Heavens and fire, no more, and the time rolled back, all but gradually,

God no radio, and no wind to call,

He is our summer time, and you got nothing of your mind.

Hello and welcome to episode 1237 of Effectively Wild the Baseball Podcast from Vangraths presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lemberg of the Ringer joined by an almost normal sounding Jeff Sullivan of Vangraths. Hello Jeff.

Hello! Hello!

Hi! You're back. Almost.

Yes, kind of. Yeah, we'll see how you sound by the end of the episode, but right now we're good to go.

So, as we mentioned last time, we have gone a week or so without Banner, it's been a while, and when you don't Banner, the Banner builds up.

So, a lot has happened in baseball, and we can't talk about all of it.

But is there anything from the last week that you wanted to touch on specifically? I have a few things, but anything in your mind?

Well, it'll inspire the stat bless that's coming up, but of course Jose Alvarado did play first base.

So, I derived great delight from that, and so the stat bless eventually turns into a Travis Wood fun fact, but in any case, I've looked up how often pitchers also played other positions during the game. That's fun.

What else do we have? I mean, there's the discouraging, Mike Trout is injured, and it designated hitter news.

There's the further discouraging kind of, Shouyotani, probably not going to pitch, but maybe hit. I don't know if that's good or bad.

Yeah, I don't know if that was discouraging. It wasn't really encouraging either, but the idea that Billy Eppler said on an interview, I think on MLB Network Radio, that he is going to come back to hit this year, at least it sounds like, and that he would be hitting already if it weren't for their desire to have him pitch at some point.

So, it sounds like we'll see Otoni at some point this season, nothing guaranteed, but I didn't take it as negative news beyond the negative news that we'd already gotten.

Yeah, I guess if we only get half of Otoni, he's already two times anybody else, so in a sense, we're just left with one Shouyotani. That's just basic algebraic.

Yeah, there was a fun story at Deadspin by every yang about Otoni's BP sessions, and how they're just legendary, and everyone is talking odd tones about how they've never seen baseballs hit farther than Otoni's.

Otoni is hit them, and he's hitting balls like 600 feet or something close to it in batting practice. I will link to it, go check it out.

But Otoni is still fun as a hitter, so even if he comes back as a one-way player, which wouldn't be nearly as fun, it's still something that's better than Otoni.

Here's what I don't understand. I know Shouyotani is strong, he hits them all fast or hard, whatever you prefer.

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