Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2133: (Eternal) Rest Day

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Phillies’ Zack Wheeler extension, the Giants’ Matt Chapman signing, and a Scott Boras quote about free agency, then (17:35) bring on Patreon supporter Jay Wade Edwards to answer listener emails (26:41) about see-through players (and see-through pants), how different baseball would be if instead of a lineup […]

Philosophical music Effectively wild Effectively wild Effectively wild Hello and welcome to episode 2133 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. We will be joined a little later on today by a top-tier Patreon supporter, J. Wade Edwards, who will accompany us for some emails and some stat blasting,

which he will perform. So just a bit of banter before we bring him on, because there have been a couple notable signings, one of which we anticipated on a preview last week, and one of which we will discuss on a preview later this week. So I don't know how much there is to say about either. But when we had Matt Gelb on for the Phillies preview last week, we talked about the potential for a Zach Wheeler extension. And that has since come to pass. Zach Wheeler, who was slated to become a free agent at the end of this season, will not now because he has signed a three-year, $126 million contract. No options or opt-outs or anything. Just simple. He stays with the Phillies for a few more years at quite a lucrative rate. That's a $42 million annual rate, which is the largest for any contract extension as an average annual value and the fourth largest for

any contract ever behind Otani, I guess, technically Scherzer, Verlander, now Zach Wheeler. And you know what? I guess he deserves it because he's arguably been the best pitcher in baseball, which I don't know that we give him enough credit for that. But he has been. Maybe not on an inning per inning basis, but the inning count counts, too. So, when you take into account those two things, that he's been both durable and effective, whatever war you're using over the past few years during his Phillies career, he tends to top the list. Yeah. He has been worth 19.3 war by our estimation of war since he joined Philly before the short 2020 season. And I wonder if the volume is part of what sort of obscures the value for people. They're like, well, I was going to see through 213 innings in 2021. And it's like, yeah, he did that. And he had two 780 RA while he did it. It's like, he's been very good. And he has, to your point, been very available for Philly in a way that has

been really important to what they've been trying to do. So it's a lot of money, but I think that they would have been quite silly to let him walk. And given kind of the space and the place he was going to occupy in the forthcoming free agent class, I am not surprised that they maybe had to offer a bit of a premium to ask him to forego exploring free agency, because boy, the pitching options next winter are going to be kind of sparse. Yeah, he's good. And now he's going to be a Philly for a

while longer. So that seems good. Of course, the Phillies assume some risk that he will remain durable this season. And as we've seen of late, pitchers get hurt. That's not new, but it has been happening a whole lot lately. So even when you're as durable as Zach Wheeler, at some point that luck can run out. So they and he hope that it won't be this season, but they've kind of taken care of their next off-season business already, more or less. They're sort of set. They have almost everyone under contract and now they just have to figure out the next wave, which we talked to Matt about. So I'd refer people back to our recent preview where we brought up this eventuality.

I was actually sort of surprised that Wheeler is about to be 34. He turns 34 in May. Probably would have taken the under on that if someone had asked me to guess. I guess he didn't fully get established until later on. I mean, he came up, he was fairly young, but then he missed time, right? He was gone for a few seasons. And then by the time he came back and by the time he really established himself as one of the best pitchers in baseball. He was in his late 20s, if not arguably older than that. So maybe that's why his age sort of snuck up on me, but he's pretty well-preserved performance-wise, stuff-wise, hasn't lost a whole lot. He started sweeping, which worked well for him last year.

So the Nola-Wheeler combo is locked in for years to come. So that's going to be by the time all is said and done, if both those guys hold up, that is going to be quite a duo fronting that Phillies rotation for several years, eight years, however many years it is, by the time it's all said and done. I don't know if I would have assumed I had an accurate sense of Zach Wheeler's age because he has sort of always looked like he's been 35. You know, he has a he has a mature face, I think. And so maybe that's part of it. Maybe it's just the beard. Maybe I'm only really reacting to the beard, Ben, you know, maybe it makes him feel older to me.

That could be true. To the beard, Ben, you know? Maybe. It makes him feel older to me. That could be true. Maybe the perception of advanced age is what caused the Mets to allow him to walk. Right. They certainly wish they could have that one back.

Not just the whatever Brody Van Wagenen said about him at the time, but also just not committing to him having him go to a division rival. Yeah. And then just shove for years. Not the best decision. Yeah, maybe not. So that's heartening for Phillies fans. The other significant signing was also a long time in the making and was something that could sort of be foreseen. Although until the actual contract was signed, you never know if this guy was ever going to sign or if this team was ever going to sign a free agent. But the Giants signed Matt Chapman. And this was also a three-year deal, but it was not

a notably big three-year deal. It was a notably small three-year deal. This was basically the Boris Bellinger contract, but smaller, which makes sense because Matt Chapman, maybe even more question marks and certainly more age-related uncertainty baked in. But he was one of the Boris Four and didn't work out well for him either. out well for him either. I think it probably worked out significantly worse for him than it did for Cody Bellinger because Bellinger at least got the high average annual value. Whereas Chapman, the contract structure is kind of complicated. There are bonuses and, of course, the options after each year in the three-year deal. But it's a three-year deal that in total amounts to $54 million, which was just another killing blow to your hopes in the Effectively Wild free agent over-under draft. I'm sorry to say, but I think it's time to call it. It would be tough for you to pull this one out.

But, hey, I've doubted you before. So we'll see. I can't believe you made this about out. But hey, I've doubted you before. So we'll see. I can't believe you made this about me. I can't believe it. Well, it was an under on $150 million, I think, was the MLB trade rumor's prediction. So that's a pretty big gap. And I think this one, because it's not quite as comfortable a pillow as the one that Bellinger got. Also, he reportedly had an extension offer from the Jays at some point. It was said that he was offered six years and 120 at some point in the past year. If that's accurate, then maybe he's ruining the day he didn't do that. With Bellinger, who knows whether there was a better offer out

there for him. If that offer was accurate for Chapman, then you can cry over that spilt contract because it was there, right? So now Boris actually had an analogy for this situation, as one might expect. I saw Jesse Rogers of ESPN tweet this one. Scott Boris on Free Agency, quote, it's like fishing. Of course it is. Of course it would be like fishing. Is it like fishing? Well, let's see. Let's see where he takes this and see where it's actually like fishing. But it's nautical enough that this could only come from the mind and mouth of Scott Boris. It's like fishing. You go out and expect the fish, parentheses teams. I don't know whether Jesse supplied that

clarification or whether Boris himself did. You go out and expect the fish to be there. And sometimes they are, and sometimes they're not. Now, Jesse Rogers built on the Boris analogy, which is pretty presumptuous of him. But he picked up where Scott left off and said, and sometimes you have the wrong bait, implying that perhaps teams were not appetized by the clients that Boris had this offseason or some of them. We had that discussion recently. There's some truth to what he's saying,

that sometimes the teams are biting and sometimes they're not. But of course, it is the agent's job to get the teams to bite. And I guess you could say maybe the agent is supposed to have more control over that, more influence over that than a fisher person has over the fish. If the fish are not swimming there, the fisher person cannot make them swim there. You can entice them. You can try to find where they are. But if they don't happen to be swimming there,

there are always teams in the water. Now, I guess they might not be in the market so much. Some teams may have taken themselves out of the market. And so how can you hook them if they're not willing to be hooked? Look, on the list of Boris analogies that are wackadoo that we can't decipher, this isn't one of those. I get what he's saying here. There is some sense to this one, but it is extremely Scott Boris. It's far from his worst in terms of clarity. Like I'm not sitting here going,

Scott, what are you talking about? Which I sometimes feel like, Scott, what are you talking about? But I don't, I think that it's low-key kind of a bad one in that the bait presumably is the skill set of your clients. And you're saying like, hmm, I don't know about that bait. Yeah. And also you have to sort of set the hook yourself. There's something to the placement, the presentation. So it is what kind of bait you're using. But then also, are you applying it correctly? Are you juking and jigging?

Do you have the line at the right depth? Are you using your down ringer? It's just like, is there a skill issue here? Is there a technique problem or is it about the bait? And maybe it's a combination of both. I guess that's fair. It's like, who's responsible here? Do we need a new fisher person? What is the accepted gender neutral vernacular of fisherman? I went with fisherperson. Fisherperson? Yeah.

Fishing sort? It could be fish person. No, because that's confusing because then you're talking about The Way of Water, a movie that won Oscars for reasons I still don't understand. Okay. Well, regardless, Chapman didn't get quite what he wanted here, but the Giants got what they wanted, I suppose. And we will talk more on our Giants preview, which is coming soon. I promise. I know I've been the boy who cried wolf with the Giants preview, but we really will have one this week. It does make them better. And I think part of the reason why Chapman didn't get the deal he wanted, it's not just age. It's not just the fact that he's never been a great hitter.

He's generally been a good hitter. But I think it's got to be the trajectory of his season because his post-April offensive performance. And I know that he had some injury issues and maybe that affected him. And he still was hitting the ball hard often. some injury issues and maybe that affected him and he still was hitting the ball hard often. But boy, when you look at the line late in the season, it was kind of concerning. Yeah. And I think the fact that it has been up and down in a way that is, you know, there's, there's like the in-season piece of it. And then there's, you know, there's been drift back and forth along, along multiple seasons, right? there's, you know, there's been drift back and forth along multiple seasons, right? There've been years where the bat's been very strong. There've been years

where it's been kind of underwhelming. It seems like the defense is slipping a little bit. If it's not going to be as good as it was, can it kind of bolster the profile in the same way? You know, third base defense is valuable, but unlike Cody Bellinger, he can't play like center field, right? So it just seems like it was sort of set to be a little less compelling across the board. And maybe he should have taken the extension in Toronto because that was a good roster fit anyhow.

Now it's like, what, IKF is going to play third base full-time? Right. You could say both sides. Maybe Chapman should have accepted that earlier extension offer if it was actually out there. And maybe the Blue Jays should have signed Chapman to this deal if that was an option. Now, I don't know if that becomes difficult if a team has offered you a lot more in recent history and then your price falls for whatever reason, then maybe it's tougher to swallow accepting a smaller deal from that same team.

But I think a lot of Blue Jays fans are looking at this and saying, we still could have used a Matt Chapman at that price. But I think it is an upgrade for the Giants. It's not just an enormous, massive upgrade, but it is an important one. the Giants. It's not just an enormous, massive upgrade, but it is an important one. And certainly defensively, the upgrade over J.D. Davis is very substantial. And I think the Giants and their pitching staff, they're well set up to benefit from that. And the Giants are probably in a position where it helps them, even though they're sort of saying they're done here. And both the teams we're talking about, people have been connecting them to Blake Snell. Could the Phillies swoop in?

Could the Giants swoop in if his price falls low enough? But the Giants are at a point where you wouldn't say that they're playoff favorites probably even with Chapman, but they're within the realm of contention at least. Sure. contention at least. And two wins, three wins, however many wins they're upgraded here, projected because of Chapman's presence. Those are pretty important wins. So I think it's a decent signing by them. And if they can't get the marquee top tier free agents, then I guess they got to load up on the middle tier guys. And that's what they've done. Look, I think they still, you know, particularly with Tristan Beck's injury, and we'll talk more about all of this with the preview, obviously, but they still could

really use an arm and the remaining arms seem like they're going to be kind of spendy, but I think it does improve things for them in an appreciable way. And like you said, you know, they're at the point in the wind curve where adding marginal wins could end up making a big difference. I just feel like they're in a spot where even though signing Chapman sort of reduces the complexity of the potential, like platoon solutions, platoon solutions, that's not real, platoon solutions, being able to concentrate production in one guy I think is useful, but they still feel like a roster to me that it's kind of Rube Goldberg-y. It depends on a lot of pieces working well together at once to get them back to October, and it would be so nice if the giants would you know spend some money on a marquee guy and like really just you know check off a big box and be able to concentrate a bunch of wins in one roster spot because i'm sure they'd be like meg we are trying so hard to do that yeah that has occurred to them yeah it's it's not like they're you know trying to be cheap um it sounds like a lot of their offers to the big guys have been very competitive and they just haven't been able to land them. And so they're in a really weird

spot, I think, organizationally. This definitely makes them better, but they need a big win, I think, in the next round of free agency. And I don't know if they're necessarily going to be set up just based on who's going to be available for them to really accomplish that. So I don't know if they're necessarily going to be set up just based on who's going to be available for them to really accomplish that. So, I don't know. Yeah. We will get into that soon. And yes, the Giants could use an arm and Sonny Gray could use a hamstring and Lucas Giolito could use an arm and an elbow and Ronald Acuna could use a meniscus. Lots of players hurting out there. I hope you all stay safe and recover and make it back roughly in time for opening day.

And we could use a guest. So let's bring one in. Well, with us now is Mike Trouttier, Patreon supporter, J. Wade Edwards. Jade. Jade. That's just a combination of multiple names of yours. Jay, welcome to the show. I am green with envy of something. Oh, thank you. Thank you for having me.

Well, thanks for being here. And you probably know the traditional question that I ask all of the Patreon guests who join us, which is, why are you joining us? What could have possibly possessed you to support us at the highest level? I've been listening to the podcast for like six years now. And your voice accompanies me on every dog walk and every Los Angeles commute, which are sometimes long and frustrating. So it's only fair that I compensate you

for keeping me company. Effectively Wild is made for Los Angeles commutes. You got a lot of time to listen. Oh yeah. We got a lot of time to talk. It's to the point to where I've had, I probably haven't missed a single episode in like six years. Wow.

Agreed. That's all six years. It's barely half the catalog. I know. I, it was a very strange time to tune in because I live in Los Angeles. I work in TV and movies. I'm an editor. But I was writing a script about baseball, so I was researching minor league baseball, and I actually found the only rule is it has to work before listening to the podcast. And I tuned in the podcast right as the Sam era ended and the Jeff era began. So I totally missed Sam. And I was like, who's this other guy?

But then quickly fell in love with Jeff. Well, you preempted my next typical question, which is how you found the podcast. I guess that answers that through the book. Yes, through the book. And I've been listening ever since. Well, tell us a little bit about your baseball background. What kind of fan are you? Where are you in the world? Where'd you grow up, et cetera? I grew up in Florida and I'm of an age where I grew up with TBS, Atlanta Braves baseball before Florida expansion into the Rays and the Marlins. So I grew up a Braves fan and moved to Atlanta from college in 1991.

And then the Braves won their division for the first 14 years of my adult life. Perfect timing. So I have no choice in my fandom. Yeah, I guess not. And now you're in LA and you were just telling us before we started recording that you are in close proximity to Dodger Stadium, which has not increased your affinity for the Dodgers, if anything, the opposite it sounds like, but you still see the Dodgers a lot. Back in the 90s, the Braves were in the NL West.

So the Dodgers were a rival along with the Astros, which is also weird to think about. Yeah. So yeah, I just haven't been able to turn off the fandom that ingratiated me as a child. So, I go to lots of Dodger games and I silently root against them. I hate watching after all these years, but that's just your access to baseball necessitates that it come through the Dodgers lens, I suppose. That's right. So you just tolerate them because you love baseball. I love baseball. I actually love Dodger Stadium. I like Dodger dogs.

They're delicious. I know. I know. If you get a good grilled one, no. Anyway. if you get a good grilled one, no, anyway.

But I love Dodger stadium. And because I live so close, I can solve the commute problem of trying to park at Dodger stadium. I know where to park and how to get in and out easy and quick. And I can be home in 15 minutes. Wow. So, so I do love to go into Dodger stadium, but the Dodgers are so good.

They are boring to watch. For years, I've been going to games and like sixth or seventh inning, if it's a close game, they get a clutch hit and then they win. And then the game ends. I'm like, this is the same every time. And then now I have to listen to I Love L.A., that horrible, that horrible song. Wow. My goodness. You take that back. Yeah.

Randy Newman is or has been a fellow Patreon supporter. So this is Patreon supporter on Patreon supporter insults. Wow. Randy Newman is a legend, but it's that song in that context maybe because the song is supposed to be ironic. But I don't know how many Dodger fans are picking up on the irony at the moment. That's the case with a lot of Randy Newman songs. He doesn't actually hate short people. He's inhabiting a character when he sings these songs.

He's adopting a persona. But I was going to say that you probably wouldn't be like the stereotypical Dodgers fan getting there leaving early because the commute is easy for you. But it sounds like you're leaving early because the game is over anyway because the Dodgers are going to win or that's what you assume no I grew up with a father who left every sporting event early so I rebel against against that so I um I usually get a drink on Sunset Boulevard before the game and then walk up the hill and uh get the early and stay late. I always stay till the end of the game. I do watch the last half inning from the concourse near the exit. So you can scoot right after. So I can scoot right out immediately. Yeah. That makes a big difference. I've got it

all figured out. Yeah. You've got a good routine. I always wonder when people listen to us during commutes, like I'm glad that we can be some sort of a balm for that experience, but I do worry that they will come to associate us with traffic and who wants that? It's like a reprieve. It's like going inside your mind in a stressful situation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully we assuage your road rage and maybe just our calmness prevents any sorts of, you know, people getting out of their cars and yelling at each other, honking excessively, effectively wild. Maybe it lowers the blood pressure, hopefully, sometimes. Everybody's working from home now, so now it's mostly just dog walks.

Right. Well, the Dodgers did sign some interesting players, as you may have heard. I'm super excited to see Shohei Otani and Yamamoto. I mean, that's going to be incredible. And root against them, I assume. It's hard. Like, I'm kind of neutral, but if something bad happens, I'll say to my, you know, co-Dodger watcher, oh, no. Oh, no. The Dodgers are losing. I really just root for a close game. Yeah, that's fair. That's really what you want when you're kind of a neutral fan. And you work in the industry and in Hollywood in some capacity. What kind of editing do you do? I've been editing for a long time. I started out editing animation for Adult Swim.

If you smoked pot in the early aughts, you probably saw some of my work. And moved to LA about 10, 12 years ago, and I've been working in more live action, some animation, but more live action. So, some pilots and some indie films and that kind of thing. Nice. Have you had a chance to edit any baseball content? No, it's my life's goal is to create or make baseball content stories. I love, that's the part of baseball that I love is the ongoing, never-ending story that it tells every season. So that's just, you know, that's why I was writing a minor league baseball pilot five, six years ago that hasn't gone anywhere, but I just want to write baseball stories. It's so fun. Did you think that my comedy idea where we have a body mix-up swap between Hunter Renfro and Mike Trout, is that a winner? Should I be seeking out representation in LA?

If you had time, we'll just write that pilot. You and me. Okay, cool. get something on screen. Maybe it can be a Patreon perk that we do not nitpick the inaccuracies. If one of our top tier Patreon supporters makes a baseball movie or show, you can exempt yourself from the effectively wild pedantic treatment where we go over everything that's wrong with it. That makes it sound like a threat, Ben. Right. Well, unless you'd consider that to be a perk, unless you'd be flattered to get that treatment, in which case we would happily indulge. But as you're a longtime Effectively Wild listener, I'm sure you would make no such mistakes. Right.

That would be the goal. That would be the number one goal is to make a baseball property that has exactly zero anachronisms. And I kind of understand where they come from. Yeah. zero anachronisms. And I kind of understand where they come from. If there's one person in post-production who understands baseball, the first draft may be all accurate, but as studio notes and making the scene shorter or longer comes in, that just becomes more and more difficult to make the baseball part of that scene consistent. Almost impossible. make the baseball part of that scene consistent. Almost impossible.

So we want to do some emails with you, and you are also going to grace us with a stat blast. I don't know whether we should do that now or do the emails first. Do you have a preference? Do you want to wait or do you want to go right into it? Why don't we do the stat blast last? Okay, so let's get to some emails. And this one comes from Sean, a fellow Patreon supporter, who says, When reading the accounts of the see-through pants, I started thinking about what other parts of the uniform or equipment could be see-through. None of the options seemed particularly useful or interesting to me until I got to the concept of an entirely see-through player. In episode 1993, there was a question about a black box outfield. That was where the ball disappeared, at least for some observers during the play. But Sean says,

I'm more curious about limiting it to a specific individual. What if the catcher and all of his equipment was see-through? Would the strike zone be called differently without a catcher blocking some of the umpire's field of view? How would framing work without the glove to obscure the exact location of the ball? Would pitchers be significantly less accurate without a catcher as a target? Would more batters advance on wild pitches since it would be easier to see where the ball was? After years of being uncomfortably familiar with the catcher's crotch from the centerfield camera, would we now be uncomfortably familiar with the catcher's crotch from the center field camera, would we now be uncomfortably familiar with the umpire's crotch? So I guess we're limiting this at least for the moment to catchers specifically, invisible catchers.

How would that change the game? Well, but, okay, so they are invisible because invisible and see-through, you know, not necessarily the same thing, right? Like if you're invisible, there's none of you there. If you're see-through, it's like a Cronenberg film. Yeah, they could be transparent, but still shimmery. You could see some sort of ghostly outline there. I would hope that it's not the kind where we see their intestines and such, Yeah. Because that seems distracting and not in a good way.

Good. Yeah. We're getting into horror movie territory. Yeah. So I guess we would learn how important the catcher's target is to the pitcher's accuracy. Can you throw strikes if you just have to imagine where the glove is or where you want to put the pitch? How vital is that for the pitcher to actually see at least some suggestion of where the ball should go? not to be so essential, just pitchers are so good and there's so much muscle memory that maybe they could just fire it in there or they could use the batter or the umpire or something else as the frame of reference instead of the catcher's glove. And maybe that would be good enough to get by.

And then presumably the umpire would be more accurate, right? Unless, despite the distorting effects of framing, it is helpful to have the catcher's body as a frame of reference. I could imagine it would be difficult, at least if you're used to a corporeal catcher, an opaque catcher, and then suddenly there's a see-through catcher or an invisible catcher and now you're unmoored you've lost your bearings a bit but if you had trained that way if you were used to that state of affairs then i could imagine it being better because your view would not be obscured we would end up with umpires feeling up on catchers in places they don't anticipate they will because you know they

put their hand on the back of the catcher when they're setting up to see so they might like bonk their head or like tickle their ear or i mean you wouldn't have like inadvertent butt grabs because they have a sense of where the guy is supposed to be you know they're not like reaching down there so there's that you're very dependent on pitchcom working the way that it needs to right because if you have an invisicatcher you can't go to signs as a backup right so you know if you're calling the game and you're invisible and you're like and then he's like i can't see it so you really need pitchcom to work we can't have invisible catchers without pitchcom that innovation had to come first, you know? Yeah. It's like the thinkability of a thought. And then also we would get so familiar

so much earlier in games with the phenomena of umpires getting like a sweaty tummy crotch area, which I think we've talked about on the pod before. You know, you get into the summer months and because of how they have to crouch, their tummies are in contact with their crotch area sometimes and to varying degrees, depending on the guy. Right. And then they stand up and they got like, you know, they, they, they're wet

in their crotch and it's not because they've peed themselves. It's because of, you know, they've had, they've had surface on surface contact. We would notice that more. They might not like that, you know? Yeah, we might not like that either. Yeah, I'm sure they don't appreciate me pointing it out, like, right now. You know, they're like, hey, Meg, you're supposed to, isn't it a courtesy, a part of the social contract that you not point out are wet crotches? But you guys have wet crotches, you know?

It's like maybe you need different pants. Their pants being translucent, like the player's pants, I think would obscure that better, actually, if they're the whites. We don't really know how the grays are going to play. I have a thought on the pants, but I'm going to hold on to it for a second because I want to let Jay talk. I think it's interesting if the catcher is invisible, but his glove is visible. So it's like a glove floating glove target. where the important parts are, really.

So it's very different. If it's just a floating uniform and a disembodied glove, then that's a different scenario. Then if you come into contact with this catcher, then everything is rendered invisible or transparent. Different answer. Right. And it really becomes confusing if there's a play at the plate. Right.

Yeah, I was going to say, right. Huge safety concern. Yes. Huge safety concern. Yes. Huge safety concern. And also just how would you ever know whether the tag was applied if the glove is also transparent or invisible? Or how would you know whether the force play happened? That would just be impossible.

You have to sort of see where the fielder is, right? And yes, if you're a runner barreling around third and heading for home and you're just completely guessing about where the catcher is, you would probably have to slow down and play it safe. I think it would probably benefit the defense because, yeah, you would just, you'd have to feel your way. You'd be faltering, fumbling forwards as if you were in a dark room or something. You'd have your hands out in front of you just sort of feeling for the catcher and you would not be able to go at full speed. So it would be a benefit in that sense. I think if anything on the field should be invisible, it's probably the umpire.

Well, they always say that the best umpires, you don't even know their names or notice they're there, right? I would miss the hand gestures for strike three, but maybe just their arms are visible. Do you mean all the umpires or just the home plate umpire? That's a good question. Because the fair foul thing is like, that's kind of important.

Yeah, you need to see them gesture. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Safer out. So maybe they have their hands aren't, they could just be disembodied hands, but the rest of them is invisible. But why, though? Here's what would make baseball even harder is if the pitcher was invisible. Mm. That's a safety issue, I would think. Because then the ball would just appear out of nowhere.

Right. That would be impossible. To look at the release point. And in this case, it could be coming from anywhere. So that would be scary. Yeah. Yeah, this would benefit the defense. What if pitchers tattooed themselves so that they were the same color as the grass and the dirt?

They'd be almost invisible. They'd be like a chameleon. A real commitment to the bit. Yeah. I feel like it would run afoul of some of the rules because there are distractions yeah and you know you have to interpret them perhaps a little bit broadly but like there are rules in the rule book about you know what color the glove can be and what color your sleeve can be if you're the pitcher. They really want you to see the ball.

That's sort of like one of the foundational rules of the rulebook. And if you're anywhere close to not being able to see the ball, then they have objections to that. So I think that if you were to tattoo yourself in such a way, that could be a problem. You could be running afoul of the official rulebook. Yeah. Wow. Much to ponder here. There's a lot of implications. Can I share my pant thought now? Sure. I'm worried that the pant discourse is going to make me insane.

I'm genuinely quite concerned about that because, Ben, I've already shared this with you but i was i was pulling a photo for a feature image on a piece unrelated to the pants to be clear just like a i needed a picture of blake snell you know i needed a picture of blake snell looking perplexed perturbed and i found one and i could see his undies through his pants, and I could make out the flesh, you know? Like, the flesh was discernible to me, distinct from both his underwear and the pants. And that was a picture of him from last year. And so, has Lee been telling the truth about the pants?

Or the pants? And why didn't we notice before now, you know? Like, is this like that dress that we all thought was different colors like 10 years ago? And we were like, no, it's definitely blue. And other people are like, no, it's definitely gold. And I was like, I'm really worried about our ability to like construct a functioning democracy when we can't decide on the color of the dress or tell if the pants were translucent. How did we not know if they were, in fact, like this, why did we not notice sooner? You know, like, people were very horny for the Phillies last year. You know, they were paying real close attention and no one noticed? Ben? Well, as we were saying in our Phillies preview, the Phillies were showing so much skin as it was that maybe our eyes were drawn elsewhere because the jerseys were unbuttoned. So who was paying attention to the pants? But I'm persuaded that there was some degree of

transparency, but I'm not convinced that it was the same. I could make out the flesh, Ben. I could not of of his leg, to be clear. I could make out leg flesh, not a different. That made it sound worse than it was just like his thighs i was like there's there are his thighs i can see yeah his human thighs you know not like it i'm so upset mlb pr has been doing a full court press with the press and emailing members of the media to try to convince them, me included. Do you mean to suggest that people didn't just happen upon Red's photo day pictures on their own bed?

Is that a suggestion that you are making? You may have seen some people, some members of the baseball media tweet the same image that was supplied by MLB with some similar language. I did not tweet that, but I did receive that missive. And I was told that there has been a lot of chatter about the quote unquote see-through pants, uniform pants. But the fabric and thickness are the same as before the new uniforms, which you can see from previous photo days. And then they sent this little graphic along. The subject line for this email, which came in on a Friday night,

was if of interest, which was interesting. I was not expecting to see several pictures of reds with their hands in front of their privates, but not blocking everything there except what their hands in front of their privates, but not blocking everything there except what their hands were blocking. So I accept that there was some transparency under photo day conditions, certain lighting and flashes and not that kind of flash,

but also, yes, maybe that kind of flash. And Meg, I think the picture you sent me was not that, right? Correct, it was just him on the mound you sent me was not that, right? Correct. It's just him on the mound looking flummoxed. Yeah. I mean, and not about his pants as far as we know. Right.

Presumably about a call. Yeah. I could accept that. Okay. So they're saying the fabric and thickness are the same. Now, of course, they used to say that the baseball was the same, right? Or that it at least was within the allowable limits. And then it turned out that they weren't actually measuring the thing that mattered when it

came to how far the ball was flying, right? They just, they weren't really testing the seam height. And it turned out that actually made a big difference with just a small difference in the seam height. So I suspect that there's something similar going on here that, okay, if you're telling me the fabric and the thickness are the same, what aboutilant because of the obvious acknowledged change in the rest of the uniforms, which nobody disputes. And so we were keyed up and we were wired to notice any other difference and sort of pile on. It's like when a website gets redesigned. And even if it's a good redesign,

most people hate it at first because you just don't know where to find everything. Right. It's new and you're not used to it. Moved the menus around in Excel. And I was like, why did you do this? Where are pivot tables? Yeah. And you've been through this with the Fangraphs redesign,

which was fine, but not unique among website redesigns and that you always get that backlash and then people get used to it. And if it is better in some ways, then they accept that it's better eventually. So there might be something like that going on here, but I'm not convinced that that's all that's happening. And plus the players, right? So many of the players. Yeah, the players say it's different. I yeah i feel crazy it makes me feel it's making me feel crazy like it's it's a funny this falls squarely into the fun scandal category i mean again we don't want we don't want anyone's bits showing at work like that's not fun that

that's like a legitimate you know material labor condition issue but But the idea of the contested transparent pants, that's beautiful. That is a beautiful scandal. But also, it's making me feel slowly insane. So, these are my problems right now. I'm just like, those are sheer pants. Why didn't I see that before? Yeah. And as a number of people pointed out, even if there was some transparency previously, it doesn't mean it's good that there is. Right. We're noticing it now. Yes. Maybe if we've belatedly noticed it, we could still rectify it if it is a problem. So you could say maybe it's not as big a problem as we're treating it as that we've blown it out of proportion because if we were all just wandering around watching and enjoying baseball and the pants were sort of transparent before, then how big a deal could it be? But also, you know, there are lots of longstanding problems

in society that once there's more attention paid to them, we say, hey, we should not allow things to go on that way, even though they've always worked that way up until now or not worked as the case may be. Resisting making a number of size-related jokes based on what you just said, but we'll move on, Ben. Okay. This feels so much like a corporation saving a few dimes and then putting their employees in the cheapest possible clothing. Oh, yeah. There's an aspect of this that I hadn't thought of until just now.

We also have managers and coaches wearing these cheap-ass see-through pants, and they're 70 years old. Yes, Jay. Like, it just gets worse and worse and worse. Yes. Yes, I agree. It is. Ron Washington deserves better than this, you know? Yeah.

There's a Nick Castellanos quote from this week that just calls it out that's fantastic. Yes. Yeah. Nick Castellanos emerging as, like like our labor king is, you know, that's beautiful. One of the foremost unbuttoners of the top. Exactly. Yeah. He's all for skin showing. Right. Yeah.

Okay. I meant to mention, Jade, you were lamenting that we would lose the distinctive signature strike gesture, but we've kind of lost that already. MLB has discouraged umpires from having their idiosyncratic demonst it about themselves and trying to be the center of attention and you don't want them delaying the call so that they can make more of a gesture. But if they do it in a timely manner, I think it adds some character, much like a batting stance or a weird delivery or whatever it is. We don't want all of those differences sanded down. They're trying to eliminate the one good part of umpires, which is the personality. Yeah. All right.

Lael says, how different would baseball be if instead of a lineup of batters facing a single pitcher, it was a lineup of pitchers facing a single batter. We do not have enough arms for this. Yeah. It's exhausting for everybody. Pretty different, I think, in this case. Offense would greater for multiple reasons because you would have the same batter swinging over and over again. So the times through the order effect in this case would not be to the batter's

advantage. They would not gain the advantage of familiarity. They would just get exhausted and fatigued by batting over and over and over again and facing different pitchers every time. So that would be bad. Also, we would just have to have ghost runners. And I mean, true ghost runners. Invisible runners, not invisible catchers, not invisible umpires, but invisible imaginary runners, which would stink because it's fun to have base running. I think we all would rather have base runners than not. So just to have to say there's an imaginary man on first or second now, and then how do you know if they went station to station? We're all familiar with this problem if you played as a kid

with a ghost runner, imaginary runner. So that would be bad. Offense would be severely reduced. I guess maybe it would speed up the games, but at what cost? And maybe not even, because you'd have to have constant pitching changes. So this seems bad in just about every way. I don't know that I can think of an advantage here. The only way this might be not just a domination of pitcher over batter

is if the multiple pitchers had to come from your nine or your eight position players yeah and they had to rotate every every batting event the other thing i was going to say like if you're using pitcher after pitcher after pitcher you'd have to dig a little deeper into the pool but then you could also just have your entire roster reserved for pitchers because you don't need many batters anymore because you just have the same batter over and over. You'd still water down the pool of pitchers. It would still be diluted talent if you're mandating that it has to be a different pitcher.

I don't know if it's a lineup of pitchers. I don't know what that means. If we're just talking nine pitchers, then teams have that anyway. But if you have to cycle through them even faster, then eventually you're going to get to pitchers who would not be major league quality otherwise. But even then, by the time you did the poor batter, what would their bat speed be reduced to at that point in the game? What if you had 27 pitchers and each one pitched until they got an out? You could do that. I just don't know why you would want to. Yeah, I don't know that we're making baseball better in any of these scenarios. And also, where are all of these pitchers coming from?

We're not lousy with pitchers. And by the end of the year, think about how many guys are hurt. We're going to have enough guys on every team for this? No, we are not. Well, i guess you might have fewer pitcher injuries that might be one advantage here just because the workloads are going to be so low and also you're not going to have to throw max effort by the end of the game because the batter is going to be so tired that he's not going to be able to catch up to anything anyway. So fewer injuries, fewer pitcher injuries, at least. So we'd be freed of some of the scourge of elbows springing, but even that would not make up for

how much less entertaining this would be. And just watching the same batter up there for the entire game, even though you have a real rotation of pitchers, that's going to get dull too. even though you have a real rotation of pitchers. So that's going to get dull too. I roundly reject this scenario, but pretty different, I would say, because usually the default answer is actually not that different. It's not that different in the sense that it's still recognizably baseball. It's still batter versus pitcher.

But in many pretty important respects, it's quite different. All right. William says, In the coming weeks, I will be moving out of a city with a major league baseball team, a band of merry seafarers, to a town with a minor league team, one with nominally wet socks. I have never been to a minor league game before, but intend to be a regular at my new home team's field. My question is, how does one root for a minor league team? With the best players on the team constantly moving away and the playoff bracket seemingly much less important, what outcome should I root for? Whose jersey do I buy?

How much should I care? Is it cooler to root religiously for a minor league team? Less cool? Help! So I can't really speak from personal experience here. I've been to minor league games, but I haven't really rooted for a minor league team. I don't know whether any of you can speak from experience or whether we're just speculating here. Every other summer, I'll go on a minor league baseball road trip, usually through the Midwest, where I've got some friends and see minor league teams. I always want a resource where I can be like, I'm going to this game, and I want to know who are the prospects I should pay attention to.

That's really what you're looking for as the baseball is, who are the players that might make the major someday? But I have kind of a hard time finding that for a specific game without going through long, long prospect lists. I don't know. When I've gone to minor league games, there are definitely fans of those teams, right? Like, I remember there was a time when, I don't remember what exactly caused their issue. Maybe it was weather related, but

the Aqua Sox had to play a game at Safeco. It was Safeco at the time. I think it was still Safeco, not yet T-Mobile. One of their playoff games, because there had been some issue with the field or what have you. And so they ended up playing it down in Seattle and it was a very cool experience. But I was really surprised by how many people there were clearly like they were Aqua Sox fans. They weren't necessarily Mariners fans. And they knew individual players and they got invested in kind of org guys who, you know, kind of hung around. But I think it was a much more sort of amorphous concept. I think that having

an enjoyment for the atmosphere of minor league baseball was maybe more important to them than any individual player was, you know? Yeah, I was around the Sonoma Stompers, of course, which was a very minor league. And there were people who came out and supported the team and rooted for the home team, even though the stakes, competitively speaking, weren't that high. Now, in that case, of course, players were part of the community in a really tangible way because at that level, there were players staying with host families. And so it was almost like a family atmosphere in some respects. And you don't have that in minor league baseball anymore because minor league players are housed by the teams and unionized.

And I think on the whole, that's a good thing. On the other hand, there are some costs to that at least. There was a piece at Defector recently by Jen Ramos Eisen about international players in the minor leagues and how paradoxically in some ways it was easier for them when they had a host family or at least a good host family who would be invested in helping them overcome certain cultural barriers. You'd have someone who could sort of show you around town and school you in the basics of things that adolescent players have to learn. And maybe you might not get that personal one-on-one instruction if you're not literally living at someone's house, you're living at the team barracks or whatever you call it. And so I think maybe in that sense, when you had players being part of the community at a lower level,

then there was kind of a personal connection. You know, you'd see them around town. So I think you still root for the team, especially if there's no major league team nearby and that's the highest level baseball you got. You can still root for that team to win and root for those players to succeed. And yeah, if you're more of a mercenary attendee and you're going from game to game and ballpark

to ballpark, then maybe you just want to see the prospects. Or if you're there to evaluate the talent and say, I saw so-and-so before they were big, before they made the majors, then that's kind of a cool thing and a fun story to tell someday. And also, it's just nice to be at the ballpark, hopefully, no matter the stakes. And maybe you get to know your seatmates and people who are sitting around you. And then there's kind of a community in the stands, right? Or you're going with friends, you're seeing people, you know, you're just enjoying the fresh air out there and you're rooting for your team, even though development is maybe higher priority for that team than winning any particular game or even winning on the seasonal level. Yeah, it's certainly a different experience going to minor league baseball as a tourist than as a as it's your hometown team. Yeah. I think you feel a fondness. So it's certainly not gauche to root for a minor league team. If that's your home team, root for them.

Yeah, go ahead. I mean, you don't have to root for them. If you just want to sit there as an objective baseball liker, you can do that too. But I think you could get invested in the fortunes of particular players, even if they're... If you want to, yeah. Yeah. If they're transient with that one team, even if they're passing through, maybe you root for them to graduate. You can still get invested in those personal stories, the slice of life, the human element? I think that there are just no really bad ways. Well, that's not true.

There are objectively bad ways to root for against players, but they tend to be about, you know, being a little jerk, you know, but as long as you're not being a little jerk, like you can enjoy the transience, you can enjoy the permanence, you can enjoy the fact that your ticket was like 12 bucks, you know? I think that there's a lot about that experience to sort of recommend it. And whatever part of it grabs you, I think is a fine part. Yeah.

There's always crazy food, local beer, festivities, and players and major league players on rehab assignments occasionally. Right. Yeah. Fun promotions and between innings hijinks. And maybe you get to know the people who work for the team. Yeah, there are a lot of things to root for. It's different but not necessarily worse. Okay, question from Craig.

After listening to you discuss the Billy Epler suspension, that was Billy Epler, former GM of the Mets, who got busted, possibly scapegoated for phantom injured list stints. I was wondering how to avoid similar scandals. Teams are incentivized to fudge their roster for flexibility. But why punish just the GM? Why punish anyone? Why not just give the teams what they want within reason? I'm not the first, but I propose a new official rest IL designation. Each player can be put on the IL for a week for rest

once per season with the player's permission. No deceptions or conspiracies. Do this rather than shuttling a spent reliever to the minors and be limited in calling him and his replacement back up. If a starter pitches a no-hitter, give him a couple extra days off to recover. If a hitter is in a slump but not injured, let them clear their head for a few days. It seems like it would be good for player health and cost teams only marginally more an extra salary. NBA teams are always doing load management. It seems inevitable that more sports would see the benefit of keeping players fresh. The players' union should be in favor.

More players, more salaries. Seems like a win-win. Even baseball curmudgeons get to complain about how soft players are nowadays. And nothing makes them happier than that. And if a team abuses the real injured list, you could threaten to penalize them by removing their rest list privileges for the next year. A player who accepts an IL turn when they aren't injured can have their future rest privileges limited. Everyone has an incentive to not game the system. You could actually tighten the rules about how teams use the AAA shuttle too, so it's not just an excuse for new churn on top of existing churn.

This could be a slippery slope to further expansion, but if they can stick to once per year and cut some existing churn, it seems like an improvement. Your thoughts? I have a name for this. Okay. It's a non-available player, but you just abbreviate it to NAP, N-A-P. So, you're like, this player is taking a nap. I love that. I like that a lot too.

I love that. Yeah, that's great. Often when you reverse engineer an acro, it is patently ridiculous. But that, yeah, okay. I'm in. I'm in on that. be eliminating loopholes and being vigilant because we don't want to exacerbate the trends towards shuttling and coming and going and just anonymous players. And we also don't want players to be subjected to this against their will. We don't want it to be a way that teams can deprive players of service time or salary, certainly. And we wouldn't want them to impose this on players. We wouldn't want them to pressure players to take a nap when they are not tired. But maybe- Make them sound like a four-year-old. No, I'm fine.

I have that problem with my daughter on occasion. I bet you do. So she's a good sleeper on the whole, but every now and then she's not tired. She probably gets it from me. So I wonder whether there's any way to entirely eliminate that, because if you have this, then maybe it's just inevitable that players would be leaned on by teams. Say, hey, why not take a nap right now? Aren't you feeling sleepy? You know, they try to hypnotize them into taking a nap.

But some players might appreciate it because there are players who take mental health breaks of sorts during the season. And there's no mechanism for that. I mean, you could go on the I.O. with anxiety or something like that. But if it's just, I need a break, then your team has to play shorthanded for a while, and then maybe you feel pressure to take a was on fire for the rest of the season, maybe that's the benefit of this, that he could just take a formal nap

and then come back feeling refreshed and it would benefit everyone. The Marlins did this with a pitcher last year. Are you talking about Agri Perez? Yeah, when they sent him to the minors to pitch. But that was maybe, I mean, it was certainly workload related, but also tough to untangle from the service time considerations too. Little shifty bits. And so the nice thing about this would be that you would still accrue service time, presumably, and you'd still get your salary. And you'd still get your salary. It would be like if you get hurt when you're on the major league roster, this would be not requiring an actual injury, I suppose, but it would be the same sort of mechanism.

A nap. I don't know how we draw the line between is this for like nagging injuries that might not send you to the IL but would be bad enough to impair your performance and possibly if you're pressured to play through them, you could hurt yourself worse. Or is this really just for, eh, I'm not feeling so great right now. right now or I could use a bit of a break or or the dead arm the tired arm that players suffer sometimes where it's hard to diagnose an ill exactly but something just doesn't feel quite right yeah I kind of like it I like it a lot I do think like you said Ben we would need to do some work to make sure that it wasn't getting uh exploited in a way you know I like I don't care about the part where a guy comes up and gets paid the big league minimum for a couple of days. That part you like, but there's definitely service time jobbing that can be a result of this stuff. But I think that you could probably cinch up those gaps pretty reliably,

and then everybody gets to take a little rest. I love a nap. I used to not be a nap person. Now I'm a nap person. I also have become my dad because I'm like, I'm just going to rest my eyes for a little bit. I'm like, when did that happen? When did I become a like to drink light lagers while watching sports and need to rest my eyes a little bit person? It happened so fast. Question from Ezra, Patreon supporter. A question from Ezra, Patreon supporter. Is the best way to be good now just trying to pull as many fly balls as possible unless you have some freakish bat-to-ball skill like Luis Arias? All you hear old heads talking about is hitting the ball the other way, and every new head just talks about pulling fly balls. Is there some happy medium, or should everyone just be trying to be Isak Paredes. He is one of the more extreme practitioners of this,

for sure. And others, David Laurel had just interviewed Dalton Varshow about this for his Sunday Notes at Fangraft's Extreme Flyball Pull Hitter. And yeah, we've moved past flyball revolution into pulled flyball revolution. Not just any fly ball you want to pull to do your damage. And you do hear that a lot, like a lot of players talking about trying to pull their fly balls, a lot of analysts suggesting that so-and-so pull more fly balls. And I think all else being equal, it's probably beneficial, but it's not for everyone necessarily. I was talking to Ben Clemens about this because he's written about that recently for Fangraphs and the newsletter Down on the Farm has done some good studies on this. And it does seem like

for a lot of players, it's good all else being equal, but it doesn't benefit every player profile equally. And some, like Luisa Rice, has the question mentioned. If you're just weird, if you have some unique swing profile and it works for you, then you don't have to try to fit into the mold of everyone else. And if you're a super powerful guy who hits the ball out without pulling it every time, then maybe the benefit is sort of limited. And if you're super, super weak, maybe the benefit is limited too. I was reading an athletic article recently about the Guardians and how they didn't really add any thump or much to the lineup. And so they're trying to engineer some thump with the players they have. You know, they're trying to teach Stephen Kwan and Miles Straw, etc. to actually try to swing for the fences at times.

to swing for the fences at times. And it sort of scared me because Stephen Kwan is like, I literally don't know how to swing and miss. I'm really bad at this. And yeah, there are some counts and some situations and some pitches where it does pay, potentially, even if you're more of a contact-oriented hitter, to try to muscle up a bit. But if you're Stephen Kwan or if you're Miles Straw, you just have so little power. I know he, best shape of his life, added some muscle too, but man, Miles Straw, you know, I don't know if that's enough. And if you're as good at what you do as Stephen Kwan, then do you really want to say maybe trade a little contact for power? Because then is that in the back of his head? Does it screw up his approach at the plate?

I don't know. I would be wary of that if it's working for you, at least. Now, Milestraw, it's not so much working for him. So maybe you say, you know, what's the harm? Whereas Stephen Kwan, it's why mess with success? So I think it depends. If you're a super weak guy, then maybe you actually do want to hit the ball on the ground or if you're speedy. But it's also tough to say, yeah, do this if you're used to doing something different, because that could have a whole lot of unintended consequences. But it does really work for some players, for your Isak Paredes, who are just extreme, hit the ball out in front of the plate and pull that thing and make up for not being a big, hulking Yandy Diaz type by just extracting every iota of power potential from your frame. It can pay off, but it's not necessarily for everyone.

It's kind of what makes baseball interesting is the wide variety of types of hitters. One would hope, yeah. Yeah. Do y'all have a favorite aesthetic kind of hitter? Like a slap hitter versus a pull hitter who swings and misses a lot? I kind of have a favorite, which is like the Nick Marcakis, Freddie Freeman type, who's constantly hitting opposite field doubles in the gap. Yeah. If you're Freddie Freeman, just good at everything.

That's not a bad way to be. Yeah, it's like. But that kind of aesthetic hitter who hits doubles in the gap is always like entertaining as opposed to swing and miss Joey Gallo who's entertaining less often. less often. Yeah. I find the Joey Gallo extreme entertaining in principle or in theory, just to see how far you can push it to be a baseball extremophile and make it work or at least be good enough to stay at that level. But maybe from a plate appearance to plate appearance perspective, it can be boring sometimes. But I mean, yeah, if you can be Freddie Freeman and you're just hitting ropes everywhere and you don't even have to sacrifice contact for power because he doesn't strike out that much anyway, he's just good at everything. I would

love for there to be more quans and arises. It's just a very difficult skill set to pull off. And you have to have really sort of singular skills to make that happen. And those skills have been de-emphasized for valid reasons, I think. And the scarcity of those skills makes them even more enjoyable. If this were the dead ball era, we'd all be saying, yeah, give me Joey Gallo or, you know, give me Babe Ruth. Like, oh, that's new and novel. Swing for the fences. Be that guy. But now that's kind of the default. And so we crave something else. To answer your question, my preferred, I like there to be variety. I like being able to see a lot of different guys and approaches. I think that locking in on one is not necessarily my preference.

But I think about the guys who I've enjoyed watching hit the most. And it's like, I really liked watching Michael Brantley hit, you know? Yeah. Like watching Michael Brantley hit really fired me up. Professional hitter. Yeah. Professional hitter. Yeah. Pure hitter. I like guys where you can see, you can watch them executing barrel variability in their swing, right?

They're able to adjust and make contact and like good contact at multiple points in the zone and kind of move their barrel around to do so. I like watching the extreme, you the extreme swing and miss guys. I wouldn't want that to be the entirety of my viewing experience, but when it is working enough that you get that really big thump, it's quite special. But I like there to be variability

both in the individual hitters but then across the population. I just mostly think like just leave Stephen Kwan alone and don't trade Nolan Jones. Like what are we doing here, Guardians? Or sign a free agent. Radical idea. You had your guy. His name was Nolan Jones. And then you were like, we do not want that Nolan Jones. Send that Nolan Jones away from here. And then Nolan Jones was like, I'm going to be a good player, actually. Sorry. Quoting from down on the farm here, they

did a post in December where they identified some players whose profiles might be most conducive to the Paredes approach. Bryson Stott, Gabriel Moreno, Andy Abanez. And they pointed out an important quality that enhances the Paredes approach to batted balls is his plus hit tool. Making frequent contact in the air to the pole side is bound to lead to some homers, even on the lower end of the exit velocity spectrum. A combination of Paredes' ability to manipulate the direction of his batted balls and his ability to make consistent contact result in a game power grade much higher than his raw power. So not anyone can do this. And there can be some costs, of course, possibly, if you're just hunting for pitches to pull, then maybe you're going to be more susceptible to off-speed stuff or braking stuff or outside pitches and

your swing decisions are going to suffer to some extent or maybe you'll make louder contact but less contact right so it it depends a bit on the profile all right last question here we started with an umpire related question or at least it morphed from catchers into umpires and we'll end with one too tim writes the knicks are protesting their game against the rockets after the referees admitted to making an incorrect call i thought this was all eyewash, but apparently in the late 2000s, a game was resumed after a successful protest. This email was sent in mid-February, and since then, that protest has been denied. said, if we're going to start replaying games for blown calls, Armando Galarraga's non-perfect perfect game or perfect imperfect game is where we should start. So that got me thinking, imagine if they did. Maybe at the All-Star game or as a ceremonial first pitch before opening day for the Tigers. Get the same umpires, get all the same players in the order and defenders in the field, and let Galarraga get one more chance at perfection. It would be a spectacle. I feel like millions of people would watch. If he got Jason

Donald out this time, would you consider his perfect game legitimate? Even better, what if Cleveland came back? They were only down three and with Galarraga not being totally fit and ready to pitch, I feel as if there's a good chance Cleveland comes back. Imagine the spectacle. It would be amazing. What are the logistics of this happening? Looking at the box score, it seems there are no longer any active players from either team.

So as people recall this incident, 2010, there was what should have been the final out of a perfect game for Armando Galarraga and Jim Joyce. The umpire over there blew the call. So this was in the replay era, but not in the full replay era. It was like in the boundary calls or the home run fair foul calls, I forget, but not in the overturning a clearly incorrect force play call. So there was just no recourse.

And I think Joyce might have even petitioned for an overturn. And it was denied by Bud Selig, the commissioner at the time, and I think understandably, but people still talk about this thing. So if we staged some sort of historical reenactment here and got everyone back together. Would anyone care? Would this change anything about the perception of that play? I love the idea of an old-timers game trying to replay a game that went one direction. It's like an alternate universe of what happened in that game. That's pretty fun, but it's an exhibition. You can't just put a bunch of old guys on the field and be like, now the stats count.

Right. No, you definitely could not consider this legitimate retroactively because of what happens in this exhibition. I guess I would watch. I question whether this would be such a spectacle that millions of people would tune in because what would the stakes be? We're not overturning the results. It would be kind of fun maybe to see what happens, but ultimately, mostly meaningless. Yeah, I don't know how satisfying it would be to the people involved, right? Like, even if you were able to get it exactly right, it's like, okay, well, that doesn't give me a perfect game.

It doesn't amend the baseball record in any appreciable way. It's just like, oh, yeah, it was possible for us to not goof this so badly. I don't know. I don't know if that would make me feel better. Yeah. The umpire gets the call right and then everyone kisses. Sure. Only if they want to.

Only if they want to. Only if they want to. Only if they want to. Yeah. And he did finish the game subsequently. Only if they want to. Only if they want to. Only if they want to. Yeah. And he did finish the game subsequently. He got out of it. So I don't know what we would learn here that he was capable of retiring Jason Donald.

I mean, we saw that he was. He just had the call go against him. And also, I think that to their credit, both Galarraga and Joyce handled this well, famously well. Like it was an example of good sportsmanship that is still shared that Joyce owned up to his mistake and Galarraga let him off the hook and they both handled it fairly well. And they've gotten a book and a documentary out of it. Yeah, I was going to say, they wrote a book together, didn't they? Yeah. And I think Kalaraga has acknowledged that he's probably better known for not getting it than he would have been for getting it. I wonder if that will change at any point, whether at a certain point, like when everyone involved and everyone who witnessed this is gone, will we remember the specifics? Will future people

remember what happened there? Or would they remember to the extent that anything is ever remembered long-term if he were on a list of perfect games that people were just familiar with those names? But hopefully this story would be passed down and people would remember the imperfect perfect game. I've actually been slightly disappointed that in recent years, Galraga has called for this to be reclassified as a perfect game. I almost admired him more when he accepted that this was just the way it worked and didn't really rail against it or protest or ask for some sort of exemption. But he has, I believe, maybe on multiple occasions in recent years. And there are people who support that.

There was a petition to Rob Manfred in 2022 and people sent him a document and asked him to overturn this. It was like a law school class sent him an 82-page document making the case that he should be given the perfect game, a law school class at Monmouth. And they sent this memo to Manfred and Manfred was like, nope, Pudsey decided this. My predecessor ruled on this. And I think that was right because what sort of precedent can it set? Obviously, one reaction is, well, let's make sure we get these calls right in the future so we don't repeat this problem. But you can't start overturning things that happen on the field because we know they're wrong now because that would be chaos.

And where would we stop speaking of slippery slips? So I have no problem with upholding that. And I think maybe it worked out for the best anyway. So if they all got back together just for fun to play it out or for charity or something, I might watch. I might tune in. But I don't think it would be that big a deal. You can't rewrite history. However, we can write a stat blast here and you can bring us home here.

And I'm going to play a stat blast theme that was submitted to us last week by Patreon supporter Now I Only Want to Triumph. And I debated whether to use this one because, as I told the submitter, it's an abomination. to use this one because as i told the submitter it's an abomination and perhaps perhaps we should not air it but i'm gonna play it and apologies to john fogarty but you know what he has some Música Thank you. Was it for a day to waste? Is today still past? That's evil. Horrific, clearly. It's so evil. This makes me laugh so hard.

I hate it, but I respect it. I hate the song, but I love this version of it. It may never be played again, and maybe one time was too many. Apologies to my lovely wife, Jessie, who composed and performed the Stop Less theme song for massacring her song. But, you know, I had to tip my cap. Sometimes you got to hand it to him. And this was maybe one of those times. So, Jay, you're giving us a sneak peek here of a StatBlast that you will be presenting in person later this week. That's correct. It's interesting that the play and song is that because

I write about baseball on Substack and I write a lot about baseball and pop culture and baseball songs. So, I would never write about that song. But I write about a lot of other weird, obscure baseball songs and baseball stuff. So, one of the other beats, as it were, on my Substack is that I write about baseball cemeteries. beats, as it were, on my sub stack is that I write about baseball cemeteries. During the pandemic, I wanted to get some exercise and walk around where there were no live people. So I walked around cemeteries. And cemetery tourism is kind of a thing in the South, kind of where I grew up. So I wanted to go find dead baseball player graves, but I had a full-time work-from-home job, so I wanted to be efficient about it.

So, I started researching which cemeteries had the most baseball players by war. I even made up my own metric, wins above replacement per cemetery, which I pronounce warpk, which is fun to say. Rolls right off the tongue. Yeah. I pronounce Warpk, which is fun to say. Rolls right off the tongue. Yeah. So, I started doing the research and like three or four months later, I had written 20,000 words in a document. I had cataloged the best cemetery in all 50 states. If you wanted to go visit the best dead baseball player cemetery by Warpk.

Yeah, this is good. Dead Baseball Player Cemetery by Warp. Yeah, this is good. On episode 2090, I spoke to an expert on dead baseball players from the site RIP Baseball, who talked about the pleasures of visiting baseball grave sites, but had not quantified, had not broken down the dead baseball players by their in-game production. So if you want to maximize your efficiency on these visits, which is really what it's all about when you're visiting grave sites and cemeteries, then this is handy. So I assume you'll make your data set available, if not now, at some point, so that if people want to plan their own visits, they can. But I guess you'll

have to give us the highlights here because 50 states might be a bit much, but... I'll try not to go through all 20,000 words. Okay. So, I started writing about this and luckily for this research, baseball reference, if you click on a player and it says where they're buried, it'll take you to a page where you can go state by state and just sort all the players by where they're buried. So that makes it pretty straightforward. But there's still a lot of stuff to do. So I started writing about this and it ended up being a lot of baseball history, players that I didn't know about, kind of a travel guide, road trip planner to how to see the most.

It's like if you're on vacation in South Carolina, how do you go see the most dead baseball players in one day? And then I kept finding weird, fun facts about players, especially if they had been in movies or had recorded a song or had some kind of pop culture thing. For example, if you go to South Carolina, the number one cemetery is Oakland Cemetery in Gaffney, South Carolina, but that's because Gaylord Perry is buried there with his 90 war. There's only one other player, Jim Rowland,

who had three and a half war in the 70s. So, you end up finding a lot about researching tentpole players, but also obscure players. Super fun to learn about baseball in this way. There's a famous quote about Gaylord Perry that they'll put a man on the moon before he hits a home run. And he hit his home run, his first career home run, like 10 minutes after Apollo 11 landed on the moon. Well, the man who said that was Alvin Dark. He's also buried in South Carolina, like 45 minutes from Gaylord Perry. He's in Robinson Memorial Gardens in Easley, South Carolina. So you could go visit both of them

while you're on vacation in South Carolina with my research. Van Lingle Mungo and Buck Bobo Newsome played against each other in high school and they are both buried in two towns close to each other in South Carolina. So that's the kind of hardcore

research I'm doing. Yeah. Two of the great names and characters. Yes, yes. So, that's the kind of hardcore research I'm doing. Yeah. Two of the great names and characters. Yes. Yes. So, I've sorted all the best cemeteries by war. I can give you like the top 10, the top five. And I'll, again, in Effectively Wild style, I will share my spreadsheet and Ben can post it. Yeah. We always share our data here at Effectively Wild. Yeah, yeah. So state by state, there are some states that have negative war, like Hawaii has only like three dead baseball players buried there and they had negative cumulative war.

But Alexander Cartwright is buried in Hawaii next to George Freeth and Joseph Campbell, the author of Hero with a Thousand Faces. So that's a cool cemetery to go visit. And it's a baseball cemetery. Yeah. So, there's all kinds of weird things like that. I'll just go to the headline.

Everyone wants to know, what's the best state to go visit dead baseball players? It's California. Well, I guess that's probably the best state for live baseball players, too. Awesome. Yes. Yes. Yes. baseball players too.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Like the top 12 or so states have like a thousand war buried in them, but California has 4,200, 4,200 war buried in it. And there's two cemeteries in California that kind of are the cream of the crop for dead baseball players. This is really like,

let's talk about some dead guys segment. Yeah. So there's two, two c talk about some dead guys segment. Yeah. So there's two cemeteries that you would go visit in California. One is in Colma, California, which is near San Francisco. Colma is a weird place in that 80% of the town is cemeteries. That's the reaction I generally get from this. So there's 57 players buried in the Holy Cross Cemetery in Colma, including Joe DiMaggio and High Pockets Kelly. So, that's a good one.

That cemetery has 246 war in it. That's like number four on the list. Number three on the list is Gates of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York. Ben, do you know who's buried there? No. Babe Ruth. Ben, do you know who's buried there? No. Babe Ruth. Oh, okay. Heard of him. That makes the list because 180 of the 280 war there is Babe Ruth's. There's a couple cemeteries

like that. Like the number 12 cemetery in the US is the Paoli Cemetery in Paoli, Ohio, but there's only one player buried there, and it's Cy Young. So, there's 163 war there, but it's all in one player. So, the number two cemetery in the U.S. is the Holy Sepulcher. I don't know how to pronounce that. The Holy Sepulcher Cemetery in Southfield, Michigan. It's only 12 players, but there's 285 war in the number two cemetery. Charlie Gerringer and Harry Heilman are there, so that's about 150 war of that. But the number one cemetery in the U.S. for dead player war is Englewood Park Cemetery in Englewood, California, South L.A., with 47 players buried there. 47 players buried there.

Now, there's no household name kind of inner circle Hall of Fame player there, but there are, of the 47, there's a lot of really good players, if not famous players. A few are Jim Gilliam, 45 War, played for the Brooklyn LA Dodgers. He's buried there. He had great nicknames. Junior, Junebug, Sweet Lips, and Devil were all his nicknames, according to Baseball Reference. Sweet Lips. Sweet Lips. Jim Death Valley Scott and his 25 wars buried there.

One of my favorites, Arthur Lee May, with his 15 wars buried there. He played outfield next to Hank Aaron in Milwaukee. Played for about 10 years. But he was also an R&B singer. He released like 20 singles with his band, The Crowns. He went to high school with Richard Berry, who wrote Louie Louie, and Lee May actually sings backup on the original release of Louie Louie, which is the cornerstone of Western civilization, according to me. Doc Ellis is buried in Inglewood Park.

Everyone knows Doc Ellis. But the one that really is like the tentpole of dead baseball players in Inglewood is Kurt Flood is buried there. Oh, wow. Wow. Yeah. So, it's a fairly famous cemetery being where it is in LA. Ray Charles, Edel Fitzgerald, Etta James, and of course, Richard Louis-Louis Berry are all buried in Inglewood. That's kind of a summation of my research. I'm presenting it at a conference on Friday, this Friday, March 9th, I think, at The Nine, which is a baseball conference in Phoenix during spring training. So I'm super excited to sort of be a professional baseball writer.

I'm excited to sort of be a professional baseball writer. Well, this was the trial run, just the sneak peek. If you want the full presentation and 20 there are some famous baseball figures there, but I don't know how they stack up war-wise, but that is a picturesque place. Let me look at my list of cemeteries. If I had a nickel for every time we heard that on Effectively Wild. I have Evergreen Cemetery in Brooklyn with 113 war. Green Wood has a hyphen between green and wood, weirdly, if that helps. I don't think it made my top 50. Oh, okay. But I may have, you know, you're kind of eyeballing this rather than analyzing every single cemetery in the U.S., but I was pretty close. Oh, okay. Creighton, you know, or Asa Brainard of the 1869 Red Stockings. Zero war for these players, but

still significant historical figures and just a nice place to walk around. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I love doing this. It's part of my baseball vacations is finding a new cemetery to go visit. Well, this was important research. Thank you very much. My pleasure. And I hope you got your money's worth today. You were additive.

You supplied a stat blast for us. Another Patreon supporter supplied the stat blast theme song, which was subtractive, if anything, but we humored them. And is there anything that you'd care to share or plug or anywhere people can find you or anything you'd care to say? I'm never going to charge for it. But I'm trying to just, you know, kind of expand my subscriber base for my very, very niche baseball and pop culture writing. It's called Tinker, Taylor, Solaire, Spezio on Substack.

All right. Well, hopefully we can help you meet that goal. We will link to it on the show page along with your research. We're glad you could come on today. Thank you, Jay. This was fun. Thank you. Thank you for having me. All right. That will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening.

Orioles and Giants previews coming up on our next episode. For now, you can make like Jay Wade Edwards and support the podcast 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. Andy Northrup, Webster, Robbie Feinberg, Nathan, and Paul Rice. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include, of course, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangrafts memberships,

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at r slash effectively wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back a little later this week. Talk to you then. Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Effectively Wild Baseball Podcast