Does baseball look the same to you as it does to me?

When we look at baseball, how much do we see?

Well, the curve balls bend and the home runs fly.

More to the game that meets the eye to get the stats compiled and the stories filed.

Fans on the internet might get riled, but we can break it down on Effectively Wild.

Hello and welcome to episode 2488 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm McGrawley of Fangraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of the Ringer. Ben, how are you? Just dandy.

How are you? I'm alive. Good. That's better than the bare minimum. And I think we are both doing

decently in the grand scheme of things,

but neither of us can compare to Shohei Otani, whom I must report, is doing well.

He is having himself a fine season.

And I know that we're well down from our historic highs of talking about Shohei Otani.

Our banter rate about Otani has been higher in past seasons.

But he is having a career year.

I will have everyone know.

This is probably peak Otani,

which I know seems almost preposterous to say this far into one of the best peaks in baseball history.

Do I even need to say one of?

But he is having his most valuable season or is on pace too.

And even if we are not on pace to set a new high for talking about Otani,

maybe we can pick up our pace because he is on an 11.5 war pace

entering the weekend at FanGrafts.

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