Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2211: Hip Hippo Hooray

Episode Date: August 31, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Juan Soto’s free agency and Aaron Judge’s ego, follow up on in-season exhibition games, and (18:51) answer listener emails about the possibility of adding games to the baseball season, bullpen pitchers robbing a home run robbery, redrawing (or enforcing) coach’s boxes, pronouncing “wRC+,” programming ABS to help starters […]

But whoever it is, they'll still be just a couple of baseball nerds. They'll still be speaking statistically, rambling romantically, pontificating pedantically, bantering bodily, drafting discerningly, giggling giddily, equaling effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2211 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Van Lynberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs. Hello Meg. Hello. So Jeff Passan published a free agency preview at ESPN+.

Seems early for free agency previewing. It's still August, but I guess that's when you do these things and here I am talking about it. So it worked. And a big part of the free agency preview was a Juan Soto's free agency preview because that is the most exciting thing other than, I guess, the intrigue surrounding the cipher Roki Sasaki and his posting status. But surrounding the cipher Roki Sasaki and his posting status, but this was discussed in our Patreon Discord group in the wake of Passon publishing this piece. Do you think that the dynamics of Aaron Judge's salary might affect the negotiations with Juan Soto and what the Yankees are willing to pay? This is not something that Hassan mentioned in his piece, but he basically handicapped these Soto sweepstakes as Yankees versus Mets, or at least

those are the contenders. You might have sort of a Subway series for Soto. A Subway Subway series? Subway Subway series. I think I would opt for a Soto Subway series. Either way, they seem like they are likely to both be in the bidding and in the running. And as Passanota said, there's basically no knock on Soto. What can you really fault him on at this point? He is young, especially for a free agent. He's incredibly accomplished. He has answered whatever questions existed

about him this season because he's just been so good all around. As we noted, his defense has ticked up and his offense is almost unsurpassed, almost peerless, except for his teammate, Aaron Judge. But do you think that because Judge is the captain, would it be awkward for the Yankees to offer Juan Soto more money than Aaron Judge makes on an average annual value basis? Total value, I'm sure his contract will blow away Aaron Judge's because their respective ages are quite different.

As one of our Patreon supporters, Megan pointed out in the Discord group, Juan Soto, famously 25 years old, Aaron Judge's first full season, he was 25 years old. So that kind of puts things into perspective. So the length of the contract, if Soto wants to maximize the length, it will be very long. But the average annual value, Judge, I guess, putting aside the difficult to classify Shohei Otani contract, I guess Judge is the highest paid position player, 40 million per. Then you had the Scherzer and Verlander short-term high AAV contracts, but Judge is kind of the

cream of the crop pay wise, Otani aside at least, and he's not purely a position player or at least the Dodgers hope he isn't. So do you think there could be ego considerations there? Would they have to try to come up with some creative structure so as not to bump Aaron Judge from the salary leaderboard? I hadn't really considered that as a thing you have to navigate until just this very moment, Ben. I think the reason that it didn't occur to me to fixate particularly on the AAV aspect of it is that the total, like you said, the total is just likely to be significantly larger. I know that there are guys who care about AAV. You know, we've heard that in the course

of negotiations for this and that free agent, but it seems like the top line number is going to be the thing that really matters the most, if only because that's going to be how the contract is understood in the public. When we talk about these deals, we often talk about them in terms of total guaranteed dollars. And like Otani's great evidence of this, because even though he has this bizarre structure, and even though there are all of these deferrals, and even though that was a huge point of conversation when he signed the deal, when you see it referenced now, you just see the total guarantee referenced more often than not, right?

I guess that's partly because his contract is so confusing, but also it does seem like, yes, he wanted to have not just the biggest top line number in baseball, but maybe in all of professional sports. So with that said, on the one hand, that might indicate that like, Judge is just going to have to get over himself. I'm sure Aaron Judge is not ignorant to the dynamics that would make Soto's deal different than his for all the reasons that you just cited. On the other hand, maybe the fact that the top line number is going to outpace his total guarantee and probably by a significant margin.

Maybe that suggests that there has to be some amount of massaging and that the AAV will be the place where they opt to do that. But I don't know, if you're a guy who's out there saying that the only thing that matters is winning a World Series and that the regular season is a failure absent such a championship. You can say you might take a different tact in private, but publicly you're going to have to be like, I'm so thrilled that Juan is back. This guy gives us our best chance to win a World Series and that is all that matters. So I don't know, like there has to be a, I imagine a temperament component to the question of being the captain, you know, that has to qualify

you. And so I bet he'll say the same stuff and like, you know, he can be spoken to reasonably, I imagine. I don't think it's going to end up mattering all that much. CB Yeah. One would think it would not be very captain-like to- LS It would not be very captain-like. But again, guess who didn't move off a shortstop when he maybe should have? CB Yeah, exactly. Right. LS The last captain. So even the captains among us are but human. CB Not all captains are good at being captains.

LS Right. sometimes people mutiny and then you write dad books about it. I just finished The Wager, can you tell? I really liked it so much, Ben. What a good time. I read it too. Man, that's grand. He knows what he's doing.

Yeah, so you could have a Captain Queeg or a Captain Bly or a Commodore Ensign. Who was it in The Wager? It's been a little while since I read it. Cheap. Yes. Right. So hopefully Aaron Judge would not go that way. Yeah. Hopefully he doesn't cheap out. Oh, yes. He should put the team before himself. And of course, it would further the goal of the Yankees winning championships, which is of course all that matters that would further the goal of the Yankees winning championships, which is of course all that matters if they retain the services of Juan Soto. And yes, hopefully it's not like he'd be surpassed by some scrub, it's Juan Soto.

And also, just in an interest of solidarity, I suppose players in theory should always be rooting for other players to make bank and to raise the average annual value ceiling higher. You shouldn't begrudge a fellow union member for making money, presumably. For all those sorts of reasons, yes. One would think that a judge probably wouldn't make a stink about that. Yeah, certainly not publicly because Yankees fans would be like, Aaron, you're making many millions of dollars and we want one Soto. So his contract was what? Nine

years, 360 million. And Passon says the floor for Soto is 500 and it's going to be more than that. Right. And it's going to be more than that. Right. And it's going to be more than that. Yes. So passing wrote the industry agrees the floor for his contract will be 500 million. It will go higher though. So I guess the floor is not really 500 million. So in order to keep the average annual value below judges, while having that kind of top line number, it would have to be a really long-term deal, which it could be and might well be anyway. He could do a 15-year deal for 39 million per and that's 585 million,

right? So you could do that if you wanted to protect poor air judges' ego somewhat. And it does seem like agents care about this kind of thing sometimes too. And maybe even specifically Scott Boris just topping some other rival agent and their client and the one-upsmanship. So I don't know how that will come into play here, but yeah, it's just, it's hard for me to imagine the Yankees being outbid for one soda because they shouldn't be. He has clearly proved that he can succeed in New York. If you can make it there, you can make it anywhere. And he has made it there and they need him clearly. And Aaron Judge, as great as he is, will not be this great forever. I mean, I know we've kind of been saying that for a while, like, oh, he's wrong side of 30

and yet he still keeps getting better somehow, but that won't continue forever, I would imagine. And so you're going to need Juan Soto to be the foundation of your offense for years to come. So I guess if anyone could outbid them, it would be Steve Cohen. And this is of course the Hal Steinbrenner Yankees, not the George Steinbrenner Yankees. So being outbid is conceivable, but they did pony up for Judge and Garrett Cole. And it's just gonna have to be an even bigger number for Soto because of his age.

My cheap joke made me feel so strong, Ben. I feel very powerful now. Yeah, that was a pretty good one. Looking at the fan graphs valuation of what Aaron Judge's production would be worth on the free agent market in his not even yet two full seasons. It's up to $116.3 million worth of value and counting. So he's basically going to be like a third of the way to that contract's number in two seasons. Even if he does and when he does tail off, what you want

when you sign a free agent to a big contract like that, especially someone who's already over 30, you want them to put up immediately. You want the decline to wait. You know that the decline is coming and that's okay. And you're just paying for those front-loaded prime years and hoping that you get them and the Yankees are getting them. They've certainly gotten that this year. While I was Googling and searching for things here, I found a headline at nj.com published May 3rd, 2024. Aaron Judge's Yankees contract already not aging well, host says, something is up. And this was evidently WFAN host Keith McPherson said early in May, quote,

I don't like being right about Judge. What I said in spring training was we're never going to see the dominant Aaron Judge from 2022 again. Oh, buddy. But it's okay, because he doesn't like being right about Judge, right? So he's probably happy that he was so wrong about Judge. It's probably a great relief to him. LSW New York talk radio, you guys are doing special stuff up there. My goodness. CB He's not the only Akees fan to have expressed similar sentence. But yes, he's not completely

washed, this guy said, but I think about what we thought we were getting. It's unfortunate for us as Yankees fans. You guys, I keep talking about how I want the broader New York, New Jersey media market to chill a little bit, but I don't know how sincere I am when I say that because it does make me laugh. It does make me have a good chuckle when I get to watch you guys do you. We can only ever be ourselves. Arizona is this place that is undergoing a rapid cultural transformation as new people

move to the state and the politics of the place change. But I also just saw a Phoenix New Time headline, Arizonans have the fourth highest per capita rate of pointing laser pointers at airplanes. So you can also only ever be yourselves. Brenda the Pod, Zach Buchanan tweeted that one out. So I don't know, man. You guys do you.

I cannot wait for the headlines this off season as the Soto Subway series unfolds. I'm sure everyone will be very normal about it and it will not be apocalyptic in its tone even a little bit. What a, mmm. You know, it's like, what's that tweet? I'm sad for our country, but this is great content. Yes, well, tremendous content. Yes. Tremendous.

That's right. Tremendous. Sorry. Me and memes, we don't have a great relationship. I'm often unsure what to do with them. If it is an intra-city struggle, then we're basically guaranteed some juicy New York Post back page headlines about whichever team ends up the loser in the Juan Soto subway series sweepstakes. I wonder what I want more. Like if I were ranking, you know, if I were doing sort of my hierarchy of needs ranking

of the potential outcomes there, I still think that the best possible outcome is that he ends up somewhere else entirely. And then you just get to watch everyone in that Metro like melt down about it. And, you know, I'm sure there will be headlines about how he can't handle New York actually, even though we've had an entire season that proves the opposite of that. That would be fun. The Mets outbidding the Yankees would be great if only because again, the headlines would be apoplectic. I don't know. I think it's going to be a good fun time either way. How long do you think it will take Wonsodo to sign a deal? Ooh, well, Boris never rushes into these things.

He sure does not. And what reason does he have to this year? He's got, you know, do we know who Corbin Burns' agent is? Is he also a Boris guy? I can't remember him. I think he is, yes. Yeah. So he has Soto and Burns to do.

I think those are his marquee guys, but yeah, I wonder what that means for how long it'll take Burns to get done. Cause he's probably a high profile enough player and the best available starter, right? Yes. It's a, it's a pretty significant step down from Soto to the next best position player and from Burns to the next best pitcher. Sasaki aside. So right.

And Sasaki's situation is just so, I really, I know, I know that the industry scuttle butt indicates he could get posted, but I am just so skeptical of that. Yeah. No, unless he has some kind of clause built into his contract, which if he did, you'd think he could have triggered it already unless there was some sort of time that he agreed to wait. But if not for that, yeah, the financial incentive for the Marines to wait a couple more years. And for him, yes, but he might prioritize his competitive aspirations over the financial ones like Otani did perhaps, but the Marines may not feel that way. Nicole Zichal-Klein I also just wonder with him, he's had the health stuff, you know, his stuff is like, has rebounded, but is still diminished relative

to what it was. Though like, I say this with zero inside info, I want to be quite clear about that. But like, if we are to assume that he might at some point require some sort of surgical intervention on his arm. Does he want to just get posted and do that and get it over with? It's a fascinating case. But all of that to say, I imagine that Boris will be quite heavily involved in both the Byrnes and Soto negotiations himself. Cause you know, like we say, he's a Boris client, but like all of these guys, including

Soto and Byrnes for that matter, have like other people at Boris's agency who work with them in a more direct and sort of persistent way. And then, you know, Boris comes in on big stuff. So as we learned when we got, you know, rescheduled abruptly when we tried to talk to Scott a couple of years ago. So I wonder how the timing of those two will unfold relative to one another and the relatives for the rest of the market and then how much that will hold up other stuff. Although the number of teams that are going to be in on Soto, I imagine will be relatively small, even though

I think he will get a big deal just because like he's going to get such a big deal. It's not like the Rays aren't going to be like, I bet we can land one Soto. They're not going to think that. They're not going to think that. No, there are teams that should try, but probably won't even bother to get into it. When we were trying to lock down that Boris interview, which we eventually did, it was the Soto trade, right? That initially scotched, scotted our scheduled time to talk to him. I don't think it was the trade. Oh, the contract talks. It was the contract talks that caused an issue. Right, because remember he turned down a 15 year, $440 million contract from the nationals

reportedly a couple of years ago. And granted he was a couple of years younger then, but he's if anything better now he's reached a higher level of play and he's still so young that I don't know that teams will hold 25 versus 23 against him. Granted he will turn 26, the advanced stage of 26 late in October. But yeah, we haven't had a 15 year contract, right? Fernando Tatis Jr. was 14 years, Harper was 13 years.

There have been multiple 13 years, right? But I don't know that anyone has gone to 15, but if anyone would, it would be one, so to. So looking forward to seeing how that one plays out. Yeah. All right, let's answer some emails and I will just read an email comment that is related to our conversation

on the last couple episodes about exhibitions and in-game exhibitions, specifically between the big club and the top affiliates, the parent club, big leaguers playing minor leaguers on minor leaguers home turf. We noted last time that there was a lot of backlash from players about having to play those in-season exhibitions and I quoted from a 2001 New York Times article where the Mets were fed up about having to give up an off day to go play Norfolk in mid-April. And we mentioned that doesn't really happen anymore. And Raymond Chen, Patreon supporter, effectively Wild Wiki Keeper, pointed out that it is not allowed to happen anymore because it's actually prohibited by the CBA now in season exhibitions.

I don't remember which CBA that started, but players apparently hated those exhibition games so much that they made a priority of not playing those anymore. So article 5C3 says, during the championship season, there's that term again, the championship season, no club shall be scheduled to play an exhibition game. I guess not including the All-Star game. That's not a club game really.

So players no longer are subject to having to play their affiliates mid-season. But Matt Trueblood wrote in and said in regard to teams playing in-season exhibitions against their own minor league teams, the 1998 Cubs stopped between legs of a 10-game road trip, quote unquote, on the way from San Francisco to Houston to play a game against the Iowa Cubs in Des Moines. Sammy Sosa hit

a home run. He snuck an extra one in that year. Wild that that used to happen not all that long ago. But Matt's question is, have you read or heard about the calendar creep happening in European soccer? Even though I talk about soccer and college football and hang up and listen these days, no, I was not intimately familiar with the calendar creep happening in European soccer, but helpfully Matt explains the UEFA Champions League is expanding this year and a change in its format will increase the number of games played over its season from 125 to 189. Every team will play eight league games.

Then there will be a series of two leg play-ins for their 16 team tournament. All of this has to be squeezed and smushed in between games played by the participating teams in their domestic leagues, which invariably claim a monopoly on the weekends. The number of games teams play over there is rising to old time Pacific Coast League kinds of levels.

I wonder if we'll eventually see similar pressure come to baseball, be it more international tournaments or things like inter-level competition. At a certain point, the only way to demand more money from your broadcast partners is to increase inventory, right? So this is interesting because it has seemed like the pressure has been applied the other way in baseball, right? Not with any real results thus far, but you hear much more about lopping games off than tacking them on. Right. Can you imagine if the

baseball season was longer? Yeah, it's pretty darn long as it is. It's so long, Penn. You just play forever. I don't know how they play their existing schedule, soccer players, because they're running like a half marathon every time they're playing a game and the women are doing it in shoes that don't fit right, apparently. Yeah. Hopefully that's changing. But yeah, I don't know that we will see more baseball games.

There's no way. You hear so much conversation about, will we go back to 154? Right. And would that decrease revenue or would it not really? Because if you decrease the supply, maybe you increase the demand for the games that are remaining and you have higher TV ratings and you sell more tickets, et cetera. But players aren't going to want to sacrifice revenue probably, even if it means you got a little more time off and teams won't either.

And so there'd have to be some kind of accommodation there, but yeah, adding on, and we've seen the NFL do the same thing, right? 16 games to 17 and now are we going to get to 18? Seems thing, right? 16 games to 17. And now are we going to get to 18? Seems inevitable, right? So I guess this has happened in baseball in the playoffs. Right. Yes. Because now we have a longer, we have a series for the wild card now. Yeah. Right. Yeah. We tack on extra rounds

and tack on extra playoff teams. So that even if you have the same number of rounds, you have more games being played in those rounds. And I don't know that there's that much more you can do there. You can certainly expand the playoff field further. And we know that owners would like to do that and they'd like to go up to 16 or whatever, right? Especially if there's expansion.

So I guess that would add total games, but would not really add to every team. Exactly. I mean, it would just add to certain playoff teams that managed to make it that far. I guess you could see conceivably certain types of games being exchanged for other types of games. Like if you shorten spring training and the grapefruit and cactus leagues, and you'd be costing yourself some revenue and attendance there too. But if you shorten spring training, which is also often a frequent proposal, then in theory, I guess you could add on some more meaningful and more lucrative games. It is true that there's potential for more international competition and the Olympics, we talked about

that. And of course the WBC increasing in popularity. So there might be some impetus there to play more international competitions, but maybe that would come at the expense of domestic games, right? Not in addition to, cause they're just weather constraints and workload constraints, particularly with pitchers that just make it pretty prohibitive. It seems like to add on. Yeah. I don't want to downplay the physical toll that an expanded schedule takes on athletes

who play other sports. I know that this has been a concern as the, to your point, NFL has expanded its schedule and I think you're right that they will look to do so again. And it's like, soccer players are running a half marathon, football players are basically in a car crash once a week. It's not like that isn't a consideration for other sports, but you do have sort of just an upper bound of we have to have enough pitching to forget play the games well, like play the games at all. And so it seems like as, you know, we have contracted the minors and reduced the pool of available guys, you know, there's

just at some point the rubber has to meet the road on innings. And I don't know that we have enough, like this is kind of a callous way to describe it, but like pitching inventory basically to sustain any kind of expansion, at least on a league wide basis, which is why I think, you know, you will probably see efforts to expand limited to postseason play, like special international exhibition play, which has the added benefit of also being, you know, game inventory that is potentially more appealing to advertisers and rights holders. So that would be my guess. But I, an already exhausted person would simply offer, it's

fine. And we don't, we have enough, you know, like it's good to miss things for a little while. That's how you, that's not the only way, but that's like one of the ways you know you love them, you know? Like, so enough, enough. It is okay to have an off season even though we continue to podcast over the off season. And even though we like that baseball is a constant and then it's a feature of the sport that I would like MLB to embrace that it's just always there. We're awash in games, but yes, there is a limit. I don't put it past MLB owners to try to squeeze more blood from the stone here, because they're not the ones putting their bodies on the line. Yes, but I think players might resist that strenuously

much as they've resisted in season exhibition games against Michael Winktips. Okay, question from Kenny. The White Sox stink. That's not a question, that's just a statement, which I agree with, and can use all the help they can get to win. Couple nights ago, they thought they hit a walk-off

until Travis Jankowski intervened. I saw that. And then he was placed on outright waivers by the Rangers, I guess, as a reward for that great catch. However, the robbery occurred in front of the White Sox bullpen. So theoretically, a player in the bullpen could have stood against the wall to try

and catch the ball or prevent the outfielders' catch. Now this would obviously cause friction between teams. And I don't think the Sox are desperate enough for wins to try this way. I don't know about that. But at some point, the stakes are high enough to make it worth it. Does that start in the playoffs?

LCS to clinch a playoff spot. Also, some teams have tiered bullpens. The Angels, a fan can dream of the playoffs, currently warm up in the back bullpen. Would they think of switching bullpens for the playoffs or even jump into the front bullpen to rob the robbery? What would be the best method to prevent robberies? Your own body, a net, a wall. I like the idea of a net, something like-

Are you allowed to monkey with a robbery from the other side of the fence? I don't think so. I don't think you're allowed to do that. No, I like the idea of it, and I like the idea of a net and trying to fish it out of the outfielders glove, kind of like a splash landing in San Francisco or something. But I think it's interference.

Yeah, isn't it just obviously interference? Rule 6.01B, again, I consulted Raymond Chen here. The players, coaches, or any member of a team at bat shall vacate any space, including both dugouts or bullpens needed by a fielder who is attempting to field a batted or thrown ball. So that or bullpens maybe was written for stadiums with on field bullpens, which we, we don't see so much anymore, but it probably still applies.

And like to be clear, like there's that rule as written, there's obviously judgment in the enforcement of that rule, right? Because like you can, you have to get out of the way. You have to yield to the, the fiel enforcement of that role, right? Because you have to get out of the way. You have to yield to the field or attempting to field, right? Or its interference. But also, how fast you got to get out of the way? How easy is it to get out of the way? I'm sure that there is a level of chicanery that could be done and maybe could be convincing enough to an umpire.

But to interfere with someone trying to rob a home run requires like obvious effort and intervention. And so I don't think that you could even try to like get cute with it. And I'm so glad that this is interference because I was going to be like, wait a minute, have they been allowed to mess with the the whole time and I didn't know? Okay. I'm relieved. You could though, without making contact, you could shout, ha, like A-Rod.

You could yell, you could do some sort of interference behind the basket distraction effort on a free throw kind of effort, I guess. You have to really concentrate if you're trying to rub a home run. So if you had the whole bullpen congregating around that guy trying to psych him out somehow, but without putting hands on him, then I guess that would be legal, but Bush league. I think you would get called out for that. You might get drilled. The bullpens would clear, maybe both bullpens would clear. They'd have a bullpen brawl about this.

It's just bad form by bullpens. It would be an unwritten rules kerfuffle for sure. Well, and I think that if you did that, if you tried to yell something about the guy's mom to distract him from trying to rob the home run, maybe that only works one time, not only because you would face retaliation from the other team in some way, shape or form, but I bet that they might contemplate amending the rule to be like, you can't do bits. They'd have like an anti-bit provision to be like, you know, you can't yell about, you know, your mom doing whatever moms do, you know.

Yeah. Okay. Question from, I believe a different Kenny, Patreon supporter Kenny who says, is it time to reform coaches boxes? I cannot remember the last time I've seen an MLB base coach stand inside the box. The first base coach seems to always stand behind it, almost in the outfield. The third base coach stands behind it unless there is a runner on base, then he stands in front of it. I assume for a better angle so that they can wave runners home. This annoys me to no end. Why implement a container for people who refuse to be contained? Why not extend the width of the box so that it actually contains the coaches

where they prefer to stand or remove these short parallel lines so the box is just a line that coaches are no longer contained at all or do away with the box entirely. We could just have free roaming base coaches. Is there some sort of penalty for standing outside the box that umpires aren't enforcing?

It also occurs to me that this is another way that makes baseball unique from other sports in no other sports, our coaches permitted to stand in the field of play. Would love to hear your thoughts on a solution to this crisis. Okay. So relax a little bit here. We can put these things in their proper perspective.

Yeah. I look as someone who, uh, is a fan of the Seattle Seahawks I can tell you that when Pete Carroll was still the coach there was a guy who's like job was to pull him back out of the field of play Because they do I will say they do let them wander a little bit in football They let them wander a little bit But you really have to get out of the way of the officiating crew And so there was a guy who was like, you know, like people who put their kids on leashes

at amusement parks, who was just there to like yank Pete back across the sideline line. Yeah. Sideline line? Is that? Sure. So here's what I'll say. I want to hear what you think about the base coach thing, but I would like to introduce a new crisis into our listeners' minds.

Would you like to react to the bass coach thing first, or would you like me to muddy the waters before you do? I am excited about your crisis, but I guess I will weigh in on this one and just say that as someone who has had a thought experiment on this podcast about, do we need bass coaches coaches? What would the difference be? Just asking questions, not anti-base coach necessarily, but base coaches overrated. The rules say this, rule 5.03, base coaches. A, the team at bat shall station two base coaches on the field during its time at bat, one near first base and one near third base. B, base coaches shall be limited to two in number and shall be in team uniform. C, base coaches must remain within the coach's box

consistent with this rule, except that a coach who has a play at his base may leave the coach's box to signal the player to slide, advance, or return to a base if the coach does not interfere with the play in any manner. Right. Okay, so the base coaches boxes are semi-permeable. Yeah.

You can stray from them in certain circumstances. Other than exchanging equipment, all base coaches shall refrain from physically touching base runners, especially when signs are being given. Then it specifies penalty. If a coach has positioned himself closer to home plate than the coach's box or closer to fair territory than the coach's box, before a batted ball passes the coach,

the umpire shall, and this is key I think, upon complaint by the opposing manager, strictly enforce the rule. So not really strictly at all, unless someone asks them to. The umpire shall warn the coach and instruct him to return to the box. If the coach does not return to the box, he shall be removed from the game. I'm imagining the coach just being forcibly removed, just kicking and screaming because he refuses to be confined to the box. In addition, coaches who violate this rule may be subject to discipline by the office of the commissioner.

Rob Manfred just gives you calls like, get back in the box. Stop, please stop escaping the box. Hey, hey, get back in the box. I think this is like mutually assured base coach box destruction. Destruction, yes. Yeah, because everyone is flagrantly violating this at all times. And so if you call the other teams coach on it, then they will retaliate. Right. So it's just, no one wants to say anything basically. And this I recalled came to a head in a very sort of sophomoric way last May,

when there was a feud between the Yankees and the Blue Jays. Remember there was that strange little, is Aaron Judge peeking and cheating in some way? Oh yeah. Like the Blue Jays were upset that Aaron Judge was glancing to his right during In It Bat. I remember that, yeah. And then Domingo Hermann was ejected following a foreign substance check, and then things escalated from there. And I'm just reading from a CBS Sports account here. In the third inning Tuesday, the Blue Jays dug out and Yankees third base coach,

Lise Rojas, exchanged words, seemingly because the Blue Jays did not like that Rojas was positioned outside the coaches box. All of this stems back to Toronto's complaint with Judge, who they claimed was sneaking a look at New York's base coaches, allegedly improperly positioned Monday. Quote, It's easy to look at a runner at second when you're hitting. It's tough to look into the dugout. It's probably a little bit easier to look at a coach. Blue Jays manager, John Schneider told MLB.com before the game.

I think that there's boxes on the field for a reason. I think when it's glaring 30 feet where you're not in that spot, you kind of put two and two together a little bit. And so Rojas and the Blue Jays dug outward, jawing, and then Schneider said, pitching coach Pete Walker was probably more playfully than anything saying, I'm watching you. They probably all heard that Rojas kind of took exception to it. It's two competitive teams.

You're not pleased with the way everything is shaking out the last 24 hours. And I think it's just people being competitive. I think Rojas responded how he did and we responded how we did. And then it continued because in the bottom of that inning, Yankees manager Aaron Boone chirped and motioned toward Blue Jays third base coach Luis Rivera to get in the coaches box. Crew chief James Hoy spoke to both managers after the inning and told them he'll handle the base coaches and their positioning. And then Boone said, it's tired. And I hope not when he was asked whether the coaches box shenanigans would continue. It's just silliness. It's silliness. It's ridiculous.

I think everyone I hope on both sides realizes this. So it's funny that he's like, I'll handle the positioning and it's like, but you can't do anything until they complain. So, right. I guess in this case, they both complained. And so he was then empowered to sort of seize control. And I don't know, maybe everyone complied from that point forward, but that's an illustration of what we were just saying, because, you know, one team complains and then the other team complains and everyone's just pissed about something else entirely. Right, yeah, it's like,

Taylor Tomlinson has this great bit in one of her standups where she like stubs her toe and freaks out and she's like, this is about something else. It's like the degree of emotional reaction is completely out of sync with the severity of the thing on the field. And it's like, hey, what if we all just talked about what we're really mad about and tried to figure that out? Are you ready for me to invite a new crisis? Yeah, I guess I would say that this is not, this does not qualify as a crisis.

Right? No, I'm doing air quotes. Yeah, no, you could say that, uh, why are we maintaining this fiction? Why don't we just redraw the boxes? It's just disorder that we have this rule that is just obviously being violated at all times. And we could either enforce it, which I don't think is particularly high priority, or we could just recognize the reality and not have someone be out of the box at all times. Right. So

if you want to redraw the boxes, I guess I have no, I have no issue with that. Okay. I would be fine with that too, because yes, I am, I am going crisis and I'm going air quotes while I say that. Although then do you move like the, the Overton base coach window? Well, sure. Like this is the thing. If you extend the box, right? Then they're just going to take the extra space that you're giving them and then they'll be out of that box, presumably. So maybe you have to hold the line so that they don't range even farther. Speaking of ranging farther,

I want to be clear. I'm not being a grump like the umpire that ejected Adrian Beltre, but like the umpire that ejected Adrian Beltre. But sometimes batters in the on deck circle are practically behind home plate. What in the world? And some of this, I think, is like, you notice more with particular center field camera angles than with others. And so I wonder if there's like a, you know, Lord of the Rings force perspective thing going on here or something. But the other day I was against the advice of doctors watching the Seattle Mariners and Randy Arosa-Rena was just like practically behind the home plate umpire. I mean, not really. I'm being slightly hyperbolic, but the degree to which Randy was just like dead on in the, in the shot

as the pitcher, I don't even remember who they were playing, was getting ready to deliver. I get why hitters do it, right? They want to see the stuff as it's coming in to give them a sense of what they're about to see in there at bat. But I was just like, I don't, what did, what did the guy who used to do this the most consistently who I would always notice was Miguel Sano. Miguel Sano would just be, and I only really ever noticed him doing it at their home field, at Target Field.

I didn't really notice him doing it on the road. Maybe he felt like, well, this is my house. I get to be where I want to be, right? And take your shoes off. I don't know if he's a shoes off guy, but like I am a shoes off gal. I get it, but I'm just surprised that this isn't something where the umpire is more often like, Hey, get back over there. Like when you're very close, like you can feel a looming presence.

Sometimes these guys are like right there. And you know, it'd be interesting if we could quantify the times through the order effect based on angle in the, on deck circle, right? Like are you actually getting extra Intel by having a more head on view? Right. Cause you can see some stuff, but you aren't literally behind the empire. So like you're, you know, you do have, there is some limitation to the view, but yeah, I was like, Randy, also look out buddy. The odds that you're going to get domed by a foul ball seem higher?

I don't know. Are they really? Who could say? Yeah. No, it does seem like not only potentially a competitive advantage, but also a safety issue. A safety issue. You could get drilled by a foul ball wherever you're standing, but if you're standing there,

it seems like the risk is probably higher. Higher. Yeah. It's like during spring training when the coaches will sit like right there out of the dugout and I'm like, I know that they're putting a screen in front of you, but it seems like they don't always do that. Some of you guys are going to get whomped with a foul ball. That's going to be dangerous for you.

You don't want to, you're not going to have enough time to react. It's right there. Yeah. By the way, in basketball, they have coaches boxes too. Wikipedia has an entry for basketball. Yeah, but they're on the court all the goddamn time. Yeah. So the NCAA introduced a coaches box before the 1984 to 85 season.

During the 2017 to 18 NCAA basketball season, the coaches box was expanded to allow coaches to stand 38 feet from the baseline. Although the rule has been somewhat loosely enforced, stepping outside of the box is a technical foul. So that's a bit more of a penalty at least than exists in baseball, even if it's not applied all that often. In the NBA, coaches may walk from the substitution box line, which ends four feet before the mid-court line

to the baseline. So baseball is not unique in having coaches boxes, but to have them where they are, I guess, is unusual. Okay, question from Richie, Patreon supporter. I was wondering if you've ever been bothered by how much of a mouthful saying out loud WRC plus is. Particularly the W as it's a three syllable letter. I tend to sub vocalize when I read. So when I read a fan graphs article

that makes multiple references to the stat, it quickly starts to feel very cumbersome. I've gotten in the habit of saying weighted RC plus instead. And I feel it rolls off the tongue much better. I've gotten in the habit of saying weighted RC plus instead. And I feel it rolls off the tongue much better. It's become so ingrained in me now to say it this way that I always get thrown for a mini loop whenever I hear you two say it the traditional slash normal

way, I'd be curious to know if I'm the only one bothered by this or if it's ever crossed your mind as well. Not until now, but now it's weighing on my mind somewhat. Yeah, I don't mind this that much. I say WRC Plus a lot and I guess I kind of do a W almost, right? I'm like appropriating an accent almost. W. Wait, as an aside, you know who appropriated an accent?

W. I guess I could do that too. Sorry. It's hardly alone among politicians in catering his monor speaking to his audience, but I do kind of alight it a little. I kind of do a WRC plus maybe because if you say the full W, maybe we should just do away with W's. Can we just replace it?

Can we substitute a W or something else? It is. Okay, so hold on. Wait, I have to intervene here. You don't go W when you say WRC Plus. Like no, no, I've been listening to you for hours. WRC Plus. There are members of my family I have talked to less in the last five years than you, Ben Lindbergh. And you're not like, I'm not like, oh, how's the ranch? You know, relax.

Yeah. But I guess I try to shorten it slightly without like doing a bit, but yeah. I just weighted RC plus, it is easier to say weighted RC plus than WRC plus, but something kind of grinds my gears there about if you still say the abbreviated RC and you're just saying the W part, something about that seems kind of inconsistent to me. Yeah.

Yeah. But WRC plus doesn't really roll off the tongue the way that OPS plus does. I mean, some stats are harder to say than others and some you actually do read, like you say WOBA, right? You don't usually say W OO-B-A or the full name. And there's some discrepancies and disagreements about this, right? I mean, there are people who say F-I-P, right? And, you know, we've gotten this question, I think, like, what stats do you say out loud? And I don't think I have any atypical pronunciations of stats,

really, but there are people who differ on this subject. AMT – Yeah. I mean, look, the first thing I'd say is this is a big country, so the odds that you're the only one seem quite small. You say it however you want to, particularly to yourself. The stakes for someone who doesn't have to get on mic six hours a week, so low in these moments. So I think, you know, be true to yourself and what feels right. I have never even one time contemplated WRC plus as a hard thing to say or like a cumbersome, not hard, but cumbersome thing to say. I reject wholesale the idea that WRC plus is somehow more cumbersome than OPS plus, but maybe I'm showing a statistical bias rather than a pronunciation one there.

Like you though, I do try to have some like consistency of what I'm saying, like how I'm mixing. So like- There are people who say ops, right? That's a big bone of contention. There are people who say ops instead of OPS. Who are these people? I don't know. OPS is not a hard thing to say, but I get it. I mean, why say FIP instead of FIP, but not say ops instead

of OPS? Ops is a word, I guess is one reason. I mean, there might be confusion there potentially. There you go. See, that's an actually good reason. There might be confusion there potentially, but especially because we say like, yeah, we say baseball ops, right? Yeah. So for baseball operations. Yeah. I think that I would either do WRC plus, which is what I opt for most of the time, or I would say weighted runs created plus.

And that, that is a mouthful, you know? So there you go. But this is an interesting piece of feedback because while this particular bone of contention is one I haven't heard before, like you're hardly the only person who sort of sub vocalizes as you're reading. And so I wonder if there are consistent things that readers tend to find a little cumbersome.

You know, that's interesting. That's an interesting like thing to contemplate. Cause I will say that one of my Picadillo's as an editor and every member of the fan graph staff can attest to this. And sometimes they're like, Hey Meg, relax. Is like, I find like a lot of repetition of the same word close together to be kind of, it strikes my ear wrong. And so I wonder, you know, are other people experiencing this with something like WRC plus or war, what have you? I think we tend to opt for, you know, but that's not true. Cause I was going to say we tend to

opt to say acronyms as words when there is a word that exists. But is that true? You know, like we say war, you know, because war is a word. W's are weird though. Do we know what's going on with that ranch? Are those animals okay? Like have we checked in? Did it just get excited about painting and then like, oh crap, there's cattle out there. I don't know. I hear a lot about Pablo Escobar's hippos, but not so much about- Do you hear a lot about Pablo Escobar's hippos, but not so much about other- Do you hear a lot about Pablo Escobar's hippos? It feels like every other week I'm reading a long form piece. I mean, the hippos are out of control. They're a menace to society. Wait a minute. Every other week you read a long form piece about Pablo Escobar's hippos?

I feel like I do. Another hippo piece again with this. I get that the problem is not curtailed. The hippo population is spiraling. It's proliferating. The hippos are proliferating and they're a menace to society. But how many times can you read and write about the hippos? Yeah, they're feral hippos basically because Pablo Escobar had like four and they've been left to their own devices and the birds and the bees and the hippos and the hippos and the hippos beget hippos. And now there are hundreds of hippos. Hungry, hungry ones. Nicole Zichal-Klein They don't beget other stuff,

they're hippos. They don't like- Ben Fisk It's a hippo violation. Nicole Zichal-Klein See, that's pretty good, Ben. Ben Fisk They can use that as the headline for the next long form investigation, deep dive into the hippo situation. Is it possible that we have all been making a mistake and the thing that is really causing the collapse of journalism is that we are just funneling too many of our resources into the Pablo Escobar hippo long form beat?

Maybe. I love Friday show. Friday show is my favorite show of the week. It's always so fun. The number of pieces on this subject that I've seen suggest that the traffic is there. So if anything, maybe we should be funneling more. We should have entire verticals devoted to the hippos. Maybe fan graphs should cover the hippos. I don't know. Hippo graphs. They're not an animal you should underestimate.

You know, I don't think many of our listeners probably encounter hippos in the wild. But if you do, like don't, don't, I'm going to do a big swear. Don't f*** with hippos, you know? They'll kill you, you know? And very often the people they kill, I'm not going to say they deserve it, but like, it's like a, hey, no better kind of thing. Just like don't mess with bears. People will be like, no, bears will kill you. They'll kill you. CB I'm looking forward to doing the show notes for this episode and seeing how many

different articles on Pablo Escobar's hippos I can find to link on the show page. LS I am so excited. I'm not going to Google it, you know? I'm going to wait and I'm going to look and I'm going to be so delighted and then, Ben, I'm going to go read every single one of them. Okay. Okay. Hippogriffs or hippogriff, hippogriff, a legendary creature. No, that's a different animal.

Yeah, you won't encounter those in the wild. And it's already crossed with something, so you can't cross it again, you know? You'll create a monster. Can you imagine? Yeah, that's like the Island of Dr. Moreau sort of situation. That? You'll create a monster. Can you imagine? Island of Dr. Moreau sort of situation. That's how you do the section. Where would the hippo head go? Cause like you can't get rid of the, you know,

the horse pieces and are they horses on the bottom? Do I know what a hippogriff is? Yeah, it's like a, it's a horse and an eagle, I think. Is it a horse though? Cause like don't they have eagle claws? I think it's like a centaur with an eagle in the front instead of a person. It's like the back is a horse, back half is a horse and the front half is an eagle. Hippo, griff, hippo.

Oh yeah, the front is the eagle, the back is the horse. Okay. I was like, cause they do have talons. I remember that. Probably more aerodynamic that way. What would the hippo part of it be then? Like how would you make it a hippo? Would you, how would you do that? You could just replace the hind horse half with a hind hippo half. It's similar enough, I suppose. They're so different. Do you not know the difference between a horse and a hippo?

Same number of legs, you know. A horse and a hippo? They're not the same. They've got little sushi tails and you know, there's some commonalities there. Sushi tails. Anyway. Did you say sushi tails? Swishy tails.

Swishy tails, okay, that makes so much more sense. I was like, what is this sushi tail? That would be a different kind of mythical creature. Oh boy, we've really, we're really giving people a Friday show on our Friday show. Back to baseball somehow. Back to baseball. Jeff in Santa Fe, Patreon supporter, says, I was talking about the starting pitchers

going deep into games issue with a friend of mine earlier today and he suggested something that I hadn't heard before. And that's a relief to hear something you haven't heard before when it comes to the starting pitchers. How can we make them go deeper into games? Because I've heard it all. Yeah, you have, brother. I don't need any more proposals about this, but this one is kind of clever and novel at least.

The idea would be to counteract the third time through the order issue, a potential ABS strike zone could be adjusted such that it expands slightly every time a pitcher goes through the order, or maybe with every batter, every inning, giving a pitcher who faces more batters an offsetting advantage. If a new pitcher comes in, it would reset to the baseline strike zone. I can't decide if this would be more or less disruptive

than some of the other proposals out there. In fact, I kind of think it would synergize well with Ben's plan to also reduce the number of pitchers on the roster since it incentivizes longer outings, but maybe without changing too much how guys pitch. We also went on a tangent about UMPs wearing augmented reality goggles to see the dynamic strike zone. I think we've talked about that one. But what do you think about this in order to counteract the third times to the order penalty, which is one of the main causes of starters not going as deep into games, not the only one, but a significant contributing factor.

So to take away that advantage, you would rig the strike zone in the pitcher's favor the deeper they went into the game. It feels out of balance to me. I think that when we try to do rules interventions, what we are often really trying to achieve is that not that it's going to be perfectly balanced, but that you aren't guaranteed a particular outcome prior to an epa, a pitch, whatever. It's relatively balanced between hitting and pitching because you want execution to be able to determine what happens and you

want stuff to be proportional. And this feels out of, this feels like a disproportionate reaction to the problem because it isn't as if teams don't have a means of counteracting the third time through the order penalty. They can just put a new picture in here. And I know that we're trying to get guys to go deeper and what have you, but I think that this goes maybe a little too far in the other direction. Cause it's not that we don't want to see no relievers. We just want to see them a little less often.

So it feels like it feels too much to me. It's like it's, and you know, the other thing that I'll say is I think that the accepted wisdom at this point is that the thing that you see decline from pitchers as they go deeper isn't stuff necessarily. It tends to be command first. They start to lose command and they might maintain VLO. But we want to be mindful of the fact that like there is a stamina and injury component to this, right? And so I don't want to inc... Like I want to find a sweeter sweet spot because I feel like this would maybe incentivize guys to stay in too long. And then it's like, it's such a weird thing to have a fundamentally

different zone later into games. And you know, we see some of that already, right? Like strike zones might change a little as like games progress. Part of it too, is that like if a guy, so a guy, a pitcher has gone through the order three times. They've managed to perform well. They've already done well. And so they've theoretically already like had an advantage versus the hitters because they've like managed to stay in and like not get bombed and what have you. And so then do you want to tip the scales even further in their direction? Like part of the benefit of the push and pull of the game happening the way that it does is like,

you know, hitters are at a disadvantage earlier, maybe because like they haven't seen the guy as much, he isn't tired yet, He has his best stuff. Do you want to make things harder for hitters longer? No. Did that do a better job? I'm somewhat convinced I actually nailed that thought, but I know what I mean. I'm going to keep thinking about if I can say it.

I appreciate the ingenuity of the suggestion. I'm also against it. You could just make it a small expansion of the zone. It could just be a little nudge, right? It could be just enough to counteract the times through the order advantage. So it wouldn't be that noticeable, right? It depends how you calibrate it. But I guess philosophically, I still am kind of uncomfortable with having ABS and also programming ABS to be variable like that. It almost seems like it defeats the purpose of having ABS in the first place.

Like if you're going to go with the computerized system that in theory is very consistent and that's the advantage of it, then does it make sense? We may have talked about this before, but does it make sense? We may have talked about this before, but does it make sense then to program the computer to basically behave like a human? Why not just keep the humans, right? Because I do value the malleability and amorphousness of the strike zone in moderation to some extent, right? I do actually think that it's more of a feature than a bug that the zone expands and contracts depending on the count. Even though that seems unfair, I think it actually makes baseball more

entertaining because whichever party in the batter pitcher confrontation is currently at a disadvantage gets a little advantage, right? Because the zone contracts in their favor, expands in their favor. the zone contracts in their favor, expands in their favor. So if you took that away, I think that might actually hurt because plate appearances would be a little less competitive. You'd think that the hitters really in the hole, if they're down O2 now, well, what if the strike zone doesn't shrink at all on O2?

Yeah, then they're really gonna be dead in the water. So I think there is some advantage to that. And I do appreciate the ability, of course, of catchers and pitchers to kind of finesse the zone a little bit, but then do I want that to be programmed into the system? Like, do I want the ABS zone to vary by the count? I kind of don't think so, Ray.

Or I don't think most people would want that. I think most people who are pro-ABS just want it to be a uniform zone from pitch to pitch, which is rational and understandable and totally justified. So I think there wouldn't be a big constituency for, yeah, let's get all the calls right, but also let's program it so that the zone still changes and fluctuates all the time. So I just, I don't know that that would please anyone really. Yeah. Yeah.

I think that that's right. And so much better put than my point. Well, I liked your point too. We both, we collaborated. It was a team. All right. Colin says I'm being a little contrarian. So take this with a grain of poutine.

If you put aside the politics and off the field stuff, I legitimately can't square the Vato is a Hall of Famer stuff in a world where Lance Berkman isn't in. Statistically, they're incredibly similar. Surely the fame isn't worth that much. So we've got a Berkman, pro-Berkman, Cooperstown constituency here. I don't have very strong feelings about Lance Berkman one way or the other. I love that our player page, listen as a free agent. It's like, yeah. Technically true. Part of this is, you know, who he played for.

And I don't mean that in like an anti-Astro's way, but it's just like, how much, how much Lance Berkman do you feel like you watched, Ben? It's hard to put a number on my Berkman consumption, but I enjoyed Lance Berkman. I'm on board with Berkman is underrated or Berkman should have gotten more support or should have stayed on the ballot longer. He was one and done on the ballot. He got 1.2% support on the 2019 BBWAA ballot.

There are certainly worse players who were in the hall of AM or got more support or lingered longer than that. So if you want to say he didn't get a fair shake, fine. But I don't know that I would hold that against Vado because I don't know that I would hold that against Vado because I don't know that I see them necessarily as the same. It is true according to fan graphs were there only a few wins above replacement apart. Vado is at 58.8 and Berkman is at 55.9.

If you go by baseball reference, so I guess it's a defensive difference, baseball reference has quite a wide gap between the two as these things go. Vato is at 64.5, baseball reference for, and Berkman is at 51.9. So that's kind of a gulf. And really, I guess it comes down to not only defensive evaluations, but also just longevity and playing time, right? Because they actually have identical career OPS pluses, rolls off the tongue, each of them had a 144 OPS plus,

but Vado made almost 1000 more plate appearances, right? And that's a lot. I mean, that's like two more full seasons of the same production, right? So same production. So that makes a major difference when it comes to edge cases. And it's not like Vado himself is a slam dunk necessarily. I think we were saying that he is now perceived that way, but he wasn't throughout his whole career. And in an earlier era, I don't think he would have been. And maybe even five years ago, if he'd hit the ballot when Berkman did, maybe he wouldn't have been a lock, right? With the same stats. So I think there is a

meaningful difference between the two. And I'm open to the idea that Berkman got a raw deal, but I'm also completely comfortable with a Cooperstown that includes Joey Votto and not Lance Berkman. LS. Yes. Okay. I'm going to say three things. The first is I bring up the Houston of it all in terms of my own impressions of Bergman just because like guys of that era who played for NL teams, because the Astros were still in the national league. I just didn't see as much.

So there's that. For me personally too, I'm a big hall person. And so I don't really care. Like if Lance, if you think Lance Bergman should be in there, go with God in a swift way. Like that's fine. I would, I think that you can be a Bergman head, you know, you can, you can pound the table and I don't think that the people who are like rah rah on Joey Votto are necessarily

in the same breath saying, but not Lance, he sucks. You know, I don't think that that constituency is very strong. And I don't know that the question necessarily implies that. I do think it's okay for like the, when cases are close for the fame part of it to matter some, it shouldn't be enough on its own to get you into the hall. But like as part of our consideration of the resume, I think it's relevant. I think it is fine for it to be on there. I do think that you're right that like Berkman's consideration might

have been different now. Cause I think that the electorate for the hall of fame is, it's shifting pretty rapidly. Not that there's been been so, so much turnover, but I think that you get both the introduction of new voters, not all of them vote, clearly, but you are getting more people in the electorate. And I also think that not every one of the folks who is maybe from an older generation of writer is necessarily changing their thinking on this stuff because we still get doofy ballots and we still get sort of like pick me behavior from some people. But I think that it's changing both because of an influx of new voters, but also a sort

of reconsideration of advanced stats with older voters. Would that have been enough for Lance Berkman? I don't know. Yeah, I think Berkman would have at least maybe lasted like Bobby Abreu has lasted, right? You could make a case that Abreu is a little bit better, but also less famous, I think, than Lance Berkman. And Abreu is not really gaining support,

but he's doing enough to hang on. He's been on five ballots thus far, and he's topped out at like less than 15 gaining support, but he's doing enough to hang on. He's been on five ballots thus far and he's topped out at like less than 15% support, but more than 5% crucially. So yes, I think things might've been a bit different if you wanted to provide a way to kind of equalize those careers and because Berkman he's close to the hall of fame left field JAWS standard for peak, but not for career, right? But he did have quite a postseason resume, which Joey Votto didn't have

and didn't really have the opportunity to have, but Votto played in 11 postseason games and didn't hit well in them. Whereas Berkman was a hell of a postseason hitter. He played in 52 postseason games and as good a hitter as he was in the regular season, he was even better in the postseason hitter. He played in 52 postseason games and as good a hitter as he was in the regular season, he was even better in the postseason, which is impressive. It's harder to hit than 949 career OPS in his 52 postseason games. So that's something. He's a really great

playoff hitter, so you could give him credit for that. All right, question from Alex. When MLB looked into and implemented bigger bases, was home plate ever a consideration? And if not, why not? I would estimate most collision injuries occurred there, so it would make sense to enlarge that base too, right? Of course, a solution done wrong could mess with the strike zone.

So something different would have to be done than how the other bases were increased. My solution, add a dirt-colored rectangular base with a home plate cutout or make a multicolored rectangular base going from the front corners of the exiting plate to the line where catchers can squat. This would give a larger lane for baserunners to slide into and potentially make plays at the plate more interesting with more creative slides to get around tags while also creating objective spacing to keep batters from crowding the plate, as well as set a standard on where catchers can set up, as either side touching the base could be considered a balk. A different base color would make it more difficult for an ump to call out or safe on tags, but replay would allow us to sort those issues out. I initially considered having the extended base be on the whole length of the batter's box, but that may be too big. Thoughts? Do you have a better suggestion?

So yeah, I'm not aware of any consideration of making the plate larger because yeah, obvious, strikes own ramifications there. But I do support having a second base or even a second plate. I haven't really thought about it that much in terms of the second plate, but the second base makes sense to me. And we've seen that, right? I mean, that has been tested or used in college baseball and college softball. There's momentum building toward having just a second base next to adjoining the other base. And so you basically have one base for the runner to run through and one base for the fielder so that you don't get collisions at first base, right? That's where it's often mentioned. And that's been a proposal that has been around for a long time.

And that I think we've talked about and I fully support that. I think that's a good idea. And we've seen like the, the widening of the runners lane and that rule changed this year. So there's clearly some desire to do something like that. And I guess home is the other place where you tend to get collisions. So maybe, maybe something like that would work. A second base, an auxiliary base might work there too, I suppose, or plate in this case.

I wonder logistically like how you would do it at home. Cause like for, you know, the bases of the corners, it's easy. You just put them up in foul territory basically, you know, and there's like a direct line. It would be like, does the umpire have to like bring out a bag? You know, like I think, I think that the, the size of that space makes it harder, but I would be open to it. I don't know that another bag necessarily saves you collisions at home, just because like the ones that I think are the worst happen, like when the, it's not at the base itself, it often is up the line from the base a little bit, right?

When it's like the catcher is catching the ball and the, the motion of bringing the ball to the runner causes them to, right? So like, I don't know that another base solves that problem, which is where some of the worst stuff happens. All right. Patreon supporter Jay says related sort of to the Judge John Hodgman case that you discussed recently, the podcast where the case was about whether an A's fan should support another MLB team or whether that is kind of enabling the owners who aided and abetted John

Fisher's efforts. Jay says, I certainly understand A's fans boycotting the team, but how about if all other fans boycotted A's away games in solidarity? So there is a lot of solidarity. I mean, people on board with the cell chants and shirts and such, but what if there could have been or could be some kind of organized league wide boycott where opposing fans would boycott A's away games, road games, and then that would hurt opposing owners in their bank accounts too because suddenly John Fisher's incompetence and avarice would be hurting them, right? As opposed to just kind of in a nebulous, this is embarrassing to baseball and also our teams are going to have to visit a minor league park to play, et cetera. But if you were directly costing them revenue

because you could kind of get a collective action thing where every team's fan base was like, we're going to do it for the A's, we're going to stay away so that they will hit them where it hurts. Do you think such a thing would be feasible and would it have any impact? I struggle to think yes, just because I think it would need to be, I mean, it would be tricky. I don't know, maybe it should be optimistic. Sure, sure. I do think it would need to be really quite sustained though, for it to have a meaningful impact because you would need to organize it across not only folks buying tickets to attend in person, but I think the broadcast impact would also be a meaningful signal to owners that this is a really serious problem. You're essentially proposing a general strike of baseball fans and those take a long time to organize. They're not like an easy,

spontaneous thing. And I do wonder how long it would have to last for owners to be like, fine, we're going to get rid of this guy. Because what we have seen already feels like it should be enough for them to be like, get this guy out of here already, you know? And it hasn't proven to be. Yeah. I don't know whether A's fans have ever suggested this or requested this, but yeah, it would be hard to get fans to do it in a kind of concerted way to deprive themselves of their teams in solidarity with A's fans.

But I don't know, maybe if you could even get like, and it'd have to be like a rolling thing. It's not like something you could do on a one day. Okay. Everyone participates in this one day. It'd have to be like everywhere the A's went, you'd have to organize it with a different fan base on a different day. It'd be very complicated. If you could make it work and it was a sustained thing, I think it might have an impact, but yeah, that would be pretty tough, I think, to get everyone on board with that boycott. Yeah. Okay. Question from John. In one episode you were discussing the new hitting machines that can mimic pitchers and you brought up the Yankees pitchers talking about fairness and

how the pendulum has constantly swung toward pitchers over the years. This led to your discussion on pitchers on the roster moving back the mound, although not on lowering the mound. This all left me wondering, is there an ideal level of offense? Is there a year that you think we should emulate? I know it is hard to tease it all out, steroids, more running in the 80s, amphetamines, changing balls, but is there an ideal level of offense for you? It is an important question, which I think we've said, like if you have to decide what you want baseball to look like in order to change it, to look more like that, right?

And so we have expressed some curiosity and well, what does MLB think is the ideal level of offense exactly? What has its fan feedback told it about that? You know, we've heard some things like fans want more balls and play and more base running and more extra base hits and triples and doubles and such. But like defense have a level of scoring in mind. Is that too abstract? You know, would you have to kind of show them what it looked like

and then have them choose? I don't know if you ask the average fan or even sort of a sicko, like, Hey, what is your ideal runs per game or league-wide average OPS? I don't know that anyone would have that holstered, right? But you kind of do have to answer that question before you start to move things toward that goal. You have to have a goal. And I do think that there's value in variety and that even if you could come up with some Goldilocks level and style of offense that I wouldn't want offense to be frozen there forever.

This is why I like living in a place with seasons. It's nice to have change sometimes, even if sometimes that change is to a thing you like less. Plus with high offense eras, low offense eras, there's something for everyone at various times. But it is an important question, I think. Yeah, I don't know what my ideal is, but that's a really good question because it's, you know, I am sensitive to the fact that we're maybe just never happy with these things because

like the year of big home run, we were like enough already with the home runs. It's hard to point to a particular year too, because I don't know that overall offensive level is even, it's certainly a relevant metric, but it's not the only one because to the home run point, like we also care how we get to that level, right? You know, I think one of the things that we on this podcast have been advocates for is that like we'd love to see sort of a more balanced offensive game. In addition to having the overall level of offense come up, we want it to not just be home runs. Although how easy that is to manufacture remains to be seen. We're still trying to sort out whether

the rule changes have really done what we want them to in that regard. So yeah, I'd need to think about it. Now I feel like I'm in Miss Congeniality, like picking the perfect day. All you need is a light jacket. You know? Yeah. Well, I don't know if this is a hot take. In a way, it's a very tepid take, but I actually think the level of scoring is kind of okay right now. But I don't think, as you were just saying, the level of scoring is the only consideration because if you look at the level of scoring right now, it's actually right around the

overall historical baseline. This is par. This is average. If you look with a certain lens, 4.42 runs per game per team have been scored so far this season. If you do a weighted average of the average runs per game figures, let's say since 1901, the first year of the AL, then it's 4.44. And okay, that's including some dead ball years there. So what if we start with 1920, the live ball era?

Okay, the average 4 era? Okay. The average 4.51 runs per game. And again, we're at 4.42 right now. So we're really actually almost dead on just what the average scoring has been over the past century or so. Now that has been inflated somewhat by the zombie runner, which of course has a scourge on the sport and position player pitching and the universal DH, et cetera. But I think where we've landed with the scoring is not such a big problem, but it's the shape of the scoring. I think it's very home run reliant. This is still a fairly high home run rate historically speaking, just a little less extreme than some recent seasons and you know, low batting average and low batip at least

relative to some recent seasons, though not more distant seasons. So I think if we had roughly this level of scoring or a little more, let's say accounting for the Zombie Runner and Universal DH and everything, if we had just a higher batting average and a little more contact, I think it'd be fine actually right now. I kind of think this is okay, you know? And they've had to change some rules even to get us to this point.

But you know, if you gave me like 10 more points of batting average maybe, and like a 20% strikeout rate instead of 23 or whatever. Like, you know, that would raise scoring somewhat too. Maybe it doesn't even need to be that high, but I think that would be perfectly fine for me. So I don't think it's that far from at least like runs wise being right around the right level, but I guess maybe the platonic ideal or is this

shaped just because of when we were born? I don't know. It's not like we were old enough to really appreciate 80s baseball, right? But 80s baseball, I think, does have a lot going for it just in terms of the speed and the contact and the variety in the way that teams could construct their rosters and their offenses, right? There is sort of a saminess and a uniformity, and maybe kind of we've solved the optimal way to do certain things. And so things tend to look like each other, at least that's the popular perception. So yeah, I would say not so different in the big picture, but maybe more 80s-ish and the finer points. And that'd be

kind of okay, you know? I don't think we're that far off really from the ideal. Well, there you go. What a nice optimistic thing to say then. Yeah, now it might be hard to get us even a short distance toward that ideal just because pitchers are witches and max effort and all the rest. And again, I don't even think the scoring environment or the shape, I don't think that's the biggest problem I've said.

I think the injuries, the pitcher injuries specifically are the big problem. Cause a hitter injuries are actually down this year. It's just the pitcher injuries that keep going up or at least resist sinking. So that to me is a bigger problem and the shape of the production more so than the overall result. And related to that, we got a question though I guess it's really more of a suggestion from Jason, Patreon supporter who said, I've got a mild opinion on a bit of common phrasing that is often used on the podcast

and elsewhere in the conversation about Paul Skeens and whether he should be shut down. You mentioned the old phrasing of bullets in his arm. I've always found this an odd phrasing, especially since it seems to be that with UCL injuries, they are far more random. That's sproing seems to be more likely to happen with max effort pitches, but it's also not like avoiding max effort pitches is totally safe either. Sometimes the ligament just goes and therefore every starter outing is a gamble. My issue with bullet is that bullets and a gun are finite and countable.

I guess it's also kind of violent imagery, but then again, pitching is pretty violent to your arm. You can check how many you have left. Pitcher injuries feel far more mysterious and far more up to chance. When it comes to pitcher injuries, I've never really heard anyone say, oh man, that pitcher almost looks like they're almost out of bullets. We might say that about an aging pitcher who isn't throwing as hard or isn't as effective, but the concern isn't that with a few more pitches he'll be injured. The concern is that he's ineffective and he'll get hammered because he can't locate or he's lobbing meatballs. And as it pertains to skeins, the pirates aren't considering shutting him down because

he has only so many bullets in his arm total, and this will allow him to throw a few more innings at the end of his career. They aren't even concerned that he'll run out of bullets this season. They're concerned that he'll go out one day and break. So my recommendation is to change to throws of the dice instead of bullets in the arm. Each start, there's a gamble that this time the dice will show up unlucky and he's out for 18 months. Perhaps some pitchers and starts have dice that are more poorly weighted,

or there's a wider range of numbers in the role leading to injury. Perhaps my D and D is showing here. Yeah. It fills with skeins and other young pitchers. When this comes around that the question is not whether we're drawing down on some grand total number of pitches left in their arm. Instead, they're trying to decide whether they want to gamble a few more times this season, given that maybe each start tilts those odds in a slightly more

entry prone direction. Maybe we're not even really sure about that. Regardless of whether that throws odds in a slightly more injury prone direction. Maybe we're not even really sure about that. Regardless of whether that throws of the dice is the right phrasing, I do think that bullet should be retired. I just don't think it really describes what we're talking about with pitchers and injuries these days. And I thought that if we use that term in that conversation, that we'd used it advisedly or sort of skeptically, like with this understanding, because I agree with this evaluation of things pretty much. And I think we said something to the effect of if you save 30 innings of skeins this season,

that doesn't mean you automatically get 30 more innings of healthy skeins next season, right? So I do kind of reject the idea that there's some finite number of pitches and you're just emptying the chamber. So I feel like I generally already use it this way or, you know, use it with caution. And I think I support this throws of the dice or throws of the weighted dice. That does seem fairly apt to me. Sure. I wouldn't begrudge that use, but I think that it's the finite part of it that is appealing to people in that expression. I think Skeens is not the ideal guy to use it for for a different reason. I don't remember, I guess we used it when we talked about him, but I'm more likely to

use the bullets analogy for someone like Kumar Rocker. Kumar Rocker has had devastating injuries stuff. There are reasons to think he had the failed medical with the Mets even before he ended up getting drafted by the Rangers and then needing Tommy John. And I think that, and this I think is actually in his prospect report for us at FanGraphs, there was a perception that the Rangers should, to the extent they can, sort of get him to the majors as quickly as possible because he probably only has so many bullets, right? And you're right, you don't, you know, if you actually, I don't know anything about guns, but like, you know how many

bullets you have, but you have a finite number. I mean, maybe less finite in this country than I would prefer, but like you have a finite number. So I think it's a more apt turn of phrase for someone like Rocker where there is sort of an injury concern and an unknowability about how many pitches he really has to throw at all. So let's have them come at the big league level so that they are useful to him and to whatever team he's pitching for. That's fine. You can use dice rolls.

I don't know enough about Dungeons and Dragons to know. Are there special dice considerations? I know that they do dice. There's dice? And then they do stuff with the dice and it like determines if the ogre lets you enter the castle or whatever, right? I'm not knocking D&D. It's not for me, but like I get the appeal of D&D.

I understand why people like D&D. It was like these campaigns, you guys, some of these campaigns years, some of them were years. They go on for years. People play D&D for so long. Just like a baseball career, one hopes. But you're right. Like there is both a finite nature to it and a knowable nature.

You would use the word fewer just to bring it back to my world rather than less because you know how many there are. It's a countable thing. You can say fewer rather than less. I think I'm fine with it. I would be fine with us trying to use fewer firearm-related analogies just generally, though. I'm not going to make a federal case out of it. That's a funny turn of face to deploy in that context, isn't it? Yes.

Hey, hey, hey, Friday show took a turn. Yeah. Related question from Peter, Patreon supporter. I have a possibly pedantic question. Why do we discuss an innings count rather than a pitch count? I think this has come up maybe even in the context of skeins, but I don't know that we've answered a question about it lately. So often we hear about starting pitchers have any innings count for the season, but it is entirely possible given their style of play that their pitch count may wildly vary. And he sends some data on the top innings throwers this year compared

with how many pitches they've thrown. And you can see that someone like Chris Bassett throws way more pitches compared to his innings while Logan Gilbert throws way more innings compared to his pitches. I'm sure if you've been the whole season, you'd find even bigger discrepancies. Maybe they always match enough that it doesn't matter too much, but given that the actual arm throw is the issue rather than the innings themselves, is there any reason we should refer to innings rather than pitches?" Generally, I'm against kind of hard innings limits or pitch limits, frankly. I feel like these should be kind of evaluated more on an individual basis and case by case and not pushing any particular

pitcher too hard, but not having sort of a one-size-fits-all policy, whether it's innings or pitches, I do agree that maybe pitches gives you a little more precision. It's just that innings is a good shorthand, right? Because historically people didn't have pitch counts easily accessible for one thing, whereas you could look up innings totals more easily. And we're just more used to, like, you know, if, if you asked someone what the workload over a given season, pitch count wise is they wouldn't instinctively know that you'd have to do some multiplication and say, Oh, well, this many starts and this many innings and, you know, per starts you throw this

many pitches, right? Like you just wouldn't have that kind of as a shorthand. And so I think that's a big part of it just because in casual conversation, it usually probably doesn't make that much difference. And so you can use innings and people will get the sense of what you mean. And yeah, at the extremes, they're going to be quite different pitch counts with the same number of innings. But for most guys, they'll kind of cluster around the same in pitches per inning and it won't make that big a deal. And then I guess the other thing is that getting up and down might have some impact. And so innings might actually tell you something that pure pitch counts don't, right? Just because you sit down, you warm up again, you have a break

between innings, hard to quantify what sort of strain that adds, but there is, I think, a belief that there is some additional strain there. So if you hold pitch counts equal, but you throw more innings or something, that might be more strain in theory. So I think there's something that innings count captures that pitch count might not. And to be clear, teams as they are managing and shaping guys' workloads are absolutely keeping both of those things in mind. I mean, it's sort of a funny thing. I think it's useful shorthand for us on the public side.

At this point, the way that teams are determining, are we overtaxing a guy? And it's not a precise science clearly, but they are looking at stuff that is so far beyond either inning or pitch count, right? They're looking at changes in release point, they're looking at changes in velocity, they're looking at, they might have kinetrax stuff that's helping them determine that stuff. The actual decision of how much can this guy handle is being made with so much more data than like we are using. So like that's, that's the other reason it doesn't bother me is cause like either is going to be an incredibly crude shorthand relative to the actual metrics that are being

used to determine that stuff on the team side. So exactly. Yeah. Okay. And last question comes from Josh who says, the suspension a few months ago of Jays prospect, Oralves Martinez for 80 games, raised a question for me about how some innovations in player development impact the league's ability to enforce its rules. When the suspension happened, there was a chorus of voices saying this was a big blow to the Jays and would set back the players' development because he would miss most of the remainder of the season. But is that actually true anymore? Obviously he's missing the chance to play against better competition at AAA in the majors, but wouldn't the Jays just require him to report to their player development complex and spend the 80 games working on the specific aspects of his game? They believe need improvement. For instance, if the Jays believe that the one thing holding Martinez back from being an everyday starter at the Major League level

is his swing decisions, wouldn't they assign coaching resources to design and execute a training regimen over the next three months to tangibly improve that facet of his game? If this thesis holds, then is he and the team really being punished that severely? I appreciate that this would be much less true for a player already in the big leagues, whose absence could undermine the team's playoff chances. And of course, that would cost them a lot of salary too in that case. But player development implications wise, do you think that you could kind of make up for that lost time via non-game related methods? I think that you can do some stuff, but I think it really depends on

where the guy is in his big league trajectory. We know that there is a gap and a meaningful gap between even AAA and the majors. And I know that we got all kinds of machines and robots, happy belated Skynet Day to all who observe. But at a certain point you just, you have to get into games. You need to simulate gameplay. So there's, I think that that stuff helps and it keeps you sharp. And I think that guys who take advantage of, you know, going down to the complex and doing stuff there are in a better position to come back strong from suspension. But I still don't think it's the same.

I don't think it's the same. Yeah. There are teams that might think it is because part of the initiative behind cutting down the miners and that's an MLB thing to some extent too, but there are teams that were leading that charge, right? Like Jeff Luno, et cetera, who were saying, we don't need as many minor league levels. We could have this more focused, deliberate practice and maybe we could have academies sort of soccer style instead of having a full minor league system and you could work on certain skills.

I think that would probably replicate or perhaps even improve upon the in-game experience in some ways, but I definitely do think you would lose something. And you'd lose the pressure of those situations and things moving faster when you're actually in a game in a competitive scenario. And I think you are allowed as far as I know, this is maybe outdated, but I found Adam McAlvey, as far as I know, this is maybe outdated, but I found Adam McAlvey, the Brewers beat writer for MLB.com, this was like a decade ago, but he wrote about what a suspended player can and cannot do according to MLB.

A suspended major leaguer can participate in spring training and spring training games, can participate in extended spring training and extended spring training games, can participate in affiliated winter league games, can work out with the club, can participate in affiliated winter league games, can work out with the club, can participate in batting practice before the gates open before a game, cannot receive pay, cannot participate in Arizona Fall League, cannot participate in postseason games, cannot be elected or selected to the All-Star game. If that is all still up to date,

then I guess Oralves Martinez could still be doing a lot of stuff outside of games. It's not like he has to do no baseball activity whatsoever or even team guided baseball activity for months. Right. And I think there's also a provision where you can go on a minor league assignment in the last 15 days of your suspension. Right. You can kind of tune up against actual competition beforehand, yeah. Cause they don't want you to get, part of this too is like, they don't want you to get hurt

because you don't have an opportunity to get back into game shape and game practice before being activated off the list. Like there is a balance that has to be struck there. So some of it is about like getting in, you know, getting tuned up to playing games, but I think some of it is also a nod toward injury prevention on that score. Alright, hopefully the Jays have had those super advanced pitching machines for Arelvis to train against.

And by the way, we still don't have much pitch-by-pitch data prior to 1988, so innings are still a handy basis for comparison, though there are methods of estimating pitch counts prior to 88. Effectively, Wild Wikikeeper and Rules Peruser Raymond responded to our conversation about the credit and blame that is apportioned in the case of a midplate appearance pitching change, or a midplate appearance hitter change for that matter. He writes, In regard to the discrepancy between who gets assigned the strikeout after a mid-PA pitching

change, I think the principle here is the failure is charged to the person who is responsible for most of it. A walk was historically viewed as a failure of the pitcher and a strikeout as a failure of the batter. On the other hand, the accomplishment is earned by the person who finished the job, because good things take hard work, they're not gifts. So the person who finishes the job should be commended for getting it done. Say there is a mid-PA pitching change on a 3-2 count and the next pitch is taken. If there's a ball, the walk is charged to the previous pitcher. Failure.

And earned by the new batter. Accomplishment. If there's a strike, the strikeout is earned by the new pitcher. Accomplishment. And charged to the previous batter. Failure. I still think it's strange and sort of anachronistic. Also apologies to Royals fans for jinxing them, we talked earlier this week about how

injury-averse they've been, and no sooner had we discussed that than they suffered some injuries. Vinny Pasquentino and Lucas Ersegg were injured on the same play, Ersegg seems okay, he's day to day, but Pasquentino is out six to eight weeks with a broken thumb, so possibly done for the year unless the Royals make a deep playoff run. Are bad, but not really. It's tough to escape a season unscathed. As the Royals GM said, every team goes through this at some point during the year.

The ones who survive are the ones that have players step up. The Royals had hardly gone through this at any point during this year. Until we brought that up. And also thank you to everyone who signed up for our Patreon in response to our plea on the previous episode. We very much appreciate it, we hope others will join them, which they can do by going to Patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast coming, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access

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Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you next week. Effectively Wild is the only show I did Hosted by Ben Lindberg and Meg Rowley I wanna hear about Joe Hayo-Tonny Or Mike Trout with three marks