Otani, the Stap-Bless, the Beef Forest are shweets,

the avi pettance and super, a fete,

I think that it's effectively cool,

I think that it's effectively wild,

effectively,

effectively, savage Effectively Wilde. Effectively Sauvage.

Effectivement Sauvage.

Hello and welcome to episode 2479 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg.

Oh, hello. Well, today we bring a bounty of banter, emails, stat blasts, but first we must discuss a curse because I fear that I have

broken Shohay Otani or at least have broken the bat of Shohayotani because his arm seems to be

just doing dandy. But he's not hitting like his usual self and he's not even hitting as much as his usual self,

which is because he isn't hitting like himself. He's being given more days off to rest,

to regroup. And I, of course, made the bold preseason prediction that Shohei Otani would

win the Say Young Award, but not the MVP award,

which, to be clear, I was not really rooting for, but was just throwing out there as a sort of

fun thought experiment. And as I noted, I wasn't really rooting for it because it would require

either that he slumped offensively or suffered some sort of injury

that prevented him from hitting but did not prevent him from pitching or someone else just

had a miraculous historic season and outshone him even though he managed to hit well and be

the Cyong Award winner. Well, it appears so far

that one of those scenarios is sort of coming true, which is that he is having a Cy caliber pitching

performance, but he is not having a great offensive year. Now, by his standards, obviously,

...