Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2315: Eight Bidets a Week

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Roki Sasaki and the Dodgers’ bidets, baseball in The Last of Us, The Simpsons, and the (future) work of Lin-Manuel Miranda, walk-off groundouts, two possibly botched calls, Jesús Luzardo and how skilled teams are at evaluating medicals, a four-homer effort in a loss, the unexpectedly exciting NL West […]

Let's play ball, it's effectively wild. It's effectively wild. It's effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2315 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. So we finally have answers about what it was

that persuaded Roki Sasaki to sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers. All the other teams that are wondering what they did wrong, what could they have done to have him come to their team instead. Now they know it was about the bidets. That's what it was about. This is according to the OC register,

according to Bill Plunkett. Stan Kasten, Dodgers president and CEO, says during our first meeting with Roki, we were telling him about the project we had ongoing to upgrade our clubhouse and facilities. I was telling him about all the amenities we were adding. We're gonna have this and this and facilities. I was telling him about all the amenities we were adding. We're going to have this and this and this. And he asked, are you going to have Japanese style toilets?

And Casten asked Sasaki if that would actually have some bearing on his decision, if having his preferred type of toilet could convince him to sign. And Sasaki said, now it sounds like a joke, but for me, it's pretty important. And he said that their willingness to make changes for his comfort and his fellow players comfort was definitely a factor. I'm sure it had nothing to do with all the other Japanese superstars on the roster and the Dodgers track record of winning and Los Angeles and proximity to Japan and improving pitchers. No, none of that. It was about the bidets and so Casten said done, you got it and it was a good idea that we got from a player and they had to tear up their plans. They were already, they'd

like poured concrete, the cement was drying on the bathroom that they were remodeling and they had to tear it up, start over again. And now they have in the newly renovated home clubhouse, including the manager's office, there are eight sophisticated state-of-the-art multi-function, heated seat, bidet-equipped, Japanese-style toilets. And it's much like my apartment, actually. I don't have eight, but I have multiple, and I'm just like Roki, me and Roki. You have to have a bidet to convince me to sign, too. I am. Okay, so here's the thing, Ben. And look, you have much more bidet experience than I do. Yes, ample experience.

Happy to talk about it. I'm a humble renter and like I... Oh, it's not a permanent installation, you know. You can just, you slap that thing on the seat and you're good to go. This was my question. They're talking about, they're pouring concrete. Oh, they got a rip up.

What? So, and I understand that like, and I don't mean to insult your bidets to be clear, but like I understand, you know, there are bidets and then there are bidets, you know? I have one that's top of the line. So you couldn't possibly insult it. Even Roki Sasaki,

I think would probably be impressed by one of my bidets. Okay. But so then I don't understand why there is a need to involve concrete at all. Yeah. At a certain point, what are we doing here? When I read this story, I had two thoughts. The first is, you know, on the one hand, what an inexpensive way to attract a global superstar, right? To indicate to a guy you're really keen to sign that you're taking this seriously, you're willing to go the distance and do what you can to make sure he science, you know, on the flip side of

that, can you imagine if you like played baseball for the athletics and you're like, we're playing in this minor league park and down in LA, they're putting bidets in, where are bidets? Why are we getting a bidet? Make it nice for us here with a bidet, you know? Bush League, no bidets at all, probably. Yeah, and- That's an unfortunate turn of phrase, given the subject matter. Yeah, I'm sure it wasn't just the fact

that they put in bidets, but maybe it was- It would be so funny if it were. It would be so funny if you was like, no, like, I have really specific sh**y thoughts, and let me tell you, if they're not met, I'm out. Padres, Blue Jays, you blew it. No bidets. That was the difference. No, but even when it comes to the bidets, I'm sure that it was not just bidets or no bidets that made the difference, but maybe their willingness to take the note from him and to cater to his desires that impressed him, perhaps. But really, I think it could pay dividends

for other players if they get into the bidets. And of course, they were exposed to them on their trips abroad. And you go to Japan or other Asian countries, it's just standard. It's hard to find a primitive Western toilet where you actually have to wipe like some sort of medieval peasant

or something and they were wiping them no they were just tossing it out the window I guess or at least that's the that's the perception yeah but you raise a good point about how much actual remodeling had to happen I'm not totally clear on why so they they had poured their concrete, the concrete wasn't even wet around it yet. This was Janet Marie Smith, the Dodgers Executive Vice President for Planning and Development,

who's famed for many previous ballpark projects, Camden Yards most notably. And so, Kastin comes to her and says, we need bidets, and she made the bidets happen. Kastin acknowledged, it took some doing. He won't discuss how much expense it might have added to the $100 million project, a number he also won't confirm.

It actually took some undoing. The bathroom had to be torn apart and not just a little. It was not a simple one-for-one replacement. The new toilets required different plumbing as well as wiring for power. So I don't I don't know. But with my toilets, at least we didn't have to remodel or anything. You just put the seat on there and you plug it in and just hook it up.

And and that's that. But I don't know. Maybe they just didn't have that kind of toilet or something. Anyway, I don't want to invite lifelong envy in you, Ben. Like, I don't want to disrupt your equilibrium in this way, but I need you to entertain the notion that there might be toilets you're not aware of that are even fancier. Yeah, the days I haven't dreamt of in my philosophy.

Right, yeah, like, really... I find it interesting. I'm not going to put a value judgment on this, but I find it interesting in an era where I would describe, you know, we're in the like so-called player empowerment era in a lot of sports, but I think that generally the relationship between teams and players has even in the midst of courting them as free agents, just like at least a little bit of antagonism, right? Because people like power,

they like to maintain the power that they have and teams are in a position of great power. And this is an unusual circumstance in that having given up the right to ask for as much money as he might want, Sasaki had a tremendous amount of leverage, right? Because he expanded his own negotiating pool so broadly by not being expensive.

So maybe this is just the natural exercise of that leverage. But I do find it interesting that they were like, sure, we'll tear up the bathrooms. Like when they said yes to that Maybe they didn't know that to put in the super toilet They would have to like do new I was like did the person they quoted in the piece like just not understand the difference between Concrete and like cock, you know, it's like you get a you put a toilet in you got to put her

Well, there's debate on that in a home improvement circle Some people say you shouldn't because then you can tell if there's a leak more easily. Anyway, I'm not, I'm not here to pass judgment on that either. Don't sound off on in the comments on Plummet. I don't know. But it's just, it's an interesting thing. It's, it's such a clear and convincing expression of the Dodgers profound interest in signing him, which isn't surprising

or particularly strange, but you do set a precedent in terms of what people might think to ask for or the sort of scale of thing they might think to ask for the next time around. Now the Dodgers will be within their rights to the next time someone says, you got to do new plumbing for me, say, you're not Roki Sasaki, like you don't get to ask for that. But, and maybe you say, we don't have to do new plumbing, we've got the super toilets on board. But yeah, you know what team needs bidets probably?

Oh, which one? The Phillies, because they're all milk. You know, might be useful to have a bidet on hand, you know, get up in there. Maybe so. I didn't know which way you were going with that one. But Sasaki did say... Hopefully always out, not in. Sasaki said that none of the other ballparks have them.

So unique, apparently. We're just behind the times. We got to get with them. And I brought this up not because I seriously think it made the difference in the Dodger-Sanin Roki Sasaki, but because it's funny and also because it gave me a chance to advocate for bidets, big bidet guy. I've written about this. You're always on the hunt. I'll see if there's any chance.

As we discussed last week, we try to be so discerning with our sponsorships. We so rarely entertain them. They have to be tied to baseball. They can't be gambling adjacent. You're threading a needle. Is the needle ten? Needles are always ten. Anyway, it's an unusual thing. We don't do it very often.

But I think if a bidet company came to us and were like, we'd like to sponsor Stablast, would we have to rename it the Shablast? Probably. If I could get a bidet out of it, maybe I'd be into that. I don't know. Yeah, I'd do it just to get you a free bidet, but we could also argue that it's a baseball adjacent

now that there is a connection. Right. It's a baseball bidet. If The Last of Us is a baseball show, then bidets are baseball bidets now. Baseball toilets, every single one of them. And Max Muncie is quoted in this piece saying that it's a nice remodel, everyone likes the upgrades. However, he says, I don't know how to use them,

referring to the toilets. I don't know what does what. I don't want to mess with it. I'm here to help. Max, I'm sure there are plenty of Dodger staffers who are on hand to help. Ask your, Roki Sasaki, ask any number of teammates who could probably help you here because it'll change your life. Like it's changed mine. And I wrote about this during the pandemic when people were hoarding toilet paper and I just said, Hey, here's a life hack for you. You barely need any if you just get yourself a bidet, but that's not the only reason. And look, maybe it would help.

We see outbreaks of illness all the time on baseball teams that can, you know, I mean, can you count on these players to be hygienic? It calls to mind that great anecdote from Molly Knight's book about the Dodgers when she reported that just prior to clinching the NL West in 2013, the Dodgers were struggling. Don Mattingly called a team meeting. He told everyone, you gotta loosen up, you gotta stop pressing.

And then Zach Greinke, of all people, stood up, took the floor, said, I've got something to say. The room fell silent. And he said, some of you guys have been doing the number two and not washing your hands. It's not good. I noticed it even happening earlier today. And he said, some of you guys have been doing the number two and not washing your hands. So it's not good. I noticed it even happening earlier today.

So if you guys could just be better about it, that would be great. So Zach Greggie was a Dodger more than a decade, about a dozen years too early. He could have been so happy with the bidet situation. And this could be a concern if guys aren't washing, we know, we see guys with the flu-like symptoms and sometimes they pass it around. And I'm not saying that Mookie Betts fell ill because the Dodgers didn't have bidets yet.

I'm just saying that something could happen, you know. Some sort of matter could come into contact, could be passed around. And so the bidets, I think, are just better all around. As it pertains to bets, are we then given to understand that they do not have bidets at Camelback Ranch, that the Arizona facility is bidetless? One would think, but I can't confirm. Why would one think? If one is pouring concrete to secure the services of Roki Sasaki. Surely we got plumbers down here in the valley, man.

You know, I know that's a weird state, but we're not like uncivilized. So there's that thoughts. Cause, but that's all lead up to my second thought, which has been, and I, again, I say this as a non-Baddei user, you don't still wash your hands afterward? This is an excellent question. Aren't you still meant to wash your hands?

It depends on the bidet. Now, if you have a strong enough stream, I'm not wiping. I'm not doing anything back there. Aren't you? No. Okay, so can I ask you another? I swear to God, we will talk about actual baseball at some juncture here.

But now we're just doing this for a little bit. There's a dryer. There's a dryer. There's a dryer. Okay, so this is gonna be my question. I was like, you're not like, No. You know, what down there, right?

No, it's like, you know, the hand thing. You put your hand under the dryer in a bathroom. It's like that. Okay, but those, wait a minute. Wait, so I guess it doesn't matter because you're not then, you know, having bidet and dried. You're not then like reaching down there and touching your bum, but you those hand dryers often just like plaster the germs around. Like they're, they're not whatever remaining germs,

because people don't wash their hands perfectly, right? They don't do it for long enough. They don't get perfect coverage, et cetera, et cetera. Some stuff is like hard to get off the quality. The soap can make a difference. All of this. All of this. So don't you just end up with like poo bacteria

between in between your butt? Is that a risk? I mean, I imagine this has been tackled by the bidet community. Yeah, it's not free-floating potentially because you're sitting on there as the dryer is in operation presumably anyway. You can of course, you're welcome to wipe if you can spare a square if you want to fast forward through the drying process because you do have to sit there for to wipe if you can spare a square if you wanna fast forward through the drying process because you do have to sit there for a minute

if you actually want it to be thorough. So you can cut the line, so to speak, but there's no need to. That's what I'm saying. You're living in luxury and I highly recommend it. Yeah, so moving on, probably it's that time too. No, not yet. Okay. You're not, no, you're time too. No, sorry, excuse you. No, not yet, okay.

You're not, no, I tried. I tried. So my understanding is that part, I mean part of why they, they, doctors, tell you to wash your hands after you use the restroom is for cleanliness reasons, right, to prevent the spread of fecal-borne illness, like norovirus, which as someone who suffered from that last year I can tell you don't want you do not want that

literally, but Also just that like you go to the bathroom a couple times a day and you're supposed to wash your hands a couple times a Day and it's like a convenient juncture to do that. Yeah, it's not a bad thing to wash your hands regardless But so then are you washing your hands at other points? I am so sorry because you are gonna get really specific feedback on your hygiene habits And I am not gonna have to deal with any of those emails But I am I'm just curious because you know like hand washing is good It's a tricky thing though

Especially in the winter here because it's like you wash your hands and then your hands get dry because of the soap and dah, dah, dah, and it's like, it's already so dry and it's like how much hand lotion can one woman use in a calendar year? I don't wash excessively, I guess. I like to give the immune system a little challenge and it generally rises to it, but if I go out, I mean, I'm dropping off my daughter, picking up my daughter, I'm in a school,

there's lots of kids, grab your hands, toys, I mean, yeah. You have a child who's in school, like you're just screwed regardless. It's a Petri dish. I don't mean to say that you shouldn't try to prevent illness because I think trying probably does prevent a good bit of illness and if none of you tried,

then you'd all really be sick all the time but also realistically, you're just gonna be a freaking sick dude. Yeah. All right now we can entertain questions via email if people want to know more but I assume most people don't so it's funny you mentioned The Last of Us being a baseball show now it has been a baseball show almost from the start in fact Sam Miller wrote about this a couple of years ago. Very early on. Yeah. Yeah. When season one was on about how it was a baseball show, there was a baseball on the show, made it a baseball show by Sam's definition. But there was a more explicit baseball reference

in the most recent episode. No spoilers. No spoilers. Cause okay. So I got to say this to our listeners. I need to set up very, I need to calibrate very specifically for people because our listeners will know that last year I did a very good job or two years ago, when was the last of us on last? Two years ago. Two years ago. I was, I was up to date.

I watched it every week and was immune from spoilers. Unlike mushrooms. I would not presumably be immune from the cordyceps. But anyway, I need our listeners to know that I did have the events of episode two spoiled to me in the New Yorker of all freaking places. It's a very silly sentence to say. So I know that, but I have not actually watched that episode yet. I know the broad strokes of what happened

because of the New Yorker. Don't worry anyone. We're not going to say anything about that, but this is- Sure, but I'm just, I'm saying in case we get emails, I have not yet watched two and three of this season. I've seen the premiere, but I've not watched the next two episodes. So if you decide to respond to this, well, I have been spoiled about some events, momentous events. I have not watched those episodes and I don't know what happens in the third one. So I just, I say this as a plea that I will watch them

when my baseline tolerance for apocalypse is higher than it is right at this particular moment. But I just, this is my plea to like, don't spoil it any further for me. Not you, but just in case we get emails about this, that's where I'm at in my watching. Important PSA. So yeah, there's in season one, there's a famous scene, there's a drafts on a baseball field. Yeah, it's cool famous scene, there's a drafts on a baseball field. Yeah, it's cool. And yeah, it's nice.

And in this one, in episode three, there's a baseball game going on. And the character Gail, who is an original character, not in the game, but is sort of a source of some levity, which is in fairly short supply in this world and this show and played by the excellent Catherine O'Hara. She's watching this baseball game being played and she makes a comment about how she used to be a Tigers season ticket holder. And we see there's all

sorts of flubs going on here. It's like that game ending multi-error play by the Rangers the other night where they're just throwing the ball all over the place. The same thing is sort of happening here, which is a little more understandable because this is not the big leagues. It's a post-apocalyptic Jackson. But in this case, she makes the observation

that this team looks like the 03 squad. So a little joke at the expense of the 2003 Tigers. Yeah. And this is not even the first mainstream media reference in recent years to the 2003 Tigers because it called to mind in Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness, the Sam Raimi MCU movie. You can spoil that to your heart's content.

I'm never gonna see it. Well, I won't, but there was a reference to the 2003 Tigers there too, because multiverse is in the title, and they go to a different universe, and there are some kids talking about how you know who's the best, the 2003 Tigers. So, just kind of situating you in this alternate universe, where the 2003 Tigers are not one of the worst teams of all time, but actually a good team. And that's a little joke because Sam Raimi of that film is a Detroit guy, is a Tigers fan.

So, you know, he just stuck that in there. But now we're up to two 2003 Tigers jokes, which seems fairly niche. I would not imagine that most viewers of The Last of Us are getting that reference and clocking exactly what she means. I guess you can infer, you can pick it up from context clues that they must have been bad. But that is quite a coincidence or not really a coincidence but unexpected that we'd get two references

to the 2003 Tigers, the lowly 2003 Tigers in some big important movies slash TV shows that many people are watching. And so that does make me wonder then, are we gonna get a wave of 2024 White Sox references? Just 20 years down the road, are people gonna be reminiscing about that? Maybe it depends on whether instead

we're talking about the 2025 White Sox or the 2025 Rockies for that matter. There are lots of options for terrible teams these days, but I do wonder whether that's a sneak preview of some other references to abysmal baseball teams showing up where we least expect them. What IP do I have to commit to watching to have a multiverse where the Mariners have both attended and won a World Series. Yeah, that must have happened.

I don't know whether Dr. Strange and the Multiverse of Madness covered that one, but yeah, build the worlds that you want to see. And hey, aren't they still in first place now? So, you know, maybe this will be that universe. We'll see. Try not to look at them too hard. You know, it's like you glance

and you look away real quick because you're like, if they know they're being observed, they'll start behaving differently. I can't have this be my very special particle, even though they are my very special particle. Yeah. I've been watching a lot of baseball media or baseball references in major media. So the Simpsons just did another baseball episode and I watched it. It was not another Homer at the Bat.

I don't think it's gonna go down in legend like that. We're in season 36 here, so you have to calibrate your expectations accordingly. It was mildly entertaining. They made a joke about I think every team in this episode at some point including your Mariners there was just a little throw away thing that you see on a screen and it's like something about how in Seattle there's no pressure to win or something which it's not quite accurate there's

actually I guess a lot of pressure to win. In fact the exact opposite is true. Yeah they have just not risen to that pressure. And that's why there is more and more pressure every year. Yeah, this is the year. Maybe this is the year, but. Maybe this is the year, Ben. Yeah, the premise of the episode, which is the most recent one, if you wanna catch up on it, it was kind of of interest to Effectively Wild.

Again, the execution of it was very latter day Simpsons. It's called Abe League of their Mo, which is a strange, strange reference, but it's a Abe and Mo episode. And they're going to see the isotopes and they're sort of the only two fans and they bond over that. And then there's a Shohei Otani type figure who's a two-way player, except that he's European and he comes to the isotopes in place. He actually pitches two-handed for some reason. Yeah. And he is a big hulking guy. But then it actually turns into a critique of sports betting. This guy, this two-way star, he gets into sports betting

and Moe's like, how did this happen? How did you get into this? And then he looks around and he's like surrounded by billboards advertising sports betting. So, you know, kind of, kind of on point. And it's a critique of the sports industry and the constant inundation by sports betting. So yeah, it touched on some themes

that we discuss here on Effectively Wild. Two-way superstars, sports betting, et cetera. But hit or miss when it came to the actual writing and jokes, but if you're looking for some baseball media, have at it. And also there was a tease for some potential baseball media reported by Playbill, of all places. I saw.

And the news was that Lin-Manuel Miranda is working on a baseball film. Now, the subhead was the film will center on the Molina brothers, three World Series-winning catchers in Major League Baseball. And this is very brief, it's not detailed. And so I'm not sure exactly what form this is taking. And I can't even completely conclude that this is definitely a Molina movie from what Lin-Manuel said here.

The quote is, I'll tell you something I'm working on. The Molina brothers who are from my dad's hometown of Vega Alta, Puerto Rico. Vega Alta is home to like an appalling number of major league baseball players. It's really incredible. So to be able to- Any way to say that.

Yeah, appalling. Yeah. So to be able to honor that in a movie is something we're really actively trying to do. So I can't tell if this is actually a Molina Brothers movie or it's a Vega Alta movie or it's a baseball in Puerto Rico movie or all of the above, perhaps.

And look, I'm here again. I'll preemptively put out the notice here. I'm available as a baseball movie consultant. Yeah, and I think we're quite well qualified for this one, given our affinity for catchers. Now, granted, if you gave me creative control over the Molina Brothers movie, yeah, it would be a Jose Molina biopic. And then maybe Benji would appear and maybe we could find some time for Yadi in there. He'd be in the background in some of the Jose scenes,

I think. So you'd probably have to restrain my impulse to make it all about Jose. But I think I could help otherwise. I'm not even totally sure if this is like a scripted, dramatized movie or if this is a documentary of some sorts. I mean, he just, I don't know, he said it's a movie. It could very well be a documentary. So I have no idea what this will be exactly. I doubt it's a musical, though a Molina musical

is something I would watch. So if Lynn is interested in going down that path, I think I'd watch that. Give me the big Jose Molina framing musical number. That seems like something that I would dream about and could come to life somehow. So yeah, I don't know if it'll take that form. Yeah, I mean, look, this is why you need both of us right because

We we both care about Catchers we both care about framing. We have a lot to say on that subject, but you have You know, it's like they wouldn't let me write like the magazine, you know, musical on my own. That would, that would be fan service. That would be strange. It would be strange on a number of levels, I shall acknowledge, but they wouldn't, they wouldn't let me do that. So, you know, I can be there to say, hey, Ben, you know, like this is a little much we're getting, we're getting a little in the weeds on this, that and the other thing with your favorite Molina and you can go, oh, Meg's right. And then we'll write a, help him write a good movie.

You know? Yep. Look, that's another way for me to get a bidet. As if we have a consulting fee on a major motion picture. Yeah. Let's get some residuals. That'd be nice. Yeah.

We'd be in bidets for decades to come. We'd be set for life. Don't they last a long time? Or how often? Mine have, yeah. I haven't had to replace a bidet. I was just about to ask a really gross question. I was like, does how much you use it

like make a difference at how long it lasts? Maybe, but one of my models is self-cleaning, at least the fancy one. So I mean, you should probably still do some supplementary cleaning. I mean, you should probably still do some supplementary cleaning. But yeah, yeah. Anyway, it does reinforce my sense that there's still a lot of baseball media out there, even though we don't get true blue major motion

picture baseball movies anymore. So much, if aside the golden age of the baseball movie has passed us by, but we still get a lot of baseball references and even some unlikely ones. So I am heartened by the fact that that keeps happening and pops up in various incarnations. Me too. So a few baseball related things,

because we have kind of talked about baseball, but not actual on-field baseball to this point. So one thing that David Laurela has touched on a couple times that kind of caught my fancy, he's written about this in the Sunday Notes and I'd like to do some deeper stat blasting on this, but he noted a couple of weeks ago on April 10th at Fenway, the Red Sox walked off the Blue Jays on a 4-3 ground out. So it was the bottom of the 10th inning and Blue Jays second baseman, Andres Jimenez, bobbled the ball and so he didn't have a chance to get the runner at home, the winning

walk-off run. And so he could have just held the ball at that point because what difference does it make? The runner is going to score regardless, but he still threw to first and he got the force out. He got the meaningless out. Yeah. Lost the game, but it was on a walk off four, three ground out. And stat heads Katie Sharp of baseball reference answered

David's unspoken query and noted that since 1914, there have now been a total of 17 instances where the winning run scored from third base on a ground ball that was fielded by the second baseman and thrown to first for an out. But this was the first time it had happened, evidently, since 1997. So we'd gone more than a quarter century there without seeing a

walk-off 4-3 ground-out, which is why it caught David's eye. And I'd like to do some deeper stat blasting and find out if there are other cases. I mean, what about walk-off 6-3 ground-outs? Or, you know, like 5-3 ground-outs. What about other other walk-off situations where an out was recorded somewhat meaninglessly, but just go through the motions, I guess. And I think I would want to do that. Maybe I think if I were a player, there's no particular purpose to it. I wonder if the pitcher appreciates it because aren't you, you're kind of

helping that guy's ERA maybe just getting an out. A pitcher still care about ERAs. I mean, I guess it doesn't annoy hitters, you know, it could annoy hitters. Yeah. It's almost like, yeah, it's like, we're not going to give you the satisfaction. Right. Now I, I, right.

I guess that it's going to be an error regardless, presumably. So it's not like the hitter's going to get a hit. Get a hit, yeah. Yeah. But still, you'd think that the pitcher might appreciate getting that out. And it's just, it's like a small little moral victory. It's almost like, you know how you hear teams say, like if they lose or they fall behind by a lot of runs, but then they claw their way back and they don't come all the way back,

but they say at least that the momentum was kind of with them like coming into the next game, they're thinking, we put up a fight. And I always thought as a fan, it was actually more deflating to lose that way. Like I'd really rather be blown out than to mount an improbable, incredible comeback and then fall just short. That is much more demoralizing to me as a spectator than just to be blown out and to

give up on that game early. But I guess I could understand how as a player, as a team, you might think, okay, we, we bounced back. We've got some fight. We've got some pluck in this team. We never say die, right? So maybe there's something to that. It's like, hey, we're going to go down kicking and screaming. You know, you got to tear the uniforms off our back that day.

We're not going to give you the satisfaction of just scoring that run and also getting the first cleanly. We're going to retire that guy at first. We're going to try to stick to the fundamentals after we initially screw up. So I sort of applaud that. I guess it's, it's kind of eye wash, maybe, except I don't know that you even get credit for it, really. It's not even eye wash because it's, I don't know that anyone would like credit your hustle or something really, although I guess I kind of am right now. But yeah, I think on the

whole, it's just sort of maybe it's muscle memory. Maybe you do it without even thinking. It's like, well, I guess I'll get the out. Or maybe there is some thought process. Maybe it's sort of saving face too. It's like, well, I just bobbled that and I feel bad. And I guess I could just kick rocks and do some pebble hunting, as Sam Substack says, and just like look down for blaming the dirt that caused me to bobble that ball, but maybe I could do something not really useful but looking productive at least to get the out here, show that I can complete an athletic play. I just I think it's kind of quirky and fun and I think I would try to do it if I were in that situation. I think that if it were me, I would, and I were the pitcher,

like is it eye wash? I guess sure. But it's, I don't know, I would find it to be meaningful. I wash like we're gonna, we're gonna finish this thing. I don't know. I think having closures like really important in life and sometimes hard to come by, you know, I'm a I'm a ruminator Not like as a kind of animal. That's a good yuck But I'm a I'm a ruminator and it can be counterproductive

You know sometimes it helps to Sit with something for a long time because you work your way through it and you find You know real resolution and clarity on the other end of it. But sometimes you got to be able to brush off and move on. And I would think like ending on the, you know, we didn't, we didn't quite get it done, but we got it done, you know, and it's dusted and now we can Sally forth. I bet they say Sally forth a lot in club houses. I bet there's just like ringing off the walls constantly.

While they're sitting on their bidets, they just talk about Sallying forth. How many bidets do you think that they have? The Dodgers have eight currently. I know exactly. Okay, yes, but like that is, you can't all be, it's a 26 minute roster and all the coaches, you can't all be on a bidet at the same time.

Also, if you heard a person in the bathroom saying, Saturday 4th, you'd be like, I can't go in there for like half an hour. It's gonna smell real bad, you know? Like this is what I'm saying. That's bad clubhouse behavior. I love Granky so much, man. Me too, I miss him.

Cause you know that there were people in that room that day who blushed, like unbidden, and then were like, yeah, I'm the one who dropped a stinky deuce and then did not wash my hands. Gotta wash your hands, I'm telling you. You only need to get, I wash my hands. I want people, I worry that having said I had neurovirus,

the people that are not washing their hands, I wash my hands, wash my hands. But you know, you like go and you get a salad and who knows what's going on over there? You don't know if that person's washing their hands. I don't know where it came from, probably from that salad that one time. Anyway, really bad, not good.

You don't want it. You don't want it. People probably know too much about my bathroom as it is, especially our Patreon supporters who get the privilege of finding out even more about it on our bonus episodes. That's what you get for signing up. Anyway, I do miss Zach Greinke though. He really has just sort of disappeared from public view, at least from my public view.

I haven't, yeah, I think there were a couple ways that that could have gone because on the one hand it seemed like, yeah, like he certainly wasn't interested in publicity or doing interviews as it was. And so when he was finally freed from that obligation and imposition, then good for him that you just never hear about him anymore because it means he doesn't have to talk to anyone he doesn't want to talk to. However, he was always hailed as someone with great baseball smarts who seemed like he might want to be around the game. And even when he was active,

he was interested in scouting and the draft and he would like be in the draft room and everything. And so there was part of me that thoughts, well, maybe he will stick around the game and maybe he will just continue to generate Zach Granke stories just as a member of a coaching staff or a front office potentially. And maybe he will, maybe he stories just as a member of a coaching staff or a front office potentially And maybe he will maybe he's just taking a breather. Has he even officially retired?

I don't know the answer to that. I don't think he's officially Announced it but I know he threw out a first pitch. He's thrown out at least one first pitch which seems sort of Ceremonial, but I don't know that he's officially called it or signed a one day contract or something like that. I don't know that he'd be the type to do that anyway. But yeah, I was kind of hoping there'd be one last ride for him even though he was looking kind of cooked at the end, but I do miss him.

I miss his presence, though he left us a lifetime of anecdotes, even if we never hear from him again I wonder I I remember seeing him I think I told you this and told our listeners this like I saw him at the pack 12 tournament last year Oh, yeah, all right P pack the pack all right P to the pack and your tournament you guys had a great Pressbox spread took good care of everybody. That was nice He hasn't been floating around the valley to my knowledge since then. But I don't know, maybe, you know, I think that for some of these guys, like they, they get to a point

where they're done. And like, they have, I don't know how old Zach Granky's children are, but they have like, at least, you know, school age kids. And if you're in a position where you can like take a little time, spend some time with the family after. Yeah, make up for lost time, yeah. Yeah, that might be quite nice and it doesn't preclude you returning at some point and you know, being part of the game.

I'm sure that there are plenty of teams that would be interested in having him as a coach, as a special advisor or whatever, but what's the rush, you know? I don't recall how old his kids are either, but I'm sure that he has delivered the same message to them about the importance of washing their hands after going number two.

I would think so, you know? Kids get that message a lot about hand washing. It's adults where it gets very, it get kind of dicey, you know? Right. Well, it's, they're playing a kid's game out there and evidently- There you go, gotta wash your hands. ... in the clubhouse bathroom as well. Yeah. Yeah. They're young in, young at heart. It's their inner kids sometimes coming out and forgetting to wash their hands until they're reminded and shamed, publicly shamed, you know, it's, it's good to have public shaming at times when it's merited and, uh, you know,

in some sense, there's not enough of that going on, or at least not enough people taking it to heart. And so, I think, I think the immunity is the bigger problem. We need Zach Renke is the clubhouse ombudsman to just call everyone out on this behavior for all we know. He's just, he's stationed like one of those bathroom attendants, you know, who hands you the towel to wipe with or something. Maybe he's just doing that out there, just reminding everyone to wipe when they go

number two. It's pretty important. Yeah. Couple of replay flubs lately or just non-reviewable plays. We never talked about the controversial call on the Aaron Judge, maybe Homer. Yeah. That was called foul, ruled foul. A foul ball just fell. A bullet down the line. Look at there. See from that angle it was fair right? Into the tree. Oh my god.

Strike three so from what would have been a long home run he strikes out looking. Doesn't like that call. And he tells Adam Beck quickly out of the dugout and Aaron Boone just got thrown out. I think that was a home run personally. It sure looked like one. It sure looked like a home run. And really, it's not like Aaron Judge has home runs to spare. So I mean, we got to give the guy a dinger when he finally hits one, you know, like,

you don't want to discourage him. Good job, Aaron. You connected with, you really hit that one hard. You want him to be rewarded when he hits the ball hard. It just happens so rarely. So I was scanning his stats and just thinking, gosh, if only, if only that ball had been called a home run, then we'd really be marveling at his triple slash line. Then it'd be pretty impressive as it is. It's a,

not too shabby given that perhaps the umpires conspired against him. There was also a triple play the other day that stood caused a triple play controversy because there was an out that should not have been. It seems like based on the replay. Line drive, Nathaniel Lowe. Pick it up. Come on, yes. We got it. Let's go. They're saying he caught the line drive. Go. Woo.

That's a triple play. It is not a reviewable play whether a ball is caught or trapped on the infield, but it hit the ground. So it was a bad call. This was a Met Snats game and Jesse Winker lined a ball to the Nationals first baseman, Nathaniel Lowe, and the umpires ruled it a catch.

And the rest is history. The play proceeded from there. And Lowe threw to C.J. Abrams at second. He touched the base and Nimmo was off the base. And then Abrams tagged Mark Vientos for the triple play. And it was a 107 mile per hour line drive, and it can be tough to tell whether you trapped it or you actually gloved it on the fly,

and looked like it hit the ground on the replay. But not reviewable in this case, because it's in the infield, and so it can't be reviewed. And so I always think, most of the time when something is not reviewable, I always think like, couldn't it be though? Like most of the exceptions,

I kind of feel like, yeah, but it kind of could be though. Right? Like according to the replay review rules, flies and liners fielded in the infield, I guess we would call that a pop-up if it's fielded in the infield, I guess we would call that a pop-up if it's a fly in the infield, are not eligible to be reviewed. Obviously you can review catches in the outfield. Right. And of course the Mets agreed that this should be reviewable and Carlos Mendoza, Mets manager, said yeah that's

just frustrating that a play like that with so much impact not only in that inning but in the game it's first and second, nobody out. And before you know it, you're out of the inning and there's nothing you can do about it. I was asking for them to get together. And it was just a pretty frustrating play. And the UMPs told him he said that if somebody had seen it, they would have gone to Alfonso who was at first base. But yet Nimmo said that with how umpires now review plays in a time efficient manner that all catches should be able to be reviewed. I do wish it could be reviewed, I wish that all catches could be reviewed, I get it's in the infield but that plays happening in front of the first base umpire where he really doesn't have a great read on it which is a good point. Hard to tell from behind whether that was GloVe just off the ground or it did actually catch the ground first. And the only guy who really does have a great read, Nimmo continued, is Homeplate and maybe, depending on where the third base Empire is and maybe second,

so basically everyone else I guess. But yeah, he's not perfectly positioned to call that and maybe no one saw it perfectly. And so I understand why there are some replay exceptions, but oftentimes I do kind of think we've come this far. We could go a little bit further. I know there are people who want to roll things back and not have as much replay, or at least not the process that we have now, but I'm generally pro-replay.

I am too, and I think that one of the concerns around expanding the universe of plays that is open to replay review is just that it might bog the game down. But if people have, if teams have the same number of challenges, I don't think there's a ton of risk of that. You know, I understand that like if you make successful challenges, you keep having them. I suppose you could, you know, extend the chain forever that way. But especially on something like this, where it's, it is so important. I really

do think that you ought to be able to say, Hey, you should, you should take a look at that. Or if you're uncomfortable with that notion, like it sort of expand the understanding of what the crew chief can call for himself, right? And say like, look, we really got to look at that, you know, no, he didn't have a clear line of sight to it. And we, you know, we really need to get this play right, because it's gonna potentially determine the outcome of the game. So I don't know, I think you got to be able to correct that stuff in real time because you you have the exact same problem. And I didn't watch this in real time.

So I'm not sure how good the broadcast angles were. But in general, and stuff like this, like you have, you just have a much better view of what's going on at home. And so you end up with this disconnect between the folks, both the umpires and then the fans in the stand, and then the fans in the stand and then the people watching at home seeing it slow down to like super slow mo speeds and be like, oh my God, he didn't catch it or he did or what is it? What have you? And I think just give people the same number of challenges and say, have, have at it. I mean, I think

that some of the like judgment call stuff should be subject to replay review, but I know I'm in the minority on that one. Yeah, the difficulty, I guess, is that what do you do with the runners if you did review it? Like if it's called a catch on the field and then it's overturned via replay review, and then it's kind of a mess, right? Because the play shouldn't have ended. And so... Yeah, but there are other plays where, you know, you end up having to place the runner

and there's a little bit of judgment and discretion there. I don't know. I feel like that's a sort outable sort of problem. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean, you could just, let's do it over, I guess, because either way someone gets sort of screwed in that situation. Yeah. Let's just take a mulligan on that one. There's no way that would be the outcome that they arrived at. They would not be like, oh yeah, do it again. They'd be like, no, we're not making him throw more pitches. We're not giving him more chances.

Like there's no way that that would be what they would ultimately settle on. I don't think. Because you don't want to assume outs. I mean, you can't assume the double play as the saying goes. And so maybe just everyone could be safe in this situation because he didn't catch the ball and all the subsequent things kind of depended on that being ruled a catch. But I know that there may be some situations

where it could get kind of thorny. But yeah, I mean, something like this, since it's a catch and not a catch and that just feels like something that we're kind of used to. I guess it doesn't come into play all that often. I think it would sort of surprise people that, oh, you can't review that. That's weird because we're used to catches in the outfield that are potentially traps being reviewed. But that's maybe all the more reason to try to figure out something

because it's just like they're both catch plays. It's the same kind of play essentially and so it just seems sort of inconsistent. I don't know I mean in the infield obviously you have infield fly rule and so there's all kinds of complications here so there could be some sort of amendment to that too but yeah it's just it seems suboptimal. I agree. Yeah and it was also kind of awkward because then MLB puts it on social media because hey, Triple Play, that's historic, right? And then of course gets kind of dragged in ratios.

Oh yeah, I bet they did. I wonder if that was a debate in the social media channel at MLB headquarters. Like something historic just happened. And so in any other circumstance, we would certainly make a fairly big deal about the fact that this was a triple play. But also we know that people who are watching this triple play

are just going to see that it shouldn't have been one. So what do we do? But I think they did ultimately do it because, hey, it goes into the history books. Maybe they were like, we because hey, it goes into the history books. Maybe they were like, we have to put it out there because if we don't, people will think that there's some sort of like conspiracy related to.

Stripes and effect with the. Yeah, we gotta just eat it for a couple hours and then people will move on to some other controversy, which, you know, that's not a bad assumption in our day and age. So, yeah, maybe. So in the interest of reviewing incorrect calls, or at least incomplete ones, we got a couple people writing in about big bat flips. Big bat tosses was a suggestion for what we would call it, though that to me, a toss suggests, I think more lateral movement in my mind.

Like you're, you're throwing it somewhere, not just up. I don't know whether that tracks, but at least that's what I think. Oh, you tossed it. It probably was like tossed to the side as opposed to straight up and down, which is kind of the Lugo Caminero examples. Now I'm going to be stuck on my understanding of the word toss. Yeah, but like when you... I think of like a ring toss or something.

Oh, okay. Like the bag toss. Or a toss in the infield. You toss it to somewhere, to something, as opposed to a flip could kind of be just up. But you can toss things up. You can. I guess you can. It's literally a phrase, toss up, it means something different though.

Yeah, I was gonna say that toss implies overhand to me, but I don't think, you know what, maybe it does. Maybe it does. Wow. Because I was gonna say. I've thought about this word so much more than I have. That's amazing. I'm thinking it through in real time with you and everyone else who's stuck with us this long.

Cause I think a toss, yeah, that seems to me like an overhand. I don't know that I would say, cause I would say a flip if I meant an underhand toss, you know, if you're just a underhand, but I did just say underhand toss, but I guess I would specify underhand toss. And if I did leave it unspecified, I would assume overhand. That's what I'm saying.

But then again, I just said, you know, ring toss, beanbag toss, that would typically be underhand, I guess. But in a baseball context, if I hear toss, I don't know, I kind of think maybe not underhand. I think, I guess sitting here, I would assume that tosses are underhand and throws are overhand. Yeah. But you can throw underhand. I mean, to be clear, these are malleable categories and I'm only just now thinking about it because I haven't spent a lot of time with the word toss.

Now it doesn't mean anything, you know? Yes, we've reached the semantic satiation point. But I think, yeah, I guess you could do it for both. I just lean toward overhand with toss and underhand with flip. Can we all agree that flip is underhand? Yeah, flip it over there. Conclusive, yeah.

Flip it over there. But a couple of people wrote in to suggest that maybe before Kim and Arrow, before Lugo, there was Wilson Contreras in 2020, and that maybe this was the Ur-high bat flip. Oh. That's higher than the ball. Get it. Oh.

Oh my. Christian wrote in to say, I wanted to bring to your attention this bat flip from Wilson Contreras in 2020, which I will link to for you and also for everyone else just to jog your your memory. It's hard to compare the height to those two. There's not a great shot that I can find that puts it in perspective with the players on the field. To me it looks like it probably didn't go quite as high but as you mentioned this one was in an MLB game unlike the others also one-handed similar to Lugo's but but with less windup motion. So yeah, there was a little less of a body English

just effort put into it. Longtime listener, writer, Matt Trueblood, also wrote in to say, he's not a connoisseur of bat flips, but it's always seemed to me that Kamenero and now Lugo have basically trod the trail blazed in MLB by Wilson Contreras. It's just that Contreras has came in an empty park and Matt says if we want to say 2020 doesn't count, he's fine with that. But he thinks it's similar to Lugo's

in terms of height, spin, et cetera. I am just now getting to the part where they're gonna show me the flip. I think here's the replay to show it Oh, yeah, here we go. This was a home run Okay, so this highlight is just undoing my psyche Ben. Let me tell you why I It's not the things I want to like clarify my thoughts on the 2020 of it all It's not that I don't think 2020 doesn't count. It's that I don't remember anything from this season like the number of things I genuinely recall from that season, nay, that year, very limited. Just like my memory of that year is real poor. I don't think I'm alone in this experience. And I'm grappling with that not only because I don't have any memory of this bat flip,

but, you know, Dylan Cease is the pitcher in this highlight. And I had forgotten what he looked like without facial hair, to the point that when he shaved his beard a couple of weeks ago, I was like, who is this stranger pitching for the San Diego Padres? Like, we were done doing the joke about how they have limitless roster spaces, and yet here is a man I've never seen before in my entire human existence pitching a good game for them. No, no, had seen him cleanly shaved before.

Apparently, don't, but I, no memory of it. What are we talking about? It went very high. It did go high, but we don't, at I, no memory of it. What are we talking about? It went very high. It did go high, but we don't, at least in what I've seen, we don't really just get a great view of it. It's another one where it crosses into the frame. You're watching the ball sail and then the bat gracefully,

somewhat beautifully, end over end in slow motion is sailing through the air as well. But yeah, it's hard to gauge exactly how high it is. But it almost has to be higher than any other MLB bat flip I can summon to memory. So yeah, we see the launch and then we see when it's kind of at its apex or close to it, but we don't see the full trajectory.

It's hard to tell. Yeah, it is hard to tell. I don't know. But yeah, I'm okay with calling that a trailblazer, and I don't know whether it's as high, but we could give that the leader in the clubhouse, at least for now. Okay, do you have confidence in teams' individual ability

to assess medicals for a player? Like, do you think that that's a skill, a repeatable skill? Would you guess that if one team looks at a player's medicals and says, oh, there's a red flag here, this is concerning, we don't want this guy, and another team says, well, we'll take him. Do you think that that is a demonstrable skill that if we could somehow know that, uh, you know, each time that there was a ruling by a certain medical staff and there wasn't turnover on that staff, that

there would be real demonstrated difference there in terms of diagnostic ability and difference in diagnostic ability. Yeah. Um, so I think the answer to that is yes, but I also want to allow for, I think what we sometimes are attributing to a difference of diagnosis is really a difference in risk tolerance. So, and I, I would even venture to say that I think that that is the more And I would even venture to say that I think that that is the more frequently occurring scenario. That sometimes, you know, we'll see a trade get quashed, squashed, quashed, quashed, squashed, squished. It could be either.

I think either quash or squash could work in this context. Quashed. A trade will fall apart. And then later that day, sometimes this happens within the context of the trade line fairly often, that same player will be on the move to somewhere else, right? And either we know about the first trade falling through or in the TikTok that emerges of the trade

that was actually consummated later, we learned that other teams had interests, but there were concerns about the medical. And I think that quite frequently when that scenario unfolds, it's not that Dr. A with the name of team you think does a good job with medicals, like that has a reputation for having good medicals. I don't even know. You don't have to. Gosh, I don't even know. You don't have to. Yeah. You don't have to.

So, Dr. A with Team A looks at a scan and says, oh my God, there's a squirrel in his elbow. And then Dr. B with Team B looks at that same scan and is like, no squirrels as far as I'm concerned. And then they trade for that guy and he blows out two weeks later. Right? Like, I don't think that that is tends to be what happens. I think that more often than not, what will happen is team a doctor, Dr. A with team A looks at those scans and I love that you can't see me right now. But I'm like looking at my screen as

and doing gestures as if I am looking at a scan and I am not a doctor with any team and you can't see me. So why am I doing that? Who could say? Anyway, I think that what more often happens is he looks at the scan, they look at the scan and they go, you know, I think that we're seeing some ligament damage in the elbow and we don't know what's going to happen there, but we really can't afford to incur additional injury risk. And so this isn't the guy for us. And then Dr. B with Team B looks at that and goes, look, there's some amount of wear and tear in the ligament

and the chances that this guy needs surgery down the road are X, but hey, we're not trying to win this year. We like this guy. That's a risk that we're willing to take, or this isn't unusual relative to the normal wear and tear we would see in a picture, whatever, you know, they, they have a different sort of risk assessment. And I think that that difference in risk assessment is often

driven by like where in the competitive cycle, a given team is. So the way, and you know, it's going to be informed by their organizational depth. It's going to be informed by how significant of an acquisition it is. It's going to be informed by any number of things. But I think that that constellation of considerations is much more often what determines whether or not a trade goes through or not, or a signing goes through or not than a fundamental disagreement in the diagnosis. That I think does occur. And you know, it seems like it would have to within the baseball context, because it does within the medical context more broadly. But I don't know that there's

like an enormous difference in sort of the diagnostic acumen of different teams. And I am even skeptical of the notion that there is a huge amount of difference in the injury prevention skills of different teams, which isn't to say that it isn't there at all. And you know, there, we can all we hear your Mets jokes reverberating there, we can all, we hear your meth jokes reverberating across our email box, like we hear them all. And they're all very funny. I know that there are teams that have had worse luck with keeping players, particularly pitchers healthy than others. But I think that more often than not, that

is the result of them having a different sort of baseline tolerance for injury risk on the front end of the acquisition, wherever in the sort of player acquisition chain it comes than anything else. But maybe I'm wrong. Right. It's just hard with the way that pitchers are used these days by basically every team just airing it out all the time to make that much of a difference maybe. And so maybe it is just about evaluating the injury risk

or then yes, your tolerance for risk or your ability to have some sort of buffer when things inevitably go wrong. But I brought this up because of the report by Ken Rosenthal that the Cubs had tried to trade for Jesus Sosardo in December, and they actually had a trade in place with the Marlins, but backed out after reviewing his medical records

and they had concerns about Jesus Lizardo's back and elbow. And I don't think it would come as a shock to anyone that there could have been concerns about Jesus Lizardo's body and medical records. So I do enjoy this genre of story though. I don't really go in for rumors as they're happening much anymore, but I do like the retroactive, when it's real,

when it's not just a fake, they tried sort of situation, but like an alternate history of we actually agreed on a trade for this guy and then something happened. The player scuttled it, the one of the teams backed out, whatever it is. I think it is interesting to contemplate how things could have been different if a player had gone here or there. And I also enjoy it when a player proves them wrong, proves the medical folks wrong and holds up and endures. And then I don't know if the team is looking back and kicking itself because for all we

know they make this kind of call many times and we only hear about it. All the other times. Yeah, we hear about it the time that they're not right or just a fraction of the times in general. But this came up because Luzardo, who of course ended up going to the Phillies, was facing the Cubs, pitched against the Cubs, and pitched very well against them on the 26th. He just shut them down, I think gave up a couple runs unearned over six in a game that the Phillies won. And I don't know that the the Cubs are looking back on this and saying oopsie for all they know they may be quite confident that's what they saw actually will happen at

some point. Yeah, manifest at some point. It wouldn't shock anyone if Jesus Sousato does get hurt again at some point but to this point he has been a very valuable acquisition and yes I think I shouted that out on our end of the off season, just moves we liked episode. I think I mentioned, hey, remember the Phillies got Jesus Sousaido, that could be an impact acquisition. And thus far it has been and could continue to be if he does hold up. And the risk tolerance consideration is interesting

because you'd think that if anything, the Cubs would have had more tolerance for risk in Jesus' heart or just in terms of how badly these two teams needed pitching. They may have somewhat similar competitive aspirations or financial resources. The Phillies have been even freer, I guess, with the just being willing to spend on guys than the Cubs have. But the Cubs needed pitching much more than I mean, with the Phillies, it was like, gosh, they get Jesus as hard as two is like gilding the lily like you have such a strong starting rotation and staff in general, that wow, that's the cherry on top if he's actually as good

as he has been in the past. So you'd think the Cubs would have needed someone like that more and do, do need someone like that more. I mean, now Christopher Sanchez has forearm soreness and then that's kind of concerning. So there's a never enough redundancy. It's almost as if you can never have enough pitching. But the other thing about evaluating an MRI or whatever, as they always say, like there's no major league pitcher, no veteran pitchers arm.

That doesn't have something in there. Yeah. So. Squirrel, mouse. So, yeah, it's like, is that is that fraying? Is that tearing? Is that just normal wear and tear? Because these guys are just like subjecting their elbows and ligaments to like car crash level loads on every pitch. Like, yeah, is this just normal? Is that what a normal healthy pitcher's elbow looks like? So I've got to imagine that the margins are just pretty small when it comes to those calls. Like it's gotta just be maybe if you had a medical staff for enough years and you had enough

documented cases, you could have some sort of signal there. There should be a signal, like I'm not suggesting that you go in for an MRI or you go in for some exam and who cares who your radiologist is, doesn't make a difference. I'm sure there's talent differences there. Sure, totally. Maybe that's even an area, I mean, one of the places where I'm open to the idea that there is actually a beneficial application of AI or what we would have called machine learning. In radiology? Yeah, right.

Oh, yeah. That seems to be a case where you can pick up on some subtleties there. Yes. That seems to be a place where there is a lot of agreement, actually, that it is a very fruitful application of AI. Right.

And we're conflating, as everyone does these days, AI with generative AI, which large language models and that is not what we're talking about. This is stuff that just would not have been labeled AI before chat GPT came along and everyone decided that that was now AI. But yeah, their application. So I wouldn't be shocked if teams are doing that, even when it comes to players' medicals and exams and imaging. Maybe that's something even their human medical

practitioners would recommend. But yeah, just because there's gonna be some amount of damage in there and it's just gonna be close calls over and over again that maybe it would be like umpires where yeah, you can tell the good umps from the bad umps, but there's so many 50-50 calls and you need a lot of pitches to actually tell who's good. And then it's just gonna to be a percentage points difference

ultimately separating them. I do think that there are just bad medical staffs. It's just my general across the board belief that it's just easier to be bad at things than it is to be very good at things. And so you can do harm. You can make a bad situation worse by rushing someone back or whatever it is.

But yeah, when it comes to evaluating imaging, I just I wonder. And so I'd always be wary of acquiring someone where I saw something, but then I'd always be worried about, oh gosh, am I being too cautious here? Because sometimes you got to go for it. It's like the winner's curse and free agency, you know, sometimes you just have to spend more than everyone else to get the guy Sometimes you have to take on more risk than someone else And so if we get to the end of the season and Jesus Lizardo has held on and he's pitching in a Phillies playoff rotation Right cubs down Justin Steele are thinking gosh, we sure would like to have that guy Yeah, but you know But that's hindsight, obviously.

So it's tough in any case to say they made the wrong call here. And you never know if it could be like ticking time bomb. I mean, Carlos Correa, who knows? Were the teams that passed on him right or wrong? Like, he's had some injuries. He's had foot problems. It hasn't been an ankle specifically. And sometimes he's been the player

that he was cracked up to be, and sometimes he hasn't. And who knows when he hasn't played well, is that related to anything that showed up on a medical? It's been years at this point. And last year he was great in 86 games. And the year before that, he was not so great and he hasn't been so great this year. So it's been kind of up and down. But whether that has to do with those issues that were flagged,

tough to tell. I should say like, I agree with you that I don't think there's a ton of difference in like the diagnostic space between teams. I do think that there is probably much more room for difference in injury management and sort of just overall injury health. And I think it's important to distinguish between pitchers and position players because and maybe this is me just being overly fatalistic about pitchers, but I just kind of assume that all those guys are going to break at some point in some way. And the degree of break might differ and maybe you escape by with a forearm strain and you don't need to miss an entire season or what have you. But I think I

just like mentally I'm like you're gonna lose a year of a guy's you know whether it's him signing with you his you know pre-free agency time whatever position players you know I think that maybe that's a place where a good medical staff could distinguish itself from a bad one. Like, can you keep these guys healthy? Or and some of this is me actually asking the question, are there meaningful differences in the way that you go about preventing like soft tissue injuries versus not? I don't know the answer to that. Maybe that's an area where a really good medical staff can make its presence felt either in preventing those injuries to begin with, or being being particularly adept at helping guys come back. And to your point, maybe some of that is just having

restraint to not rush dudes when they're not quite ready. I don't know. This is an interesting thing to contemplate. It seems like it would be a place where you could, if you are a very wealthy team or a team that maybe isn't super wealthy, but is on a relative basis, they're all wealthy, you know what I'm trying to say. But relative to other clubs, maybe this is where you want to put resource because you think the return on investment is really high. Do you get a meaningfully better staff if you spend a bunch of money attracting the best talent?

Do you have a meaningfully better staff if you have the latest doodads, you know, whatever those medical doodads may be? I don't know the answer to that. Like, it seems like resource has to make some amount of difference, but do you get to a point where there's sort of diminishing return? That's an interesting question and one that I think, I don't know that we have a tremendous amount of insight

into because we don't tend to track medical staff size relative to team to team the way that we often are kind of engaged with who has a big front office and ops staff versus not, you know? So I don't know. Yeah. Speaking of Carlos Correa, we got a lot of notifications about a Carlos Correa kiss. Another hit and Ryan Jeffers will be the ninth twin to bat coming up here in this fourth inning Kiss a little hug there for Ramon Borrego and a smile and we'll keep it going Yeah, there was just a little kiss seems to me that the twins are maybe the league leaders in

At this point. Yeah, there's there's a lot now. It's not not a full on lip lock. It's not actually mouth to mouth happening here. But lots of tenderness going on with the twins these days. Yeah, so Anton wrote in to note that on April 28th, Carlos Crea had a very tender hug with the first pace coach, Ramon Borrego and Not just your your standard sort of bro hug or like a you know slap the back a couple times it was lingering embrace and then Correa had a little kiss a playful little kiss with the trainer after a collision with the teammate

Yeah, just you know, just, it's, again, it's... Right, no contact with the body actually being made here, really, but, you know, it's something, and they certainly seem to want to, and this is not, I think, a first for the twins. I remember a couple years ago, there was the Jordan Alvarez home run kiss, post-home runs. He would kiss Martine Maldonado.

They'd get like a little neck nibble going on there. Yeah. It was, it was. Yeah. And I don't know whether he has continued that tradition now that Maldonado has moved on, but it seems like the twins are now the standard bearers of this because not only is Correa, he gave I think Borrego a little kiss on the helmet too, that was I think a few days earlier, and the announcers were delighted by that. So this is something that's happening regularly. And

also I think we were notified back in spring training by listener Zack, who wrote in to note that the twins actually took a photo, a trio of twins, and I will link to this trio of twins. It sounds wrong. Sounds like a mismatch in the number of people who should be involved. It does sound wrong, doesn't it? But I'm talking about Minnesota twins here, not fraternal ones.

Right. And the twins actually put this on Instagram, I guess this was last year. This was February 2024. The caption is, we're the three best friends that anyone could have. And it's Byron Buxton, Royce Lewis and Carlos Correa. And Carlos Correa appears to be planting a little, yeah, at first I thought he was just

whispering sweet nothings in his ear, but no, it's above his ear. It's like on the back of his head. He's just given a little kiss. Gosh, a lot of injuries in that trio. Yeah, no kidding, man. But but yeah, they seem to be unafraid of showing a little PDA. So they seem to be the league leaders right now. So they're they're kind of showing what's possible when it comes to little kisses if they want to.

Sure. Our listeners who perhaps started checking out Effectively Wild during the team previews and have not heard my theory of the little kiss, they may be like, what's my up to these days with this little kiss? I think that it's nice to expand our understanding of what is a socially acceptable exchange of affection, particularly between men. And again, only if they want to. That's not going to be everybody's cup of tea to have a little kiss, a little affectionate kiss, but just sometimes you want to show your bros some tenderness, you know? Tell your bros you love them, if you love them, you know? Like we should have, we should tell people that and bros in particular should concentrate on it because sometimes it gets

lost or discouraged or what have you. And so I just think it's nice if they want to have a, and you know, sometimes you'd be watching baseball, Ben, and you'd be like, I think those guys want a kiss. You know, I think the energy suggests a desire for a consensual little kiss. And I'm not saying that they necessarily have to make out in the dugout, although, you know, again, that is a form of demonstrating affection. If's what they want they should do that would cause Quite a stir would imagine but if they if that's what they want. Just have a little kiss. And so it's a night It's just nice. It's nice to see some tenderness You know with your friends with with your friends and I understand these rules co-workers

So maybe it you know, like have good sense about, demonstrate common sense in public. Yeah, we don't want any HR violations happening here. Yeah, we're not asking for that, but I'm just saying that if you want, if you both want a little kiss, you can have a little kiss. It's fine. Yeah, it's nice. I'm glad that you asked.

It's nice! Feel free to express their affection. It would appear, based on the evidence of like two things, that this is very much a bat in Carlos Carrillo's bag. This is one of his maybe preferred means of expressing tenderness and affection to his comrades. This is a little kiss. These pants, Ben, are hilariously sheer.

You can just visualize the tags. Yeah. They look like they're wearing, like you feel like you're looking at the run-d's. You're not, but you feel like you are. I want kisses and not sheer pants. That's my vision for America. Strong pants, tender kisses.

Yeah, sounds like a good compelling platform. You have my vote. Couple responses we got to talking about Edwin Diaz's mismatched temporarily leg lengths. And we were on the right track, it sounds like, but JJ Patreon supporter wrote in to say, I suffer from a similar affliction.

Muscles on my right leg and hips are turned inward toward my body, which causes my left side to compensate. When I have a bad running form or have been sitting a lot, my muscles compress and my left leg, quote unquote, shortens. If someone works on the muscles, the tension will release and my heels will be flush again. And listener Eddie wrote in to say,

physical therapist here, hoping to provide some information about Edwin Diaz's sudden mysterious discovery of one leg being longer than the other. You were both on the right track. Nice to hear. I like to be on the right track. Better than being on the wrong track. A true leg length discrepancy is an immutable

characteristic where the length of the femur plus tibia are unequal between sides. A functional leg length discrepancy occurs most often when one of your two inominate bones, I hope I'm saying that right, big pelvic bones is rotated either forward or backward, which causes the positioning of the acetabulum, boy, challenging my on the fly anatomical pronunciations.

I hope so, and we'll get further emails probably if I'm not, socket of the ball and socket that comprises the hip joint to be asymmetrical and the appearance of the leg to be longer or shorter, Edwin Diaz almost certainly had a functional leg length discrepancy. They are fairly straightforward interventions an athletic trainer or physical therapist can implement to help correct this. So yeah, that's what was going on. We weren't completely mystified. It was more just the way that he threw that out there. Yes. Didn't offer

any additional details. Didn't seem at all concerned by it, nor I suppose should he really have been deeply concerned by it given these details. But still, I think a lot of people who weren't familiar with this were like, I need more information here. And it was not forthcoming, but now it is unaffectively wild. Yeah, there you go. Other notable things that have happened, Eohenio Suarez hit four home runs in a game. How about that?

In a loss. No less. Yeah, I think the third time that's happened, that's gotta be a bummer. I mean, you gotta be happy as Eohenio to have hit four homers, but I guess you've probably, I didn't look up his quotes after the game to see how gleeful he looked or sounded but yeah You at least probably have to pay lip service not in the Carlos Correa sense

But in a verbal sense to you know, I wish that the team had won Obviously, this is all in service of the team, You know, if Aaron Judge were hitting the four home runs, he would of course downplay his role and. They were garbage home runs. If they had gone farther, we would have won. Who would have to punish them? Yeah, it's meaningless. He doesn't sound like that at all.

If the team doesn't win, if we don't win the World Series, who even cares? What are we even bothering showing up? But yeah, I think that if I hit four home runs in a game and my team lost, even a team that's in a dogfight in that division, you need every W, I think I would feel pretty self-satisfied. But then maybe I'm not a true team player.

But you know, sometimes you have to take pride in personal accomplishments, even if they don't coincide with collective ones. I think that's where really your teammates come into play because they can give you social permission to be excited, you know? They can say things like, and I didn't actually look at the quotes after the game either, so this is, but you know, you could be Corbin Carroll and be like, ah, I wish we could have won that one for A.O. Henio.

Like he hit four bombs for us, such a disappointment that we couldn't get that one for Aohenio. Like, he hit four bombs for us. Such a disappointment that we couldn't get that one in the bag, especially given what he did. Like, that's, you know, you need an adept social sense in that moment, I think, to be like, nut. It doesn't fall to Corbin Carroll specifically, but. Penn, you see how Corbin Carroll's hidden? Ooh, boy, ooh, boy.

It's very exciting. Yeah, the NL Best. It's really just firing on not quite all cylinders. Four out of five cylinders, really firing. And then the fifth cylinder is. Right. But like the dentist can't agree on the good toothpaste, so four out of five seems fine.

You know, it's like we have a consensus. We know. Not from a Rocky's fans perspective, but yeah. The other teams are representing our division well, so you know, it's fine. But yeah, no, it's quite an exciting division. As we record here on Tuesday afternoon, the Dodgers and the Giants have identical 19 and 10 records.

And I don't know what to make of those giants. We got an impassioned plea from a Patreon supporter named Michael to talk about the giants. And they are certainly worthy of discussion. Michael wrote in, I mean this in a playful way, but what's a guy gotta do to get some discussion about the giants beyond, and the giants are doing weirdly well.

I realize I'm looking at them through my black and orange colored glasses, but I think we might be approaching a point where the explanation could be that they're actually a decent baseball team. All right, let's not get ahead of ourselves, but I think approaching the point where we might call them decent,

I think, you know, that's not too aggressive. I think I can get on board with you there, Michael. They've been decent even in recent years. They've just been even in recent years. They've just been extremely 500, but maybe Michael means more than that. Not only are they leading the NL West as of April 28th, they're tied currently.

They have the highest run differential in the division, more so of their 29 games played. 22 have been against teams that are above 500, and they're 15 and seven in those games. Wilmer Flores is thriving, maybe blossoming in his role as DH, leading the majors in runs batted in. Jung-Hoo Lee is finally healthy and is showing that he can be a great center fielder

as well as a solid bat in the lineup. And all of this is happening with Willie Adames, Patrick Bailey, and Lamont Wade Jr. struggling mightily if they can shake their slumps. It's only up from here. Of course, maybe the guys who are doing well will not do quite as well to balance that out, but I'm with you.

We're into the fan irrational or somewhat rational exuberance here. The Giants often don't get much credit and frankly haven't deserved much in the last few years. I always appreciate when a fan, you know, you start to read that they don't get enough credit and you think, oh, it's another one of these, because, you know, like, fans, they often think that people are being mean to their team, they're not talking enough about their team, and most commentators, broadcasters, podcasters don't really have it out for any specific team.

It's not really an axe that is being ground here. It's not necessarily bias. I would go so far as to say that if anything, the bias is often with the fan who's writing in to suggest that their team is being underappreciated, though certainly sometimes they have insight into a team that a national commentator does not. But the vibes this year, Michael continues, are great, despite your unfortunately low ranking in the preseason vibes draft. I guess that's probably true. We probably did put the Giants pretty low there, but who could blame us really for, you know, coming off the past couple of seasons.

As someone who watches approximately 150 Giants games a year, the team vibes are very reminiscent of 2021. I'm not saying the Giants will be able to maintain their current run to finish with 106 wins, but they deserve a lot more credit for the way they've played so far this year. Yeah, it's a long way away from 2021's final record

and anyone can have good vibes when times are good, when times are tough, that is when the vibes are truly told. But yeah, we can absolutely celebrate the excellent start that they're off to so far this season. It's been fun. It has been fun. And what I would say about really any NL West team that isn't the Dodgers, but maybe particularly one like the Giants, where my expectations would be that they would be like kind of a

middle of the road team, which isn't to say that they'd be bad, but that there were obvious deficiencies that hadn't been totally addressed despite their best efforts. That just wasn't going to be good enough given the strength of some of the other clubs that they have to contend with in the West. But banked wins are banked wins. And so, if what you, where you find yourself at the end of June is that you're a club that has exceeded expectations. Well, for one thing, they can't take those ones away, but also maybe it informs your strategy at the deadline. Like maybe you say, hey, you know, we thought we were going to be good next year. We thought we were going to be good two years from now.

We're good in a way that's pretty compelling right now. Maybe we like try to jumpstart this thing and get ahead of schedule. I don't know. Like it's it's exciting. And, you know, at the very least you're watching fun winning baseball right now. So I think that that's a great thing. It's so nice to see like, you know, you felt so bad for John Lee to just like go down so early in his tenure in the U S to see him kind of get a real mulligan and really rise to the occasion. Like I was looking at our, at our leaderboards before we started recording, because you know, sometimes

you're like, do I know what's going on in baseball? Good to make sure I'm up to snuff. And there he is. He's like, he's been worth a win and a half. He's the seventh most valuable position player in baseball by our accounting of war, a whole win behind Aaron Judge. But that's more about Aaron Judge being bananas. 243 WRC+, my goodness.

But anyway. If only he had that homer. Yeah. Right, if only. They've been good and they do have the best run differential in the division as we speak. The Cubs have a better one and the Reds leading the National League of all teams, the Reds,

but it's so close in the NOS. The Giants are five runs up on the Padres, we're six runs up on the Dodgers, and then the Diamondbacks are in positive territory too. I thought it was going to be a three-team race to the extent that I thought it was going to be a race at all. Let me put it this way, I didn't think it was going to be a race. I still am not convinced that it's really going to be a race

for the division in the long run, but it's at least been competitive to this point. And I can now buy the idea that there are four potential playoff teams in this division. I mean, not necessarily all at once. I'm just saying they could contend for them. Whereas before I probably would have said three, not that I would have entirely written off the Giants chances. It's not like they've been abysmal, but they've just been so mediocre. And every time that they've made a good run and looked like, Oh, they're kind of in this thing and then a slump would follow and maybe a slump will follow now. But the underlying numbers have been strong.

So it's not purely just a mirage here. They did have that weird walk off win against the Rangers that I referenced referenced earlier and that was kind of the definition of you know one run game and also it took a comedy of errors for it to happen. Maybe they would have won anyway that's just how it ended but it's not like they've just had 19 of those. They have been pretty good though you know if you look at base runs records let's say they do I guess have guess, have the, well, not the best record in the division even. I guess the Dodgers are, the Diamondbacks are just a hair ahead and the Dodgers are

just a hair behind. But all of these teams have been pretty good is the takeaway. Like this is just a fun division except for the Rockies and even the Rockies are kind of compelling in sort of a rubbernecking way. Oh, that's so mean. It's not wrong. I agree. I think that this is a really fun, it's going to be a really fun tight race. I think that we came into the year, bemoaning is maybe strong, but aware of how fat the middle was in terms of the projected standings, right? Just so many teams, so tightly clustered, very few teams, you know, breaking through even the 90 win market, at least from

a projection perspective. And you know, that can go a couple of different ways. First of all, reality can diverge from our projections, but also, you know, that can go a couple of different ways. First of all, reality can diverge from our projections, but also, you know, sometimes you get kind of a boring slog of a season where every club is kind of like up for a couple of days on every other club and it doesn't feel like it has momentum. It's just like a mush. And this feels, I know this feels more lively as a season than I was necessarily anticipating it being,

just given how bunched everybody was to start. So I think it's great fun. Can I give a, maybe not a bidet update, but okay, I have a new team that needs bidets update. Sure. I think it's the Mets, Ben. It's the Mets because apparently Brandon Nimmo, I'm quoting a Blue Sky post from Tim Healy here,

Brandon Nimmo is the latest member of the Mets to succumb to a stomach bug going around, hence his absence from the lineup. He was sick during his big game yesterday. He had quite the day yesterday. This makes at least six players who have gotten sick in recent weeks. So maybe the Mets, Uncle Steve, you got to get some bidets in there, buddy. You can afford it, even if he has to tear up some cement. So yeah, I don't want to cast dispersions. I'm not suggesting that every player who is ill is ill because they didn't wash their hands or their teammate didn't. But if Zach Renke called it out, I wouldn't doubt that it's still happening somewhere to someone.

So yeah, it's just, it's better all around, but also kind of a competitive advantage if you wanna put things in those terms. Pays for itself, bidets for itself even one could say. But the- Bidets for itself, that's so good, Fred. The Dodgers have many more bidets than they do healthy starting pitchers,

which is part of the reason for the fact that they have, well, not failed to launch, but failed to lap the rest of this division. They're doing quite well, to be clear. It's just, you know, they started the season, not even playing particularly well, but just winning every game. And Sam was noting, like, if this is the Dodgers,

when they're not playing that well, then will they actually set the record? But no, they have just kind of continued to not play all that well and have actually lost some games eventually. But right now on the roster resource depth chart, it's three guys, just as it was last October. It's like no matter how many, I mean, there's the memes, the tweets about this, but no matter how many redundant Dodgers starters they acquire, they turn out not to be redundant because right now, Yamamoto, Sasaki, and May are the only guys listed there in that rotation.

And Glassnow has shoulder inflammation now. He's had multiple problems. Tony Gonsolin is returning this week, so that will help. But Blake Snell with his own shoulder problems and Gavin Stone, of course, shoulder surgery and a couple of Tommy John guys in there and Kershaw, who knows when he'll be back, not for months and Otani seemingly is months away still.

So yeah, no matter how many pitchers they throw at that problem, and obviously it's because of the type of pitchers and the particular pitchers that they're throwing at it. But nonetheless, that's why they may not run away with this thing that they do still have those issues there. So I hope that it's a more entertaining race than, you know, because one of the reasons why other people and even to some extent we were bemoaning the fact that the Dodgers were so active over the offseason. Like one of the reasons I said that it was kind of a bummer was because, hey, you have

these other excellent teams in this division and they're probably feeling pretty hopeless now. If the Padres, if the Diamondbacks were anywhere else, they'd be thinking we're the favorites, or at least we've got a great shot at this. And in the NL West, you probably don't think that. But at least to this point, that has seemed to be a winnable division. So we'll see whether that continues to be the case. I hope it does. I mean, it'd be good for the perception of baseball, I think, and not to

downplay that, yeah, spending lots of money and having a second and third and fourth line of defense when your first line goes down. That's an advantage that the Dodgers have that not every team does. But it would be good, I think, for just the conversation about baseball and the perception of how imbalanced it is. If the Dodgers actually didn't run away with this thing. And there'd be plenty of schadenfreude, too, to be clear. But just in terms of tamping down, that discussion of baseball is broken because the Dodgers are, if not buying a championship, at least buying a walk

to the division title. Maybe that won't turn out to be the case. Who knows? Hmm. I don't know. It's like somebody said that sometimes it's hard to predict baseball. Sometimes I've had guys who heard you. Yeah. Someone. Yeah. Could it have been? I don't know. Not me.

We. Yeah. I'm just saying some of the emails were really rude. Some of them were very rude emails. And I am here to say, told you so. About that. Yeah. Closing thought, I'm going to quote Rob Manfred, which is never the greatest place to end on, but he had a quote. He gave a little insight into what he and Donald Trump talked about in their recent meeting. And it was some stuff that frankly, you would want the commissioner of baseball to talk to Donald Trump about, which is, you know, advocating for baseball players being able to come in and out of the country, etc.

Like, you know, sort of sad that you have to get some kind of carve out for baseball players because of other just, you know, sweeping policies that are sort of misapplied and could be cruel in many cases. But if you are the commissioner of baseball, well, maybe that's beyond your purview. You at least have to look out for baseball and baseball players. And so perhaps that is what Rob Manfred is doing here. Of course,

Pete Rose came up in the conversation and Manfred didn't dish the details on what exactly was said, but I guess we can guess because Trump has already made the public request for Pete Rose to be pardoned, whatever Trump thinks that means. I don't know whether Trump thinks that means his past tax violations. I doubt that's what he means. He may just mean his presence on the ineligible list Anyway, Manfred came out and said that he is not going to pocket veto this he will issue a ruling and he's waiting on this before like he denied a previous application for

reinstatement a decade ago and I don't know whether he will go the other way now because of the way that the winds are blowing or political pressure or whatever else, but he did at least signal that he's not going to completely cave here. One would hope at least he's pointing out why what Pete Rose did is wrong and why,

and he's made this point before and we have actually supported him on this point, that the fact that we are just buried in sports betting messaging now and that even the league itself is privy to that and is party to that does not mean that there's hypocrisy going on here, that Pete Rose is suddenly on the hook because the way that Manfred phrased it though, so he said, there isn't always has been a clear demarcation between what Rob Manfred, ordinary citizen, can do on the one hand and what someone who has the privilege to play or work in Major League Baseball can do on the other in respect to gambling.

The fact that the laws changed and we sell data and or sponsorship, which is essentially all we do to sports betting enterprises. I don't think changes that it's a privilege to play Major League Baseball. As with every privilege, there comes responsibilities. One of those responsibilities is that they not bet on the game. So one would hope that having said that,

he's now not gonna suddenly turn around and said, having said that, we talked about that recently. Sure, Pete Rose, you're off the list. Or you can be in the Hall of Fame now. These are kind of separate conversations, I guess. But but he has at least reinforced that point. The way that he phrased that when I read that the first time, though, when he said there's always been a clear demarcation between what Rob Manfred, ordinary citizen,

can do on the one hand and what someone who has the privilege to play or work in Major League Baseball can do on the other in respect to gambling. At first I was thinking to myself does he think he can bet on baseball because he's not someone who has the privilege to play or work in Major League Baseball. He certainly works in it. He works at the top of it. What I think he was saying here obviously is that you, if he were just some guy, just just your buddy Rob, then he could bet on baseball and it wouldn't have any bearing on the actual events. Whereas he can't because he is commissioner of Major League Baseball, Rob Manfred.

I thought it was a funny way to phrase it because he is not Rob Manfred, ordinary citizen, and he didn't draw the distinction between Rob Manfred, ordinary citizen and Rob Manfred commissioner of baseball. He said someone, which almost makes it sound as if like he's exempting himself from that. But no, I understand what he's saying here. But it did get me to briefly entertain the hypothetical of is Rob Manfred just jonesing to bet on baseball? Is he looking forward to?

Is that why he's he's calling it a career after his current term, supposedly? So he can finally wager he can finally get some parlies in without getting in trouble. But I don't know that that's on his mind. But yeah, the rule itself is clear that it applies to like people who work for teams and also the league. And that does apply to the commissioner of baseball. So that would be quite a scandal if Rob Manford himself were found to have placed bets though, you know, I guess in many cases he probably doesn't have any special insight into what's going on in

a game. He's not playing in it. He can't probably directly affect it. He may not even have intel, but he could at times and also the appearance of impropriety would be quite strong there. So, yeah, but look forward to finding out what he will do when he is Rob Minford, ordinary citizen. Yeah, it would be, you know, I guess the place where it could really come down is like, he has suspension power, right?

But I think that would be a pretty obvious scandal. He'd give the game away pretty obviously. Who could stop him if he just sort of trumpily took it upon himself to say that the norms don't apply and I'm going to test the limits of my power. If he were to bet on baseball, could he just brazenly do it and not be called on the carpet because he would be the one who would normally who who disciplines the commissioner who watches the watchers. So Commissioner discipline myself. Yeah, I guess he works with the owners. Yeah. And I imagine that like, it could be depending on the the circumstances,

like you might end up with like an indirect bit of enforcement via like a player union grievance or something like that. But I just, I have such an earnest plea. I think this might end up being okay. I am nervous that like a public stance has to be taken because there's been a lot of rolling on over when public stances have to be taken. And I don't wanna like insult Rob Manfred, but I don't know that like gumption is necessarily a trait I associate strongly with him, but. Yeah, there is at least one bone in his back,

seemingly maybe when it comes to Pete Rose specifically, and maybe nothing else, but yeah. And so again, we will see, but I, Reb, if you're listening, I don't know why you would be, but if you are, we don't often hand it to you. Don't make me seem foolish. I will be very annoyed. And let me tell it to all of our listeners.

No, we will be rude in all likelihood. If Pete Rose is reinstated, it just like, wow, every opportunity to defend a sex best is just going to get taken by this administration, isn't it? But this application was not filed by Trump. It was filed prior to Trump taking office, but obviously his advocacy for it has an impact on the situation.

So and I think that my snarkiness aside, like that is a thing to note and have clarity on that this is Pete Rose's family and his close personal lawyer that, uh, that submitted the application for reinstatement has come directly from the Trump administration. But, um, publicly reported until right around the time when Trump gets an issue and aired it again anyway. Correct. And it does make me wonder, this is speculation on my part, but I do, I wonder if,

you know, Trump has had things to say about Pete Rose in the past. And so I do wonder if after he took office, I wonder if the way that he heard about this and the sort of bee in his bonnet, if the bee was placed there by this lawyer. Like I do wonder if he was like, Hey Donald, he probably didn't call him Donald's, but he was like, yeah. Yeah. I'm imagining how much Rob Manfred would know about my bidets if he was listening to this episode. So on that thought, let's end. Okay. have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks, BPM23, Paul Hutchison,

Craig Dillon, Tanya Singh, and Lil Toot, which might be something that happens to you while seated on a bidet. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, the latest of which we have recorded. We talked to producer Shane McKeon about all manner of things that will be hitting the Patreon exclusive feed soon. You also get prioritized email answers and playoff live streams, personalized messages,

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