Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2025: You’ve Got a Friend in Ohtani

Episode Date: June 28, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the three Taylor Wards, the truth and multiple untruths about Elly De La Cruz’s twin brother, the dominance of 20-year-old Eury Pérez and the Marlins’ usage dilemma, Luis Arraez’s plate predictions, MVP odds, and underestimation as a prospect, the Mets’ struggles and Buck Showalter’s morbid mind, the Orioles’ […]

When I'm riding the bus or going for a walk One strap on my head for them to listen to people talk I wanna hear about baseball with nuance and puffy and stats Yeah, yeah Don't wanna hear about pitcher wins or about gambling odds All they want to hear about pitcher wins or about gambling odds. All they want to hear about, Mike Trout has the vitacles. And the texture of the hair on the arm going out of one's head. Gross, gross.

Gimme, gimme, gimme Effectively Wild. Gimme, gimme, gimme Effectively Wild. Gimme, gimme, gimme Effectively Wild. This is Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2025 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Aurelia Fangraph, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you?

I am 100% healthy. How are you? I sound froggy. Yep. Well, now it's your turn. Oh, no coughing already now it's your turn. No coughing already. It's a disaster. Here we are. As I just said to you before we started, I hope yours does not last as long as mine did. But our listeners, they put up with a lot when it comes to our vocal quality and our health.

I assume they would rather have us podcast at not 100% health, you know, day to day. We still got to get out there. You can't always be in fine form. You just got to get your reps. You got to take your at-bats. And that's what we're doing here. Or you could take an episode off. But, you know.

Yeah. You know. You know, Ben. You know. So I've been told. So I learned two facts about players that we've talked about a fair amount recently and for a while now. One being Taylor Ward, and it is related to Taylor Ward's name. So we've talked a lot about how Taylor Ward's name gets mixed up with other players, most notably Tyler Wade, but not exclusively Tyler Wade. So I learned this fact from one of our listeners, Tanner, not Taylor, but Tanner, courtesy of a scoreboard fun fact at a game, and that's that Taylor Ward's wife is also named Taylor. Yeah, so Taylor Ward's wife is also Taylor Ward, I assume.

I don't know if she took his last name, but there could be two Taylor Wards in the Taylor Ward household, except that there might actually be three because their daughter is named Cameron Taylor Ward. Their daughter born last year. So daughter's middle name is Taylor. She might choose to go by Taylor Ward someday, in which case there would be three Taylor Wards in the Taylor Ward households. I don't know how I could not have known this before now, but I'm very happy to know it now. I find myself confused mostly. You know, if you know one thing about me, it's that I enjoy human names. You know, there are so many of them, and a lot of them are really excellent. Yeah, we should use more of them instead of repeating some of the same ones over and over in the same family.

I just think that there's potential to do more there and to explore the bounds of names now i will also say this some names ben they're not good some names they're they're not good spelled oddly we got a lot of connors with k's out here you know i had the i had the pdp league on before i started recording there's a connor with a k and i'm like like, did we think that we needed to do that? Where was the decision made to be like, you know, the Connors were Cs? Yeah. Was that C not working for us? Right.

Were people confused about how to pronounce? Exactly. I guess we're all for variety. Sure, yeah. And we like different types of players and everything. Totally. But if it still sounds like Connor either way, then what do we really gain from this except confusion?

Yeah, it seems like, you know, every time I look on Instagram, there are a lot of millennials being, they're just playing fast and loose with vowels in their kids' names in a way that I'm, you know, candidly flummoxed by. But, you know, maybe it is a name that has particular meaning to them you know maybe they are really committed to to taylor or or or maybe taylor ward's wife did take his last name i like to envision that as like leaving it you know i stole it um and then when they named their daughter maybe they opted for is it spelled the same, the two Taylors? Yep. Okay. Because I was going to say, like, maybe, and this isn't dispositive on this idea, I guess, but, like, maybe they were like, oh, well, we'll name her in such a way that her mom's name is in her name since her mom's last name isn't in her name. Like, maybe that was part of the thought process.

Could be, unless it's a Madison Bumgarner dated a girl named Madison Bumgarner situation. Right. They were both named Taylor before they met. But that's probably not the case. Probably not the case. But, you know, wilder things have happened. Again, we got Connors with Ks.

We got Es and Is and Ys and Ns that I just think don't need them. Their daughter Cameron's name, that's Cameron with a Y instead of an O. Okay, so like, look, I just, I don't know, man. Like, the combination of Instagram and home goods did something to our brains, and I don't know that it was for the better. And here I am. I don't want to make fun of this child. You know, it's not her decision what her name is at this stage. Not until she chooses to go by Taylor someday.

I don't know if I like this Cameron with a Y. I want to be Taylor Ward. Why is there a Y? Why? Why? You know, literally, why? Is Cameron with an O more male coded traditionally? Maybe, that could be true.

I don't know. Anyway, that's one thing I learned. Another thing I learned is about Eli De La Cruz and his brother, his twin brother, in fact. Okay. If you tell me his name is Eli, I'm going to lose my mind. No, but this is not what I learned. This is fake news that I could have learned if I had not known better. But I Googled Ellie De La Cruz twin brother because I saw a tweet that he had a twin brother and that there was an interesting fact about him, which I will share in a moment. But first, in an attempt to confirm it, which I don't think I needed to do because the source was literally the Reds. I think it was a Reds media relations person.

But I Googled Ellie De La Cruz twin brother. And the first result that comes up on Google, which is possibly diminished these days. This may be another side of the search engine apocalypse. apocalypse. But the first result, like up in the little top window area, is from a website called airportsindia.org.in, which sounds very reliable and like an authoritative source of information about Elie de la Cruz. So what it says on the Google results page is, well, I'll just read you some excerpts from the page itself. It says, So, wow, did not know that Elie de la Cruz, who's certainly making waves, didn't know his twin brother was also making waves.

According to this website, moment for baseball, Eli De La Cruz and his twin brother, O'Neal Cruz, made their major league debuts in the 2023 season, which is wrong on multiple levels. Oh, yeah. Not only are they not brothers or twins, but O'Neal Cruz debuted last year. Famously. Born on January 11, 2002, in Sabano Grande de Boya, Dominican Republic, these twin powerhouses are now playing for the Cincinnati Reds and Pittsburgh Pirates, respectively. Again, a mixture of accurate and inaccurate information. Ellie joined the Reds on June 6, 2023.

Okay. And O'Neal joined the Pirates on April 29, 2023. No. No. There's like a subhead and another section below this, the genesis of greatness. And it says the De La Cruz brothers started playing baseball at an early age. Their remarkable talent led them to sign with major league teams as international free agents in 2018. Again, one of them did. Ellie signed in 2018. O'Neal signed, I think, in 2015.

He signed earlier. I think that might be right. It was earlier. Ellie inked a deal with the Cincinnati Reds for $65,000. I think that is accurate. That was his signing bonus. While O'Neal landed a contract with the Pittsburgh Pirates for a whopping $1.5 million, which I believe is inaccurate if going by his baseball prospectus, Scott's contract info, which says he signed for a $950,000 signing bonus, not $1.5 million. And it goes on in that vein. So the next section, a sneak peek into Ellie's career.

In 2019, Ellie De La Cruz made his professional debut with the Dominican Summer League Reds, etc., etc. It goes on. Then it says O'Neal's rise to stardom. O'Neal Cruz, Ellie de la Cruz's twin brother, began his professional career in 2019 with the Gulf Coast League Pirates. Again, no. No, he did not. He began his professional career in, I think, 2016, right? It was a while before that. So I don't know what's happening here. I don't know if this is some sort of AI experiment gone wrong.

Oh, maybe. Googled L.A. Dela Cruz twin brother just to play a prank on them. But I kind of enjoyed just like the mix of of inaccurate and accurate and just the confidence with which this site airportsindia.org.in is pronouncing things about these players career. It concludes promising future ahead. Experts predict that the Dela Cruz brothers are the next big thing in Major League Baseball. Oh my gosh. What a weird very weird ben what a strange thing you've stumbled upon well and it's like so i mean obviously this is just incorrect yeah i get being like you know who else is tall right you know so like i get that part but, they don't look, apart from their height, like, they don't look alike, you know, and not all twins are identical, but they, like, they don't look related. Right.

And it's... They are a few years apart in age. Yeah. Which would be, all identical twins are, I think, the same age, you know, approximately. So, that is disqualifying. Yeah, like, there's a lot about this that is obviously wrong. But see, in here, before I realized that this was all just a bunch of nonsense, I was going to be like, is Ali's twin brother also very tall? Well, that's interesting that you ask that question, actually, because that is what led me down this road. And by the way, I should mention

that airportsindia.org.in, it does have a byline at the end. Like there is a name of a person who supposedly wrote this. Again, don't know if it's a real person. But the reason I ended up on this website was because I saw a tweet about Ellie Dela Cruz's actual twin brother. Oh, my gosh. And this was from Jamie Ramsey, who's Cincinnati Red's director of media relations and presumably would be in a position to know. Yeah. He tweeted, one of my favorite facts about Elie de la Cruz is that he has a twin brother who is 5'8". Oh, my gosh. Yeah. This is a true fact.

This is an actual fact. A true fact. And there was a – A fact is is an actual fact. A true fact. And there was a... A fact is what you're saying. Yeah, yes. And there's a picture from one of their Instagrams, which I will link to, and I just linked to you, which does provide photo evidence of one de la Cruz twin who is... Oh my gosh! Significantly larger than the other. These two young men standing

next to each other look related. They do. I wouldn't say, oh, you must be identical twins. No, but they look... Ellie looks like a more stretched out version of Pedro, his brother. They look more related than Ellie Dela Cruz and O'Neal Cruz look.

Yes, I guess so. If you were to see those players from afar, you might be more inclined to say, oh, those guys must be brothers. They're both giants. But if you actually look at the facial features and everything. Right, their faces don't look the same. Wow, oh my gosh.

So like, I don't want to attribute to a person I have never met, like, psychological scarring. And perhaps I am being influenced by the fact that Taylor Cruz's brother is literally, like, flipping the bird to the camera in this photo. But do you think that he's like, what the hell, man? Like, what the? Yeah, I hope he has a healthy attitude about this, but it must be strange. I mean, it's got to be strange in some ways and probably very nice in some ways to be an identical sibling to start with. But if you're an identical sibling who is that far from identical. Right, well, you know there's a term for that, Ben. They're just fraternal. Fraternal, but they're not, though. Well, I guess're not, though. Well,

I guess they are, right? I mean, I had... Wait, do we need to clarify to you what a twin is? They're different than brothers, Ben. It's like squares and rectangles. Right. I am married to a twin, a sororal twin. I don't know what you call it. Yeah, is there a separate term for that? Yeah. Not identical, but, but, uh, you know, a resemblance, certainly closer in height than the De La Cruz brothers. But I dated a girl in college who was an identical twin, except that her twin really was not very much like her. And I was very confused by that at the time, like significantly smaller, not, you know, nine inches different, but the girl I dated was like significantly taller than her sister and kind of looked different.

And at the time I felt like this was false advertising or something. I was like, I was led to believe that identical twins were largely identical, at least physically. And it turns out that's not always the case. And there are a lot of reasons for that. I mean, you know, sometimes an identical sibling is born a lot larger or smaller. It has to do with like the connection to the placenta and sort of like nourishment in the womb. And then there are other epigenetic factors that can dictate what you look like and how tall you are and all of that. So yes, probably not the case that they're identical, but I have known identical twins

who have varied quite widely in size even. But yeah, this is quite wild. I asked Trent Rosecrans, and as far as he knows, Pedro de la Cruz is not a professional athlete or an athlete of note, but I do not know what his attitude is in relation to being so much smaller than his extremely large brother. Yeah. I mean, I wonder, like, here they are in a photo together, so maybe they just are thick as thieves and it doesn't matter. But it's like, in the hierarchy of sibling resentments, potential sibling resentments, I want to clarify, is it a bigger issue to be very tall relative to your sibling or to be a professional athlete relative to your sibling.

And in Taylor Cruz's case, they're not unrelated concepts. Yeah, both apply. But yeah, I wonder what that's like. Man, how many people in the population have dated twins twice? Not the same from the same. Yeah, I never really thought about that i don't know if i have a type in that sense but it did happen that way yeah but yeah this is uh i am an only child so i know nothing of sibling resentments and rivalries from personal experience

but you'd think that this could potentially be the cause of some sort of friction or I don't know, but hopefully not. Hopefully not. Hopefully not. Yeah, I think that like in my experience of being a sibling, I would imagine that being very different might actually afford you an opportunity for a healthier relationship because then you're forging, you're each forging your own path, right? You're doing, you're doing different things. Right. And, and so you get to like make your own way and mark on the world as opposed to

like if his younger brother was a professional athlete and then you're like, well, I mean, you're not going to be like Ellie. And then, and then that can worm its way and although it doesn't have to there are plenty of siblings who I think are closer in their professional endeavors and end up having lovely relationships I don't know maybe as a twin

you are happy to have the difference even if you don't have a strong physical resemblance just because people probably make all kinds of silly assumptions about how similar you're going to be that might not have any relationship to who you each are as people. That's probably quite tricky at times to navigate, I would think.

Well, while we're talking about baseball giants, can we spend a moment here on Aerie Paris? Sure. He's just a cheat code at this point, basically. He was the top pitching prospect. It's not a surprise that he is pitching extremely well. But gosh, he's good. Yeah, he's really very good.

I mean, he's 6'8". He throws 100. good yeah he's really he's really very good he's uh i mean he's six foot eight he throws a hundred he releases the ball from like what seven feet in front of the mound or whatever like so it's ridiculous extension paired with great velocity almost randy johnson-esque mix of those things. And he is off to one of the best starts in recent memory, right? I mean, first nine starts, 1.34 ERA. That is the lowest ERA over a player's first nine starts since Steve Rogers for the 1973 Expos. Of course, Steve Rogers, he threw 75 innings in those nine starts. Uri Perez has thrown 47 innings in those nine starts. And they're managing his workload carefully, right? He usually throws 80, 90 pitches.

But gosh, like he is just dominant and overpowering. And he has all these different weapons. He has the fastball that is thrown really fast and maybe doesn't get quite as many whiffs as you'd think. But then he compensates by getting lots of whiffs with everything else, like the curveball is unhittable. And it's just it's rare for a 20-year-old and just barely 20-year-old pitcher to make the majors and get significant time at this point, just because teams tend to be so careful with young pitchers for good reason in many cases. But he is absolutely dominant. And it's not like we're suddenly talking about the Marlins as much as we've been talking about the Reds since Ellie arrived. But I don't know, maybe we should.

Yeah. So I'm just pretty dazzled by what I've seen so far from him. Yeah. I think that they're going to have some tricky choices to make here because they are not in first place in their division because the Braves just are refusing to lose or at least refusing to lose very much of late. But, you know, they're 45 and 34 and you know at some point here they're going to have to make some decisions about how often they want him to throw and how they balance that against the desire to like be competitive in in a playoff race which isn't a wild thing to say about them at this point, right? Like they are in a wild card spot as we are recording today.

In fact, they are in the first wild card spot, I believe. So, you know, how do you balance wanting to sustain that performance over the back half of the season and hopefully make a return to the postseason with the fact that like Yuri has never thrown more than I think what 77 innings in a season yeah he's he's actually he's at his career high right now at season high he threw 78 in 2021 in his first professional season and he is now at exactly 78 thus far between double a and the majors so far this year so so that's uh downside, I guess, of taking good care of young pitchers and protecting them is that when they break out and you bring them up, they don't have much of a workload

built up there. There's this concept called the injury nexus, which I don't know if it really holds up to modern scrutiny. But the idea was basically that when you're a young pitcher, you're more subject to injury and you're still developing. And so there's this window where if you're overworked during that time, it's even more dangerous. And he's certainly still within that window. I guess we're probably not at the point where you do a Strasburg-style shutdown. Like, I don't know if that made sense at the time, and I don't know if it would make sense now. It seems like to shut a guy down and then have to ramp him up again. Right. Could have its own negative consequences, one would think.

Yeah. Yeah. Especially if you're ramping up again in preparation for the playoffs, if they were still in the chase there. especially if you're ramping up again in preparation for the playoffs, if they were still in the chase there, and then you're going from inactivity to max velocity and high pressure. That just seems bad. That seems maybe worse than just doing what you're doing.

So maybe this is the most responsible thing that they could do, just kind of managing him, making sure he's not overworked in any given game or from game to game, giving him adequate rest, but having him remain a member of that rotation. But if they keep going, I mean, once we get to the end of the season, he will have probably like doubled. Yeah, blown through, right? Yeah. So I don't know if that's and then, you know, if you're fortunate enough to make the playoffs,

is he completely gassed by that point? So I don't know what else you do. He's like too good to not use him or just sit him down. So I guess you just got to keep using him on a fairly tight leash from game to game and hope for the best. It's a tricky business because I think that we are better equipped. I mean, not you and I, but like teams are better equipped than they have ever been to, you know, at least be able to register the sort of ancillary signs that one might see that would indicate fatigue, right? So like velocity decline and changes in command and control and, you know, you know, consistency of delivery and release point and such. So like they So I think that they are in a spot where they can say,

hey, we're noticing X, Y, and Z factor that make us think that you're fatiguing. Maybe you take a turn off through the rotation. Maybe we throw you every six days instead of every five. There are different strategies that they could deploy, and we never know what is the pitch that's going to be a problem. But I think he has been fairly healthy throughout his young minor league career. So it's just, you know, it's an odd, but he's so spindly, you know? And I do feel, even though he's, you know,

he is among this group of young dudes up in the majors now who are like built like construction cranes. He's still, you know, he's among this group of young dudes up in the majors now who are like built like construction cranes. He's still, you know, he's still kind of spindly. And so I feel more nervous for the spindly guy. Yeah. Which is, I don't know, maybe that's a silly way to think about it. Because it's like, are know, he's so young and he can be so good for them for so long. I'm sure that they are conscious of sort of wanting to protect future Yuri and the future Marlins and not wanting to sacrifice that at the expense of the present. But when you find yourself in surprising contention, like, I think it would be awfully tempting to say, eh, just go. say, eh, just go, no, no, no.

But, you know, I hope that they won't make that sound because what a bad sound it was, you know, apart from anything else. Speaking of spindly pitchers, Tristan McKenzie is hurt, right? He hurt his elbow UCL issues, which is never great. But yeah, I mean, you have that kind of the prototypical power pitcher build, as they say.

Yes. And bodies come in all shapes and sizes, even of successful pitchers. So I don't know. I could imagine that being built more solidly might perhaps help you not wear down or something over the course of a season, or maybe it's the opposite. Maybe if you're putting a lot of strain on your lower body, landing on it over and over with a heavier load there, maybe that could wear you down over time. I would guess that in terms of just the strain on your UCL specifically, I don't know that it would make all that much difference. I mean, maybe if you don't have enough lower body leg strength to sort of take some of the strain in your delivery, and it's just all arm, maybe that

would be bad. But I could imagine it just being kind of a case-by-case basis thing. But with the Marlins now, I mean, with Perez doing what he's doing, and then with Arise doing what he's been doing all season long, they're not as fun, I guess, maybe top to bottom as the Reds. You know, maybe like if Alcantara were doing better, then they'd have a really great young rotation. I guess the lineup is like not quite as fun fully as the Reds lineup is these days. But just even those two standouts, just, you know, checking the box score every day to see what Arise did and then seeing what Perez did. That's a lot of fun, too. And they've still been outscored by 15 runs on the season, the Marlins. It's still not clear how good they are.

I mean, much like the Reds have been outscored by 22 runs, right? And the Marlins are 45 and 34. And the Marlins are 45 and 34. The Mets have almost the same run differential and are 35 and 43 and are currently like a smoking ruin, which maybe we should talk about for a moment. But the Phillies, too, basically have the same run differential as the Marlins. They're 40 and 37 and a few games back of the Marlins. They're 40-37 and a few games back of the Marlins. So we talked a lot early in the year when the Marlins were undefeated in one-run games about that. They're still 19-5 in one-run games. So it's still a very strange season. And I guess I have been reluctant to buy in and catch Marlins fever or anything because I guess I i guess i'm even less uh confident maybe that they can keep it up than i am in the reds so yeah although gosh even even in that month where the reds went what like 15 and 8 they said they emerged from that month with like a plus seven right yeah it's like even when it's going really well in terms of the win-loss column like

it's there's fluke to be had there's flukiness yeah yeah i speaking of arise i i wanted to play a clip that i sent you before we started recording this is the other day so luisa rise evidently called his home run that he hit which i guess is noteworthy because he doesn't hit a lot of home runs. So if you're someone who hits a lot and you predicted it, well, it's a higher percentage play for you to predict that you will hit a home run. Arise has hit three this year. So for him to predict it, it's maybe more impressive. And well, I'll just play the clip from his manager, Skip Schubacher, here. Nice home run and the bat flip. He told Pipe that he was going to hit a home run that next at bat.

So he hasn't done that all year. He did it again. The guy just tells you what he's going to do every single time, and he does it. And I just kind of a loss for what's happening because it's almost July, and he's still calling his shot. It's just, it's wild. I don't even, I don't even know what to say. I mean, I said. So what I found amazing about this is it's not just that he predicted the home run because again, everyone's predicting everything constantly for all we know, he does predict a home run every

time and he just rarely is right. But what Schumacher said is that he predicts what he's going to do every time up, he said. And then he does it. He didn't say he predicted he's going to hit a home run every time. But he says he basically like calls his shot every time or he like predicts what he's going to do in every plate appearance. Probably hyperbole. But what if he actually did? What if he actually predicted to do in every plate appearance, probably hyperbole. But what if he actually did? What if he actually predicted the outcome of every plate appearance? Because as good as he is and, you know, hitting as close to 400 he is and getting on base

as close to 500 as he is, he still makes an out most of the time he comes to the plate. And so if he were actually predicting what he's going to do every time, then he would very regularly be saying, I think I'm going to roll over and ground a second here. I think I'm going to pop out to the left here. I think I'm going to ground out to third this time. And even if he did that,

and even if he were right, I guess you'd almost still have to send him up there unless it were like the last at bat of the game. And if he made an out, it would be over. And you knew he was definitely going to make an out because he's unerring in his predictions. If he predicts in the first plate appearance of a game that he's going to ground to short, well, you still have to leave him in there. You can't pinch hit for Luisa Rice. He's your best hitter.

He's, I think, by WRC+, despite the lack of power, the best hitter in the National League this year. If not, he's near the top of that leaderboard. Yeah. So even if he were to predict half the time that he was going to make it out, well, I mean, you'd still have to leave him in there because he makes it out less often than just about anyone else does these days.

So it would still be useful. But I would enjoy that. I mean, players are always predicting positive outcomes. So I'd love it if someone said, you know, I just I don't think I can hit this guy. I think I'm going to think I'm going to go down this guy. I think I'm gonna, I think I'm gonna go down swinging here. I think I'm gonna take strike three looking. I think I'm just gonna, you know, ground to, I think I'm gonna just tap one back to the pitcher this time. You never seem to hear that. So I want more stories about predicting failure. I'm trying to decide if

it reinforces or undermines like the lore that is starting to emerge around him because we are generally i don't want to say skeptical realistic about like how much even guys who have really good sort of barrel variability within the zone can point and shoot basically when they're up there you know um this is part of why the collective baseball intelligentsia has been like, well, it's you can't just tell them like, well, just hit them where they ain't, you know, like in response to the shift. It's like that's really hard. Even very good hitters are still in a reactive posture. And so their ability to like target where on the field they want to send the ball is going to be somewhat limited. Arise does seem to have some degree more innate skill to do that than a lot of other hitters. And so it's like, is he just able to look at a guy's arsenal and have an understanding of what he's likely to be offered

and say, hey, I can't do it this this time but then other times he's able to does that make us believe him more even though the result isn't good i don't know like i think that it's been going on long enough that the way we talk about like joey vato's ability to properly assess the strike zone. I don't know. We need to do the hitting equivalent for a rise. We're getting into that territory where he needs to be talked about in the same hushed, reverent tones. You know, I think we're, I think we're there. Yeah. He is by the way, one point of WRC plus ahead of Ronald Acuna as we speak here on Tuesday. So doing it in a dramatically different way. Acuna is second in batting average in the majors, and he's not within 70 points of Luis Arias.

That's how much of an outlier Arias is. And yet, you know, obviously he's hitting for power and he's running wild on the bases, etc. So it's a very different 160 WRC plus than Luisa Rice's 161. And overall, maybe a more valuable player he strikes out, but it's hard to be basically batting 400 and slugging under 500. And yet, even if you do that, it's hard not to be a 400 hitter and not be a very productive hitter, just despite the discounting of batting average. If the batting average is high enough, then you're going to be good. And I was talking about that on Hang Up and Listen this week. It came up. If he were to sustain this somehow, almost miraculously for the

rest of the season, like if he hit 400 and he finished, what, two war, let's say, behind Ronald Acuna, what would the MVP results look like? I have no idea. How dare you be so rude to Corbin Carroll. Oh, my God, Ben. Well, yes, or Corbin Carroll. Anyone other than Arise who, let's say, tops him in war. Because when I looked, he was not close to the top of the war leaderboard, even the National League war leaderboard. He's 25th now as we speak on tuesday and in the national league he is 12th and you know he's 1.3 wins by replacement behind ramalakunya which is simultaneously not a big difference and a pretty big percentage difference

and so if that were to continue by the end of the season, if he were, say, three war ahead of a rise, but a rise batted 400, would we have a contentious conversation about awards voting? Like, I think we're past, you know, people worrying about batting average. Oh, Ben, that's adorable. I mean, okay, maybe I'm in a sabermetric bubble here. I think a little bit. I think part of why I'm just so able to purely enjoy Luisa Rise is that at least up until now, no one's been trying to turn him into more than he is.

Like, no one's trying to say he's the best player in baseball. turn him into more than he is. Like no one's trying to say he's the best player in baseball. They're saying he's like a freakishly talented contact hitter and hitter for average and he's got preternatural hand-eye coordination and bat-to-ball ability

and everything, but not then kind of having a halo effect extension of that to he's amazing in all facets of the game, right? Because he's not fast, which makes it more impressive that he hits for average the way that he does. He's not like beating out tons of infield hits or anything. And the fact that he doesn't walk an enormous amount or hit for power means that he is just so subject to the vagaries of batting average on balls in

play that makes it harder for him in some ways although making tons of contact maybe makes it easier but no one's trying to make a case for a rise over a kunio let's say at this point but if we got to the end of the season and arise it hit 400 which would probably be the story of the season that would probably be the most memorable thing that happened during the regular season, Shohei Otani's heroics aside, right? And so if the most memorable thing from this regular season was that was the year Luisa Reis batted 400, and yet he ended up three-war or whatever behind the National League leader, would he be the favorite for the MVP? Would he get strong support? Would there be anger over like the sabermetricians who are trying to rob us of the great story of Luis Arias or diminish his

accomplishments or anything? Or have we gotten past that and everyone can just kind of put it in perspective and say this is an amazing accomplishment? And it also does not mean he's the best player in the league. When was the last time someone had a WRC plus even remotely as high as his with an ISO that starts with a zero? When was the last time that happened? So I think a couple of things. I mean, I do think that in general, even the folks who I think tend to view the game through sort of a more traditional lens than we do can appreciate like the totality of a player's game. And so a rise might fall away from, you know, whether it's Acuna or Carroll, you know, assuming that things sort of stay as they are on the position player side in the NL, you know, he might kind of fall away by virtue of the fact that like, Ronald Acuna Jr. has 35 stolen bases, right? And Corbin Carroll has 23.

And both of those guys hit for considerably more power than Ari rise does, even though Carroll's a smaller statured guy. Right. And, you know, it's not like, you know, particularly if it's Acuna who ends up being his primary competition, like he's hitting above 300. So it's not like he's, you know, a hit in 220, but doing a lot of other really great stuff and is going to end up with a case that is offensive to traditionalists. Like if he's a 300 hitter with, you know, 40 plus stolen bases and is, you know, playing reasonable defense and hitting for power, like he has a, an MVP case that looks very traditional, even if it doesn't involve a batting average, it starts with a four, right? Like he just happens to be really good at everything. So I think that that will help to sort of assuage some of the traditionalists who want to acknowledge what an incredible

accomplishment hitting 400 would be, but probably can acknowledge like, you know, come on, like relative to his closest competition, he's a step down and they are able to make sort of a traditional case. So there's that part. And I am like hopeful that that will, you know, that will be the thing that sort of dictates the direction of the discourse where we can have the conversation and it'll be fun to have it because I do want to make sure that Arise like gets the recognition that this thing should come with because he is an exceptional hitter even if he isn't hitting for power. But also, we really like to make up a guy to get mad at. We love to make up a guy, Ben. I mean, not you and me. I mean, sometimes you and me. Well,

I'll speak for myself. I don't like to make up a guy to get at it. It's been known to happen. But I think that there will probably be somewhere a column written about how the sabermetricians are ruining things. And it's so hard as if it's not hard to hit.328 and launch 17 home runs against today's pitching. That's really hard to do, too. That was really hard to do, too. But, you know, I'm optimistic maybe that the primary discourse will be around, like, wow, look at all of these really great hitters in the NL, and they're great in different ways when we're evaluating their MVP cases. Like, the ranking is, you know, pretty obvious, but that doesn't mean that, you know, whether it's a second or third place finish that Arise won't be worthy of that. Like he's, he's really great. You know, I think

that having that, you know, diversity within the ecosystem of the game is really good for the game. In some ways it like makes the conversation more, I think, fruitful when the contrast is as sharp as it is. You know, some years we have guys, we have a bunch of guys who are all really good and they're separated by fractions of wins. And, you know, they kind of are doing the same kind of thing in terms of their profile. And then you're like, how do I justify the choices here

when the contrasts are sharper? I think that it makes for a more fruitful conversation and in some ways a harder vote, maybe, because you're not able to do apples to apples. But it's also an easier vote because you're not trying to pick apart my new differences in the same profile. I don't know, man. We'll see where it goes. All of this, of course, is predicated on his ability to actually hit 400 and if he ends the year hitting 370 then i think it's you know he's not gonna yeah he's not gonna be maybe not even a top three finisher um it really only becomes a question if on the last day of the season. It's a disgrace, really. Right. If he only bets 370.

Right. Like, who has time? You know, who even has time for someone who only does that? But, like, if he ends the year below 400, I think that this issue kind of takes care of itself. But if he doesn't, hmm. Yeah. It is incredible in retrospect, though, that he was not more highly rated as a prospect. Yeah. Incredible in retrospect, though, that he was not more highly rated as a prospect. I'm not saying that I saw this coming.

But if you look at his minor league batting lines, he was basically doing this all along. Right. I mean, there was never a time when he was not hitting for a high average. His first professional season as a 17 year old in 2014 in the Dominican Summer League, he batted.348, right? He batted.331 lifetime in the minors. He batted.338 in his brief time in AAA. He batted.318 in AA. Like, he did this all along. As soon as he made the majors, he did that from day one to his rookie year 2019. He batted.334 that season in 92 games. And yet he was never a top 100 guy anywhere, I don't think, any of the major places at least. Just looking back at the 2019 Fangraphs top prospects list,

not to blow up Eric and Kylie here, but he was rated 12th directly behind Williams Astadio, who was 11th. And look, I'm sure I would have had Astadio higher as well. He was certainly higher in my heart. But and part of it was that Astadio was already in the majors and Arise was in double A at the time, although, again, he would make the majors that season and bat 334. But he always had this ability. in double a at the time although again he would make the majors that season and bat 334 but he always had this ability and because he was not like a big super athletic super toolsy guy and

maybe because he breaks the mold because it's a low batting average era for so many reasons and players aren't prioritizing batting average the way that they used to. And so scouts probably aren't either. And you're going to have a tough time projecting someone as just a batting average savant in this era. Like he's an outlier and outliers always give scouts fits, you know, unless they're outliers because they're giants and they are super fast, like Elie de la Cruz, who I realized he also signs autographs sometimes, the fastest man in the world. Oh, yeah. Which is wonderful. Not the fastest man in baseball, which he might have a legitimate claim to, but in the world of anyone, all the sprinters, anyone, Elie de la Cruz, fastest man in the world. I just, you got to love the confidence, I guess. It would be entertaining and amusing and fascinating if he were actually the fastest man in the world.

And that might break baseball in some ways that I think we've talked about in the past when we were wondering whether Billy Hamilton would be the fastest man in the world. He wasn't. Anyway, that was a side note. What I was saying is that if you're Luis Uribe, your tools don't jump off the page to the same extent and your dimensions don't. And so people probably thought, well, he's not fast and he's defensively limited. You can stick him at a few positions, but he's not necessarily going to excel at any of them. And I think in that 2019 prospects list, they projected him to basically be, you know, because of the lack of power and everything, he likely projects as a bat-first utility guy. But there's a chance he makes sufficient contact to be a regular at second. So that chance paid off.

He does make sufficient contact to be a regular at second. So that chance paid off. He does make sufficient contact to be a regular at seconds. But yeah, just, you know, he was unusual. And so scouts sort of missed on him to some extent. Yeah. And I think that, you know, when you're thinking about like the bucket of sort of permissible misses, for lack of a better word. Like that kind of miss is definitely in that bucket because so often it isn't enough. Like it just, the overwhelming majority of the time, it's not enough. It's not enough to be able to do that.

And I think that, you know, being able to have like sort of that control and variability that is in the way that Eric might describe it, like sentient is really hard. Yeah. Nick Madrigal batted 359 in AAA and 319 in the minors. You could come up with other examples of contacts, high average guys where it just didn't or hasn't translated. Right. And so I think that it gives you a data point that helps you to clarify, like, what is the, you know, the edge case scenario where this is enough to not only, like, bolster the profile such that you're an everyday player, but one of the more valuable players in baseball and certainly one of the better hitters. And you can learn from that. But it's also hard to be able to say,

well, yeah, this guy, you know this guy? That guy is just like that guy. They're the same guy because there are so many guys and some of them are named Connor with a K. Yeah, so that's been really fun to watch and less fun to watch

are the division Mets of the Marlins. And that's the Mets. Man, the Mets. You just sent me a tweet. I did. Mets owner Steve Cohen tweeted while we've been talking here. And he has pronounced, I will be doing a press conference tomorrow before the game. You will get it from me straight.

Do we think that Buck Showalter's getting fired? I wonder, because I was... It's kind of rude to announce you're going to do it and then make the guy wait a day. I mean... Steve Cohen, famous for decorum, never rude. It'll be the very first time.

Yeah, I was going to bring up a recent Buck Showalter tweet that was, or quote, it would be funny if Buck Showalter were tweeting. Bucks on Twitter? I'm shocked by that. Yeah. You would probably know about that. But Tim Healy, who covers the Mets for Newsday, he tweeted a couple days ago, in response

to questions about the Mets Tuesday starter, a dodging Buck Showalter said, What is it with knowing about things before they happen? Do you want to know about when you're going to die? Maybe Steve Cohen just told him. Yeah. At least in a professional context. Yeah. I feel bad for Francisco Lindor, but that's tremendous content.

Yes. It's going really quite badly. And not just in a fluky, you can see that this is actually a very good team and they're just getting unlucky. They're getting babbled to death. They have weird sequencing issues. It's not been their 35 and 43 as we are recording today. I think that Showalter, and I wouldn't presume to outline all of them because the Mets fans listening, I'm sure, have a catalog. But he seems to be making some strange choices. He's making weird choices with the lineup,

and you never want to get too invested in that because we know that sometimes it doesn't matter, but also he's not always playing his best guys. And then like the way he's using his relievers also seems quite odd and very prickly. It seems to be quite prickly in a way that I can't imagine, like resonates with his dudes. Did you watch their meltdown against the Phillies?

Did you see this? That was not pretty. It was like shocking kind of really to see them. They're not playing good ball right now. And, you know, they've been at times like error prone in the field. And it doesn't seem like things are going well over there. And, you know, we saw last year with the Phillies that, you know, all those things can be true. And then you move on from your manager and the vibe shifts dramatically, you know. So it's not as if they have to be totally dead in the water but also i am i'm struggling to to think of how it gets a lot better because

you know they don't seem like they're in a position to really do much deadline wise at least from the minor league side of things and they're old you know particularly their pitchers been famously extremely old and uh yeah it. And yeah, it's not great. It's not going well. Yeah, it's sort of the flip side of the Reds or the Orioles or these teams where you get an infusion of youth and maybe they accelerate the timeline because those guys click and they come up and they hit the ground running. And then with the Mets, again, they won 100 games last year. the ground running. And then with the Mets, again, they won 100 games last year. They either kept the guys that they had or they replaced them with other high-profile guys. And yes, Edwin Diaz got hurt, but they still had a ton of talent. But when you're that old,

when you're the oldest team in the majors, there's just inevitably going to be greater collapse risk. I'm not saying I saw a Mets collapse coming, but I think of the good teams, the top tier teams, as you would have identified them coming into the season, the top projected teams, you might have said things could go wrong here. You know, if they can't keep this ancient rotation healthy or if it's healthy but not as good as it was. I mean, you were basically banking on Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer remaining among the very best pitchers in baseball at an advanced age. And that has not been the case this season, even when they have been available. So when you're starting with that, that's just not great.

And then you have other guys who are underperforming. I mean, Francisco Lindor, right, who's signed for forever. He's not necessarily the problem with the Mets, but he's not necessarily part of the solution these days either. So there's just a lot of weaknesses there. And their playoff odds are down to about 12%. It's just it's not looking great so steve cohen has uh resisted firing people and uh ranting but he's gonna give it to us straight on wednesday so we'll see what that entails he he just recently issued a press

conference about the mets being chosen to play in what london next year and the statement said something about uh did i say press conference or press release but he he said something about like looking forward to introducing the mets and their never say die attitude to the uk it's like that was not giving it to us straight. Are we talking about the same team here? So now he's going to give it to us straight. They, they might say die. That might be their attitude.

Now they might say, I'm very tired. You know, they could say, I am a team that is in its late thirties and sneezed and screwed up its back. Just to like pick a thing that happened to me yesterday. So you've conceded that you're in your late 30s now? I think I am.

Well, now I'm 37. So you've crossed the threshold. I think I've crossed the threshold. When I was 36, I think I was still safely in my mid-30s. But now I am 37. And so I think I'm in my late 30s. It happens. I feel fine about it

I've liked my 30s except for your back that you strained dude like this cold you know and so I'm sneezing and I feel I mostly feel fine

you know it was one of those things where like the feeling crummy part I kind of speed run ran through and I had like 24 hours where I was like I feel gross and then I've had like many more hours than that where I sound gross and am conscious of that. And I have been sneezing quite a bit, although I will say batten a thousand in terms of muting myself. You know, I've had travel lately. It's a very busy time and I'm working a lot, had a lot to do. And so probably not setting my body up for success. And then I sneezed and I was like, wow, I feel that sneeze in several vertebrae. feel that sneeze in several vertebrae. And it's not the first time I've had that happen in my 30s, but it is the first time I've had it happen in my late 30s. So here we are.

Yeah. Well, you got to pace yourself with when it comes to like, I'm old now and I have aches in my bones because, you know, hopefully you're going to get a lot older than you currently are. Yeah, and feel way worse than I do now, you know. And you'll be looking back and you'll be thinking, oh, how I long for late 30s Meg, right? Right. And how I felt then. Yeah. So, you know, I always imagine if someone in their 30s is talking about feeling their age,

then someone listening in their 50s or 60s or 70s or 80s is thinking, oh, you sweet, stubborn child, just wait. Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah. Yeah. I don't mean to say that it is as bad as it will inevitably end, simply that it is the worst it has ever been for me personally. That's, I mean, I feel fine generally, but it is humbling, you know, you're just, Really what it says is that you have to take care of yourself.

You can't get away with what you could when you were younger. And I think that's instructive. You want to be able to move around comfortably as you age as best you can, which is why you should stretch. I won't sink to that level. I won't engage in this debate again. Some of us aren't trying to be swole, Ben. We're just trying to be able to touch our little toes. Well, I guess any indication of aging, it's a reminder that you might one day die, which Buck Showalter, of course, reminded us of as well. I think there is quite a large leap between knowing Tuesday's probable starter and knowing when you're going to die. There's a distinction

between those things. And I can understand why you would want to know the latter and not the former or the former or the latter. I forget what order I said those things in. But, you know, there's some utility to, say, a reporter knowing who's going to start Tuesday's game. There might not be to knowing when you're going to die. I mean, there are a lot of stories about whether you would want to know that or not. But it's a little bit of a different calculus than, hey, who's starting on Tuesday? I think that when you've been around as long as Buck has and you've, you know, how many press conferences post game pressers, um, has Buck done in his career? So many, right? Like, you know,

I get that things aren't going well for your team. I imagine that his situation feels precarious, um, and that he is not enjoying that feeling because who among us does, right. But you know, don't make people feel bad for doing their job. Like, you know, we've got to ask that question. It's a completely reasonable question to ask, right? Like, if you're interpreting the who is your Tuesday starter question as something of a, like, a gotcha, then, Buck, I'm sorry, sir, but your problems run deeper

than that question. That's a gotcha. You're in rough shape. He didn't say it was a gotcha, to be clear. I don't want to put words in his mouth, but that's sort of the vibe of that. No, he just equated it to wanting to know when you're going to die. That's all. Yeah.

I mean, I saw that quote, and I was like, like fuck you've been listening to effectively wild that has a yeah you know hopefully we aren't always that confrontational but the the general thrust of that quote feels like it should be on a mug with our logo on it yes there basically is a world where i guess we would not know who was starting and that would be a mystery and probably in earlier eras, it would have been more difficult to ascertain who was starting and you would have had to check the newspaper and maybe you would not have known. I mean, that could just be the convention, right? It varies by sport, like how transparent teams are with the media when it comes to injuries and availability. And the convention in baseball is that, you know, we get pretty decent info, right? I mean, we certainly don't get everything. We

don't get Steve Cohen giving it to us straight in every case, right? But sometimes teams hide injuries or players hide injuries or we just don't get the full story there. But usually we know who's going to start the next day unless you have some serious rotation issues. And then it's understandable because the team itself may not know who's going to start the next day. But we do kind of take for granted that, hey, if I'm planning out what games I want to watch or attend, then it would be nice to know who's actually pitching. And I think that probably serves everyone in the situation to know that, including your fans, your spectators, your audience, the people you're putting on this show for. They want to know what they can expect to see.

So I think that system serves us all well. And in the bygone days where you had to open the paper to see who the starter was, how did they know? They asked the question. Right. They were like, hey, you know, Buck, who's starting for you on Tuesday? That's how they found out. And they asked the question like reporters do. I got an answer, by the way, to the question you tossed off about when the last time someone had a 160 WRC plus with an isolated power below 100. In episode stab last.

It happened one time in 1899. That's it. Wow. Among players with at least 500 plate appearances in a season, which Arias does not have yet. And by the time he gets there, he may not satisfy these conditions either. But the only time it happened, evidently, is John McGraw, the future Hall of Fame manager for the 1899 Orioles. He had a 178 WRC+. In fact, he batted 391, 547, 446.

He walked 23% of the time and he had an isolated power of 55. And that is the only time a major leaguer has done it with at least 500 plate appearances in a season. Other guys like dead ball era guys came close, Eddie Collins and Nap Lajue and Trish Speaker, et cetera. But, yeah, it has not been done except for that one time. So I don't think Uriah is going to do it, but he's doing it so far. So it's pretty extraordinary. Wow. So I identified an think Uriah's going to do it, but he's doing it so far. So it's pretty extraordinary. Wow. So I identified an actual fun fact.

Yes, you did. Yeah. Or it could become one, I suppose. Could become one. A potential fun fact. A nascent fun fact. Right. An embryonic fun fact.

Yes. Yes. So a couple other things. We've met some interesting major leaguers in recent days. Some are top prospects. The Orioles just, they have a boundless reserve, seemingly, of top position player prospects. For a while there, it was like the Orioles have lots of interesting pitching. Now it's just like endless, endless waves of position player prospects where it's like too many to call up all at once. And so Jordan Westberg is the most recent arrival.

I don't know how they have room for more good infielders. It seems like they already had too many, much like the Reds do. But now it's, I mean, you have Jackson Holiday behind him, and you have Keston Kirstad. Wait, did I say that wrong? Keston Herstad? Keston. Keston. Keston Kirstad.

Keston Kirstad. and Colton Couser right I I think you should leave it in yeah so that I can apologize for me setting you up for that because I have gone on and on about Connors with Kate yeah that was why I screwed it up I am impressed by just how many waves of great talented position player prospects they have, some of whom are on the cusp of the majors and some of whom are a bit further away, though they seem to look major league ready already. But that's not the type of player we typically devote a lot of time to on a media major leaguer segment, for instance. Not that this is one officially, but I did tell everyone in the outro to the last episode, hey, if you're watching on Saturday, the Padres are calling up a knuckleballer. And they did, Matt Waldron. And I tuned in to see that game because I was super excited about the knuckleballer, the first true knuckleballer,

not position player pitcher, not someone messing around, but an actual pitcher who throws a knuckleball. First one in the majors for a couple seasons since our former podcast guest, Mickey Janis. And I got to say, I was a little disappointed to learn that Matt Waldron is a part-timer. He's a part-time knuckleballer. He's a part-timer. He's a part-time knuckleballer. Can you even call him a knuckleballer? I guess you can call him a knuckleballer. He pitch, that he's going to throw a knuckler and then he's going to throw a get-me-over fastball. And there are plenty of examples throughout baseball history of players for whom a knuckleball was a secondary or tertiary or supplementary pitch, right? It was just part of the mix, something they threw every now and then. But I was a little disappointed. Like, I guess beggars can't be choosers when it comes to big league knuckleballs at this point. You know, it seemed like they might even be extinct. They're certainly severely endangered. And so to have someone come up and throw, what did he throw? 13 of them, I think, in 62 pitches,

He threw out 13 of them, I think, in 62 pitches, something like that. So, you know, a distinct minority of the pitches that he throws. But when he threw them, you know, they did what a knuckleball is supposed to do. And we got gifs of them barely rotating, right? It's sort of an R.A. Dickey speed knuckleball. Not an R.A. Dickey quality knuckleball necessarily. But it's like low 80s, which is a little faster than I'd like. I like a slower knuckleball that you have some time to admire on its way to the plate. So Jay Jaffe wrote about him for Fangraphs, and he found that he's been throwing a knuckler, messing around with a knuckler since Little League.

So he's not like a knuckler messing around with a knuckler since little league so he's not like a knuckler come lately he's he's had this in his back pocket for a while although i guess he wasn't really throwing it regularly until a couple years ago when he was toying around with it and then they encouraged him to throw it and i guess it was maybe his primary pitch initially and then last season according to what jay could find he only threw it nine percent of the time this season he's been throwing it in the minors like 22 percent of the time and he's been hit pretty hard so he's 26 that would be young in the life of a full-time knuckleballer i'm happy to have any kind of knuckleballer back i'm just saying when i tuned in and I did not see knuckleballs immediately, I felt like I had been lied to. I had not actually, but I had just not determined all of the information that I should have had going into this game. I wanted more knuckleballs than we actually got.

comedy and i don't appreciate people who don't commit to the bit okay like if you're gonna go and do it the whole way yeah i mean like but ben baby steps right like we had this we had this void we had a yeah a knuckleball void and now we have less of a void you know we have a we have a smattering we have the option we might and well you would tune in to be like, I'm going to throw it. So we can make room in our hearts for a dabbler, I think. Yes. You know? Yes. And he pitched okay. He gave up two runs, gave up a couple solo shots in four and two thirds.

And he was just a spot start. He got optioned, but he did all right. It was a credible performance fit beside, and he will hopefully be back at some point. And things aren't going that great for him in the minors, throwing not enough knuckleballs in my mind. So perhaps he will ramp up the knuckleball usage at some point. But yeah, I'm glad we broke the drought, right? There was a knuckleballer back in the big leagues, at least for one day and at least for 13 pitches. a knuckleballer back in the big leagues, at least for one day and at least for 13 pitches. Also this weekend, just a follow-up, I think on episode 1841, I did a stat blast about teams that won series despite being outscored. So like the worst run differentials in a series where you won.

And this weekend, I think the Rockies made that stat blast obsolete or out of date because they took a series from the Angels in which they were outscored by 20 runs in total, right? So Sarah Langs had the stat second team all time to win a series of any length with a run differential of negative 20 or worse, joining the Louisville Colonels, who in June 1897 versus the Chicago Colts, won two out of three despite being outscored 45 to 22. So I guess that was kind of angels-y because they had that extraordinary game where they were the first major league team to score 20 runs in the span of two innings. And they just totally trounced the Rockies despite Shohei Otani going one for seven,

which was weird. You'd think if the Angels had an outburst like that, that Otani would be a central figure and he was not in that one game, they won 25 to 1 and yet they lost the preceding game 7 to 4 and they lost the subsequent game 4 to 3 so they ended up i i guess i don't know if that's like a pyrrhic victory from the rockies perspective or what but that's one of those cases where you wish you could spread those runs out, distribute them a little more evenly, maybe, and take the series instead of that single game. I think that was remarked upon on the broadcast, where Canning's going back out there for his fourth inning of work, and they were like, I'm sure the other starters who were in the dugout today are wishing they'd save some runs. And I was like, yeah, they probably are. Yep.

Probably are wishing that. save some runs. And I was like, yeah, they probably are. Yep. Probably are wishing that. It was wild to see. And the contrast was so stark, right? Because you're like, it's Coors. Like, crazy things can happen there. But it's funny to have that happen versus what the Rockies were able to do, right? For some reason, I envision both sides engaged in an explosion of runs, which, you know, that doesn't happen very often, but it's just like it was a land of contrast kind of a game.

Yeah, it was. I do appreciate that the Angels are kind of going for it. I mean, you know, they kind of went for it over the offseason, and they're bringing in reinforcements. It seemed like entering the season, they had a lot of infield depth. I remember on our preview pod, we were like, where are all these guys going to play? You know, and then David Fletcher was in the minors. And then suddenly there were injuries and Gio Urshela, it seems like is out for the season. And they're back to playing Velasquez and, you know, trying desperately to find someone to start. And so they go get a couple of guys, you know, and they go get Mike Moustakis, like in the middle of that series from the Rockies, joins the Angels.

And then they got Eduardo Escobar from the Mets, who was sort of made redundant by some of their young call-ups. But he's not bad. You know, like when it comes to replacement players, you're pretty happy to go get Eduardo Escobar in the middle of the season when you're shorthanded. I saw that he just became an American citizen, I believe. So congrats to him. And also congrats to him on landing somewhere where there's a Fogo nearby, because we've talked about his affinity for Fogo, the Brazilian steakhouse. And there is one in Irvine, which is about a 20-minute drive from Angel Stadium. So he's set there. Not bad. Not bad. I assume he was aware of that. He's probably been to every Fogo near a ballpark just as a

visiting player. But I wonder when his home FOGO changes, his home park, his home FOGO, when he transfers teams and one staff that knows him so well from dining there constantly, do they contact the other FOGO? And is there a transition team, like a handoff? You know, here's how Mr. Escobar likes his steak, et cetera. Just because he's such a frequent customer, I hope that there's some communication there. Yeah, is there a rewards program for Fogo to check? Oh, definitely. Yeah. I mean, he's a spokesperson.

He's a valued customer. I just, I hope that he gets the personal touch at any Fogo he goes to. So it's good that that worked out. We did check it one time when we first talked about this to see like, were there Fogos close enough to every park? And there were some where there were not. So, you know. No Fogos. No. So. Which doesn't mean that there isn't a good Brazilian steakhouse, to be clear. Yeah, but it's got to be Fogo. But he would have, he'd have to branch out. Yeah, it's got to be Fogo power for him.

So lucky fortuitous for him. I don't know if he has a no trade clause or anything. I don't know the specifics of his contract or whether the proximity to a Fogo would dictate the teams on his no trade list. Anyway, it could have been an uncomfortable situation for him, but it's a decent landing spot. And also, I had an insight, if you can call it an insight. I'm not sure if this is actually insightful, but I had a realization about the Angels and about Trout and Otani. Really, it's just kind of a comp, I guess, because I've marveled at the fact that Trout was the most fascinating player, the player I obsessed about and talked about and wrote about constantly and who seemed so extraordinary and unprecedented and was doing things no one had ever done.

And then somehow he was supplanted by a teammate, which what are the odds that anyone would supplant him and that he would be playing for the same team. I think the dynamic is sort of like the original Toy Story when Buzz Lightyear shows up and sort of displaces Woody in Andy's affections. I'm Andy in this scenario, and, you know, I have my favorite companion, my favorite toy. Not that Trout is my toy or that his sole purpose in life is to entertain me, but, you know, he was my fave. Like, we went way back, right? And then suddenly there was a new spectacle, you know, someone, a gift-wrapped box that gets unwrapped and suddenly it's Shohei Otani, who, much like Buzz Lightyear, I mean, you know, he can fly and he can shoot stuff, or at least he thinks he can, right? Shohei Otani actually can do the things that Buzz merely thought he could do until he saw the commercial and realized that he was not an actual space ranger. I'm not going to bring in the prequel, which is not really a prequel, but kind of is light year here. It's very confusing to the canon. But the point is that like suddenly there was this new sexy toy who was like attracting Andy's attention. And Woody was kind of left, you know, to fall by the wayside. And Woody was suddenly worried about like, is Andy going to bring me

to the restaurant? And suddenly he's sabotaging Buzz. And I don't think any of that has gone on. Like, do you think there's ever been a moment where Trout felt any kind of envy, jealousy, resentment toward Otani? Like, hey, I was the big dog. I was the big man on campus. I was the consensus best player in baseball. Suddenly Shohei Otani shows up and he's still in the spotlight on my own team. And he's striking me out in the WBC championship game. Like, do you think any glimmer? Certainly no, no outward hint of any sort of friction at all. It seems like they get along great and they're always complimentary towards each other.

But like, you know, trout who seems fairly laid back, you know, from what we can tell, but to get to that level and to be as good as he is, like he's obviously driven and super competitive. So when Buzz Lightyear shows up and you're Woody,

like, can you not feel some slight spark of, hey, I used to be Andy's favorite toy and now I'm not? uh sort of instinct that might otherwise uh lead him to feel like a more intense uh jealousy uh sustained jealousy is the one that probably saved him from it because i i think mike trout really wants to win yes you know um and so i think that the experience he has likely had i mean he's probably had frustration more than anything else because because even with Otani, they haven't been able to break through, at least so far. But I would imagine that, you know, it's relief more than anything. Like, I don't have to shoulder this by myself. And I think, you know, not that, Otani is sort of an interesting mix when you think about his seeming desire to be the face of the game, because we don't hear a lot about his like

personal life. You know, I don't think that he is interested in being, I don't know if I'm going to draw the right distinction here. Like, I think that he wants to be the face of the game. I don't know if I'm going to draw the right distinction here. Like, I think that he wants to be the face of the game. I don't think that he wants to be a celebrity in the sense of like us knowing like who he's dating, you know, where he goes on vacation. Like he doesn't seem interested in that, but he does seem interested in being a,

a presence within the game and without it, uh, in terms of the broader culture. So that might also contribute to Trout's sense of relief because while we're all busy like gawking at New Balance commercials or whatever, Mike Trout just gets to think about the weather and hang out with his wife,

which seems to be what he wants to do when he's not playing baseball. So I'm sure he's had moments within the context of, you know, the arrival of Otani within sort of grappling with his own slow maturation slash decline as a player, you know, that sort of thing. But I bet the overwhelming feeling is one of relief and then frustration, but not Adotani at the rest of them, you know? Yeah, at himself for signing a super long extension to be an angel forever. I don't know that he actually regrets that. But

if he really wanted to win top priority, it's not working out so well so far. But yes, it's like in Toy Story when eventually Woody and Buzz are on the same page and they realize that their purpose in life is to entertain Andy, right? And that they can both do that and they can do it together and more effectively together than apart. And Trout and Otani, they're both trying to win games and they're both trying to make the playoffs. And so if they pull it in the same direction and they're both great, then that furthers that goal for both of them. Yeah. And also, how can you resent Shohei Otani?

Because even if you could somehow resent his talent, it's tough to resent him as a person, right? Because he didn't come in hot like Buzz Lightyear kind of did, you know? You're really speaking of being committed to the vet. Yeah, but, you know, he didn't come in and say like, well, I'm the leader now. Like, you know, this was Trout's team. Now it's Shohei's team.

No, like, you know, he came in and was very polite and deferential and respectful of everyone as he always seems to be. So there's that. And then there's also the fact that I feel like if he were just a hitter, just a position player, and he were better than Trout, then maybe that would enhance the competitiveness. But it's like he's in a different classification altogether. He's not a normal player who's just better than another normal player who happens to be really great at not a normal player who's just better than another normal player who happens to

be really great at being a normal player. He is entirely unique. He is like Buzz if he actually could fly. He's just on another plane where Mike Trout never even considered maybe I could be one of the best pitchers in baseball too. I mean, I don't know if he ever aspired to that. He certainly never thought he could do that. So it's almost just like such a different sphere of competition that you almost have to be like, well, that guy's just, I mean, you know, we're not even quite in the outfield with trout and so that might you know cause some friction but i think it's probably fine they both seem again like it's hard for us to really know right because we don't know them but they don't seem to have exhibited evidence of of friction they seem like pretty even-keeled guys, the two of them. So, I think it's probably fine. But, you know, if you have more to say about Toy Story. Well, at the end of the movie, they're getting along great, and Andy gets a dachshund,

and then they're both worried about the dachshund, which, again, I mean, I have a dachshund and love my dachshund, but also love Trout and Otani. So there's room in my life for all of them and in Andy's life for all of them, at least until he grows up. But that's another toy story. Man, yeah, they just get sadder from the first one. Yeah, they really do. Yeah, just a couple last observations. Rob Mains wrote something at Baseball Perspectives following up on something Louis Paulus had written on his newsletter. Just looking at the fact that it does seem like the shift ban or suppression or whatever we're calling it has actually kind of backfired in a sense.

Like it worked in the sense that it did raise BABIP a bit, at least on polled grounders, right? And for lefties, et cetera, if you do some splits and subdivisions there, it has had the effect that you would think that it would have had and that it was supposed to have and intended to have. But it has backfired in the sense that, and Joshian predicted this, I mean, this was not something that was totally unforeseeable. I think we talked about it before this rule was put in place.

But because it kind of made life a little easier for the players who would pull a lot of balls into the shift, those players are now playing more. They're just getting more playing time. And thus, those players who tended to be high strikeout guys, they're in the lineup more regularly striking out a whole lot. And that seems to be contributing to the rise in strikeout rates. So if the goal was to, say, produce more singles, that's not really happening because more balls in play are becoming singles. But also, as a total percentage of hits, singles are down just

because the ball's more lively, there are more homers being hit. But also, singles per game is not really up. And it's because there are fewer balls in play because there are more strikeouts, which seems like it is a byproduct of the fact that they basically bailed out the hitters who were most vulnerable to the shift. They said, no, you don't have to worry about trying to hit the ball the other way or whatever, not that that was easy to do. Now we will just kind of, you know, we'll we'll forgive your loans here, I guess, like we'll we'll sort of, you know, take away this thing that was doing you damage and therefore your teams will stick you in the lineup and you will do what you always used to do, which

is strike out a lot. And maybe you will double down on that because now you have less reason not to. And the net effect is that there just are not really more singles because there are fewer balls in play to begin with. So that seems to be what's happening here. It's like it worked in one way, but it also had the opposite of the intended effect in another way. And the net effect is basically nothing or just more strikeouts. So my ambivalence about this rule or resistance to this rule, I have not had to eat crow or change my mind on this one thus far. I'm still, you know, like it's not actively bothering me from day to day

the way that I worried that it would, but I still don't really like it and don't think it really did what it was designed to do other than, I guess, sometimes relieving you of the disappointment of seeing a ball

that off the bat you thought might sneak through and didn't used to and now does. I wonder if there are pitchers who are like, oh, man, I was wrong all along. Bring it back. Bring it back. Yeah, right. And the other thing, so Rob Manfred, the man who spearheaded those rules changes, he also

recently gave an interview. Now, that is always a scary preface to anything, Rob Manfred making a public comment. But he made a comment in a Time magazine interview when Time magazine named MLB like one of the titans of industry or whatever. like the hundred most influential companies, Major League Baseball. And it was up there with like a bunch of giant companies, I guess, largely because the rules changes were implemented, right? So they interviewed Manfred for this story and they asked him if he had any regrets. And he mentioned a few things. He said, it's probably a longer list than just one thing. There are some decisions that I'd like to have back. There's no question about that.

He said some of the decisions surrounding the Houston situation would like to have those back. He said he'd like to take back the comment he made about the World Series trophy and the hunk of metal, etc. So there is a follow up about the sign stealing scandal. What do you regret about that? He said, I'm not sure that I would have approached it with giving players immunity. Once we gave players immunity, it puts you in a box as to what exactly

you were going to do in terms of punishment. I might've gone about the investigative process without that grant of immunity and see where it takes us. Starting with, I'm not going to punish anybody. Maybe not my best decision ever. So this got a lot of headlines, you know, that were framed as like Rob Manfred says he may have messed up by not punishing the Astros players or maybe said that he actually did definitely say that he did that, which I guess isn't quite what he said, but close enough. And you could say, okay, this is

You could say, OK, this is humility. He is owning up to possibly a mistake. Like we talked about this a lot at the time and the pluses and minus find out if he had gone about it differently. And would he have been able to punish them or would the Players Association have pushed back on that? Although in that case, maybe the Players Association would have been blamed from a PR perspective for defending those players as opposed to Manfred being blamed for not punishing them. Maybe that's what he regrets more than anything. I don't know. But on the one hand, you might say, okay, it's good, it's positive when you can revisit decisions you've made and say, maybe I could have gone about that differently and not just saying I never screwed up and everything I do is wonderful and I'm infallible. humanize as a person, I guess, to be self-deprecating or to own up to their flaws. On the other hand, I wonder whether it's good for baseball for him to have said this. Right. Because it did then open up just another round of recriminations and dissatisfaction about how that was handled or how he handled it, maybe how it had to be handled.

about how that was handled or how he handled it, maybe how it had to be handled. Like, what good does it do, I guess, for Rob Manfred for baseball to come out and say, huh, maybe we should have punished those players after. Like, maybe we should have stripped that title from them. Just because that conversation is ongoing, it hasn't died down for several years. It was never going to really while this lingered in living memory. But since people are still sort of sore about that, maybe it's better for him to maintain like that's the only way

it could have happened. You know, sorry, like it had to be this way then for him to come out and maybe humanize himself, but then also be like, yeah, maybe we could have punished those players like

because then that makes everyone kind of double down on, gosh, they should have been punished. And so it's up to us to continue to give them grief for that, which fine. But it maybe opens up old wounds or makes it harder for those wounds to scab over if you're saying, I regret how I handled that. It's tricky because it's like, I want to evaluate the truth value of what he's saying versus the strategic piece of it. It's hard for us to know how different the investigation would have been without the participation of players. So maybe they would have been able to arrive at the exact same level of detail and they would have gotten their arms around the totality of the scheme

without the participation of players, but it's hard for us to know that. So there's that piece of it. It did strike me as... It's hard for it to feel humble from him because it mostly just seemed self-serving. to grant immunity for the purpose of having greater clarity into the scope of the scandal, but talk about it in a way that reads differently than what Manfred did. And honestly, if Manfred says all the same stuff but leaves the hunk of metal comment aside, I think that we probably

interpret that entire moment differently than we do now, right? So, I don't know. It's hard. It's hard for me to, to look back on it and sort of separate those things out. But my sense of him in his comments here is less like it would have been good for the game and more, it would have been better for me personally. Like I would have come away looking better in this situation than I did. And that's a very different, like, I don't, it's not a project I need to like help advance, you know, like I don't care about that part of it. I want what's good for the sport. So it's hard for me to separate those things. There is a version of the punishment for that where you grant immunity and and still levy more stringent sort of punishment against the organization and come out ahead of where they

did in terms of it feeling to people like it had been enough you know i think that definitely there are a lot of people who would like to have seen the individual players involved suspended. But I think retaining the World Series title is really what is, you know, still sticks in people's craw when they're upset about it. So I don't know. I don't know what the answer to that is. Yep. Lastly, I wonder whether we will see something like this happen for baseball. Have you followed the controversy in the NBA with Shams Sharania, who is one of the big newsbreakers along with Woj, right? And he works for The Athletic, but he also works for FanDuel.

And so before... Those things seem like they might be in conflict, don't they? Well, they did last week, right, when there was the NBA draft and he tweeted that Scoot Henderson, when there was the NBA draft and he tweeted that Scoot Henderson, one of the players in the draft, was gaining serious momentum at number two with the Charlotte Hornets. And that moved the betting odds for who was going to be drafted where, right? And so that was kind of complicated because on the one hand, his job for the Athletic, he's a newsbreaker. That's what he does. On the other hand, he moved the lines with his tweet, which I guess was somewhat suspect. I mean, he and Woj are rivals in sort of snipe. And later on, Woj was like, yeah, that was never even being considered. He's not going to be drafted second. They never thought about that. So everyone's like,

huh, this is not illegal. It's not really regulated. Like there's nothing that says that he can't do this, but there certainly seems to be a conflict of interest there. If someone who's working for a gambling company and has this big platform can just move the lines by tweeting something that turns out to be erroneous, if you could just do that. Now, if he did that all the time, then no one would trust his reports and they wouldn't move the lines, I guess. But if he were to do it or someone were to do it, just sprinkle in a red herring tweet every now and then for his gambling company that employs him so that they can make bank on those bets. Right. There seems to be a clear incentive to do that. So I guess this wouldn't happen probably in baseball the same way right now. I don't know if there's like an equally prominent baseball media member who works sites that have relationships with gambling companies. But being directly employed by one is a little bit different.

And obviously, like the MLB draft is not such a big deal that you're getting tons of betting action on that one, probably compared to the NBA draft. So I don't know that we could see exactly the same situation happen there, but could something like that happen down the road in the baseball sphere? I think without some proactive rules around it, yeah. I mean, it's a big problem. I think that it's something that if you're, certainly if you're a reader of one of these sites you want to keep in mind. And if you're, you know, an editor, having very clear rules around this stuff is pretty important because, yeah, there's a potential for huge conflict of interest, right? There's the, and it kind of takes on a bunch of different flavors, right?

Like there's the self-enrichment potential conflict, right? Where you could, as a person who has inside information whether you're you know a prospect analyst or a beat writer that could potentially apply to baseball right you know right where it's like you could in theory get inside information place bets based on that and be ahead of you know announcements that end up moving the lines or what have you so there's like that piece of it. And then, yeah, when you're like directly employed by a gambling site and you are meant to break news and, you know, inform your readership as an aside on behalf of a site that I think has some, or in the past has had some gambling affiliations. Like it's just a,

or in the past has had some gambling affiliations. It's a really tricky thing, and the league has put itself in a position where they don't have a moral ground to stand on when it comes to this stuff because they have official sports betting partners too, and they're putting lines on every broadcast or at least referencing them on a lot of them. They're inviting members of you know draft kings or

fanduel to participate in official league events and stuff like that so yeah like it's a it's a huge potential problem this is part of why everyone not everyone this is part of why i was so uncomfortable with the the enterprise because you set yourself up for insider trading or at least the appearance of it i don't know if he, you know, was trying to manipulate the lines by reporting something that was wrong. He doesn't have to. He doesn't have to try. He's just in a position where he could do that. And, you know, the announcement of news can have an effect on betting markets even without a partnership or some association, right? And so that reality is always present, but it feels really different when you

have a direct relationship with a sports book. So I don't know, man. I just think that I know a lot of people, they like sports betting, they enjoy it. If you're able to do it in a way that is within your means and feels fun to you, that's fine. As we've said multiple times on this podcast, it's not the way I relate to the sport. But if you're able to do that in a way that isn't destructive, you're a grown-up, you get to pick what dumb stuff you spend money on. That's part of what being an adult is, right? But I do think that it's useful to keep in mind that there are not really firm guidelines in place for this kind of thing at least not that are enforced by any body that has the ability to do something about it and so

you just want to go in eyes open that like it is always stacked against you it's just and this is just one more way that that's true yeah um and i do think that it would be to the benefit of, you know, when we talk about baseball specifically, like be to the benefit of the BBWA to put a policy in place around this stuff. And, you know, I don't think that we have gambling specific outlets in the association. And I know that both the association and the league have been resistant to that but like should be a policy about this stuff because the opportunity for abuse is is there and i'd like to think that it's not going to happen but you know right i was like what is that another football for me to kick lucy yeah fanduel for what it's worth said fanduel is not privy to any news that shams breaks on his platforms, which may well be true.

You know, I'd venture to say it's probably true, but we wouldn't know if it weren't true. And it might not be true in the case of another person or another company. So, yeah, you're tempting fate there. All right. All right. I will end with the future blast, which comes to us from Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball. This comes from Rick and from 2025. He writes smart glasses and a VR future. David Hamilton's 122 stolen bases was the most remarkable performance of the 2025 season, and it helped the Red Sox return to some semblance of glory, though they stumbled against the Rays in the division series. And the Rays, in turn, stumbled against the Dodgers yet again in the World Series as the ageless Clayton Kershaw threw a no-hitter in the sixth game to clinch the series.

All right. Happy to have some more postseason success from Clayton Kershaw through a no-hitter in the sixth game to clinch the series. All right. Happy to have some more postseason success from Clayton. The 2025 season was as notable for its technology as its play on the field. The Giants just up the road from Silicon Valley used branded smart glasses to add an extra dimension to the fan experience. Fans wearing the glasses could see relevant statistics come up in the right corner of their view when they looked at an individual player. And with the automatic 10-second save, they could relive the home run or that splendid double play to end the game, sending their saves to social media. Improved versions of the smart glasses promised to zoom in on key players with high-definition optics, instant stat updates, and more. The glasses were a hit in Oracle Park, and by the time postseason play rolled around,

half the teams had issued their own smart glasses. Brave new world. Brave new world, indeed. Can't wait for the future blast when we get to some horrendous gambling scandal. I'm sure it's coming one of these days, but just smart glasses for now. Well, after we finished recording,

Buzz Otani, Shohei Lightyear, struck out 10 over 6 1⁄3 one-run innings, the one allowed by a reliever, and also hit two home runs, the second after having a cracked fingernail that caused live leaderboards I'm looking at, he was worth 0.4 war as a hitter, which was more than any other hitter on Tuesday, and also 0.4 war as a pitcher, which tied Kevin Gossman for the most war of any pitcher on Tuesday. I don't really know what the record for war in one game is, or the modern record, at least. It's not an easy stat to look up for all years for single games. Sam wrote an article for ESPN some years ago where he looked at baseball reference daily logs of war and sort of backed into single game war calculations and found that, say, Scooter Jeanette's four homer game was worth something like 0.73 war, and that was the highest he found. So Shohei just about testing the practical limit

in modern baseball. And when he was interviewed on the sideline after the game, he said, I wish I could have finished that seventh inning. After he hit the first home run, he couldn't even go through the full home run celebration because he had to get back on the mound right after that. So he just sort of waved it away, acknowledged the applause and the congratulations, and then started getting ready to pitch again. He may not have time to pause and celebrate what he's doing, but we should take that time. You can take the time to support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Gary Egan, Jack Caldwell, Peter Shoemaker, Tex Paisley, and NPC. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks

include access to the wonderful Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, as well as access to monthly bonus episodes, one of which we will be recording and releasing this week, plus playoff live streams and discounts on merch and ad-free fancrafts, memberships and expedited email answers, and so much more, patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site, and anyone and everyone can send us questions and comments via email at podcast at fangraphs.com. You can also send us a theme song if you want us to add your theme song to our regular intro and outro rotation. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can follow

Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. You never know precisely where it's gonna go By definition, effectively wild