Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2297: Shocked and a Paul

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the opening series of the regular season in Japan, then (10:55) discuss the removal (and eventual restoration) of a page about Jackie Robinson on the Department of Defense website, before (39:53) bantering further about breakouts, how player heights dropped (or didn’t!) after players were measured more accurately this […]

It's effectively wild and it's wildly effective. It put a baseball in the perfect perspective. Impressive for smart and impeccably styled. It's the wildly effective, effectively wild. Spin rate along shangle. That's the bad that made war. You might hear something you never heard before. Hello and welcome to episode 2297 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graaffs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer joined by Meg Raleigh

of Van Graaffs. Hello Meg. Hello. Later on this episode, we'll be chatting with Paul Skeens. Yeah. No big deal. NBD. How about that? Paul Skeens will be dropping by. He's making the rounds a little bit right now because he's promoting MLB The Show 25, which is out this week, and he's on the cover. He crashed the shortstop party along with LA de la Cruz and Gunnar Henderson. And normally when we get the, hey, do you want to talk to so-and-so for 15 minutes?

He's plugging this, but also you can ask about other stuff. We tend to pass on that. It's not the best format, but A, this is a product that I play and it'll be the show 25, but B, it's Paul Skeens. And you don't say no when someone says you want to talk to Paul Skeens. Yeah. I think that when you get a chance to ask the guy who NBD could maybe be an MVP. Does that work?

No, I don't know if it does, but, but, but just we're going to leave it, you know, cause like I was trying something, you know, sometimes you try something just to like see how it feels. Yeah. That's what Paul Skeens has been doing this spring with new pitches, including a cutter. So we will talk to him about that. We won't actually talk about the game that much. The game is good.

It's out for Switch and PS5 and Xbox Series SX. And if you've ever played MLB the show before, you have some idea of what to expect. Paul Skeens, by the way, has not played one, or at least not much, not a big gamer, but we'll talk about other things with him. We will talk about being a starting pitcher in this day and age and being a prominent one and his personality and his pitch mix and his approach to max effort versus throttling down a bit, perhaps relevant given that his rotation mate, Jared Jones has come up with elbow issues recently.

Yeesh, grimace. Yeah, yeesh. I know that strangers are often so enamored with us. So tell us about your personality question. I can't wait to see how it goes. I bet he'll be like, yeah, I want to open up to you guys. Yeah, this will be the time while doing a 15 minute remote interview to plug a game. I think this will be when he bears his soul to us. So we'll see how that goes. So this is how you get

Randy Johnson coming on to talk incessantly about Kingsford Charcoal, which some of the old heads in the audience will remember. So it's high risk, but potentially high rewards. We shall see. It's funny because typically we record the intro to pod, just to like pull back the curtain a little bit here after we have recorded interviews, but that is not the case. So we really are just like, I don't know. We're going to see how it goes to talk to Paul today. We are as in the dark as you are as we were recording these words. So we'll see. So baseball is back. Major League Baseball is back a bit, a little bit.

Major League Baseball has dipped its toe in the water, played a couple of regular season games, Dodgers versus Cubs. I hear anyway. I hear anyway. I hear. I haven't seen with my own eyes this baseball you speak of. Because look, Ben, I love the game, you know. I'm about the ball, you know, I'm about it. But I also, it's like three in the morning is an insane time. Yes, you are not well situated to tune into these games. Even as a sicko, if I were you, I would be like, this is great. I'm a morning gal, Ben, you know, we've talked about this.

I'm a rise early, get going on the day, have a glass of water, a cup of Joe, a 6 a.m. start. I would be like, this is beautiful. Baseball with breakfast? Let's get after it, but I am Also 38 and sleepy and in the midst of position on power ranking So what was anyone's expectation really was your expectation that I rise at 3 a.m. No Barely barely in bed by by then. I mean, that's not true. That's dramatic

That's an overstatement of the case. But they've been some long days, Ben. They've been long. My vibe right now is so weird. I can't wait to talk to Paul Skeen. It's going to be great. They're 2430 scheduled regular season games. So I don't think you need to deprive yourself of a night of sleep to tune into the first two, even though they're notable. We've been deprived of regular season action for some time, and thus, you have a fan-graphs post devoted to game stories for a single regular season game, which would make no sense at any other point in the season.

At any other point in the season. And I want to make two things very clear for concerned listeners out there. First, when I looked up and I realized on Monday, hey, we got some ball in the wee hours tomorrow. I said to the fan graph Slack, I was like, no one is obligated to stay up for this. But if one does and one feels moved to write about it, one is welcome to, would welcome it. But I wanted to be clear that I had no such expectations of our staff because again, three in the morning.

It was six for me and yeah, Davey did the breakdowns. And did a fantastic job. Wanted to make clear to, yeah, really fun. Yes, and I was up, I'm not a morning person, but I am sometimes a stay up until morning person. And so I did that and you person, but I am sometimes a stay up until morning person. And so I did that. And you know, the daughter gets up and we get her ready to school and everything.

And it was actually nice. It was as we were getting her ready for photo day, there was baseball on and entertaining teams and players. And it was just, I can't claim to have been glued to every single pitch, but despite the fact that I have mixed feelings about the practice of regular season games just being played in mid-March kind of on an island relative to the rest of the regular season and also literally on an island because they were playing in Japan, but it was nice even though it's

kind of odd to have a couple games that count quote unquote, and then we go back to Cactus League action, and then we have a real opening day. I think it's good for baseball. And I think there's a pop to these events that you wouldn't get with pure exhibitions, which they also played.

But the fact that this time it counts to quote old bud, I think that actually does sort of juice interest in these things and makes the players play harder. And an average of 25 million people watched game one, which is pretty incredible given that it's mid-March, the Dodgers took both games. I think that team might be good this year. Time will tell. It was nice. It was just really nice. And I was watching with Jessie, my wife, and she said when the first game was on, I feel my heart rate slowing just to have baseball on.

And I don't drink coffee, so I did not have a cup of Joe. I had a cup of Joe Davis instead, and it was delightful. It was great just to have it on in the background, got to see some good players, got to see Roki Sasaki, a little bit wild, but also a little bit unhittable, and got to see Shohei Otani off to a 439 WRC plus start, having a breakout campaign thus far, I would say. His home run was debatable, whether it was one.

It was, I think it was one of those call on the field stands situations where there was a suspicion of fan interference. And it was- Oh, was there? Yeah. And so the conspiracy theorists are out in full force. Oh, boy. So of course they wanted Otani to have a home run

instead of a double off the top of the wall. It was tough to tell. Look, it may have been out and maybe it was if it had been called fan interference initially, then they would have let that stand and it wasn't clear and convincing enough to overturn. I think that is justifiable. Regardless, he had himself a couple multi-hit games and got a hero's welcome and the fans were super into it. And so I enjoy this tradition and they certainly had the right teams and personnel playing in these games to showcase the talent for the home

audience. So great stuff. Great to have baseball back in limited form before we get to the the deluge next week. It feels very nice to know that our regular companion will be back soon and in a context that carries obvious and persistent stakes, unlike spring training, which like has stakes. You know, I reject the notion that spring training has no stakes. It has a lot of stakes for the guys on the field, often, you know, career defining stakes, depending on where they are. But having like major league ball back pretty much every day, it's gonna, it's gonna feel really nice.

And I can't, Ben, I'm so excited for my first real baseball nap. I can't wait. I'm so happy. I can't wait. Part of that is I feel very tired, but part of it is it's the best kind of nap, man. And like the first one of the year feels really good. Last year, my first baseball nap of the season was defined by a norovirus. That was less good. I can't recommend that. I feel like I'm going to be so paranoid next week, just remembering how my life went off the rails this time last year.

Now life is off the rails for different reasons that are farther away from my stomach, but more distressing in a lot of ways. Yeah. We'll talk about that in a second. But yes, you will be entitled to a baseball nap after positional power rankings wrap up. And I guess you could have set your alarm for 3 a.m. and then instantly fallen back asleep and it would have kind of been a baseball nap. But not really. That's not the same. No, yeah. That's just a baseball sleep. That's not a nap. My daughter always corrects me when I talk about nap and I just conflate napping and sleeping. Very important distinction. So yes, but either way. Are you telling me that Sloan is already being pedantic about? I guess that's true.

Oh my God. Lord alive. Yeah, she is her father's daughter. Yeah. So if our heart rates were slowed by the return of baseball, then our heart rates ramped up again because there was another baseball-related and Dodgers-related story that we just want to weigh in on here. And look, we know how people feel about politics on non-politics podcasts, and we generally abide by that. We certainly are not afraid to wade into those waters when it pertains to baseball, as it often does, in sometimes very obvious ways and sometimes more subtle ways. And we will never hesitate to observe those connections. But also, there are plenty of places for people to get politics talk. And I recognize that

Effectively Wild is probably not your primary destination for that. And in fact, you may want Effectively Wild to wash over you much like a Dodgers-Cubs broadcast at six in the morning Eastern time. And if you want us talking politics, you can find that on the Effectively Wild Patreon bonus episode where, look, many people may not want that and I certainly wouldn't blame them, but those who listened seem to find it cathartic or at least the ones who cared to write in and tell us about that. So that's there if you want it. That's what I'm saying. We're not going out of our way. We're not reaching to try to draw connections here or shoehorn political opinions.

I sometimes do. A little bit. I mean, maybe as an aside from time to time. A little bit. Yes, but a devoted in-depth discussion, not so much. No, generally not the purview of our pod. Exactly, right. There's a time and a place. And this is one of those times and places

because this is one of those times where politics intrudes into baseball in a very obvious and unavoidable and distressing way. And we are of course referring to the fact that a page on the Department of Defense website about Jackie Robinson and his military service was removed for the better part of a day.

It was restored just shortly before we started recording here, but it was down for a while and it clearly was not an accident that it was down. And if you've been following the news, and on some level, I don't blame you if you haven't, but it's been hard to avoid that there's just been a wave of these takedowns of various luminaries and heroes who happened to be of the non-white persuasion,

and that is not a coincidence. And so you may have seen stories about Iwo Jima flag raisers articles being taken down or Navajo code talkers or Army Major General Charles C. Rogers who is the highest ranking black service member to receive the Medal of Honor and all of these people's pages were taken down in this Trump regime mandated sweep and order to remove all evidence of DEI diversity, equity and inclusion from all federal government outlets of all kinds.

And so this is this larger executive order and as part of the compliance with this, which whether it actually is defensible and must be complied with that has yet to be tested perhaps. But of course there are many people who are hurrying to comply with this both inside and outside of the government. And so this quickly rose to national attention because we are talking about literally Jackie Robinson in this case. And there is absolutely no defense, no matter how convoluted one could conjure

for taking down a page promoting Jackie Robinson and his exploits. And to some extent, it almost feels unnecessary to weigh in because how could one have any other opinion about this? And yet clearly people in power do and are not at all shy about sharing their opinions about it and imposing policies about it. And I'd like to think that probably we are preaching to the choir here on this podcast because I'd like to think that we've already repelled the subset of people who

would applaud this. Well sometimes we are surprised by our email. Occasionally. Nonetheless, I think it is important from time to time to counter obvious villainy like this. And so that is what we were doing here. And look, I know that there are different definitions of white supremacist and post 2020, especially

that term has been applied to more systemic institutional inequities in a way that I think is understandable, but also surprising, perhaps jarring to people who think of that as being reserved for more virulent racism. But by any definition, if this is not white supremacist practice, then I don't know what is. And it is absolutely shameless and intentional because Jeff Passon to his credit was making inquiries about this with the Department of Defense

and got back not one, but two statements defending the policy before finally they caved to the public pressure and the spotlight here. And one of the statements was one that I had seen sent to other outlets about some of the other page removals, which was just unhinged essentially, just this is from the Department of Defense Press Secretary, Pentagon Press Secretary who said,

as Secretary Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense press secretary, Pentagon press secretary, who said, as Secretary Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense has said, DEI is dead at the Defense Department. Discriminatory equity ideology, we're doing a rebranding here, is a form of woke cultural Marxism that has no place in our military. It divides the force, that's a D, erodes unit cohesion, that's an E, and interferes with the services core warfighting mission, that's an I. I see what you're doing there Pentagon Press Secretary. We are pleased by the rapid compliance across the department with the directive removing

DEI content from all platforms. In the rare cases that content is removed, either deliberately or by mistake, that is out of the clearly outlined scope of the directive. We instruct the components and they correct the content accordingly. Then they sent a follow-up statement to Passan, which walked that back slightly. Everyone at the Defense Department loves Jackie Robinson.

Clearly. As well as the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, the Marines at Iwo Jima, and so many others. We salute them for their strong and in many cases, heroic service to our country, full stop. Can I interrupt you? Just because this is not a... Strong and in many cases, heroic.

It's just such a... In many cases. I'm doing a blanket advisory that there might be some swears, okay? There might be some swears. I'm gonna leave it to Shane's capable judgment to decide which of them to bleep, but just like heads up, everyone,

gonna be some swears. So like, you know, choppy water ahead. It's such a unhinged distinction to draw given the list of individuals that they named there in many cases. What are you talking about? What the f*** are you talking about? Just listing Jackie Robinson, Navajo Code Talkers, Tuskegee Airmen, Marines in Iwo Jima. Sometimes heroic. In some cases, in many cases, they did some heroic service.

Take it or leave it, anyway. Not the most important thing, but still a thing I could not help remarking upon. Please continue. Yes. So they salute them full stop, which is actually what is happening here. They are stopping the saluting. We do not view or highlight them through the prism

of immutable characteristics, such as race, ethnicity or sex. We do so only by recognizing their patriotism and dedication to the warfighting mission. Like ever, they mean every other American who has worn the uniform. And then it goes on to do some more ranting about DEI and the clever wordplay that they have going there. So this is obvious villainy on its face, I think, as we said, and just to think that you could thread the needle somehow to salute Jackie Robinson, but not do so through the prism of race, when talking about Jackie Robinson's military service, which, by the way, the armed forces were segregated while he was in them.

He was court-martialed while he was in the army, like, before refusing to, oh my God. Yes, and so to think that you could separate those things and somehow salute Jackie Robinson without acknowledging the context. I mean, this is something that has come up in baseball context where Jackie Robinson Day is coming up, right? And so there's this perception

that at times that MLB has sort of celebrated itself to some extent, pride in itself, and also celebrated Jackie without kind of reckoning with the consequences. And, you know, I think maybe they've been better about that of late, but you celebrate Jackie, you kind of have to discuss why he was a celebrated figure, right? And the same is true for his military service. And look, his military service was distinguished as well. Obviously he has that page on the DOD website because of his baseball fame and his other athletic accomplishments.

So that's the clear baseball connection here. And so it is nonsensical to say that you could strip out that aspect of things. And look, the page before it was restored, briefly it was giving a 404 error with a DI added to the URL. And it was archived with the Wayback Machine. And so I was reading it and look,

the page itself is just sort of a Wikipedia-esque summary of his military service. And I was not aware that the Department of Defense had a page on Jackie Robinson's military service prior to it being removed. So it's not necessarily that the actual content of the article is unique or invaluable here, but it's clearly the symbol of it and the motivation for removing this

and what that symbolizes. And if they wanted to make people forget Jackie Robinson's existence, then they have Streisand affected themselves here because this page became a much bigger story than it ever was when it was accessible. So it is self-defeating in that sense. And I hope that they do defeat themselves in this exercise because it's just hard to imagine that this is happening except for all the other evidence that of course this is happening at this point.

And look, I mean, public pressure worked in this case except for all the other evidence that of course this is happening at this point. And look, I mean, public pressure worked in this case as it did in the case of Rogers, but you have to wonder, A, how many similarly objectionable things are flying under the radar and are being allowed to stand because they do not pertain to literally Jackie Robinson, just about the most uncontroversially heroic figure in the past century of American history. And B, to have this happen and to not immediately put out a statement saying, this is the worst mistake we could have made. We deeply apologize. We are falling on our swords. How could we have this was an egregious oversight and heads have rolled, but to defend it, to make it clear that no, this was the plan more or less. And C, if this was just a keyword search and automated process, which it probably was on some

level, that's not any better. Perhaps this was not someone saying to themselves, we should, what I'll do at work today that I can email Elon at the end of the week and tell him what I accomplished at work this week. It was, you know what, I think I'll take down a Jackie Robinson page. Perhaps that wasn't the way it went down, but clearly when you're devising this policy,

pages like this are going to be swept up in it. And if you are devising this policy, pages like this are going to be swept up in it. And if you are devising this policy at all, then that's what you want to happen. My instinct when confronted with sort of grievous injustice is often to lean on facts. I'm like a facts gal. I wanna be like, well, this is wrong and here's why. And so when I saw this story,

my instinct was to go to Jackie Robinson's fan grass page and get ready to tell Blue Sky all about the wonder that was Robinson on the field because I think that for as obviously important, not only to the game of baseball, but to the fabric of American life as he was. I think that his accomplishments as a player can sometimes be overlooked. And I understand why the balance kind of falls down on the side of, you know, trying to stand in the face of the color divide, but he can be kind of underappreciated as a baseball player. I had to stop myself because they're not making

a fact-based argument. They're racist. You know, that's it. Like, we don't need to overcomplicate this. This is a regime that views the acronym DEI as a convenient way for them to launder in a permission structure for people to look at every person of color, woman, gay person in a position of authority or claim and question their credentials and undermine the assumption that they are in the position they're in because of their own merit and accomplishment. No, no, it's about marginalized people getting a leg up through DEI. You know, this is such an obviously ridiculous and unhinged expression of that, that it sort of puts the light of the whole project, right? The notion that Jackie Robinson benefited is so fucking crazy that I think it's obviously crazy.

Like it lays bare the intent of the broader project. I feel like we're in this moment where a lot of the guiding sort of conservative principle right now seems to be that they enjoy owning the libs, right? And we gotta admit, we libs, we've never been more owned than we are right now, right? We are furious all the time. We are incandescent with rage at things relatively minor on the scale of human suffering and devastating, right? We are, we are owned right now. But I think that moments like this demonstrate that there can be pushback because while many

of the people involved in this regime are very committed to a racist and devastating ideological project, many of them are also f***ing cowards when presented with resistance. So we should continue to push back on this stuff. And I like, we don't have to get cute about it. When it's obviously racist, you can just call it obviously racist. We don't have to cite his war. We don't have to, we don't have to talk about all of the awards. We don't have to talk about how many home runs. It doesn't, that's not the point. It's not about what Jackie did. It's about what they want people to think white people can do in the face of black people.

That's it. We don't have to make it more complicated than that. I am so angry. I'm sure Paul Skeens is going to be thrilled that this is the end of his episode, man. I think he's going to be, I mean, I don't say that like he's going to disagree with us. I don't know. I don't know.

But like, I just, this is bad news. These people are doing bad stuff. They want to do bad stuff to you, your neighbors and everyone you know. So let's call it what it is. This is racist. It's the latest action in a long line of them. They're not gonna get better.

So the only thing we can do is to continue to fight them wherever we can. I am sorry for being a little all over the place, but I am just so worked up. Oh, I'm with you. This is infuriating. May I offer another thing? I'll be very curious to see what, if any, response we get to this from Major League Baseball and also specifically the Dodgers, because I don't know if you know this Ben, but the Dodgers won the World Series. And typically, lately, when a sports team

wins a championship, they get invited to the White House. So Dodgers won the World Series. And typically, lately, when a sports team wins a championship, they get invited to the White House. So Dodgers have some choices to make about what they want to do here. Major League Baseball has some choices to make about what they want to say here. And I hope they say something, because candidly, there are a great many issues that this administration has been advancing in recent weeks that Major League Baseball could say something about. They are a league who employ a great number of foreign nationals. So perhaps they might want to opine on some of these wackadoo cruel immigration policies. They have their complexes in Arizona and Florida, two states that are routinely getting absolutely

wrecked by climate change could say something about that if they cared to. Jackie Robinson Day is in a little under a month. They got some time to say something. I know that they want to curry favor with this administration. I know that it's easier for them to pretend that this didn't happen or to say we're glad that the error has been remedied, but I wish they'd say something. I don't think they will because they think they're cowards and they're trying

to curry favor with the Trump administration, but I hope they do because it's important to say things. It's important to use what power and what you have and they have more than we do. So I hope that they'll take advantage of that. Don't expect that they will, but I'd love to be wrong. Yeah. A few things in response to what you said. Yes, I think we should highlight the accomplishments

of Jackie on the field even more often than we do. Though, of course, his greater accomplishments are beyond how good he was at baseball. He would not have had a chance to be the trailblazer that he was had he not been as good at baseball as he was. That was kind of crucial to the whole experiment, quote unquote, that he proved clearly that he could hack it in that league. But yes, citing war would not necessarily capture the entirety of Jackie Robinson. In fact, this page was

citing war lowercase because that is part of his legacy as well. And yes, you touched on it there, just the suggestion that Jackie Robinson has anything to do with some sort of diversity equity or inclusion program. He was just the opposite of that. He had to fight for any inclusion multiple times in multiple ways. And for another, I think the very fact that there's an initiative to delete pages like this speaks to the need for programs designed to aid diversity, equity, and inclusion. You are inadvertently making the case for why there is a role for such programs because clearly there are powerful forces aligned diametrically opposite to those very programs. For another thing, not that there's a cap

on the number of pages you have dedicated to heroes, or many people say are heroes, many cases they're heroes, but every time you take someone else, you don't have to take someone out to put someone else in, but by deleting all the people of color selectively and allowing all the white heroes to stay, you are of course doing exactly what you accuse DEI programs of doing.

You are giving an advantage to one race, just giving a leg up for nothing pertaining to accomplishments but purely related to that prism of your demographic. So you are doing what you accuse others of doing, but you don't care because it's your own in this case. So maybe that goes without saying, but I said it anyway. And yeah, as for MLB, I mean, look, I think that they have already kind of caved to an extent because as some people have noted,

they have removed the word diversity from their inclusion page. They still have an inclusion page, which I guess is something. They still have a page devoted to various policies, but they have stripped out some of the language there and have sort of stealth edited it. And they are far from alone among big companies

in doing this. Many companies have tripped over themselves, again, complying with an order that does not apply to them, but have hurried to do it to curry favor and MLB quietly did this as well. And I would expect that there will be many more times during this administration that politics will collide with MLB and we will have ample opportunity to see how MLB responds to that.

And like you, I would not expect any outspoken stance. And to some extent, I'm certainly not expecting that or looking for that even from Major League Baseball and Rob Manfred, I guess the fact that we would even be thinking maybe MLB will speak up speaks to how broken other aspects of society is because MLB and private enterprise and business would not be my first choice to take the lead on responding to things like this. And for the most part, I understand, I guess, obviously the business incentive for MLB to stay out of the fray. There are times when I think it impacts baseball's business so directly that it would be kind of cowardly to speak up. And there are other times where even I am not necessarily looking for MLB to just take a strong stance

on something. I'm looking to others to do that, but not necessarily to MLB. And look, at this point, aside from moving the All-Star game that one time, which I think Rob Minford probably regrets, they do not really have a history of speaking up in that way and I would not expect that to change in this current political climate and I have kind of mixed feelings, I guess the extent to which I really want them to be a leader when it comes to that aside from even expecting them to be but yes, it's going to keep coming up and We will see how they respond and And gosh, I mean, as for this administration and this policy, it's not even a policy. This is not targeting DEI policies in any way. This is just clearly selectively trying to erase the accomplishments of certain people and doing it on the web and

also doing it in person at various federal buildings and departments just removing photos, removing portraits. It's very clear. It's not at all subtle, but you can't even claim that it has something to do with the policies that you're ostensibly targeting. You are just removing people who accomplished incredible things because of their background.

And also if you claim to support the troops and the military, but you want to expel and erase any non-white members of it, what message does that send? Cause last I checked black men were overrepresented in the U S armed forces. So what do you take away from that? But look, we could go on, but, uh, I think probably our, our probably our position on this is pretty clear and it's hopefully one that is shared by a lot of our listeners. But there's just so much that's beyond the pale these days and that makes us mad and feel like we're losing our grasp to reality a dozen

times a day, which is why we did a Patreon bonus pod on it, just to sort of get it off our chest and reestablish some shared reality with each other and with our listeners. And this is just another one of those cases. And the good news, I guess, is that you cannot erase Jackie Robinson, because again, he's Jackie Robinson, and taking down webpage, in this case at least, just brought more attention to his accomplishments. But there are many people and programs and policies that are less visible than Jackie Robinson where the decisions that are being made now can actually have real effects and real harms.

And so people must be vigilant about those things. AMT – I want to get better about the way I talk about this because I feel like I just end up kind of flying off the handle and I don't articulate it perfectly. And I don't know that that's a thing that we need to expect of ourselves in this moment. You know, expressing disdain for it at all is something I suppose. But we're a country that I don't think has really good, really very good historical literacy to begin with. And the version of our own history that we are taught is often sanitized in the extreme. And that's been true for a long time and to see it worsen, to see this be such a coherent ideological project just is very concerning because you can't step forward into something

better without an understanding of where you've come from. And a lot of people worked really, really hard, were vocal, were thought to be kind of annoying at times in baseball's history to say, no, we need to really grapple with what happened here. We need to understand the cost to Jackie Robinson. We need to understand, as we've talked about a couple of times over the last few years, the impact that integration, while a morally correct project, but the impact that integration had on black baseball beyond major league baseball, and by that I mean the business entity that was major league baseball, you know, the effect that it had on the Negro leagues and the state of the game and the communities that those teams were housed in, right?

We've, I feel like a lot of people have done a lot of work to try to complicate our understanding of all of that and bring the reality of it to bear on the present and help people really try to get their arms around it and have the correct amount of reverence for the people who fought those fights and an appreciation for what they had to overcome and the people who made active choices to try to maintain that color barrier. And to see this kind of work undermining all of that in service of what? So that people can pretend that the past didn't happen. I mean, I know that in service of what? You don't have to write your emails. Like I understand, again, the broader project here,

but it's just incredibly disheartening because the gains have been so hard fought and they are still incomplete. They're incomplete under a framework where you're trying to get your arms around all of it and sit with it however uncomfortable it might be for white baseball fans. It's disgusting and it's racist and I hope that everyone takes a moment to like sit with

the project that they have, which is to try to counter that stuff wherever they can and tell an accurate story and history because it's going to be on a lot of people having individual conversations with people they know, correcting the record on so many things. So start with the baseball because that's more fun, and then get to the other stuff, I guess. Anyway. Yes. And look, a web page temporarily being taken down is one of the least harmful and serious manifestations of things that are happening, but also one of the least harmful and serious manifestations of things that

are happening, but also one of the more visible and it's sort of a tip of the iceberg situation where that kind of tells you what's happening out of view. And look, there was just a policy that was put into effect where a segregated facilities ban in federal contracts was ended. And I understand that there's no teeth to that because segregation is illegal on a local and federal level, but it is still symbolic and clearly symbolic of something. You don't just decide, this is redundant. We don't need the segregation ban in federal contracts. Let's just take this out just because you're worried about duplicative language in a law,

let's say, right? Like, clearly there's an underlying motivation here and they have not been shy about that. And hopefully they will be thwarted in those broader and deeper aims. But one way to thwart it is to call them out. So believe me, I would rather these mask off, awfulness instances were not happening so that I could just go back to ranting about breakouts, which I know that everyone loves when I do that. Speaking of which, we actually got an email

that I think was sort of enlightening to me on that topic from listener Ezra, who wrote in to say, "'I regret to inform you that the breakout pick epidemic has reached March Madness. So of course March Madness has begun and people are doing breakout candidates for the tournament. And there was a tweet the other day about how they've lost the plot when it comes to March Madness breakouts. And I think this is maybe a bleacher report thing on social where it was, you know, highlighting some breakout candidates and everyone was saying,

these are like some of the best players in the tournament or these guys were already good or they've already been good in previous tournaments. How are you calling these breakouts? And this was actually instructive for me because in this situation, I'm the casual who hasn't heard of the good players. I've been pretty open on hang up and listen.

I will be talking about March Madness this month, but it's not my strength. And so in this case, I'm the hypothetical casual. We've been sort of imagining on these effectively wild discussions where we're the sickos and we've been trying to put ourselves into the place of the people who are not sickos and okay Well, is there an audience for this would they want to hear about these breakout candidates who actually are already good? But maybe you're not widely known. So, okay. I'm on the other side of the equation here But I also don't really care who the March Madness breakout players will be Because I'm just not that into college basketball,

which only lends credence to my sense that there's no real constituency for very obvious breakout picks, because either you know those players already and you're aware that they're good, or you aren't interested in knowing them, which is kind of where I am with breakout candidates in some other sports that I don't follow as closely. And I think that applies to baseball too, that either you're in the know,

or you don't care to know that to the extent that you are going to be looking up a list of breakout candidates in March, let's say. Look, I'm sure there are some people who fall into that category and are actually interested in that kind of content, but I think it's a fairly fallow market there that you are targeting. So being on the other side of things actually was, was kind of eyeopening for me. It's so funny. I enter March Madness the same way I do the Olympics. I want to know as little about what's going on as possible. Like I just wanted to wash over me in the moment.

I wanna get really invested in like a 13 seed, you know? Just sit there going, I don't know that I need to know. I don't need to know. Or if the breakout happens, you'll be aware of it because you'll be watching. Right, because we'll be watching. Yeah. Yeah.

So you're just probably not so much in the market for the preview content is my case. Anyway, I had a lengthy G-Chat conversation with our pal Craig Goldstein at Baseball Prospectus about breakouts. And I think he is generally aligned with my position, but he was sort of testing me. He was playing devil's advocate.

And so we were doing sort of a Socratic dialogue, and he was highlighting some edge cases, and I thought it actually helped me formulate my position, because he was asking, for example, can Andrew Benentendi be a breakout player or someone of that ilk? No! Someone who… Craig! So he's… he was not necessarily arguing that he could, he was just saying, okay, what if he was good again

after not having been good for quite some time? And so I said, well, I'd say he qualifies as a breakout candidate only if someone were predicting that he'd be an MVP, let's say, because Benetendi has been an all-star, he's had a four to five win season. So if I were predicting, yeah, that he would have another 2018 type season,

I'd say bounce back. Bounce back, yes, exactly. As I prepared to interrupt you like four separate times, that was what I was gonna say. Like he is, he's a bounce, he's a bounce back. Bounce back candidate. Yeah, bounce back candidate. If I were predicting, maybe he'd even be a bit better

than that, I'd say career year candidate. Now, Craig replied that bounce back to an outlier season seven years ago is sort of a stretch, which fair. Maybe there could be a statute of limitations on bouncing back, perhaps that ship has sailed, but I'm fine with the step forward or level up or improvement or career year, any of those completely

fine in my mind. I think you can still, I get what Craig means and I, you know, his point is well taken, it pains me to say that, but I love you Craig. But I still think you would call it a bounce back, even if you're bouncing, like you've become one of those like really hard rubber balls and are bending very high in the air whereas previously you've been like a hacky sack you know you've undergone a transformation admittedly but hacky sack do people still hacky sack is that a thing did you ever hacky sack what did

that like wash over New York or did you guys go, oh, you crunchy West coasters? Was that like a... Yeah, not really. I had one. I mean, I have hackied a sack, but I haven't, I never really was super into it. I had a different game that was similar that I just played with a crumpled up piece of paper and it became a sensation in my high school.

We called it Mat Ball, which I invented because the first piece of paper that we crumpled up had my friend Matt's name on it. And so it just became Mat Ball. And it was great. It was really fun. We'd play it everywhere and there were crumpled up pieces of paper just littering the school. But yeah, I didn't hacky sack so much. I haven't been on a college campus lately, so I can't really say whether hacky sack still transpires. That is sort of the natural environment, the prime ecosystem for that. But so, what I was going to say before my HackySac tangent was that I still think it's a bounce back because

you have gotten out of the muck. You've cleared the low bar you had set. But I think when it comes to Ben Intendi, I would still call it a bounce back. But really what I might say more is like, you're a comeback player of the year candidate. Maybe you talk about it that way, like you're to denote the distance that you are traveling. Because Ben, have you're to denote the distance that you are traveling because Ben,

have you like really grappled with how things have gone for Andrew Benatendi since he? Yeah, it's gone pretty poorly. Oh boy, man. This is bad. It's bad. And I guess that's kind of what Craig was saying because I said in my mind, a breakout is when you really raise your perceived ceiling in a significant way. And I don't think you can break out twice unless maybe you raise your perceived ceiling a second time by as much as you did the first time.

And so with Ben and Tendi, I could see the argument that his perceived ceiling has fallen so precipitously that now if you were to get back to where he was at his peak, then that would in a sense be a breakout. He would have broken out of people's expectations for him. To be clear, I don't think I would have called his first strong season to breakout because he was a first round pick

and a number one prospect in baseball and a rookie of the year runner up. So that was sort of expected that he would be good. But yeah, I would call it, I mean, even like a post-hype sleeper sort of candidate maybe, but I think once you've demonstrated that you're capable of something, that's your established ceiling,

even if you subsequently fall short of it for a time. And to me, even if he had a fine season, I would say, well, we knew that was in him somewhere. We knew he could do it. He had done it before. And we had that discussion on one pod where we talked about whether a fluke year is a true breakout.

And I think we came down on if it's perceived as a fluke in the moment, then probably not. If no one really buys the breakout. But if it seems real in the moment, but looks like a fluke in retrospect, then yes, I think so. However, what Craig then went on to say is, could you have a more specific kind of breakout?

For instance, let's say that Ben and Tendi, who has gone back to sort of this new approach, or I guess not gone back, but gone to a new approach where it's more of a pull lift sort of thing, get the ball in the air. And what if he were good in a different way? What if he suddenly hit 30 homers, which is something that he never came close to doing

even when he was a productive player. And I allowed that, I think you could have a qualified breakout or re-breakout. You could have a breakout power year, let's say. Even if he wasn't any more productive than he has been holistically the first time around, I would absolutely say, yeah, he had a breakout power year. I would just include that qualification. I think that that's a useful way out of this conversation.

Yes. Maybe one aspect of your game takes a big leap in a way that is appreciable and meaningful. I think that that's a good way to get around these kinds of problems. I still wonder if I would apply that to someone like Ben and Tendi. I think part of the problem too is that like, it's so helpful to be able to look at these guys' careers in their entirety and then chart the course, right? Because then you're not, part of it is that we're kind of guessing at what the future is going to bring, you know, and how much the future, even if the line looks the same that the shape of the production will be, you know, like we're trying to do so much.

Yes. Unfortunately, we do have to discuss events as they occur because this podcast would probably be pretty boring if we waited for everyone's career to wrap up before we discuss them. Yeah. Do you think we'd weed out the bits that people don't like? Possibly, yes.

Possibly. We wouldn't have to have any more breakout conversations. I didn't intend to get stuck in another breakout called a sec. But here we are. Blame Craig. We like blaming Craig for things. I love to blame Craig.

Here's the thing. I would rather talk about breakouts with you all day than have to sit and continue to contemplate the Trump administration for one more minute. We're going to have to at some point again, I'm sure. But it's nice to take a little break to talk about something stupid. I do understand the stick to sports people a little bit, you know? I get it. I understand the desire to retreat into something else for a while.

I share that. I'd love to be able to do it more, but I don't think your issues are with us, really, you know? Turn around to somebody else and point the finger. That's what I was doing when I was watching Dodger's Cubs and our heart rate was temporarily falling. And yes, so lastly, I'll just say that I conceded to Craig that in certain limited circumstances, one could have a double breakout. And I even identified friend of the show, Brent Rooker, as a candidate for the double breakout, not just because he's a friend of

the show, but because I think legitimately he may have broken out in consecutive seasons because he did genuinely raise his perceived ceiling in back to back years. In 2023, he went from waiver bait, journeyman, quad A type guy to above average big league bat. And then last year he went from above average big league bat to close to top five hitter in baseball. So in my mind, I didn't see either of those game raisings, those ceiling raisings coming. And so that kind of qualifies in my mind, but it's rare that that would happen. Do you feel good about having conceded a point to Craig?

Do you think that that's wise? I like to show that I'm a reasonable man and sometimes I can reach a compromise with people, even including Craig. I do like the notion of a double breakout. At a certain point, we're going to end up liking breakouts because we're just going to come up with a bunch of wacky variants and then be like, this is the best actually. That would be how it comes full circle. Yes. Now, one other topic that we must return to

that probably has been more hotly anticipated, new heights dropped. And by that, I mean, we're released, but also most of them did drop. So we have been anticipating- Although not all of them. Some people got taller. They did.

Congrats to them on growing relatively late in life. Or standing up straight for the first time ever. Or that. We have some data on this. So we knew that this was coming and we discussed it and we even identified some possible candidates to break out of their previously listed heights. And you obtained a spreadsheet from David Appelman,

Dark Overlord of FanCrafts, and passed it along to me. And I did some spreadsheet stuff, and I have some stats here. So we knew that this was happening because of the challenge system, and because players have to be more precisely measured in accordance with the rulebook zone. And there was supposed to be a rigorous process here where there was not only a physical measuring

that was happening where impartial neutral observers would be brought in to say, hey, stand up straight. I see you standing on your tippy toes or slouching. I mean, slouching would probably be better from a performance standpoint, but you know, we men, we have egos, so we sometimes tend to add

an inch or two and sometimes baseball players and athletes, they are among the main offenders when it comes to that. And there was also going to be a biomechanical measuring too. So somehow even if you defeated the physical test, then the computers would catch you. I'm not sure whether that part of the process has happened, perhaps it has, but we have seen a mass updating of heights. Now there are some heights that conspicuously have not been updated, which makes me question

A the process or B whether the process has been completed perhaps. I guess this is happening in stages and waves, different camps, different updates. I think everyone has been measured. I think all the guys have been measured. But like it's a lot of guys, you know, and so my understanding from someone I talked with at the league was that it would sort of come out in batches. So we might now, I have not followed up to ask if the process is complete. So it's possible that a conspiracy does exist, but I do wonder if they've maybe just not

gotten to everybody yet. So yeah, Jose Altuve is still listed as five foot six on MLB.com. So make of that what you will. However, we did get hundreds of changes here, just going by the Fangrass database and the MLB supplied data on Heights and Appleman did the before and after. Yes, both come from MLB as a data source, just so that everyone is clear. And so I have a spreadsheet here of all of the players whose listed heights changed. So I don't know one question I had was how many players heights did not change to were measured.

Right. It's tough to gauge also because I think the idea was that they weren't going to measure all the pitchers, although this spreadsheet does seem to include a few pitchers. So I'm not. I think they had to have measured the pitchers because it's not like they can't take a now. I thought, I thought I had read that they weren't going to bother because they aren't going to hit in almost all circumstances.

Right. They will eventually have to measure them before the system can come to major league baseball, because you need to have a zone for the guy. And you could have a pitcher, you know, non-Otani division take a plate appearance, but the odds that a pitcher is going to hit in spring training, I mean, you know, so maybe, I think that maybe they didn't measure pitchers this go round, but I think they will have to eventually measure them. I suppose they should just for completeness sake, but it's obviously the odds are long that a pitcher other than Otani is going to hit. It does happen in extremely rare circumstances.

There was a previous reporter I remember seeing that if that happened, they were just going to go with the listed height until the person could be measured, I think is what it said. So I don't think they're going to be like, no, no, no, the computer has not had it say yet. What will we do? Yes. Anyway, what we have learned here is that purportedly, Alex Bregman stands five feet 11.

So again, make of that what you will. Now, when we asked Chandler Roome, who covers the Astros, when we forced him to answer what he thought would happen to Alex Bregman's listed height, he did say about an inch, but it's just, it's hard to square with the visual evidence that we've seen at various points. So, he's listed at five foot 11, down from six feet. And there are some other notable examples here of changes one way or another. Now, I'll give you the overall stats. So I have a list here of 548 players

whose listed heights changed. And the average change was negative 0.21 inches. So it's small and and median was negative one inch and the mode was negative one inch. So you are most likely if you were on this list of changers to have changed by losing an inch. However, it is far from universal as that average suggests. So of the 548 players I have here, only 316 changed downward. Only 316 of the 548 shrank. That is 57.7%, which is far from overwhelming.

And of the changes, 446 of the 548 were by one inch in either direction. So when there was exaggeration, it wasn't really that extreme. So 81.4% of the changers changed by only one inch in one direction or the other. Now of the 102 players on this list who changed by two or more inches in either direction, 68 of the 102, so 66.7% exactly two thirds were in the downward direction. So if you were off by two or more inches, then two out of three, you were off in the direction of you were actually shorter than you had previously been listed, but still not universal.

So there were still some players who were leaving inches on the board here. And it's tough to tell because in some of these cases, so I'll put this online, I suppose, but the number one changer in the growth direction, the guy who got taller is one Rydell Martinez, who added seven inches. Now I'm not sure whether that was a data error of some sort

or whether there was just some shoddy record keeping in some cases, because there are some pretty obscure players here. There are players, you know, international players, there are Japanese players, there are Cuban players, there are players perhaps who were measured or who gave their listed height years ago in another country, in another league, who knows, maybe there was even conversion between measurement systems that was screwed up. Maybe they were measured so long ago that they actually grew. Maybe they had a growth spurt at some point.

So I don't know how much stock to put into these things. So Rydell Martinez was at seven inches higher. Angel Sanchez was at four inches. Caden Nicoletto was at four inches higher. Julio E. Rodriguez, the mariner named Julio Rodriguez, who was not that Julio, a four inch gain, Jesus Castro, three inch gain. So those were the only guys who were above two inches

and got taller. There were a handful of guys who lost three or more inches and literally just a handful, just five guys who went down by three or more inches. And literally just a handful, just five guys who went down by three or more inches. And here they are, one Luis Aguayo, one Gavin Lux. You have probably heard of Gavin Lux. Gavin Lux went down three inches? Yes, he lost three inches. He went from 74 inches to 71.

And then Connor Wong lost three inches. Brandon Bullion, do I have that right? Bui-on, he lost three inches. And Tucker Barnhart, also a prominent player. Interesting. He lost three inches, a couple catchers there. I was just about to say that's so interesting. I mean, like not all of them, but two.

Yeah, that is interesting. Cause catcher is one position where you don't have to exaggerate your height as much as other positions. Cause in some cases it's even seen as a detriment. Like it's going to be bad for your knees, all that crouching. Yeah. Now I have to give credit to a listener

because when we solicited suggestions, we asked for people to write in if they thought that they could pinpoint someone who was gonna lose a lot of height here. We got an email from listener Andrew Madison who wrote back in January, Connor Wong is not six foot one I'm pretty sure. Which is funny because as a poor framer which I have long thought is partly caused by his being smaller than most catchers he has to move more to get behind a pitch. He might be one of the people who most benefits from the challenge system.

And Andrew was dead on there. Conor Wong was one of the greatest height losers here. And so look, there were other two inch losers here. George Springer, Randall Gritchick, Max Muncie, JD Davis, Teasca Hernandez, Anthony Santander, Michael Conforto, JP Crawford, Gleiber Torres. Look, I don't have to list every guy. I'll put the list online if you care to peruse it. Guy, guy, guy, sure, guy, sure, guy.

It's far from universal though. Sure. If you thought that there was widespread exaggeration going on, perhaps, but the inaccuracies were quite often in the other direction and they generally weren't that stark. We're talking an inch for most of these guys. And maybe it's not shocking that there were a lot of one inch gainers because the precision when you're measuring your height, it's not great, right? So totally. Yeah. I mean, you're kind of just eyeballing it. You know, who

knows like, were there socks? Were there shoes? Were you standing up straight that day? Was it earlier in the day or later in the day when gravity had done its work and brought you down to earth a little bit and the measurement system and how closely are you accounting for hair? And you know, like there's a lot of, there's a bit of a buffer, right? There's some laxity here and some inaccuracy. So I'm not really surprised that there are a lot of people who were off by an inch in the other direction either.

Yeah, I'm not surprised by that either. This seems like, you know, kind of the spread I would expect. There are definitely reasons to fib your height a little bit. That incentive, by the way, exists for players. It also exists for teams, right? Because you know, when Eric Long and I again looked at this on the minor league side, we know that height is a parameter in a lot of teams' models. And so saying that your guys are a little taller than they are when they're in the minor leagues

might have an impact on their desirability and trade. Obviously not the most important consideration or factor, but a consideration and factor in those conversations and how often are we really updating those heights after a guy has gone through the minor. So it makes a ton of sense. But I also think there are plenty of guys who go in there and they remember being told to stand up straight to be measured by their pediatrician and probably are just like, this is how tall I am, you know? So it seems about right to me. I don't know that Alex Bregman's height seems about right to me. I think it might still feel a little-

You probably shouldn't use the height that your pediatrician told you because presumably you've grown since then. No, but the process, you know, when you go in there and you have to stand so tall and then they put the little thing, you know, they measure you and the little thing comes down on your head.

Yeah. Yeah. And then they put the little thing, you know, they measure you and the little thing comes down on your head. Yeah. I got measured at my doctor's office last year and I was like, why? Like, why are you doing this? I'm 37. Like, also, I'm 37. Are you, what? What are you doing?

And she was like, yeah, I don't know why I asked you. Anyway. But anyway, yeah, the heights, they are different, but the same, but the different, but the same kind of like the pants. Yeah, apparently and transparently. So if, if other heights change, we will, we will update you on that. We'll be on this. Don't worry.

Yeah. I think it was no less illuminary than Craig, who reminded me that last year they noted when there was finally a potential admission that there was a problem with the pants, that the pants might take longer to get out to everyone, that there were production issues with the pants. Now I know that when we- Yeah, they might not be ready for photo day. Right, but when we got, when guys got to camp, they may sound like the pants were better.

And Ben, those pants, they are the same pants as last year, which are different pants than a couple of years before. Those are, those are some sheer, those are some sheer ass pants. Seeing some butts. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Definitely still seeing some shirt tails at the very least.

I wonder, like, you know, I can't decide if I want Paul Skeen to listen to this whole episode or not. I can't decide, you know? No, I doubt he will, but if you are listening, Paul, thanks for coming on this journey with us. Hey, Paul, thanks for hanging us. Sorry that I'm weird today. And a couple last things. Joey Gallo's height was not among the ones that changed. He is still listed standing tall at six foot five.

However, his positional classification has changed. Joey Gallo is now a pitcher, at least in name. So this fascinates me because Joey Gallo fascinates me and always has. And I mentioned on the White Sox preview that spring training was not going so great for our pal Joey and it did not get any better. I don't think he had any additional plate appearances.

So he finished the spring with the White Sox, having struck out in 11 of his 20 at bats it did not get any better. I don't think he had any additional plate appearances. So he finished the spring with the White Sox having struck out in 11 of his 20 at bats with a couple singles and one walk. And the White Sox subsequently said, no, thank you. And when you cannot make the White Sox out of spring training, then that is perhaps a sign that it's time for a change.

Now he made a dramatic change and he took to Twitter for the first time in about three years to tweet a video of him in the outfield with the caption, it's been fun outfield. And then after I think that caused some confusion, what does he mean by this exactly? He clarified and tweeted, just to be clear, I will be pitching.

And just in case that wasn't clear, Levi Weaver and maybe others followed up to confirm that yes, we are actually talking about a conversion to pitcher here for Joey Gallo, the three true outcomes king will now be trying to perpetrate strikeouts from the other end of the equation. And I certainly wish him well, as I have always wished Joey Gallo well

since he was a great prospect, but also an extreme one that made people wonder whether it would work in MLB. And I suppose those fears eventually were justified, though he made a nice go of it for a while there. And it's one of the steeper and more sudden tumbles that you will see for a player who was quite productive for years and always had an extreme profile, but made it work and was not just a bat, was a good glove guy, surprisingly. And part of

that was because of his arm. He always had a fantastic arm and he was a good glove guy, surprisingly. And part of that was because of his arm. He always had a fantastic arm and he was a pitcher in high school and he was a prospect as a pitcher in high school. And the arm strength was still there. So I see the vision. It's obviously gonna be an uphill climb given that the man is 31 years old

and has not really thrown pitches in anger for quite a while, one would expect at this point. But you don't see a whole lot of conversions at this stage of a player's career. And you don't often see it for someone who, in his prime, which was not all that long ago, he just got broken by being a Yankee, evidently, but he isn't that far removed from being a pretty productive outfielder, and yet he is far removed from that,

from a performance standpoint. So I guess it is time to try to reinvent himself, and we'll see where and how he attempts to do that, whether this will be some sort of Indie ball progression or how wild he will get with this exactly, but I hope it works. I would love to see Joey Gallo back in the big leagues on the mound.

What do you have to lose, right? You're always gonna, in my mind, I know there are people who are mean, and I'm not one of them, I'm sweet as pecan pie, but mean people might mock you if you fail in this endeavor, I know there are people who are mean, and I'm not one of them. I'm sweet as pecan pie. But mean people might mock you if you fail in this endeavor, if you're Joey Gallo. But those people suck, right? If you're Joey Gallo, you're not going to be a hitter in the majors.

We've established that when the White Sox are passing on you, your time doing that is over, brother. So why not try it? You know, you got this big frame. You got a big arm You know, you are familiar with the concept of the strikeout. So just flip it around see what you can do I think see that was a little mean I'd say that wasn't sweet as pecan pie That was a little bit that was a little bit but but the general the general Sentiment is a kind one which is go get it, Joey. Go show them what for. Let's see what you can do, you know?

Yes, and I appreciate when a player who has accomplished a lot in the big leagues and has made almost $40 million in his career. It's not like he has to do this, but he clearly loves the game and maybe he doesn't want to go out this way. Now, he may go out with a rude awakening about his pitching too.

I'm not saying this is going to go well. This is a tough transition to make at any point in your career, let alone this point, but he's willing to. But he's only 31, you know? It's true. Right. And I think it's probably easier to go this way than the other at this point in your career, because it's very hard to make up for the reps that you lose just from a pitch evaluation standpoint and a plate discipline standpoint

and just seeing pitches come in and knowing when to lay off. That's tough if you have foregone a decade of seeing thousands and thousands and thousands of pitches, it's tough to make that up. Whereas if you've got a good arm, you can just kind of go out there. And again, like, you know, refining your repertoire, all those things that happen, the command, all of that, who knows whether that will be there. Who knows? Who knows whether the arm strength that he once had will be there either.

Who knows? But it's, yeah, there's a little bit more of like, well, have arm, will travel as opposed to you've kind of already lost your chance by missing out on all of that development. Yeah. The bats famously don't travel. And someone out there is probably listening to us talking and thinking, well, Meg, Ben, what about Charlie Culberson? And fair question.

First of all, older. Second of all, shorter. Third of all, not actually a real person. The thing to remember about Charlie Culberson is he's really just Dan's B. Swanson moving back and forth really, really fast. That's one boy. That is one guy. One boy. He's a real person. I know that. He's working in a front office now. Charlie's having a great time. He's not pitching. He retired from baseball. It didn't work for him. We have to acknowledge the failures. Oh, it often fails.

Sometimes you get up there and you try and you think it's going to work and then you blow out. Like, remember, wait, no, I'm going to come up with it. Don't you dare tell me the name that I am supposed to remember. And you're like, I don't know who you're talking about. Do you remember, Ben, a former Mariners outfielder by the name of James Jones? Do you remember James Jones? Does that name register you from Long Island? You wouldn't know anything about the school he went to because you don't care about college baseball, but he was a not good outfielder. You know, that's the thing about James Jones. Seems like a very sweet guy and Real gangly and he hit in the minors But it just didn't it didn't work for him at the major league level and then he he tried to do the pitching thing

And I think he needed at least At least one Tommy John and maybe he maybe needed to I can't recall You know He tried to make it work with the You know, he tried to make it work with the Rangers and then he tried to do it with the Dodgers and it didn't, it didn't come together for him. But you know, his only big league time was as an outfielder. And again, that didn't go particularly well, but he did try it, you know, and he's closer to to Joey Gallows height than Charlie Culberson was, I wonder how tall Charlie Culberson actually

is. The answer is zero inches because again, he's not a real person. I applaud the attempt. I give you applaud it for trying even if it fails. By that, I mean you in this podcast, but also people who are trying to convert to pitching. Mostly Joey Gallo and real human man Charlie Gorson. Yeah, like Anthony Gohs did this too. And he made it back and he had a Tommy John, right? He did. Yeah, and look, he hasn't had a distinguished major league pitching career, but he has in

the sense that he had one and that in itself is distinguished. And so we can add Joey Gallo to our tracking here along with Tyler Naquan, who's attempting to do this. That's right, Tyler Naquan. And my incessant David Fletcher updates from when he had probably tried to do this last year, right? So look, I'm always interested if you give this a go. And at the very least, Joey Gallo, he will retain the top of the TTO leaderboard, the three true outcomes percentage. He will always be, or at least let's hope he will always be the TTO king. We'll see what happens with the environment.

I think in, uh, in recent years, that's actually gone down a bit league wide because the strikeouts seem to have plateaued for the moment and the home runs have been down just a tad, but Joey Gallo is, uh, first by a lot on the three true outcomes, home runs, walks, strikeout, percentage leaderboard at 58.7% and the next real hitter is Miguel Sano at 53.6%, so it's like a full five percentage points difference there between number one and number two,

where that equivalent difference between, it would be like number two and I don't know, number 25 or something. He's an outlier. You have to, Joey Gallo got 3,400 played appearances in the big leagues. To find someone with a higher three true outcome rate, you have to drop the minimum down

to 759 career played appearances. And then you get to pitcher Dean Chance, who was at 59.3% TTO in 759 plate appearances. So I'm not sure that's something that Joey Gallo is proud of, but it is a distinction that he holds and will likely hold for years to come. Can I try a joke on you? Are you ready for my joke? Would you say that Joey Gallo is saying T-T-O-F-N

to the batter's box? You know, like Tata for now, but T-T- I'm going to work on it. I'm going to make it, I'm going to dial it in. It needs a little more time. Jared Ranere Yeah, the execution was wanting, I think, but yeah, the conceptually. Danielle Pletka Yeah, it has the components of a joke. Jared Ranere Yes, exactly. Danielle Pletka Maybe not the laugh, which is admittedly one of the more important components. But I mean, look, sometimes things need a little time in the writer's room before they come together and just give me a minute.

You workshop these things, you bomb, and that can be a learning experience. Yeah, I don't have a tight tongue, but that's because I haven't tried yet. Yeah, okay. Last thing a tight tongue, but that's because I haven't tried yet. Yeah, okay. Last thing, pre-skines. Did you see this Marlins story about how the Marlins... See, that joke worked. That worked. You got me there.

Definitely not. Well the Marlins were briefly trying to or conceiving an experiment of their own. So when we did our Marlins preview, we asked like, are the Marlins not worried about running a foul of the Players Association and a grievance here? It wouldn't be their first time. They're not spending and they are a revenue sharing recipient and they don't seem to meet the standards for continuing to receive revenue sharing and not spending on players.

And there was a report in the Miami Herald about this where it explains that the Marlins are not concerned about this, which is what our preview guest, Kevin Burrell, said. But apparently because they think they have complied, because the agreement, the wording they think they have stuck to the letter of the law, if not the spirit, because the agreement, the wording they think they have stuck to the letter of the law, if not the spirit, because the agreement requires teams to use revenue sharing dollars quote in an effort to improve performance on the field. And the Marlins believe they have done that even with their low payroll and would defend themselves if a grievance is filed at the end of the season on those grounds because

they have done various things to improve their player development pipeline. Let's say so they're like hey, we bought a traject Machine and so we aren't subject to a grievance You know what I have to say you want to say that get the hell out of here with that. Yeah Tata for now Marlins. Yeah, that's right Tata for now TTFN. Hey, man, you're the one who's like, she should keep recording while she's editing the positional power rankings. It'll go fine.

That's their defense. And the other thing that I guess maybe they would lump into, here's what we're doing to try to get better, other than spending a lot on Major League Player payroll. There was a LinkedIn ad that was put up last week. I almost brought this up on our last show of the week, last week, but I just kind of didn't know what it was about. And so I waited.

And so now- This I think I did hear about actually. Yes, okay, so this was it. So the Marlins, they put up this ad and we've talked about how much weirdness there is on LinkedIn these days, and this was hand in hand with that. The minor league operation staffer for the Marlins

put this ad up that offered non-professional players a chance to play against the club's low A affiliate in Jupiter for a daily wage of $150. So it was basically like calling all former college players or people who maybe were former professionals or something, you can come scrimmage against our low A team and we will pay you like a day rate for this basically. And this was certainly out of the box.

When I saw it, I was like, this is an effectively wild hypothetical come to mind maybe, because I know that we've discussed years ago before such wonders as trajectory machines existed. I remember talking about how maybe teams, instead of having the old coach just lob in the batting practice fastball, they could just pay a former pro,

someone who's not far removed from being an actual pitcher. Maybe they could pay Joey Gallo, who knows, to come in and throw a higher speed and more realistic batting practice. And that would be more beneficial. And teams have gotten on board with that, whether it's with a machine or whether it's just someone who actually throws game speed batting practice because that's just more helpful from a practice standpoint. So they've done that. So I'm sure that we've discussed the hypothetical of just

have former high level players come out there instead of just having practice that isn't that helpful. It's just old coaches, it's just fungos, it's just various drills. Okay, have actual talented players not far removed from their prime such as they were come and give you a game. But this was weird, not only because it was unorthodox, but also it was kind of like, well, they play a lot of games in this league and so aren't they already playing against minor leaguers? And so when exactly are they going to be practicing against these sort of scrubs that they have drummed up here? I mean, I guess it's kind of cool for those guys who get to like live some semblance of their former professional dreams possibly, but also there were all kinds of concerns from a labor

standpoint about this because the CBA covers the miners now. And so, you know, they're in the union. And so there were some considerations about like, well, is this an attempt to undercut? Like, you know, we're contracting the minor leagues and at the same time, we're kind of like paying people by the day to come play here. And is this an acknowledgement that they need more development, that they need more games? Is this like a competitive advantage? Is this a way to cheap out? It was hard to kind of classify exactly what this was. And there are very strict limits on how many guys you can roster on your domestic affiliates.

And so there's the piece of it that is like the team cheaping out and that is bad. And there's also the piece of it where like, I'm going to be rude to the Marlins here and I apologize, but it's like, you could conceive of a craftier team with better alternatives using this as a way to circumvent the domestic reserve list restrictions. Yeah. I don't even know if that was the intent of this posting. It may well have been, but like I can understand the league being like, hey, because imagine like if they have let this go, then there'd be a listing tomorrow.

I don't know that they would actually do this, but like, there are plenty of teams that pushed back against the notion that the number of guys you could have working out on your complex, on a domestic roster, should be contracted. Like, say the Dodgers. The Dodgers want more guys. They want more guys in their system because they don't mind paying them. Right. So, you know, a team that like has that sort of mentality, if you're allowed to do this, might say to some, you know, young college player who they don't have

enough confidence in to like give a roster spot to, but want to see what they have, they could be like, well, you could come like work out against our club. And then, you know what I mean? Like this is, and if that were the intent, I'd say, it would have gotten a good win. Because I think that the size of the restriction is ridiculous and we're like probably missing out on a couple of good players as a result of it. But I get why the league was like, Hey, so no though. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

So that's what came out here that this was something that was posted on the LinkedIn page of a minor league operations assistant and had not been run by MLB, which this seems like something like this. You might want to say, is this okay? Is this kosher if we do something like this that no other team is really doing? There are scrimmages against college teams in spring training, that sort of thing sometimes.

But to put up a job listing that's like 150 bucks a day, you gotta be available from 12 to five on 10 to 15 home game days per month when the Jupiter Hammerheads are in town. And maybe it was more of like a practice before the game. And then it said, it's a unique opportunity to gain exposure to professional players and coaches, enhance your understanding of high-level training tactics and receive performance data on your practice sessions where applicable. And so they're kind of dangling like, hey, maybe this is a pathway for you to go pro. It's almost like a tryout of some sorts,

but this was maybe the person who posted this jumped the gun. At least the reporting suggests like maybe the team wasn't even totally aware that this was happening in this way or at least- Oh boy, somebody got in trouble. Yeah, or at least that's what they're going with. And the players association reached out to MLB to be like, hey, you seeing this?

Have you asked about this? And by that point, MLB had already talked to the Marlins and this had already been taken down. Right, because the union doesn't want you creating what are effectively non-union jobs. That's not good. Yeah, Robert Stock, the player, he tweeted about this too. And I wonder if these won't turn into a workaround

to sidestep minor league roster restrictions, especially if they sign a player or two from the quote unquote practice squad eventually. So in general, we like a hypothetical. We like a, hey, here's a way to maybe get a bit better or here's something you could do that's kind of unorthodox, but perhaps it's a competitive advantage. And maybe you give people a little exposure to the pros and that's fun for them. But yeah, this is, this is thorny for a number of reasons.

Yes. And I want to be clear. I am not advocating for like scab jobs. I am saying that we should expand, re-expand the number of roster spots and sort of players that they can have on their complex at any given time. Because I think that the restrictions as a result of the contraction of the minors is bad for baseball. That's what I meant. So bring them back and make them union jobs like they are. That's what I'm saying. Now I'm trying to sound like a guy from New Jersey who might be in a union. Doing a lot of bits today. I am so sorry. I don't even know. I'm just tired and my brain is soup. You know, I've got soup brain today. Full soup. Well, here's a bit we could do. We could talk to the possible best pitcher in baseball.

We could. So let's take a quick break. Let's do that. And we will be back with the Pittsburgh Pirates, Paul Skeens. and your journey to the big leagues. Take control of choices that matter. Now the third baseman, Derek Martin, level up your game. That one way back and it's gone. And become a legend because your road to the show starts now.

And the Reds are World Series champions. All right, well, we are joined by Pittsburgh Pirates opening day starter and MLB the Show 25 cover model Paul Skeens. Paul, welcome to Effectively Wild. Yeah, good to be here. Thanks for having me. So I can't really relate to you on an athletic level because you are considerably better at baseball than I am. However, I do feel a kinship with you from an expressiveness standpoint, because like you, I am not a very outwardly excitable person. And that often gets misread as indeference, as low interest,

when in fact, inside I might be bubbling over, who knows? It's like right now you're probably extremely excited to be talking to us, but you're hiding it fairly well. I couldn't tell from the outside. So your girlfriend has called you the King of Nonchalant, and you have referred to your composure, and people have observed this when you won the Rookie of the Year award or when you were just named opening day starter.

Was it similar when you got the call to be on the cover of MLB, the show? Did you contain your excitement? Was there fist pumping? Could there ever be? Is there a scenario where we could see that composure break, or do you see it as an advantage for you on the mound? Yeah, I definitely see it as an advantage. It's how I pitch. So I think me being myself is an advantage. When I found out about the show, it was pretty much what you would expect from me, not from other people.

So I'm glad, it's good to hear someone who relates to me on that standpoint. Yeah, it's tough. People think that we're not happy, but we are. We're excited. Not everyone shows it the same way. I am effectively Wild's resident reactor. I tend to be a bit more emotive than Ben, as our listeners know, but I actually want to go a little further back, because you obviously had a distinguished college baseball career.

Ben isn't much of a college baseball fan, but I am. And I wonder if you can talk about how the experience of the College World Series washed over you compared to getting the call to come up to the majors and then having your first start with the Pirates. Because I can imagine both of those being defined by excitement, but also nerves. They're obviously both momentous, but at very different stages of your career. So how would you contrast those experiences? Very, very similar, but different. So adrenaline is obviously a huge factor. I truly don't

know between my debut and pitching in the College World Series, I don't know which outings I had more adrenaline in. Both of them were definitely different than other starts in terms of the preparation, everything that comes with it. There was a lot of added stuff from the outside that you have to deal with that made it very different from a normal college start or a normal big league start. Adrenaline-wise, pitching in a full stadium is different. I believe you're the first starting pitcher to be on the cover of a video game

in this franchise, at least the main cover, not counting some of the alternates. And I think it's been about a dozen years since really any prominent video game baseball game has had a starting pitcher on the cover. And that kind of ties in with the larger conversation about starting pitchers as stars in this era with some of the injuries or with some of the lower innings totals. There's kind of been this perception that it's harder for a pitcher to be a star the way that they once were. And I wonder whether you think about that at all, whether you think it's possible still for a starter to be a star, it certainly seems to have happened in your case, or whether you would like the starting pitcher to be prominent

in that way that you think back to earlier eras, starters certainly were. Yeah, I mean, just being a starting pitcher, you throw every five games. But the nature of an ace, of a legit starting pitcher is it commands the attention, I think, of fans and, you know, in the stadium and whoever's watching at home that, you know, this is this is their game in a way more so than a star position player would, I think, in any one specific game. Now the position players get to do it every single day, which probably leads to, you know, more of the stardom. But I definitely think it's possible.

Like you said, it's about staying on the field and pitching at a high level. And if somebody can do that, then I think it's very possible for a starting pitcher to be a star. I think when the starting pitcher is a star, you guys hold a narrative focus, right? You're sort of like the main character in a movie, you're guiding us through a game. And you are a throwback in that respect. In some ways, you're obviously getting a ton of attention within the game with your performance and accolades and also your rookie card.

And I'm curious how it has washed over you to know that your rookie card with the debut patch is currently up to a $700,000 bid in its auction I know that this has been a card with the patch that you've been trying to Get you and the Pirates made some very generous offers to the kid who found it But to have it up to 59 bids and $700,000 what with a day to go. With a day to go. Like how does that wash over you that must strike you as absurd on some level?

Yeah, I think it's absurd. To me, it's a piece of paper. But for me, the debut patch, I wore it on my debut. So I guess somebody would be able to share that piece of history with me. And I got to experience the debut. It was my debut and I got to experience it and pitch. So I think that's a little bit better than the card itself. So whatever people want to pay for it, great, but I'm not interested in getting it back. Have you done an inventory to remember what else you were wearing that day? Because suddenly it's

a money-making scheme. It's like, what socks did I have on? I guess Fanatic's got the rest of your jersey that you were wearing that day, but you must have had something like beard clippings from Paul Skeen's debut. There's another million. Yeah, maybe. Maybe I'll throw those in. But yeah, I wasn't savvy enough to track that back in the time. So maybe I'll start tracking it now. I am curious, not that we need to get on too much of a tangent about this, but sort of what the experience has been like for you as you're interacting with autograph seekers and collectors.

Because I live in Arizona, I go to a lot of Fall League games, and even in Fall League, you can observe guys with bags full of baseballs and cards, and they'll send their kids down to get autographs, and their kids will come back and they'll send them down with a fresh round of balls. I imagine it has to be a strange thing for a pro athlete because obviously you want the fans to be excited and you want them to be cheering for you, but it can feel a little predatory at times to have the third round of baseballs going down to a player. So how does that stuff kind of work for you? How do you interact with that?

I think it's pretty easy to tell, I think, when somebody is genuinely is a fan and wants an autograph. The other ones you kind of have to avoid. Yeah. Because it is, you know, predatory. They are trying to make money off our autograph and our, you know, image and likeness. So yeah, I mean, you gotta watch out for it.

I know I sign a lot less than I used to, but not because of that really, because I don't have as much energy for it now. Yeah. We get pulled in a lot of different directions. So it is eye-opening to get to professional baseball and see that stuff. Must be hard for the people who make MLB the show to keep up with your repertoire of pitches, which is ever evolving. So I don't know if they've modeled the cutter yet. I don't know if that's in there, if we're going to need a mid-season update for the Paul Skeen's arsenal,

but tell us a little bit about the experimenting and tinkering you've been doing this spring after the success you had last year and just generally how you think about balancing the value of variety and unpredictability with wanting to throw your best pitches more often. Yeah, I mean, everything you add takes away from something else or it adds to something else.

So we didn't want to add anything that would take away from anything that I'm throwing, you know, obviously the stuff last year worked, but there was some definite ways to go forward that could make us better. So, um, that was the mindset, you know, in the off season, as we were playing around with it, that's the mindset now. And, you know, I don't know what my repertoire is going to look like during the season. I don't know what it's going to look like next season. I think it's ever evolving, you know, as I play around with stuff.

If someone's good enough to throw it in the game, I'm going to throw it in the game and then we'll figure out, you know, how to pitch with it. It's probably tough for the show to figure out what pitches I'm throwing because I think what I'm throwing right now probably isn't exactly what I'm going to be throwing at the end of the year this year. I know it wasn't last year, so it's a, it's a, it's a unique challenge. Hopefully they're up to it. So is it a field based thing?

Is it a metrics based thing? Is it some combination? If you throw a pitch in spring training, is it like a, well, the hitters will tell me if this is effective or not, or is it different to have a pitch play well in spring training and then take a cutter or whatever else you're working on into games that matter more? You know, it might be, it might be different in spring training to the regular season. I really don't know.

That's something that has kind of been eye opening to me in spring training. I'm working on stuff in the same way that hitters are working on stuff. You know, a hitter might come into spring training and say, I'm not going to swing at a fast ball and I'm only going to swing at a breaking ball in zone and I'm going to hit it, you know, for a double or whatever. But you don't know what they're thinking. So it's kind of tough to figure out what they're trying to accomplish as well as, you know, what I'm trying to accomplish and just be as objective as possible. So it is a it is a feel thing. It is a metrics thing. There's some data and there's some feel that goes

into it. And it's a fun balance, you know, trying to figure all that stuff out. As we were preparing for this interview, I was reading some of the other press that you've done before the release of the game and I was surprised to learn that you aren't much of a video game player and I think that the reason I saw was that you actually struggle with some of the dexterity to play it as well as you might, which was surprising to me as a pitcher. So first, I'd love to hear more about the challenge of playing video games as Paul Skeens,

because I was quite surprised. And then also, you know, you have this incredibly busy schedule. You're trying to incorporate a new cutter. You're having to do press availabilities like this. And I'm curious sort of what you do to step away from the field and sort of wind down when you actually have time to yourself. Yeah, I've tried. I was actually talking with somebody about it

today about the, you know, the whole hobby thing, everybody, when you get to pro ball, specifically, I really don't know why. When you get to pro ball, but they always tell you that you need a hobby. You need something outside of baseball. So I've tried a lot of things. I'm packing up my apartment right now to head up to Pittsburgh and I have a guitar in my room that I've played like three or four times because I bought it and I tried it and it didn't work. I didn't feel anything with it. You need finger dexterity for that too, I guess.

Exactly. Yeah. I'm even worse at guitar than video games. So I've tried the whole video game thing. It hasn't worked. So I'm still searching. You've clearly got the dexterity to manipulate pitches though. Is that a different type of dexterity? Obviously it is. Yeah, I guess so. Well, if you teach me the Splinker, I will teach you how to play video games. I don't know if that's a fair trade, but we'll work it out. I'm glad to know that I'm better at something than you at least involving a physical activity.

So that's heartening. I wanted to ask you, Jacob deGrom was talking the other day about how he's been through multiple elbow surgeries and he's realized now that he can take something off of his pitches. And he wants realized now that he can take something off of his pitches. And he wants to, because we were talking about durability and availability earlier. That's his priority now is innings, which I know is something you've talked about too.

And he was saying, well, I was good at 96. So do I need to throw 99 necessarily? Or is it better for me to take something off and stay out there? And that's a realization he's come to in his mid thirties after multiple Tommy John surgeries. I wonder if it's possible to have that epiphany earlier in your career and whether you've thought about it because you throw 99, you sit 99, you're maybe the hardest throwing starting pitcher in baseball.

Do you think about that too? Should I take something off? Maybe it'll hurt me in the short term on a pitch to pitch basis, but maybe it benefits me and my team longterm. Yeah. I mean, I'll say that I did not train VELO, uh, in the off season. I was not trying to gain any VELO. The VELOs that I was throwing in my bullpens, I was not even looking at them. Uh, it's, It's pretty irrelevant.

The Velo is gonna be there. You know, in August, my Velo started to dip a little bit, like a mile an hour, and I was only throwing 98 instead of 99, and some people were, you know, making a big deal out of it, and you know, I stayed on the field and had a good year. So, you know, my Velo right now is probably not as high as it was last year and, you know,

maybe not as high as it will be during the season. It's a weapon. It's a tool that you can use. I do think like there is a difference in the resilience of a 22-year-old body versus a 32-year-old body. But it's, you know, we're always learning. So as long as I'm recovering well, as long as I'm feeling good, my pitches are performing well, that's probably not something that we're going to change a ton. But we'll see.

And yeah, I know guys are so wired for the max effort mindset. Lastly, what percentage of your pitches would you say you are just emptying it out, letting it eat versus, you know, this will be enough to get me through this plate appearance and maybe I'll save something in the tank for later. Yeah. The way I think about it is maximum efficiency, not maximum energy, because you can throw a ball as hard as you can and it'll be three miles an hour slower than if you just sequence correctly.

It's funny how it works, but that's just how it works because I had a coach tell me that you have something like 218 muscles in your body or something like that and the odds of them all firing in the correct sequence every single time, you have a much greater likelihood of winning the lottery than that actually happened. And the higher effort that you throw at, the less likelihood of that happening. So as much as you can sequence correctly, which happens at a lower energy effort percentage, I think, the better off you are. Well, glad to hear that.

We want you to stay out there, protect Paul Skeens at all costs. And maybe it's good that you have the slower heartbeat because some guys, they look at the VELO readings and they want to just juice them up. They want to get it to triple digits and beyond. And you're the king of nonchalant. You're keeping your composure. You're not going to get super excited by the radar readings. So happy to hear that. Wish you the best this season with the Pirates and also in your effort

to get good at guitar and or video games and or find a hobby. Yeah, I appreciate it. All right. It's been a pleasure, Paul. Thank you. All right it's been a pleasure Paul thank you. Yeah thanks so much. Oh thank you guys. Well that went well we thought despite the somewhat promotional circumstances that was quite a pleasant little chat. Thought he was pretty frank even though he was there to be a pitch man for the game he wasn't going to pretend to be a big gamer even though he's not. Pitch man quite literally that was not even intended to be a joke. I guess given the lack of excitability we discussed,

perhaps he's not an ideal hype man to hawk a product, but I appreciated the candor. And even when he didn't have a mind blowing answer, he seemed to seriously consider what we asked. And that's all we can ask from an athlete in an interview. So thanks to Skeens and thanks to you all for listening and hopefully for bearing with us when we delved into political territory.

I timestamped that in case people wanted to skip. But sometimes it can be nice to commiserate. Even if it's a parasocial podcast commiseration, just to hear someone say what you're thinking can be kind of reassuring. One of the problems these days is that these things surface and you wonder, does this even need to be said?

Isn't this self-evident? Have we entirely lost our moral moorings? But it turns out that yes, people evidently do need to say something, so we don't end up back in a world like the one where Jackie Robinson got drafted into a segregated service during a world war against fascists. Some things just keep coming back around. And Effectively Wild episodes will keep coming as long as you support us, which you can do on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly

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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 Effectively Wild. And you can check the show page at fan graphs 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. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. Can you effectively sort through

All of these stats and players in your head isn't a while to repeat them to all of your indifferent family and friends They'll keep you company, they'll keep you sane On a well-beguiled.