You say I waste my time tracking all these that lines, and it's here I found my kind,

and I'll effectively wild.

Hello and welcome to episode 2115 of Effectively Wild

a baseball podcast from fancrafts presented by our

Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer joined by Meg Rally of

Fancrafts. Hello Meg. Hello. Where do you stand on naming pitches that are subsets of other types of pitches?

You have some thoughts on this, right?

This became a big issue for some reason,

especially during the post season

when everyone was talking about sweepers.

And some people were upset because I guess

the idea that the sweeper was something new as opposed to something

that had always existed but was now named and classified and pursued more actively.

I ask because I was reading a good explainer at

Baseball Prospectus this week by Brian Menendez about the death ball which is

the new sweeper essentially the new hotness the new breaking ball

variant the sweeper is a kind of slider the death ball is a kind of curve I will

explain the death ball, but tell me what you think of this in principle.

Okay, I'm so glad that you asked, because I have a lot of thoughts about it.

Actually, I have some thoughts that I have a lot of thoughts about it. Actually, I have some thoughts that I have a lot of conviction in.

I mean, it is useful to have specific and distinct terminology for pitches that are sufficiently different from one

another that it adds explanatory power sort of conjures a particular image of a pitch, right, to say this is a sweeper versus just a regular slider.

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