Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2266: Where to Put the Pit Stop

Episode Date: January 4, 2025

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and Patreon supporter Jordan Smith banter about Jordan’s baseball background, the Tigers’ 2025 hopes, the Dodgers signing Hyeseong Kim, and more, then (30:48) answer listener emails about per-game stats, “advanced” stats, televised arbitration cases, an owner playing in games, pit stops on the basepaths, assorted variations on the Golden Batter (and […]

Does baseball look the same to you as it does to me? When we look at baseball, how much do we see? Well, the curveball's bent and the home runs fly The more to the game, the beats the eye To get the stats compiled and the stories filed Fans on the internet might get riled Hello and welcome to episode 2266 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of FanGraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer.

Ben, how are you? I'm doing okay, although it is the slowest baseball news period of the year. We are deep in the doldrums, which is a challenge when you make a year-round three times a week baseball podcast, which, you know, maybe that was a bad idea to begin with, but we've stuck with it for a really long time. So if we can get through this, we can get through anything. We've done it in previous off seasons. I'm sure we can do it again. But this time of year always reminds me of the Merv Griffin show episode of Seinfeld when Kramer finds the old Merv Griffin show set in a dumpster and sets it up in his apartment to host a fake talk show. And eventually they run out of

guests and topics to talk about and are reduced to Newman discussing how lately he's been buying the generic brand of wax beans. And if he rips off the label, he can hardly tell the difference, which for us would probably be equivalent to, I don't know, talking about the Nationals resigning Trevor Williams and bringing back Josh Bell. No offense to those guys or the Nationals. But Kramer says, we need a new format. We should shut down and retool. And after pulling the plug, he returns with a revamped show based on scandals and animals. And for us it's emails, which is not new, although Meg, it's been more than a month since we have done a full fledged email show, which seems, seems like a very long time.

But I guess there's been a lot of news and transactions to talk about and winter meetings and then holidays and then pre-prepared end of year formats that we do. And here we are, instead of the late animal expert, Jim Fowler, who was Kramer's first guest on the revamped Merv Griffin show in Kramer's apartment, we have Mike Trout to your Patreon supporter, Jordan Smith, who as far as I know has brought no animals, but has brought himself. Hello, Jordan. Hi, Ben and Meg. It's a pleasure to be here. Yeah, no animals. At least not that I know

of. I can certainly take a peek around. Oh, you know, I take that back. I am adjacent to a few labs. We're not doing anything terribly mean to any of the little rodents, but. Well, I guess this anticipates a future question, which is what do you do? But. We're shadowing. Very, yeah, very curious about what the answer

to that will be now. But we usually start by asking what could have possibly possessed one of our top tier Patreon supporters to support us at that level, aside from the desire to join us on the show, which you have very patiently been waiting for for roughly half of 2024. And your turn has finally rolled around here. So welcome and what gave you this wild idea? You know, it doesn't seem that wild to me at all.

I'm reasonably comfortable in this yet to be discussed career. I don't have a ton of vices at this point in my life. I'm married, have a young son, and I love baseball. And I love listening to you all talk about it. When I saw the opportunity to finally support you all, and I'm allowed to say, y'all, I live in North Carolina, now I have for 12 years or so and I'm allowed to say y'all I live in North Carolina now I have for you know 12 years or so I'm taking it it's such a joy and it brings such a different perspective and even if there was no you know appearance on the

pod patients are not it's well worth any investment from anyone in my opinion so you know use that as an advertisement as well so well thank you we didn't put you up to that but we appreciate it I'm also of the opinion that y'all is like a perfect word. You know, I understand that it's adoption outside of the South is maybe, you know, unlikely and that many people who are from there feel a sort of pride of authorship with it. But y'all is perfect. Y'all is great. It's inclusive, you know. It's a piece of grammar that the rest of the English language is lacking. So good job, the South. Don't always say that, but in this instance, you guys nailed it.

Yeah. Yeah. It's really useful. And I feel self-conscious saying it myself. It feels like cultural appropriation or something. So maybe where are you from originally Jordan? Are you from a non-y'all saying place? I am from a non-y'all saying place. I'm from Michigan originally to answer your question. Uh, and I lived there until I was about 27, 28, 28 years old, even from being reasonably rural Michigan, not a word I had in my vocabulary. And, uh, yeah, since I lived down here, you know, at first I said, Oh, no, I'm going to hold on to all of you thinking I'm Canadian and, you know, just talk really

quickly and throw lots of A's in, all that. But Meg, you hit it on the head. It's a perfect word. I can't get by without it anymore. So I find myself, you know, and I'm traveling home for the holidays and I'm in Michigan polite company, it's almost like a reverting back. And I go, oh, this feels weird. Do I say you guys again? I don't know what to do anymore, but yeah. So how did you come across us and add us to your baseball podcast rotation?

I was trying to think about that because I know you ask all the folks that come on here that question. And realistically, it was somewhere in the 16, 17, 18. I can't remember a specific time, but I run a decent amount. Podcasts during that are important. I'm sure I was just looking for something interesting and sort of outside the scope

of local coverage or sort of more standard, I guess, coverage of baseball and you popped up probably, who you know honestly and you know since then just been off and on listening between a lot and a little bit less when the Tigers haven't been doing so well which is most of the last decade yeah I know but hey there's a guy named Shohei Otani that came along that sort of reinvigorated a love for MLB in general. And I think probably now I'm thinking about the years that 2018 when Otani came along is probably probably about when I really started getting

into the baseball as a whole. And it was nice having something that made me appreciate the entire sport rather than just sort of, oh, what are the Tigers doing? Why is there payroll that low? What is going on? So, yeah. That could be nice.

We help broaden your horizons or show hey, Otani did one of, one of the two potentially, but, uh, we've, we've teamed up in that respect, maybe. But yeah, glad you came across us. It's just our, our great SEO are finally honed. You know, we've just really gamed all the search engines with our super long esoteric wordplay filled titles. And, uh, one way or another you find your way to us. And we do hear from a lot of runners.

And I think our podcast is made for marathoners. We just, we talk a lot, we make a lot of episodes and their training never stops. They got a lot of running to do, a lot of hours. And when people say they listen to us at the gym, I'm always sort of surprised because there are a lot of people who listen to like pump up music, you know, just get the adrenaline

going and that's not necessarily effectively wild. It's not what I listen to at the gym either. I just listen to people talking for the most part these days, but I always wonder, it just doesn't seem like something that's going to inspire you to post PRs or something in the gym. Just like add a little extra on there, you know, just one more rep, just listening to me and Meg talk about baseball just really, really brings that out of you.

But wherever and whenever you listen, we're happy to hear that you do. So what is your origin story as a baseball fan then? Were you just a Tigers fan? Are you a long time Tigers fan or did you come to the sport more recently? Oh yeah, I've been a Tigers fan since, since I think my dad made it that that was going to be the case. And having a son of my own, I kind of see what he was driving at like back then. That would have been the very late 80s, early 90s for me, which was another, we'll say fallow period in the Tigers. Well, late 80s was fine, but I wasn't really around for

that. But then the 90s were reasonably miserable. But you know, that didn't matter. Still played baseball as a kid and, and, you know, followed the Tigers along as closely as we could. And it was mostly, you know, just instilled by my dad. And then later on my brothers and friends, right? You know, you grew up in Michigan with a lot of people that like baseball. You know, I'm from, I mentioned I'm from Michigan, but I'm from central Michigan. So like Mount Pleasant, you know, if any other listeners are from around there. Are you holding your hand up right now and pointing? I, you know, not a visual podcast as you so nicely discussed on the last Patreon this

morning, speaking of running. But yes, absolutely. At least mentally. So, so right in the middle, I believe Zach McKinstry, current Tiger, went to Central Michigan University as well. But anyway, I digress. I've been in love with baseball since I was a little boy. That 2006 run was like nothing I had ever experienced. That was at the time when some people had reasonably decent ability to get back and forth with updated scores

and all that. But I remember sitting in a lab at the University of Michigan with my classmates and the TA said, hey Jordan, what's going on? And my phone was buzzing and my dad was texting me updates of the game when they were playing the Yankees in the DS. And I said, oh, I'm sorry, I'm distracting. My dad just keeps texting me because he's excited and I don't know what's going on. He said, oh, no, no, I'm distracting. Like my dad just keeps texting me because he's excited and like, I don't know what's going on. He said, oh, no, no, no, like, hey, everybody, like,

let's just, this is a big deal. We'll pick up next week. And we just sat there and texted my dad as a class. That series ended up pretty good for us. And of course, you know, the Oakland series as well, and then going to the World Series, like, it was just nothing, I just didn't expect to see it ever. And then of course that turned into a, you know,

basically decade long run of a little bit less like right after a six, but then you get into nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, and they're just rolling through there. And then some, you know, frankly, devastating losses in the playoffs over those years. But God, it's been fun. And you know, as the Tigers got a little, not as good and sort of, you know, I lost the day to day interest in those teams. That's when like kind of kind of mentioned earlier, getting into the whole sport became more doable. You know, the sort of birth of the national podcast and the, and the podcast

of people that talk about it in a little bit different way than just like your standard sort of sports talk radio makes for more interesting angles, a different way to look at the sport with no tiny coming along. Like I said, with With that I think sort of springboarded me into like okay maybe I really do need to pay attention to what's going on elsewhere. It's been great to watch baseball ever since and think about baseball and have a different perspective on it. So still die hard, True Blue Tigers, the last season was incredible. I was over the moon for the last month but love to watch the rest of the sport too and your podcast is a large part of that. So you have mentioned labs a couple of times already and you have referenced robots or rodents, not robots.

That would be a different kind of lab probably, although I guess we don't know. So now is the time that I ask for the big reveal about what it is that you do. Oh gosh, so exciting. I am actually a pharmacist by training. I'm an associate professor as well. I went through undergraduate pharmacy school

at University of Michigan, like I mentioned, a little bit at least. And then since then, did a little bit of post-grad work after that and took a faculty position on back in 2015. And last year actually was promoted and tenured. And I think that was part of, you asked earlier why I decided to sort of spring a little bit. I said, oh yeah, that's like a little gift to myself. So yeah, I'm a associate professor of clinical science,

as they call it, on the pharmacy side. So do a pretty healthy mix of work in the infectious disease space. I guess I should have mentioned that. That's my primary specialty. Do some work at the hospital, a few hospitals locally. Do some work at some of our free care clinics in the area. Of course teach students. Research focuses largely on, you know, they call it antimicrobial stewardship if you all are familiar, basically making sure we give the right antibiotics to the right people at the right time and that they're, you know, used appropriately. It's good stuff and then you got to not think about how the vast majority of

antibiotics we use in the country are for animals. But hey, you know, you do what you can, right? You fight the battles, you can win. Yeah, otherwise, you know, it's a blast teaching. I love having students, love doing the research, love doing the clinical work. And yeah, our labs, they are down the hallway, but I don't do any work on the rodents specifically. I just kind of go say hi every now and then

because I'm on our animal care and use committee. So okay. Well, it sounds like you're doing important stuff while wasting time listening to this podcast. You're not alone in that respect. We've heard from a lot of people who I'm like, I hope we're not distracting you from that vital work of yours that is hopefully helping humanity. Or Ben, you can think of it as you and I helping to prevent the spread of bird flu. I assume that that's the most pressing question.

So why are you dinging the pod? You know, or- Yeah, maybe it's that. Yeah. Maybe it's that. We're putting Jordan in the right mindset to be able to do better work in the lab. Creative, non-reactionary, obsessed with puns and kissing.

I mean, like that sounds like it would be a relevant activity, maybe not an advisable one, but a relevant activity to infectious disease. You don't know. CB Yeah, no, kissing definitely is probably not in a good way when it comes to infectious disease, I guess. You mentioned the animals being pumped up with antibiotics, which is not so great when it comes to resistance. But have we made any inroads when it comes to not overprescribing to humans so as not to develop antibiotic resistant strains of various things that can kill us? How worried about that should I be? Because every now and then, I feel like not as much really recently, but there have been lots of, you know, we're all going to die because we're out of antibiotics that still work and all the bugs have adapted to them and we will be back in the pre-penicillin

era when it comes to treating diseases. Is that still something that should be keeping me up at night? Yes, but not necessarily for the bacterial reasons. Recently, it's become more of a pressing concern for even me as someone who deals with this stuff every day. I certainly like having immunity to things and I'm hoping that we as a country maintain our desire to have that as well. And honestly, that's a much bigger fear than antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Usually, bacterial infections are less contagious than viral infections. Not to say they aren't, but the horribly resistant bacteria that we have, frankly, terrifying on a sense of like,

oh gosh, what do we do to fight those things? But the isolates that are truly multiple, multiple drug-resistant, nearly pan drug resistant are still reasonably fewer and farther between. And mostly we see them, regrettably, in the sickest of the sick patients already. And it's a bummer, right? Because there is a fitness cost for the bacteria where oftentimes for the bacteria to be able to live well, they tend to be sort of easier to kill with antibiotics.

The ones that are just your garden variety, Staphylococcus or Streptococcus, they tend to live pretty well. They cause a lot of infections across the country. But then the ones that are really resistant, well, they're almost sick in their own way, but they're like, but you're not going to kill me. I'm just going to sort of float through life as this horrible organism that given the right circumstances, given a totally destroyed immune system, I can sort of take hold. But given most healthy people, I can usually be warded off.

That's a pretty, I guess, maybe a rosier outlook about it because we're definitely selecting for those things. Don't get me wrong. But it's, I don't know. I think less of an imminent threat than say, well, Meg, you mentioned bird flu. Uh, we just recently got through a pretty gnarly pandemic and, you know, some would say we're sort of still in that. Um, so, but I think your fears are, are warranted.

Uh, I also don't think they're at the top of my like, oh, no list. Okay. You're more concerned about us deciding to like flirt with polio and measles again. That's a bigger concern. You know, I don't love it. You know, as again, you know, for me, for me, as well as, as my little guy is three years old, I'm like, oh man. Yeah. On that note. Yeah. Yeah. Cheerful note. We can probably talk a little bit about baseball. I did say that there was no news this week, but there has been a bit of news just since

we started recording this episode, which is that the Dodgers have made a signing. They have signed a Korean infielder, Ha Sung Kim. Oh. Not to be confused with the former, well, for now, former Padres infielder Haesong Kim. This is the 25-year-old Kim who was a 300-hitter in eight seasons in the KPO. This is reportedly, this is just breaking, but it sounds like it's potentially a three-year deal with an option for an additional two. This was broken first by some outlets in Korea, I believe. He was 26th on MLP Trade Rumors top 50 of free agent

rankings and they predicted a three-year $24 million deal for him. He is a former teammate of Ha Sang Kim in South Korea. And again, he's young, he's a high average hitter, he gets on base at a decent clip over there. Not a lot of power, just doesn't have even Ha Sang Kim's power, but he is a good runner, he's a good defender, at least at second, he's played a lot of shortstop, although he's been at second for the past few seasons. So given the lack of power and the fact that he's been at second, he wasn't going to be a huge dollar guy. But now the Dodgers have added him to the mix and I don't know whether this means that they will stop flirting with Mookie being back at shortstop and they're going to put Kim at short or they're just going to see how he does or see how that shakes out in spring training or however everyone

fits in here. But good, good bat to ball guy. That's kind of the book on Kim. Do you have anything to add to that Meg? My only addition is that I hope he can play a real big league quality shortstop because I think they should have one of those, you know? And not in a Mookie can do anything kind of way, but in a like, hey, you're a shortstop, go play shortstop. What a concept. That's my only addition. I don't know. I

can't decide if I want the Ha Sung Kim we are familiar with, current former Padre, to re-sign with the Padres now and for there to be a concentration of variations on this name, or if it would be better for everyone if he now signs outside of that division. Can't decide, got to think about it. Maybe I'll have an answer by the end of the pub. As I've said, my priority is that he stays together with Jirx and Profar wherever that is, and if that should be in San Diego, great. And as one of our listeners pointed out, when we did our weak spots on

contending teams last time, the Braves were one of the contenders that were weak projected at both shortstop and left field. So again, if we're going to get a Hassan Kim Jirx and Profar package deal, that might be a place that they could go to. But look, I guess it just adds more fuel to the fire of the Dodgers have broken baseball and they're signing everyone. Though again, in this case, it's not so much that no one else could afford

to spend this amount of money. It's that really the Dodgers, they've just made it difficult for any team to have a more compelling pitch than we win all the time. And we're always at the playoffs and we win our division. And by the way, we just won our World Series and we seem to improve players for the most part. And we have a lot of stars if you're into that. And we've got a big market and we're on the west coast, which is closer to Asia than other locations in the US. So they kind of got it all going for them these days.

And I know that that can be. Some other locations in the US. I would just point out, I am curious who they are going to move off the 40 man because they have a full 40 man. So that'll be interesting. Yes. This is, it's interesting from a positional perspective. So we'll see what they do. We'll see what Jason Martinez does at Roster Resource,

how he handles this. He'll probably have that updated by the time this podcast is complete, I'm sure. Almost certainly. I'll refresh, check back in, see what he does. Jordan, I'm guessing you don't have extensive thoughts on Haesong Kim? Not in the least. When you first said Haesong Kim, I said, oh, you know, that's an interesting

sort of fallback option for the Tigers. If they don't do what they should do and sign Alex Bregman, then the distinction was made. And I said, oh, I'm going to let them talk for a while. Can I ask you a quick question? So I'm always curious and then we can talk about other baseball stuff if we want, but Jordan, so you would be in favor of a Detroit Bregman mashup. You're on board for that? In the context of like legitimate mashing, which the Tigers completely lack, absolutely.

And don't get me wrong, I'm not of the mind that Alex Bregman is the, oh hey, the Tigers won, I was at 85 games last year, 86, and Alex Bregman, all right, let's go, Dodgers, look out. But I am of the thought that, what are we doing? Sign someone, third base is a big area of need. And Bregman and Hinch clearly get along and have whatever history y'all want to make. But for my purposes, I adore A.J. Hinch. He seems like a lovely guy. He

seems very smart and obviously all that stuff with Houston. That's 2017. We don't need to look back. Might as well reunite the fellas. They seem to like each other a lot. There are definitely issues, seems like at the age of 31, which I consider very young, but he's obviously starting to wind down. But really, the payroll is so low. What are we doing? That's an obvious hole and an obvious way to fill it. Yeah, it's just not perfect, but I certainly would not be upset. The sign stealing of it all was actually why I asked the question and I'm not trying to set you up or anything. I just am curious about how fans of other teams interact with that because my sense,

I guess George Springer is the most obvious and Correa, those two guys teams sort of interact with that because my sense, I guess George Springer is like the most obvious and Correa, those two guys are sort of the most obvious departures and it seems like their fan bases have largely embraced them. Like I don't hear a lot about Springer and sign stealing stuff anymore and you know, other aspects of Correa's career since Houston have been more prominent, you know, with the injuries and what have you. But Bregman was the one that was like mugging in the dugout after home runs in the year of the scandal. And so even I, a person who was largely moved on from my instinct to sort of moralize about

it, he does, I have a little more of a holdup with him than with the other guys. And I don't know how fair that is. And so I'm just, I am always curious, like how are these guys going to encounter their new fan base and how will they be perceived by the folks who suddenly find themselves rooting for them, presumably, or maybe they will sit grumpy, cross-armed in their various ballparks, I don't know.

You know, if you're trying to, you know, get me all riled up here with the sign ceiling business, Well, sit grumpy, cross-armed in their various ballparks. I don't know. If you're trying to get me all riled up here with the sign ceiling business, as a University of Michigan graduate, so I'm sitting here going, gosh, for half of the Tigers fans that are also University of Michigan fans, if anything, we've embraced the heel on that business. And I think sometimes this is a little bit regrettable in the case of more serious things that go on outside of the game. But oftentimes if someone shows up and is playing well for your team, I think the fan base is going to be pretty okay with it. Again, and if

it's something major to the game, but minor in the grand scheme of things like science dealing, I'd be much more okay cheering for that guy than say if the Tigers signed someone with maybe a little bit more sorted personal history. Well, I'm guessing that the end of last season was probably among the best fan experiences of your life. How could it not be as a Tigers fan, even though you've seen and rooted for better Tigers teams than that one? Just the way that they got in unexpectedly was super exciting, even for neutrals, even for me.

But did that give you a sense of confidence coming into 2025 or did that make you worried that the team would say, okay, we don't need to do as much because look, we made it as opposed to, wow, everything had to go right for that to happen. and that was improbable. And now we actually have to build on that foundation to ensure that that wasn't a one-off. It's placed the burden of expectations on the team, right? And with that, of course, in baseball is, well, at least in the case of the Tigers is a, like, well, you know, we got a lot of young guys and we got to see how they develop and gosh, they sure are cheap. It turns out it's both, right?

It's always going to be a little bit of both. Like I'm so excited for the future. I have a lot of confidence in again, you know, maybe asterisk, whatever you want to do it, but in AJ Hinch and the way he managed that team, you know, I was sort of the Randy Quaid in major league to my family after he basically loses it. Right? Like my dad, my brother's, everyone's excited and I'm going, okay, you know, it's not that real. Or like, oh, you know, if you look at the underlying numbers, dah, dah, dah, dah, right? Which I have you all to blame for this. But

as, as time went on, you know, and you see this and you see there are certainly some flukes, right? The, the, the bad bit on a lot of our relievers, some of the contact rates, all those things, like it doesn't seem sustainable, but at a certain point, it's certainly sustained long enough. And whatever they're doing, the way they're managing that pen, the way we're hopefully going to have some more arms, big deal, Alex Cobb, welcome. But then, of course, Jackson Job coming in, right? And Tarek Schubel, without saying, I think Rhys Olsen is a fantastic arm as well. If they can put that together with the bullpen management they've had, I feel pretty good.

I would like to see more moves on the offensive side. Gleyber Torres, I'm bummed that that was exciting to me. No offense to Gleyber, he seems like a cool dude, but it's like, hey, we can do more. We can do more. And so I do wonder, where are they at? And so far, the offseason started with all these huge signings and all this news, but as you mentioned, it's gotten kind of slow. And I'm just sort of hoping that in some way, shape, or form, they make some improvements

to that lineup. I'm very excited about a lot of the young guys. I'm very excited about a lot of the minor leaguers. But I guess the level of confidence I have in management and general management is very high. The level of confidence I have that the resources are going to be allocated in the way they probably should be is not quite as high. So we'll see. But I'm certainly excited.

Last thing on Kim, there are also some reports circulating that the deal maybe is 22 million, but the guaranteed amount is lower than that. And that there were other teams that submitted offers and even larger offers potentially, including the angels. And that Kim chose the Dodgers over potentially bigger deals elsewhere, which would not be new really. So this is just a cycle that repeats. I don't know how any team can counter this when it's just

players want to play for that team more than they want to play for any other team. And partly that's because they have a lot of great players. And so the fact that they have a lot of great players just enables them to keep collecting even more great players. And Kim doesn't even necessarily seem like someone they need that acutely. And the fit there, positionally speaking, I mean, it's kind of crowded there. How do you fit in Mookie and Kim and Lux and all these guys? And it's just like, oh, do we need to play our great future Hall of Fame shortstop at right field or second base? Because he can play them all. These are the problems that the Dodgers have to deal with.

It's just really tough to compete with just having that compelling a pitch, just come play for us. We'll pay you more money. They have a lot more money. They could maybe offer more money, but they don't even need to so often at this point, which has just got to be immensely frustrating. so often at this point, which has just got to be immensely frustrating. But it's how do you legislate against that, I guess? You could have rules against certain amounts of deferrals, maybe, and you could have some sort of cap imposed eventually, maybe if the owners get their way. But how do you stop players from wanting to play for the Dodgers?

That's tough. I mean, it seems like he could be a utility guy or a bench guy even. He might've even chosen the Dodgers despite having a clear path to playing time for some other team, right? Like what you'd think that would have been more persuasive to him. So yeah, it's, uh, it's tough. Like they're, they're just not going to have enough room. Like they have Pais and

Outman and all these guys. Like they'll have to make some trades or just get rid of some guys who could probably be starting elsewhere. It's just an embarrassment of riches right now. Yeah. I think the cap of the 40 man does a lot of work here, but not enough for some teams I suppose. I think they would like a more strict, stricture, strict, stricture. Am I making stuff up with that? I don't know. Before we move on to emails, Jordan, just to put you at ease, like I think the general perception of Hinchin, the industry is very strong, even despite the science-stealing stuff, which I don't say to like praise his leadership

in the face of that because you probably do have to do more than break monitors to intervene on widespread cheating across your roster. But like people like Hinch, you know, they think he's a good guy and a good baseball mind. There's a reason like he has a job now and Lu now doesn't. And some of that is the titles and some of that is people like one of those guys and they don't like the other one. So there you go. Oh, feeling much better. Let's get to some emails and here's one from Emil who says, what do you see as the future of per

game metrics in the baseball conversation? Back when pitchers regularly threw entire games, statistics like ERA conveyed something meaningful in that context. In today's game with innings pitched by starters continuing to dwindle, do you think per game statistics will continue to be in vogue? Over the statistical revolution, we've seen more per game statistics introduced, such as FIP and ex-FIP, which attempt to enhance a legacy stat like ERA, and other stats pop up such as strikeouts per 9 and walks per 9, but in a conversation about a pitcher's effectiveness, these numbers all lack context because they won't throw nine innings.

In basketball commentary, there's been a growth in per 36 minute statistics conveying a player's performance over a normal starter's typical workload for a game. Per game stats are still popular, but I noticed these three quarter game stats more and more. Do you foresee a future baseball conversation where performance relative to a partial game becomes prevalent?

I guess this has already happened to an extent just in percentage stats. Right. We've kind of displaced K per nine and BB per nine with K percentage and walk and BB per nine with K percentage and walk percentage or K minus BB percentage. So some that are just the denominators is plate appearances. Those have become more common and are kind of more telling in some respects. So I guess that's one way in which this has already happened. We haven't just like adjusted it for your average start length or something instead of runs allowed per nine innings, it's per six innings or something like that

instead. And I guess that's inertia. I guess that's what we've historically used for so long. Those are the numbers we're used to. It would be kind of a hassle to change. And do we need to, I guess? So do we really need to change those things? Because even if it is still on a nine inning scale, it's still a rate stat and we sort of understand it, I guess. So I don't know that it obfuscates all that much. Yeah. I don't think that it is confusing to people.

I think they know what's what, but you're right to know that, like, not that I don't cite or use K per nine ever, but I'm much more likely to use strikeout rate, you know, walk rate rather than rely on the K per nine, just because I, part of it is, doesn't have anything to do with the typical length of a start. I just, it's a cleaner stat to me. Um, I think that it communicates the point maybe a little more clearly, but that might be because I have just thought in that way for a long time. And so my handle on like, what is the league average strikeout rate is stronger than it would be for like K per nine or something like that.

I don't know, but I think it's fine. And I imagine that there will be, I don't know, maybe I'm speaking out of turn here because I'm not as familiar with sort of how sentimentality necessarily interacts with stats in other sports. But I do wonder, like, you know, we always have some amount of resistance to moving on from stats that we're, um, we've been reliant on for a long time in baseball. And some of that is that the stats are good and we like to be able to have some consistency era to era in the way that we talk about the game. And some of that is like, we're a little

bit precious about it. And I think that's fine. Like the history of the game and its longevity is a big part of the appeal for a lot of people. And I don't know if like basketball fans engage with that in the same way in the NBA. So I wonder if there's maybe a little less resistance to change in that regard, just because you can call them sentimental, you can call them grouchy, however forgiving or sort of rude you want to be about it. But my however forgiving or sort of rude you wanna be about it. But my sense is that they're not quite as picky about it. Everybody's grumpy about three pointers. They don't have grump to spare for other stuff.

Yeah, is this something that bothers you or ever occurred to you, Jordan? Not terribly. I like to think of that, even though we're talking about sort of, I guess, individual stats in the terms of like how effective that pitcher might be Yeah, yeah, I think of a game right. It's easy for my head to Expand to oh, yeah

If you were to pitch a full game, which is still nine innings even though yeah God forbid a pitch ago that long it makes sense. You're right. Like so so I guess I'm as a 38 year old Transitioning into you know, funnyuddy-duddy territory, I suppose, it's just, it's made sense to me the whole time. But it also doesn't, it doesn't conflict with anything when I see something new or interesting presented to me, right? Like, just because it's easier for me to understand in the past, doesn't mean that if you show me K-rate or if you show me something that describes a little bit more effectively, you

know, what a pitcher is doing and why he's being so effective, that I can hopefully incorporate that into a conversation with, say, my dad or my uncles when I'm watching and just be gentle and cool about it, you know, not, you know, cross my arms and say, yeah, Mike Trout's better than Miguel Cabrera. I did not win a lot of arguments that year. But, but to say like, yeah, he is dominating. That's awesome. And look at this, this is part of the reason why. So I think as long as you can,

as your brain will allow for it and you can sort of communicate that effectively, the more the merrier. I just turned 38, so we have three 38 year olds on this podcast. Wow, they let you do that? Maybe I could see a per inning stat catching on. Maybe if we just divided it by nine, if we just did that instead, but I don't

know, it would just take such a mental adjustment and also you just have such smaller numbers, you'd really just have to get used to tiny numbers when we're used to seeing multiple runs and it would be like fractions of a run. And yeah, just, I don't know how much it would help, but if we were drawing it up from scratch now, maybe that's what we would do. JJ, Patreon supporter says, will there be a time in which we no longer refer to them as advanced stats, but simply stats? Blowing my mind here, JJ. Whoa. I, again, I don't know because yeah, I mean, what we define as advanced maybe

has changed a bit where we, we might've used to refer to FIP or something as advanced and then now it doesn't really even see, seem that advanced because we have more advanced and more complicated and more just new age data driven stats out there, but it's still kind of a helpful distinction between just traditional back of the baseball cards, non-sabermetric sort of stats. I mean, there's still a difference even if we're becoming accustomed to them such that they no longer seem that advanced to us. They are still advanced relative to the basics, the fundamentals, the building blocks.

So again, I think it's still sort of useful to distinguish. I increasingly hear people talking, maybe making a distinction within advanced stats between those that are driven by inputs from derived from stat cast versus, um, what we would, you know, like war as an advanced stat. Um, so I do think that there are times where people are making that distinction, but more broadly, like it is a useful way to, to sort of categorize these things because it's really like advanced relative to the more basic like slash line stats that a lot of people grew up with. And I think maintaining that distinction is useful from a categorization perspective.

Final update maybe on Kim here, it's only 12 and a half million guaranteed for the three-year deal. And then there's a two-year team option which would give him an additional nine and a half million guaranteed for the three year deal. And then there's a two year team option, which would give him an additional nine and a half million for the two seasons after that. So it would be a bargain if he's good, but it's no sure thing that he will hit in MLB enough to be an everyday player at least. So this might be a depth insurance kind of bench bat move. So this might be a depth insurance kind of bench bat move. And it's the kind of signing that if it were not the Dodgers, no one would be saying, oh, baseball's broken. Team X signed Hyesung Kim to a pretty low dollar amount. And then there's like a two and a half million dollar release fee. Basically, it's just 20% of the guarantee goes

to his team in Korea, the heroes. So it's not like another superstar and it's not a lot of money. It's just that every time the Dodgers do anything at this point, we're just all mentally adding it to the litany of other Dodgers moves. It's not as if they have signed all the big free agents this off season. Now they signed Otani and Yamamoto last year and they've made some major moves and they got Teasquer back and they signed Snell, etc. But they haven't completely dominated the market this off season. Not that they needed to, they just didn't have all that much to do. But it's just every additional Dodgers move is just

building on a mountain of previous moves slash success for the team that I think contributes to the idea that the Dodgers have just sort of solved the sports, which if anyone does, I guess they have. Like they've just ascended to the level of not needing to outbid anyone because it's just we're the Dodgers. Wouldn't you want to play for us? And everyone says yes, even if the path to playing time is tougher.

All right, question from Nikhil, Patreon supporter, who says, I was in the shower thinking about baseball arbitration, as one does. I randomly remembered that although Judge Judy is a former judge on the show, she's acting in the role of arbitrator. I think you know where I'm going with this. What would be the impact of televising contract arbitration hearings? Would teams hold back

to avoid publicly dunking on a fan favorite and explaining why they're actually not as good as fans think they are? It seems obvious that MLB would never agree to this unless they were allowed to have final cut privilege and edit out all the stuff that makes them look bad. But the mental image of Judge Doody dunking on a team exec trying to claw back half a million bucks from a deserving player is fun to think about. So yeah, one of the things that you hear about arbitration is that sometimes the proceedings can get a little nasty and sometimes there's bad blood and there's a little bitterness because if the player attends the arbitration hearing, they're hearing the team

list all the reasons why they do not deserve the amount of money that they're asking for. And so sometimes that can ruffle feathers and no one would want to sit in a proceeding where their employer is explaining all of their shortcomings, even if it's just all kind of theater and you're just trying to convince arbitrators who are going by the old school stats, largely not the advanced stats, as we just said. So yeah, I don't know. If this were public, would teams be shamed into not shaming players in public or would everyone just get on board with sort of a Judge Judy Jerry Springer style? Yeah, the team's going to trash the player and then the player's agent and their representation is going to pop up the player to make them sound even better than they are. It would be compelling TV, I think. Some players, they don't attend their

own arbitration hearings and maybe it's better not to because why would you know, some players, they don't attend their own arbitration hearings and maybe it's better not to, because why would you want to hear that? I guess I don't know that it actually does color their decisions years down the road when people say, oh, you're squabbling over this small amount of money. They're not going to want to sign an extension with you now because they just heard you badmouthing them. I'm not sure whether that actually tends to be the case years down the road if you make a good offer later, but there is that perception. So yeah, I would watch. But if these proceedings were public, how do you think it would affect them, Meg?

MS. MCNAMARA I mean, I think that once you've made the decision that you are going to fight with a player over fractions of the league minimum, that you have accepted a level of potential criticism that I don't know that it being televised would necessarily alter. And I think you're right, you know, there are notable examples of players who have said that they didn't like the way that they were treated in arbitration, but I think provided that they are given an offer that they think is fair market value. I don't know that we can cite an example of a guy, you know, saying, Oh, I won't go back because of that. I know, like, I think Dylan Batances talked about how it did color his perception of the front

office when he went through the arbitration process. And I know there are others and I'm blanking on names. I did a study on that at BP years and years ago to see if the rates of resigning or signing extensions were affected by whether you went to contract arbitration. And I didn't find anything. I'm not going to say it was the best constructed study or a definitive answer, but yeah, it didn't jump out at me as a thing. Well, and you know, I feel like we're forgetting a notable example here.

So if we are, please feel free to let us know in an email listeners. But part of it is just that there isn't much variation team to team in the strategy. And so, you know, I think this is sort of an understood part of this process, which is unpleasant. Teams don't particularly like the arbitration process either, to be clear. But I think that because the approach to the process is so uniform across teams, it has lent not an air of legitimacy, but sort of this is the expected procedure in a way that I think has maybe changed the way that the teams and players view it.

I think a lot of the ire is directed at the arbitrators at this point rather than the teams. So that's something also, but I don't know. I mean, it would be interesting if a team set out to say, look, one of the ways that we're going to distinguish ourselves is to have a different, less cheap approach to the arbitration process. I wonder how that would be perceived, but they might get pushed back in some quarters either from other teams or from the league itself because I know LRD is sort of helpful to teams in setting some of these things. So I don't know. It's a weird process. The fact that it's judged by people who are not typically baseball experts, I think makes the whole thing feel kind of arbitrary to folks at times in a way that probably could

be improved upon. Would it be as dynamic? You'd need a dynamo to make it interesting because at the end of the day, salary disputes aren't really that interesting. CB Yeah. Is this player going to make a lot of money or a lot, but slightly less? LS Well, and part of it too, part of the delight that people take from Judge Judy is Judge Judy. And part of the delight is that the people who go on Judge Judy often have a dopiness to them that allows her to really cook. And I don't know that you would get that same dynamic with MLB arbitrators and like front office personnel and agents. There was always something kind of parasitic is probably

a little too strong, but you know, I think people would comport themselves a little differently than maybe the average Judge Judy defendant or plaintiff. You tuning in for People's Court Baseball Arbitration Edition, Jordan? 100%, but I think I'm a pretty targeted audience for that. I mean, I'm listening to you talk about it, and I'm going, yeah, yeah, okay, okay. And then I almost, wouldn't there maybe based on you know, how some teams are run

There's the potential for some dopiness in there and and I wonder if maybe that would that would come across We might see some more people and they're more frequently than others And and more entertaining I suppose but you know hard to say the I think what's really getting me is Meg You brought up arbitrary and I've just been sitting here going, is arbitrary related to arbitration for the last couple of minutes? And so apologies for a little bit of fog there, but I still haven't decided in my head. I do think that this probably should not be public. I think baseball players, we know how much money they make. It's an odd job and they're well compensated for it, but a lot of transparency into

their lives that we would not extend to ourselves or we would not want to extend it to ourselves. Would you want people tuning in to watch you negotiating with your boss about a raise or something? It's just pretty intrusive. But yeah, at least with Judge Judy, people I guess elect to go on there. LS. I think pushing back against making processes like this sort of geared toward and streamlined toward entertainment value is probably for the better. The entertainment value in baseball comes in baseball. It doesn't come in this other stuff. And you know, people like to play GM and they have their fantasy teams. And

we write a lot about salary and how teams structure their payroll. And so I don't want to say like Van Graaffs would never, but I do think that understanding this to be like, this is serious business, you know, these are life changing decisions for the individual players involved. They are often precedent setting decisions for the player population as a whole. And so there's something about making it like zippy entertainment where you have an arbitrator going, you know, doing the like, look at my watch, hurry up thing, the judge, you know, from the Judge Judy gif. Like, that's not the kind of vibe I want to salary arbitration. We want, if anything, for the baseball of it all understood in modern terms to be more central to the process, not less.

So it feels like it's working at cross purposes to sort of modernizing the arbitration system. Although if this keeps our war out of the art process, then fine. Yeah. To head off any emails from etymologists, which normally I would welcome, the root word is the same, so arbiter, trace it to the Latin root with the same spelling, meaning eyewitness, onlooker, person appointed to settle a dispute. This is all according to Merriam-Webster. A number of English words stem from the Latin arbiter, many of which have to do with judging or being a judge. An arbiter is a judge, arbitration is the act of judging or serving as an

arbiter, yet the most common meaning of arbitrary is existing or coming about seemingly at random or by chance or as a capricious and unreasonable act of will, which seems to be quite a bit different in meaning from the other two words. Arbitrary does indeed come from the same Latin root and its oldest meaning in English was depending on choice or discretion, particularly regarding the decision of a judge or a tribunal. But over time, it developed additional senses that are somewhat removed from that initial meaning.

And there were probably pedantic, prescriptive people at that time saying, no, arbitrary shouldn't mean that. That's the opposite. It's like literally, you don't mean literally. I'm sure that was the debate at the time, but then these things change and we get used to them and we no longer are bothered by them. I'm so glad I know that.

Thank you. My running bit for this pod will probably be after every answer, I will provide a final update on HiSongKim, which in this case is that friend of the pod, Dodgers beat writer, Fabian Ardaya has reported that they have said that they're going with the plan of Mookie at shortstop and Gavin Lux at second base throughout the off season.

The plan with Kim, according to a source, is for him to fill a super utility role. So this does not necessarily displace Mookie, shortstop Mookie, which, you know, it's fun. I don't know if it's good, but it's fun. And it impresses me that he's even able to fake it over there and maybe more than fake it. Okay. Question from Lee, Patreon supporter. You talked about pay drivers. This was in Formula One, where the driver brings in sponsorship dollars because of their personality or nationality or influence or what have you. Another fun motor sports thing is the concept of the gentleman driver. A very wealthy

person decides they want to go racing, so they just bankroll a whole team to race with. Isn't that every Formula One team? I'm sorry. What? We're making a distinction? What? We're making a distinction? Imagine, well, I guess they're actually getting in the car and racing. I guess that's what we're talking about here. Not just a vanity project, not just like Michael Jordan having a motorsports team, but like getting behind the wheel. Imagine a world where David Rubenstein doesn't buy the Orioles to make money. He buys the Orioles so he can play in MLB. Could this actually happen? And even if it can't, which owner passed a present would be the most fun to see out there, whiffing at gnarly curveballs because no pitcher wants to hit a billionaire with 98 mph cheese? Could someone who's sort of public facing and well

liked like a Mark Cuban get away with it? So you cannot do this. No Ted Turner turned himself into a manager of the Braves for a while. And then that got banned very quickly. So you can't even, if you're an owner, make yourself a manager for a while. That got strength struck down Ted Turner. I think he got away with that for, for one game maybe in 1977 and then, and now president Chubb Feeney supported by Bowie Kuhn said, no, you can't do this if you own stock in a team, you're forbidden to manage it. And there is also a rule on the books, which we've talked about that prevents players from owning stock in a team. So a player can't be an owner. And I guess you could also say that

an owner cannot be a player. I think it probably works both ways because if you're an owner who is a player, then you're also a player who is an owner. And yeah, that would not work, I guess, unless you maybe got approval from every other team, which you probably wouldn't. And probably the union would be upset about it and there'd be all sorts of CPA ramifications. So no, I don't think you could get away with this. It would be a very expensive way to get yourself a baseball reference page to drop a couple billion maybe on a team and then try to insert yourself into the lineup. But don't think you could get away with it. Although I never put

anything past billionaires when it comes to bending the rules and getting away with things, but I think in this particular case, it would be tough. And also, there'd be a big backlash to this. Even if it were a popular owner as these things go, I think you would quite quickly become unpopular because it would be clear that this was entirely a vanity project, which it is I guess for a lot of owners, but more in the sense of, you know, I'm a man about town. I'm the big man on campus. I own the team and people will like me if I spend a lot of my money to sign players. Not so much to do something that is directly deleterious to winning, which would be inserting yourself

into the lineup. Okay. Yeah, yeah. That's the technical answer, but which owner do you want to see up there, Ben? Like, come on. Answer the interesting part of the question. Which guy, who do you, there are two, there are, to my mind, there are two answers and I have a definitive name for one and then we need help on the other.

I think the guy who would maybe get the most leeway, and by that I mean like if he went into a game one time, you know, like one time, I think that people- And like in garbage time, in a blowout, you know, like a position player pitcher situation. Yeah, yeah. So like one time, the answer is probably John Middleton, right? I think that the answer, and the answer might also involve the Dodgers in some capacity, but I feel like that feels more, I know that there are individual owners and everyone has, but in terms of there being a name, like a guy, a specific guy and not a investment fund, people are thinking about Middleton. So set that aside, because that seems like the obvious, we'll let you have one answer, especially if you wear dress

shoes while you do it, because that's important to the answer, right? But now the question is, which guy do you let get up there and do it in the hopes that he embarrasses himself? Because that list is longer, you know? And you might want to go with nutting right away, but hold on. That might be a good answer, but it's not the only one. So there's that. CB Well, is it John Fisher? If it's John Fisher, a lot of Ace fans are probably rooting for the bean ball in that

situation. But- LS I think it's better for John Fisher to not be in public very much around his baseball team. For everyone involved, but particularly for him. It seems to be his preference, but yeah. I mean, yeah, most owners are probably not as unpopular as commissioners, I guess, historically speaking, but a lot of owners are quite unpopular. So, I don't know. See, if Jerry Reinsdorf went out there, A, I guess, how much worse could the 2024 White Sox have been?

And also he does seem to love the game, which doesn't really translate into always spending on it or being a good owner, but at least he'd be doing it out of affection for the sports, maybe. Obviously like Steve Cohen, just as one of the more prominent owners, he probably has the goodwill built up right now after signing Wansoto at all to get away with this. Again, if it were in a low stakes, low leverage situation, I think, because he's kind of a character. He's on Twitter, you know, he's or he has been, he's like a public figure in a way that many owners aren't. Maybe fans would tolerate it as a one time only experiment. But yeah, I don't

know. Like, I mean, if Mike Ilic had done this, he was popular, right? Could he have gotten away with this? Chris Ilic, maybe not. But if Mike Ilic, Little Caesar's king, who sort of spent above the market size during his time with the Tigers, would there have been a big backlash if he had tried to do this once? Mike Ilic could have thrown a whole game. He could have done whatever he wanted with the way he was spending toward the end of

his tenure. I have no love in my heart for the owner class in general, but he's as close as it's come. I think he could have done pretty much anything in the city of Detroit. Chris, he has some really big triceps. I noticed that when they were doing the celebration after the playoff birth. So, you know, maybe he would have a shot. Hard to say. But I don't think he has the same. I think there's a lot more nothing about Chris Illich sort of in Detroit as opposed to, you know, really a genuine admiration for his father.

Yeah. And I think if you were trying to do it, cause you fancied yourself an athlete and you were in denial about that, and maybe you were, let's say one of the reasonably young on the fit side sort of owners and you're like, I could get out there and not embarrass myself like that would make it even easier to root for you getting embarrassed probably. Whereas if you're one of the more aged owners, I don't know, you might just feel worried about the person or just feel bad about them or something, but I mean, if like, you know, peak tabloid Steinbrenner had gotten out there, you know,

George, big Stein just getting out in the field. I mean, it's shocking, frankly frankly that he never tried to make himself the manager given how much managerial turnover there was during his tenure. But I mean, I guess you could, you could be an executive, right? I guess if you wanted to make yourself the GM or the Pobo or something, you know, some owners kind of do behind the scenes, they're pulling the strings. If you wanted to officially set yourself up as that, I guess there's probably no rule against doing that. You'd be bad at it, I'm sure, but you could. I think the problem is that the owners who have fostered goodwill with their fan bases have done that in part by helping to bankroll teams that are now contenders.

It does change the stakes, right? It's different. if you're a beloved owner for a team that isn't competitive, like I think fans really want to ever, but you know, the Mets have aspirations now, right? You don't sign Juan Zoto if you don't have aspirations. So I think maybe spring training is the place that something like this would have to happen. Or you do like a charity exhibition something or other, then you could be like, I'm going to take an ad-bat and everyone would

be like, oh, Steve. They talk to Steve Cohn. Yeah. In an exhibition, you could get away with it. We've seen that enough times, right? Will Ferrell and Billy Crystal and other celebrities have done that. The Will Ferrell thing really annoyed me. Yeah. Was he the one, did he play every position or?

I don't remember if he played every position, but I think he played for every team in the Cactus League. I don't know. Garth Brooks did it multiple times too, including with the Mets, I think. I'm willing to admit I might be a grump about this. Like I would be open to that feedback that I'm being a grump. Meg, I'm firmly with you on that. That's a little too much for Will Ferrell. Like it's cool to do it for a team in a game. Love it. But we don't need to do every team. The other thing is that as effectively a gentleman podcast host based on that definition, I hope the listeners will do me the courtesy of thinking this is not terribly irritating.

Yeah, this is Paola at work. You have purchased the right to insert yourself into this podcast. I was listening to that description. I said, oh gosh, well, I feel weird all of a sudden. I mean, if you can fund a Formula One team, then I have misunderstood what the upper bounds of living a public health life are. I think you're far more qualified to banter a bit about baseball with us on this podcast than any owner has been to play baseball on a field. Yeah, the standards here are not quite as high. And we got another motorsports inspired question.

This is from Justin, Patreon supporter. As a recent F1 convert, thanks to the Netflix doc, I was excited to hear it come up on episode 2551. Ben said something like, I love hearing things that work in other sports and thinking about how they'd apply to baseball. So here's a really dumb F1 one that I'd love to hear y'alls thoughts on. I said a y'all too. Every F1 car is required to pit at least once during a race to change tires in order to have at least two different tires of the three soft medium hard tire types on the car

as a point of making strategy compelling. What if in order to score a run, a runner had to take a pit stop at some point around the bases and change into a different pair of shoes? What rule can you devise to make this the most interesting slash possible? What different shoe options should there be? In general, I think for the spirit of the question,

the runner cannot change shoes during a foul ball or timeout or dead ball of any kind as when F1 drivers pit the race continues on around them. Would love to hear y'alls thoughts. So we have a pit stop or multiple pit stops around the bases where the runner has to change their shoes. What would, I mean, I guess like maybe you'd want a different type of shoe if you're more likely to slide, like you're, you're not as likely to slide into first base. So maybe after you get to first, you change into something that is more conducive to sliding. I don't know what that would

be necessarily. It seems like your current cleats are kind of all purpose, like they look for everything. So if you had different surfaces on the base pass, maybe, like if you had, I don't know, dirt here and then turf there and then grass here or something, if it was like a different surface you were running on each time you went station to station, and then you had to change shoes so that you were less likely to slip or you could get greater purchase or something on that particular surface. Cause that'd be kind of cool cause it would be almost a tennis element where you have like grass courts and clay courts and hard courts and then, you know, different people

and different styles of play excel on the various surfaces. That would be kind of cool. And you used to have that more in baseball for better or worse, where you did have more turf and that helped runners run. That's part of the reason that runners were running so wild in the eighties, but also you could maybe get away with more slap hitting because you could just, you know, have bouncers through the infield and they wouldn't slow down as much. So if you had that just for base running strategy

and shoe wearing strategy, then that would help. Because as currently constituted, if you have the same sort of surface all the way around, then what's the incentive to change your footwear? AMT – I like it coming at sort of natural pause points because you don't want to disrupt the flow of the game by being like, ah, like making it an obstacle course, you know, you like, you have another pair of shoes waiting for you at second base. Oh, that would be kind of funny. Yeah. Where would you, where would you store them? Would it be like the base coaches where they sometimes, or you have something in your back pocket, like you have your sliding gloves or your mitt, which you have, and then you put on and you give your batting gloves to the base coach. Where would the shoes, like

would the base coach have to have your shoes out there and then run them out to you? Or would they be under the base or something and you'd have to dig them out? I don't know where they would be stored exactly. Cause you can't really put an extra pair of shoes in your back pocket the way that you can gloves. I think, you know, it would disrupt the flow in a way that I think would kind of be a problem. Can you solve this one for us, Jordan? Yeah. You know, this strikes me as more of like a Savannah bananas type thing.

Yeah, now I'm intrigued by it because yeah, I would watch it, you know, I would watch it but I don't know if it fits necessarily here. But you know, having done well, one, I won't do any more triathlons, but having done a triathlon at the idea of like, oh yeah, I've got to like change my clothes real quick and get on this bike or oh, I've got to, you know, there there's a strategy to that and there's a there's a timing. There's a there's an intrigue. It's there.

I just yeah, it doesn't seem like it would fit real well on a you know, an MLB game. We just had all this progress with time with all the pitch clock and all that. Let's let's there. Um, I just, yeah, it doesn't seem like it would fit real well on a, you know, an MLB game. We just had all this progress with time, with all the pitch clock and all that. Let's, let's not. Yeah. You don't want to give those gains away. You know, we've had such good ones. Yeah. So like XFL style version of this would probably be you get on base and then you bring out your sharpened spikes from like the, you know, 120 years ago where guys would get gashed and you, you bring that out in like a bloodthirsty kind of way. Or back when you had more collisions at home plate, you know, maybe, maybe there'd be some sort of padding you could wear when you're on third base. You, you add some sort of chest protector. So you're like even with the catcher, except not even because you have the momentum on your side too.

So it would really be unequal in that sense. But yeah, you could put on extra armor, maybe as opposed to removing the armor that you wear at the plate. But again, we don't want that. We don't want baseball to be a full contact to sport in that way. So yeah, I don't know. Other than like making runners slip more or like maybe some sort of moon shoes situation, maybe, you know, like, uh, you could jump really high. You could, that's sometimes helpful for sliding and you could, uh, to evade tags. You could do like a Saquon Barkley. You could do like a, just hurdle over someone in your moon shoes.

That might be kind of entertaining, but that would slow you down considerably. So it'd be a bit of a trade-off there, but yeah, I don't know that you could really improve on the spikes that we use right now. So it would really be about how silly you want to make people look, how much you want to kind of insert some sort of handicap that then adds strategy, I guess. But I think you'd have to mix up the surfaces too. I don't think it works without also varying the surfaces. Yeah. Hmm. Okay. We have a few that were prompted by the golden better nonsense, which has receded

obviously from the conversation, but I think there were some interesting thoughts here. Rob, for instance, writes, I hate to write this email as I'm not a huge fan of the proposed golden plate appearance change. Thanks for referring to it that way. However, I believe I have an elegant solution to two of the problems you raised with that proposal. First, that the golden plate appearance would only rarely occur in the platonic ideal situation of a late game high leverage situation. And second, that the Golden PA might force us to reinvent the Courtesy Runner. As I see it, there's an obvious fix. When a team uses their Golden PA, the Golden batter and the hitter he is replacing swap places

in the batting order. This would disincentivize an early usage of the plate appearance by pushing your best batter farther down in the order, and it would eliminate the need for a courtesy runner. This version of the rule calls to mind the once common double switch, which to my mind makes it modestly less offensive to baseball history. Presumably this would also reduce the number of extra opportunities that top batters would get, reducing the impact on the statistical environment. So what do you think of just a swap like that? Does that work at all? I think it works better because they pointed out so nicely in the email, it's less insulting to me at a surface level as just being a baseball fan when I think about it

that way, but also, no, I don't think it works. Does it work? Work sense, you know, the capital W. Yeah, less harm for sure. Well, here's another consideration because we got sort of a similar email, but from a perspective, I had not considered this was from Grant's Patreon supporter. I think I have a solution for acceptance of the golden whatever concept limited to twice per season, but per team. But first I'm a scoreboard operator for a major league team. So, Grant is coming to us from this perspective, the golden at-bat or plate appearance creates a logistical system challenge that I don't think you talked about. Some scoreboard systems that display lineups during the game don't allow operators to easily move players around in the lineup. For sure, multiple occurrences

of the same player are not allowed. A lot of programming would have to go into the effort to implement the rule, unless it's done in a specific way. This was like when the situation with the same player playing in the same game for multiple teams arose this past season. we had Kenny Jaclyn of Baseball Reference come on to talk about how Danny Jensen might break baseball reference somehow because this just wasn't really allowed at this time. So a lot of programming would have to go into the effort to implement the rule unless it's done in a specific way. The systems I'm familiar with will allow me to switch two players so that they still appear just once each. The system asks if you're sure,

and will only allow it if you acknowledge that you're making a correction as opposed to a regular lineup change. So the way I would implement the rule from a scoreboard perspective is to allow a one-time lineup switch of two players with the caveat that neither can be on base at the same time, or at the time.

That just feels right, but it also avoids a lot more complications with scoreboard systems that track player progress on bases to update stats in games. I hate the rule as an every day option too, but if teams could use the golden switch far less often, would that change the appetite for it? I think it does for me. What if teams could only make a golden switch one time in one game prior to the All-Star break and one time in one game during the second half? That would eliminate concerns about significant impact to historical stats, spark conversations, and give announcers additional reasons to speculate a potential drama.

With only two to use for the season, they could always be used in high-impact situations where the game is on the line. Fans on talk shows could complain about why the team didn't use their golden switch in a seemingly prime opportunity, and you know why it would be big news every time a team uses one, the first season they're available. You could talk about it just about every time it happens. I'd have a lot of fun speculating

about whether the manager of my team wants to pull that card in a tight situation or save it for another day, another series of playoff clenching situation in the second half. It would not be fun seeing a Golden Switch every day, but I think this is tremendously fun if the quantity is very limited so we get to experience it without really changing much. Shohei will get two more play appearances per season, not enough to drive

anyone wild about the statistical impact. So yeah, I think Golden Switch, it's better and drastically limiting the number of times you can do this is better. Although golden switch sounds too much like golden snitch. So that might lead to some quidditch confusion. Yeah. But, uh, but in principle, I think they're onto something more so than on something, I guess, like relative to the original proposal. I do think that we should be like a little bit skeptical of changes where part of the argument is,

this will happen so infrequently, you won't notice it. It's like, well, then why do it? Yeah, that's a good point too. And we got one more on this topic, at least Jonathan Patreon, who says, the golden at bat or plate appearance discussion reminded me of a tie breaking idea I had that I posted in discord, but I don't think I sent to you both. It's inspired by an Armageddon game in chess where players have asymmetric

win conditions. In chess, the player with the white pieces must win while the player with the black pieces can win or draw, but will also receive less time on the clock than the player with the black pieces can win or draw, but will also receive less time on the clock than the player with the white pieces. In baseball, in the event of a tie after nine innings, my idea is that you give the home team the option to hit or pitch. The pitching team would need to get three outs before giving up a run to win. The batting team needs to score but would get the option to reset their lineup wherever they choose. The run expectancy for zero out spaces empty is 0.461, so I think the batting team choosing their lineup wherever they choose. The run expectancy for 0 out spaces empty is.461, so I think the batting team choosing their lineup may even it out a bit. I'd prefer they play extra innings without the zombie runner and play until a team wins the normal way, but if MLB prefers to

end games faster, this could be a fun way to finish the game. Do you have any thoughts on this idea? So sort of a sudden death situation, you get to choose whether to kick or to receive sort of you give the home team the option to hit or pitch and then the pitching team just needs to get three outs before giving up a run. I just feel like we have spent so much time, uh, trying to maintain or achieve good balance between, um between the different components of baseball, hitting and pitching to then say, ah, yeah, different, no, I don't care for it.

I think that you want the things to be in balance. I think it makes for, the symmetry of it is pleasant. Does this strike your fancy at all? Jordan? I more so than the zombie runner does, you know, but, you know, and I love anytime you can add, you know, a little bit of strategy and thinking about, you know, uh, does the lineup have three guys that are just like really, really good? Uh, and that would make a huge difference. And, you know, I, I just think about it, you know, makes me sort of excited. But you know, again, we could also just play another few innings

and see what happens. But that would be, that would be crazy. We couldn't possibly. Yeah. They never, never would have tried that. Never would have worked. Yeah. How dare. Yeah. And last one related to this and also to the Zombie Runner, this comes from Charlie Patreon supporter. I know it's been some time since it's been the zeitgeist and even Manfred has all but shut it down himself, but if you could take a monkey's paw style deal and change the Zombie Runner for an extra innings only golden batter or whatever you would call it, would this be a trade

that you would take? So golden batter or zombie runner in extra innings only. And yeah, I think I would, I think I would make that trade again. I don't want either, but I think I would rather have the fundamental of the lineup being inviolable. I think I'd rather have that violated than I would the rule about you can't just magically appear on base without having done anything or having had someone in the batter's box prior to that. I think the latter bothers me more, the just completely unearned runner and the way that it distorts scoring. I think probably the Golden

Batter would distort scoring less probably than like basically doubling the run scoring, which is more or less what we get when we're in extra innings with an automatic runner on second. It's like they both distort the sport and the regulation rules in a pretty fundamental way, but at least the golden batter might add a little entertainment value, whereas the zombie runner doesn't so much for me for some people, it does some, some misguided souls out there, but not so much for me. So I guess I'd take it, but I wouldn't be thrilled about the exchange. It would be a pretty puric victory to say, Oh, we finally got rid of the zombie runner.

Oh, but also we have this now. See, that's so interesting because I feel like the Golden Ant Bat is a way more fundamental violation of the natural order of things. I don't know, I don't know if I can articulate why though, but it feels, I feel that in my bones. Yeah. What do you think Jordan? I almost feel like with this Golden Bat thing to come in, it does seem like it would affect it less because you're not starting with a guy in second, like ready to score, which by the way, from a fan side of things, it's just too damn stressful. But then the Golden Bat, if it was going to be in there, it would almost have to be, oh hey though, if this doesn't work out, games over after 10 days, it's a tie or something.

Because it does upset that fundamental, right? That fundamental something about the core of the game. Um, that if it just went on after failing, it'd be kind of, then you get back to that switch scenario, I guess. Yeah. And, uh, people have proposed extra innings. You reset the lineup, you get to choose your own lineup. You go back to the top of the lineup, wherever you are. Sam Miller has proposed this, others have proposed this and written in about it even. And again, I would prefer that we just keep things the same more or less. It's like we got an email from Mitchell who said in the NFL, they treat the start of overtime as a new game. They do a coin

toss to determine possession. If a game gets through nine innings tied, managers get to submit a fresh lineup. If they sub someone out, they can go back in. They can redo the batting order based on who they know is available out of their opponent's bullpen. And yeah, I mean, I guess, you know, Sam had sort of a similar proposal at ESPN years ago and it's not, it's like Mitchell's is that it's, it's just the start of a new game. But then after the reset, then normal rules regarding subbing players go back into effect. Whereas Sam has proposed, you know, you just keep sort of resetting the lineup every inning

or every plate appearance either. You even, you can just keep choosing who you want to send up there. I would just prefer for baseball to be baseball all the way through. I just think with the pitch clock, I'd be sympathetic if we didn't have the pitch clock still. I mean, I wasn't, I guess, even at the time when we didn't have the pitch clock yet, but I'd be more tolerant of it maybe if we didn't then have the pitch clock and have that go so swimmingly to the point where you can't complain about the game length as much because the games are shorter

and also just much more standard in length. So you really can plan around how long a baseball game is going to be. And I think if we occasionally had a really long one as we used to, that'd be all right. It's fun for the sickos out there. And if you're not a sicko or you have to be up early the next morning, you just don't get to see the end of that game or you don't get to stay for it. And that's okay. But look, we've lost this battle, I guess. So all these different variations of what you can do in extra innings, I guess I, I dislike most of them less than the zombie runner. That's the credit that I will give them, but I can't endorse any of them. I can't say I, I approve of this. So it's always just, you know, what does less harm basically. All right. We can finish with two last pedantic questions.

How can you not be pedantic about baseball? This one comes from Phil. So something we talked about briefly during the 2024 season, 73.1% of all pitches thrown by Tommy Canely were changeups, but were they? A change up must by definition be a change from the norm, which is why in my youth the pitch was frequently called a change of pace. But if nearly three-quarters of the pitches thrown are change-ups, they're not really change-ups, are they? What are they a change from? Yes, I know I ended that sentence with a preposition. Sue me, I will not. Instead, a Canely fastball would represent a change-up for him, a change from

his normal pitch. Perhaps it would be better to bring back another term from baseball's past and simply label Canely's preferred pitch a slowball. Heck, we could go back a hundred years and call it a down shoot. Admittedly, that term as originally used referred to something more like today's slider or splitter, but hey, it's not needed for that anymore. But it seems to me that one cannot properly describe one's most frequently thrown pitch as a change-up. And I think I sort of said something to this effect when we were talking about Kainlee's run of consecutive change-ups thrown during the postseason,

and is it even a change-up at that point? But it is still a distinct style of pitch, right? So it's not purely subjective just based on the contrast with another kind of pitch. It's also a pitch that you like grip and deliver in a certain way and that moves in a certain way. So yeah, it's not solely about the difference in speeds. I also think that in an era where guys are throwing ever-increasing variations on established pitch types, having a hold on some common ground in our understanding of what a pitch is,

is something we should be loathe to give up. And I understand that, like, you know, you have guys who throw really, really hard, who throw, who actually do throw four seamers, and they throw their four seamers really hard, and then you look at their slider velocity and if all you were going off of was Velo, you'd be like, that's a fastball. And then you realize like, no, it's a slider. So like, I know that we're, we're in murky fuzzy territory to begin with, but because of that, I think we want to hold on to common understanding as much as we can and saying that, that his fastball is, change. No, no, confusing. Keep the same.

CB Yeah. Because Kainly does still throw a fastball. Not often, but- BT Right. But he does have one. CB Yeah. So it is still, yeah. Just in the interest of comprehensibility. I mean, imagine not that there are that many guys who throw way more changeups than fastballs, but in a world where that became more common, how confusing would it be for all of us if we defined it on an individual basis so that if this guy, it's a fastball, but no, he throws it less than his changeup, therefore the changeup is no longer called a changeup. And we still would call the fastball a fastball, I guess you could still do that

at least. So unless we're proposing that we relabel the fastball a change up because it's a change from the slower pitch, which is your primary pitch in this scenario. Like if we have to reverse things, yeah, good luck with that. Having to keep track on an individual basis of whose fastball is actually fast and whose is slow. That would be a formula for confusing absolutely everyone. I am generally also of the opinion that we should go by the characteristics of the pitch more so than what the pitcher calls it.

Because I'm happy to note that they call it something else, but we have to have a civilization here and we have to have pitch classifications. And if someone just decides that something that moves a certain way is not what that is typically called, then if we have to make a special carve out for them, it's like just a ton of work for people on the backend of things for one thing. And how do you keep that straight? So it's helpful to know, I guess, that someone thinks of it as a different type of pitch, but I don't really have a problem with labeling it sort of based on the generic, you know, based on the characteristics of that pitch more so than how that pitcher thinks of it. All right. This one comes from Derek. Here's a question in the genre of, does this bother you as much as it bothers me? Which I guess all of our pedantic questions kind of fall into mostly. On the PBS NewsHour, it was

reported that Juan Soto's deal is reported to be worth $765 million over 15 years. That would work out to more than a million dollars per home run if he's able to keep up his 2024 output for the whole time. I initially took issue with the statement because it seems to suggest that it's a plausible scenario that Soto could in fact keep up his 2024 production over the entire course of his contract. As great as Soto is, I don't think any reasonable person

could realistically expect him to hit more than 600 home runs over the next 15 years, though it would be pretty awesome if he actually managed to do that. And I say that even as a Yankees fan. So it seems like it does a disservice to the audience to imply that this is plausible. Then I realized that there's another problem here. Hitting fewer home runs would actually increase the number of dollars per home run. So if Soto fails to keep up his 2024 output for the next 15 years, it would still be true that the deal would work out to more than a million dollars per home run.

So what say you? Am I justified in thinking that this comment about Soto's contract was not the best journalism? What do you two think about breaking it down this way? First of all, I love the attention to detail on noticing that if you hit fewer home runs, it does increase the value of each home run. So heck yeah.

The other thing is we're taking away all the focus from all the other cool stuff once Soto does too. Like, yeah, it's a million dollars for home run, but also, I don't know, a couple hundred thousand dollars for every time he takes a bunch of pitches that other people, mortals, would swing at. And you know, that has value too. So it's sort of, I think it's misguided in how they applied the analogy because yeah, it is backwards. I think he's

absolutely correct there. And also, yeah, there's a lot of stuff besides home runs that matters. We're pretty good at talking about that now. Yeah. We have so many tools at our disposal to like articulate the value proposition here that it just seems so reductive. And also, just say the part that you want to say, which is you're like, they shouldn't make this much. You should sound like the penguin because that's what you're trying to do. CBer It is a way to, I don't know if it's exaggerate, but just highlight how much money it is, which I think $765 million, that does that pretty well on its own. I don't know that you really need to

just break it down on a per outcome basis, but you could do it per season. I guess if you wanted, you could do it per game maybe, but even that doesn't really work because we don't know how many games he's going to play. Yeah, that's my main objection, Jordan, as well. They're not paying him purely to hit home runs and nothing else. Yeah, it would be a pretty bad deal if that's all he ever did, if he just only hit home runs. I mean, if he's a guy who hits home runs every time up, if he's the kid who only hits homers, then that would be a steal. But we've answered the hypotheticals about how bad could you be if you've hit homers, but all the other times you're making outs or whatever. Yeah, if the only positive contribution he makes is home runs and he's still hitting

the same amount of home runs that he does currently, then that would be a bad deal. You wouldn't pay that many millions of dollars per home run and they're not because they're paying him to take walks and play in the field and hit doubles and singles and do lots of other useful stuff. So yeah, I don't think that framing is very helpful. LS. I also just like, it's literally Steve Cohen. Like we don't need to imbue the man with magic powers and you know, as I've noted, he put on the hat and the zip up, like part of this is an emotional thing for him, clearly, but if ever we're going to just assume that the guy owning a sports team is a relatively savvy business operator, we can make that assumption with Steve Cohn. I'm not saying

that to absolve him of his alleged crimes, you know, we're not, that's not the project here, but like, he's fine with this, you know, he's fine with it. He made a decision that he seems very enthusiastic about. We could just be, be like, you know what, Steve seems fine. So we don't have to stand up for a hypothetical version of him where he's unhappy with the fact that he currently employs Juan Soto. No, he seems thrilled with that. It seems like the value proposition is one he is okay with. So it's okay, it's okay. I just, I don't know if you're serving your audience because are your listeners saying, hmm, $765 million.

Is that a lot? Is that, what does that break down as on a per home run basis? I don't know that anyone was really wondering that. It's like when people will sometimes to try to convey the size of a thing, they will compare it to some other landmass, which is probably also unfamiliar to their audience. It's just like that's X number of Belgians or Rhode Island or something. And I just, that never helps me all that much usually anyway. Yeah.

All right. Lastly here, I thought that was gonna be last, but I forgot if we can put this golden, whatever it is, to bed forever, we got to just two similar emails on one wrinkle on that. One by a Patreon supporter who goes by, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm, hmm. Hope I've read that correctly. Who said, how about, I had a thought about the golden at bat idea

that also injects interesting strategy. How about we deregulate the bench? So let's take a hockey or basketball approach that allows a player previously removed from the game to come back into a game after an inning is played. Maybe it can happen only during a team's turn at bat. So in theory, the home team has an advantage because if they bench, for example, Julio Rodriguez

after his at bat in the seventh, right out his replacement in the eighth in theory taking a risk, then pinch hit him in the ninth, you're performing the same trick but within a more strategic mechanism. This allows guys to assess injuries and off the field but maintain the ability to return defensive replacements to come out in a blowout but for the starters to return if the opposing team starts coming back, etc. And then Zachary or Zach wrote in for something sort of similar in contrast to the already existing pinch hitting rules, baseball's unique approach to substitutions, players cannot return

to games once they're subbed out, whether for hitting, running, defense, etc. We've talked about that in comparison to other sports. As a Guardians fan, it makes me think about what was widely guarded as A.J. Hinche, your manager, Jordan outmanaging Steven Vogt when Vogt brought in his right-handed platoon bats, John Kenzie-Noel and David Fry off the bench in the second inning when Brent Herter came in only for Hinche to quickly bring in right-handed relievers instead of using Herter as a bulk guy. Will Brennan notably did not record a plate appearance and Kyle Manzardo hitting second in the lineup left after only coming to the plate once. I wonder if, in a slightly more palatable version of this rule, would it be applicable only among bench bats,

allowing for an extra opportunity to allow them to step into the plate in a leveraged situation without formally burning a bench spot or completely removing the bench spot from the lineup? This may not have the same give me more trout vs. Otani matchup effects, but would something along these lines be at least a little bit less threatening to the tradition of the game because it wouldn't give an extra opportunity to hit for someone already in the lineup and wouldn't have weird base running implications. So yeah, I guess, right? I mean, this falls into the, yes, it would be less bad kind of category of all these variations on the proposal, but also less exciting.

What's the upside there really? I guess there's some tactical considerations, but you're not going to be super excited about the bench bat getting to bat again, unless in the first version of this, you're like removing a starter from a game so that you could maybe have him come up again sooner or something. But yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

No, thank you. No, I just sleep well enough alone. I think. Yeah. I think it's okay when there's some idea that just seems fundamentally bad. If we all just say that just say, that's bad. That's bad. And we don't try to come up with variations

that are a little less bad and say, well, is that better than that bad thing? Okay, I guess like there's gradations here and it's less bad, but it's still bad. It's still worse than what we have. And so it's almost like we're like, we're doing the work of the people who are proposing the terrible idea and trying to come up with a compromise. Oh, let's meet in the middle and we'll give up part of it. And we'll accept a bad thing if you accept a slightly

less bad thing, but we don't have to budge. We don't have to give grounds like that. We could just dig in our heels and say, no, we like it how it is in this scenario. Right. Right. And baseball and as in life, Ben, you know, we could think of some real world examples. Allow the Overton window to be shifted in this instance. We can just refuse for it to shift. Refuse. Don't let them misconstrued or misrepresent where the overton window is currently. That's the other thing, you know?

Just like, we should go because I'm going to pop off about stuff. Oh my God. I'm going to pop off. All right. And Jordan, you probably have to get back to work and do some pharmaceutical stuff. And we hope that you have... That sounds different than what his job is. I didn't know you had read my CV.

I hope you've enjoyed this. I, we've enjoyed it. I hope you've gotten your money's worth. If you want to plug anything, feel free. Or if you want to tell people where to find you, feel free. Or if you'd rather they not find you, then we can just say goodbye. But thank you for your support. We appreciate it.

Oh gosh. Thank you all for having me on. This has been so much fun chatting with you, you know, and I do want to just also thank Jason Bonetti for being so cool. I know he listens. I know he listens. He's been on the pod. That was a delight of a season even before it became a delight on the field. And I man, awesome. So from So from Jordan, Tom, Bryant, Nick up in Michigan, all the thanks, all the thanks, man. Yeah, he's the best. Going back to what I said earlier about my sort of line of work,

and digging in heels a bit, vaccines rule, we should get them. Everybody be cool to your LGBTQ friends, family, loved ones, because they need it. Support, you know, everything you can. That's also very important. So, yeah. Amen. Hear, hear.

All right, that will do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening. We dug deep into the mailbag today, but we still have a whole big backlog left, which we are happy to have you replenish. Just email us at podcast at fangraphs.com, send us your questions and comments. You can also message us through the Patreon messaging system, if like Jordan, you are a Patreon supporter. You can become one 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 yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners,

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personalized messages, discounts on merch, and ad-free fan grass memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectivelywild, and you can check the show notes at FanGraphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance.

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