Effectively Wild Episode 1685: Too Close to Call
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley
4.7 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 24 April 2021
⏱️ 96 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley offer a few updates on the first subject of their “Meet a Major Leaguer” segment, Zach Pop, banter about Corey Dickerson’s impending 200th career double, and answer listener emails about weather-based scheduling, giving umpires the option of not making close calls and deferring to replay reviewers instead, the strange statistics of Javier Báez, enforcing parity (but also mediocrity), whether baseball fans could channel the collective action of the soccer fans who sank the Super League, bringing the chess clock to baseball and improving pace, and the easiest role on the roster in which to collect low-effort, low-pressure paychecks, plus a Stat Blast about Bill Buckner and the overrated or underrated players whose Black/Gray Ink scores differ most from their career WAR.
Audio intro: Cat Stevens, "Pop Star"
Audio outro: Blind Melon, "So High"
Link to Kevin Goldstein on Báez
Link to Michael Baumann on the Super League’s demise
Link to Grant Brisbee on what makes games long
Link to Ben in 2014 on the least-used players
Link to B-Ref Black/Gray Ink glossary
Link to giant Stat Blast spreadsheet
Link to Meg on Hamels
Link to video of Astudillo saying “gasolina”
Link to video of Astudillo taking cover
Link to video of Astudillo’s homer
Link to postgame video of Astudillo
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Yes I'm gonna be your pop star |
| 0:07.0 | Yes I'm gonna be your pop star |
| 0:11.0 | Now more |
| 0:14.0 | Yes I'm going to be your pop star |
| 0:21.0 | Oh mama, mama see me |
| 0:24.0 | Mama, mama see me |
| 0:26.0 | I'm a pop star |
| 0:29.0 | Hello and welcome to episode 1685 of Effectively Wild A Baseball Podcasts from Vangrass |
| 0:35.3 | presented by our Patreon supporters, I am the member of the ringer joined by Meggale |
| 0:40.3 | of Vic Salomec, hello |
| 0:42.0 | So on Thursday we debuted our new segment, Meet a Major Leaker, first Major Leaker we met |
| 0:48.7 | was Zack Pop, Marlon's reliever, and who would you suppose pitch two perfect innings |
| 0:54.8 | in Thursday's Marlon's Giants game with a couple of k's, it was none other than Zack Pop |
| 1:01.0 | and I actually noticed and was happy for him, I think that's one benefit of this is that |
| 1:07.0 | before I might not have bothered to look at the Marlon's Giants box score and if I had |
| 1:12.4 | I might not have recognized the name Pop, but as it was I got a little rush of recognition |
| 1:17.9 | and pleasure for this Major Leaker I have met and I met him via you know five minutes |
| 1:23.6 | of googling but I know where he's from and where he went to school and his hopes and dreams |
| 1:29.2 | and so I'm invested now and it's kind of like the minor league for agent draft where we |
| 1:33.8 | draft a bunch of people that maybe we had never heard of before we did our research for |
| 1:38.1 | the draft but then when you see their names pop up throughout the season it's a nice little |
| 1:42.5 | perk so I'm looking forward to that feature of meeting a Major Leaker. |
... |
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