Effectively Wild Episode 2089: Putting the WAR in Awards
Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast
Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley
4.7 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 23 November 2023
⏱️ 108 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the proper pluralization of “POBO,” then (7:12) answer listener emails about baseball with a five-second pitch clock, how long fans will continue to boo pickoff attempts, what it would take for a team to pay a particular fan to attend (or not attend) its games, Freddie Freeman’s base stealing, bringing turnovers to baseball, clubs that could achieve “perfectly average success” in the 30-team era, the limits of fan tolerance for playoff expansion, a proposal for the postseason to be like college bowl season, boosting starting pitchers with a “bullpen bank,” whether Harold Baines would’ve been better off declining Cooperstown induction, Adam Wainwright and the Hall of Fame, and fan voting on Hall of Famers, plus a Stat Blast (1:30:13) about whether awards voting has gotten more homogen(e)ous and more closely correlated with WAR.
Audio intro: Harold Walker, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Link to POBO pluralization exchange
Link to info on forming plurals
Link to pitch tempo leaderboard
Link to speed chess wiki
Link to Episode 1453
Link to Tango on pickoff attempts
Link to Bruce Chen’s pickoff attempts
Link to Gonny Jomes wiki
Link to MLB Ballpark Pass-Port
Link to MLB Ballpark app
Link to Stathead on 1B SB
Link to FG post on Freeman’s steals
Link to L.A. Times on Freeman’s 20–20
Link to graphic on Freeman’s 20–20–200
Link to Sam on Freeman’s improvements
Link to NYT on O’Neill’s 20–20
Link to Stathead on oldest 20–20 guys
Link to Pujols steal streak video
Link to H-E-B wiki
Link to baseball exceptionalism wiki
Link to EW on batters catching pitches
Link to The Athletic fan survey results
Link to NHL playoff format wiki
Link to playoff randomness by sport
Link to “paper champions” study
Link to Ben on the SP protagonist
Link to Ben on pitcher limits
Link to @dril “turning a big dial” tweet
Link to latest Hall of Fame ballot
Link to HoF tiers EW discussion
Link to article on Baines induction
Link to Ben on Baines
Link to Jay Jaffe on Wainwright’s 200th
Link to Jay on HoF SP standards
Link to EW episode 114
Link to HoF by election method
Link to Ben on Mauer’s candidacy
Link to EW emails database
Link to homogenous vs. homogeneous
Link to Kenny Jackelen on Twitter
Link to Ryan Nelson on Twitter
Link to B-Ref awards voting results
Link to awards data, all years, with WAR
Link to awards data with calculations
Link to Ryan’s Stat Blast graphs
Link to concentration ratio explainer
Link to HHI explainer
Link to SABR study on WAR and awards
Link to win probability of scoring team
Link to Secret Santa sign-up sheet
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Effectively Wild Wiki
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Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You never know precisely where it's going to go by definition |
| 0:07.4 | effectively wild. |
| 0:09.4 | Hello and welcome to episode 2089 of Effectively Wild, a Baseball podcast from |
| 0:15.2 | fan graphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindbergh of the |
| 0:19.2 | ringer joined by Meg Rally of fan graphs who I believe is in the midst of a heated exchange on |
| 0:25.9 | Twitter about the proper way to pluralize Pobo-bo-bo-O-B-B-B-B-O-Boh. |
| 0:32.0 | You know, God-Sons his most trivial battles to his pettiest little soldiers and this is definitely one of them. |
| 0:41.8 | I mean look I get it I get what Michael Bauman is saying. |
| 0:45.6 | We've all been wrong before you know. But here's here's the thing and I you know I initially responded to him having written out in response to my plea to the the Pobos to just like you be with your, you know, like, uh, please don't make me bother anyone |
| 1:06.4 | today or tomorrow or Friday and say, hey, you left anything right now, and then feel like a little jerk and then have to work you |
| 1:14.5 | know while feeling like a jerk the worst combo and he said poboos but he spelled it |
| 1:19.6 | capital P lowercase So, and as if to, you know, and I got distracted by whatever point he was making because like that's a, you know, like a terrible thing to do and he acted all affronted as if I was |
| 1:38.8 | wrong and even once so far as to to impugn my skills as an editor. And then thankfully, before he did that, I got distracted by other stuff. And so I didn't see it until Craig Goldstein had weighed in to offer that it's like RBI, which is the argument that I would have made, but Craig made it for me. |
| 1:58.0 | How courteous of him? |
| 2:00.0 | Because like, Bowman doesn't do R's B. I. |
| 2:03.3 | Well, that's the thing. |
| 2:04.6 | Yeah, that was solidarity from another editor who has to make these decisions. |
| 2:09.0 | But Craig saying it's just POBO as a plural like RBI that doesn't really resolve things |
| 2:15.6 | because there are many people who argue that it should be R's B. I. |
| 2:19.4 | Right and but they're like trying to like get attention you know like that's |
| 2:25.0 | that's attention seeking behavior or their pirates yeah because I get it in theory yeah runs batted in it's not run batted in and it's not |
| 2:37.4 | president of baseball operation well it is yeah president of baseball |
... |
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