Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1937: Never More Than 12

Episode Date: December 2, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Ben’s daughter’s first steps, follow up on differentiating players with the same name, equipment replacements, and suggested recreational sports for Ben to play, and then discuss the Royals’ remade coaching staff (19:43), the career of the late, all-time-great Gaylord Perry (22:57), and the latest ESPN Crasnick/Rogers annual offseason […]

Listen up now, listen up now What's on your mind? Spit it out now It looks like the time Is running out now Is running out now What's it about now? What's it about now?

Hello and welcome to episode 1937 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing well. My daughter took her first official steps today. Oh, Ben. That's nice. That's awesome. Yeah, she's been doing walking adjacent activities for quite some time, but today's the first time where it really is just incontrovertible, definite walking,

all captured on video, very heartwarming. So my job here is done, I guess. Parenting wasn't so hard. She can get around without me now. So time to kick her out of the nest. I was going to say, I feel like my friends who have had children have said that when they start walking, parenting gets harder. Oh, yeah. It's terrible news. Yeah. It's like now. It was great for a few minutes. Yeah. And then consider the ramifications of this. And you like, you know, you kind of lag into, no pun intended, the walking part because crawling presents its own challenges. But, you know, a lot of them were like, well, you know, it was nice and we could just put him somewhere and he couldn't go anywhere.

You know, he just stayed there. Yeah. Oh, pre-crawling was even better. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it's just it gets progressively worse and worse. We're very proud, but also dismayed about what this means for us.

So that was nice. It's been a good day for that reason. Not as good as yesterday when the dictionary definition of ghost runner changed, but not bad. changed but but not bad is is the strategy behind the volume of podcasts that we produce such that you know sloan will never be able to go back and listen to all of them and thus will not know that you comped you know her first steps to dictionary.com changing the definition of something and then found it wanting yeah it's definitely not the first time that i've made that kind of comparison because i can i remember saying that having your sports team do something great is maybe the most joyous thing that can ever happen in your life. So hopefully she never hears that.

I can't imagine that she would ever be moved to go back and listen to perhaps decades old baseball podcast by that point. But who knows? You never know. If so, Sloan, you're listening in the future, hello. Congrats on being able to walk. It's very exciting, you know, being able to walk. Yeah, she was pretty excited about it. Yeah. Also sort of apprehensive, not fully committed to the bit, but we'll see. Pretty soon she'll be running around and then there will be no hope for any of us. So a few

follow-ups as usual. Today, I got to say, we got another exciting Effectively Wild tradition making a comeback today. It's the Krasnicks, as we have historically called them, ESPN's annual hot stove survey, which was produced by Jerry Krasnick for years. And Jerry now works for the MLBPA. And so the mantle has been picked up by Jesse Rogers, also of ESPN. And so every year they have done these surveys of executives or baseball insiders, whatever that means. And they ask them the pressing questions about the offseason. And we try to speculate about what their answers will be. One of us does. One of us quizzes the other on what the executives may have said, and then we discuss whether we would have said anything different. That's always fun. We've been doing that since, I think, at least 2014, so going way back.

and Sam was always obsessed with this. He used to track it and keep track of the accuracy of the insiders because he found that they weren't really very accurate at all. That when it was sort of a coin flip kind of question, they typically didn't do much better than an actual coin flip, which suggests that no one knows anything,

including us, but we will still talk about things even though we may not know anything. But just a couple of follow-ups. So for one thing, I talked the other day about how we need some better way to differentiate between athletes with the same name, either across sports or intra-sport. And we were talking about the Luis Garcias and how there are three of them currently. And one has accent marks or two have accent marks and one does not and how that's not enough for us to be able to tell the difference.

And so maybe we need some sort of parenthetical indication of either the sport or the team perhaps. And it was pointed out that one alternative, which has been used by the golfer Jung Eun Lee. So she is a South Korean pro golfer who plays on the LPGA Tour and the LPGA of Korea Tour. And she is called now Lee Jung Eun 6 or Jung Eun Lee 6. So there's just a 6 added to the end of her name because there were five previous Zhang Hunlis. So there was a Zhang Hunlin five and now there's a six. And that is apparently one way that they differentiate. And so that's kind of how she's like listed. But that is sort of officially her name.

Like, I don't know if it's legally her name, but she just goes by that now and is commonly referred to by that. So if we were to use that precedent, then we would have to have, like, Luis Garcia 1, Luis Garcia 2, Luis Garcia 3. And then what do you do if you get, like, a Luis Garcia II, you know, then? Oh, that's trouble, yeah. Right? Like, what happens then? Right. You know? And we'd actually, I think there have been five big league Luis Garcia's at least. So we'd be up to five. And I don't know what happens if two of them debut in the same year. Like one of the current Luis Garcia's goes back to 2013. But then two of the Luis Garcia's join the majors in 2020. So who takes precedence? Who is two, who is three or four or five as the

case may be? I guess you could go by debut date or some other metric, but that's one option. It's just, it's not part of the baseball tradition to do that, but it would really be helpful if that were something that we could do. Like when we had the Bobby Joneses and it was like one was Bobby J. Jones and one was Bobby M. Jones or the Chris Youngs. I mean, there are other ways you can differentiate, but it would have been helpful if we had all just internalized the ordinal numeral system. So something to keep in mind. It's like, you know, we didn't do that. We don't have the metric system. You know, it just feels like we're missing opportunities to add clarity to our lives. It's too bad. Someone pointed out that we had multiple racing references in the pod, and so they were surprised that we did not discuss the number of tires in a NASCAR or F1 race, which is kind of, I guess, the equivalent to baseballs used in a game or any other kind of ball. From what I can tell, it's about a dozen sets of tires per race in NASCAR.

It's like 9 to 14 sets of tires per race. And of course, there are multiple tires per set. So you can do the multiplication if you want. In F1, you're allowed a limited number of tire sets. I think 13 dry weather tires or dry track tires and four intermediate and three wet. So it depends on the terrain and the conditions, but there are limits there. So that puts you, I guess, in sort of the soccer range or the golf range, probably a bit above that, but we went through the whole breakdown. So that fits in somewhere there. Still nowhere near baseball and no one has suggested any sport that comes anywhere close to baseball when it

comes to how profligate it is in terms of using its equipment and replacing its equipment. And I think part of that probably also, as someone noted, maybe players have gotten more apt to throw balls into the stands as souvenirs. So not just foul balls and home runs, but also just gifts after the last out of an inning or if you're Milton Bradley before the third out of the inning. Sometimes that wasn't really a longstanding tradition. From what I can tell, it's something that really became commonplace in the 90s. And I don't know whether it's because teams in the league were trying to win fans back and get back in fans' good graces after the strike. And so they gave a bunch of giveaways or whether that is a coincidence but prior to that it was not something that happened regularly and

was apparently something you could get fined for i don't know how often players tested that but i think stan musial supposedly said that he was once fined for tossing a ball to a fan. So that has become more common, and I suppose that has led to maybe even more baseball replacement. But again, a good thing, I think. Yeah, I think a good thing. It's funny that you could be fined as a player for throwing a ball into the stands, but we didn't extend the netting in foul territory

until like two years ago. Yeah. That's kind of funny. I not like haha funny it's been kind of terrible at times for people i don't mean it in a i don't mean to be insensitive it's just you know it's kind of funny yeah well usually usually the players aren't pegging people i mean hopefully not i want to be clear if a player throws a ball in the stands with the express purpose of trying to hurt someone they they should definitely get fined for that. Yes, I agree. All right. And lots of responses, as hoped and planned, to my plea, my prompt for people to suggest recreational sports that I could get into on the condition that it can't be too competitive and too serious. I don't mean, by the way, that people have to be bad at the sport necessarily or beginners. I just mean that they can't take it too seriously and get too hyper competitive.

And then the other condition is that I don't want to make too many new friends and get into a whole social scene. You are expressly opposed to new friends. Yeah, at least in that context. And so lots of responses have come in and people have made excellent suggestions, not just about how I could get into some of the sports that I mentioned as possibilities, but also ones that I had never considered and in some cases had never heard of. So wiffle ball has been a popular suggestion and that's a good one. Yeah. I should have considered that. I've enjoyed wiffle ball has been a popular suggestion, and that's a good one. I should have considered that. I've enjoyed wiffle balling. So, that's their own balls because some pitchers prefer clean ones

and some prefer scuffed ones and some have intricate patterns cut into the ball. And so because of that, the pitcher will usually use the same ball for the entire tournament. And it's a big deal if a new ball is brought into play. So that's a big contrast from baseball. So wiffle ball is something I could look into. People mentioned racquetball and fencing, which I think I might be kind of into fencing. I've never tried it. Didn't even cross my mind, but might be into that. Well, and it would seemingly really fit with a don't be social thing because you're literally engaged in armed conflict. Exactly.

Right. And you've got like antisocial. You've got a mask on. Right. I you've got like- It feels antisocial. You've got a mask on, right? Right. I could just keep the mask on the entire time and no one would even know I was there. Definitely be as weird as possible while wielding a sword.

Definitely do that. The mask fencer. And then disc golf, kickball, quad ball, formerly known as Quidditch, volleyball, longboarding, hockey. Now, I have expressed interest in hockey and I expressed interest specifically in floor hockey. And I've noted that I really like hockey. And one of my regrets is that I never actually played hockey because I loved floor hockey. And also I like skating, but I've never combined the two.

Apparently, you can pick it up as an adult. And that's something if you go to just kind of a rec rink, you can maybe take some lessons and make that transition. And apparently, it's often played late at night, which is good for me. Ultimate was a popular suggestion. Pick up Ultimate. I do have a friend or two, an existing, pre-existing friend. So no new friends.

Right. Yeah. Happy with the ones I have. Don't want to get rid of those. But I do have friends who are into Ultimate, so maybe they could guide me there. Curling has been suggested by multiple people, and that would go along with my half Canadian heritage. My concern with curling is that it seems like it's quite a social sport. So that worries me. But with a limited number of people. True. But it does seem that beer is kind of core to the experience. Or I don't know if it's like.

And you're not a big drinker. Maybe not as much as like beer league softball where it's almost in the name. But drinking, I get the sense, is pretty integral to curling. Maybe not necessarily. I'm sure there are like teetotaler curling associations. But it seems like there's like curling social clubs and everything, and that just sounds too involved for me. And I don't know if that would satisfy also. I don't know if that would satisfy also like I want kind of like a quick twitch activity, you know, like hitting balls and throwing balls and catching balls and kicking balls and everything. I don't mean to discount just like the strength and conditioning and athleticism that is required in curling because I know it is quite a workout and it can be tough on you.

But I don't know if it's exactly the kind of physical athletic activity I'm looking for. Sorry if I'm slandering, curling anyone. But other people proposed endurance sports. And I mean, I do do some of that. Like I'll do some running and rowing and biking and that kind of thing. But more for exercise than for fun, other than biking, which I find a nice sort of relaxing, solitary activity. But I don't know that that is something that I want to do either in a group or really as a sport, as a competitive thing, as opposed to just for exercise or for meditation purposes sort of sometimes. So that's about it. I can't say I enjoy running either. It's always been something that to the extent that I've done it, I've done more out of obligation than enjoyment. So that,

I guess, kind of covers it, but lots of great suggestions and I'm sure they'll keep coming in and I have a lot to think about and consider here. A lot of potential alternatives and opportunities to pursue. I really am looking forward. I think you should try a bunch of stuff, Ben, you know? Yeah, I could audition a bunch of sports, yeah. And one approach to minimizing the social aspect would be to rotate, right? Because if you're, you know, you're trying a bunch of different things, some of them you won't like, and then you'll kind of weed those out.

But if you do a couple different ones, like're gonna you're gonna miss things you're not gonna be around as often you won't you you won't be a core cast member you know right yeah that might be a way to do it long enough to to put down roots rolling stone gathers no moss and no new friends so that would be that'd be great i'd just come and go and people would be like, remember that guy who was here for a few weeks and now he's not here anymore? Wonder what happened to him. Never got his name. Don't know how to contact him. Don't know who he was.

It sounds perfect. I have actually heard from some other people who either have the same sort of desire or they have relatives who do maybe. sort of desire or they have relatives who do maybe and i wish that i could get together with them and not be friends while we pursue our sort of solitary but in groups it's more like parallel play you know like kids at that stage where they're not really old enough to play together but they will sort of play alone side by side. Right. I guess that's kind of what I'm looking for here, I suppose. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that, you know, to take us back around is another milestone that you will soon reach with Sloan, I would imagine.

Yeah. Parallel play. So thank you, everyone, for the suggestions. Lots of great ones here. I'm not sure that all of these are feasible in my immediate area. Curling, for instance. I'm not sure I can curl within walking distance. I get the sense that there's curling like in Brooklyn and maybe north of the city. I also don't want

to commute too far. So that's yet another condition. That's fair. Yeah. So there's that. Someone also suggested I could try my hand at cricket because if I have some baseball skills, maybe it would port over enough that it would be fun to try. And then maybe I would also understand cricket. So that would pay multiple dividends. Yeah. I mean, I think that you have, you know, you have some good options available to you. And like I said, I think you should try a bunch of different things.

And then, like, you know, you can make, like, a movie montage. Right. Yeah. Or do a montage. Well, more to come. Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions so far. Yeah. Well, more to come. Thanks, everyone, for the suggestions so far. So I also I meant to say, like, I noted how I just kind of that we called Matball, which was basically, it was like hacky sack, except that you could use any part of your body, basically. And we just played it with a crumpled up ball of paper. I'm sure there are many variations of this. We called

it Matball because the first Matball was a piece of paper that had my friend Matt's name on it. So it's literally named after someone named Matt? Yes, yes. And we would just crumple up the ball and like the consistency of the paper and how tightly you crushed it and wrinkled it up was very important. Some people would have tighter mat balls than others and that had different levels of springiness. But that was just so much fun. We would play all over the hallways until teachers or coaches would make us leave, but any spare moment, you could crumple up a piece of paper and play mat ball, and it really tested your reflexes and your coordination, and a lot of us got really good at it, and we had these elaborate mat ball exchanges, and we would keep the rallies

going for as long as we could and count up to high records. That's among my fondest athletic experiences was mat ball more so than my organized sports experiences. So I don't know if that helps anyone, but that's what I'm looking for. See, you could start a mat ball league, but then you would have a lot of social obligations in all likelihood and a bunch of administrative work to do. And if you do that, then I have to answer more of our emails. So, oh, I don't know. Part of the appeal of Matball was that you could just play at a moment's notice anywhere you were with zero organization.

All right. So a couple news items. One is that the Royals hired a pitching coach, which would not be that notable, really, except for the fact that lots of Royals fans really wanted their old pitching coach gone. Yeah, they sure did. They felt very strongly. They did, which was partly a product of the Royals pitching staff's underperformance and the sense that you had all these young pitchers coming along and they didn't have

the right support system in place. And then some of the comments that Eldred would make or that Dayton Moore would make about Eldred, etc. Anyway, they are continuing their overhaul of their coaching staff from more of the Dayton Moore, Mike Matheny, old school type to now the, I guess, J.J. Piccolo as GM and Matt Quattraro as manager. And Matt Quattraro, I guess, J.J. Piccolo as GM and Matt Quattraro as manager. And Matt Quattraro, I guess, is filling in his coaching staff to some extent with former Rays coaches. So he brought along one of the other Rays coaches from Kevin Cash's staff is now going

to be Matt Quattraro's bench coach, Paul Hoover. So you have former Rays people running that side of things. And then now Brian Sweeney is going to be their pitching coach. And he comes from Cleveland. And he has been the Guardians bullpen coach for a few years now. Great bullpen. So good hire just based on that. But also he is someone who comes out of that Cleveland pitching development pipeline and he's very well versed in the numbers and the data. And so it's sort of this new age coaching staff that the Royals are putting together. It's quite a break from the past, which doesn't mean that the Royals will be instantly far more successful than they were. But it does seem to be a philosophical shift, which I think for Royals fans, or a lot of them, was long overdue. And it

also kind of speaks to just like the importance of who you know and connections at the major league level. Because a lot of this, like you hire Quattraro and Quattraro hires his former colleague away from the Rays, Paul Hoover. But Quattro was also in the Guardian system. And the Royals owner, John Sherman, he was a former minority owner of Cleveland. And so he had familiarity with Quattro and also, I suppose, with Sweeney. And so a lot of it is just kind of connections, which doesn't mean that they're not totally qualified and they won't be good at the job. But it's kind of amazing how even at these high stakes jobs at the big league level with tons riding on the results, a lot of it is like, oh, well, I worked with this guy and he was good. I liked him. So I want him around again. It's less of an old boys network than it

used to be, I think. But a lot of it definitely when you're filling out a coaching staff, even though now it's not just like the manager's drinking buddies anymore because teams are actually trying to develop players at the major league level. But there still is an element of, well, who do I know? Who's in my contacts list? Who am I friendly with and I know I get along with? So I guess that's the same in every job and every profession and every industry, but definitely still true at the major league level. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely still true.

And in other, I suppose, sadder news, Gaylord Perry died, the man, the myth, the legend at 84. And just a few thoughts about Perry. First of all, Rob Manfred's extremely sanitized remembrance of Perry was amusing. So his one paragraph obit here, Gaylord Perry was a consistent workhorse and a memorable figure in his Hall of Fame career, highlighted by his 314 wins and 3,534 strikeouts in 22 years. He will be remembered among the most accomplished San Francisco Giants ever. And through his time All true. Can't dispute any of that. And yet that is probably the only thing published about Gaylord Perry this week that will not include spitball somewhere in the first paragraph or perhaps sentence.

So maybe Rob knows what we all remember about Gaylord Perry, and we should remember him as an incredible pitcher in addition to someone who had a deserved reputation for doctoring pitches throughout his career. But it's funny that that was entirely left out by the commissioner who has cracked down on the use of sticky stuff in the sport. Yeah. It's, I mean, again, understandable, but funny nonetheless, right? Yeah, right. And really, like, inner circle, one of the best pitchers of all time. He's eighth in Fangraph's pitching war, 13th in baseball reference pitching war, 18th in Jaws.

So however you slice it, he's basically one of the 15 or so best pitchers of all time. And a couple of interesting things about him. I think, if anything, he's probably underrated just because he is so associated with doctoring pitches and the spitball that you forget that he also had excellent stuff. And he threw in the mid-90s when he was young. And he's also one of those guys who hung around forever. And so people remember him as an old pitcher. And he was a great old pitcher, but he was also a good young pitcher with great stuff and lots of other legal pitches that he threw to great effect as well. The spitball, it wasn't immediately part of his repertoire. He picked it up from another pitcher named Bob Shaw, who was proficient at the spitball. And he was traded over in 1964 to the Giants where Perry came up. And so Gailard Perry's first couple years before he picked up the spitball, he was not very good.

And maybe it's just because he was young and he hadn't fully matured yet, or maybe it's because he hadn't added that to his repertoire. So he had a 77 ERA plus in his first two combined seasons, 119 innings, which was partly out of the bullpen and partly in the rotation. Partly out of the bullpen and partly in the rotation. And then supposedly, according to his book, and it's hard to know how much of that to take at face value, but it was sometime in the spring of 64, May of 64, that he really started experimenting with the spitball in games under Shaw's toolage. And he had a really excellent season that year, although he was not at his peak yet. He had a really excellent season that year, although he was not at his peak yet. So you could do a before and after, except that he also picked up or became proficient with a slider that same season. So it's still hard to say whether this was night and day before and after spitball or whether it was the slider two.

And sometimes he would just defend himself on the grounds that he was throwing a hard slider, not a spitball. So hard to separate the two. But also when he first came up, which was in the early 60s, that was before the real gear of the pitcher dead ball to type era. And so people were not really cracking down on the spitball at that point. There was not such a stigma about it. And a lot of people threw it, supposedly, which just goes to show, I guess, that a lot of it really depends on the offensive environment. If it's sort of a high scoring era and no one's really worried about hitters being at a disadvantage, then no one cares too much about whether pitchers are getting an edge. But if offense is down, then suddenly it becomes a big issue. I'm just reading from

Gaylord Perry's Sabre bio here, which is written by former Effectively Wild guest Mark Armour. And he writes, although the spitball had been formally outlawed in 1920, allowing a few practitioners to continue to throw it until they retired, countless hurlers were rumored to have applied saliva or otherwise doctored the ball in every succeeding season. Here's complain. Managers protested. But for the most part, pitchers could do just about anything to the ball, providing that no one could prove that they did it. And in the early 60s, he says this was quite common. The spitter was a hot topic, more so than at any other time since its abolition.

Ford Frick, baseball's commissioner, pushed for its legalization. And he had the backing of Cal Hubbard, the supervisor of umpires, AL President Joe Cronin, and countless other dignitaries. The Sporting News, still baseball's Bible, favored its legalization repeatedly in its pages. The umpires and bureaucrats wanted to change the rule because they were not capable of enforcing it. And it had become an embarrassment. And Burley Grimes, who was the last legal spitballer, said that he thought there were more spitters being thrown in the 60s than back when it was legal. And there were estimates that pitchers who were throwing the spitter as high as 50 as many as 50 of them and so every time a pitcher had a few good games they were accused of throwing

illegal pitches but no one really cared all that much until offense cratered after they changed the strike zone and then suddenly it became a big issue. And the more successful you were, no one complained about Perry doing it either until 1966 because he was pitching really well. And he was an all-star for the first time that season. And then all of a sudden it was like, hey, wait a minute. He's good. This is unfair now that he's actually getting the best of us. Now we actually have to protest. So that's all uh kind of interesting

that it's so era dependent yeah yeah yeah yeah and also like from 68 to 69 so 68 after that season the year the pitcher the mound was lowered and the strike zone was changed and so pitchers were at a greater disadvantage but not Perry he was able to weather that change totally fine in fact he he pitched just as well in the raw stats his ERA went from 2.45 in 68 to 2.49 in 69 essentially the same and he pitched more innings in 69 and so his ERA plus went up because the offensive environment changed. But there can't have been too many qualified pitchers whose ERAs were essentially the same or improved going from 68 to 69. I imagine he was in the minority there. But really,

the big question about him was how often was he actually cheating? And he did his best to obscure that throughout his career. It was never totally clear. He kind of encouraged the mystery of it. And that seems to have been about as big an advantage to him as the actual cheating. At some point, he said, I don't even have to throw it anymore because the batters are set up to believe it's there waiting for it. So he would go through this whole elaborate pre-pitch routine to make everyone think that he was reaching here

and reaching there and ultimately he may not have been reaching for anything for vaseline or any other substance most of the time but because everyone thought he was or was worried that he was, then it was really effective mind games. So it was very smart. Like, I wonder if you could somehow have an alternate history where he never cheated and never even developed a reputation for cheating. I wonder how much less effective he would have been. And if he was significantly less effective, whether it would have been more because he wasn't cheating and getting the advantage of the substances or because that wasn't in hitters' heads. So I wish we could know that somehow, but I guess we never can.

But I wonder, you know, he seemed to kind of court the reputation and indulge the reputation. So I don't know if it bothered him that he was known as a notorious cheater. It seems like he kind of cultivated and encouraged that to an extent. And even now, like people, it's one of the first things that comes to your mind when you think of Gaylord Perry. And so it's odd how we really condemn people for some kind of cheating behavior and then others get a pass or even like a winking smile or a knowing kind of, oh yeah, he was always constantly cheating. If you're cheating now and you're doctoring pitches, it's like a whole thing and you're

trending on Twitter and everyone's mad at you. And if you're stealing signs or whatever, trending on Twitter and everyone's mad at you and if you're stealing signs or whatever, it's odd. I guess part of it is just like the haze of time and nostalgia and just like, oh, back in the day, this was how it worked. Whereas if you're doing it currently, then not everyone is as amused by it. But it is weird because as everyone always points out, when people get up in arms about people using PEDs or maybe if Carlos Beltran, you know, the Hall of Fame conversation about him stealing science or whatever. And people always say, well, Gail Perry's in the Hall of Fame. So what are we even doing here? So it is kind of an odd and perhaps illustrative example of double standards,

I guess, when it comes to different kinds of cheating at different times and i think that like we react to things differently when it is and i don't know how fair this is necessarily but we're more inclined to do like the knowing like oh that guy that's what that guy does when it's like a guy you know yeah i think that that our reaction to rule breaking tends to ratchet up with its proliferation and perceived sort of prevalence because if it's one guy, like it can be a quirky thing that one guy does. quite straight the way it needs to be you know so i think that that's part of it too where it's like if you perceive that everyone is using sticky stuff and that it is going to have a an outsized effect on the offensive environment your reaction to that is going to be different than like that scamp that scoundrel you know so i think that that's part of how we you know sort of weigh and balance these things too right and i wonder in this era, even if the permissiveness was the same now as it was during his career.

And to be clear, like he took a ton of flack for this and people were always up in arms about it. And it was basically a circus every time he would pitch because people would wonder, like, is he going to get inspected and is he going to get away with it? And how is he hiding it and where is he hiding it i don't know what that would even compare to today like if we had somehow known about the astro sign stealing situation in real time while they were still stealing signs like that would be kind of the comp otherwise i don't know what it would compare to maybe john lester being unable to throw over and everyone wondering whether people were going to take advantage of that. But even if this era were the same as that era in terms of the league letting you get away with it, I wonder how different it would be just because of camera angles and high def and GIFs and the internet and Twitter, right? It would be such a sensation every time he pitched the way it was this postseason when Joe Musgrove had shiny ears or, you know, Fran Provaldez had suspicious whatever it was like. Then it starts trending and it works its way to the dugout somehow. of Gaylord Perry from every angle for every game that we could access on command and study and

share on Twitter or wherever, I wonder if that would be sustainable just because it really would be impossible for him to hide things as effectively if he was hiding things. And if he wasn't, then maybe the mystique would be gone. And also maybe just the level of scrutiny would be so intense from the fans that the league would be forced to do things. And it was kind of forced to do things just by player complaints and opposing manager complaints. It's funny because late in his career, he became kind of a journeyman and he was going from team to team. And so managers who had complained bitterly about him before suddenly embraced him and defended him when he was on their team. But now it would just become even more of a circus every time he pitched. I can't imagine that it would be allowed to persist. There would be consequences. He wasn't

actually ejected or suspended or anything until one time at the very, very tail end of his career, mostly, he completely got away with it. And when they inspected him, they couldn't prove anything and they couldn't find anything conclusive. So if he actually was cheating all that time, he was extremely effective at it. But nowadays, I don't know that he would be able to either get away with it as well or maintain the illusion as well. I think, I mean, they probably weren't doing like the full James Karinczak, you know, head massage approach to whatever. He didn't have nearly as much hair as Karinczak. That's true.

But they did like. They got up on him. Yeah. Yeah, they did. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know, man. It's like maybe it's sort of the was Bryce Harper really seeing anything or did he just want Lance McCullers to think he was tipping pitches?

I mean, there might have been some psychological subterfuge at the same time that there was actual substance applied, but I don't know. It's a weird thing. The audacity of releasing an autobiography called Me and the Spitter, an autobiographical confession in the middle of his career in the spring of 1974 comes out with a book. Up until that point, he had maintained that he didn't throw a spitter and he didn't cheat. And then all of a sudden this tell-all book comes out. And in the book, he says, well, I'm a changed man now. I'm reformed. This is what I used to do.

I don't do this anymore. So he denied it for years. Then he confessed. But in his confession, he's like, this is all in the past. I'm not going to do this again. I don't do it now. Yeah. And then like for decades after his career, he would always kind of hedge and, you know, just be like, did I cheat?

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. So he just sort of like managed to straddle that line somehow. But just imagine, like imagine if, I don't know, Marwin Gonzalez came out with a book and was like, how I stole signs. And then he just went on playing for other teams. Yeah. Except like someone better than Marwin Gonzalez,

like one of the best players in baseball. If Alex Bregman did it, you you know carlos correa did it or george springer did it i feel like that would get you even more blackballed than actually doing it and being caught bragging and not being apologetic about it so man i mean a legend for multiple reasons yeah i mean as as we saw with literally the guys you just named i mean part of how we gauge you know our willingness to sort of grant clemency in these moments is how sincere and and sort of profound we perceive contrition to be and you know i think that it's it's a little it's obviously going to register differently when it's a whole team of guys and there was a world series championship and you know like there's there's stuff about how the houston stuff unfolded that is obviously different again i think when

when we perceive it to be sort of a systemic problem we We tend to bristle at it more than we do when it's like a guy. But yeah, I mean, that was part of, that has been part of the problem for Houston where it's like they really fumbled a sincere and seemingly heartfelt apology and sort of active accountability for what happened. And that was that for a lot of people, you know? Mm-hmm, yeah.

And shortly after his book came out, they really started enforcing the rule and they were worried, his team Cleveland, because a ball was called on him and that was the new penalty that they were going to put in place. And so they actually set up a demonstration for the umpires in the bullpen at Fenway so that he could throw his legal pitches because his actual legal pitches moved a lot and were good. And so because he had come out with this book and said he threw the spitter, now everyone thought he was always throwing the spitter. So he set up this demonstration so that he could show off his forkball for the umpires and show them that he was throwing it

legally and that it actually moved as much as they thought maybe a spitter would so that they would not be constantly calling spitters on him when he wasn't throwing spitters. But who's to say he wasn't doctoring the ball in the bullpen too? Who knows? Anyway, the only other thing I had to say about him is that it kind of amazes me that as he was on the verge of 300 wins, so he was sitting at 297 after the 1981 season, which was shortened by the strike. And so he might have gotten to 300 that year otherwise, but he was at 397 and he'd been okay in 81. He had a sub for ERA, which was a little bit below average for the time, but he was not bad.

And yet he couldn't get a job. You'd think that there would have been a lot of teams clamoring for him to come pitch for them and get the 300th win and sell some tickets. But it took him until the following March to finally get the call from the Mariners, and he became the ancient Mariner and got his 300th win in their uniform. So that sort of surprised me. He had a little bit left in the tank and he had milestone watch and he was basically like a league average pitcher roughly for the Mariners. And the other thing is that I miss ancient pitchers. We love Rich Hill, of course, and we want him to pitch forever,

We love Rich Hill, of course, and we want him to pitch forever, but there aren't a lot like him. And there were at various times like that really aged pitcher, especially the knows? But we've talked before about like the Necros and their age on baseball cards and how old Phil Necro looked. Yeah. anymore. Now, if Rich Hill does return next year, as he has stated that he'd like to, that will be his age 43 season. So that'll be exciting because we haven't had an age 43 pitcher. We had two age 42 pitchers this year, Rich Hill and Albert Pujols.

But we haven't had an age 43 pitcher since Bartol Cologne left us at the Major League level, at least. Yeah, I was going to say, be careful. You're making it sound like he died. Yeah, no, he's still pitching somewhere out there, but he's not been in the big league since 2018.

And so it was just Cologne, Cologne, Cologne, 2016, 2017, 2018, and there hasn't been an age 43 pitcher ever since. And a lot of years there's only one or there might not be any, but there were really some local maximums. There were some peak old guy pitcher periods. And it was really the 80s, like mid to late 80s and late 2000s, mid to late 2000s. Those were just prime ancient pitcher periods because like in 1983, you had Woody Fryman, Jim Cott, Phil Necro, and Perry.

And in 1988, you had Steve Carlton, Tommy John, Joe Necro, and Don Sutton, and they were all in their age 43 seasons or older. And then in 2006 and 2007, you had another peak. 2006 is the all-time peak with five pitchers in their age 43 season or older. Roger Clemens, Jeff Fisero, Jamie Moyer, of course, Terry Mulholland, and David Wells. So we have not seen many of their ilk ever since. And Eno Saris wrote an article last year about how this has actually been a pretty good time for older pitchers, that older pitchers have been aging fairly gracefully relative to older hitters of late. But still, they're not lasting that long. They're not lasting like into their mid-40s. And I guess that could have

something to do with the decline of the knuckleball. A lot of aged knuckleballers out there and maybe also just the primacy of velocity yeah these days and teams looking for that so the chill long may you run but i'd like there to be more like him and you'd like there to be more guys on baseball cards where you're like that's like 100 miles of bad road on there. Yes, yes, please. Yeah, anyway, RIP Perry. Okay, so the hot stove survey, this is from Jesse Rogers.

And this year he surveyed 12 baseball executives and insiders, however he defines insiders, but a dozen team executives and MLB insiders from across both leagues. I believe this is actually a smaller sample than usual because Rodgers has done 15 or 20 anonymous sources in the past and Krasnick used to do like 30 or 40. So smaller sample alert here, but same sort of exercise, just polling the insiders on the big questions of the offseason, most of which are still very much open questions because not a whole lot has happened. So maybe that'll change next week with the winter meetings. a quote unquote normal off season post lockout, post pandemic. But we maybe forgot that the last normal off seasons we had were also extremely slow. So yeah, I guess like slow, but then like

winter meetings rolled around and then they weren't. Yeah, it could pick up for sure. And the terms have thus far been generous, if anything. I think there's money to be spent. So the pace has been a little slow, but it could very well pick up soon. So here are the questions. I have primed you with the questions, but you have not seen the responses from the insiders. And so the conceit here will be that you will speculate about what you think the insider said. And then if you have a different opinion yourself, or I do, we could also volunteer that. But this is mainly about predicting what the predictors will predict. So the first question posed to the insiders, will Aaron Judge get a package worth more than $320 million and who

will he sign with? So this is a two-parter. So the first yes or no over under 320, what do you think the insider said? And we should note that even though a dozen executives were polled here, it's not always a dozen respondents. In fact, fact it usually isn't which always flummoxes us like these people have anonymity here they're protected they can answer anything and yet still there are always some who just like sit out questions or say pass or prefer not to say but do you think that the majority of them said that he will go over or under 320 i'm gonna say that the majority said under incorrect really yeah okay so you telling me that allows me to maybe tweak my answer to the second one yeah that is true yeah okay well that's fine held the reveal but yeah but yes uh it looks like 11 11 answered and seven And seven said over. Wow. Okay. And the 12th was a Yankees executive.

Maybe, yeah. Or working for the Giants. Right. So if you want to guess the leading team, I guess, that was named. I'm going to say the Giants. No, it was the Yankees, actually. It was the Yankees. Interesting.

So I would have thought that at three above 320 that that the assumption would have been that he was wooed away from New York. That would have been my guess. Uh huh. Yeah. Yeah. Six said Yankees. I don't know if this is six of 11 or six of 12. Yeah. Six said Yankees and then three Dodgers and two Giants. Wow. OK. Dodgers ahead of Giants. Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. That is interesting. Okay. All right. Well, there you go. Question two, which shortstop will get the most dollars and years in free agency? So can I ask, so did people answer the two parts of that question separately or as one? No, it looks like they assumed that you would get the most years and the most dollars.

That makes sense. But I just, you know, I thought I'd clarify. I'm going to say that the majority said Carlos Correa. It's actually a slight lead for Trey Turner. Okay. Which I don't know that either would have shocked me. But yes, seven said Turner, five said Correa. It's actually a slight lead for Trey Turner. Okay. Which I don't know that either would have shocked me. Yeah. But yeah, seven said Turner, five said Correa. Okay. And Correa, he's a little younger. Yes. And so I might have answered the same way you did there. Yeah. I might

still answer that way. I think I may disagree here. Yeah. I think Correa might get a bigger deal. I think that he will get a bigger deal personally. Yeah, there's one executive who says that Turner's skill set could age the best and Correa's had some injuries in the past, etc. And that's a valid way to look at things. But yeah, the age, I think I might lean toward Correa as well. And I don't know whether I'd lean over or under 320. Like the Yankees have reportedly already offered 8 and 300 for Judge. Right. So it will take more than that if someone is going to woo him away.

Right. And of course, the Yankees could match if someone raises. But yeah, I guess, I mean, if that was kind of the opening offer of the offseason, at least that we know of, then it certainly is not unreasonable to think that he could go another $20 million or more higher. So I don't know. It could go either way on that. I guess the executives more or less did too. All right. Now this one, I guess, is more involved. So where will the four big free agent shortstops sign? So this is Turner, Correa, stops sign so this is turner correa dance b swanson and xander bogarts and i guess if you want to just name the leading team for for each one okay and it i guess it could be the same answer

for some of them not that one team will sign multiple of them but they might have they're the same teams that have a need and the wherewithal so yeah yeah okay who should we start with Turner is listed first okay I'm going to say for Turner it's gonna be Dodgers and Phillies in some combination correct I know that's kind of cheating but like it's probably those two and then who's next Correa Correa I'm gonna say Dodgers and Yankees. Wouldn't it be, Ben, as an aside, wouldn't it be so spicy if Carlos Correa ended up being a Dodger? That would be such spicy stuff. Oh, I want it badly. Just because I like it when men have to relate to one another interpersonally and see how it goes. Because sometimes that can lead to stuff.

and see how it goes because sometimes that can lead to stuff who's next swanson swanson atlanta i think people think that swanson will end up back in atlanta okay and bogarts oh gosh i had an answer for this earlier and now i can't remember what i said i thought i guess like the giants need a short stop they're not gonna want to play Xander Bogarts there, though. I don't know. Giants. Giants show up on every list for all four guys, but they are not the leading contender for any guy. Okay. For Turner, the executives had it Phillies six, Dodgers four, Giants two.

Oh. And for Correa, they had it Yankees four, Twins three, Giants three, and then also receiving votes, Cubs and Red Sox. And then Dansby Swanson, you were right, Atlanta

Braves in the lead with six, followed by the Cubs, the Dodgers and the Giants with two apiece. And then Bogarts, four for the Red Sox. Yeah. And also four for the Giants. So I guess they were tied for the win there. Okay.

And Dodgers, two. Yankees, one. Cubs, one. So same limited set of teams. So they're like, here are the teams that need shortstops. Yeah, basically. And spend some money maybe. Yeah.

Yeah. And I guess the default, like the prior would maybe usually be re-sign if the team has a need there still. I don't know, like what's the rate of re-signing just across all free agents? Like how often do free agents just re-sign with the same team? Because they would re-sign with the same team presumably more often than they would sign with one of the other 29 teams, right? So your default assumption might just be, yeah, I guess the likeliest candidate would be that they stay where they are unless it's a case where there's a clear replacement for that player or like the team has already expressed that it is going to be moving on

or the player clearly isn't interested in moving on, all else being equal and not knowing anything, I guess it's sort of a safe guess that they'll be back, right? And so with each of these shortstops, either the leading response or the second most popular response was just their old team because those teams still need shortstops because their big shortstop is a free agent. So why not bring back the guy you know if things have worked out, which they have in all of these cases. So, yeah, no huge surprises there, I suppose. Okay. Will Jacob deGrom leave the New York Mets?

Yes or no answer. I'm going to say no. No is the more common response. Yeah. Eight to four. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Will Justin Verlander leave the Houston Astros? I'm going to say yes. Yes is the more common response. Nine to three, actually. Ben, I could be a baseball executive. Well, I'm sure you could, but I'm actually sort of surprised by how lopsided that is. Nine to three. I think a lot of people think that he is going to be very enticing to the Dodgers and that

the Dodgers are going to be willing to do a short and big deal for him I think that that seems to be a growing consensus whether it proves to be true I don't know but I feel like there's a growing sort of consensus around that in the industry yeah it's interesting because I have written, Sam has written before about the tendency for World Series winning teams even more so than World Series losing teams to keep the roster together, to bring the gang back.

And that's for many reasons. One, everything just worked out great. You're all feeling wonderful about each other and you want to just keep it riding, let it ride and not mess with success. And also if you just won the World Series, then maybe you have some money to spend or some projected increases in attendance and everything. So there's just good vibes all around

and Verlander has been good for the Astros and the Astros seem to have been good for Verlander. I guess he is somewhat more dispensable for the Astros seem to have been good for Verlander. I guess he is somewhat more dispensable for the Astros than for other teams, given that they do have a lot of pitching, although it's never easy to lose a reigning Cy Young Award winner. that city and the fact that he's won multiple titles there now and everything. I don't know. I guess I would have put higher odds on the Astros retaining him, although who knows what the Astros are doing these days because they don't have a GM currently. They're just, Jim Crane is just going rogue or Jeff Bagwell is running the ship. Who knows what's happening over there?

So I don't know how to predict what they will do. But yes, it seems like the executives even more confident that Verlander will leave the Astros than that DeGrom will stay with the Mets. So that is interesting. OK, next, which top pitcher after Verlander and DeGrom will provide the most value? Carlos Rodon, Kodai Senga, Taiwan Walker, or Chris Bassett? Like, we'll have the highest war? Is that what we mean by this question? Yeah, well, that's a good question. That brings us back to our favorite discussion

about what does value mean? How do we define value? And it does not actually specify what that means. Does it mean war or does it mean dollars per war? It really doesn't say. So I guess you can define it however you think the executives would define it. Yeah, I don't know that my answer actually changes that much. I think it'll be Rodan.

So Bassett and Rodan are tied at five. Really? Yeah. Okay, so that makes me think that there is some portion of i mean bassett so i don't want to knock chris bassett i think chris bassett is a good pitcher and i think that he will be a good pitcher for whichever team signs him i think that he will sign a lower dollar deal yeah then rodon or sanga will maybe on par with taiwan walker i think he'll sign for more than taiwan walker but like if they're if we're tiering them, I think it's like Rodon and then probably Senga and then Bassett and Walker, but with a gap. And that answer makes me think that there are at least some portion of that group of 12 that is thinking about this in a dollars per war way probably yeah in this context that's that's how team

executives think of players right so if he was just asking who do you think will be the best pitcher you might get a slightly different answer here so Senga got two votes and Tywin Walker got no votes but he got a great pun from Scott Boris so that's something all right which team outside of yours will make the biggest splash this offseason and it would of course help to know the distribution of teams that jesse rogers talked to here i guess but we do not know that so so who do you think will make the biggest splash is the question i'm gonna say I'm going to say that people said Giants. Correct. Yeah. But there's a pretty big spread here. Oh, yeah. to spend some money. So the Giants got three votes. The Phillies got two votes.

I guess that always makes sense with a David Dombrowski team, especially coming off a pennant. The Texas Rangers got two votes. The Dodgers got two votes. And the Red Sox, Yankees, and Cubs got one vote apiece. Interesting. So yeah, seven teams were represented here. So that's good, I guess. Yeah.

Maybe that's good. I don't know if that's more or less than usual, actually, but it's good that it's not just everyone zeroing in on a single team. And who will be the most notable player traded this winter? Okay. So let's think about who the bad teams in baseball are. The Oakland A's, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the Cincinnati Reds. Some of those teams have already traded all or most of their good players. The Kansas City Royals.

So I have like a sneaky answer and a spicy answer. You want my sneaky answer first or my spicy answer first? Sneaky first. Sneaky, I'm going to say Sean Murphy. Okay. Just because I think sometimes people forget about the ice. And my spicy answer is Devers. Oh, interesting.

I don't think that they'll actually do that though. And they should get eggs thrown at them. No, don't throw things at people. Throw metaphorical eggs. Sean Murphy was tied for the most popular response. Three people said Sean Murphy. See, if I did as well on our drafts as I'm doing here, I would win every time.

Three said Pablo Lopez. Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah. That's a good answer. That's a good answer. Two said Lucas giolito two said brian reynolds yeah two said corbin burns interesting i don't think they'll do that one said colton wong and one said fernando tatis jr oh boy yeah that person thinks that the Padres are going to sign Trey Turner. Maybe, yeah.

That would be quite a time to trade for Nino Tatis Jr. right now. But according to Rogers, the person who selected Tatis did not explain their pick. So just throw in a bomb and walk it away while the explosion is happening behind you. So it's an interesting one. But yeah, Sean Murphy, Pablo Lopez, kind of the consensus there. And the Sean Murphy trade rumors have been flying fast and furious. So that checks out. All right.

And finally, how do MLB's 2023 rule changes impact your offseason's decision making? A lot, some, or not at all? I'm guessing some. A lot, some, or not at all? I'm guessing some. You'd think some would be the most popular because people are always more inclined to pick the less extreme, somewhere in the middle option. But not at all actually led the way. Interesting. With six, and then some was four, and then zero said a lot.

And again, too abstained for whatever reason. Why agree to participate if you're gonna sustain yeah get the your name is redacted and then you sit out questions anyway i don't understand it doesn't doesn't make sense has never made sense but six said not at all that is it's interesting because yeah like we've talked about this we talked about this with eric long and hagan i'm sure we'll talk about it again. Yeah. Yeah.

It's not a totally different game or anything, but we've seen some teams making trades for like shift victims and even suggesting that maybe they will be better post shift. Like the Pirates tried to sort of sell that with Carlos Santana. Yes, they did. Maybe it's the Pirates just, you know know trying to get their fans excited about something anyone like any amount of spending any veteran on that team it's just something you say right but there's like there's gonna be an impact for some players right and i'm sure that all front offices have assigned an analyst at some point to oh yeah you know run the numbers on this figure out what the impact of this is going to be if any and should Oh, yeah. very well may be the case at least when it comes to the shift in positioning but still i would go with some like not at all like it doesn't cross your mind like it's not a factor at all it's got to be solid that feels that feels like an irresponsible answer candidly are you trying

to convince us that it's not at all because it's actually a lot maybe i don't know but then what's the purpose of doing that in a literally anonymous survey anyway i would say some it's gotta be some if it's non-zero it's right it's some you know how much some yep all right well we enjoyed that as always thank you to jared krasnick for starting the tradition thanks to jesse rogers for carrying it on and we will link to that so you can check out the answers yourself if you're so inclined i enjoyed that i feel like i crushed it yeah you were good at predicting how executives think which does that mean that you're good at predicting what will actually happen no executives are seemingly not that great at that either yeah sometimes they they really really whiff. So we had been planning to do an email show and

then we didn't because we had the Krasnicks come along to save our bacon. I had just a couple of questions here put aside that might make sense to answer here quickly. And one was awards related. So before that's too old, we could just dispense with that quickly. Daniel, Patreon supporter, said, why doesn't MLB have an awards ceremony where they give out all the awards like an Oscars night for baseball? That would be a huge event instead of just doing some press releases about awards. And this is something that Joe Posnanski and Michael Schur recommended, suggested on a recent episode of their podcast. But what do you think of the idea of trying to build this up into a big event and have it be star studded and have people actually show up for it and make it a whole production?

Well, they do have a ceremony, right? The BBWA does a dinner in New York and they get all fancy. They get all dolled up for that. Right. There is an for that. Right. There is an awards dinner. Yeah. But that's after the awards are – well, it's different awards, right? It's like New York Chapter BBWA awards.

They give out – I think they give out the big awards at that dinner, don't they? Yeah. I think it's like in January. I should know. I've never actually gone to it. Well, you'd have to get a tux, Ben. Yeah. I believe I have never worn a tux in my life unless I wore one when I was very small and I'd forgotten.

I may go to my grave without ever having worn a tux. You were a suit guy at your wedding? Yeah. Yeah. But, right. I think, yes, they do present, I think, the major awards. I think they do. The I think, the major awards. I think they do. MVP and Cy Young and such.

And they're also the New York Chapter Awards. Yes, I think that's also true. So the fact that no one really knows that this exists or what it is, I guess would suggest that maybe it's not such a great idea. But this is months after the awards are decided and announced. So that's why. So what if you did that dinner, essentially, but that's when the announcements were made? Well, I think a couple of things.

I mean, sure, why not? You know, it can't be any worse than the two-hour long program to announce two awards when we know the answers sometimes. So, like, there's the silliness of that. I wonder if some of the thinking is that, like, there are, like, the like the espies exist you know obviously not baseball specific but you know we already have sort of a sports award show and i

don't know what kind of numbers that does like i don't know what the viewership of that is i don't know what the viewership of any award show is at this point candidly but it's less and less every year yeah one would one would think So I think that it's probably, part of it is probably also an acknowledgement on the part of the baseball powers that be that not everybody who wins is charming. You know, like you get a guy who goes up there and he gives his thank yous,

and I bet some of them would be great and some of them would be actually funny, not just baseball player funny, but some of them would be not funny or charming or they'd say really you know they'd offer really pat answers like we get some of that with the sbs so maybe they think that the sort of production value and excitement is gonna be better if they just do their existing format where they have like the hour-long show on mlb network and they show you highlight reels of all the guys who are finishers you know it's like what is the top three right they they announced the top three in advance and then they do like an

hour-long show and you're like oh well it's nice that the runner-up and third place runner-up and rookie of the year got some shine because we know he's not going to win. But, yeah, I would imagine that that's sort of the justification. Plus, you know, it's a time of year when the season has just concluded. Like maybe guys want to be with their families, you know. They just got done with the postseason. Right. I was thinking that too because when it comes to the Oscars, let's say,

a lot of people don't have to travel for that because they're already they live in la yeah right and baseball players they live all over the country they live all over the world right so i suppose if they do show up for the bbwa dinner in january then that would suggest that they might show up earlier i don't know if everyone shows up yeah event but but yeah maybe coming so soon after the season, at least for players whose teams were in the playoffs, maybe at that point they're like, I just want to be at home and relaxed right now.

So there's that. Yeah, I don't know. I guess I'd be in favor of it. I don't think it would be some enormous event. When people are like, MLB does a terrible job of marketing its players, I always think, what would you do exactly? No. and has, I think, done a better job in some respects recently. But I think a lot of that is really out of MLB's control. It's just it comes down to larger trends in the country and competition and other entertainment options.

So I don't know that just like having the right marketing message is going to reverse everything. So, yeah, maybe it would be more exciting than telling us the finalists and then and waiting until the season is over like joe and and mike were suggesting that they do this in the break between the championship series and the world series when everyone is is eager for that and the season isn't fully over yet but but then you you're gonna have some award winners who are on those teams and then are they gonna travel back and forth to wherever that event is? And then they were saying, well, you could hold it where the World Series is going to be held.

But then you wouldn't know where it was going to be in advance. And you couldn't plan anything. So there are some hangups there. I would watch, I guess, if they did it that way. The other thing is that having all the awards at once, it is they spread it out over a week yeah and they assume that that will lead to more conversation and i guess it's hard to say whether it does or it doesn't but if you concentrated all the suspense and all the reveals on that one day then maybe that would be a bigger blowout yeah it's just i don't know that there's like this year at least there just wasn't that much suspense about any of the awards.

Really, there were some close races, but I think there were clear favorites even in the close races. So and I find myself just caring less and less about who actually wins, whether they were deserving or not. And we have such good stats now that we can all kind of come to our conclusions about who was the best without needing other so-called authorities to weigh in. So I think the ceiling is somewhat limited for this, even if it were done well. But I wouldn't be against having a baseball awards night instead of just parceling it out the way that it is currently. Yeah, I mean, if you did it all in one night, it probably would have fewer moments that felt like it was dead air than the existing specials do. Although I do like that they spend time

on each of the finalists, even in races where, you know, it's clear that there's a favorite and maybe a runaway favorite because, you know, even in those years, there are guys who have great seasons. Maybe they're not an MVP-level season or a Rookie of the Year season or whatever, but it's nice to have a moment of acknowledging them or, you know, several.

Yeah, and maybe you would have some viral screw-up. Maybe someone would slap someone. Maybe someone would open the wrong envelope. Who knows? So there would be some suspense about a live event if people didn't know beforehand who the winners were. But again, all this stuff is known to someone weeks in advance of when the news actually comes out. Anyway, worth thinking about. Yeah. And then you have to sit there on your podcast nervous for weeks and weeks and weeks that you're going to spill the beans and get in trouble and never be allowed to vote ever again.

Right. And Alec, Patreon supporter, asked, why do we still require five innings for starting pitchers to get the win? So he's suggesting that now that starters don't go as deep into games and don't get the win or the decision as often that we should just lower the threshold for starters. So you can win a game as a reliever facing one batter. So why not lower it for starters? I guess that's one way you could do it. Or we could just say, who cares about wins and accept that now? The only reason I like having it be kind of consistent

is just so we can track these things over time. Yeah. Like how many fewer pitchers are getting wins or getting decisions starting pitchers. That is that's kind of handy just to say the pitcher who pitched the most innings in the game or something like that yeah then i guess you would have more starting pitchers getting wins but then it would be even more meaningless to get a win right because it's already silly to pretend that the pitcher was solely responsible for the win which has never been true, but is especially

untrue today when pitchers don't pitch as many innings. So if you were to lower the bar for winning so that you could pitch a third of the game or something and still get a win as a starter, then what is the point of the stat at that point? Because why pretend that that you are the person who should be credited with the win when it's really a team effort so i'd be on board i guess with some sort of win probability added based speaking of things that will never happen yeah like the fan graphs stars of the game like the hockey style stars of the game that people can vote on. I kind of like that idea. We're just giving it to the player who had the highest WPA. Like, yeah, that's, that's more responsible for a win than whatever we could come up with whatever redefinition of the win we could decide on. So it's already so fallen by the wayside in terms of people actually using it as a tool to evaluate players. And if we were to gerrymander the definition of wins such that more players or more starting pitchers got wins, then the stat would be even sillier than

it already is. So I'm kind of in favor of keeping it the same and paying less and less attention to it, basically, or switching to some sort of WPA model that might actually reflect your contribution to the win more accurately than this binary win or loss sort of pronouncement. Yeah, I think that, I don't know, I'm reticent to adapt the stat too much because I do like having that through line consistency, but I don't know. There does need to be an acknowledgement of changing roles. I don't know. Like you, I don't feel overly fussed about it

because I don't think about wins that much. Right. And I don't think we're going to persuade people to some WPA-based thing, Ben. That's not going to... Ben, it's like that tweet, you know? Yes. Yeah, you're not going to persuade people to that.

That's already shifted into the realm of how we mock the nerds, so you're not going to get there. Well, the other conversation that goes on is about qualifying and changing the definition for how you qualify for the ERA title. James Smith just wrote about that for Baseball Prospectus recently, and he's not the first to have written about that, even for Baseball Prospectus. I know Sam wrote about it years ago, and Rob Maines may have written about it too, but there are fewer and fewer qualifiers every year, and that is sort of silly i suppose we do need to set the qualifying bar

somewhere so that we can have a civilization i guess and so having it set as as an inning per team game just fewer and fewer pitchers are clearing that bar we talked about how potentially it could have affected shohei otani's performance in the Psy Young race. Who knows? Just not showing up on leaderboards. So Sam suggested, I think, and James suggested maybe you could lower it to 130 or something like that and see how low we have to lower the limbo bar to accommodate changing pitcher usage. Or James floated the possibility of maybe you just take the top x pitchers in any year maybe you take like a percentage or just the top raw number of pitchers by innings pitched or

something and then you could keep that consistent as maybe a proportion of all pitchers or just the same number of pitchers as long as you have the same number of innings in a season the same number of teams etc so that might be one way to do it where even if the ceiling kept falling in the innings leaders other than sandy alcantara just kept pitching fewer and fewer innings then at least you could maintain well it's the top 90 pitchers in the year or however many you decide on i guess the question though if you did that or if you make any changes, then do you apply it retroactively? And that's kind of complicated. They have changed the definition of qualifying for races multiple times over many years.

And so that was a matter of some controversy at times where they had to apply it retroactively and then decide that, oh, so-and-so who at the time was celebrated for winning a batting title or not winning one or ERA title or whatever, oh, now retroactively they are the champion or not the champion. So we would have to decide whether we want to apply that throughout all of baseball history or just set a cutoff at some point. But it has been very striking even just like since 2015, I guess, is roughly when it just fell off a cliff in terms of just workloads for starting pitchers. So things have really shifted just in the past several years to the point

that maybe we do kind of need to do something, but it's tricky. It's tricky, Ben. It's like you want to have reverence for the past, but you don't want to overdo it either. Conundrum. And lastly, question from Sean, also a Patreon supporter. You may recall or not that I'm one of the 20 or 25 living Tigers fans who hasn't given in to nihilism at this point. And my questions are simple. Will the way this tank spectacularly failed be seen as a cautionary tale for other mid-to-lower

market teams as to what not to do? Was it good process and bad results, given that the odds of Mize, Manning, Turnbull and Scooble all being injured concurrently would have been the worst-case scenario? Or should teams more closely examine the way Cleveland

doubled down on development and upside players available in free agency are otherwise undervalued. I look forward to hearing your thoughts and look forward to another season of rage watching Javi Baez swing at two strike sliders off the plate away like a newborn fawn trying to walk or like a newborn Sloan trying to walk in my apartment. So first of all, is it too soon to say that the tank slash rebuild have spectacularly failed? Oh, man. That team does look really bad, though.

Looks pretty darn bad. It looks pretty bad. And I feel reticent to bury them. It's tough because there was a point where the fillies rebuild looked like it had spectacularly failed. Yeah. We spent a couple of episodes talking about that. Yeah. And it certainly didn't fully come to fruition.

Yeah. And yet they just won a pennant, which for many fans would probably pass the bar for, okay, that worked, I guess. Even if it's the first time you make the playoffs and even if you barely make it in, we also, I guess, have to essentially redefine what success is in this era. Like, is it that you have to come out of the tank as a super team like the Astros or you have to be like the Cubs and you have to be a perennial contender and make the playoffs multiple times and win at least one title? multiple times and win at least one title or like if the phillies don't keep making it back did they fail or was it enough even if you just like take advantage of the expanded playoff field and squeeze in and and then have a great playoff run like are the memories great enough to justify the whole downtime i don't know probably not yet and if you make it to contention

but a big part of your making it to contention is not even really the tank and the rebuild but like other players you imported then is that even part of that same process so i don't know yeah it's tricky because like on the one hand you look at their big league roster and you think to yourself boy there's a lot here that isn't very good yeah but then you also look at their big league roster and you think about how you know while they have they do have money committed to some guys some of whom maybe are not going to be very good They actually have like a surprising amount of payroll flexibility and they're going to get more next year and the year after because Cabrera is retiring, right?

And I imagine that some of, I don't know what deal they worked out with him. Did they work out a deal with him on that? It sounds like he will play one more season. And then they'll be done. Yeah, I guess they were vesting options starting in 2024. So he probably was going to be done regardless. So it's like they have $30 million a year coming off the books with miggy retiring and then i don't know i think that

it's not great i don't know that it is like unsalvageable but it's gonna take them spending because like their farm also isn't that spectacular so they don't have a lot of internal help that seems like it's coming right now and a lot of the value in that is concentrated in like... They don't have any... Their big star prospects have made the roster. Some of them have not gone great for them. That seems like it doesn't make you feel good.

Not much that makes you feel good about last season because no they were seen as a team that was going to take a leap and they saw themselves that way i think and then they just took a step back yeah totally across the board yeah and as disappointing as they were this past year that they could be a bounce back team next year. Maybe Riley Green, Spencer Torkelson, they do better as more established sophomore players. And maybe the free agent additions that they made are not as unproductive as they were this past season. And some of the pitchers who are hurt

are going to continue to be hurt for a while. But it's not out of the realm of possibility that in 2024, let's say, they have a productive core of like Green and Torkelson and some of the pitchers maybe. It's tough because some of those pitchers, other than Schuble maybe, have sort of lowered their outlooks and ceilings to some extent. Even if and when they come back healthy, you might not have the high-level top-of-the-rotation expectations for them that people once had.

So that's tough. If there's anything you could say about the process, I guess the fact that they did go very pitching-heavy at first. They did. And that was always a bit of a risk because if you're building your foundation on pitchers it's just it's always going to be kind of a shaky foundation so they had all these top pitching prospects and then they had to get some position players too and then

eventually they got some good position player promising prospects as well but it was initially a pitching centric rebuild which yeah you really you could say about the Braves too, right? Because they set out to have a very pitching-centric rebuild. And even if you set out to build around pitching, you might end up not really being built around pitching as much. But that going to go really heavy on pitching because we know there's going to be attrition. And so we're just going to stockpile pitching. Or you could say it's inevitable that we will always need more pitching. And even if we do go heavy on pitching, we will still need more pitching. So let's bank on position players, which I guess is more what the Cubs did, right? And their core was more based on position players, but then they really struggled to supplement with pitchers, certainly internally. They just didn't develop pitchers who could supplement their position player core. So obviously you do need both. But if I had to lean one way or another, if I were sketching it out,

maybe I wouldn't go all the way one way or the other, but I certainly wouldn't go heavier on pitching. I don't think I would more bank on the bats. No. Well, and then it's like if you have a pitching heavy rebuild, and okay, fine, like maybe that works out for you, but then maybe don't sign Javier Baez, you know? Like look for, like I just like look to raise your floor so that you can survive the

variance of pitching more easily. Does that make sense? Yeah. You know what I mean? And like, there's a lot of variance in Javier Perez's bet. And I, like, I enjoy watching him play baseball. But boy, does he sure, yeah, he does, he does swing through sliders like a fawn trying to walk. I don't know.

I think there's more like flailing involved with Javi. But yeah, like I get what you mean. So it's like maybe you think that the pitching strategy is going to play for you. Cool. But then, you know, like protect your downside risk maybe a little bit better. I don't know. Yeah. Well, obviously they feel like it's not working because they made a leadership change in the

front office. And so I guess the question is, will Scott Harris be able to salvage this and pull it out of the stall? Or because it's a new regime, partly, will he be more likely to blow it up again if things don't take a step forward and say, well, this isn't my mess, right? So I don't have to clean this up. I can start fresh and I won't be married to this particular attempt at the rebuild because I was hired because that was going so badly. So I could come in and restart essentially. I don't know what his pitch to ownership was was it it's okay i can pull this out

or was it i might have to start over again but you want someone different doing that i don't know it doesn't seem like he's imminently like trying to trade everyone on the roster anyone who's left and would be attractive to other teams so i i assume they will still make some sort of go of it and hope that there's a bounce back this season and that guys get healthy and then there's payroll room. So it's not like out of the question that come 2024, let's say, we're looking at the Tigers as a team that could still pull things together with the players that they were trying to count on here. So it has been a failure, but I wouldn't say it is destined to definitely be a failure forever yet. Yeah. It's not that encouraging, I know, but.

Yeah. And they're also, you know, they still have the benefit of playing in the central, which is less of a benefit now because they're going to have to play the not central a lot more than they have previously had to play the not central but they still i think are in a division that is relatively weak compared to some of the others so like yeah maybe some of the guys who had a really bad time rebound you know maybe torkelson finds his footing at the big league level maybe they supplement some of their existing roster with outside additions you know they get mcgee's contract off the books and then they're able to do some more there although they could still do stuff with what they have

so I'm not saying they can't do that. And then a year from now we look around and we're like, oh, they're kind of hanging around in the wild card. Could be true. Doesn't seem like the most likely outcome to me, but it is not an impossibility, so that's good.

By the way, the range of pickleball responses i've received it's been very wide some people very pro pickleball other people have said pickleball too competitive and and maybe also too much socializing so i don't know what to think about pickleball i might give it a try also golf is is kind of out for me i think i've played a little golf and i just you'd think maybe the swing would port over from from baseball to golf but i don't mind going to a driving range every now and then but but the actual golfing the expense the travel etc no i don't think it's for me sorry okay all right we've got to do a pass blast to end here i also meant to mention mention about Gaylord Perry that there's the famous anecdote that is being shared about him finally hitting a home run right after the moon landing because his former manager, Alvin Dark, had quipped that he would not hit a home run before they put him in on the moon. And then finally, he hit a home run immediately after they put him in on the moon in 1969.

Gaylord Perry hit his first major league homer. But what people don't point out as often is that he had not homered to that point in his career. He debuted in 62. He didn't homer until 69. But then he homered again in 70, again in 71, again in 72, and he hit a grand total of six homers. Ultimately, he homered when he was 42 years old. So yeah, it took him a long time. But once they put men on the moon, he homered several times. And he was actually just as good a hitter as an old pitcher as he was as a young pitcher, which was not good at either time. But there's an old Nate Silver study that showed that pitchers just get worse at hitting, or at least when they used to hit. It was just sort of like a straight line down aging curve wise, because whatever athleticism allows you to maybe put the bat on the ball early on, because pitchers don't actually

like train to be good at hitting, they just get worse the ball early on because pitchers don't actually train to be good at hitting. They just get worse and worse and worse and they don't actually compensate with anything to make up for the declining physical skills. Although Sam wrote about this too and found maybe that wasn't always the case. But if that's the case, it is impressive that Gaylord Perry was as good an old hitter as he was a young hitter, even though he was bad at both times. was a young hitter, even though he was bad at post times. Okay, here is the pass blast from 1937. And of course, from Jacob Pomeranke, who is a director of editorial content for Sabre and an expert on the Black Sox. This is 1937, a machine-like system. After Branch Rickey and the Cardinals established the modern farm system and every other team followed suit, Rickey began to look for new ways to gain an edge. In the 1930s, he started organizing dozens of tryout camps all

across the country, gathering hundreds of teenagers together every weekend to throw, run, and hit in front of ex-players and coaches who graded their performance. Rickey envisioned these camps as, quote, the chief source for new talent doing away almost entirely with the scouting system that has been in vogue for many years, as the Sporting News warned in an editorial on February 18th, 1937. Rickey believes that tryout camps eventually will be established at strategic points throughout the nation and that they will become the mecca for every youth ambitious to carve out a career in the game. and that they will become the mecca for every youth ambitious to carve out a career in the game. If his prediction is realized and the scout passes from the scene, the sport will lose one of its most colorful appendages. But mass production now threatens to force the individual to the sidelines in baseball, as it has done in industry, and to substitute for him a machine-like system

that will pass judgment on prospects by the hundreds instead of by the scores. It begins to appear that the Ivory Hunter 2, that was something scouts were called back then, must give way to a more efficient system that will throw all young talent into a mechanical hopper, which automatically will separate the wheat from the chaff, classify and label the product, and designate the farm to which it should be sent for ripening. History apparently is repeating itself, with the camp meeting destined to play an important part in the revival of the game. And Jacob concludes Ricky's tryout camps turned out to be a fad.

No more efficient or cost-effective at discovering top prospects than scouts, who never went away, then or now. The Cardinals' biggest signing of 1937, thanks to their scout Ollie Vanek, was a left-handed pitcher from western Pennsylvania named Stan Musial, who was still 16 years old. His contract wasn't legally allowed, but when Commissioner Kennesaw Mountlandis punished the Cardinals in the spring of 1938 for hoarding minor league players and allowed more than 100 of them to become free agents, Musial was not on the list. It would have changed Cardinals history if he had been. But as always, there are a lot of parallels here, right? Musial was not on the list. It would have changed Cardinals history if he had been. But as always, there are a lot of parallels here, right?

Like people worried about scouts going away. People worried about changes in talent procurement and evaluation. And is it all just going to be mechanized? And that was what Ricky had in mind. Ricky, he really would have fit in well these days. I guess that is why he is innovative and revered is that he kind of remade the game in his image to some extent and everyone else followed suit, but he was ahead of his time and it's this time that he was ahead of, but he was kind of thinking along the same lines so yeah i guess you would think that that that might be more efficient if you just had all the players come to you in a bunch and you just

watch them all at once instead of having to scour the country and go to tons of different games it's like the showcase circuit now right it's the same sort of idea i suppose so i guess he was on to something to some extent there. But it's true. Scouts have not gone away on some teams that sometimes they do. But they're still hanging in there, at least at some levels. And, right, I guess like the Royals Academy, they used tryouts decades later. And tryouts are still used. I mean, there are still players who were found through tryouts and will sign with major league organizations through tryouts decades later and tryouts are still used. I mean, there's still players who were found

through tryouts and will sign with major league organizations through tryouts, but it is not sufficient as a way to sift through any options out there. Yeah. Just too many. Just too many. Too many. All right. As is often the case, I have a few final notes for you. The first is that we recorded this episode prior to the raise signing of Zach Eflin to a three year, 40 million dollar deal. So this is yet another data point to suggest that the money is flowing freely. The MLB trade rumors estimate for Eflin was two years and 22 million dollars. And Meg is actually going to be the beneficiary of that one because she took the over on that deal very wisely in our free agent contracts draft and she will be on the scene

next week at the winter meetings to deliver her hot podcast takes from San Diego where much more money will be spent presumably. I don't know which amuses me more or confuses me more the fact that 40 million dollars is the most the Rays have ever spent on a free agent, I read, or the fact that Zach Eflin was the player who prompted them to spend that record setting amount. Of course, they've spent more on contracts, but not free agent contracts, apparently. That is not a ton of money by baseball standards. Also, a couple more follow-ups. First, on the changing equipment within a match or contest, beat, a couple more follow-ups. First on the changing equipment within a match or contest. Beat, a couple more submissions.

Raymond notes that the sport that goes through the most of its essential piece of equipment is target shooting. Of the various disciplines, I think mixed doubles trap shooting goes through the most in a match. 150 clay pigeons and 150 bullets per team. Okay, good point. I was not thinking of shooting. I was thinking of balls.

I guess a bullet is sort of a ball, a very deadly kind. But if you have a sport that is based on shooting and destroying targets, I suppose it would make sense that you would need to swap out shuttlecocks quite often. Yes, it's not a ball sport. It's a shuttlecock sport. Nothing at all amusing about that term. Jimmy points out that roughly two dozen shuttlecocks are used in an Olympic match, but the average pro badminton match lasts about 40 to 50 minutes. So if you extrapolate to a baseball game length, then the rate is kind of close, maybe at the low end of baseball's ball swapping rate. So that's a good one. Had not considered that possibility. And evidently, bad mittens umpires really crack down and restrict

players when it comes to swapping out shuttlecocks. So if they allowed the shuttlecocks to be swapped as freely, as liberally as umpires allow balls to be swapped, then things would really get out of hand. And lastly, an actual ball-related suggestion from Lord Crondor pertained to lacrosse. By rule, along with the ball used for the opening face-off, there must be 10 balls lined up behind each end line at the start of play. This is because shot attempts do not necessarily result in change of possession, and they usually don't, so the offense wants to get back to play quickly and simply picks up a ball from the end line instead of chasing it to the fence or backup net. Also, these balls are swapped out periodically because the originally textured surface can

become smoother with use. Balls that have been smoothed out are called greasers and they are terrible because you need friction between the ball and your stick mesh. So just to make sure I have that straight, you do not want greasy balls, you want friction between your balls and your stick. Okay, back to the message. So while I don't have any hard data on single game ball usage, my guess would be that somewhere around 25 to 30 balls

see the field during a given game. Nowhere near the 100 plus in baseball, but significantly closer than most other sports. The reason we were talking about equipment being swapped out is that I was proposing that is one of the most notable ways in which baseball is unique or near unique. And to recap, my top five were the equipment being swapped out frequently, all the balls being replaced, plus the variation in field dimensions and sizes and shapes,

and the defense having the ball and initiating the action, and the ease of analysis, the way that baseball structure lends itself to being broken down sabermetrically and just the comprehensive data that is produced. And then my final nomination was the lack of a clock. to being broken down sabermetrically and just the comprehensive data that is produced. And then my final nomination was the lack of a clock. I did ask for other nominations, though. Now, one listener and Patreon supporter, Jabron, he quibbled with my field dimensions and sizes. Pick, he noted that neither cricket pitches nor soccer pitches are uniform either. They vary in size.

That is true. I guess you could say the same about golf courses or the field in Australian rules football. I would argue that other than golf, baseball maybe has the most variation in size and shape. The diamonds are basically going to be the same, but if you factor in foul territory and outfield shapes and depths and fence heights, et cetera, not to mention the playing surfaces, which vary in many competitions. I'd say baseball probably takes the cake there, but perhaps it's not unique. If we were going to swap something in, there are a couple of possibilities. One, multiple listeners suggested the fact that baseball managers

and coaches dress in the same uniform as the players. That is true. That is a very weird one. Extremely idiosyncratic and anachronistic. Also strange that they can go on the field during games. I don't know if that deserves to crack the top five, to the batter size, which is weird when you think about it in sports. And this elicited a lot of responses and subsequent discussions. But in most sports, the essential dimensions are the same for everyone, at least within the same level and league. If you're a shorter NBA player, you don't get to shoot at a shorter basket. But in baseball, the strike zone's dimensions change based on how big the batter is. And that maybe makes it easier for baseball to permit more shapes and sizes for its players at the highest level, though there's certainly a lot of variation in other sports in that sense too.

But the strike zone, kind of the center of the action in modern baseball, being so sensitive to the size of the competitor so that that conforms to the player as opposed to the player conforming to it and being advantaged or disadvantaged as a result. That does sort of set baseball apart. And lastly, just wanted to share some research that listener Matthew did. He wrote in to say, I was listening to your conversation on episode 1912 about team-by-team home attendance. It made me wonder who draws the best on the road. team home attendance, it made me wonder who draws the best on the road. After making the attached spreadsheet, which I will link to on the show page, I was shocked to find out that the Cincinnati Reds had the third highest average road attendance in 2022.

I thought maybe this was a quirk of the schedule, so I created a simple expected road attendance metric based on a team's opponent's average home attendance. As you would expect, the Yankees are the best at drawing away from home under this metric, followed by the Dodgers. Oddly, Cincinnati is still third in this metric, and Oakland jumps to fifth. The Padres were fourth. And then the Phillies, the Mets, the Giants. I could imagine someone with more math skills making a metric that takes variables into account, such as time of year, day of the week, standings, etc. I do not have those skills. On the other end of the spectrum, St. Louis was 20th in this metric. They had the second highest home attendance. And Colorado is 22nd. They were ninth in home

attendance. It was interesting to think about why Cincinnati and Oakland draw so much better on the road than at home and why no one wants to see St. Louis play their team. I assume this means nothing and I'm thinking about road attendance wrong, but I thought I'd mention it in case you'd like to muse about it. There does seem to be some correlation generally between how good the team is and how good its road attendance is, but it's definitely not even close to a perfect correlation. And I would guess that you have some teams with giant fan bases and intriguing reputations, the Yankees and the Dodgers. They will boost attendance. But then after that, it's all sort of a jumble and there's barely any separation between the next several teams. The Yankees and Dodgers are sort of outliers on the high end. The White Sox were at the bottom and then the Rangers and the Royals and the Mariners. But again, very about it. When you're deciding whether to go to a game, how often is the road team, the visiting team, the defining factor? You're probably going to see the home team or you're going because you have some time and you just want to see a baseball

game or you're going to hang out with friends. So there's probably not that much separation among most opponents. And then when you factor in the variation in the weather and the time of year and the starting pitcher matchups and all of that, then that could produce some sort of fluky results. That's my best guess, but I always appreciate it when listeners do some interesting research and send it in. I also appreciate when listeners support us on Patreon, which they can do by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly

amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free and get themselves access to some perks. Max Gannett, William Fyfe, Kellen Larson, J-Sung Lee, and Ron Jolly, thanks to all of you. Patreon supporters get access to the Effectively Wild Discord group, reserved solely for Patreon supporters, as well as access to monthly bonus episodes and a whole host of other perks. Discounts on merch and ad-free Fangrass memberships, playoff live streams, and more. You can contact me and Meg via email at podcastfangrass.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 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 hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will talk to you sometime early during what we hope and expect will be a more eventful next week. Every single one of us could have a good time. will be a more eventful next week. Sorry Dylan