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Hello and welcome to episode 1840 of Effectively Wild, a Fangirlos baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm a rally of Fangirlos and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindbergh of The Ring or Ben. How are you?

Doing just standy. How are you?

I'm doing well. I'm realizing that if you ever change publications, I'm going to get the intro wrong for at least a week.

Oh yeah. Yeah. I've been pretty fortunate.

I've changed outlets a few times during the life of this podcast, but given the turnover rate in media in general these days, I'd say that being in the same place since 2016 and having the same podcast intro, it's pretty good.

Yeah, it's pretty great. I'm not telegraphing anything about culture or anything like that. I just think you know that. I have a cadence. I'm comfortable with.

I know well. You know, it has familiar mouthfeel. Yeah. It's like when you have a new year and you write old year on your checks if anyone still writes physical checks anymore. Wherever we still write dates, if we actually write dates, it takes a while to adjust. So if one of us were to change outlets, then yeah, probably it would take several intros to just rewire the muscle memory or the mental memory or whatever it is to get that right.

It's a pattern that we are both used to. So we've got lots to do today. We've got meet a major leager, the great return of that segment. We have a stat class. We have some emails. I'll just pick up where we left off last time with the Miguel Capara Intensual Walk, which happened as we were speaking as recording episode 1839 and we had a little real time reaction to the walk that the Yankees issued to Capara as he was sitting on 2919.

So I played along and I booed and yes done some level. I was I took some offense at this or was affronted by this. I guess it was a little less fun in the moment than just going after Capara.

I don't really care or I don't really fall to the Yankees or Aaron Boone. I mean, I think the main thing, the main reason why I don't care, aside from the fact that while you've got to win the game, right. And you know, that's got to be your top priority as the manager of the Yankees. But also like Capara will just get that hit today or tomorrow or sometimes soon, right. It's not like pulling someone from a perfect game where unless it's rocky Sasaki at this point, possibly like he's probably not going to be going for a perfect game.

The next time out, so you're just losing that opportunity forever with Mickey when he's one hit away. I mean, unless something truly tragic happens, he's going to get that hit. So you're just making one group of fans happy instead of another group. And in fact, as long as the Tigers are still at home, which they are this weekend, probably haven't even bigger crowd on a Friday.

And they would have had on a Thursday. So more people will get to say that they were there for Macau Cabarras, three thousand, so don't really care for that reason as well. But other Ben Ben Clemens, Ren the numbers, right.

In a post that was just published at fan graphs on Friday. And he concluded that it was actually a counterproductive decision by Boone that if you factor in the particulars of the players who were up and on the mound and on deck.

That it actually cost the Yankees about a percentage point of win expectancy. And of course, it did end up backfiring in Austin, Mito's actually hit a lefty and drove in runs.

So that's the range of most managerial decisions, like other than Joe Madden, issuing the the basis of potential lock.

Yeah, it's generally a small. These are, these are small percentage points sort of differences in win expectancy generally.

And obviously Boone's decision making process led to him thinking that on balance things were shifted in the other direction that he was actually helping the Yankees win based on whatever he was drawing on. But it does seem like very often these days we are having that conversation of fan entertainment versus what is optimal for the team, right.

And sometimes it is pulling a picture in the middle of a perfect game or no hitter, in which case it's what is optimal for the team and what is optimal for the pictures health probably.

But it's bigger than that. Also, it's often like, you know, stealing bases less often than players used to steal bases, right. Because the math doesn't necessarily support the kind of attempt rates that we used to see or you know, you could talk about just pitching styles hitting styles.

Like that has become a conversation in baseball now where it seems like and maybe my perceptions are skewed here because I don't follow other sports nearly as closely as I follow baseball. But it does seem like MLB has had the misfortune of maybe having what is on paper the correct decision.

Be less often the one that is also the more fan friendly decision as opposed to save the NBA where people mostly like three pointers. I mean, yes, there's a conversation about are there too many now have we reached the tipping point, the breaking point or in the NFL where people generally like passing like strategies that are advantageous or you know, like going for it on fourth down, right, which is exciting right going for it on fourth on more exciting than punting.

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