Well and welcome to episode 1853 of Effectively Wild, a baseball-thide cast from Vandras

presented by our Patreon supporters, and then the burger of the ringer joined by Meg

Rally of Cancress, hello Meg. Hello. So there's been a bunch of baseball news

since we last spoke and we want to discuss it and we will next time before the

end of this week, but today we are going to give you something that we've been

hoping to bring you for a while. We are devoting all of this episode to the

probabilities that have been appearing on Apple's Friday Night Baseball

broadcasts, which are co-produced or produced maybe entirely by MLB Network.

For the entirety of this season, every Friday, since the start of the year, there have been two

games every Friday evening that have appeared on Apple TV Plus, and as many people have noticed,

those broadcasts include real-time probabilities, which are updated from pitch to pitch on the

bottom right of the screen. So sometimes they will show a probability that the hitter will get a hit,

sometimes they'll strike out, sometimes they will reach base, etc. So of course, we were interested

in this from the start. In fact, I think even before these first appeared, I may have mentioned

on the podcast that they were going to appear because I read it in a press release, and we were

interested. Our interest was peaked, I would say, right? We were kind of into this idea.

Yeah, we were into the initial concept for sure. Yeah, I was curious to see what it would look

like at least. And so I tuned in, and I still thought the concept was kind of cool. I don't know

if it's essential. I don't know if it would enhance the enjoyment of the broadcast to everyone,

but basically on board with the concept. But there were certain odds that were raising red flags to

me, or at least not what I would have expected to see. Let's see. As I would put it, basically,

either I fundamentally misunderstood baseball in some way, or there was something weird going

...