Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2165: The Bunt Stops Here

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a fake Ronel Blanco tweet about a fake Ronel Blanco quote, Meryl Streep’s sports apps, how four expected-to-contend teams’ injury-depleted rotations are faring so far, Josh Hader’s multi-inning outings, fêting Erick Fedde, Elly De La Cruz’s pursuit of 100 stolen bases, an Austin Hedges bruise, a possible benefit […]

Hey everyone, Ben here. Just so you know, on the episode you're about to hear, Meg and I will discuss Elie de la Cruz's stolen bass pace and the prospect of his swiping 100 bags. Well, he had 26 when we spoke, but after we recorded, the Reds played the Dodgers, and wouldn't you know it, as Mick Jagger sang in Mother's Little Helper, He took four more! Four more basses, that is. He has 30 steals now. So, you'll hear us say that he's on pace for 98. He's now on pace for 110.

You just can't put him on anymore. You walk him, he'll steal second and third. Or he'll certainly try. He actually got thrown out going for a fifth steal. Just wanted you to have the updated figures when you hear our banter about it. Now you know. And like Ellie, away we go. Number one Fangraphs baseball podcast. The stat cast is that blast. TOPS plus when the stats need contrast. Zips and steamer for the forecast.

Hello and welcome to episode 2165 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Meg, what did you make of that flawless intro by me? No notes. If you stick around to the very end of this episode, you may hear a few false starts, you know? Every now and then, even after 2,000 plus episodes, it's going to get you. It's funny. I had false confidence, I think, because I was telling you before we started, we try to alternate the intros. Yes.

We don't always do it. But who starts off the episode, we try to just, you do one and then I do one. And I remembered it. I committed to memory who was going because I was doing the odd ones for a while. And so my mnemonic device was, I'm odd, so I do the odds. And then things got disrupted and I was doing the evens and I couldn't remember that I was the one who was doing the evens.

And here, because you missed one last week, I'm back to odds. And I came in thinking, I can nail this intro. And then I flubbed it four times before I finally got it down. But no one needed to know that unless I disclosed it. But I did because radical honesty here, uneffectively wild. You know how people will sometimes say when they say a good tweet, this is why I'll never delete this app?

Yes. Well, I had one of those moments this week. delete this app? Yes. Well, I had one of those moments this week. It was a fake tweet about a fake tweet that people fell for it. I guess the tweets were real, but the sentiments were fake. So you know how there's that account or maybe multiple accounts for multiple sports, Fax Sports, F-A-X, and they do these fake quotes by athletes.

And so they will put in giant print the fake quote and then in tiny print, fine print at the bottom, they'll say so-and-so did not actually say this. And generally, I don't love those because, A, I don't think they're that funny on the whole. But also, they do kind of confuse people, which, I mean, it's the point. But I've seen in our Facebook group, people will post those sometimes and half the comments will be people who just don't get it and they miss that it was a joke and then they're confused and they're angry and it would probably be a stretch to connect this to misinformation and faith in journalism. But still, it seems like it's just kind of confusing people and it's not funny enough to justify that in my mind at least but

this is an exception because fax sports mlb tweeted a fake quote attributed to astro starter ranel blanco okay who was ejected for sticky stuff, the stickiest stuff that the umpire who was doing the inspection said he had felt since the inspection started. He has subsequently been suspended. And so the fake quote attributed to Blanco was, we're the Astros. We do two things. We win. We cheat.

And now I'm all out of cheating. Now, you wouldn't think you could fall for that because obviously he's not going to say that. You know, it's not even – it has to be somewhat credible to be satire that actually works, right? But it was quote tweeted by an account that was purportedly Ronel Blanco's Twitter account. So the handle was at Ronel Blanco 56, his number, and the display name was RonelBlanco, and the profile pic was a photo of RonelBlanco. So it appeared at first glance to be RonelBlanco's actual Twitter account, and who would go to the trouble of making a fake RonelBlanco Twitter account? And so the RonelBlanco Twitter account quote tweeted the Facts Sports tweet and said, I never said this.

And the replies to the fake Ronel Blanco tweet about the fake Ronel Blanco quote were many people falling for the fake Ronel Blanco tweet. Yes. And informing the fake Ronel Blanco that he got got, telling him that, no, this is a parody account. This is not actually real. And yet they were themselves getting got by the fake Rennell Blanco. So it was just fakes all the way down. That's the twist. And this I enjoyed, just seeing the people hoodwinked by the multiple layers of deception here.

I want to take these things in stride because like you, I don't want to overreact. We don't need to make everything like a big thing that says something. It is funny, but it is disconcerting. It is a disconcerting. Why would Fernando Blanco be the one to say something like that? Wasn't he like an able when the banging scheme was going on? He definitely wasn't on the big league roster. Yeah, he was in like, depending on when you think that all happened, he was in like high A to, you know, like double A.

He was not a... Yeah, it was like the Blanco... Yeah, he didn't debut until 2022. Ejection and suspension, I think, got a lot more attention because it was an Astro. Totally. Even though post-cheating Astro is Astro as far as we know. But this amused me. And I saw something else on Twitter that also amused me, which caused a stir, a sensation on Wednesday, which you probably saw the photo of Meryl Streep.

Cinematic icon, national treasure. Yeah, Meryl Streep, who is at an event and was holding her phone. And you could see in this image between her fingers, her home screen, and some of the app icons. And it certainly appears that she has the MLB Ballpark app on her home screen. Not just on her phone somewhere, but like go to like on the front. And also it looked like the athletic app maybe. So big sports fan, big baseball head, Meryl Streep. And I just want people to know I have reached out to Meryl Streep's publicist to invite

her on to Effectively Wild. As of podcast time, I have not received a response and I may not, but I just wanted people to know that their Patreon dollars at work. We're not going to let this opportunity go by. We'll shoot our shot to get Meryl Streep on Effectively Wild. I've said this before and I have a feeling I'll have reason to say it again. I think one of the most admirable things about you, and I say this as someone who can be a little shy asking for these sorts of things, you're just very unbothered asking people for stuff. And in a polite and appropriate way and in a way that you never get ruffled when they say no or don't respond. get ruffled when they say no or don't respond you know you're you're not a jerk about it but you're you're very comfortable being like hey do you want to come on the show or hey do you mind sending me that thing and just seeing seeing what people do and uh i think that's a very useful

skill to have particularly when it is you know honed in a way that makes you you know like not intrusive and not a jerk. Like, it's good. It's good. I would be terrified to talk to Meryl Streep. I'd get over it, but I would feel very nervous about that. I would too, but we would power through it if she wanted to come on the pot, which seems unlikely.

But obviously she's a big, if you have the MLB ballpark app on your home screen to keep track of all the games you've gone to, then you've got to be pretty serious. And I guess she's been cited and photographed at games before, at least in some sports, but I haven't really seen a whole lot from her talking about her baseball fandom. So for all we know, she's just been waiting for someone with a baseball podcast to approach her publicist and say, here's a microphone for you. So would I be so bold in person if I just ran across Meryl Streep? Would I walk right up to her and say, hey, you want to come on my baseball podcast?

Perhaps not. Right. But what's the downside of sending an email? You just don't get an answer. Yeah. Her publicist is employed literally for this purpose, you know, to field inquiries from relevant parties interested in speaking to national treasure, dearly beloved Meryl Streep. Relevant parties and also effectively well. first saw this this circulating my initial instinct was that um while it was it was perfectly feasible that she uh is a baseball fan it's also some people like they download a thing because most if you're doing eat tickets that's like the most convenient way to do it is through the

ballpark app right and then uh you forget to remove stuff from your home screen right you know like some people have like a hundred listened to no longer in progress podcasts just floating around their podcast app like yes but i do curate my home screen quite carefully yeah those are my my most used apps on there and same and i i can be a little particular about these things. So I was like, maybe she just like went to a game. But then, you know, you see the presence of the athletic app and you're like, no, I think she's a sports fan. I didn't want to get excited about the prospect of national treasure Meryl Streep being a baseball head.

But I feel a little more comfortable now. It's exciting stuff. Well, the baseball's in her court. That little more comfortable now. It's exciting stuff. Well, the baseball's in her court. That's the wrong sport. That's a mixed metaphor. That's the wrong sport. Come on, Effectively Wild, Meryl. You're welcome anytime.

Yeah. So the Ronell Blanco multiple layers of fakery was making me think that we could do a check-in maybe on the rotations that were shorthanded coming into the season. And we're going to just have to try to get by for a while before injured guys got back because there were a bunch of contending teams that entered this season with players on the injured list, either holdovers from last year or guys who got hurt this spring. And it was just like, can they tread water until the reinforcements arrive?

So you had the Astros were one with Luis Garcia and Lance McCullers, Hurd and Verlander to start the season. And then the Rangers had Scherzer and DeGrom and Tyler Malley. And the Rays had Shane Boz and Drew Rasmussen and Jeffrey Springs. And then the Dodgers had Walker Bueller, who's back now, and Clayton Kershaw and Dustin May. So how have they done so far? Well, Ronel Blanco has been pretty important for the Astros

because they haven't had a whole lot of effective starters. In fact, they have the lowest fan graphs were by starters of any team, which is a big part of why they are off to such a rough start. Though they have won four in a row as we speak on Thursday and six of seven. Also six of 11, which doesn't sound quite as good as six of seven, but both true. But they have had bullpen issues and rotation issues. So the bullpen's been like fourth from worst, and then the rotation's been worst. And yeah, getting guys back would help there. I don't know that you can count on McCullers returning at any point.

They've had other issues as well, but not going great for them if we were to do an assessment of how the rotation has held up so far, even though Verlander is back now. Now, the Rangers, they're 13th in starting pitcher war, according to fan graphs, and roughly the same in ERA and FIP. So, it's going okay, you know. They are just above 500 as a team. They're, what, second, I think, in the AL West. They're benefiting from the Astros' slow start. So maybe they're doing enough, you know, and their guys are on the comeback trail. They haven't fallen out of the race or anything while they're waiting for the cavalry to arrive. That wasn't so great, but John Gray's been great. Evaldi's been great.

Although he's now hurt. Yeah, true. Michael Lorenzen signed as a stopgap late in the spring, which I think we thought, okay, that's good. They got a paper over the crack somehow. He's been okay. He's been decent. He's been respectable. He's been throwing, most importantly, perhaps.

Yes, as have Heaney and Dunning. Also Hurt. Yeah, Bradford had a few good starts. Also Hurt. Yeah, so that's a problem with the guys who are filling in for the Hurt guys also get Hurt. But it has not been disastrous. No. They've made it work, and they haven't made it work offensively as much as you expected them to. The Lankfords and the Carters, it just has not been – yeah, they've been barely above league average offensively.

So that is a disappointment, but the pitching hasn't taken them out of it at least. The Rays are right below them, thanks in part to recent guest Zach Littell, 14th in starting pitcher war. Now, they have dead last in bullpen war, which you don't expect to see from the Rays. No, you don't. But the rotation has held up enough, I guess. And then finally, the Dodgers, they're 11th in Fangraph's war with Buehler back now, but they've had to piece things together also. But Glasnow has been great, and Yamamoto has been excellent, and Gavin Stone's been pretty good. And so things are going okay for most of them,

even though Buehler's first couple starts back have not been super successful. Yeah, they've been a little shaky. I would categorize them as kind of shaky, you know? Yeah, yeah. So no one's passing with flying colors here. No. But only the Astros have flunked this test of their early season shorthanded rotation.

The others, they're doing okay. They're middle of the pack-ish. The Dodgers are good enough at everything else that this is not a big problem for them. And the others are in it. They're hanging around until they get bolstered by mid-season returns. Yeah. And like you said, it's some of the both to my mind, more surprising, but also more concerning issues for, say, the Rangers have actually been on the offensive side of the ball. In fairness, Devin Carter does sound like he's dealing with some like back stuff. Right. He had to get a cortisone shot. So, you know, maybe some explanation for why he had a slow start. Langford is hurt now. They're without Josh Young. But yeah, it's been a bit of a mixed bag. I'm sure that they hope their guys come back soon. But Scherzer had a little setback, right?

He had an unrelated setback. Something was wrong with his fingy. But yeah, I think that other than the Astros, they've all been able to at least stay afloat. Blanco didn't challenge his suspension, right? He's just like, yeah, I did that. Yeah. Yeah.

The real Ronaldo Blanco, not at Ronaldo Blanco 56. Yeah, he just was like really an A-ball when all this stuff was going on. Yep. Oh, gosh. oh gosh i wonder what the reaction would be if a non if someone who wasn't on the big league roster at that time like was that transparent about it how would that read in the clubhouse of course most of the guys who were involved in the banging scheme aren't in houston anymore so yeah there's that i suppose but you got to watch out you got to be careful out there you know uh there's people are trying to get you. They're really trying to get us

a lot of the time, I think. We talked about the Astros' early season bullpen issues when the back of their bullpen, surprisingly, was blowing up. You expected that that would be a strength for them with Presley and with Hayter and with Abreu, et cetera, and Montero. And some of those guys have not been good. Some of them have been better of late. Yes. Hader and Presley, to some extent, they had and have like big ERA FIP gaps and small samples, and it's probably not a big deal, but they had some poorly timed runs allowed. Yes. I had noted, though, since this is something that we fixated on, Josh Hader, to his credit, I suppose, has pitched multiple innings in multiple outings. Yeah.

So we wondered whether maybe after he signed the big deal he'd be a bit more flexible because I think part of his objection was like, well, I'm not going to hurt myself. part of his objection was like, well, I'm not going to hurt myself. I'm not going to take a big risk here and potentially jeopardize the payday. And now that he got the payday, and I guess now that the Astros and the Astros bullpen has struggled, he has maybe responded to that by being a little less rigid when it comes to his usage. So three times now, he has gone more than one inning. I know it doesn't sound revolutionary or anything, but he was like pretty darn dead set on just going one inning and it's going to be the ninth every time. Now, two of those cases were games where he entered in the ninth and then the game went to extras and he just stayed in and pitched the tenth. Yeah. So it wasn't necessarily the plan, but he was willing to do it.

He did have one outing earlier this month against the Yankees where he entered to get an out in the 8th and then stayed in to get the save in the 9th. So that was a four-out outing. So that's good, I guess. He has loosened up a little, and I don't know if it's in response to the contract or response to the dire straits that the Astros found themselves in or just different team, different people prevailing upon him to be a little less rigid with the usage. But he's doing it, and they've needed it.

Yeah, they have. The Astros have won all of those games where he stretched himself. He got wins or saves in those games. So good for him. Good for him. We brought it up when he wasn't doing it. I got to bring it up now that he is doing it. And I recall us being mostly sympathetic to the instinct to not want to jeopardize your first big payday, you know, especially for a team that was at the time,

I think, already well out of playoff contention. But yeah, it's good to follow these things up. Yeah, I understood it. I had some sympathy. I was also kind of critical about the just extremes to which he took that. I thought, you know, maybe every now and then in an emergency, but that is what's happening now. Also, just wanted to shout out a White Sox who is performing well while we're talking about pitching. I know. There's more than one White Sox pitching well.

You could even say White Sox are pitching well, at least two of them. We've talked about Garrett Crochet and his success transitioning from relief to the rotation, which has continued. But also Eric Fetty, the return of Eric Fetty. It's gone well. And I remember that we shouted him out when we were doing our just prior to opening day recap of signings or transactions that we liked from this offseason. And we gave some credit to the White Sox for winning the Eric Fetty sweepstakes. Yeah. Which they really were if you cast your mind back to the winter meetings.

It was not a whole lot else going on. And it was all about who's going to get Eric Fetty coming back from Korea. And then it was the White Sox. And we were like, really? Yeah. It was the White Sox, and he's pitched well. Yeah. He has.

He has picked up a sweeper. He's throwing, I think, a splitter now. He's kind of caught on with the trends of pitches that are in vogue or back in vogue. And he's been good. 2.6 ERA, 52 innings, nine starts. The FIP is considerably higher, but still decent. He's been a good pickup on a pretty low dollar deal. And for the White Sox, I guess all that amounts to is we have someone else to trade.

But at least they do. You might think, is there anything left to go that would even be appealing to contenders now? And yeah, there's Eric Fetty. There's Eric Fetty. You know, people always need pitching. Teams always need pitching. And yeah, he's been probably about as good as you could have hoped or expected. And that deal is so reasonable.

You know, I think that they will not struggle to find a suitor for Eric Fetty if they decide they want to move him, and I suspect that they will. Two years, $15 million. And add him to the list of players who've gone overseas and come back as new men somehow with maybe a new pitch mix. They figure something out and have a lot of success over there, and then they parlay that into a return. And suddenly they've leveled up while they were away. It's always fun. It is fun. Now, we got to talk about Eli De La Cruz. Okay.

So, Eli has 26 stolen bases. Yeah. He is kind of lapping the league, the leagues. He is nine ahead of the next closest guy on the stolen base leaderboard. As we speak on Thursday, Jose Caballero has 17. So, wait, as an aside, good for you, Cavi. Like, that's great. That's great.

Good for that guy. He's doing fine. Yeah, he's doing all right. That's nice. He had 26 steals all of last season. Well, I guess he only had like 280 play appearances last year. He wasn't an everyday guy for Seattle. 149 now.

Still, he's picked up the rate. And Ellie has picked up the rate as well. And it helps that he's actually getting on base more often. So he has more opportunities. Correct. And as Sam documented in Pebble Hunting this week, he has taken advantage of more of those opportunities as the season has gone on. He has run more and more higher percentage of his potential stolen base opportunities. He has tried it and he's almost on pace for 100 now. I think he was when Sam wrote that. He has played 43 games and the Reds have played 43 games, which puts him on pace for 98 stolen bases. Now, I guess the first question is, do you think he will get to 100? And then the second question is, should he? Should he try? Is this an aspiration he should have?

Or is it counterproductive to run that wild? What do you think? I don't think of him as someone who runs wild. I think of him as someone who runs often. And I will not claim to have watched every Reds game this year. But in the moments of his base running that i remember from say last season you know particularly when there would be a miscue in the outfield or or an outright error and he would you know keep running right i thought that he was a very he seemed like he was very much in

control even you know he he gives this impression of being because he's so big and he's so long-limbed and he's so fast that it does you know he looks like he has a head of steam because he does you know his like the momentum of his own body is difficult to arrest i think um but my impression of him has always been of a very sort of thoughtful base dealer who is making the most of like really impressive physical tools. And I'm not saying you necessarily disagree with that, but like I always think he's very much in control, even when he's got these long limbs flying everywhere because he is just like such an enormous human being. So I think that is it useful to have a particular number in mind i don't i don't know i will not claim to know the psychology of ellie de la cruz so i don't know if that is a helper hindrance but i think continuing to be sort of operating under a an mo of like controlled

aggression is is very useful because he's really good at it you know like he's uh in addition to the um sort of raw stolen base totals the stolen base metrics so like his bsr which is base running runs above average so it includes stolen base stuff but it also includes like advances and what have you he rates out very well by that metric he's a guy who if i were the reds i'd be like you know you have a you have a green light to go more often than not um and it's very you know it's very exciting they've they've cooled you know as a team like they're they're eight they're 18 and 25 right like they're they're only as good as the astros would have read really differently at the beginning of the year for a lot of reds fans i

imagine if i said that so i think that if you have a way to force the issue and you're as fast as he is and as good as he is like he'd be a guy where i'd be like make them make a play you know make that defense make a play whatever defense that, because I think he's pretty talented. So go, go for us, young man. It's funny. Kevin Pillar, the veteran outfielder, stole his hundredth career base on Wednesday and he's pretty proud of it. He tweeted a photo of the bag, which it appears that he kept as a souvenir. And Kevin Pillar is in his 12th major league season.

He's 35 years old. He's the 27th active member of the 100 stolen base club until Cedric Mullins scores one more, I think. And there are 20 active 100-100 guys who have 100 career steals and 100 career homers. And I think eight of them are former MVPs. Kevin Plar is not, but it's an august group for the most part. And it took him that long to swipe that bag, which is why it's so memorable for him. Ellie is going to steal his 100th career base before he turns 23 in his second season. So the pace a little bit different. And

I think if Ellie gets there, it would be sort of a legendary accomplishment. And I think two weeks into the season, Jeff Passan predicted that Ellie would go 30-80. He'd be the first 30-80 guy, kind of seeing Ronald Acuna's 40-70 last year and raising him at least in one of those stats. And since then, yeah, Ellie's stolen even more to the point where 100 is realistic. Now, as he has picked up his frequency of going, his offense has slid a little lately. I don't know if those things are connected. But over the past couple weeks, he has a sub-300 on base percentage. And you could say, oh, he's tired.

He's playing in every single game. And maybe he's wearing himself down even though he has the youthful energy and vitality. It still takes a toll on you. I don't know. Maybe that's why he's not hitting as well. Maybe it's a complete coincidence. Maybe he is going more often when he has the opportunity because he's getting on base less often and he's getting fewer opportunities. Reds aren't really getting on ahead of him, which I guess is good for his outlook if you want him to get to 100 because the bases aren't being clogged very often for them. So I think you could say that

he will probably tail off as the season wears on and the grind and the dog days and the heat and everything, and maybe he will slow down. Then again, he has only sped up lately. And he hasn't missed a single game. You got to figure at some point he might miss a game. So this pace of stealing 98 is contingent on him not missing a single game, which is tough too, right? So I would say he probably won't get there. And yet if he's going to get close, then he might really try for it. As you were saying, maybe it's not good to have a number in mind and then aim for that number and kind of put

that goal above everything else. But it's not looking like the Reds are really going to be contending when it's all said and done. So maybe the biggest and best story about them will be Ellie going for 100. And it would be pretty darn exciting if he does do that. I mean, no one has done that since the 80s, since Vince Coleman. And yeah, I think it would be tarnished slightly by the fact that, well, it's a lot easier to do that now with the new step-off and disengagement and pick-off attempt rules. Obviously, the conditions are much more conducive to this. But then again, some of the other prevailing conditions are not at all conducive to this because it's not really encouraged now or it's not valued the same way, which is sort of what

Sam was saying. If you're going to do this, you kind of have to do it for the story more so than for the value. It's not that it's not valuable but it's not that valuable we know now like when guys were stealing 100 in the 80s they really thought that was extremely valuable even if they were getting caught a lot and it wasn't as far as we can tell right so so now you have to do it despite the fact that other players like Trey Turner, for instance, and other speedy guys are like, I don't want to subject my body to this. And it really does. I mean, there's a lot of wear and tear and damage. Like you read quotes from Maury Wills back when he was doing this and how banged up and bruised he was.

We've talked about that. The dust. Yeah, the dust that you ingest. Yes, we covered that too. And even if you don't break a bird bone or something, it's just like, you know, and even if there are fewer collisions around the bases these days,

maybe things are safer in that respect. But even so, it's tough, right? So it probably doesn't make sense if you were just doing a cost-benefit analysis to the team at least. But it might make sense for Ellie. Like if he wants to be a star, if he wants to get on the highlights packages, that would be one way to do it, to steal 100 for the first time in decades. Like that would be one of the biggest and best storylines of the season, I think. I think that you're right. And he's obviously quite a bit away from arbitration.

He's not ARB eligible until 2027. But I imagine stolen bases are a number that play well with an arbitrator who famously are maybe a little less familiar with some of the advanced stats. And if you can say like, I'm a guy who's like, call it 70 to 100 stolen base dude, like that sounds like a number that's going to help get you paid. Again, that's like a couple years out for him. So he should stay healthy and available in the meantime. But I think establishing yourself as like one of those guys is,

can be valuable to you, even if we know something that we didn't in the sort of height of the stolen base era about what it's sort of overall value to the team is, I would say, give this man a day off, probably, you know, it seems like he should get a day off not just from

a stolen base perspective but you know it's like if you're playing every game i know that i know the guys don't like to do that necessarily and you know sometimes teams don't like to do that and for all of our insistence uh before opening day that where are they going to put all these out infielders? Like, you know, they're not as lousy with options as they maybe once were. But I think give give Ellie a day, give Ellie a breather, a blow every now and again to like rest himself. Can I do you have more to say about Ellie De La Cruz? Because you mentioned bruises and I'm going to have to say something about Austin Hedges in a second. So just remember that I need to do that, okay? Just that they tried to give him a day off on Wednesday.

I think he didn't start. It might have been the first game he didn't start this season, but he did concede in the eighth and played defense. So, yeah, but it was a partial day off at least. Did you see Austin Hedges? Are you, side note, are you an apostrophe S possessive when someone's last name ends with an S or do you just go S apostrophe? Move on. Not by choice. Usually I would just do the apostrophe, but Ringer style is more inclined to do the apostrophe S. So if I were writing it, I would probably say hedgeses. Hedgeses. Even though, yeah, I probably wouldn't by choice if I had my druthers.

But I guess you do kind of say that if you say it out loud. You can't just say Austin Hedges, right? If you were referring to an Austin Hedges bruise, you can't say Austin Hedges bruise if you want to make it possessive. I did. You just said it. It was very clear. I knew exactly what you meant. I was not confused.

Anyway, that's not the point. Did you see his bruise? Did you see the picture of his bruise? I didn't see Austin Hedges' bruise. Austin's bruise? There. We'll be a little familiar for the sake of clarity. There was a picture going around of a bruise on his, I think his inner thigh from a ball that had sort of ricocheted in the dirt and hit him. It was a foul, maybe it was a foul tip. It was enormous. maybe it was a foul tip.

It was enormous. It was the color of a beautiful plum, the outside, not the inside, although there was variation in the color. And it just made me realize professional athletes are amazing, you know? And catchers are unhinged as a group because he had this bruise and then i would have needed to be carried around by like several people for a number of days and possibly weeks if i had that

bruise and it would be all i talked about it would be i would be you know being carried through the grocery store and the staff would be like why why are you being carried? That's kind of intense and a choice. It feels like a big choice. I'd be like, do you want to see my Bruce? I just want to take a moment and be in awe and appreciation for the physical

toll that this game takes on these guys. I won't speak for everyone. I will simply say that they seem, on average, to be made't speak for everyone. I will simply say that they seem on average to be made of sterner stuff than I am because, boy, it was just like, it was enormous, enormous bruise,

so big. Catchers especially, yeah. If you don't have a high pain threshold and tolerance for bruises, you probably don't make it to the big leagues as a catcher. You probably wash out earlier or change positions, which would be the sensible thing to do. And I'm glad that many people don't do that sensible thing because I like catchers and we kind of do need them. And I guess that's a good opportunity to flag something else that you brought to my attention,

which was a tweet by Tanner Swanson, the Yankees director of catching, who was our guest last August on episode 2052 when we talked to him about blocking technique. And he had a tweet the other day about catcher's interference, which is something else that we've been talking about a lot. Tanner tweeted, The catcher interference narrative is missing a very important piece from the conversation. Yes. Tanner tweeted, report this to be true if asked, restricting catchers into deeper setup positions could potentially put players at even greater risk. This is a complex issue. The answer may not be as simple as it seems. So I don't know. I haven't asked any catchers about whether this is true,

but Tanner Swanson, he talks to lots of catchers. And if he says that they report this to be true, Swanson. He talks to lots of catchers. And if he says that they report this to be true, I don't doubt it. Obviously, it didn't help Austin Hedges avoid his bruise here. But we were talking about, well, is this a safety issue? Are catchers creeping too close to the hitter? They're getting nailed by backswings or just swings all the time now, or well, not really. Pretty rarely on the whole, but much more frequently than they used to. And that kind of culminated in the Wilson-Contreras broken arm. And so there's been a round of concern. I wouldn't even say concern, trolling, sincere concern about our catchers sitting too close. And so Swanson is suggesting, well, maybe that is happening, but also perhaps it's preventing an even greater ill in that if the glove is taking the brunt of these things, then maybe you're getting foul tips less frequently to the face or head that can cause concussions and really serious long-term issues. So I have no idea if that is true, but something I hadn't considered until you sent me this tweet.

My instinct is to put it in the category of replay review in that, well, it's hard to say that it's accounting for a specific number. I wonder how on the brain this potential benefit is for catchers. I would imagine that for many guys, the ability to potentially frame pitches more effectively is probably a bigger part of their motivation, but this might be in the mix for some guys and teams also. And it might, you know, if this is the understanding, I don't know if it is how universal this is in Otean or just Mark I, you know, if this is part of the understanding on the team side, then it helps to put their sort of risk calculus around stealing pitches versus risking injury in a slightly different light, right?

It changes how we would think about that. Did you see the tweet I sent you of Austin Hedges? Like, I'm realizing how'm realizing how intimate this looks. Yeah, I know. Look at that bruise, Ben. That is, it's enormous. I mean, it's roughly circular, but way bigger than a baseball. Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. And it is from a foul tip. This is a tweet from Zach Mizell with an athletic story accompanying it sort of on what it's like to be a big league catcher. The quote that he has pulled out for the purpose of the tweet is, if you cut my arm off, if I can play, I'm going to go. And he has censored it. I am not. And I'm going to do a big swear.

So parents be wary. I'm going to go play. Unhinged individuals, just like as a category, I am in awe and I also worry about them. Yeah. There was something else I wanted to say about injuries, which is that I think maybe the most dismaying kind of injury is when a player returns from injury and then immediately gets hurt again. I know. Maybe that's kind of obvious. I mean, certainly if you're serially getting injured, then that's bad. But sometimes a guy will come back like after rehabbing from something and then will get hurt like right away and will be gone again.

I was thinking this because Jorge Soler, who was on the IL, then came back and was on the field and was taking BP, and he fouled a ball off the top of the cage that ricocheted and hit him in the head. Yeah, it looked painful. It did. And he's okay, I think, like he proceeded to play, but it looked bad. But that just put me in mind of that sort of sequence where it's like, yeah, it's deflating for fans because you're waiting and you're kind of crossing off the days and you're reading the injury updates. When's he going to be back? And we can finally slot him into the lineup or the rotation. And then maybe you get a glimpse of the guy for a game and he's gone again. I was thinking of this with TJ Friedel recently

because he had the same thing where he broke his wrist, I think trying to make a sliding catch in spring training. Yeah, that's right. It took him several weeks to come back from that. He came back last week and then he just got hit by a Kyle Harrison pitch and broke his thumb. And so now he's back on the IL. And it's like, I thought we just did this.

You know, it's almost like Matt Manning last year where he had multiple broken bones. Like he got hit by multiple comebackers that broke bones. They were not one after the other. Like he was pitching for, I think, at least a couple months, a few months in between those injuries. But when it's rapid fire like that, you just made it back and then, nope, you're gone again. That sucks. Yeah, it's incredibly frustrating. And I, you know, I have to imagine it's not as if getting hurt the one time and coming back, you know, no one wants to get hurt at all.

But depending on the severity of the injury, we've talked about this before in the context of Tommy John. Like, I think we maybe underestimate because recovery from injury tends to be pretty successful these days and the timelines for it tend to be relatively predictable. The timelines for it tend to be relatively predictable. And so we can, you know, there are exceptions or definitely some injuries where you hear it happen and you're like, oh, that might never be the same again. Right. Like if a pitcher is like, hey, I have thoracic outlet syndrome. It's like, well, nice career you had there. You know, like there are certainly exceptions to this rule. But I think because we have gotten or you and I, we're not responsible for injured players. gotten, or you and I, we're not responsible for injured players, thank goodness, but these training staffs have in general gotten so good at helping guys get back that we maybe underestimate

how isolating it can feel to be rehabbing back from injury. And I imagine pretty frustrating. These are guys who are in the roles they're in, have the jobs they do because they have been athletically exceptional in some way probably for their entire lives and so i imagine that it's like you know if you and i get hurt it sucks and it might be really inconvenient it might be expensive it could be painful but we you know we're like computer gremlins like that's our our job so uh who don't do video while they podcast thank goodness and so you know it's less like threatening to our sense of self and so i can only imagine you go through some amount of rehab maybe it's short maybe it's long you feel good you're able to feel confident in how your body is feeling and reacting to stuff, which I think is a big part of the return process for guys is not having to think about the potential for re-injury every time they swing or throw the ball.

incredibly upsetting and demoralizing to these dudes like i would if it were me i would be like are you effing kidding like i have to go do all of that again or i have to go do an entirely different one i don't know which i would find worse if it were me like is it better to re-injure the same thing that's probably more alarming to re-injure the same one than it would be to injure a different one right if you've if you re-injure the same thing, then I think you start to have more existential thoughts than if you break a weird bird bone in your foot and then you break a weird bird bone in your hand. You're just like, ah, bird bones. What are you going to do about those?

Well, it's a relief that Solaire seems to be okay and on the comeback trail because the Giants, my goodness, the injury stack that's going on over there with Bailey and Murphy and Ahmed and Conforto and Jung-Hoon Lee seemingly going to miss a lot of time and Slater

and Solaire and Blake Snell and just on and on and on, walking wounded. Yeah, they're having a rough go of it. It's also, I feel bad. I feel particularly bad when guys suffer injuries and they're kind of funny looking. And I really want to be clear. I'm not making light of Soler getting conked in the head with a baseball because that's not funny.

And I feel bad for the guy and I hope he gets better soon. But it is like visually kind of funny. And so that's that shouldn't be allowed. You shouldn't have visually. There shouldn't be a sight gag with an injury. That's terrible. Well, on the positive injury front, maybe we don't talk about that enough. It's always doom and gloom.

Guys getting heard pictures in particular. You know, Kyle Bradish came back. And that's good, right? Because we've talked about how often it seems when a pitcher is nursing an elbow injury or a forearm strain or a flexor strain or whatever, like, oh, Tommy John is inevitable, you know? And you're just delaying the inevitable if you try rest and rehab and PRP injections, etc. And, of course, you can point to a lot of pictures and even recent cases where that has been the progression. However, every now and then, someone does make it back. And people will often point to Masahiro Tanaka, who did this and avoided Tommy John surgery with the Yankees.

Well, Bradish has done it now. And he did PRP and rest and rehab when he had a sprained ligament in his elbow this spring. And he's made it back now. And he has started three games. The first two starts went well. The third one wasn't so hot. But on the whole, he's been effective. They're limiting his pitch counts still and building him back up again. And I don't know

if you can say he's out of the woods or when he would be out of the woods or if any pitcher is ever out of the woods. Perpetually in the woods. They are Hansel and Gretel. It's just a forest. Yeah. Every pitching staff is a forest, I guess. They're all in the woods. But he's a that far in the rearview mirror. So still some cause for concern, but he at least made it back and he's pitching and he hasn't had to go under the knife yet. Famous last words maybe, but if he does stick on the roster and continues to pitch pretty well, then he will at least be another prominent recent example we can point to, to offer some hope that it's not inevitable that you will be gone for 12 to 18 months. We should count every single day that a pitcher does not require Tommy John as a victory.

I am not interested in litigating the enthusiasm that we feel for learning. Actually, that hurt guy, he doesn't need TJ today. He hopefully won't need it tomorrow. I think every single one of those is exciting. And maybe this is actually going to work its way around to being pessimistic rather than optimistic. But I just think that, you know, I tend to think of pitchers in two categories they're the guys who don't need tommy john today and they're the guys that do need tommy john today and i i appreciate that there's nuance in reality between those two categories in all likelihood and that you know if they're having a root around by your ucl then maybe your your guard should be. But I just assume that if we were to take, you know, if we were to conceal their identities because we don't want it to affect how much money anybody makes unnecessarily.

But like if we were to conceal everybody's identities and we were to subject every pitcher in baseball to an MRI, there'd be something. There would be something on every single one of those. And some of those might be more alarming some things. but there'd be at least something on all of them. They're all just ticking time bombs in the forest. That's terrible. That'll start a fire. It's funny. There was a Discord group conversation recently prompted by my perhaps overly long digression and overly detailed digression into the pronunciation of summer sausage. Summer sausage. Is it summer sausage or is it summer sausage? And we talked about why people might pronounce it one way or the other. And someone was saying that we see the same thing with Tommy John or Tommy John, where when you say the pitcher's name, you would usually say

Tommy John probably. But when you're referring to the surgery, you might say Tommy John, which I noticed that you just did. And yet if you say Tommy John's surgery, if you say the full phrase, often it's more evenly stressed. It's like Tommy John surgery, or I would even probably stress the second syllable there. It's curious. But I noticed that because you did say Tommy John. Tommy John. Tommy John. Yeah.

Batcast. By the way, speaking of the Batcast stuff, I meant to bring this up when we were talking to Petriello last time, but I forgot. last month about whether Ted Williams' famous, Williams' Williams? William I. Red seat home run in Fenway that is still marked by the different colored seats out there among the green, whether that actually plausibly went that far. And sadly, we don't have bat cast data for 1946 when that homer was hit. I think it's safe to say that was definitely a barrel. That was definitely a blast by Ted. And I'm always skeptical of those like the home run landed here diagrams and legends and tales. often it was just like a member of the team's PR department just walked out and paced out the distance, right? And so you hear, you know, 600-foot home runs or the mantle home run of 565 feet,

and it just seems implausible given the tracking data that we have now. But Mike applied all the information available to us to the Red Seat Homer and found that, A, it's not actually 502 feet as it was reported. Like, it's maybe 502 feet if you did pace out the distance. But the way that we report home run distance now is like the distance for it to go all the way to the ground. So if it's interrupted in its flight, you don't just stop the counter when it stops. You project how far it would have gone if there had been no impediment there. And so by that measure, the way that we report home runs now, it would have had to be even

farther than 500, two feet, like considerably farther. And that seems implausible because we haven't had a home run tracked by StatCast that was quite that far. And yet Mike determined that it actually probably was plausible. For one thing, there's a little more precision when it comes to where exactly that home run landed because, like, a guy was sitting in that seat and the seat is still roughly in the same place. Like, it's Fenway Park you know they've remodeled they've put it back on the seat now but it's it's still seemingly in roughly the same place back on the seat they're like you know you know uh our famously incredibly comfortable ballpark it used to be worse yeah yeah sometimes you can't see the field and sometimes there's no lumbar support, but it's better now. But it actually went through the guy's hat. It's a good even though it would have had to go really really far and as mike documents like

there are a whole lot of people saying you know sluggers who've hit really deep home runs and have been like i don't know that if even ted williams could have hit one there and as mike said it would have been more like 525 or 530 feet based on how we report these things today, which sounds even farther fetched. However, he looked up the data for the weather that day and like the temperature and the humidity and most importantly, the wind. There was a big storm that day that was like, you know, big gusts and disrupting everything. And also Fenway was differently constructed back then. They didn't have the big press box behind home plate that kind of cuts off the wind a little bit. And so if you got the ball up high in those days, it could be caught by the wind and just sail in the wind farther than it could today.

And so using the hourly wind data, which we have even from 1946, like we can't say exactly whether the wind was gusting at the instant that Ted hit that home run. But given the conditions, given the wind, Mike, as Greg Rybarczyk, who worked for the Red Sox for a while and used to operate the HitTracker online site, he reached a similar conclusion years ago. Mike says, yeah, the estimate actually was that it would have gone as far as it is reputed to have gone. So that actually holds up on that day in that ballpark that actually could have and seemingly did go as far as the red seat suggests. So how about that? It actually holds up to the most rigorous modern analysis. very good piece mike did a good job with it and also i don't bemoan our lack of stat cast in prior eras and people might think but isn't this inconsistent with your general sense of unease

related to people buying two not one but two phony twitter accounts i think that it's good to have some tall tales like it's you know and so i like being able to say it's within the realm of the possible but i don't need to be able to say it's definitively true you know i just think uh we want a little we want a little legend uh in the in the game's history because we were so precise in the present, you know? And I like that. I, I,

what's one of the things I really appreciate about baseball is the precision and how it can sit next to other things like, you know, whimsy or, you know, stirring feeling or silliness or what, what have you. I like that those things can all kind of be in a basket together.

But I think it's important to have some tall tales. And I don't need to know. I don't need to know any more than I already know about that. That's what I've decided. You know, I'm good. Especially if it's a harmless thing. It's like what good can come of debunking legendary player achieved legendary feet now in this case we're not debunking it we're we're actually bolstering the case which i guess makes it even more impressive

maybe but yeah it's fun to have tall tales sometimes and also yes not everything is about quantifying everything down to the last details like we were saying with Ellie, like, is it good value-wise for him to try to steal 100 bases if he tries to do that? Maybe not, but do it for the story. Be a legend. Like, people will remember that. It will be, this is entertainment, you know? This is, we're trying to have a good spectator experience here. And particularly when the method that you're using shows off a really incredible athletic skill. Base running is great. I think part of the reason that base running and good base running really resonates with me,

I won't necessarily speak for others, is that it does feel like a really potent combination of a heady pursuit. You have to be a good base runner between the ears in addition to with your legs right and the combo i find very i'm like wow human bodies they're kind of amazing sometimes they let us down but you know sometimes it's they're really incredible to watch like when you get a bruise like that you know when you get just a and then you keep you keep playing well the next thing i wanted to bring up is is a perfect confluence of the last two things we talked about, injuries and tall tales. Now, you were saying that it can be kind of uncomfortable sometimes when you're laughing at an injury.

Like it can be kind of a physically funny sight gag, but also someone got hurt, right? funny sight gag, but also someone got hurt, right? Well, that goes more than double probably when it was a fatal injury, when someone died in a way that could be construed as humorous, I guess, or weird or wacky. And sometimes the passage of time helps a little bit like with that, you know, if it's, it happened so long ago that that person wouldn't be alive anymore anyway, and no one who knew them or could care about them

is still alive. You know, it, you maybe might feel a little less guilty about joking about the circumstances of their demise. Wait to see where this is going. Where are we going then?

There is a tweet the other day by Tim Haggerty, who is a broadcaster for the Padres AAA affiliate, the El Paso Chihuahuas. And Tim tweeted a story. I don't know how he came across this, but it's an old newspaper story. And here's how Tim described it in the tweet.

In 1906, a town ball player in Pennsylvania named B.F. Hicks was hit by a train while pursuing a fly ball. And that is an accurate description of this story. Wait, wait. See, you chuckled. Wait, hold on. A lot of people chuckled. Wait, read the sentence again. Well, let me read you the story itself because it's short. Okay.

So this is from 1906, newspaper account headline, Death Came With Catching of Ball. And it says, Journal Special Service, July 21st, during a baseball game between railroad employees at Pitcairn yesterday. This is Pitcairn, Pennsylvania, which was a big railroad hub at the time, my God. Yeah. Now, this was Ben Bate. I had to use my newspapers.com account to dig into this one. That sounds like a tall tale. Yeah.

It sounds like a guy gets hit by a train and he's still holding on to the ball. I found other accounts that made it seem even more improbable maybe that he retained control of the ball. So here's another report. Left fielder runs upon railroad oblivious of his peril during hot game. During a baseball game among the men employed about the Pennsylvania Railroad roundhouse at Pitcairn this afternoon, BF Hicks, who was playing left field for one of the teams, ran over on the railroad tracks after a long foul tip. He was gazing into the air at the ball, and when his comrades shouted to him that a train was bearing down upon him, some commonalities here, even

similar language, he was so interested in getting the ball that he failed to take the warning. Now, this puts it in even more gruesome terms. Just as he caught the ball, the engine struck him and he was instantly killed, his body being badly mutilated. In his dead hand, however, Hicks still clutched the ball. Now, clearly the guy was a gamer. I mean, this was not even a high-stakes game and he was just going to go get that ball heedless of the train bearing down on him here. He was a railroad worker. There were thousands of railroad workers at that time.

It was a big hub, like the biggest railroad hub junction east of the Mississippi. You'd think he would have been aware of the risk of the trains everywhere, but he was just so intent on catching that fly ball. Now, that much is not in dispute. I didn't see any accounts saying that this didn't happen, that he wasn't killed while playing baseball and trying to catch a fly ball. However, I am skeptical of the dead hand clutching the ball. We're supposed to believe here that he was hit by a train

at the instant he catches the ball, his body is badly mutilated, We're supposed to believe here that he was hit by a train at the instant he catches the ball. His body is badly mutilated. Yeah. And somehow he's holding onto the ball after all of that. He's probably flying through the air. He's flattened by this train and his hand is still – like would he have had possession of the ball? It's not like rigor mortis had time to set in or something. Like it just seems very unlikely that he would have retained control. And this was, I mean, 1906, who knows if he even had

a glove at the time or whether there was really much to the gloves back then. Although I guess it's supposedly just in his hands, not in a glove. It doesn't say he was wearing a glove. It just sounds farfetched to me that he could keep control of the thing despite dying in the process. And here's the thing. I tried to trace this back to the original reports, and there are some reports that appeared on the same day kind of contemporaneously, and some included that detail and some didn't. But the Altoona Times, I think, was first to this, if anything. And Altoona is like 90 miles away from Pitcairn in Pennsylvania.

So they were kind of like on the scene. They were the local paper reporting on this and may have had it first or at least as early as anyone else. And their version was a little less sensational. So their headline was, killed in act of catching a ball. BF Hicks chases it to railroad tracks and is hit by

an engine. During a game of baseball, BF Hicks, age 23 years, single, ran to catch a ball when he was struck and instantly killed by a shifting engine near the roundhouse at Pitcairn yesterday afternoon. Says where he lived. At noon, a crowd was playing baseball. Hicks ran to catch a ball, which had been knocked a great distance. The ball was about to alight on the tracks, and as Hicks attempted to catch it, he was killed. And then it says where his home was. So this report, which I would consider more credible, doesn't even say he caught the ball, let alone that he was still clutching it in his outstretched hand post-mortem. It says that he was trying to catch it, and then he got hit by a train, which that sounds much more plausible to me.

Journalists were much more prone to sensationalism back then. There was a lot of printing the legend going on. You know, we're trying to sell some copies here. We'll dress these stories up a little bit. So this reads to me as, okay, there's a large element of truth here. He really was hit while he was trying to catch a foul ball or a fly ball by a train. But I think someone added some additional adornment on there about the detail of the hand clutching the ball even after death with the mutilated rest of the body. That part doesn't pass the sniff test to me.

And some of the other accounts like had different ages for him. I'm trusting the Altoona Times on this one. I think they had it right. And I don't think, you know, I hate to take this away from BF Hicks because he really, I mean, he laid it all on the line there. Like, you know, even more so than a catcher who would play one-handed or take bruises. Like, I mean, he, he left it out on the field, right? He left it all on the field, BF Hicks did. So he was not lacking for effort, but I, I just can't quite buy that he not only

made the catch, but continued to clutch the ball. I'm sorry. I hate to be all Neil deGrasse Tyson about this story. Oh, no. Wow. First of all, I'm so glad we landed where we did with this train of thought. Oh, no. I didn't do it on purpose. I swear I didn't do it on purpose. Oh, no. Oh, my. Oh, dear. I'm sure that the primary motivation to like sell some newspapers, right? Cause it is a sensational detail. Uh, I do wonder, I do wonder if there isn't a little bit of like trying to give the man some dignity in this moment because, you know, look, I'm just going to say it. What a bit, what a goofy ass way to die. You know, like by a train. First of all, trains are loud now.

And I imagine they were loud then. Like, how did you miss the train? Right. You know, like, I don't want to, you know, doubt your focus, but surely you'd be like, oh, a train. He was eminently focused on the baseball game, just not on his surroundings. Maybe the author of this particular piece was like, look, it's a goofy death. I'm sure that's how they referred to it at the time, because I bet goofy was in way of circulation. But it's a goofy death. But we can at least give him the dignity of having caught the ball.

You know, that adds a gravity to it. Right. And now I've robbed him of that dignity 120 or so years later. But here's the thing. There is another sensational aspect to this story that was not in the account that Tim Haggerty tweeted. And I learned about this from the Altoona Times. They did a follow-up two days later. And here's the thing. It gets even more tragic in a way. Now, this is just sad because there was a second fatality that stemmed directly from B.F. Hicks' misfortune. Here's the headline in the Altoona Times, July 23rd, 1906,

news of sudden death is fatal to boy's mother. I know. Mrs. Bell Hicks succumbs from shock on learning that her boy had been killed. Mrs. Bell Hicks, mother of BF Hicks, who was killed Friday afternoon at Pitcairn while playing ball, a full account of which was published exclusively in Saturday's Altoona Times. X-Tree, X-Tree. Altoona Times had it first. Died Saturday morning at her home in Cove Forge, this county. Mrs. Hicks was in very delicate health.

Okay. However, when she heard of the untimely death of her son, the shock was too great for her, and she died shortly after receiving the sad news. That's sad. Her brother receiving the news of her death Saturday. The body of B.F. Hicks was brought to the city Saturday evening. The badly mutilated but possibly still clutching a ball body of B.F. Hicks. Mrs. Hicks had been in failing health for some time. And this is sad.

They had a double funeral. So they had a double funeral on July 23rd for B.F. Hicks and his mother who died upon learning that B.F. Hicks had died. So, that was a less goofy secondary death coming from the goofy first death. But yeah, it had repercussions beyond B.F., sadly. Wow. It took a turn, Ben. You brought me down, you know. Yeah. It's quite a story. It's quite a story. It's quite a story. My goodness. Okay.

Last thing I want to do here, I want to critique a couple plays for you and with you. And the first one, I'm going to get kind of crotchety here potentially. Okay. Matt Trueblood, writer, former Effectively Wild guest, he brought this to my attention. So on Tuesday, the Pirates were playing the Brewers, and the Pirates were down by a couple runs in the top of the ninth. And McGill was in to close it out for the Brewers. And Connor Joe came up for the Pirates. Okay. And McGill went to a full count on Connor Joe.

And then the two pitches after that, so the first full count pitch was a foul ball that Joe jumped all over and he pulled a 99 mile per hour inside fastball and was just a little too quick on it despite the speed and the location. And because this will be important in a moment, I will play a quick clip from each broadcast.

Each of the broadcast crews was impressed at how Connor Joe jumped all over that very fast inside pitch and almost timed it up. So here's what the Brewers broadcast said about that. And it's ripped foul. almost timed it up. So here's what the Brewers broadcast said about that. And it's ripped foul. Got the hands in on 99. He knew a fastball was coming.

And here's what the Pirates broadcast said. I tell you what, that's 99 on the inside corner. Connor Dill just leaned all over there. They say he was on that one like braces on crooked teeth. Okay. Now the very next pitch, second full count pitch, this one is only 97. It's also a fastball inside but also high a little bit more over the plate. But again, Joe jumps all over it. He hits a home run.

Okay. over the plate. But again, Joe jumps all over it. He hits a home run. Okay. And again, the broadcasters were quite impressed that Connor Joe had managed to make such solid contact with that ball. So here is the Pirates broadcast. Wow. That's impressive there. Connor Joe is continuing to just pound the baseball, come up with just all type of things. You see, this is a good fastball at the top of the zone, Browning. He knew. He didn't make time about moving that barrel. Goodness gracious.

And here's the Brewers broadcast. That's a pretty good piece of hitting on a ball up and in. Yeah, that was a good at bat right there. Connor Joe has done it the count one and two. Got it to a full count, got a fastball that he liked and knocked it out of here. Okay, the reason why this is important, ultimately it wasn't that important in the game. It was just a solo shot. It pulled the Pirates to within one, but they ultimately lost four to three.

So didn't really swing anything there. ultimately lost four to three, so didn't really swing anything there. But the reason why it stood out to Matt and why he directed my attention to it was that after the count went to three, two, Connor Joe stepped out of the box for a moment and he consulted a card. He pulled a card out of his pocket and I took a screenshot of him consulting the card, which I sent to you and will also put on the show page. And he was just, you know, very ostentatiously sort of staring down at this card that he had in his pocket and pulled out. Presumably, this card contained some information about McGill's tendencies. One would assume on a full count specifically, probably. What does he tend to throw on 3-2 or where does he tend to throw it?

And so perhaps Connor Joe was so prepared to jump all over those fastballs that he subsequently saw because maybe the card said, hey, he throws a lot of fastballs or even inside fastballs on 3-2. And Matt looked it up and said he's thrown like 80% fastballs on 3-2 this year. And most of those were inside, but it's a small sample and it's a lower number if you include 2023 and who knows, maybe it's matchup specific, but he thought there was something of value he could get from this card. Sure. And then he timed him up really well and kind of clobbered him subsequently.

Clobbered. And there's nothing illegal about this. You can do this. You can whip out a card with some scouting info. But Matt came to me because he feels sort of get off my lawn about the constant consulting of cards during the game now. And I've kind of come around to that feeling too over time. It kind of detracts from the experience to me

when I see him sort of pause a plate appearance and get a refresher on what he's going to see. I mean, they call it a cheat sheet, right? It's not literally cheating. This is not against the rules, but I wouldn't be mad if it were, if it were cheating to do this, if it were rendered illegal to do this. Because I think over time, I've just become more down on in-game intel, basically. So like coaching visits, you know, mid-inning, you know, I'm kind of- Yeah, you don't want any mound visits. You say, get rid of them.

Yeah. And when players started consulting cards, I thought it was cool because it was new and novel. And I like information and using all the data that's available to you. And I thought, oh, OK, I applauded it. And one of the early instances was in 2018 when Austin Davis, who was pitching for the Phillies I think at the time, he brought out a card and Joe West confiscated it because Joe West, the old-timer, the traditionalist, I guess thought it was against the rules, but it wasn't actually. And then Joe West, future and now former Effectively Wild guest, he later apologized for confiscating the card because there wasn't anything that said that Davis couldn't have that card. But the more we see this now, now that the novelty has worn off, to me, it's just kind of like – it's like asking for a line in the middle of a play. It's like you should be off book. Like you should – you're coming up to face McGill.

You've got time in the dugout. You can watch on the iPad. You can read the scouting report. You can go over and ask someone when you're on the on-deck circle. You can refresh your memory about what McGill does on full counts. And granted, you probably won't get to a full count.

And maybe you don't want to have your head stuffed with facts and figures about what McGill throws on 3-2 if you might not even get to 3-2. So I understand it. And yet I just kind of feel like players should either be prepared or not. And that once you're out there on the field in the thick of the action, you kind of just got to go with what you know. And the preparation is something that could set players apart,

whether you've studied, whether you've done your homework, whether you've committed that to memory. So, you know, it's still, I don't even know what the card said. For all I know, it didn't say he throws inside fastballs on 3-2. Maybe Connor Joe just really did well here. And obviously, even if you know a 99 mile per hour inside fastball or 97, you still got to hit it. It's impressive regardless. But this interlude here, which wasn't even visible on one of the broadcasts, I watched both. One of them just cut away while he was doing this and you couldn't even see it. And the other lingered on the plate. And so you could see him do this. So you could have easily missed it, but I don't know. I don't think I like it. This is like

something that should be in the dry run. Like this should be in rehearsals, you know, by the time the game's going on, you got to know that stuff or not. What I'm hearing from you, Ben, is that you hate information. That you- Just go with your gut. Didn't have test anxiety as a student. I did. But you couldn't bring in the answers. That was cheating if you brought in a cheat sheet at the test you know because of the rule the rule says i know i'm saying right i'm not saying you broke the rules i'm saying maybe there should be a revision i appreciate that this matters a lot to you and i uh support you but i don't care you, it's not that I even necessarily disagree. I think that the I'm surprised that the novelty of a hitter doing it didn't kind of change the way it washed over you.

Because true. We're used to outfielders, pitchers, catchers, of course. Yeah. So I'm surprised that the novelty of it was not enough for you to go like, I don't love this. But, you know, you kind of got to hand it to him. Connor Joe has incredible hair, my goodness. He does, yeah.

Like, just really nice. Good for you, Connor. Maybe it's the cheat sheet creep, though, that the novelty has worn off because we've seen it in so many other contexts that now, yeah, the card creep, it's like now we're bringing it into the batter's box. Yeah.

We're looking at cards mid-plate appearance in this dramatic moment. And it wasn't like he delayed the game. I'm not sure he even called time, really. It was quick. Like he stepped out of the box. He looked at the card. He stepped back in. It wasn't a big deal.

We got the pitch clock now. So that's not such a concern. I don't know. I just, I kind of want baseball to be off book when you're between the lines. Like there are a lot of inning breaks. You get ample opportunities to consult all the information, and I applaud players who do. There's more than ever available. But I don't know.

Something about like interrupting the action to look at a card, it just doesn't feel like you should be able to do that to me. Maybe I'm just getting kind of crotchety. I don't know. Can I bring your attention to this isn't something I have an issue with, but I just find kind of interesting sort of in this vein. So I noticed the other day I was watching the San Diego Padres. And I don't know if he, you know, does this consistently. Maybe it changes. I know as I am Googling around, I can see pictures of him where it is sort of come and gone throughout the years. But Luis Campisano is one of the catchers who wears the like, he looks like a quarterback, you know, he's got the little like, you know, and so he's wearing that He's catching the game. Fine. And then he came up to bat in the next inning and he did not have on, he didn't have on like a guard. He didn't have on an elbow pad. He wasn't wearing anything on his ankles, but he still had his catcher thing on, his little wrist thing and i found that so funny like so many times we see guys break weird little bones um or like get dinged up in their elbow or whatever or like they break a bone on the top of their foot because uh of a of a foul ball and so you know guys go up there like an armor now uh and

he's clearly not opposed to some use of armor because he's a catcher so he's got his you know chest protector and all kinds of stuff when he's catching but he left the little thing on i just found that so interesting it's not actually objectively it's not at all interesting you know like the cosmos is interesting this is like a weird thing i noticed but well i wonder what what's that about you know what's that about? You know, what's that about? Yeah. I don't know. I wonder if it's more trouble to remove and reapply or- Maybe. Hasn't there been a case of like cards have fallen out of those things?

Yeah, there was an instance where, I don't remember if it was a catcher's card, but didn't Kevin Kiermaier, I always want to say- Yes, that's right. There's a big controversy. To do. I don't remember who the, he was still a Ray, I think, at the time. I don't remember who the race were playing. It was it was the Blue Jays, right? Because he there was some bad blood about that. And then he later became a Blue Jays fan. And that explains why, at least in part, I am hearing Kevin Kiermaier's name said the way that Buck Martinez says, Kevin Kiermaier.

I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. I want Buck Martinez to call every single baseball game. I want him in the booth for every team. Because I just don't understand where it came from. And I have come to realize I don't care. It's just so. So anyway, yeah, I think that I can't remember if it was the catcher's card or what, but Karim Kirmer found a card, and he did give it back, and there was a big – Yeah, it was Alejandro Kirk's card.

Card. Okay, so it was a catcher's card. And there was a big to-do about it, and then we got to talk about decorum and etiquette, which is our favorite thing. And it's really just being pedantic for manners, if you think about it. But yeah, I don't know. Maybe he doesn't want to take it off. Maybe he doesn't want to put other stuff back on because he's just been freed from his chest protector. And he's like, I cannot be burdened. I get to be temporarily unburdened.

But then you think he'd take the sleeve off with the thing, you know? Yeah. If there is ever a crackdown on the cards, and I'm not sure anyone else is advocating this other than me and Matt. I don't think that anyone else cares that much, yeah. Yeah. I would maybe make an exception, a special dispensation for catchers. Okay, yeah. Because they've got a lot to remember in addition to all the bruises. There are just so many pitchers over the course of a game and the course of a season and so many pitch types and so many hitters. That's a lot of scouting reports to commit to memory and recall in the moment. And so many counts and weak spots and hot zones and cold zones.

That's a lot to ask on top of everything else that catchers do. So maybe they can keep their cards, but I don't know if you're just a hitter or you're an outfielder. Come on. Come on. Okay. So that's take number one. Yes. Okay. The second take and second play, this one was more notable. You saw probably Ron Washington's comments about the failed suicide squeeze that the Angels attempted at his behest. Now, this one was notable maybe for the decision and then also for how he threw his player under the bus and totally pinned the blame on his player, Luis Guillorme, after he failed to get this bunt down. This was really, it's tough. It's the bottom of the eighth. The bases are loaded. The Angels are down by a run. And Guillorme is up. And Washington calls for a suicide squeeze. And look, I like the suicide squeeze as a play. I don't know if I usually like it analytically, but it's exciting.

Yes. Some variety. When it works, it's kind of cool. Yeah. But this was a weird situation. I mean, A, you have bases loaded, one out. Yeah. You're hoping to just put the ball in play and get the run in some other way.

Yeah. And maybe you even get a hit, and then you get an even better outcome. But also because the Cardinals pitcher, reliever Jojo Romero, was wild. Yeah. He had just walked a couple batters to load the bases and he was kind of all over the place, which seemed like, A, why not see if he just walks Guillaume and B, also kind of tough to anticipate that you're going to get a good pitch to bunt on when the pitcher doesn't seem to know where it's going.

Correct. And granted, lefty-lefty matchup, and Guillorme is a below-average hitter, and Romero is a sinker-baller, ground-ball guy, and you want to stay out of the double play there. I get it. But he fails to get this down. Yes. Okay. So here's the call of that play.

I'd like to see him hit one in the air to try to bring home the tying run. The runner is going. Guillerme misses the bunt. It's a tag out at the plate. Throw to third. Is not in time on Paris as the Angels try to squeeze. And Zach Netto tagged out at home by the catcher Pahez. So it really wasn't Guillermes' fault.

I mean, technically, I guess it is. He didn't get the bunt down. You got to get the bunt down. But also. Yeah, it was a way outside pitch again, like kind of a wild pitcher at the moment. Yeah. And he tried.

He reached out for it and he just couldn't get the bunt down. And so Ron Washington says very bluntly in the postgame presser, He can handle the bat. He didn't do the job. It wasn't anything I did wrong. He didn't do the job. I would have rather went to the ninth inning with a 6-6 lead than to went to the ninth inning the way we did. It didn't work out. He misspoke.

A 6-6 is not a lead, and maybe he meant 8-6. I don't know. To say that, he didn't do the job. It wasn't anything I had drunk. He didn't do the job. It almost makes you wonder whether there's something else going on there, like whether there's other bad blood between Washington and Guillorme or something. I mean, Washington is the guy who's famous

for saying it's incredibly hard in Moneyball, right? Like, this is hard. It's hard to do this. And Guillorme is a guy who has bunted. Like, it's not like he has no bunting experience. But when I searched on Savant, I found 17 instances of Guillormerme getting a bunt down, not to say that it was a hitter, just that he got the bunt down and it was a fair ball.

And 13 instances of him either tipping or fouling off a bunt or missing a bunt altogether. So 30 instances of him trying to bunt and it seemed like he was successful a little more than half of the time. It's a tough assignment. And Tom Tango ran through the numbers on his blog and he didn't take into account every factor, but he took into account the count for one. According to his calculations, the break-even point was 78%. And you could say it's a little lower maybe. But basically, like, you have to think that he's going to get it down three out of four times to justify. For it to be the right call, yeah. Yeah.

And that sounds optimistic to me to think that three out of four attempts he would get that bunt down. And, you know, good enough that it wouldn't just be like right in front of the plate and it wouldn't work anyway, right? I mean, there's a lot of ways that could go wrong and this was one of them. So, I think it was a curious call to begin with, but even if it was a justified call, how do you just say like, I didn't do anything wrong. It's all him. Like, Wals, he's, like, known as a player manager. Like, he's very popular with players, seemingly. And usually players don't appreciate that.

Just the manager being like, oh, yeah, that's, it's all on him. It's not, you know, like, you could make it a collective failure. Like, we didn't get the job done or something like that. Sure. But to single out your player like that and totally pass the buck when it came to the actual decision, I don't know. And Guillerme, to his credit, he said, I haven't seen what Washington said. He made a good pitch. I didn't get it down.

I've got to try to put a bat on it. That's it. So he didn't reciprocate. He didn't blame it down. I've got to try to put a bat on it. That's it. So he didn't reciprocate. He didn't blame Wash for telling him to do that. But he kind of took the high road. But I don't know. It doesn't seem like the high road to be like, it's not on me. It was all him.

On some level, the degree to which this constitutes a true failure on the player's part is sort of irrelevant um which isn't to say that you know as a manager and a coach you can't you know if you notice something that's wrong from a technique perspective or whatever that you shouldn't address that with the player like your your goal is to do the next one better uh and to win baseball games and so if there's an issue you definitely want to address it but it's like when we talk about the stuff that sort of falls to the manager, this is part of it, you know, and I think that you can, to your point, like acknowledge that things didn't work the way that you wanted them to without without throwing the player under the bus in quite the same way you know or like even

if you don't believe it like engage in a little false false modesty like yeah he didn't execute there but maybe i didn't put him in the best position you know something that we'll work on next time like that's yeah that's all that that really takes yeah and ron washington he's older school he's 72 years old he hasn't managed in a while. He played in an earlier era, the 70s and 80s, when managers weren't so touchy-feely, and maybe it was more common for them to call out a player like this. Managers know their personnel better than we do, obviously. There might be some players who respond positively to being called out like that. They take it as a challenge to be better.

But in my mind, at least, if it's a matter of effort, then it's fair game. If you're not putting the work in, if you're not prepared, if you're not paying attention, if you missed a sign, if you failed to consult your scouting card, that's one thing. If it's just a failure to perform, it's just really hard to get a bunt down on that pitch. It's not like he wasn't trying to. You're already going to have fans upset with you. You're going to have disgruntled gamblers upset with you. Now you've got your manager piling on. It's like, can you take something constructive from the criticism? Can you do something differently next time? I don't know what

Gheorme could do other than practice bunting against pitches way outside the strike zone. And this wasn't the first time that this had happened with the Angels. It wasn't even the first suicide squeeze like within the last week or so that kind of blew up in their faces because this happened on Friday too. And this time, Guillaume was on third and Mickey Moniak was at the plate and Moniak fouled the ball to third. Yeah. And then Guillaume got doubled off yes i'll play a clip of that you get a lot of situations that you have a chance to score especially at home you have to get it done to squeeze play as moniac bumps into a double play oh my goodness garcia with the catch and foul ground he flips to, and the Angels make two outs on the squeeze to win the third.

Ron Washington took a chance. Moniak on the squeeze, but popped it up. And Luis Guillorme doubled off to end the inning. I'm sorry, Wade. I'm speechless. The broadcasters were kind of taken aback by, I don't know whether it was the call or the execution or maybe a bit of both. And then Washington was asked immediately after in a mid-game manager interview what the thinking behind that call was.

And I can play a clip of that too. Time for a stage manager interview with Ron Washington. We have to ask you about that last play. call was, and I can play a clip of that too. Basically, like, he's like, we got to make something happen, you know, which I think can be a trap that managers fall into when things are not going great for their team. They'll be like, I got to manage us out of this, you know, and often the more the manager intervenes, the worse it is because there's only so many levers you can pull and sometimes they don't really make sense to pull. It is because there's only so many levers you can pull and sometimes they don't really make sense to pull. And so when things aren't going great for your team, which they aren't for the Angels because they're the Angels, then you think, gosh, we really got to manufacture runs. You know, we got to – I got to do some stuff. I got to be the field general here to kind of compensate for our shortcomings.

And then this happens where you're asking Mickey Moniak to bunt and he hasn't hit at all this year. But that wasn't even the first time I think he had been asked to suicide squeeze and failed. I think that happened in April, too. So Walsh is really doing this a lot. And the Angels have had a league average offense this year. Yeah. Granted, that was with Trout partly. Now they're without Trout as well as without a bunch of other guys who may or may not actually help to have like Miguel Sano and Brandon Drury and Anthony Rendon. But I don't know that that's a reason to suddenly be squeezing left and right.

I think that that's right. scenes and is like the the day-to-day of you know keeping the clubhouse together and doing all of the like people part of it that um sometimes when things aren't going well there's like a i have to be seen doing something and the the biggest impact is probably away from the field but uh so yeah i i think that that's right i i don't want to give anything away about his five things column he's not writing about the angels in particular, but Ben Clements has had occasion to like look at pop-ups this week. And in the course of doing that, I got this message. This might've been unrelated to that. Wait, did you know the angels had a different failed squeeze this week? I was like, what?

On earth. So yeah, that was my exposure. By the way, speaking of Angel's former angel, David Fletcher, he's in the minors now, but he showed off a knuckleball that looks pretty darn good. It's kind of a fun floater. It's sort of a classic throwback, low-velocity knuckleball, and it worked quite well. He's with AAA Gwinnett now in Atlanta's organization, and just this week he struck out the side as a pitcher. Now it was a 10-2 game in the eighth. It was just a garbage-time mop-up thing. But he has thrown two scoreless innings this season with those three strikeouts and one walk just flashing this knuckleball.

And I got to ask, like, A, nice to see him getting some positive press because his name was most in the news, I think, this year when he was identified as the guy who introduced Ipe Mizuhara to the bookmaker, like made that connection. That's right.

Not knowing how far Ipe would fall probably, but yeah, he got a little fame or infamy out of that. We got to get a, maybe David Fletcher can play himself in the scripted TV show we talked about last time. Oh my gosh, I bet, yeah. Making the fateful introduction. But Fletcher, who's been a decent and very fun player at times, he has fallen on hard times after he signed a bigger contract and extension.

And he just hasn't been good lately, not because of the contract, just he hasn't been good. And, you know, he hasn't hit. He didn't hit last year. He didn't hit the year before. He didn't hit the year before that. And now he's in the minors, also not hitting. He didn't hit the year before that. And now he's in the minors, also not hitting.

And having seen this knuckleball, I mean, do you think that David Fletcher, he's turning 30 later this month. Do you think the career outlook for David Fletcher would be better as what he's been, a kind of multi-position utility infielder type or a knuckleballer? Because I think I've seen enough now. He's got a 585 OPS in AAA. He hasn't hit in years. Having seen this knuckleball, I think it might be time for him to pull a Culberson, just do a late career reinvention conversion to pitching. I don't know that the outlook for him is better as an infielder than like probably the odds of him making it back to the majors as an infielder are higher. He was with Atlanta briefly this year in the big leagues and Atlanta's always like carrying two bench guys that never play. So he's got a

good shot at being that guy again. But like long-term, you know, maybe he should consider the knuckleball transition. Maybe long-term he should. If I were him, I'd give it a little more time as a hitter. But it doesn't always work. It doesn't often work, but it could work. It could work. It could work. It's worth trying.

But what he's doing now is not working so well. And that looked, you know, looked like a pretty good knuckler. I want to see more. It looked pretty good. All right. That was quite a grab bag of topics. Thanks for listening along. And thanks for supporting the podcast on Patreon, if you do.

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Be factively wild. Be factively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2165 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from... Two in a row! Two in a row. I made it further into this one. Yeah, I was undone from the start. It's like a horseshoes. Close doesn't count, really, except in horseshoes. Is that how that saying goes? I have no idea.

You kind of have to make it through the whole intro for it to count. Okay, I'll try again. Hello and welcome to episode 2165 of Effectively Wild, a baseball, oh my goodness, a baseball podcast presented by our Patreon supporters. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. I can remember that.

All right. Hello and welcome to episode 2165, a baseball... Oh my goodness. I've got the yips. Do you want me to do it? Okay. Powering through. Okay, powering through.

Hello and welcome to episode 2165 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast presented by our... Wait, I screwed up again. It's a baseball podcast from Van Grasse. Oh, no. I'm falling apart. You gotta leave this whole... You gotta put this whole thing in the outro. My goodness. Should I write it down?

Should I resort to that? No. I can do this. I've done this 2,000 times. You can do it. I have faith in you. Yeah. Okay.