Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1885: The Pit Clock

Episode Date: August 5, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Clayton Kershaw’s back, balky backs in general, some of the players traded at the deadline who made immediate impacts in their debuts, and the perhaps surprisingly small impacts that deadline moves make on playoff and World Series odds. Then (15:09) they answer listener emails about intentionally scuttling a […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1885 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast for Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. What's this you say about Clayton Kershaw and a back problem? What is happening here? back problem what is happening here well ben we are recording at 2 35 p.m pacific 5 35 p.m eastern time on thursday august 4th i'm saying that as much to anchor our discussion right now as i am

to anchor myself because i will tell you pretty tired from the deadline still but i am given to understand that clayton kershaw left his start against the Giants after throwing a couple of warm-up pitches, I believe in the fifth inning, and the Giants broadcast caught him saying, it's my back. So that seems unsurprising. I don't care for that at all. Yeah, I'm not like, you know, it's not the best that we're we're prisoners to our bones and all of the like, you know, gooey stuff around them that keeps them like in a meat sack. Yeah. You know, listeners to our special bonus Patreon pods will have heard that I'm anti warming up.

So that's where. Oh, yeah. He warmed up. That's a mistake. Wait a minute. No, I'm not going to let you spread your anti-warming up propaganda. No, I'm telling you there's a scientific basis, not for baseball players, though I do think probably professional athletes can warm up. I think they should warm up their arms if they are major league pitchers. Yeah. Acceptable in that case. I'm talking about weekend warriors like us, if we could even describe ourselves that way. But I don't like backs. Backs are bad. Yeah, man.

We need them. I guess they're good. Maybe they're better than the alternative, but they seem to malfunction a lot. It doesn't seem like they're fully evolved. Right. You can kind of tell that we did not used to walk upright. I mean, you and I did. I guess we didn't at some point, but our ancestors.

Yeah, for a while we were babies and we were like kind of rolling around and floppy like a big fish. Exactly. But our predecessors on the evolutionary tree, they had to warm up to standing upright. And it seems like we haven't quite gotten the hang of it yet. We still have some issues. We still have some evolving to do with the backs, potentially. That's one reason why I was worried about Mike Trout's back injury without really knowing anything about that specific diagnosis, which I'm sure is different from Clayton Kershaw's. But it just seems like, in general, backs are problematic.

Like, they're problematic for civilians, right? I have not been cursed with bad back problems to this point in my life, but people who are, they can wrench those things doing nothing, just bending over, standing up, right? And when you're a professional athlete, you cannot avoid making those movements the way that you can if you're a writer or a podcaster. So that's a problem because you're inevitably going to be wrenching those things and twisting and turning. And so if there's some sort of structural instability there,

it's just hard not to aggravate that. So there are just so many players in the past who had their power sapped or just had some kind of chronic condition, like not even necessarily a David Wright sort of situation, but like a Don Mattingly sort of situation maybe where it's just you're a different player, right? And Kershaw, fortunately, when he's healthy, he's still really good. So that's good at least, but it seems like he's good or bad for a back issue or two every year at this point.

Yeah. I mean, like, I don't think that i have like actual back problems like i don't have like a thing that has been diagnosed i'm just 36 you know and so sometimes i'll be like i'll like swiffer the floor and then the next day my back is like how dare you i mean is it was it worth it meg to have a temporarily clean floor in a place that is coated with dust at all times was that worth it for you and I'll go no did you do a warm-up before you swift no this is the problem Ben I did not stretch you know I'm just like it also just makes you feel like all relaxed into your body to stretch you just feel pleasantly squishy you know if we do yourself yeah if we didn't have backs would be like those fish that that eat the bottom of the

ocean like they don't eat the actual yeah they don't hurt their backs you know it's no but see ben they're fish maybe it's better to be an invertebrate than to have a costovertebral invertebrate than to have a costovertebral costovertebral vertebral dysfunction i'm gonna figure out a way to not say his injury for the rest of his career which i hope will be long yeah so yeah i'm gonna be like yeah i don't know it's a it's a balky back you know we should describe more things that way so he's got a balky back, you know? Yeah, but not in the pitching balk sense. Also problematic. But hopefully Clayton Kershaw will be okay. And people will just have to sign up for Patreon if they want my full philosophy on warming up and stretching or not.

So it has been a couple days from the deadline. And it sounds like you are not fully recovered. No. It has been a couple of days from the deadline and it sounds like you are not fully recovered. I did enjoy some of the deadline wrap up pieces at Fangraphs because your coverage was not complete when the deadline was passed. There were many more pieces to come. Yeah. I always enjoy, though, when Dan Zaborski uses Zips projection system. the projection system. I was having a conversation with my colleague,

Zach Krim, the other day about whether it's redundant to say Zip's projection system, since the P and the S are projection system. Is it one of those situations? But we opted to say it in print just because people might not know it's a projection system. I think, yeah, yeah. I think that that is a, right?

Like you don't have to say ATM machine. People know what an ATM is. Yeah, it's one of those. Right. But, you know. When he uses the Z projection system. Z. When he uses that to run the numbers and show what the actual impact of the deadline moves is, it's always like a little underwhelming to me.

Right. Because the numbers are not huge. And we obsess over the deadline and the deadline is a ton of fun. And sometimes it's fun because the players a team acquires will pay dividends right away. They will have some star performance in their first or second game with their team post-deadline. Like the Rays went and got Jose Siri and David Peralta, and then they played a crucial role in a one-run Rays win. And then the Twins got Sandy Leone, and then he drove in a couple of runs, and Jorge Lopez got the save, and Michael Fulmer pitched the scoreless inning. And it was like, all right, this is why we went and got those guys.

They're contributing already. And, Ben, you're overlooking one of the more exciting ones. Yeah, Luis Castillo, he looks really good. He looked a lot better than Garrett Cole in that particular start. He did. He's got the blue in his dreads now. He swapped that in. And you know one of my favorite things about Luis Castillo?

What? He's a Seattle Mariner. That's one of my favorite things about him. That is the best thing about him. Yeah, it was fun. That was a fun one. Like, you know, I think that generally,

I'm hijacking your point and I'm going to let you get back to it. No, this is fine. But I'm going to hijack it ever so slightly and just temporarily. It's like, you know, one of those things where when you have a game

where Jared Kellnick has had a home run off of Garrett Cole, you should like win those games. Like those are games you should like make a special point of winning. And then Luis Castillo's like, yeah, okay, got it. No problem. Yeah, I'm enjoying Cincinnati West.

Right, yeah. Poor Reds fans. But Juan Soto had a Soto-style debut with Padres, and Brandon Drury hit a grand slam. Sure did. It goes on and on. Trey Mancini hit a home run right into the Crawford boxes. We talked about how happy he was going to be to be hitting in that park instead of in Camden with the fence moved in and up.

And immediately he demonstrated why that was the case. Savant, he has hit 11 actual homers this year. And baseball Savant says he would have 22 if he had been an Astro the whole time and just been hitting in Houston. So double the dingers. And I guess we saw that pay off immediately. There are a few parks where it says he would have had even more than that. But the point is getting out of Baltimore, at least in that respect, probably good for him. And then on the flip side of, uh-oh, maybe we wish we hadn't made that move, at least for this particular game, was Brewers' closer, now Devin Williams, blowing his first save opportunity, right? Yeah. The Pirates getting a walk-off win, I believe, or at least a one-run win in that game. So the point is you can see some players who immediately do the things that they were recruited to do.

And then you look at the odds when Dan runs them and compares prior to the deals and after the deals and just sees what the difference in playoff odds and World Series odds would be. And I don't know whether these numbers would be surprisingly low to most people who pay attention to the deadline or not. Because like the maximum increase he found for any team in World Series odds, unsurprisingly the Padres, but plus 3.5 percentage points. Sure. Which is not insignificant compared to what their World Series odds were prior to the deadline. Right. insignificant compared to what their World Series odds were prior to the deadline. I think they maybe close to doubled their World Series odds actually relative to a few days ago, maybe not quite, but not far from that. So in that sense, it sounds impressive.

In another sense, it still doesn't because it's baseball. And if you're a really good team, which they are now, your odds of winning the World Series are just not going to be that great, especially if you're probably not going to win the division. And so even adding superstars, as we have learned from watching the Angels all these years, it's just it's not enough. playoff odds was just slightly more than the Padres. The Twins were at plus 7.4 percentage points because as we discussed on our breakdown, our digest of the deadline, their primary rivals in that division didn't really make any impact moves. So they stole a march on their competitors there and it gave them a boost. But relative to how much attention we pay to the deadline, maybe the numbers are not what you would have expected or not what if you polled an average baseball fan

and you said, hey, how much do you think the Padres just juiced their playoff odds or their World Series odds here? I'm going to guess they would go over. A hundred percent, yeah. Yeah, right. And I'm not questioning Dan's numbers at all. I think they're go over. A hundred percent, yeah. Yeah, right. And I'm not questioning Dan's numbers at all. I think they're probably right. But I guess it's still worth getting excited about because like compared to every other

day during the regular season, it still matters more, at least unless you're talking about like the last week or something where you might have huge swings. And also, I guess it's not purely about your odds in that season because in a lot of cases you're getting multiple seasons of players. And it's not kind of the cold actuarial calculation. It's like, hey, we get to watch Juan Soto now. So never tell me the odds. Like we just get to enjoy this superstar. So that's awesome regardless of what the numbers say.

But I'm just kind of taken aback every year when we just obsess, where's this guy going to go? Oh, my gosh, they got this guy. And then it's like you barely budged the needle in the grand scheme of things. do a piece that kind of looks historically at changes to help us better calibrate people's expectations of how much teams typically move at the deadline right because i think you're probably right it's like how you know it takes everyone a little while to get used to the idea of like what's a good wobba you know you gotta you gotta calibrate for yourself what that number means and i understand what you mean when you say that it feels like it should move stuff more. I think that maybe a way to think about this, if you're a fan and you're trying to get a sense of it, is just to look at the playoff odds page.

Now, Dan is running the Zips playoff odds, which are a little bit different than our site playoff odds, because the site playoff odds integrate steamer and zips into into the calculus so they're going to be a little bit different but like if you look at our playoff odds right now the team with the best odds of winning the world series is the dodgers at 16.3 percent and so it's like okay well that makes the the move that the padres have made here in terms of their total playoff odds and even their world Series odds make more sense, right? It sort of helps you to understand it, especially when the team that they're bumping up against

is the one with the best playoff odds. But yeah, I wonder, now I'm just thinking like, maybe we should like put some numbers in there to help people understand that the next time we do it. Also, I can't believe that you were like naming all of these guys who didn't do an especially good job and you had an opportunity for a great joke, Ben. Oh, what was it?

Well, because what one could say is the deadline givens and the deadline taketh away. That's a little joke about Michael Gibbons giving up five runs in his first appearance for the New York Mets. That's a little joke from me to you. I am so tired. I can't tell at all. No.

I'm excited to be here and chatting with you, and the deadline is great fun. But great fun can make you exhausted. I think that's the point of bachelorette parties. I guess those givens runs were not ultimately costly to the team. Yeah, they did manage to win, were not ultimately costly to the team. Yeah, they did manage to win,

but I think that I saw a lot of the Mets fans I follow on Twitter melting down is probably too strong, given what that can mean in Mets land. No offense, folks, but they weren't happy about it, Ben. I found them to be displeased. By the way, that Mancini homer was off of our friend Rich Hill. Can we call him a friend now that we interviewed him on the podcast once? I've talked to him twice in my life. It feels a little presumptuous.

Yeah, it feels too intimate, but he is a friend to all. Fellow traveler? That sounds wrong too. I don't know what that even means in the podcasting context. Alright. Well, to i don't know what that even means in the podcasting context all right well we haven't answered any emails in a while let's answer some emails let's do it news or anything that we need to acknowledge here before we move on oh well we don't need to belabor this point

but we will simply uh say that the the whit merrifield vaccination mystery has come to a satisfying close watch is over yeah we are given to understand that he is vaccinated it sounds like he maybe got vaccinated a little while ago so that he could facilitate trades and we'll be able to play in toronto and um you know we say uh better late than never wit Whit, and good luck in your future endeavors. So that's what I'll say. That's great. Yeah. I wish we could offer that incentive to every holdout in the country.

Like you will be traded to a better job or something. I guess some states have done lotteries and things like that, right? Sure, yeah. I guess that's not quite equivalent to being traded from the Royals to the Blue Jays. That's strong incentive for apparently it was for him at least, but I guess that's not a replicable strategy on a mass scale necessarily to inoculate the country, but glad it worked for Witt. All right. So let's answer a few emails here. Maybe one or two were trade related. Here is one from Aaron who said, I imagine that as a GM of a non-contender, it can be tough to get value out of players who are approaching free agency. Other teams know you are motivated to move them, which could reduce your leverage.

Could there be any value in mixing in a non-deal in an obvious deal spot? Maybe we're thinking of Wilson Contreras here. Oh, that actually comes up later in the email. To make the competition aware that you will walk away from the trading table. Using a small percentage of suboptimal plays is a common theme in high-level poker, but the volume of hands is much greater. I'm trying to come up with an optimistic take for the Cubs not getting any value for Ian Happ or Wilson Contreras at the deadline. I don't think this is a viable explanation,

but I would love to hear your thoughts. Follow-up question, am I just underrating the value of the compensatory picks relative to what might have been offered? It seems unlikely that they wouldn't get at least that in return. But here again, I'd love to hear your take on this. And yeah, it does seem unlikely to me that they could not have bettered that for wilson contraris although they would have been deprived of wilson contraris's services for the second half whatever that's worth well i i don't want to like be uh overly praising or overly punitive i mean i think maybe they just didn't get that uh value i also wonder i think

that like people who pay attention to defensive metrics probably know that he is not a very good defensive catcher but i don't know that that is the popular understanding of him and i don't know how much they care about the perception of the deal relative to the value they actualize in the deal but that might have been a motivator you know maybe they want to resign him and they think that'll be easier if they haven't dealt him you know like maybe they think he's one chances i guess yeah like maybe they think he's one of our guys and we uh we will be able to underscore that point more effectively if we keep him in house and maybe the sum of those things plus the potential value of a compensatory pick outweighed what they were receiving on offer.

I think that in any negotiation, being understood to be willing to walk away when you don't get your base needs met is probably valuable. I think that if you were doing a mixed strategy and you were doing suboptimal plays, I would find that more likely with ian hap than with contraris just because i view contraris as being the more valuable

trade piece we really need better language because i really don't like calling people pieces i don't like calling them chips yeah I really don't want to call them assets. Yeah. But a more valuable trade guy. Trade guy? That just makes it sound like I'm trying to be cutie, and I'm really not. I just don't want to call him a piece. Appealing player to competitors.

I don't know. Right. It seems like he would facilitate a more advantageous return. See, then I'm in a bind again ben yeah but still turning him into a commodity here but it's uh it's hard sports do that to players and to us when we talk about them so hopefully i hopefully i will be given an a for effort and everyone will be understanding here but i would imagine that the most significant return would be from him that the most significant return would be from him just because of the relative scarcity of good options.

And there was more, you know, in the Ian Happ mold. Yeah. Although that makes it more valuable than to walk away and be able to point to this trade where you really could have gotten something valuable and say, I'll do it. Don't test me. I'll do it. I walked away. I walked away from Contreras. I'll walk away from you. Well, and like, you know, I'm probably I might be over valuing scarcity relative to remaining team control. So maybe that makes Hap more appealing. Right. Because isn't he they haven't there's another year on balance there. But, you know, I think that it is probably not the worst thing for a front office to look at a situation like this and say, like, look, we'd like to because we are in a teardown mode and we have decided that is how we're going to operate. We would like to bring in talent to the organization that is going to help the next good Cubs team. But it is not like a terrible downside scenario to be like, we were not floored by any of

our offers and we'll put a qualifying offer on him and we'll either get some compensatory pick. They're not a revenue. I had to look this up earlier. They're not a revenue sharing receiving club. That's awkward. So it'll be after the second round but like you know they might say look we'll either get a comp pick there or we'll persuade contrarians to resign

and those are both fine downside scenarios relative to like who's the you know having whoever our backup catcher is for half a season. So I think it's probably fine. It's not the best bit of wordsmithing that we refer to both compensatory picks for qualifying offers and competitive balance picks as comp picks. We need better language there too, just because I think that's like radically confusing to people.

I get goofed up on it and I have to know this stuff for work. So we got to come up with something better there. But yeah, I believe Jesse Rogers of ESPN reported last week that the Cubs and Contreras had not had meaningful contract extension talks since 2017. I don't know what meaningful means exactly, but if that's true, if they haven't really made any attempts to lock him up long term or not a great attempt, then I don't know if that is why they held on to him or whether it's just that they couldn't get what they wanted or thought he was worth. But even if they didn't hold on to him just so they could establish precedent of saying, see, we will not just do

any deal. We'll walk away. Yeah. Even if that wasn't it, and I'm pretty sure that probably wasn't it, but even if that wasn't it, might as well spin it that way, right? Might as well say so, just like, well, I mean, often they will say like, well, we just didn't like the offers that were out there or something, which at least establishes that you don't have a super low bar that you had some target in mind. And if you didn't get it, if that wasn't met, then you were willing to walk away. So whether that helps, whether anyone remembers that, like GMs know each other, right? Or presidents of baseball operations or whatever their titles are, like they talk, they text.

I think they have a sense of how far you can push someone or whether they're willing to bend. sense of how far you can push someone or whether they're willing to bend. So if there is a history of someone just being willing to walk away from talks and blow up a potential deal because it's not quite what they wanted, that's probably known if you've been around for a while, if you've had talks with that team, it's something that you might factor in there. So I don't know if it's worth intentionally sabotaging a good deal in order to do that. But inevitably, probably you will not be able to make every deal that you would want. And then you can at least pretend that that was why you did it just to make people think next time you're talking to them about a trade. Yeah. Yeah, I think that that's right.

All right. Christian, Patreon supporter, probably responding to our Rockies talk on our last episode. What would the Rockies have to do to make you reconsider everything you thought they were doing poorly? Oh, man. Could they undo it with one championship very soon? Or would it take something more like the greatest dynasty ever seen? So. Wow. They're a long way away from that.

Yeah. They're a long way away probably from both they're a long way away i was gonna say they're not close to either thing yeah what would they have to do so i guess there's one scenario where montfort sells the team and they clean house and they bring in new people and then i would be more willing to reconsider i guess it wouldn't even be reconsidering. It would just be changing my valuation because the Rockies changed. But if there was continuity, if they had the same ownership in the same front office and it was just how successful would they have to be in order to change my mind and make me think, okay, they're competent after all. What would it take? Yeah. What would it take? Hmm. I'm trying to think of the closest comp and maybe it would be the mid last decade Royals. Right. Who were looked down upon in some similar ways. Right. About being a bit behind the times. Maybe not quite to a Rockies extent. But I think they took a lot of people by surprise. I've mentioned often just how incredibly fun those teams were, just like best teams that I have probably watched or covered and not rooted for, but just observed and enjoyed as a neutral, as a journalist. I really enjoyed

watching those teams. I was never completely convinced that they were great, though, which was part of the pleasure of watching them because they would have these semi-miraculous comebacks and just the way that they were doing it was sort of out of step with the times, which is what made it fun and novel. And even when they were winning pennants or championships, I still just like on paper, if you were to simulate the season a billion times, I probably would not have picked them as the favorite, which was one thing that made it fun when they won anyway. But I don't know that they even then, even with that success, completely changed my mind about that organization, which maybe has been borne out by subsequent

results. And there are positive aspects of that organization but there are also some negative aspects both on and off the field seemingly so i don't know that even breaking out and winning a world series and a couple of pennants necessarily made me think you know what dayton moore is really great at this, as opposed to, well, he put together a good team for a couple of years there in between terrible teams, both before and after. So you can't like completely luck into a World Series and back-to-back pennants. So I'm not saying it was totally luck or anything. I'm just saying there is some luck involved in baseball inevitably so just the results don't completely change your understanding of the process in all cases i mean this is like a

an overly simplistic answer but like a start to this would just be like talking about the team in a way that lines up with what we know about. I always feel like such a jerk talking about the Rockies. I know, I feel condescending. I'm sure there are a lot of people with the Rockies who know a lot more about baseball than I do. Oh, yeah. I know that to be true.

Absolutely. So I feel like such a jerk. But I think that the way that the upper-level management talks about the team publicly does not seem to like comport with like you don't need to be a brain genius to be like this isn't a good baseball team what are you guys doing but then what if they are a good baseball team after all in this but they're not like the thing about it is they're not the thing about it is that you know look we can we can go round and round about how hard it is to know the current true talent level

of a of an individual player let alone an amalgamation of players right what we are given is their performance and we know we know that that sits somewhere along a continuum of potential outcomes some of which are right smack in the middle some of which are a guy having his best season ever some of which are a guy having his worst you know 162 games ever

and that the real the measure of the man is at least somewhat unknowable. Sure, okay. But also, they don't win a lot of baseball games. And they do not do well by the measures that we have of evaluating their performance in toto. Now, we might look at them and say,

look, you play baseball on the moon. So we're going to mentally adjust our expectations of what your baseline performance could be because you're playing against a stacked deck with us? Against a stacked deck. Yeah. The deck is stacked against you. Against them, yes. It's fine, Ben. You still sound not tired at all to me.

No, not at all. i'm not at all tired so like you know you could look at them and say look we understand we understand that you're doing this very you're attempting this very hard thing but even when you do that like they still extended daniel bard you know so i think that i wouldn't necessarily think that they are a good franchise, that they are normal baseball problems that every team has where you're like, you know, your relievers can be up and down and sometimes a guy can't hit and that guy gets hurt over there. And then like the course field specific problems, I would have greater confidence in their ability to address any of those things if they talked about the team and where it is right now and

where they expect it to be five years from now in a way that seems to align more closely with the measures of team quality that we do have, whether they're quantitative analytical measures or softer stuff like staffing and infrastructure and hiring scouting directors who aren't related to the owner, stuff like that. So I think there are a number of ways in which we could see them starting to turn over a new leaf as an organization, and they haven't quite done that yet, which doesn't mean they won't, and it doesn't mean that there aren't talented and smart baseball people who don't work for that team. We know that there are, but they don't seem to be the public voices that are directing

the trajectory of the franchise in a way that is a little concerning did that make me sound more or less condescending i'm trying so hard to be nice now that i i sound more condescending almost which is not my intent yeah but i think if the question is like well if they got religion all of a sudden and maybe that's not the best expression to use with the Rockies and the Royals because it seems like they've got religion. But in the sense of starting to talk like other teams talk, let's say. And hey, like there could be a scenario where talking and thinking differently than other teams could be an advantage. Sure, totally. It just does not seem to be this scenario with the Rockies.

But if there's a scenario where suddenly they stop acting like the Rockies, sure, then they wouldn't even have to do so much better on the field in the short term to change my mind. It's more like if Christian's question is, well, what would they have to do to change your mind if it still seems like the Rockies are still Rockies-ing, if they're still talking and acting the way that the Rockies talk and act, but they're winning. Right. wins a lot more than you expect them to win, at some point you have to adjust your priors and say, okay, maybe they actually are a better team, right? So if the Rockies suddenly reeled off a ton of wins in solid, successful seasons, then I would have to question, maybe they do know something. Maybe they sound wrong to me because I am wrong and they are actually right. So in that scenario, how much would they have to win? Like multiple championships? I mean, not even championships because the playoffs are so random, but like multiple division titles, I think. Like they would have to win the NL West like back-to-back years.

And then I'd be like, okay, you just have to hand it to them. I don't know how they're doing it. It doesn't sound like they know what they're doing any more than it used to. But clearly they do because look at the results. And if it's not like a fluky winning every one run game and having a negative run differential and winning the division anyway, if it's like they are actually a solid baseball team, despite still having pizza parties at the trade deadline without trading anyone, then I would just have to say, okay, they know something I don't. So that's what it would take for me. Yeah, I think that that's right.

I want a roof for them. They've embraced purple. I want there to be more of that. Good color palette. Yeah. Beautiful ballpark. Just really odd decision-making sometimes. Just really strange.

You know, it's just strange. It sure is. All right. Here's one from Cheyenne. Speaking of strange, this is a strange question, but a fun one. This is a strange question, but a fun one. I've had the mental image of having the dirt cone, quote unquote, of the pitching mound placed on top of a mechanized, vertically adjustable elevator style platform for quite some time so that the mound can be moved up and down on demand. What if this design were used in conjunction with the pitch clock?

Once the pitcher's time is up, program the mound to slowly start sinking into the ground. Going further and further down, the longer the pitcher is over time, gradually reducing the downward plane by the second. Thoughts in terms of if this would actually incentivize pitchers to stay within pace of play timers and or how pitchers and hitters would react slash adjust. Another idea is to have the robo zone gradually shrink as time passes but that's less fun still pretty fun i guess not as fun because the visual yeah you don't get to see it see it

but oh my gosh i love this idea yeah because my favorite thing about this is that the question inadvertently is also asking, what if there was a pit? Yeah. Right? Because- If Pedro Baez is out there, eventually we will find out. Yeah. Like it'll just, you know, he's just going to sink into the ground and become a mole

man. Oh my gosh, Ben. All of our email hypotheticals are coming together. Wow. The perfect question. I think this is great. They'd absolutely never do it. Do you think you would get vertigo if you're coming set

and then you go into your throwing motion? And like when, I guess a follow-up question I have to this flawless idea is when, like does it stop moving or once it has started to sink does it just keep sinking until the ball has been released like when you come set and you're you're ready to go into your throwing motion do they go okay he's just the journey to the center of the earth right i mean no because that's that that ben is fiction and this is serious yeah how dare you sorry to make a mockery of this question but yeah maybe it's like vertigo goes until you're too deep to actually throw the ball out of and then it's just a walk i love this this is

perfect i don't yeah I have no notes. I really like this too. It would have to sink fairly quickly, I think, because if it were sinking really slowly and imperceptibly, then that would be no fun. And also it would not be sufficient disincentive to pick up the pace. So it would not have to go down super quickly because then you might be off balance and it could be a safety issue. So that's a problem. So you'd have to find the right rate of descent so that you're not endangering anyone, but also you are measurably lowering the mound in the time that you might take over and above the pitch clock timer.

So if you could find that right pace, and I wonder just analytically speaking, I mean, if you could calculate the benefit that you get from taking a little extra time to recharge or plan your next pitch. Right. How do you balance those? Yeah. Versus whatever you lose by having a little less downward approach angle or whatever that too. Yeah. I mean, that's the thing. Also, Or a pro-changle or whatever, that too. Yeah, I mean, that's the thing. Also, like, is your accuracy compromised by this? Right, yeah. You know, it would have to be, presumably.

Does it do weird things to the little stones in your ear? Yeah, so maybe it's not even so much about, like, losing the advantage of height, but just, like, having a hard time putting the ball where you want it. Feeling wobbly. Yeah, you feel wobbly. Because you are being lowered in real time. a hard time putting the ball where you want it because you are being lowered in real time well the the rate really and then like how does the rate interact with the yeah like how fast would it go and do you like when you know when the motion starts you know in movies or tv shows

where someone will be in an elevator and it starts and they're like oh no we're going and and they move you know like well i've started because it started lurch yeah lurch there's a word that's a more descriptive way of talking about this um would you yeah i guess some guys would fall and like how fast do you it would depend who's setting the speed right because like I found out the other day that on June 29th The earth moved faster like it spun faster Ben. Did you hear about this? Yeah, we had like the shortest day ever on June 29th And I was like, oh wow, like how much did we lose and then it was like 1.59 milliseconds And I was like, oh so it was the same length like I get that, you know

It's different but like that isn't meaningful to me like i can't even count that i can't even like pause and be like there there was i have no sense of how short a long time that is as opposed to this where you would want it to to mean something but you wouldn't want a guy to fall down and you wouldn't want the little rocks in his ears inner ears to get out of whack because that's how you get vertigo this is my original question like do you get vertigo when this happens you get off kilter and then you're gonna be like on the injured list for vertigo i just i like the image of it because everyone would be able to see it yeah and it's

almost like a dunce cap sort of situation. It's a powerful social motivator. I'm not endorsing dunce caps, which seem kind of cruel, but I am endorsing low level shaming of pitchers who take a really long time between pitches. So I like this implementation of that, I think, where everyone would see you slowly sinking into the ground and would know that you were lollygagging. It's like being yanked off the stage with a cane or something, basically. It's like you're sinking into the earth. It is quicksand, essentially,

which is another thing that came up on a recent Patreon episode. Y'all are missing out, those of you who are not listening to our bonus pods. But I love the image of this. And if we could work out the particulars, then I think it's much more entertaining than an automatic ball. Well, and then, Ben, here's another question for you. Does this further incentivize the development of – development makes it sound like we're growing them in the lab. But does this further incentivize teams to have very, very tall pitchers? Oh, hmm.

Right? Because can you offset some of the dip by being like 6'9"? You're like, I'm just up here. It's fine. I'm still a skyscraper. Don't worry about it. It's like when your foundation settles.

I guess your relative height advantage would not be different. So if it's advantageous to be tall now maybe it wouldn't be more advantageous but you would have more leeway yeah and you would still be very tall you'd still be very on a downward plane so good vertical approach angle and all that so yeah this merits further consideration for sure. I forwarded to Theo Epstein and co. Yeah. Get on it, Theo.

Because it's just, you know, it would be so funny. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Very funny. It would be funny. We would be like, ha-ha. If we can improve baseball while also making it more whimsical, then I think we should. Yeah.

Two in one. All right. Here is a much less radical suggestion from Mitch, Patreon supporter, who says on today's this was a past days. Yankees Red Sox broadcast David Cohn and Ryan Rucco were singing the praises of DJ LeMayhew being a plus defender at first, second and third base. And they raised the idea of a utility gold glove for a guy like LeMayhew who may not amass sufficient numbers at any one spot. Would you all support the creation of such a thing? And I've got to say, when I read this, I had to do a double take because I thought this already existed.

I did too. And I think I thought that because there is a Fielding Bible Award for utility players. And we have both been Fielding Bible Award voters. Well, good for us that we didn't get that one wrong because that would have been more embarrassing having voted. Yeah. So I wouldn't support the creation of this. In fact, I forgot that it did not already exist. And now that I recall that it does not, I think that it should. And there's already the example out there of the Fielding Bible Award. should. And there's already the example out there of the Fielding Bible Award. And you've just got many more players playing multiple positions now because fewer bench spots for position players. And so everyone's got to have a bunch of clubs or a bunch of different positional skill sets. And so

it sucks to exclude players from consideration just because they might not meet the minimum innings total at any one particular position. So yeah, wholehearted support for this proposal. Yeah, I think that it should reflect the way that teams build their rosters. I think awards generally should have some relationship to baseball as it is played on the field and baseball as teams understand it. And so yeah, this seems like there are guys who we know are bringing tremendous value to their clubs by being able to, you know, go here and there and everywhere, either to, you know, take advantage of a particular matchup or hide a guy or deal with injury and help paper that over. And so I think recognizing that seems like it just bears a good resemblance to the game. Yeah.

Huh. That's probably an easier sell than the elevator style pitching platform, I would think, to the powers that be. Can you have actual dirt on it? Because you're going to lose a little dirt when it goes up and down. So you need like a rubber ring around the bottom of the mound and then it'll help keep that dirt in. bring around the bottom of the mound and then it'll help keep that dirt in and then we won't lose dirt into the pit that we have just put into the field. Yeah. And would there be chicanery, I wonder, with the motion of the mound? Because you always hear rumors, and certainly it's been

documented at various times in baseball history, that some teams will monkey with the mound a bit, that they will have higher or lower, steeper, less steep mounds, just depending on the preferences of their pitchers and maybe to throw visiting pitchers off their game. So could you tamper with the hydraulics so that you would have different rates of descent as well? Or would that be off limits? Maybe because it's beneath the mound, that would be tough for the groundskeepers to tamper with. You'd require some engineering knowledge, some computer programming knowledge there. Probably that would be controlled by the league, let's hope. But I guess malfunctions could happen in a way that cannot with a regular mound, although those can get messed up too. But this is a new way in which they could get messed up well but you would have like a mechanical process that

could presumably be monitored right so you would have to like go boop boop boop and then it would set a height or like you'd have to go boop boop boop and then it would be like on and start descending so like if someone were so inclined they could like have a camera on that setup you know and monitor it seems like it could be made foolproof, but it probably wouldn't be given what we know about enforcement of rules in the league so far. So maybe we shouldn't do this because it could result in the next big scandal. What would we call it? Like, you're on an elevator to hell.

I think the analysis has been good so far people can probably tell i'm a little punchy yeah that's good that can be a boost for a podcaster yeah yeah all right here's another one that might give you an opportunity to demonstrate your punchiness this is from emily who says i am not high i am not drunk strong start start. Yeah, let's go. And apologies if this has been discussed before. I don't believe it has. Not exactly like this. Let us say you are a mad scientist of the Dr. Frankenstein, Dr. Moreau vein, and you also love baseball.

As a lover of baseball, you are aware of the current fad of pitch design, and as a mad scientist, you know how to stitch together body parts pretty well. Seeing an opportunity to combine your vocation with your avocation, you decide to design the perfect hand for pitching to achieve maximum optimal spin rate for the pitches they want to excel in. This brings up a series of questions. What would that hand look like? How much different would a pitch-specific hand be from the normal hand? So how different would a hand be if a hand were different? Six fingers for change-up artists. Longer and stronger ring fingers with a wider gap between the middle and ring finger for those who want split-finger dominance.

Maybe a thumb on the other side of your throwing hand for some reason. How much difference would there be between, say, a hand designed for the perfect slider and one for the perfect curveball? And would specializing in one hand choice preclude you from being effective at other pitches? Would pitchers even do this to gain an edge at their job considering the effect it would have on their personal lives? Good luck shaking hands or buying gloves. And at what stage in their development would someone give up on their natural hand and go Frankenstein? I've tried everything else. I'm going to stitch together my hands with other fingers and see what happens.

How long would it take the league to ban boutique hands and mandate birth hands as the only hands? Birth hands. What would it take for pitchers to adopt this? Someone would have to be the first, and others feel it's okay for others to go under the knife. There's probably dozens more questions to ask, and I'm sure you'll think of them. For argument's sake, let's also assume that cyborg installations are not allowed in this league. And adding extra tendons to elbows or knees is just too boring for a mad scientist to really consider. So I guess it has to be organic material. And Emily included a PS here, which I will read. I do hope this also does not come off as condescending or rude for those with disabilities with their hands. I know intent doesn't outweigh the outcome, but I couldn't shake the idea of

some middling pitcher going to a doctor to customize their hand to get better at pitching and could imagine no one else that would kick around that idea as effectively as you two and perhaps as wildly as well. And we've seen a range of hand shape and finger compliments, right? I mean, we've ranged from three-finger Brown to Antonio Alphonseca with his six. So it can work. Whatever you've got, you can work with it. Now, I'll give you the scientific answer here or as close as we can come to one from an actual expert in pitch design whom I consulted here and sent this question to. Dan O'Coin, who is the chief research officer at Driveline Baseball, and he knows a lot about pitching and what various pitch design and handshape does to pitch design and such. And so I thought we could get his opinion. We do not have to adhere to his opinion. We can come up with our own wild and effective hand scenarios.

But he said, had to reread this one a few times before responding. Great use of your time dan i've spent a decent amount of time looking at this but obviously from a different lens compared to this email i was worried for a moment there when i read the first half of this it's like what is driveline getting up to these days namely if you can find some insights relating hand anatomy to grips performance etc it gets you a bit closer to automating grip suggestions for athletes and better quantifying projection for something like the draft. That said, there's no published research that I'm aware of

or study that a team has done that has found something meaningful or compelling on this front. There are a few papers that suggest grip and pinch strength and or finger length are significantly related to spin rate, but those papers often fail to control for the relationship velocity has with spin and the relationship velocity has with being taller, longer fingers, and stronger, more grip and pinch strength. Pinch strength. Pinch strength, yes, which might correlate to pitch strength, but is Pinch strength. Pinch strength, yes.

Pinch. Which might correlate to pitch strength, but is not the same. So this is something that you will hear like Pedro Martinez, right? Right. Like people will marvel at like his grip and the size and length of his fingers. Right. And he's not a huge person in stature. So perhaps in his case that helped.

I don't know. Dan says, I've written a pretty extensive lit review here and he he links not about this specific question oh i was gonna say like i love this question but i don't know if that's the best use of your time i will link to the actual literature on this subject he also says driveline documents grips that our athletes come in with which we then pair to rep soto and trackman data to see if one type of grip has an inherent edge over another. Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are not many results worth sharing. What works for one athlete may not work for another for reasons we still don't really understand all that well, despite our many hypotheses.

However, he says, I suppose if I were to build a hand from scratch, it wouldn't hurt to have longer and stronger fingers that have more range of motion when controlling for height and strength of athlete to generate more sheer force and contact with the baseball at ball release. That's sheer force, S-H-E-A-R, not S-H-E-E-R, and have more grip options in the playbook for trial and error. I just don't think it'd really move the needle in the same way I once thought it would. The unlock is probably just generating more friction with the ball as the thumb releases and the ball slides up one's fingers. How that is done or how one could create that without using foreign substances is still a mystery. Maybe one way would just be to have more fingers. It's not a foreign substance if it is part of your hand. Right. That would create more friction, I guess,

and depending on where the fingers are, this gets back to like if you could have a third arm, where would the third arm be question. And once again, what kind of hair would be on it? That is the important question that everyone is wondering and asking. But like if you could attach extra finger to the finger that you already have. So it's just like an extra long finger that you can still control. And you could like.

You have like a Vecna hand. Yeah. Like a normal hand. Right. Yeah. You could like wrap it around the ball like a prehensile sort of like a monkey tail kind of thing oh sure yeah instead of like grabbing onto a branch you could just like sure yeah just like wrap it around the ball and then just sling it yeah that seems like it would

like be good flick it yeah so sometimes you'll see like, you know, Guinness Book of World Records pictures of like someone who has really long fingernails and they're like curled around and around. It would be like that, but with fingers basically. Yeah. So that seems good. But if you can't have like extra long fingers and it's more just about the number of fingers that you can have and the shape of them. I guess I cannot actually improve upon Dan's response here. It's not the funniest possible answer, I guess. Really, the answer is that we just do not know. The science is not there yet to answer this question with satisfaction.

To properly build Frankenhand. Right. Yeah. I think, oh boy. Like, I had a joke like 10 minutes ago and then I forgot what it was. Right. Yeah. I think, oh, boy. I had a joke like 10 minutes ago, and then I forgot what it was. So that's lost to the ether forever. I mean, could you, like at a certain point,

you would imagine like too many extra fingers getting in the way, right? Like you would. Yeah, right. it would be hard to release depending on how many of them there were and how dexterous they are like could you have them you you couldn't you couldn't kill an eagle montoya's father because there we go i found it again so relieved it was gonna bother me for the rest of the day, Ben. This whole segment is a joke in itself. But I think that you could, right, if it's natural, if you're born with this atypical hand, that might be different from if you're getting it later in your life and then it's like, can you control it? Like, do you have to rewire your nervous system so that you can control all of these extra fingers that you have now?

Yeah. your nervous system so that you can control all of these extra fingers that you have now yeah is that something you can even adjust to or does it have to happen at some formative stage in your brain formation and that seems that seems like a thing that like children shouldn't have to worry about you know you shouldn't have to contemplate yeah no like you have to be a consenting adult to to get your reshaped Frankenstein hand. I mean, obviously, like, if you lose fingers or a hand, you can compensate for that and your brain will rewire itself. put like ears on mice, but I don't know of a human equivalent to that. Extra ears? More ears on the mice? They put like a human ear on a mouse.

Oh, no. Or maybe they grew the human ear on the mouse. Was this the island of Dr. Bro? No, I think this was like actual science. Okay. We're going to get emails about it because I'm, or maybe they transplanted the ear on the mouse. Why would you do that? The less we think about laboratory animal experience, probably the better.

Yeah, it's so bad. Because there have been some bad ones. Yeah, it's just really, really grim stuff. I guess what I would say is that I don't know how the science of this would work out, but I think that here's a reason to not do it. Great, because I can't think of one myself. I'm glad you came up with one. No, here is another reason not to do it,

other than the science seeming to be kind of suspect and the briar patch of ethical issues that one encounters. Hitters have it hard enough already. Yes, right. They just have a hard time already. We don't need to further optimize pitchers' hands. I think they are sufficiently optimized. One may say that we would be interested in making their jobs a little

bit harder so that the balance between pitchers and hitters were uh better uh or more aesthetically pleasing so i think that to preserve the balance um we need to say you know yeah well the hitters can have new hands too if they want i just i, I don't know if it's advantageous. They could get a better grip on the bat. Maybe that helps in some way. I don't know if this helps them generate bat speed. We got to get Petriello back on here so he can run the numbers on that. But yeah.

And also, like if this is performance enhancing, then you've got a playing field that is further unleveled. Obviously, it's already unleveled. Obviously, it's already unlevel in some ways, and maybe some pitchers have natural advantages with their handshape. But then if it turns out that sewing on an extra finger or whatever that turns out to be actually does make you much better at baseball, well, then everyone's going to be under pressure to do that. I mean, it's going to be PDs all over again. I don't know if it would be harmful to your health to do that unless your immune system rejects your extra implant fingers. But I think other than that, it's a real hassle potentially here and I don't want baseball to be body horror here where it's just like the more you can tinker with your hand and the more fingers you can add on there, suddenly you have centipede pitchers out there. And it's like, well, whoever is willing to indulge in the most extreme body modifications will be the best pitcher.

That is not necessarily what we want to select for in the sport. Right. So I would say stick with what you got. I mean, there's always a blurry line because it's like, well, if you can have LASIK surgery, which I did and which a lot of players have done, well, who's to say where you draw the line? Do you draw it at Frankenstein hands? I mean, it seems like there are some slight distinctions between one and the other but i don't know that we want to go further down this road inevitably probably we will and at least emily drew the line at cyborg hands and implants so

right yeah but because then because then you have then you're like you're on your way to being the Borg. Yeah. All right. Or having an ear put on your... Do I dare Google this? I think I do dare. I don't personally, but let me know what you find. Mouse human ear. Well, look, I just said mouse human and it was a laboratory mouse. Oh, wait, maybe it just had a weird thing on it that looked like an ear.

Oh, okay. Whatever happened to the mouse with an ear on its back? I mean, it was in 1996, so I think that mouse is probably dead by now because they don't seem like they live for very long. Yeah, regardless of the surgery. Right. I don't think it had surgery. This is reminding me of the Soviet two-headed dog experiment.

Right. Yeah, that was bad. Don't do that either. No. Just leave animals be, I think. Just leave them be. Especially if we're talking about enhancing your pitching performance. I mean, if we're talking about, like, enhancing your pitching performance. I mean, if we're talking about life-saving remedies here, well, maybe it's a tougher ethical calculus, at least for some people.

Oh, this is so much grosser than I thought it was going to be. See, I thought it was going to be pretty gross when you described it. It had what looked like a human ear grown on its back the ear which is in quotation marks was actually an ear-shaped cartilage structure grown by seeding cow cartilage cells into a biodegradable ear shape mold and then implanted under the mouth the skin of the mouse with an external ear shape splint to maintain the shape why did they do this oh boy yeah if that happens naturally that's one thing but uh if we are inducing that to happen, I question why. Just because they couldn't stop to question whether they should situation.

Yeah, get Dr. Malcolm on the case. I think, anyway, it was a nude mouse. And in an interview with Newsweek, Joseph Vac vacanti who i think was the doctor involved in all this nonsense joked that the mouse had the ear removed and then lived out a happy normal life however it is standard for lab workers to kill the mice they work with oh no did you say a nude mouse yeah it's a nude mouse mouse is the mouse use is called a nude mouse a commonly used strain of immunocompromised mouse preventing a darker and darker oh my god i regret all of this this is so unfortunate oh okay like a hairless mouse not like a an unclothed mouse okay well okay wait a minute but also

both of those are nude mice you were drawing a distinction without a difference. Oh, boy. All right. It doesn't have a little hat. It isn't even like... That's why I was thinking of many fictional mice. It's not even like Yogi, where there's just one on top and nothing on the bottom. That could be part of the experiment, too, for all I know. Anyway, I guess we needed one of these after the trade deadline episode. That was very baseball-centric.

Yeah. Is it Yogi Bear that doesn't have pants yes yeah which seems like oh he just has the tie no who's the one just uh striding around public parks indecently exposing himself oh right because cubby or whatever has a jersey but no pants winnie the pooh winnie the pooh has a little sweater right of course yes and no bottoms very wholesome character aside well he's a bear you know he's like the fact that he's half close at all is like kind of silly because he doesn't he has fur he doesn't need clothes bringing it back to baseball just slightly not all the way but just slightly so bill patreon supporter says let's say you're a super villain so this is maybe slightly better than the mad

scientist scenario from before maybe i guess there's a lot of likely to grow an ear on a mouse a lot of overlap between super villains and mad scientists an ear on a mouse. A lot of overlap between supervillains and mad scientists, it seems like. But let's say you're a supervillain, wealthy beyond belief and extremely motivated to not let even the idea of gambling interfere with your enjoyment of baseball. Well, that doesn't seem so villainous. I can get on board with that part. that part. You want to finance enough game throwing that baseball has a reckoning and decides it can no longer actively associate with gambling. No ads on broadcast, no in-stadium stuff, no player endorsements. What would the strategy be? Paul Oyer said the fact that major leaguers are paid so much deters this. What if you outbid even the majors? What if you offered a million

per player to change one swing or don't swing decision and then revealed a year later that you'd successfully influenced 50 of those tiny decisions by 50 different players or 100 or 1,000? Or what if you spent much less money and did this in the minor leagues? Since those players are paid less and would cost less to influence, in that case, you might even lead to MLB realizing that having minor leaguers making $400 a week is a risk. You'd basically be a hero. This is how you would rationalize it to yourself in your lair late at night.

Would this work, or would they just ban everyone involved from the game forever and decide that their partnership with gambling companies is totally unrelated and probably contract another five minor league teams for the sport of it? It's probably that. Thanks for reading this bizarre email and for giving an outlet to bizarre emails like this one.

Bill, you probably thought this would be the most bizarre email on the episode that we read it, but I'm sorry to say it was probably not. P.S. I understand if you can't comment because this comes too close to your own plans and you don't want to contribute to the future prosecution's case. So if you wanted to spoil MLB's closer and closer ties with gambling by basically doing some sort of exposure therapy thing and rubbing their noses in it and saying, here's what happens. See, we warned you. I paid off these players and they

will gamble and it's all your fault and try to like scare them onto the straight and narrow here somehow would that work and and how would you do it just by like making the worst case scenario come to life so that you could say see we must distance ourselves from this yeah hmm so in this scenario we have been saying we hate gambling, but publicly, so that no one would assume that we're doing underhanded chicanery in the back. Sorry, I'm just thinking about our own evil plan. We've been too forthcoming with our thoughts about gambling for this to work, probably. Well, I think they would just ban everybody.

I think that they would just ban everyone. I think it's an interesting question. I appreciate the question because I think it's like, it's an interesting question. Like, I appreciate the question because I think it's really interesting to think about where, how bad would things have to get sort of what level of scandal would we have to see in the sport before the league decided the thing, the, the thing that we have embarked on and that we have invested a lot of time in and that we think

is going to be a persistent and lucrative revenue stream for us, the issue with that is not a single bad actor or insufficient enforcement mechanisms, but the entire enterprise. That's basically what we're asking. And I think there's too much money for that to ever be the conclusion that they draw i mean i guess the place where we're gonna kind of see the rubber meet the road on a version of this one that doesn't involve as far as we know any underhanded nonsense but like i will be very curious to see what the future of like crypto and NFT endorsements and partnerships is within baseball, right? Because I'm sure they have contracts and stuff. And so they have certain obligations that they have to fulfill. But I wonder, you know, if we had seen some of the

crashes on the crypto side that we have seen in the last couple of months prior to the leagues, that we have seen in the last couple of months prior to the leagues, you know, getting in bed sounds maybe more than I mean, maybe it's exactly as much as I mean, I don't know. Anyway, like having a partnership with FTX and some of the other crypto stuff that they've done, like, I wonder if they would look at that a little differently if, you know, we hadn't seen like the huge devaluation of cryptocurrencies that we've seen in the last couple of months and some of them may have rebounded and i'm here to tell you i don't care about please don't correct me about i don't care like if you're anyway so i think that the cement is probably dry on the existing partnerships they have but i wonder if

they will you know exhibit any reticence for future partnerships because they've realized that like the bottom has fallen out of something maybe now that's different than throwing a game right both in terms of its impact to the sort of on-field product and its legacy within the sport but i think that what would probably happen is they would say okay give us the names and they would say, okay, give us the names and they would ban those players. And I don't know, I'm sure that there are shifty characters to be had. And certainly, you know, there has been cheating in baseball after the Black Sox stuff. But I think that you would have to, I think it would cost a lot to incentivize a current player to participate in actual game throwing,

particularly if you laid out to them, oh, I'm going to tell them in a year. Well, yeah. Which I know the question doesn't assume, but I don't know, that might be naive of me. I mean, I do worry about vulnerability within the sport, so clearly I think that somebody can be had, but I think it's going to take a good amount of money because I think a lot

of guys want to think they could get into the Hall of Fame one day. Yeah. Well, I would think that it wouldn't take as much if you were going after minor leaguers. Yes, which is a vulnerability we've talked about on the show, I think. Yes, right. But maybe ultimately they would just ban a bunch of minor leaguers. And I mean, I guess you don't care if you're a supervillain what the collateral damage is here. But I don't know that that would convince. What if you're a supervillain who decides to do this, you know? Right, yeah. No, this could be heroic in some interpretations.

Maybe not the methods, but the goal at least. But I think you'd end up just getting a lot of players blackballed and banned from baseball, which would not be great. They couldn't ban fabulously wealthy supervillains because a lot of them own professional sports franchises. So you'd really cut down on your market for franchise sales there. But if you paid off enough players and enough players were implicated that they couldn't just say, oh, it was one bad apple,

it's a real systemic vulnerability here, maybe that would help. Really, you'd want to go for the umpires probably, right? Because the umpires at the major league level making a fraction of what the players are making and would have a huge sway over calls. So that might be the way to go there if you want more bang for your buck, although maybe you don't care. Maybe money is no object and maybe this is more effective if you don't take the budget route

and you show that major league players can be bought even if the price is very high. But even if you did this, would they say, OK, we cannot promote gambling anymore? Or would they just say, well, you're a supervillain who paid players to throw games? Like that doesn't mean that we can't advertise for our daily fantasy or whatever casino we're partnered with. Right. Like are those things even connected here because it's not like the player was throwing games because some better just there was so much money in it that they were paying the players off it's like you're this super villain so it's almost like you can't let it be known who you are and what your identity is and what your motivation is here it has to be like you have to let them draw the implication that

okay we've gotten too close to gambling interests and they are now paying off our players. Like if you give away the game here, then I think maybe you undo the purpose and it doesn't work anymore. And you could keep your sponsorships and partnerships, which we know would be pried out of Rob Manfred's hands. Just it would take a lot to unclutch those fingers around that sponsorship cash. So yeah, I think you would almost have to be sort of a silent partner in this and just let people infer that that's what happened, that we got too close, we touched the flame, we got burned, and now we have to back away. We have to pull our fingers and hands, our normally shaped non-Frankenstein fingers away from this flame.

Yeah, I think that their approach is always to try to legislate and then to dole out suspension and punishment once they've decided to go whole hog on something. So I don't imagine this would be any different, particularly because it's so lucrative. But maybe, because you're a supervillain, do they know that that's why you're doing it? I guess if you're a supervillain, you're prone to monologuing. That's part of the game, right? You're like, ha-ha, here, I will lay out my plan.

I am a supervillain. I mean, not necessarily good at being villainous, but. cognitive ability in this scenario where I could see into the short-term near future. And I was like watching an Angels game and I got a glimpse of the outcome of the play. Otani is playing outfield in this scenario for some reason, and he's like going back on the ball. And I see that he's going to crash into the wall and suffer a career-ending injury. And so I have the choice. I have a ball in my hand. I can throw it at him and I can hit him with the ball and distract him so that he does not keep going back on the ball and does not hurt himself. But everyone would think that I just threw a ball at Shohei Otani and that would bring shame and embarrassment and disgrace on me. And it's what do I do in this scenario? So that was episode 1814. This one, this is from Jeff San Francisco. I said, in episode 1876, Ben interviewed Jeff Fletcher about his new book, Chronicling Shohei Otani.

Fletcher mentioned that it was ironic that the Angels have not been good because it allowed Otani to continue being a two-way player without impacting the team. If Otani had been on a contending team, the incentive to keep him as a two-way player would have been considerably less. Growing pains and risk of injury would have been too high to allow the potential loss of wins. Without hesitation, Ben followed up by saying that the joy of Otani being a historic two-way player, even if it means the Angels will not be a good team. That's not a complete sentence, but close enough, we get the point. I suspect Ben's perspective would be agreeable to most Angels fans who aren't Angels fans. I get it, Jeff. However, the Angels organization and fans of the team would probably disagree. Most

importantly, Otani himself might disagree. With that in mind, here's a hypothetical that I'd like to run by you. The baseball gods have let you in on a secret. If Shohei Otani continues as a two-way player, he will never play in the postseason. This goes for the Angels or any other team he plays for in the future. However, his fate will be very different if he abandons being a two-way player. In that case, whatever team he plays for will be good and in the playoffs on a regular basis. In either case, Ohtani will continue being a great player with a lengthy career. His total earnings will be exactly the same if he chooses to be a one-way player.

It would be up to him whether he'd just be a position player or a pitcher. Now for the twist. Shohei Otani finds out that the baseball gods have told you important information about his possible futures. He seeks you out and asks you what the baseball gods told you. What would you say? Would you tell him the truth? Doing so would likely have him abandon being a two-way player, lessening your enjoyment. Would you lie to him? This would condemn Otani to languishing on mediocre teams, but your personal joy would be undiminished. I would tell him. Yeah, I think you gotta tell him.

I think you gotta tell him. I mean, especially because I'm going to say a bunch of words in concert that you're going to find really stressful, but I don't have any control to make them happen. So then you can let it go. Are you ready? Like he might just get hurt in a way that requires him to abandon being a two-way player anyway. Right? Right. fleeting for reasons that have nothing to do with the baseball gods and just a lot to do with baseball being hard and pitching being bad for you that why deny him the joy of getting to play on a postseason team and of course you're not just impacting poor otani right like imagine this

little deal with the devil is in place and he he's a free agent after next season and he signs a long-term extension somewhere you're also condemning all of those players and all of their fans to a life with no potential for the postseason and we've talked a great deal on this podcast how important it is to be able to say with some amount of credibility like we might be in this thing. And so I think, you know, you're not a selfish person as far as I know, Ben. And so I can't imagine you looking at the balance of enjoyment, yours versus all of those other people

and thinking that yours ought to be prioritized there, right? Like you wouldn't do that. You'd tell him. It's a zero-sum sport, right? So you could say that yes, Otani's teams will be mediocre and the fans of his team will suffer if he continues to be a two-way player, but someone will win. Some fan base will be happy. It will just be a different one. So from a utilitarian perspective, I don't know how much that sways me. I would say, though, that I would just feel guilty if I didn't tell him. And I think my enjoyment of his two-way play would be diminished significantly by that. Because every time I was watching him be a two-way player, I would feel that tickle of guilt thinking I should have told him, I should have told Shohei that he had this choice, that he is dooming himself to this fate of never being in the playoffs, never being on a winning team. So I think it would be a sort of telltale heart situation where I could no longer enjoy him being a two-way player because it would just make me think of the fact that I had deceived him.

And that would make me feel bad because he's Shohei, who has, by the way, homered while we were speaking, has homered twice in this game, a day after being pulled with some kind of hand cramp or forearm cramp, which was concerning, but less concerning after multiple homers. then it's going to be fine. I was just about to say that as we were talking. It's like, I don't know, he's still capable of being amazing. He's just less amazing. He's still amazing. And I would say, Ben, you're right, that other teams would get to win.

But condemning one fan base to sustained mediocrity like that, like, what are you, a Mariners fan? Are you an Angels fan? He might change teams. So it might not. It's just whatever team he's on. So I'm not necessarily doing one team. Yeah, but what if he signs a big extension?

Right. Then I am. Then you are, you know. Then you're saying get tossed. If he's presented with all the information, he might still decide to be a two-way player. That's a potential outcome too. He will just do it knowing all his options and knowing what it signifies. I don't know whether I would think less of him in that scenario if I knew that he was choosing personal success or personal enjoyment over team success. And would he even be able to enjoy his career in that scenario? See,

that's the thing. I don't think there's any way he would choose to continue being a two-way player because he's too considerate a teammate, right? And so even if it would be a sacrifice, it clearly would. He wants to be a two-way player, but I don't think he could go on basically lying to his teammates and the public and everyone, just, you know, putting himself before the team. He's not that kind of guy, I'm pretty sure. So he would inevitably have to give up the two-way scenario. So that does make it tougher because I was thinking, well, you know, he might continue

to be the two-way guy, but I don't think he would. And also, would I think any less of him if he did make that decision? I'd still really enjoy getting to see him be a two-way player, but I don't know. Maybe. I don't even care if his teams win necessarily, but I think knowing that he had made that considered decision not to win, I don't know. There are factors that are more important than whether you win a World Series. I'm not saying that should be the only thing a teammate considers, but also if you are sentencing your teammates to losing and you know it and they don't, then he is caught up in the deception and he is constantly And that's tough too because he'd be in blissful ignorance if I spared him this knowledge. He'd never know. Well, would he be though?

Would he be in blissful ignorance, Ben? Or would he be tortured by his lack of postseason appearances? I think you might be discounting Otani's broader ambition here, which I imagine is to win a World Series. That's the thing. If I could know his heart, right? I know when he was a kid, right? Sometimes we talk about these guys in a real weird way. I think it's important to acknowledge that we know.

He has my heart, but if I knew his heart, like he drew up those goals when he was still a kid, right? Like I want to be an MVP by age whatever. And I forget whether World Series was on there. I'm sure it was. But I don't know if I could know in his heart of hearts like whether he really cares more about winning a World Series or whether he would want to be the legendary two-way player for his whole career. The other thing is like he has proved that he can do it at this point. He has demonstrated that it can be done by him at an extremely high level. So maybe now like he doesn't have to have a chip on his shoulder. There doesn't have to be any-

He's satisfied. Yeah. Like wondering what might have been. He did it. We knew he could do it. Even if he can't continue to do it, he had that moment in the sun. So that's something, it wouldn't feel like his career was a waste or anything and his potential was not fulfilled. So that would ease the sting somewhat. But it's tough because in a way you would be sparing him the difficulty of making this decision and knowing that there was a road not taken. But you would also be hurting others in some ways too. So we'll probably get emails from our philosopher friends on this one.

But we always welcome those. And the easy out for all of these baseball gods tell you the future kind of questions is that— To find and kill the baseball gods. Well, that's an option too, right? Yeah. You could do like a gore the god butcher Kratos sort of situation here. That was exactly what i had in mind yep yeah that's exactly it but beyond that i think that if i thought i was hearing the voice

of the baseball god i would dismiss that maybe as some sort of mental illness that i was suffering from and that would free me from the need to do something about it other than maybe seek psychological help. I think that's the thing. It's like in all these scenarios where it's like somehow the future is revealed to you. I think given my typical mindset in any scenario like that, I would assume that I was hallucinating and that I had not actually had something revealed to me, that I was just wrong about that, that I was laboring under a delusion and that therefore I was free from any moral compulsion to do something about it. It would be, okay, why am I hearing voices and why do I think I'm hearing the voice of the baseball gods? That would be an issue as well, but that

would be a different problem. And so I think I could guilt-free not engage with this scenario in any – like I have been handed a tablet. I mean if there is an actual tablet I was handed, I guess, and other people confirmed that the tablet was there, then maybe I could not ignore that. always discount that and i would think no i am too rational to subscribe to this and therefore i do not have to tell shohei otani anything because he would immediately disregard my ravings as he probably should so in this scenario he has somehow become convinced that i actually have been granted a revelation here but right yeah yeah, like, it would, I think, yeah, I think you would have to have some proof. But if you had been given that and felt confident, I think you would be like, I gotta, from Patreon supporter Now I Only Want to Triumph. And this one blew my mind for a moment. I have tried to be more selective with these because, you know, we've been getting some where it's like even the emailer doesn't really subscribe to them. Right. And sometimes it's an interesting thought experiment anyway. But I want these to be legitimate.

Like, oh, it actually makes you think as opposed to something far-fetched because we don't engage in far-fetched hypotheticals on this podcast so it has to be somewhere within the realm of reality and this one actually made me question things for a moment it's been a while since we've done some of these we have a backlog built up that we will have to use at some point but this one why do we call triple slash stats triple slash stats when there are clearly only two slashes in them? Oh, my God. Yeah. Brain exploding gif.

For example. Well, because there are three stats. In the stat line 362 slash 609 slash 812, there is quite apparently only a slash between the 362 and the 609 and a second one between the 609 and the 812. I expect the correction to double slash stats to be coming forthwith from all the appropriate baseball writers or a place for a third slash must be found. You could add a slash on the end. I guess it would be like a silent slash. A silent slash. A silent slash. The H at the end of Winbrick. Just stick a slash on there to make it a third triple slash.

I mean, I think you're right that it's three stats, and that's why we say it. But now that I think about it, and I had never thought about it before. I tried to say silent slash, and I found that very difficult. My mouth wanted to say silent slash and i found that very difficult i if my mouth wanted to go silent slash right that's wrong the problem is that the triple is modifying the stats really but it's not adjacent right stats it's adjacent to the slash and so it sounds like the adjacent to the slash sounds like a good band name. Yeah, or at least an album name. We're adjacent to the Slash.

Right, yeah. I mean, I guess that's Axl Rose was adjacent to the Slash. Touche. Triple Slash Stats. I think it's probably too late to change this to Double Slash Stats, but maybe it should have been Double Slash Stats all along. Wow. Wow. stats but like maybe it should have been double slash that's all on wow wow i like that triple does convey how many stats there are so is there a way to preserve that while getting greater accuracy in slashes bunch of stats then we lose a little precision with yeah because how yeah because how

many is a bunch um triple triple double that's a thing already that's already a thing triple stat double triple double slash no there's no other configuration of these words that works that well, I don't think, which is the problem. But this is going to bother me now. So now I have successfully passed on this contagion of caring about this to everyone else and we're all infected with these brain worms. Yeah, like there's got to be some solution. Triple stat slash. Triple stat slash. No.

Oh, that's not good. I mean, I think that's closer. Maybe we should just, often we will drop the triple and we'll just say slash stats. We do. Because we know that there are three. Yeah. Which I guess is, I i mean higher barrier for entry there it's a little less friendly to people who have not seen this written before and do not know

what it is so they're seeing slash stats so they don't know how many stats there are but if you say triple slash stats that's you know that's hard for me to say slash Slash. What was the thing I couldn't say? Silent slash. Adjacent to slash. Slash adjacent. Anyway I don't know that it's. I mean it is. Obviously it is somewhat less descriptive. Because you don't know how many.

Slash stats. What is wrong with me Ben? There are. But if you don't know baseball and you just say slash stats as opposed to triple slash stats I don't hey you're you're still going like what stats are those you know like what are what are those stats right so yeah so if you do as as the questioner did just use Barry Bonds's slash line here from 2004. If you just say like, he's a 300, 400, 500 guy, a lot of people will know what you mean there. You don't even need

to say the slashes, but a lot of people will not. What are these numbers that you are listing at me here? Man, this is tough. This is a good question. I think this is the right kind of how can you think about baseball question because it really has made me think and reconsider things. And ultimately, I probably will not mend my ways or amend my ways. But it will from now on for the rest of my life. Probably when I say triple slash that's there will be some small part of my mouth saying. I'm going to wonder why my mouth is having trouble forming words. Yeah. Yeah. We're not making the world a better place necessarily

if all we're doing here is... We're actively harming the world. Yeah. I mean, that's not our stated goal here with this podcast to make the world a better place. No, because we're not super balanced. Yeah, I guess we're making

the world a worse place. This is what happens when I interrupt you is you don't finish your thought and then I say something that doesn't make sense. But if all we're doing is just make people question themselves as they say the things that they were going to say anyway, and so they're not able to say those things with conviction anymore because of this little whisper in the back of their brain because of that one effectively wild episode. effectively wild episode anyway i am tentatively on board with changing this in some way but i cannot concoct a solution at this time so i suppose we are soliciting suggestions with the understanding that almost certainly we will not be changing anything but food for thought wow yeah triple slash stats triple stat slash i think we just need to you know what we should call it then stat blast or past blast so episode 1885 past blast from 1885 this is from

also richard hershberger saber historian and researcher and author of Strike for the Evolution of Baseball. This is from Sporting Life, November 11th, 1885. Harry Wright's idea in endeavoring to secure a left-handed twirler is for the effect such a delivery would have when sandwiched occasionally between the good right-handed men and especially when arrayed against clubs having a preponderance of left-handed batters. Mr. Wright, however, hasn't any very exalted notion of the staying power of left-handed pitchers as a rule. Richard writes, This is the hairy Wright who led the unbeaten 1869 Cincinnati Redstockings. Here in 1885, he is managing the Phillies. He is still a thinker. He understands

platoon advantage and is trying to figure a way to take advantage of it. The problem is that there was not yet player substitution. If he wanted to have a left-handed specialist available, he would have to park him in right field, the old Waxahachie swap, which we miss. It was also understood that pitchers couldn't hit, so this scheme would be giving up a bat. This is an idea before it's time. So sorry, Harry, you could not do that. It was a good thought, and it was a better thought than, say, turning a right-hander into a left-hander via surgical means somehow, which would be more in line with the previous part of this podcast. But it is interesting to me that they were aware of platoon advantage for quite a while.

And I asked Richard actually when people became aware of platoon effects or whether we can even date that, whether there was a time when they didn't know about that. And he said, that's a tough question. Bob Ferguson was an early switch hitter. The earliest instance I know was in 1870, the reporter claiming that he batted left-handed to avoid George Wright at shortstop. In 1874, it is claimed that Ferguson routinely batted left against Bobby Matthews, who was right-handed. But of course, so were most pitchers. Matthews was an early curveball pitcher, so that likely was the difference.

In a game in 1880, two natural lefties batted right-handed against Lee Richmond, a lefty curve pitcher. I take this as the platoon effect being obvious as soon as curveballs became common. The early response was to experiment with switch hitting. Harry Wright's discussion here is early thinking about how to apply it on the pitching side and to use situational pitching and managerial moves. So curveballs, once curveballs became common post-Candy Cummings and curveballs tend to have significant platoon splits. So maybe at that point it became obvious that you were getting a better look and better results if you were facing someone from the opposite side. But prior to that, maybe there was some early era baseball where it just didn't matter that

much, I guess, because if everyone was throwing underhand and you could tell them where to put the pitch. Then maybe it just didn't make that much of a difference at that point. But pretty early on, they realized that there was something to that. Yeah. And then, you know, many, many, many years later, we're like, we have to worry about seam shifted wake. Yeah. It's like things used to be simpler, Ben. And Frankenstein hints things got

out of hand and ears on mice i'm really sorry everyone i misremembered it but you know i think that was protecting me a little bit all right we will end there the dodgers are planning to pay tribute to vin scully prior to friday game, and we will also do a little bit of that next time. Well, you heard me say on that episode that Shohei Otani had hit two home runs. What I did not say, and did not know because it hadn't happened yet, was that they were both solo shots, and the Angels also had five other solo shots in that game, and yet somehow they lost 8-7 to the Oakland A's. So here is an actually good fun fact from the at stats by stats Twitter account. The Angels are the first team in MLB history to hit seven solo home runs and score no other

runs in a game. They are also just the sixth team all time to hit seven homers in a game and lose. Incredible. Very emblematic of the Angels. I would not say that is a true tungsten Armo Doyle game. For one thing, Trout wasn't playing. For another, it wasn't as if other Angels didn't contribute. And Otani didn't exactly do something historic. He just hit two dingers. So really it was a team effort. They combined to do something historic.

It's bad. It's embarrassing. The Angels, other than Otani, are borderline unwatchable now post-trade deadline. Just not true Tungsten Arm, which doesn't make it any less facepalm worthy. episode 1884, Meg talked a bit about the Diamondbacks mascot, Baxter, and about how he's some kind of cat. And she said something about how their mascot should be a snake, I believe. Well, we got a couple of emails about that. Andrew wrote in to say, on the trade podcast, you mentioned that Baxter, the D-backs mascot, is some kind of cat. There's more to the story. I grew up in the Phoenix area and was 12 when the team was created, so they have a pretty special place in my heart, even as I no longer live in the area. Before the ballpark was called Chase Field, it was Bank One Ballpark, or lovingly, The Bob. Baxter is not just any kind of cat, but a Bob cat. Get it? Get it? I do. We also got a message from Matt on the topic of whether snake mascots can be cute. He writes,

Can snake mascots be cute? Are they always terrifying? I'm not sure. But Meg, here's an image of Fang, the mascot for the Timber Rattlers, the high-A affiliate of the Brewers. And he links to an image, which I will include on the show page. I'd say Fang is kind of cute. It also came to my attention that Philadelphia's MLS team, the Philadelphia Zoo, ostensibly have a snake as a mascot? As a Washington Post headline described, Fang the Snake, spelled P-H-A-N-G, Philadelphia's MLS team introduces new mascot, an alleged snake with legs and a mohawk. Definitely not anatomically correct. Maybe looks more like a dinosaur. Also on that episode, I shared a semi-stat blast about the fact that

there had never really been a trade like the Josh Hader for Taylor Rodgers trade, where two teams midseason had exchanged their respective saves leaders. Well, Bobby wrote in and said, I think y'all were talking specifically about midseason trades, which, yeah, that's amazing. But there was one hot stove deal that has some parallels. The Mets and the Reds traded Randy Myers for John Franco after the 1989 season. I think it is safe to say that they were both closers, and I think both teams considered themselves contenders. The Mets were in the 1988 NLCS, and the Reds went on to win the 1990 World Series. Quite true. John Franco had led the Reds and, in fact, the National League with 39 saves in 1988. Randy Myers had led the Mets

with 26. So yes, December 6th, 1989, a closer-for-closer swap. I do think it's a little bit different doing it mid-season as opposed to in December, but well-observed, Bobby. Now, in episode 1883, we were talking about the Blue Jays-Red Sox 28-5 game and how that score just seems like a fun fact on its own. You don't have to dress it up with additional facts about the number of hits that hitters had in the game, etc. And someone, maybe Meg, idly wondered whether there had ever been a game with that sort of lopsided score

where the winning team did not have a hitter who had a lot of hits. Well, former Effectively Wild guest Michael Mountain answered this one in the Patreon Effectively Wild Discord group and he noted, on the topic of high-scoring games where no individual player amassed many hits, the 2020 Braves beat the Marlins 29-9

and no Braves batter had more than three hits. No other team has ever scored 28 runs in a game without having a batter get at least five hits. This may also be the record for most lopsided final score, where the individual team leader in hits for the game had the same tally on both teams. Jesus Aguilar had three hits for the Marlins as well. Thank you to Michael for picking up that loose thread.

2020 was weird in so many ways. Also on that episode, when we talked about Justin Verlander's career compared to Max Scherzer's career, I was searching for a fun fact and I couldn't quite place it. I thought it was something about the fact that members of those mid-teens Tigers rotations had gone on to win Cy Young awards elsewhere. It wasn't that. They did win some size in Detroit. What it was is the entire 2014 Detroit Tigers starting rotation went on to win World Series with teams other than the Tigers. Verlander got a ring in 2017 with the Astros. Rick Porcello and David Price won with the Red Sox in 2018. And then Max Scherzer and Anibal Sanchez won with the Nationals in 2019. So no

World Series with the Tigers, but perhaps painfully for Tigers fans, they all went on to win one elsewhere. I'd forgotten that Robbie Ray was briefly a member of that 2014 Tigers rotation too. He has the Cy Young, not the ring yet. Maybe the Mariners can get him one. And also a first for themselves. Rewinding one more episode to 1882, in that episode I did a past blast about an apocryphal story about a crew that had been shipwrecked and had supposedly played baseball to entertain themselves. Turned out not to be true, but we got a message from Patreon supporter Jimmy who said, Listening to the past blast on episode 1882, I was intrigued by the apocryphal story of the shipwreck crew of the Trinity playing a game of baseball.

My wife, who enjoys my weekly summarizing of the week's past blasts, I'm glad she enjoys it. I hope she enjoys it, loves reading about 19th and early 20th century explorers, specifically polar explorers, so I asked if in her readings she had any previous examples of shipwreck crews playing the game, and it turns out you don't have to look very far. According to Labyrinth of Ice by Buddy Levy, in 1881, the mixed crew of Lieutenant A.W. Greeley's as part of the Lady Franklin Bay Expedition attempted to set a new record for reaching the farthest north.

They accomplished this, but when their supply ship in early 1882 failed to arrive, they had to survive. Isn't that just the way? I've seen the terror in the North Water. Evidently, on July 4th, 1882, stationed at Fort Conger in Nunavut, Canada, the mostly American crew with two Greenlanders played a game of baseball. The passage in the book is set in 1884, but references July 4th celebrations, the prior year, or perhaps the two prior years, being more festive, understandably so, with baseball being organized. My wife remarks this appears to be the first polar baseball game ever played. On a much more morose note, she notes that it is suspected that some members of the crew later went on to commit cannibalism, which would seemingly, hopefully, be a first among baseball competitors as well. Greeley's crew was the farthest north, at least until a game organized by an American nuclear

sub-crew in 1960 played softball at the North Pole. Perhaps you've seen those pictures. This crew set the field such that the pitcher's mound was at their best estimate of the North Pole, so that a batter hitting a home run would then circumnavigate the world while rounding the bases, and that a ball hit to right field would be hit into tomorrow by way of crossing the international date line. I assume they dubbed the field the Pole Grounds. If we come across any other validated stories of baseball being played, we will be sure to share. Please do, and thank you Jimmy and Becca. And the last update here, we're going all the way back to episode 1879 when I did a stat blast about Cesar Hernandez and his historic power outage, which has continued. Hernandez hit 21 home runs last season, and he has hit zero so far this season. He's now up to 456 homerless plate appearances. Most of that stat blast was correct and still stands,

but there was a slight snafu with forgetting to filter for regular season games only. And when you do that, one part of the stat blast changed. So frequent stat blast consultant Ryan Nelson notes now that whereas we had said that the record for most homers hit in a season followed by a homer-less season in 400 or 500 plus plate appearances was Snuffy Sternweis, who went from 10 to 0 from 1945 to 1946. Incorrect, it was actually Scott Pudzednik, who went from 12 to 0 with the White Sox from 2004 to 2005, or rather from the Brewers in 2004 to the White Sox in 2005. So he hit zero homers in that second

season, but he did win a World Series. Probably it was worth it. So sorry to have snubbed you, Scott. But Pitsednik is one of three players ever to accrue a qualified number of plate appearances, hit zero regular season home runs, but then hit a homer in the playoffs. He's the only player to do this and hit two homers. The other two are 1992 Jose Lind and 1993 Lance Johnson. Somewhat related, in 1942, Mickey Owen hit zero regular season home runs, but did hit one in the All-Star game. That is the only time that has ever happened. In summary, Ryan says the way I originally ran it would have been just fine

if 2005 Scott Podsednik wasn't singularly bizarre, but Cesar Hernandez also singularly bizarre, and maybe more so. All right, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, get themselves access to some perks, and help us stay ad-free. Cody, Daniel Porter, Matt Finelli, Tom Rezzo, and Jeff Gilbert, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the aforementioned Effectively Wild Discord group, as well as the also aforementioned monthly bonus pods, plus t-shirt discounts,

playoff live streams, and more. You can contact me and Meg via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod. And you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week.

Talk to you soon. Some things I forget Never meant to be That might be alright for you But not for you and me 25 fingers Feel so divine 25 fingers

Wish you were mine Wish you were mine