Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2153: Whoops it Up

Episode Date: April 18, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Carlos Correa’s nerdiness, the Pirates pulling phenom Jared Jones after 59 effective pitches, the zombie runner, what Jontay Porter’s lifetime NBA ban portends for MLB, Shohei/Ippei conspiracy theories and Shohei Ohtani’s hitting and tax loophole, Michael Busch and the Dodgers’ outfield offense, the legacy of Whitey Herzog’s “Whiteyball,” […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2153 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. So last time we were talking about the MLB jerseys functioning as Fremen still suits and conserving moisture. And you said which MLB player would be best to talk to about this subject. Yes, I did. We were informed by Patreon supporter, listener Peter, that Carlos Correa has volunteered,

that he has seen Dune II in theaters three times. Three times. So it seems like he's the perfect guy to talk to about this. And I had forgotten how much of a nerd Carlos Pereira is in that way. I remember him being an advanced stats nerd and proselytizing war and WRC Plus and such. But he's also a big sci-fi Disney franchise nerd. Yes. He named his dogs Groot and Rocket.

He has visited the Marvel offices and posted about it on Instagram. He named his son Kylo. Yep. Yeah, he did. I don't think it's ever been confirmed in print that he named Kylo after Kylo Ren, but I mean, he is a Star Wars fan. Yeah. He and his wife have done Star Wars cosplay and posted about it.

His son was born. This is his elder son, his firstborn in 2021. So despite the stain of the rise of Skywalker, I guess he was still into the character of Kylo. I mean, that can't be a coincidence, right? And I'm sure it's not the only Kylo. It's like all the girls named Khaleesiesi and then you see how Game of Thrones ended. What a turn that took. don't necessarily reflect on Kylo Ren in the way that the end of Game of Thrones told us some stuff about Khaleesi, though maybe we should have known those things about her before.

I still think that that characterization was not supported by the text, even though there's bad stuff about her. I think the turn was – anyway, that's not the point. That's not the point of this story. It was abrupt. And the actual text we're still waiting for in terms of the books. Right. Yeah, that's true. We are. But it can't be coincidence that Carlos Correa's son is named Kylo, I would think, given all the other information that we have about Carlos Correa. But point is, if we want to talk to anyone about Dune and MLB and whether the jerseys resemble Fremen still suits in form or function, Carlosst Grey is probably our guy. You mentioned that they've engaged in cosplay,

but he's specifically dressed as Kylo Ren in his cosplay. And his wife was Rey. And so, first of all, I wonder if there is support in the Korea household for the notion of them having an inappropriate little kiss.

So there's that. A little Raylo action. Yeah, I think that there might be Raylo fandom going on here. Who could say? But I feel comfortable speculating because they're— Yeah, they put it out there publicly. They put it out there. I'm gleaning all of this from his public Instagram, to be clear.

I'm not trying to be a weirdo. But there is a very adorable photo of him holding his two boys. This is from like last March. He has not posted a photo, at least on the main part of his Instagram feed since then. So maybe he's just taking a little social media break. But the caption here is House Correa. So I feel very comfortable that this is our guy. Correa. So I feel very comfortable that this is our guy. I'm less confident that he is looking at that and, you know, rooting for non-Harkonnen forces, let's put it that way. You know, and I don't want to, I don't want to tarnish the man's reputation. I'm not trying to say anything about Carlos Correa necessarily, but he does seem sympathetic to surprising characters uh in some of these

franchises that he engages with because his allegiance is to the imperialists is what you're saying i look i wasn't gonna quite say it that way um but i i think that he and look i don't think that we should feel pressure to root for characters necessarily. Like we can be moved by stories and not say like, oh, I have to have a rooting interest for somebody. We don't have to say that. We don't have to say that. And, you know, I'm conscious of what it means for a guy who had attachment and participation in the banking scheme to say that he always identifies with villains, I'm not trying to go too far with this. Misunderstood.

Yeah. Bad rap. He gets a bad rap. And people can be complicated. He can be a guy who does charity and participates in a banking scheme. He can find characters who are villainous compelling. A lot of us do. It doesn't mean that he thinks he's signing on

to the Empire's project or anything. That's a ridiculous thing to lay at the feet of this person. I don't know. But I will say that just based on... I mean, like, naming your kid, that even if you're not trying to name him after that character, you are clearly well-versed in, like, the thing.

And so it's a weird thing to say you're comfortable with if you're not naming it after him. Maybe we're going about this the wrong way. Maybe he's just, like, a big Adam driver head. That could be. And he thought Adam was a boring name. And he's like, there's so many Adams can't just name a kid Adam there's like all these Adams out there I should yeah Kylo Kylo achieved some measure of redemption so maybe that made him yes a namesake that Carl's Correa could entertain and

so bad man don't get me started but oh boy Groot and Rocket are good guys so at least he didn't name the dog after bad he's yeah he's complex you know there are many sides to Carl's Correa Don't get me started. Oh, boy. But Groot and Rocket are good guys. Yeah, exactly. That's what I'm saying. So at least he didn't name the dog after Batty. Yeah, he's complex. He's a complex guy. There are many sides to Carlos Correa. Man, these are cute kids, though. Good job, you guys.

Also, we talked about and met the major leaguer Blaze Alexander. We talked a bit about Blazes and how they're becoming somewhat more common. Not really more common. Before 2000, they were not in the top 1,000 male baby names. Since then, they have been continuously, but not in the high registers of popular baby names. They're just somewhere on the board, but pretty low. But Blaze Alexander is the first MLB Blaze. However, as a listener pointed out, Mason Wynn has the middle name Blaze and is sometimes called Blaze.

And I guess Mason Wynn may be one of the few infielders with a better arm than Blaze Alexander. So they're both living up to the Blaze, at least with their feet, with their arms, etc. So again, blazes, they're all around us. Also, we talked. Well, yeah, I live in a legal weed state then. Oh, yeah. We talked at some length about the pirates handling of Paul Skeens. Yes.

Their top pitching prospect. And then no sooner than we had talked about that, then was there another Pirates workload-related controversy with a Pirates pitcher who is in the majors and who is shoving and who's just looked fantastic, Jared Jones, who looked great again but was pulled after five one-hit scoreless innings and had thrown 59 pitches, 50 of which were strikes, second highest strike percentage in an outing of 50 or more pitches in the pitch tracking era after a legendary 2012 Bartolo Colon start. And it was a game that the Pirates went on to lose and the bullpen coughed up some runs.

And so people were kind of piling on. How could you pull Jared Jones after five innings? And this is another case where, again, it's hard to really get on teams and organizations for treating pitchers carefully. It's better than the alternative. It's better than the way they used to do it. It's better than Doc Goodning them. He's top of mind because his number was just retired. But there were many generations of pitchers who were worked too hard and would often have shoulder injuries to show for it. It's just a question of have they overcorrected? Have we gone too far to

the other end of the spectrum? And I guess my quibble here, so he knew that he was limited here and it was part of the plan. And so it wasn't completely a seat of the pants decision and it wasn't injury related or anything. Pirates manager Derek Shelton said it's extremely hard, but you know, it's something where we have to stick to our process a little bit. I understand how that's frustrating to people, but again, this kid is really important to us. We have to make sure that when we put a process in place, put plan in place, that we stick to it. And the plan was apparently for five innings. And Shelton said he's thrown, I think, 91, 85, and 80 pitches in his previous starts. So we knew that the first time he went on five that we were going to back him down. This kid is really important to us, as anybody that watched will see.

Went on five, meaning five days of rest? I guess so, yeah. Not five innings. Yeah, he had gone deeper than five in his previous start, which was what made it sort of surprising because he had thrown more pitches and thrown more innings. And so clearly he isn't just on a strict pitch count where he can only throw 59 pitches or five innings.

It seems like maybe they wanted to back off a bit, like they wanted to give him a bit of a breather outing after the heavier outings to start. And they just knew that he was throwing five. We had a pitch count on him today. That's what Derek Shelton said. I think he meant innings count because he said he was throwing five. It was his first time on five, I guess. Yeah, I guess that means rest.

And Jared Jones himself said it was predetermined that I was going five innings today, no matter what happened. Do you want to see me down the road or do you want to see me get shut down? That's what I think of it. So he's not complaining. And again, he's been awesome. He impressed in spring training. They put him on the major league roster. That's good. He has 32 strikeouts and two walks. Is that good? That seems like a pretty robust ratio. He's incredible. Knox is that good? That seems like a pretty robust ratio. He's incredible.

Yeah, he's nasty, right? Yeah, he's incredible. And he was a big prospect, but maybe not as big a prospect as he should have been, given how good he's been. But 23 innings, 32 Ks. And I guess my only complaint here is maybe with the rigidity of this. And it's not post hoc. Oh, they ended up losing the game. Therefore, it was a mistake to pull him. I don't engage in that kind of analysis or

second guessing generally. And you never know if he would have fallen apart. He ran into trouble later in his previous outings. Maybe he wasn't conditioned for that. We've talked about that. That's maybe an issue when you train pitchers like the way the Pirates are training schemes. And so maybe they thought, okay, we'll pull them when things are going great because you never know. Like Miles Michaelis the other day faced the minimum through four and then completely fell apart in the fifth and left the game, right? And I'm not equating those two pitchers, but that can happen. We know that Yeah, he sure did. So imprecise. I mean, is it a Blake Snell inning or is it a George Kirby inning? It depends really on what the inning is. I mean, that could be a very variable pitch count. Yeah, for sure. he will have only thrown 59 pitches at that point. So granted, okay, maybe there's something to like getting up, sitting down,

breaks between innings that it's a little different to spread it out over those innings. Obviously, like concentrating a ton of pitches in a single inning is maybe more taxing than spreading it out. But to me, like I would go into it thinking pitch count target more so than innings target. And then if the guy is sailing along very efficiently, then you could stretch him a little longer and not be bound by the five-inning max. There are a couple of ways that I think it's useful to assess decisions like this. So there's the process-related assessment, right? assessment, right? So I think wanting to back, maybe wanting to back your young starter off a little bit so that you can continue to use him at the big league level while also, you know, managing his workload and making sure to the best of your ability that he stays healthy,

like is reasonable. I think like you, I would probably tie that assessment to a sort of ballpark number of pitches thrown. And teams have the ability to sort of monitor in a pretty real-time way, like what is the characteristic of those pitches? Are we seeing signs of fatigue in his velocity, in the amount of spin? If we're monitoring where he's releasing the ball, can we get a sense that he is fatiguing and we need to pull him? If the answer to that is no, maybe you let him go a little more than your predetermined limit. But you have sort of a general idea from a pitch

perspective, you know, how many you're going to let him go. And I think you can have some flexibility in that, not only as you look for signs of fatigue, but what is the situation of the game? I think back to how the Diamondbacks deployed Brandon Fott in the postseason, and Troy Lovello had a very specific plan in mind for Fott and how many pitches he was going to be able to throw. And it happened in that they had that great start from him that people got all worked up about him being pulled from. And it's like, well, think having a game plan in advance so that everyone's on the same page is really useful because, you know, it sounds like Jones wasn't miffed about this. He had a plan. He wants to stay healthy. He thinks that this is a good way to sort of utilize him. You know, when we talked to Fott after that start in the postseason, like he wasn't

worked up even though other people were, because he knew what the plan was going to be going in, as opposed to, like, Merrill Kelly, who I think in part because he's a veteran and also because, like, he was cruising, quote-unquote. He was, like, visibly upset with Tori Lavelle when he got pulled from a postseason start because he was like, I haven't gotten over looking like that actor. So I think having the sort of process assessment is important. And then I think, as we've seen here,

checking in with the player about sort of their reaction to it is also useful. We've talked about this in the context of no-hitters and perfect games, where when the Dodgers pulled Kershaw from the no-hitter he was throwing, Kershaw wasn't mad about it. Looking to the player's reaction is useful for us sort of gauging our own response to these things because the player knows arguably the most about how his body feels. The team knows a lot more about what's going on with him,

not only in an individual start, you know in general than we do and so i don't find myself fussed about sort of the general idea here i do think that refining the approach of like what benchmarks do you look to and what sort of limits do you set in advance maybe there's some refinement that the the pirates could engage in there but i don don't know. I struggle to get worked up. Part of that might be because he's drawing a big league paycheck, and it's not like they sent him down after that start, you know. So he's just, like, getting used a little less, and there you go. Yeah, this is preferable, I think, to maybe the Marlins' approach

of let's just demote him, let's just kind of give him a break. If we're talking about an inning here or there, obviously it makes you look bad when the team then ends up losing that close game. And look, I want to protect pitchers. And Jared Jones, among the 143 starters with at least 10 innings pitched this season, he is fourth in average fastball velocity, almost 98 miles per hour. So that always scares me. Bobby Miller's at the top of that list and he's got issues now, shoulder, right? So, I mean, you look at any year, the top of the velocity leaderboard is dotted, more than dotted. It's suffused with names of

guys who've had elbow issues mostly. And Jared Jones toward the top of that list. Paul Skeens, whenever he arrives, will be toward the top of that list. And so that's scary. I guess it's just you could take two tacks to it. You could say, well, we can't really protect pitchers at all. I mean, yeah, don't abuse them irresponsibly the way that they used to. But beyond that, there's only so much you can do. Guys are just going to break when these velocities are involved.

And so, YOLO, essentially, you know, like, we're in it. It's exciting. Like, again, like, don't have him throw 150 pitches, but just, you know, you went into it thinking five innings. Okay, let's stretch it to six. And granted, if he knew five was the finish line, maybe no matter how well he's doing, you don't want to move the goalpost or the finish line on him. Maybe he was so good because he knew he only had to go five. And thus he was airing it out and he was letting it eat. And maybe he was gassed after 59 pitches. I don't know.

To have him get to five if that was what he was planning on and then say, well, things are going so great. Why not try for another one, right? Maybe it's one inning too many. You get greedy at that point. Right. And then maybe, again, it's less five is the target than a number of pitches, right? Right. And then you could have avoided that or maybe they have some more complex formula with stress or pitch types or opponents or who

knows, right? Whether it could be any number of factors that go into that algorithm. But yeah, you could go too far and deprive yourself of a potential win and potential innings from a young pitcher who maybe will get hurt anyway and maybe taking that inning off won't actually protect that pitcher. Maybe it'll just deprive you and him of an inning, right? If like the sproing is inevitable, right? So it's really hard to say and you never know if you made the right or wrong decision and that's maybe part of the frustration is that you just kind of hope for the best. My instinct to be skeptical of teams in moments like this is definitely less likely to be activated when the guy is in the majors and is drawing a big league paycheck and the side that they are hewing toward is one of caution rather than carelessness,

which does, again, doesn't mean that the process can't be refined. But I think that, you know, the odds that you are going to do something that is fundamentally a disservice to the individual player and your team more broadly when you're being cautious, it's just, you know, one game isn't probably going to make the difference for the Pirates. But having Jones around as much as possible absolutely will, right? So I get the instinct, even if we could do a little tinkering, you know, a little tinkering. Another follow-up, we have talked about the reliever conversions, the former relievers who are now starting, and in some cases starting effectively.

And who would have guessed that the Atlanta Braves most valuable pitcher so far this season is Reynaldo Lopez. I feel such a fool, Ben. I feel a fool. Do you feel a fool? I feel a fool. We were skeptical. I was so skeptical. Not even about whether he could do it, but whether he'd even really be given the opportunity to do it, whether they would- I was skeptical about whether he could do it, but whether he'd even really be given the opportunity to do it. I was skeptical about whether he could do it. Yeah, that too, right?

But thus far, he's been the mainstay. He's been the MVP of that rotation, which is down Spencer Strider now, which we didn't even talk about that. It makes me sad every time I think about it. That's why. It was almost like when the initial elbow issue happened, I just sort of gave him up as lost for the season. I mean, that's where we are now. It felt inevitable, didn't it?

I guess the good news is that it was an internal brace repair and not full TJ. So hopefully he'll be back and ready to go at the start of next season. But yeah, it almost felt like a formality given how his velo dropped and then the reports and the Braves were kind of cagey about what was going on there until the surgery actually happens. But we could kind of read the tea leaves and say, oh, there's no good news here probably. But with him out with some other members of the rotation struggling, suddenly Reynaldo Lopez, who looked like, oh, maybe they'll give him an audition. Maybe he'll get a shot. Maybe, okay, fifth starter.

We'll see how it goes. No, Reynaldo Lopez, Atlanta ace. Yeah, nails. And to be clear, I think that he's a very talented pitcher, but it was just going to be a sharp departure from what he has done previously, and he has had such success in that role. I didn't see much downside to them trying

because the worst that happens is actually he doesn't have, you know, the ability to go multiple times through the order and you just pop him out to the bullpen and like, oh no, that already incredibly good Braves bullpen just gets better. Like, whoops. So I didn't think there was much downside in them trying. We talk about this within the context of the Pirates. It's just hard to know, you know, you want to be appropriately skeptical of team decisions when it's like, we know how to do this, because sometimes they don't, you know, sometimes they're wrong about stuff. But generally, teams have a lot of information, some of which we, much of which we don't have

access to. And it's like, well, if they think he can do it, like they're not basing that decision on nothing. So maybe my skepticism isn't warranted. Maybe I'm being a silly goose. And as it turned out, at least so far in the early going, I feel I feel fool, Ben, you know, feel foolish. Well, one thing I said over the offseason, I think when we were talking about how many of these guys there seemed to be who were kind of are they starting? Are they relieving? You had a whole nomenclature debate as a result of it. Well, yeah, but the lines are blurring between these roles

anyway, so part of it was that I just thought, well, if you make someone a starter, that doesn't mean you're suddenly expecting them to go seven, eight innings, right? They don't have to go that deep into games. We've got openers, we've got bulk guys, we've got starters getting pulled after 59 pitches when they're going great, right? But Reynaldo Lopez has gone six in each of his three outings thus far. So it's not like he's just given them four

or five good ones and they're getting them out of there. He's giving them length by starting pitcher standards in 2024. So I would think also that teams should be better able to project and predict whether this will work. Whereas in the past, there was a lot more trial and error and it's, well, we'll let the hitters tell us whether this is a workable solution. Now, in theory, you can measure someone's stuff in the bullpen and if they have three or more viable pitches you could kind of project, okay maybe this will work. It seems like what the Rays have done with

Zach Littell with a number of other starters they've either restored pitches that were kind of backburnered or they've given guys new pitches and you can project how that will work with the rest of their repertoire and so it's not really wait and see, let's give them a shot. It's more like, well, does this guy have starter stuff or not?

Like we can know that based on a bullpen session, based on spring training. Maybe it's not quite the same, but it should be a good guide in a fairly small sample. So there should be, I think, less unpredictability about whether this will work, though. Maybe you still don't know, like, is there a starter reliever mindset? Is this guy's stuff going to play up in short bursts in real games? Or can he sustain it? Can he flip the switch the way Jordan Hicks seems to now as a starter? So I'm just saying it should be a bit more of a science than it once was. Yeah, I think that's right.

So I noticed also that there were back-to-back Fangraphs posts published on Wednesday. One was the Dodgers outfield has been very, very bad to start the season. And the next one was so far, Michael Bush has been a big hit for the Cubs. And those things kind of related, right? Because Michael Bush could have been a part of the Dodgers outfield. Now, he was primarily a first baseman, I know, and obviously was pretty blocked with the Dodgers at first base and at DH and in the outfield too. I mean, that's why they ended up trading him to the Cubs. But in retrospect, I wonder if that will be one who got away. You know, the Dodgers don't often make mistakes when it comes to evaluating their own guys. I

mean, there's the odd Jordan Alvarez in there, the one who gets away. But Michael Bush, you know, he was a prospect and he was major league ready. And there were people who saw him as a sleeper slash breakout guy like just needed playing time, needed an opportunity and he's made the most of it thus far with five consecutive games with home runs, right? He's raked and meanwhile the Dodgers outfield as

detailed in that post has not raked at all. The Dodgers outfield 64 WRC plus right now, which is second worst in the game, ahead of only the Phillies, who you might not expect to be there. But then again, they're not the all DH outfield

of the Phillies that you think of. There's some Christian Pache and some Johan Rojas, much more in the outfield where you're getting defense. There's also Brandon Marsh is hitting. And Nick Castellanos is just not hitting at all. Oh, it's so bad. Oh, it's so bad. Wow.

Not good. Not good. Wow. Wow. Yeah. Sorry. In case my whispers weren't audible. It's so bad.

Wow. Yeah. The Dodgers outfield has been very unproductive. And look, they're still in first place. They're the Dodgers. They'll probably be okay. And those guys will probably hit at some point. But they're not far ahead of the Padres

who have the best hitting outfield in all of baseball, 147 WRC+. So, again, just get shortstops. Dodgers, you should have had more shortstops. You should have converted all your shortstops. So, Michael Bush, I wonder if that's a case. It's too early to say whether the Dodgers will be crying over this spilt milk at length. But, you know, sometimes like you go sign Teoscar Hernandez, you go sign bigger names and maybe you force someone out and you end up wishing that you had that guy. I think it's very funny that we've had so many occasions to attribute to teams a whoops all whatever strategy, right? The Phillies were whoops all DHs and the Padres are whoops all shortstops.

That's just funny because I like saying whoops. So there's that piece of it. On the cereal, but you can say whoops if you prefer. It's whoops. It's not whoops. No, but feel free to say whoops. I have a note then. That was an oopsie for you.

No, I was offering an editorial note. It was very intentional. No, it was a whoops. Same meaning either way, right? Is whoops a word? That doesn't sound like a word anymore because of how much I've said it in the last 20 seconds. Whoops. Anyway, the single profile at a position or across an entire roster is funny.

It does turn out that it works better when you do that with shortstops than DHS. Who could have seen that coming? I think that with Bush, it's so interesting because the early returns are better. He's hitting the ball much harder, so that seems like it's good i do find it interesting to think about like how do we evaluate the dodgers within the context of mistakes because they just have so many good entrenched guys that just by virtue of the fact that they actually do have to respect a 26-man roster limit and a 40-man roster limit beyond that, they're inevitably going to trade away good players. It just seems like they have to because they're really good at drafting, they're really good at development, and they can only field so many guys. And so how do we think about mistake trades when it comes to them? And

I'm not saying that they never make them, but there's a different kind of rubric to apply to that decision-making process than you might have with another team. I do think that if Michael Bush were being pressed into outfield duty, that the degree to which he is not actually suitable to that task would have revealed itself such that our conversation about him, even if you were hitting well, might be really different than the one we're having, right? He is benefiting from the fact that he's not having to play out there in that way. But it's great for Michael Bush. I mean, I think that all you can really ask if you're a player is to not only get an opportunity, but if you're really fortunate, you're going to get an opportunity where it's an actual roster fit. We look at what Kyle Schwarber had to do last year as service, really, because somebody had to play out there, and even though he's terrible, it ended up being him. Whereas Bush just gets to be a first baseman. How nice for him. That's a good spot for Michael

Bush, a much better spot than really any other spot he could play except for maybe DH. Those are my thoughts on Michael Bush. I'm glad he's hitting well. I can't believe that we've gone this entire time without talking about how absolutely wild the D-backs Cubs game from last night was because it was

whoops all extras. Whoops all runs. And this is really, you know know cubs fans you might be upset and you should you should direct your ire i'm totally kidding be nice online but it's really john becker's fault because he decided he was gonna lead his column with uh the injury to say a suzuki and he's like i think this is you know gonna be in good shape provided that the game doesn't go too long when it did then. Then it went a long, long time. That was an old school game.

That was a three and a half hour long game, Ben. Yeah. So they had, what, on Monday, the Cubs and Diamondbacks played a 10 inning or 11 inning game. 11 inning game. And then they played a 10 inning game after that. I want more extras.

I haven't complained about the zombie runner recently. Would you like to? I mean, I have nothing new to complain about. It's the same complaint. I don't think that's the rubric by which we gauge complaint spend. That is not my experience on the internet. I don't know about yours. I want to make clear to everyone that all the complaints I have lodged about the zombie runner in the past still apply.

I have not warmed up to it. It's just that I suppose I've resigned myself to it to some extent, or at least I don't want to keep beating that dead horse or sadly living horse. And I would love for the zombie runner to go away, especially now that we've gotten the game times under control and we're post-pandemic

and all the initial rationales for why we needed to you know, it's like peak COVID. Oh, we got to shorten game times, et cetera, et cetera. Well, we got the pitch clock. We have vaccines. Like, can we now inoculate ourselves against the zombie runner, please? Can we please roll that back?

Probably not because it seems like most of the stakeholders are fine with it. But it continues to bother me whenever there is, say, a low-scoring game for the first nine innings that then gets completely out of hand when it becomes weird baseball after that. Not the old definition of weird baseball, which was when it would get really late and weird and fun. It rarely happens that way anymore, which is another thing I lament about the lack of extra, extra innings. When we were talking about that Rick Camp call by John Sterling last time, I mean, that game's not going to happen now, and that game,

super memorable, because it goes 18 or 19 innings. I know it taxes the staff, but it makes lifetime memories, at least for the sickos who are sticking it out, you know? So, I'm still mad and sad about it, just in case anyone was wondering. Just not for any new reasons, just the same ones. It should be a zombie horse, really.

I guess that's right. It's an undead horse. It's a zombie horse. So what you're really saying is that the league came up with, whoops, all excuses. Yeah, sure. It's not whoops. It's not whoops. It's not whoops, no. It's whoops. It's whoops, yeah.

Whoops, because it was all marshmallows, is that right? It was whoops, all marshmallows? It was whoops, all berries, right? It was the Captain Crunch. Oh, yeah, for kicks. Yeah, just with the berries. Crunch, I don't remember. Clearly, my memory of my own childhood is very hazy.

My 20th high school reunion is this summer, Ben. I just had to confirm that to someone in text and needed to, like, grasp the table and sit down. Got to go back to your reunion, you know, now that you're the co-host of Effectively Wild. I mean, you got to go back and lord that over everyone else, right? You've made something of yourself. I will definitely go back. I won't lord anything over anyone, but it will be interesting to see sort of how people interact with one another because the last time we had a high school reunion, at least one that I went to,

the most famous person from our class was a gal who had won The Bachelor and her season had aired relatively recently. So, yeah. Catherine Lowe was in my high school graduating class. She was Catherine Giudice back then. Nice gal. But, yeah, I wonder how the sands of time have treated the Roosevelt High School

class of 2004. Oh, four? As we like to refer to ourselves when we were not at all obnoxious. Anyway. One of the few bachelor success stories, lasting relationship. Yeah, yeah. My understanding is that they're still married and have a couple of kids and seem to be doing well.

So good for them. Quite a rarity. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, the Dodgers were so confident in their outfield, in their outfield depth that Bush was not the only nominal outfielder that was considered expendable. They had a surplus. I mean, they traded Johnny DeLuca right in the Glasnow-Ryan Peppio trade as well.

He's been hurt so far, so I guess they're not really ruing that one so much. And then they also had Manuel Margot, who was in that deal, too. For like a minute, they had Manuel Margot. Yeah, very briefly. And then he went to the Twins in another deal, right? But yeah, they had a whole bunch of outfielders, and they thought, no, we're good. And I guess I understand why. It just hasn't worked out so well thus far.

But it will get better. We'll remind people here that they brought up just yesterday, Andy Pahez. Right. He got his first big league hit, right? Yep. He did well in that game. So, you know. It is mid-April.

It is mid-April. Yeah. Yeah. By the way, Shohei Otani, we haven't really talked about his actual play thus far because we've had a whole bunch of other reasons to talk about Joey Otani. A lot of other things. Man, I can't wait to ask people what they think of Otani at my high school reunion. Oh, yeah.

Stay tuned. And he's maybe been overshadowed on the field by Mookie who is just lighting the league on fire. Playing like an MVP. Yeah. But Otani, despite the elbow surgery, despite people suspecting him of making illegal bets. He has a 172 WRC plus? He's hitting almost exactly like he did last year. Despite the intense personal betrayal he has seemingly suffered.

Like on our Dodgers preview, I was like, how do you move past that? I was like, we've seen him, you know, get bad injury news and go out and knowing that he has to have Tommy John still hit home runs like he's able to compartmentalize maybe. But what he's been through this season is something that even he has not been through before. And I guess good news and bad news. He got married. But then, I mean, his personal life has been in turmoil in all sorts of ways.

And clearly, he is not carrying that onto the field because he is continuing to mash. He's just hitting like the Dodgers signed him to hit. So, seemingly, he is one of these guys who it's just like, you know, once I'm between the white lines, right? Like everything else, I kind of forget about. Even though he's just DHing, he's talked in the past about how he enjoys being a two-way player. Just he likes focusing on both of those things and not just dwelling on one, but everything he's had to dwell on, just DH duty, as well as his continued rehab. He's hitting, don't let that go unnoticed in the Mookie reign of terror on the rest of the league right now. Yeah. He has a 172 WRCRC+. His WOBA is 433.

His ex-WOBA is 470. Yeah. So that's something. I don't know how reliable ex-WOBAs are at the beginning of the season. Yeah, probably not very at all. Forget I even said it, Ben. Forget I even mentioned it. It might mean something, but they always recenter that stuff as the season goes on.

Like you might have a different ball, you have colder weather, whatever, right? But yeah, he's crushing. Yeah, they do. currently stands, will be untaxed many, many millions of dollars. And that might be one reason why his contract is structured the way it is. But they're trying to close that loophole, and understandably so. It's state senator Josh Baker introduced legislation last week. Now, they can't actually do anything. The California state senate cannot change this. It's like a federal law that has to be changed, but they are trying to pass a resolution to urge Congress to do something, to establish a reasonable cap on deferred compensation. And this will be debated and voted on in the California State Senate. But I appreciated that Josh Becker, you know, often politicians will use the language of baseball, some of them baseball fans,

lots of old white men are politicians and lots of old white men, baseball fans. There's some crossover there. And there have been articles written about that. I think Brian Curtis did something once about politics and baseball language. But Becker said, ultimately, this is about fairness. This is earned income. This is not retirement income. This is income that is earned here and should be taxed here. It wasn't what the federal tax code was meant to contemplate. It's a massive hidden ball trick. So you got to end with the baseball reference. And we've lamented the lack of hidden ball tricks, actual ones in baseball these days. And I guess this is the closest we're going to come, Shohei Otani and his deferred untaxed compensation.

Well, I applaud the reference there. I feel like that is apropos. Yeah, like, you know, rich people should pay taxes. It's like a foundational principle for me. He is probably right that this is not remotely what anyone kind of had in mind when they wrote the federal tax code. So figuring out a way to bring that into closer alignment with our understanding of like what it means to earn income as a worker seems like a perfectly reasonable thing do you think that the reason he is performing so well on the field is because of his weird dog that dog's still weird i'm right about this that's a weird dog

something's wrong with that you're you're alone on this island i know and you know i've spent time both publicly and privately over the last couple of weeks bemoaning the conspiratorial thinking that has permeated the baseball Internet even after the 37-page criminal complaint against Ipe came out. But this conspiracy mountain I will – hill I will die on. There's something weird about that dog. It's a weird dog. See, this is like Bigfoot. This is like a harmless conspiracy. Other people are doing stuff that's really weird.

But I'm not. I'm perfect. Clearly. I'm the normal one. Everyone else. I'm the normal one. I think there's something weird about that dog. I'm just here to tell you.

Again. Yes. Again. But it's something I believe. Yeah. It's the children who are wrong. Yeah. Again. But it's something I believe. Yeah. It's the children who are wrong. Yeah. Yeah.

I felt compelled to tweet yesterday that I'm still noticing the uniforms being a big old mess. I'm still noticing, Ben. Every day I notice. I notice every day. And somewhere in the league office, there's a person who's thinking they've all forgotten. And I want that person to know, not me, not me. I'm in these trenches.

I'm you're still upset about the zombie runner. So I might be not to know, not me, not me. I'm in these trenches. You're still upset about the zombie runner. So I might be not as upset as you. And I am still mad about these uniforms. They are still wrong. And that dog is still weird. Right. We're just registering our continued objections, lest anyone think that we forgot about these things. It's like you have to, you know, extend a trademark on something every now and then. We just have to renew our vows of vengeance against these things so that people know where we still stand. One of the conspiracy theories that you're alluding to there, the Shohei Otani rumor mongering, one of them, of course, I think we briefly discussed the idea that maybe Ipe didn't report the offers to Otani that he received like Shohei

this entire time. He hasn't known he had offers from the Bujays and Giants, right? Like Ipe just steered him, you know, wanted to stay in SoCal where he grew up or something. Though, wouldn't you think Ipe would want to be in a state where gambling was legal? Then again, I guess he maybe claimed not to have known it wasn't legal in California. Who knows? But another one is the idea that the deferred compensation structure of Otani's contract, that was somehow engineered by Ipe as a way of imposing some limitation upon himself when it came to the gambling. Like because he was pulling from Otani's payroll account. Okay, I will limit myself to the $2 million a year or whatever. And Otani, I guess,

in this scenario is just like, sure, I'll defer $680 million because my pal, an interpreter, asked me to for undisclosed reasons or I guess maybe like Ipe could have incepted the idea in Otani somehow, you know, without giving away the real reason why he wanted to restrain his own spending. As far as we know, Ipe, despite seemingly stealing many millions of dollars, was still in debt by many more millions of dollars.

If he lost 41 or whatever it was and paid back or stole 16, there's a lot of money unaccounted for there, which I assume he just never repaid and never will repay as far as we know. So I assume that's the answer to that one. But yeah, I don't think that that is why Shohei Otani suggested that contract structure. suggested that contract structure. But I would think that this is a case, all this has been so publicly reported that probably Ipe could not have hid these things from Otani, even if he wanted to. And hopefully the agent would have gotten involved when it came to like, making sure Shohei knew which teams were in the market for his services. My read of the criminal complaint was that part of how Mizuhara was able to do what he did is that he was often sitting in between Otani and his other representatives. It wasn't as if the, you know, some of the shenanigans were the result of Nesbolelo communicating with

Mizuhara and then there not being further communication to Otani because they weren't all physically in the same place. But I have to imagine that like when it comes to your free agency, the biggest free agency in recent baseball history, that that probably didn't happen quite as much, right? That there was much more concentrated and face-to-face communication. And as we have seen, like, you know, while Otani isn't a fluent English speaker, he, I'm sure, was able to parse, like, Blue Jays and Giants. Like, what is the theory of the crime here? You know what I mean?

Like, it just doesn't make sense. Also, wasn't it reported that they all toured facilities together? Yeah, right. That, like, Otani went down to the complex in Florida for at least the Blue Jays, if I'm remembering correctly, and, like, looked around. So having frustration that this transcendent baseball player did not sign with your team is completely understandable. And, you know, it is clear that there was misrepresentation on Mizuhara's part to other people in Otani's circle who might have been able to intervene on the theft at an earlier time. And those things being true don't necessarily mean that, like, he got bamboozled into being a dodger. You know what i mean like it just you know that doesn't seem

feasible given to your point the public nature of his free agency and how many rumors were swirling publicly about what was going on and what the contract offers were and how they sort of stacked up relative to one another so i'm skeptical that that is an explanation for where Otani ended up. And like, it's also seemingly silly because it's like, he did end up being a Los Angeles Dodger. Yeah. It's not like you told me, like, he's not a Marlin, you know, if he had, if he had signed with the Angels this time around, like for the first time, and we were all wondering why the angels, like we were in 2018. Then I could see the basis for the conspiracy theories. Now he ended up with the team that everyone had connected him to forever, right? So not unexpected. I don't want to tell people not to be skeptical of official accounts when there's stuff that

doesn't make sense. And I think that, you know, in the early going of this scandal, it was very reasonable to look at the fact that from what we knew at the time, like, Otani's story seemed to have changed. And in the course of a very short stretch of time, that that was strange, you know. And it was strange. And at the time, we remarked upon it being quite strange. But we have, first of all, additional reporting that came out since then, right? The TikTok that we got of sort of the

back and forth between ESPN and Mizuhara and then ESPN and the rest of Otani's camp. Like, we had much greater clarity into the timeline within a couple of days of the initial story coming out. And then we have a 37-page criminal complaint from the federal government, right? There's no incentive for them to have taken it easy on Otani, and they were quite detailed in what happened and when. So I think that when there are facts that are unknown, it's quite reasonable to say, hey, that's weird and unknown. What's going on? And that you might even offer theories of it. But like, I do, I do want to set the precedent of us like responding to understandable and new information and going like, oh, we've answered that question, right? Like asking questions is reasonable. And then when you're provided with answers and those

answers make sense, you should take those answers and be like, I don't have that particular question anymore. You might have other questions like what the hell was going on with this bank what's wrong with that bank or like is nezbolelo gonna remain otani's agent why didn't they notice something sooner you know when in the process they have known that something was wrong we asked that question right so you can ask new questions but it's just like i got very stressed ben by the conspiracies they made me feel very unnerved because there's so much conspiratorial thinking in our culture and some of it is very damaging and some of it is like i think there might be a big foot and like that's fine you can think that that's that's like a harmless thing to think even though it's i think probably not

true so you know like i don't want to make too much of it but i also want us to like have the instinct of like responding to well-documented information and going yeah okay because like what else what else do people need now you know like this is a this is a an investigation that encompassed thousands of man hours has full forensics of multiple people's phones. It has some person who had to sit and translate pages and pages of texts for hours and hours. There's audio recordings of Mizuhara doing fraud to the bank. If that's not enough, what would satisfy you? And that's a good question for people to sit with. Cause it's like, that's a lot of stuff from a, you know, a body that has like subpoena power. Anyway, I feel like I'm all worked up this episode. I'm sorry.

By the way, you use the term TikTok, which I use sometimes too. And I've seen that sometimes cause confusion among our listeners because they're like, Oh, I don't mean like a TikTok, TikTok, the social media platform. No, but it's sort of an inside journalism media term maybe and is not familiar in this context to everyone. But TikTok, as in the tick and tock of a clock, because it's a type of story, right? Where it's the chronological order of events. It's like this happened and then that happened

and the story takes you through how everything unfolded. That's a TikTok style story. So that's what we mean when we say this. Yes. It's good that you clarified. I don't know if people would have gleaned this from everything I've said about myself as a human person, but I don't understand TikTok. I'm very nervous about it. I'm not saying it needs to be banned. I'm not taking a legislative stance here, but I will never be referring to a TikTok. I will be never doing that because I don't understand. I don't get it. Well, you did just say that your 20th high school reunion is coming up.

So I guess that establishes that maybe you're not into TikTok. It happens so fast. It just happens so fast where I was like, I don't understand this. And I'm not saying it's like bad or evil or corruptive or anything like that as a result of that. I'm not doing that dance. But I am saying I don't understand this. And I'm not saying it's like bad or evil or corruptive or anything like that as a result of that. I'm not doing that dance. But I am saying I don't get that. And I am not yet 40. So that feels like it happened too fast. It feels like it was too fast.

A couple other follow-ups. When we met Blaze Alexander, I mentioned he went to IMG Academy and that it is a prestigious sports school. And we were noting with some surprise that John Ryan Murphy is apparently the most accomplished major league alum of IMG. However, it has acquired that reputation. First of all, it's a tennis factory. Lots of tennis superstars went to IMG. Also, lots of baseball superstars have trained at IMG. So that is maybe why we were thinking of it as some sort of baseball hotbed or powerhouse. It's just not so much that people went to school there, right, at that point in their lives. Wanted to clarify that.

I don't know how much people go to school there, even when they go to school there, to be clear. Right. Also, when we were talking about the Mipe Shohei story, we mentioned that, hey, look over in the NBA. There's a pretty serious gambling story going on there. And I mentioned recently that Adam Silver had raised the specter of a lifetime ban for Toronto Raptors player Jonte Porter. He has now imposed that lifetime ban. That has happened. So, I mean, this is the worst case scenario for a sports league and also a scenario that seems like it's going to become increasingly realistic just as access to gambling, albeit legal, is more widespread as more people develop gambling problems, as there's just more money in this world as the leagues themselves promote it. So, Jonte Porter, who is not a superstar, he was sort of on a split contract. He was in the G League. Sometimes he was in the NBA. Sometimes he was sort of a prospect, as I understand it, but not a star and not very well established and not making an enormous amount of money by professional athlete standards. So So maybe that made him a likely candidate to do this if anyone was going to be, but he has now been banned for life from the NBA.

He, I'm reading from the athletic breakdown here, privately told a sports better he was injured, remove himself from a game to control prop bets on his own play, and placed his own wagers on NBA games. He did not bet on games he was involved in, supposedly. He did bet against his team, the Raptors, in a parlay, in a game he was not involved in, and then he bet on other games he was not playing in. But he knowingly, it seems, gave someone inside info on himself in order to place bets and then took himself out of a game or games to make those bets

pay off. And yeah, that's really bad. So he's the first active player or coach to be expelled from the NBA for gambling since Jack Malinas in 1954. That's a long time ago. Of course, the NBA has had gambling scandals more recently with referees, Tim Donaghy, right? But there is always the specter of this. This is always what sports leagues are worried about,

especially now that they're so in bed with sportsbooks. And there's no reason why something like this couldn't happen in the majors, certainly in the minors where the money is not as big. Like this has happened in soccer. It's happened in tennis. It's happened, you know, all sorts of match fixing scandals in less prominent places. But it happens in the NBA. Everyone sits up and takes notice and probably all the other commissioners are like there but for the grace of, I don't know, luck, go I, right? And maybe we will go there at some point in the future.

So don't be shocked when we get an MLB version of Jonte Porter. The thing that I was struck by when I was reading it was just like how low the totals were. You know, these weren't like big money totals and it seems like that was probably the piece of it that i found both the most surprising and the most disconcerting because the way that i think a lot of people think about this is like well you would need it would need to be life-changing money if you were going to risk your career you know that this career you've worked so hard for to to play some prop bets and like this was like you know, that this career you've worked so hard for to, to play some prop bets. And like, this was like, you know, in the tens of thousands of dollars, it wasn't, it wasn't like,

I know that some of the bets that were placed by others using information he had provided would have yielded a larger payout, but in terms of his own participation, it was relatively small. So I found that disconcerting. I know that, you know, the reason we know that any of this happened was because he was betting or his associates were betting, depending, you know, on which bet you're talking about, using legal sports books. And there's all kinds of tracking that goes on, which isn't to suggest that there might not be ways to circumvent that. And obviously, when you start operating in the kind of world that Lake Misohara was, you're not getting sort of an accounting of that unless there's a federal investigation into the bookmaker, right? I guess, you know, in some ways, like the ability to surveil these folks is useful, but I still think the overarching message for me is like, when you get in with these outfits, you are creating an environment where people are like primed to bet, they want to bet. And like, the most valuable way for them to do that is with inside information. And so I just, I doubt strongly

this is the last time we're going to see this. And, you know, there are going to be plenty of people who say, I'll never get caught. It'll never happen to me, you know, and it's like, well, we probably will. And, you know, I hope it does when it happens because the most threatening ones from an existential perspective are probably the bets that we don't see, right? Right. Yeah. And he placed at least 13 bets on NBA games using an associate's online betting account, which I guess is why it wasn't flagged immediately, maybe. But how easy would it be for a baseball player to do that, right? And as you said, the wagers ranged in size from $15 to $22,000, totaled $54,000.

So he's not playing in the same sphere that Ipe was. And also, I guess he was way better at betting because he netted $22,000 in winnings. So good job, I guess, ultimately. Doesn't pay off, right? And even the $80,000 parlay, which would have returned $1.1 million, that's the one that someone else placed, that he took himself out of the game. I think that one did not pay off, and it was just suspicious that there was that much wagered on that. That activity triggers that scrutiny, which is, again, one virtue of it being legal and not just totally shady and off the books entirely. But yeah, he was making $415,000 on his two-way contract.

So it's not like he was hard up exactly, at least based on that. So it's a shame. And the NFL has suspended lots of players, sort of different rules and circumstances. But it's coming for MLB. As we said, they sort of dodged a bullet with Shohei and his personal participation. But it's coming for MLB. As we said, they sort of dodged a bullet with Shohei and his personal participation. But it's coming one of these days. So the other thing is I had some thoughts on a college baseball player, which is very rare. But I was attracted to a highlight of Jack Caglione. of Jack Caglione. Now, I've been aware of Jack Caglione because he's one of the better-known college baseball players,

and he's a two-way player, left-handed hitting first baseman and left-handed pitcher, which makes him of special interest to me and not just me. But he hit a home run that everyone was claiming went 516 feet.

That was what was on the ESPN crawl, yeah. Yeah. Another fastball. Look out, was on the ESPN crawl. Yeah. Yeah. Another fastball. Look out face on the scoreboard. That actually might hit it. That went over the scoreboard, ladies and gentlemen, here at the Conjuring Ballpark. Another jack for jack. 21st of the year and that's seven straight games that he has left the yard. I mean, there's no way that it went 516 feet. No one hits home runs 516 feet. That's like the tall tales you hear of Mickey Mantle hit a ball and someone in the PR department paced out and it was this many feet

and it probably wasn't really. I doubt that it was that distance. I mean, the longest home run tracked in the majors by StatCast since 2015 is 505 feet that Nomar Mazzara home run in 2019. Granted, metal bat, as you could tell from the ping, not as juiced, I believe, as those bats used to be, but still metal. And I think the wind was blowing out. So maybe Jack Caglione has a lot metal. And I think the wind was blowing out. So maybe

Jack Caglione has a lot of power. I doubt he has quite that much. And there was a tweet by the Florida Gators Caglione's team that said, like, it's the longest home run of the stat cast era, which I guess is true, but like, they're not using stat cast. It's not actual stat cast in place there. So it seems like kind of apples and oranges. I mean, if someone in beer league softball hit a ball 520 feet, I guess you could say it's the longest of the StatCast era, but it wasn't actually tracked by StatCast. Also, the players who are actually tracked by StatCast don't use metal bats. So it's not apples and oranges.

It's wood and aluminum. I checked with Eric Langenhagen, who knows about these things, and he said he's pretty sure Florida does not have TrackMan because their home data doesn't show up in the college data that he sources. He thinks they use something,

like presumably that was based on something, RepSoto or Kinetrax or what, but it isn't TrackMan and it certainly isn't StatCast exactly. Anyway, I was wondering, clearly he crushed the ball. Clearly he has a lot of power. He's hit 21 home runs this college season, but I'm most intrigued by him because of the two-way play.

And he is a legitimate two-way prospect, but I was trying to gauge how excited I should be. Like, is this really the first test case post-peak Otani? I know we had, like, Brendan McKay, and he got hurt, and there have been some others. But for a true, legitimate two-way player prospect to come along now after Otani's shown that it can be done. And, of course, there are all the alternate histories, the what-ifs. What if Dave Winfield came along now? What if John Ulrood came along now?

Would they be allowed to be two-way players in pro ball? And maybe Jack will be that guy. But based on what Eric told me, he is more of a prospect as a hitter, certainly. So Eric said he's absolutely a prospect as both a hitter and pitcher. His arm strength has backed up this year. Last season, he was topping out at 101. This is off the mound. This year, he's topping out at 96, 97 and averaging more 93, 94. His command is not good. His likely role as a pitcher would be in the bullpen because of his poor control. And it only makes sense to explore that if he's going to sit

96 plus in relief. If we assume the pitcher he's been in 2024 is the one he'll be for good, then he's a superior prospect as a hitter where he has immense power and is a round up long-term guy once he focuses solely on that. He's had strikeout percentage improvement this year, still not a good hit tool and could, like Spencer Jones, figure out how to shorten up and still hit for power because he's so big and strong. I view him less likely to be a two-way big leaguer now than I did at this time last year because of how his pitching down and hitting up have trended. So sort of disappointing to me, but there's still a chance.

I'm holding out hope until proven otherwise. You wouldn't think that a guy who has touched triple digits and hits supposedly 516 feet homers would be the obvious slam dunk number one pick, but not necessarily, right? He's like a top five guy, certainly, but it's a weird class. I was talking to Bauman. Again, I reached out to Bauman to talk about college baseball. That's how intrigued I was. It's a weird class. Yeah, it's a weird class because arguably the top prospect is an Australian second baseman who is short, right?

Travis Pisana. And normally you wouldn't think college second baseman is great for a player's long-term potential because, you know, if you're a second baseman in amateur ball, what do you project as long-term potential? Because, you know, if you're a second baseman in amateur ball, what do you project as long-term? But he's still a top guy and then there are other guys who are like first baseman, you know, and so positionally

it's sort of a strange makeup to the top of the class. But I'm rooting for Jack, even though his name confuses me because his name is not Jack. Those are like his initials, right? He's Jeffrey Allen Caglione, which is Jack. And then also it doesn't look like it should be Caglione. It looks like it

should be Caglione or Caglione, right? But it's Caglione, even though it's Caglione. And then there's a one at the end of it. It's C-A-G-L-I-A-N-O-N-E. So I think he's mispronouncing his own name. That's my contention. But Jack Caglione is what he's going with. So that's what I will go with. And he's had Tommy John surgery too, because who hasn't? That's everything I know about college baseball. I'm so impressed. I love that you did real reporting on this and talked to multiple. I sent a Slack message to Eric and a Gchat to Michael. Yeah, you did some work there.

Some real shoe weather work there. Yeah, my favorite thing is that Jack Caglione has been referred to by Mike Rooney on various ESPN broadcasts as the Jack wagon because that sounds a little dirty in a way that I support. He's a big guy. He's a big guy who's got big power, and he throws, and he gives you an excuse to watch Florida and realize that their uniforms are better than the big leaguers, and that's embarrassing. Jack Wagon.

It is weird that he goes by Jack, it's not short for like Jack or Jackson or I don't know. What other names do men have that get shortened to Jack? John for some reason. What's up with that? Yep. What is up with that, Ben? What's that about? I don't know.

Why is Jack a nickname for John? I'll do some further reporting on that. Yeah. Go get it. Okay. Yeah, go get it. Okay. Yeah. Well, according to Quora, which is a very reliable source, probably not quite as reliable as messaging members of the Fangraph staff,

but the name Jack is a derivative of John, which originated in medieval England. The name went from John to Johnkin to Jenkin to Jackin to Jack. Maybe it just evolved that way from more Jack-sounding names. Yeah. Okay. I don't know about that. Okay. And also,

it's been a rough week for nonagenarians and thus by extension for me because we lost a couple prominent ones. Wetty Herzog, Hall of Fame manager, former executive,

and also Carl Erskine, who was one of the last living links to the Brooklyn Dodgers on the field and one of the more visible and vocal surviving Dodgers in recent years. They both passed away. Whitey at 92, Erskine at 97, I believe. Always sorry to see a nonagenarian go. But I was thinking with Whitey, like, you know, we didn't get to experience Whitey Ball because Whitey Ball ended when we were probably still in diapers, right? But we've heard about his celebrated career. And I think a large part of the outpouring of affection for him and the remembrances for him and for the brand of baseball that he instituted in St. Louis, put the ball in play, hit for high averages, get on base, play defense, run wild on the bases.

For a lot of people, maybe who grew up and were weaned on baseball in the 80s or not, that is kind of the model. That's what everyone wants baseball to be. That's what everyone wants baseball to be. When I started working at Baseball Perspectives as a research assistant, they were working on a book about the 80s, which never came out, sadly. It's still, I think, largely sitting on Steve Goldman's hard drive in some form. All the time I put in at the library pouring through the microfilm to look up quotes for that book, has gone for naught thus far. But part of it was that the 80s, I think, with a lot of people, granted, maybe it's just that the people who were at BP at the time kind of grew up on baseball in the 80s, and they look back fondly at baseball in the 80s the way that people look back at every brand of baseball that they grew up with. But also, there is

something to be said for that brand of baseball, the contact, the speed, the variability in the makeup of teams, the fact that Whitey's Cardinals could be so good despite having no slug and not hitting for any power whatsoever, but making up for it in other ways. Part of that is people being nostalgic for a brand of baseball that we don't really have anymore that MLB is trying to bring back to some extent. I mean, Bryan Cranston invoking Ozzie, right? Yeah. And I think that's what people say they want to some extent. It's not purely just nostalgia. It's also like people like base running. They like the ball in play.

You like that too, as you've said recently. I do. And they were kind of the epitome of that. And they made it work so well, partly by virtue of the deep fences and artificial turfs of the time by getting on base, by hitting for high averages, by just playing sound defense and running like wild. It's an exciting brand of baseball that really we don't have so much anymore today. And there isn't quite as much diversity in winning strategies of baseball teams anymore. So I think it's partly that. And I think it's partly also a manager putting his stamp on a team to that extent, which you

don't really see that much anymore. Like, can you imagine any manager today having their own branded ball, you know? Like, what would that even be, right? Because managers are such extensions of the front office and Whitey for a large part of his career was the front office. He was doing double duty. He was a GM and a manager. So he was making the trades and he was determining the playing time. And so a manager could really shape the way that a team played more so than they can today. What would, you know, Council Ball be? What would Melvin Ball be? Like, these managers don't really have distinctive hallmarks anymore because they don't really have the power to, or maybe the game

has been optimized to the extent, or at least people think that they've determined, you know, the way to win so that there aren't really differing philosophies of the game anymore. Yeah, I think that's right. I think it would be difficult at least to have it be associated with you. I think that the primacy of baseball ops in the modern landscape is such that people wouldn't necessarily look at even a very well-regarded tactical manager and say that he was doing all of that on his own. Part of what we laud with big league managers

today is a willingness to have dialogue with the front office, with players, with other members of the coaching staff, with player dev, to have them be sort of the point person for all of that, but someone very much in conversation with the rest of the organization. When you're insular, I think that's when we tend to think that managers have sort of lost their touch or lost their way. So I think you're right. It would be very hard for, no, there are managers who are better known than others. And I think there are guys who develop strong reputations and are thought of as being particularly good at their job. But I think the range of outcomes is much narrower than it used to be. And, you know, some of the guys who have

had sort of the most distinctive careers who we think of as being a force in some way, like they're retiring now, right? Like Francona's done. So I don't know. Who do you think the most famous manager in the big leagues is right now? It's probably Dave Roberts, right? Dave Roberts, yeah, probably the best known. I guess you could say council maybe most respected or most desired, highest paid perhaps. Yeah. But a lot of those guys, what would you even say Dave Roberts, like what's Roberts' ball? I don't know. Like clearly the players really like him. Like he is good in the clubhouse. He gets those teams winning every season. They have a ton of talent. How much of that is Roberts? How much of it is Roberts just not screwing things up at least until he gets to the playoffs. I mean, he's one of the more successful managers of all time, like in terms of winning percentage. And yet people probably associated him with early exits from the postseason and maybe some questionable decisions that he's made in those series. But yeah, I don't like what is Roberts ball independent of, say, Friedman ball or Dodgers philosophy at large? I don't know, really. Right. And you think about someone like, say, Kevin Cash, who, boy, his longevity has kind of snuck up on me a little bit. You know, you think

about someone like Kevin Cash, who I think is also one of the better known managers and part of why is because of pulling snow when he did. Right. And I don't think that most people would draw a distinction between his approach to that particular decision or other decisions he makes and the rest of the raised sort of brain trust, right? Like they work as a unit and that's why it works at all, right? So I do think it's a hard thing to say like, you know, this is my team. Now, I think that there are probably managers who do have better working relationships than others with their front office. I don't think that everybody is as closely aligned to say, you know, my impression of cash and the rest of the raised front office. But I think that the differences are a lot narrower, just kind of across the board now.

Now, sadly, I will be without you on the next episode because you've got a wedding to attend. But I want to get your thoughts on a few emails here before you escape. Linder, Patreon supporter, says, this is something related to a topic we've been talking about recently. I'm intrigued by the delayed starts of pitchers who have extended free agencies that caused them to miss spring training, such as Blake Snell and Jordan Montgomery this year. It's always reported that these free agents have their own spring camps

where they're ramping up their workloads, but once they're signed by a team, they need to gradually increase their pitching load and aren't fully ready to go into game action right away. Does this mean they aren't working hard enough in their free agent camp? Why should they be any less stretched out than pitchers who went to team spring trainings? I was wondering this too, because we've seen Blake Snell have a couple rough,

essentially spring training tune-up starts, but for the Giants, Montgomery is about to make his season debut, but hasn't pitched in the majors yet. And these are both Scott Boris clients. They have access to Boris Corp facilities, or at least they did before Jordan Montgomery changed to a different agency. But Boris has bragged before about how some of his free agents who haven't signed, they basically have major league quality facilities at their disposal. Why do you think it is that these guys needed an additional ramp up, and we're talking weeks here, why could they not just ramp up on their own and get up to a certain pitch count and say, okay, once I'm signed, I'm more or less

ready to go? I'm sure that they're throwing to live batters, but the quality of who they're throwing to and game action probably, right? It's a different thing to have to throw in a game, even a spring training game, than it is to throw off the mound. They might be doing some amount of simulated games. I'm not sure. You know, probably depends on the year. You'd think they could or should be in preparation, unless it's just that they didn't know when they would sign.

Right. So I guess that complicates things. You don't want to ramp up too early. How you ramp up too early. How you ramp up might matter. Yeah, it might change. But if they were both anticipating, hoping, planning that they would sign around or before opening day, then I wonder. Because you think like hitters now these days, they have very advanced pitching machines that mimic pitcher motions. I mean, there are people

out there who suggest that we don't need as long as spring training, or maybe you don't even need minor league games. Again, like we need minor league games because people go to them and become baseball fans. And it's just a nice thing for the fabric of the sport in the country. But in terms of like training prospects, why couldn't you just have some sort of soccer style academy and you have all these advanced machines that give you immediate feedback like we were talking about before. You maybe know more in a bullpen session than you would have in actual outings in some respects in the past. So why then couldn't you say, well, I'm just going to get my arm strength up to the point where I can throw X number of pitches and then it'll be an easy transition. But maybe it is just the lack of foreknowledge

when it comes to the timeline exactly, at least in part. I do think that part of it probably has something to do with even if they're doing simulated games, like the quality of opposition that they're seeing, because it's like you're not going up against other big leaguers. And I know everyone's ramping up. So it's a weird environment. it's not like everyone's at mid-season form that's what they're working toward right but I imagine some of it is that where it's like even once you're going you're who are you throwing to again like it can't be all JD Martinez he has to rest you know occasionally he has to sit down so I don't know yeah I guess maybe it was just as much a surprise to them as it was to us that their off-seasons, their free agencies extended as long as they did.

So perhaps they weren't prepared for it. But I wonder if they had known whether it would have been possible to get up to speed sooner so that there would be less of a ramp up post signing. Hopefully it's not an issue that too many pitchers will have to deal with. Relatedly, Marcus asked, is there any data on pitcher arm injuries from Japan? I'm curious if any conclusions can be made from their pre-tact ball and adoption or non-adoption of the sweeper. Are you familiar with any article that has looked into this? And you can tell me what your impression of this. I have not seen good data on injury rates. It could be just that that info hasn't been published in English or isn't easily accessible.

I think NPB teams are also a little less forthcoming with injury information than MLB teams are. But my understanding from reading, from talking to people who cover NPP is that there are fewer elbow injuries, fewer Tommy John surgeries. There are still some, partly maybe it's that the pitchers aren't as big. They don't throw as hard, though they are throwing harder there as pitchers are pretty much everywhere. There have been plenty of overuse issues with high school kids racking up ridiculous pitch counts at the Koshin tournament, for instance. We did an interview about that on episode 1621, but often overuse injuries tend to be shoulder related, whereas velocity related stuff, max effort is more elbow related.

I found one study on this from a few years ago that did seem to back that up, that just biomechanical differences between Japanese and American professional baseball pitchers, it was called, it was published in 2019 and appears to have been a collaboration between some Japanese doctors and some American biomechanical researchers. And they put American pitchers and Japanese pitchers side by side and kind of wired them up and found that the deliveries were different and maybe that was part of it, but also the sizes and the speeds involved. But I think the trend in speeds and maybe in injuries is also up over there, but I don't think it has been as big an issue. And I don't know if this is a case where

we should be learning from MPB or from other Asian leagues or whether it's just conditions are different and maybe the ways in which they're different are illustrative of why we have so many injuries now that maybe it is more velocity related. But that's at least my general impression. I'm sorry I don't have a harder data answer. I don't know that I have like a better answer than that either, but it certainly seems like it would merit some consideration to see if we can discern anything from it, you know? And here's one where I was also semi in the dark. And so I outsourced the answer to an expert, which is a nice thing you can do when you co-host a podcast. Bluey Ranger on Patreon, who is a big Bluey fan.

People are all worked up about Bluey. Yeah. Well, Bluey gets a lot of screen time in my household as well. And there's a big new supersized Bluey. So everyone is very excited about Bluey. Supersized Bluey. What does that mean? How long is a supersized Bluey?

Well, most of them are very short. They're under 10 minutes. And this one was like a full sitcom length, like half hour almost. So Bluey didn Well, most of them are very short. They're under 10 minutes. And this one was like a full sitcom length, like half hour almost. So Bluey didn't get bigger. No, Bluey was the same size. Yeah. Okay. Did you know that the Peppa Pig people clarified that Peppa Pig is not actually seven feet tall? I did not know that. I'm so upset. I don't have kids. I've seen like four episodes of Peppa Pig with my nieces. I wanted Peppa Pig to be seven feet tall. I don't even, I don't have kids. I've seen like four episodes of Peppa Pig with my nieces. I wanted Peppa Pig to be seven feet tall.

Why isn't that pig seven feet tall? Make that pig seven feet tall. Anyway. I like Bluey. My daughter likes Bluey a lot. People like Bluey. I'm pro Bluey. I think maybe the Bluey hype has gotten a little out of hand.

Am I going to get canceled for saying that? Bluey backlash. It's good. I get it. I get that it's like a desert of TV when it comes to kids programming from an adult perspective and it works for adults and kids. And so it's like an oasis in that desert and maybe that makes it look even better by comparison. And it really is a good show. It's not a show that I would like choose to watch without my daughter personally. I mean, I think it's fine if you do. I'm just, you know, that's

my level of Louis. People get so touchy about this stuff. I know. I'm very worried. I'm tiptoeing. I'm on thin ice here. It's good. I'm not saying it's not good. Okay. Hey, man. None of you are having to watch Caillou, so you're doing great. That kid sucked. Man, that kid sucked.

I like kids, but that big kid sucked. Being from Australia and a cricket fan, one thing I've never understood is the foul tip rule. In cricket, if you edge, that's what we call a tip. Edging and tips, all different kinds of connotations over here, Bluey Ranger. Bluey Ranger, but if you edge the ball, oh my goodness, to either the wicket keeper backstop or the slips fielders, it is a legit dismissal of the batter. Why in baseball, when it is not a two strike count, is the rule that it is just called a strike. Surely if the ball comes off the bat and is caught by a fielder, whether that's the catcher or an outfielder in foul territory, it should just be an out. I do not see how a foul ball in the outfield is different from a foul ball

at home plate. Well, fair. It is kind of inconsistent. I mean, not fair, but... Exactly. There's a reason for this inconsistency. So, Richard Hirschberger, historian, past pass blaster of Effectively Wild, person I consult when it comes to

the evolution of rules in 19th century baseball, which is closer to cricket than the modern-day game. Richard says, Prior to 1889, a caught foul tip was an out, regardless of the count, just like any other caught foul ball. The change to the modern rule had several contributing causes. One was that offense had been down the previous year. One suggestion for increasing it was to eliminate all foul ball outs. This was further than the rulemakers were willing to go, but treating foul tips like swinging strikes rather than like foul balls was a compromised version.

A second contributing cause was a brief experiment in umpire placement. Most games had only one umpire, who usually positioned himself behind the catcher. Some, however, were experimenting with placing themselves in the diamond behind the pitcher. Kind of a pitcher's helper. You get a good angle from there. This improved their calls at second base, but made it nearly impossible to call a foul tip, as these were detected by sound.

Finally, this was an era of rapid development of the catcher's glove, evolving into something recognizable as a mitt. This improvement allowed the catcher to hold onto foul into something recognizable as a mitt. This improvement allowed the catcher to hold onto foul tips that formerly would have been nearly impossible, further depressing offense. This was a pragmatic rule change made at the expense of the underlying logic of the game. Neither the first nor the last time this was done. So that's your answer. I guess it saves us some reviews or some consternation or, you know, was that caught or was it not? Yeah.

It doesn't matter much of the time. I guess. Yeah. And, you know, sometimes you get a rule and it's just like we've had this for so long that changing it is really difficult. It would be destabilizing even if we acknowledge that it's sort of like goofy, like the Senate. Sure. we acknowledge that it's sort of like goofy, like the Senate. Sure.

And Amy, Patriot supporter, says, I'm listening to episode 2147 and thinking about how difficult it must be to be an athletic right now. I also imagine very few big league players would want to be traded to Oakland slash Sacramento slash maybe eventually Las Vegas. Do you think it'd be possible to have the entire current 40-man roster of the Athletics traded away in three-team trades so no current MLB player goes to Oakland slash Sacramento, and the newly turned-over roster would be entirely minor league players and call-ups. As an example, J.P. Sears gets traded to the Red Sox, and then the Red Sox, to make room for J.P. Sears, send, I don't know, someone to some other team in exchange for someone else or for cash.

send, I don't know, someone to some other team in exchange for someone else or for cash? Is this mathematically possible or do the roster limits render this hypothesis impossible? So could they do this? Could they ship out all their major league? I don't know why they would exactly, but hey, they could pay everyone league minimum. That would appeal to John Fisher and Aaron Judge would still come to town and hit even more home runs to the delight of the Sacramento fans or spectators in the intimate new park that they'll be playing in. So could it be done that you trade all the current major league A's to other teams and non-major leaguers come back and it's just a bunch of call-ups who, for them, it'll be just like home.

You know, they'll be playing in a AAA park. It won't be jarring. And it's a Bush League organization, but there'll be Bush League players coming up to the big league. So that'll be an easy transition for them. And they'll get a big league salary, which I imagine would be appealing and could kind of soften the blow. Everyone wins, except the A's. They would lose a lot of games, but they already do. They would lose a lot of games. And they already do. They would lose a lot of games,

and I think that the league would intervene on this. I haven't done, like, I don't know from a roster math perspective. I mean, there are 29 other teams, so, like, probably, right, that they could move all their guys? Could be done, yeah. So it seems like from a roster math perspective it would be reasonable, but I think that if you're Major League Baseball, this would be a bridge too far

even for you, right? Because your whole thing here is dependent on the illusion that this move is like a necessary move to restore this franchise to something resembling a competitive big league team, right? The ballpark is holding them back. It's holding back their ability to, you know, attract fans and free agents. And I think that they would say, look, we get it. You got a lot of guys on your roster already who, as I said, are making the major league minimum, but you got to be able to pretend that this is like a going concern, even if we all know that it's not really and like the union has brought grievances against the a's in the past for far less than this right and i

don't say that like those weren't legitimate grievances but i mean that like there has been consternation and recrimination on the part of the union to the organization when they have rostered real big leaguers and as much as i'm sure the union wants to get guys in the minors paid like this is anti-competitive in the extreme because like if you're other teams right you're we'll stick with the red socks in this scenario and again i feel bad kind of ragging on the guys who are on the 26th man in oakland right now because some of them are interesting and some of them are good, even if they're complementary players more than they are superstars. It's not like everyone on that roster is going to have a bad season or

couldn't help a competitive team in some way, but their superstars got shipped out a long time ago, right? So you're the Red Sox. And for whatever reason you're participating in this the roster based on their readiness or how talented they are. You're basing it on the fact that they are not already big leaguers and are going to make the league minimum and don't have a history with your organization. You're not in a good negotiating position. And the guys that you're shipping out aren't, you know, superstars as we've established. So like the guys you're going to get back are going to be guys who are sort of like probably not even like fringe 40 man guys, right? Yeah. I mean, if you're Fisher, you don't want to tank your franchise value. That's what he's in this for. Although maybe he's tanking it unintentionally. And so maybe he would want to get good players back so that you could sell a prospective buyer on this

team will be good at some point. Yeah, but you don't have the big league or minor league like I'm going to use the word capital and I'm sorry for that because it's yishy, but it's like you don't have the caliber of player in househouse to affect those kinds of transactions, certainly not enough of them to affect that transaction. However, if we're clearing the entire big league roster, you don't have enough guys to be able to do that 26 times. Yeah, it would not be the first time that an MLB commissioner stepped in to stop an Oakland owner from tanking their team because Bowie Kuhn vetoed, overturned the efforts by Charlie O'Finley

to sell a bunch of players who were going to hit free agency. So it's sort of along the same lines, I guess. But yeah, I think you could do it if it was just sort of a Major League Talent shell game and you just kind of wanted to convert all your big leaguers into worse players, I think other teams would help you out with that, even with the roster limitations. It's like the most messed up version of the red paperclip thing you've ever heard. Right. Yeah, that in reverse. And I didn't even read Amy's PS to that email. You mentioned the Red Sox, as did Amy. PS, I'm a Red Sox fan and can't tell you who most of their roster is these days.

I'd like John Henry to sell his team along with John Fisher to sell his team, as neither John seems interested in fielding a winning baseball team. I guess Henry's coming closer than Fisher. Yeah. At least has not moved the team out of Boston. Oh, my God. I think that there would be a riot. It's a sliding scale.

Lastly, I've got to get your football fan input on this email. Matt says, I was thinking about MLB attendance slash finances versus NFL finances. If the Yankees played just 16 games a year, eight home games, all on Sunday afternoons, I know they play 17 in the NFL these days, what kind of attendance could they expect? Assuming they had the seats, could they sell 100,000 seats per game, 500,000 seats? What about TV ratings in this alternate world? Could a world with 16 game seasons be more profitable than the current setup? I'm not advocating for this, by the way. I love that baseball is every day and no game matters,

but every game matters. I love the zen of it. I'd rather watch a random late August game between two teams that are out of it than a World Series game. I realize I'm in the minority on that one. B season. How would you manage? How would you deploy your players? You could probably just use your ace every game, right? If you play once a week, just an all bullpen game, whatever, right? You could just pull out all the stops. Whoops, all aces. Yeah, exactly. The structure of baseball doesn't lend itself to a short season. Even the season we have is arguably not long enough to separate the wheat from the chaff. It's just so much more randomness in a single baseball game than a single football game. And that's why we need so many more baseball games to determine which teams are good. But this is more about the finances and whether this could possibly be viable or

profitable. Because we might get a shortened MLB regular season at some point. There's some impetus toward that. And the main reservation is, well, are we going to lose revenue, right? No one wants to lose revenue. And you could say, well, maybe you won't ultimately because each game will be more important and we'll draw better and we'll get better ratings. You know, it's a supply and demand issue, so you decrease the supply. Maybe you increase the demand on average, but this is the extreme

version of that where it's a weekly, you got MLB tailgating and you spend the whole week talking about the MLB game that is going to be played that week and everyone plays their one game. And then maybe there's Monday night baseball and Thursday night baseball still. But 16, 17 games a season, like how would that work if you had an infinite venue? I mean, that's the drawback, obviously. You know, you can't even if you sell out those 16, 17 games, which you would, You know, you can't even if you sell out those 16, 17 games, which you would, there's no way to make up the attendance that you get in 162 less well-attended games. But if you somehow had some gigantic amphitheater, you could play in Central Park and you, you know, you get some massive crowd like you see at concerts, sometimes some like Wembley-sized crowd.

Could that work? It would be really challenging because of the difference in like, I'm going to be talking like a tiny bit out of my ass here. Okay. So like, I'm going to, I'm going to admit to that upfront, but I think that the differences in how the broadcast deals are structured in the NFL versus how they're structured in major league baseball would be a big problem here because like you can listen to your local broadcast on the radio for an NFL game, but you're watching Fox, you're watching CBS, you're watching, you know, all of that is centralized in the national networks and they all have their own deals. And then, you know, now it's like Amazon has games and NFL Network has a couple of games. But the way that everything is structured is really different. And I don't know how you would require completely reworking the broadcast model, which seems like it wouldn't be a natural translation because while there are national games and there are national games during the regular season it's not just um obviously the the playoffs like so much of the the baseball

experience is predicated on like what you can access in your local market and a national broadcast model like do they care about the ace probably not right? And it's not to say that every NFL game is good. Thursday night is famous for lousy games, often featuring lousy teams. But I think that that would be a big barrier because you would need to feel confident that the money you're making up on the broadcast end is enough to offset the gate decline that you would experience from not being able to sell 100, you know, you're not selling 162,

but, you know, 81 home games or whatever. So I don't think it would work just because it would take a really fundamental sort of change in the way we orient ourselves toward the game and teams, which I guess isn't impossible, but it would be an expensive transition, I would imagine.

And it's amazing. We've talked about this before, but when you look at the broadcast ratings for even crummy games, and I imagine some of this will change as more people cord cut and all of the ballet stuff continues to reverberate. But even bad teams do really well during the summer in terms of their local markets broadcast ratings.

People put baseball on, man. They put on baseball. When the lead contemplates sort of how they want to move forward in a new era of broadcasting, you know, something like this is probably like fundamentally unappealing to them. It's how do they get more money or the same amount of money out of a product that they know is really appealing to people and can be lucrative, but they just need the appropriate distribution channels for it. It's a ton of inventory. So much inventory. It's a strong suit for baseball, to put it in business-y terms. Yeah, totally. That's sort of a selling point.

Fill airtime, just something on. And yeah, if there were 16, 17 baseball games a year, they'd all be big draws and they'd all do bonkers ratings. That's one reason why football does such huge ratings. Not the only one. It's obviously a super popular powerhouse one way or another, but it is sometimes frustrating when people compare football ratings to baseball ratings. And it's like, well, yeah, you know, you're going to tune in to see the game that has massive implications compared to the typical baseball game. To be consistent, it would also annoy me when baseball fans would defend the length of baseball

games pre-pitch clock by saying a football game is just as long and there's just as much dead time. Well, yeah, but it's a different proposition when you're asking people to watch that 16 or 17 times a year instead of 162. And it's almost exclusively on weekends and you build a whole social event around it and there are high stakes etc but it would be an event it would be fun it would be way worse i think in a number of ways we like baseball being on all the time and also we like the entire season not being a tiny sample so yeah you know we talked about resetting the continuity you know can you imagine people lose their minds people lose their minds their minds. Can you imagine if this happened and

Garrett Cole is still hurt? Like, whoops, no aces. You got to have whoops in the, if whoops isn't in the title of this episode, Ben, I don't know what to tell you, but it wouldn't be anything nice. All right. That will almost do it for today, but not quite because before we leave you, I bring you the return of a bit that's been with us for a couple of years now. Taylor Ward watch or really Taylor Ward listen. Since 2022, we've been tracking broadcasters struggles to remember and accurately reproduce the name of Taylor Ward. Very often he was confused with Tyler Wade when they were teammates. They are no longer teammates, but the confusion has not stopped.

It has arguably not even ebbed. The confusion flows freely. He's been called Tyler. He's been called Turner. Turner Ward, former major leaguer, current hitting coach. It's just a constant case of mistaken identity for poor Taylor Ward. And it continues into 2024. Here's a clip caught by sharp-eared listener Sean of the Rays TV broadcasters on Wednesday,

calling Taylor by two other names in the span of roughly 30 seconds. And Tyler Ward is the hitter with two men on, two men out. And Ward, in the short right, charged. Palacios up with it. The throw to the plate. It's not going to be in time. The run scores. And the Angels will have it at second and third, holding a 5-4 lead.

Well, that's the right call. When it comes down to it, who are you going to let try and beat you? Mike Trout or Turner Ward? And as good as he's been hitting, you go after Ward. Two different broadcasters, two different names, neither of them Taylor. There you have it. Update the Tyler Wade and Taylor Ward Effectively Wild wiki page. Why are we still tracking this? Well, what else are we going to do?

Are we going to stop tracking every time an announcer says some other name that starts with a T instead of Taylor? That would be preposterous. It's kind of comforting in a way. New year, new season, same Taylor, Tyler, Turner screw-ups. You know what else is comforting? When people support the podcast on Patreon, which they and you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild, as have the following five listeners who have gone to patreon.com slash effectivelywild

and signed up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us keep tracking Taylor Ward flubs, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks dustin osborne jay daniel lopes alex k and michael pals thanks to all of you patreon perks include access to the effectively wild discord group for patrons only monthly bonus episodes playoff live streams prioritized email answers discounts on merch and ad free fan crafts memberships and so much, check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, don't despair. You can contact us via email

at podcast at fangraphs.com. Send us your questions and comments. 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 EW pod, and you can find the effectively wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. You can also check the last links on the show page in your podcast app to find an effectively wild listener meetup at an MLB ballpark near you. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. I will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you then. can't be trusted unless it's properly adjusted effectively wild the only podcast that effectively quenches our thirst for stats