3 MLB stars have a bone to fix that you've never heard about - Ep. 648 - 2.16.26

As we continue through the off season, the hottest piece of news might be a little bone nobody's ever heard of, the Hamate Bone. What is it and why is it affecting so many different people? We've got some hot moves in the MLB and a discussion on park factors that maybe some people really aren't thinking about. It's this week in baseball. And so as we kind of come in, have even more as now Francisco Lindoor and I believe Jackson Holliday and I even Corbin Carroll now have all come down with.

Anyway, we've heard about it in the past, but not three players, you know, not being able to play. Time-geniously all having the same injury. Right, right, right. And so it has left a lot of people going, what even is it? And so it's a little bit like right here on your hand, correct? Like on the bottom of your hand where your pinky is. Right. And so it sits on top of the knob.

Right. So that's why so many players are coming down with injuries is that the constant repetitive motion of swinging the bat, having the knob of the bat grinding against your hand creates stress fractures over time. so eventually, especially unchecked swings, eventually you're going to have an issue here. And so some of the players, the way they're doing it, they're just finding it easier to just remove the bow because it has poor blood flow. And then they just get it out of there and it's not a problem anymore. Kind of like an appendix.

Right, right. It's something it's part of the human body that only baseball players would ever run into this issue because nobody else is making this repetitive motion with something against it like this other than baseball players. Now we're not going so far as to say like with pitchers and wanting to get the UCL. No, this is much. I don't think you're going to see guys getting preemptive hematobone surgery, but you know, yeah, yeah, but it's interesting in the case of Lindor.

who's a switch hitter, I thought. Okay, so batting left-handed, his right hand would be on the bottom there. And it's better for him than the other two players because they did it to their dominant hand so that it's throwing. in Lindor's case, it's his left hand, so he's not throwing with it. So that's why I think his schedule might be a little different than the other guys. But when he bats left, right-handed.

his left hand will be on the bottom of that. that is a thing. Maybe he only bats left handed for the first month or two. I don't know. We've seen guys like Alvarez on the Mets have that same sense and it takes a while sometimes for the power in the sling to come back. Right. Really interesting to see how he's affected this year offensively due to this recovery. Obviously it's something that has to happen. I have to think it affected him last year.

It's hard to not think that it was, you because if he, if it didn't have, then he wouldn't be getting the surgery. Right. they seem so sure that the meds are like, yeah, he's going to be fine. Have the surgery. They would like no question about doing it. Right. Right. They, there was never a moment where they ever not thought about doing these surgery. It seemed like, so I think that's going to be interesting to see how all three of them recover. I think that it's just pure coincidence that two of them are short stops.

So now you know everything you want to know about the hand. ⁓ Which I like much better. Right. And then obviously we did have some moves we had probably I guess the spiciest move of the week if you want to say it with the Phillies unceremoniously releasing Nick Castellanos for him to now get signed by the Padres in a whirlwind of activity there. And

That's a move that I don't think moves the needle for either team. And I think is more talked about because of the optics behind the move than anything else. Because if we're being realistic, especially Philly fans and Padre fans, both of them would admit this is not going to be the difference between either team winning or losing the World Series. Well, it's interesting on a veteran Padre team. I guess they're a veteran team, wouldn't you say? I think they're one of the older teams in the MLB. yeah. Bringing in a guy like Kostajanis. And so is this a

good clubhouse guy or a bad clubhouse guy? And he kind of got saddled when he was in the dugout after he got pulled from the lineup with a beer. And that whole story that we all read about last week, you know, that that tarnished and we were talking about that off there last week going, so who who signs this guy? Because is he a cancer? The Padres are the type of team that makes sense to me to sign. Because if you're if you're the Padres, you're a veteran clubhouse. You're not worried about him messing with the mojo of a young teen.

You know what I mean? You're not going to worry about bringing him in and having him be like, wait, is that the kind of influence we want around our plucky young upstart team that's trying to push? The Padres are thinking, OK, yeah, everybody here knows their business. We're bringing Castellanos, and we hope that he continues to be a professional, and he has a bounce back offensive season, and we get a player on the cheap. And if it doesn't work, our clubhouse will be able to more easily withstand the malcontent until we can get rid of him.

You know, and I pulled up, you know, looks like, like he said, you know, remember Cassidy last kind of came out of nowhere and was like, wow, this guy's a pretty good player. At least that's how it struck me, you know, from what was a modest start. So he hit 20 homers six times, was an all star for the Reds in 2021. I didn't even think he was also an all star in 2023, but in 21 he batted 309 with 34 homers and 100 RBIs for the Reds. That's when I thought, wow, this guy's like, he's a real player.

And with the Phillies when he was an all-star in 23, he batted 272 with 29 homers. He never really had another season quite that good again. quite like 2021, but everything's been on the down side since then. And I think you and I would say watching him defensively, I'm sure Philly fans would say was a little bit like nervous time every time the ball went out there. Right. Right. And I'm sure that the Padres are going to be hoping that they can mostly DH him because you're probably not thrilled about the idea of going and sticking him out in the outfield every day. That's a rough

defensive thing to do to your team to have him out there. And they also added the Padres you mentioned to their pitching and two pitchers that have had kind of different kinds of careers because Hermán Márquez, who was most recently with the Rockies, I think he's been a Rocky his whole career for the most part, always struck me as, this guy has talent, he just can never stay on the field. And Griffin Canning, who kind of had a good year, half a year last year for the Mets,

before he left with an Achilles injury. So you don't know what's going to happen there. These are just guys for extra arms in the bullpen. need innings. And it's not interesting discussions. people were out there talking about who do you think is the first person to get DFA from your team? And if for every team, it's some random pitcher because teams are just going to turn pitchers for innings. And that's what you saw, you know, like Verlander goes to the Tigers now. And that's as much a move for innings as anything else. Cause the Tigers are probably not thinking about

Well, we need Justin Verlander for October innings. They're thinking we need Justin Verlander for April and May innings. Well, they lost Rhys Olsen for the season, so they are trying to fill out the back end of that rotation. Right. He made 29 starts last year, so it wasn't like he didn't pitch a decent amount. So you're hoping he can give you at least 20, probably, if you're the Tigers, you know, if you could get that out of him, that'd be great, I imagine. And he was

I know, I mean, because it's Verlander to say he was pretty good, ⁓ you know, is like, like he wasn't good for Verlander, but he was good for a major league pitcher. How about that? Especially one of his age. Right. Exactly. And the you know, couple of other news notes, you know, that that was sort of the top things we've been talking about the pirates and the fact that they had such a lack of power last year. Thirty one homers fewer than any other major league team. So they went in and signed Marcel Ozuna.

who I think he only hit 19 homers last year or 21. 21 last year, yeah. ⁓ And not necessarily known, I don't know, is it fair to say as a fantastic clubhouse guy or maybe I just don't know? I think anybody that's been in the legal situations that ⁓ I'm going to have trouble calling a fantastic clubhouse president. I didn't say fantastic clubhouse, I meant that, but is he a good, does that in fact your ability to be a good clubhouse guy? I shouldn't.

It impacts my ability to judge him. You know what? Part of me would hope it does. you know what I mean? Like, I would hope the other players in the MLB would always... There's a little bit in the back of your mind when you're looking at a guy like that. Right, exactly. Like, it should bother you on some level. So I would kind of hope so. I think for the pirate's sake, they're probably hoping it doesn't and he can just shut up and play. Let's hear Homer's.

I think probably there's a concerning thing about a guy that had a down power year last year. Now he's going to Pittsburgh. We'll talk about this in a little bit, but Pittsburgh is a nightmarish place to try and hit home runs. So it's going to be interesting to see what happens there. And they weren't the only team in the NL Central making moves because the Brewers traded their rookie third baseman. Now is going into a second year, Caleb Durin to the red. Durbin to get Durin to get some picture. They got.

Kyle Hamilton and some other players back and tell you that Durin and Durand, which is just going to be a fun thing. But I don't know. I found that move strange from the Brewers. I do too, because Durbin was, I think, third in the NL's Rookie of the Year race last year. And we watched him against the Mets and he was very good when he played against the Mets. So why sell on him early? Well, and the Red Sox desperately needed an infielder.

So for them, think I love the deal. Kyle Hamilton was a guy who I was very high on a few years ago for San Francisco has done nothing to warrant being high on him since then, to be honest. So I don't know what Milwaukee was thinking. Right. And obviously the because the Red Sox that needed, you know, a new, you know, they need were done with their in field. They went out to get another one in the Isaiah counter. Falefa, which, you know, that's the needle mover, their move for the Red Sox. You know, Boston fans out there.

He's going to try to make the team somehow. just saw that their teammate Roman Anthony was just added to the World Baseball Classic roster. boy, Seldin has a guy had like 60 games in the major leagues before he got injured. Maybe he was a little give or take more than that. He got the big contract, right? 160 million for eight years or something like that. And he's on the WBC. He hasn't played 100 major league games. Right. And I mean, we have every reason to expect Roman Anthony to be a fantastic player.

I feel there are things that exist about his profile right now that you have to go well if he doesn't correct that it's concerning you know because you look at him he had the highest ground ball break in the MLB last year when he was playing now obviously you expect him to learn how to elevate the ball he's a kid you know obviously but if he does it that's a problem you can't ground ball rate ground balls are a bad thing in the major leagues because if you hit 110 mile an hour ground ball you know what that is a lot of the time

I just feel that you through that last week in your right. Neil Cruz discussion. So during the counterpart in the American League here, right? He's his counterpart. Now we expect him to fix that. But I it's interesting to see how quickly everybody is ready to just be like, my God, he's a superstar and I expect him to have a great year this year because he was trending that way last year before he got injured again. I guess that's the other thing that could keep him from being great is he just gets hurt all the time. Well, mean, certainly that was sort of a I would say a freak injury, but an injury that had never happened to him before.

So I tend to think it's going to be an injury that hopefully is just, you know, a little radar. are some guys on it eight years from now. True. But there are some guys that always seem to have injuries that you've never seen happen before. Like there's some players that just for whatever reason, they find the way. Right. I think Chris Bright just likes being on the injured list. I mean, it's just, you know, I don't know why. That's how you know it's baseball. Like the groundhog, you know, baseball season has started when Chris Bright.

returns to the injured list. I don't want to get off on a Chris Bryant thing, but I think I saw something that just sort of said the amount of games he's played since he signed that contract, you know, and the contract that he got are about as far apart as it ever happened in a free agent. The National League version of Anthony Rendon.

Yeah, well, I don't want to put him in that context because I think actually that Brian actually wants to play. That's a fun game for everybody but Angel and Rocky fans to think is who is the worst contract Anthony Rendon or Chris Bryant? The Nightmare 3rd various contracts of the 2000s. Each one is brutal when you look at it. No doubt, you know, very, very awful.

We saw that you mentioned that gallon or we didn't mention it. Zach gallon finally signed, so I had a list of free agents that were still on the board and gallon, I guess, gambled for the longer contract and ended up taking a one year $22 million deal or something like that, which I don't know. I guess that's good. But the same way we were talking about if gallon can then spin that into a three or four year deal next year, he gets the five years he wanted and he might get more money.

And they're all the pictures are becoming quite aware with Framber doing what he did that, know, that unless your name is Scoobler skeins, the likelihood of you getting a seven year deal is probably less now that it's been in a long, long time. Right, right. And if you're Lucas G Alito.

You're now at this point, you're pretty much home. You're probably the best free agent left on the market. You're just hoping to get a deal at this point. You're probably thinking I'd take three years just to have job security for the next couple of years. But you don't want to be going through this every off season because the moment you have a bad year, then signing another deal gets even harder. I tend to think the guys that are left, G Alito, mentioned Zach Lattell was 37. Max Scherzer hasn't signed, you know, Michael Koepke, the annual Michael Koepke signing.

The point is that I don't think any one of those guys is going to get more than a one year deal. Right, right. Maybe some teams, you the only way they get more than a one year deal is they're willing to sign a deal for cheaper and go play somewhere they probably don't want to play. You know, with all kinds of options, you know, right, right. If you're G Alito and they were like in Chicago comes up to you and goes, yeah, we'll pay you three for 45 with it off the out after the second year. You might take that. Right, right.

Yeah, I think even though you wanted to get paid 18 a year or you were looking for five years, a deal was better than no deal. And I think, you you worried particularly the guy like you're to give Max Scherzer a two year deal at age 41. I mean, why? I think if you're Max Scherzer and you're looking for a two year deal, you're crazy. And Max Scherzer, Max Scherzer was turning down one year deals because he wanted a two year deal. I think he's being silly because what he was not.

Yeah, right. And my sense with him is he's looking, you know, like, where do I want to go? Right. Who am I willing to go check up with for a year? I want to pitch and I want him to have a chance if everything goes well. Right. So it's not the Rockies. It's not going to be the Nationals. It's got to be a team that's in contention. Sort of. Even if it's peripherally, you know, right. I don't I don't think it'd be the Reds. I don't think he would believe How do they be the Pirates? Yeah. Yeah. Or back to the Diamondbacks. He's been there before.

You know, right, right. could see that. It's got to be like the Blue Jays or the the Orioles. I don't think we'll come back to the Mets because I just don't see that happening. No, no, that ship has sailed this way. Maybe goes to the Astros again or the Mariners. Yep, yep. Speaking of the Mets, I, you know, I watched this week, you know, and it's fun when you're in in this time of year because, you know, spring training games, I think, start coming up in this weekend or next week, you know, the 20th or something like that of the first games.

But you're watching guys work out and camp and I'm watching Polanco scooping balls at first base. I'm watching everybody's the best shape of their life. know, it and turning it and so on. home runs off of Freddie Peralta. Yeah, exactly. And it's just so, you know, it's just guys getting into shape. ⁓ I know Hoje, Howard Johnson, who played. Maybe people might forget this Hoje played some shortstop for the Mets ⁓ in 86 and around that time.

and he made, he had already been a third baseman. He doesn't feel that Bichette is going to have any problem going to third base. Now I would say the level of Hojo at shortstop is probably comparable to the level of Bichette. it's not like, know, what if these guy would be able to say whether or not he'd be able to do it then? Yeah. If I was an average or would not shortstop and I moved to third base, it wasn't so hard, you know, right. But I mean, the same way we saw Garrett Cole in the bullpen throw in 96 in spring training here, it's spring training.

We're really not going to know what any of these guys are capable of until we get into the actual games. Because even if we see Roe, Bichette and Jorge Palanca looking great at their respective positions in spring training, it's just not the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Give it give it at least 40 games a quarter of the season before you start. And then we'll start knowing. Yeah, this isn't as bad as I thought. Right. You see Cole hitting 96 in the bullpen and I saw AJ Minter for the Mets.

you know, coming back from surgery, you know, he was firing it beautifully and it's like, he's going to come back early. No, no. These pitchers in particular and somebody our friend Mark Stevens was sort of posing why is spring training so long? Why do they keep doing it? You know, this kind of stuff. And I basically pose that the pitchers need the ability to build up. They probably need spring training more than any of the other players simply just to be able to get to the point where they can tolerate throwing five or more innings in the game as a starter. Right. Right.

They need this time to get their arms back into throwing shape because I think people that have never pitched don't understand the fall off in your arm, even taking like a month off in terms of the strength and the stamina that you lose from just taking a month off. Cause I remember when that happened to me back going between high school and college and taking off a month and how that affected me. So I can't imagine yet. Yeah. The pitchers, yes, you're able to throw bullpens and stuff, but it's not the same. You're not able to simulate game intensity.

without games. And so you're not going to have the experience in December throwing what it's like throwing your 89th pitch in the sixth inning against somebody. You just can't. And you know, you're trying to stretch these guys out, if you will, or how do you want to do? And you've got the WBC in there, which is going to be interesting because you're to have players that are in the WC playing spring training games.

with a lot of players on the field, even fewer players on the field than that would be major league caliber players, they're all going to be in the WBC. Right now the WBC I think is going to be interesting because I think what you're going to see is WBC is going to lead to certain pitchers coming out of the gate really and then falling off because it's going to supercharge their ramp up period. And so they're going to come in at the beginning of the season way closer to midseason form than they normally do, especially in comparison to the batters that

Don't go to the WBC. But then because they pitched a whole bunch early when they get into the later part of the season, I bet they're going to fall off a little bit. And I would be really curious to see if we track some of these pitchers, especially the guys that end up pitching the most what we end up seeing from their performance this year. Well, and then it's all about, you know, Mark DeRosa, who's managing the U.S. team.

You know, I'm sure has been in close contact with every single team that's providing players to the WBC, particularly when pitchers are concerned going, don't kill my pitchers. I am sure DeRosa has gotten pitch quotas and pitch limits for all these pitchers. In anything but probably the gold medal game. They're going to be like, hey, we're going be really strict about this. In the gold medal game, if you need like five more, we'll probably tolerate it. Go for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're trying to win the darn thing.

And some injuries in spring training already. I don't know that this happened in spring training, but the Braves Spencer Schwellenbach who was injured last year still has elbow inflammation. I don't think he's due back for some time at this point. ⁓ Right. Josh Hader has bicep. He's been injured a lot. He's got biceps inflammation, no term Anthony Santander who didn't play much last year. He's not going to Toronto got crushed. gets in there. Soldier shoulder surgery, five to six months out.

Sean Bieber has the nightmare condition for all pitchers, which is forearm fatigue because he just wasn't that like a big signing when they signed him back and now he's got right. They signed him back and now he's got forearm fatigue. Would you have to be thinking as a Blue J fan like, God, what is that actually going to mean for him? Then Mountain Francis, who you were hoping was finally going to be, you know, coming back fully. Tommy John surgery 12 to 18 months. I was shocked at that, right? Because remember he had the two starts in a row where he almost threw a no hitter in both of them, I think last summer.

And he looked like, and then it says, okay, now he's just gone again. 12 to 18 months. mean, what a blow. Reese Olson is now going to miss. And this is probably why the Tigers felt as we talked about the day, he the need to go out and get for a later, because he's going to have shoulder surgery and miss all of 2026. That's a lot of you're seeing picture injuries. And this is why teams need guys and they need guys to just eat innings for them. And so I think

find them. What was interesting is the Mets actually did a really good job of finding ways to eat innings and steal games at the beginning of last year is just their pitching reinforcements never arrived. That's a big part about teams ability to win now in the regular season is how do we steal games early in the year with pitchers that will not be in our roster come October the first half of the Mets season and we painfully remember as Mets fans that the Mets had the best record in baseball at 45 and 24.

Right before the Pete Alonso throw to Kodai Senga and then everything kind of went south But they had gotten we mentioned Griffin Canning's name and he was excellent for the Mets Tyler McGill the first couple months of the season was very good and so we were hoping that they were going to sustain the Mets until Manaya came back to being himself and then it came back to being himself we had never happened

So I think that's interesting. obviously the Mets are looking at changes because they've announced a pretty big change, I think, for them this year, which is one Soto. Not that he's coming to New York, but now he's going to be playing left field instead of right field, which is a big change for the Mets, especially defensively because ⁓ he was not a good right fielder defensively. think any Met fan will admit that.

And I don't know why it didn't cross my mind when Nimmo was... he could do this. We never talked about this as a possibility. Nimmo was traded and I thought, that should have been the time immediately. Yes, Juanso is going to play left field next year. Why did it take all the way until mid-February? Now for all of us to be like, yeah, he could do that. that's a good idea. Right, yeah, Soto doesn't... He's actually got an OK arm, but in terms of defensive pressure, right field is harder than left field. More so because...

Generally when balls are hit to right field, they're with way more spin because of their coming off of the right-handed bat. So they're much harder to track off of the bat. Whereas you don't have to deal with that nearly as much in left field. So it was a much easier defensive position for him. And so now the Met outfield should hopefully be, and you're not now stacking a bad defender behind another potential bad defender. That was what was killing the Mets last year is that they have- Polanco to right field.

Right, because that was what killed them last year is you had Soto and right field Alonso at first. So you had one of the worst defensive right fielders, one of the worst defensive first baseman and then a rotating door of guys at second base. So even when they were good, it wasn't like there was any continuity built up between them defensively. So you just had this quadrant of the field that was very bad defensively. And now you kind of split that up a little bit. The and hopefully that's

Right. The cover up is better this year too because you've got Soto and left. Now you've got Luis Robert and center. So he covers a lot more ground, you know, than most of the fielders. You've got Robert and you've got Lindor to help cover for Soto. And you've got Simeon to help cover for Polanco. And when right now you're right.

And now you have Carson Bench gets the job and he may start the season in triple A, frankly, but he was a former two way player. The guy throws seeds out there and right. Having an arm is like, whoa. The biggest part about being a right fielder. So that makes a lot of sense. You the Met like you're now seeing the vision for the Mets coming through. And it's like, OK, ⁓ I'm now getting what you were going for here.

Do we want to talk about Emmanuel Classe again or should we just like, it just gets worse. Every, every new story that comes out for him is just burying him further. It's just like a man that lost all hope realizes there was a bit more he could lose because it's just like, okay, every story that comes out is like, okay, now not only are you going to be disbarred from baseball, they're to like erase your stats from the game at this way, at this rate with each story that comes out.

Yeah, can, know, class has no class. think I wrote it to leave it to people know he was throwing the game. It was it's wild. How like, and it's not even like, okay, you know what? He went into this full throatedly, like he was 100 % on board with going with this. This wasn't like, oh, people got in his ear and the wrong people told him to do stuff. No, no, no, no, no. He was 100 % a part of the skin here. I got that. Any sympathy I might've had for him is gone.

So before we get to your topic, which I think is a good one, I mean, I'm talking about home runs and Pittsburgh and Stadcast. I wanted to note that ⁓ out of market watching of Major League Baseball now is a package through ESPM for ⁓ only 149 for the season or 30 bucks a month. And it lets you watch all out of market games. while that seems, well, that's nice, I guess you can have one place to go to. But the problem is you're not watching your team.

And so, okay, you know who that's great for? All the restaurant and bars around the world that want to have baseball on TV and they don't want to have to think about what game they're putting on. That's who that's great for. Because people at home, we are are so with the most dedicated baseball fans on this podcast. I'm not going to imagine there's too many more people out there when we're talking about scale at least that are bigger baseball fans than you are. And you and I look at this feature and go, ⁓

How many baseball games do I need to watch that aren't my own team? who is this for? Well, and the bar, know, listen, if you're in Brooklyn or you're, you know, and you're in Manhattan and you own a bar, you better have the Yankee game and the Mets on TVs in your bar, which means you're paying the cable package price anyway. I love that MLB is trying. They're trying to make the game more accessible, but let's be realistic. The package that everybody wants is

150 bucks for the year. get all of my team's All of your team plus the 150 for all the out of market games. There's no way I get all of my team's I get all 160 for 150. I like that. I don't think the cable operators are going to the cable operators don't want that. that's one thing if MLB wants to put out a package that's

actually going to move the needle and make baseball fans perk up and pay attention. It's gotta be that because that's the product people want. You offering me baseball games of teams I don't watch is not a product. It's not a service. It's just okay. Like cool. I don't care. Of course, when I wake you up from your dream, ⁓ because that's all that is.

I know that we would like it to be that way. I don't know if it'll ever get there to try to undo this legacy system. I don't know how to do it. I don't have a suggestion. It's so far down the pike. It's hard to figure out how they could get them out of there. Right, Because the cable networks will just refuse to host it if they ever try to set up something like that. And I don't know. Yeah, yeah. So aside from other silly news items, know, and

the Orioles signing Chris Bassett and the Reyes signing Nick Martinez. ⁓ I thought you really came onto something interesting when you started looking up. OK, so we've got some players that have moved around this year and you mentioned Brandon Lau, I believe. ⁓ I got inspired from a YouTuber made the cut. You put out a video about five hitters who are looking at having regressions this year. Obviously, we listen to a bunch of different guys, guys like Teaspar Hernandez, guys like Cal Rowley.

But the most interesting one that he talked about was Brandon Lowe. And not for a lot of the reasons that you thought, because a lot of the other guys were like, their ground ball rate went up. their hard hit ball weight rate went up. One of the more interesting discussion points at least referenced in terms of Brandon Lowe was the parts that he was playing in. Because one of the things that we don't think about is, we think about like, ⁓ you play in your own home team stadium for 82 games. But what about

like the other stadiums in your division, you play those teams a lot and you're going to play in all of those stadiums, probably between another 30 to 40 games. That's what you think about that. 120 of your games are going to be played in like four studios, four or five stadiums. It's a lot of your season that is taking place in a really small set of a set of places. So when you look at a guy like Brandon Lowe, moves over from the AL East, where we're looking at where home runs are hit, they had

some of the highest expected home run rates at their stadium. think the Orioles were number two, the Rays because they were playing at George Steinbrenner Field were number seven, the Blue Jays were tied for 10th. So you were playing at a lot of stadiums. The Yankees are good too. ⁓ The Yankees are up there too. Only the Red Sox. Fenway Field, interestingly, is a place where it's hard to hit home runs. That's hard to believe that Fenway Park is not a home run park. Right. It's interesting. That probably is a lot because of the monster.

And it's also because of the teams. But because the Red Sox last year as a team didn't hit for a ton of power, actually. And so when the home team doesn't hit for a lot of power, that does negatively influence the amount of expected home runs at the stadium. But now in terms of Brandon Lowe, he moves from playing the Rays. So he had a bunch of home runs last year, but a third of them came when he was hitting in Camden Yards and he was hitting at George Steinbrenner Field. Now he moves to PNC Park.

where he's played 82 games in the stadium where it had the lowest expected home run rate in any state. They index really under, they're 66 off 100. That's the worst place to hit homers. I expect that to go up this year between signing guys like Lowe and Ozuna, the Pirates, their own power is going to go up. So in part why there were so few expected home runs to be hit there is because the Pirates didn't have anybody out there. The Pirates played 82 games there. With guys who don't hit home runs.

81 games. Right. The Yankees had one of the highest rate walk rates in the MLA Yankee Stadium is the stadium where the most batters walk. That's not because umpires magically have a smaller zone when they go to Yankee Stadium. It's because a guy named Aaron Judge plays there. Right. Right. I also make the point that in the Yankee Stadium, you know, because of the short right field porch, if Jazz Chilsom's coming up late in the game,

or Cody Bellinger, you might be thinking of walking those guys rather than letting them you with a home run down the line. Especially like one out, one out Cody Bellinger comes up in a tie game, you might walk him if nobody's on because you're like, yeah, I'm not going to let Cody Bellinger beat me on a pop-up to right field. And I guess shout out to Citi Field to being the most honest home run stadium in the MLB. It's the closest to average where basically,

Yeah, we see about the number of home runs we expect from the players that play there and the players that pitch there. So it'd kind of interesting to see that for Citi Field as a stadium. We always talk about being a not great place to hit. And we saw the Royals have moved in the fences at Kauffman Stadium. And probably a good thing because they were an 83 index off 100. So they were right. And it's especially and look, we all know fans like seeing home runs and moving the fences and people are like, how much does moving the fences in? You know what?

10 feet on the fences, especially with the way guys are hitting fly balls now, that could be a big difference on 10 feet because 10 less feet in the air when you're hitting these giant sky shots, all of a sudden balls that were falling just on the warning track. When you think about how many home runs you've seen fall on the warning track, balls just like guys catch right in front of the fence, you move that fence ball 10 feet in, all of those are home runs now. And we see a fair amount of home runs that just crawl over the fence and barely make it anyway. So.

You move them in 10 feet. Those are clear home runs without any chance of a catch. And now all of a there's a whole new set of ones. So I wouldn't be surprised if we saw the Royals jump up in their home run totals this year. But yeah, you really got onto something and I haven't spent a lot of time in this. You just sent me the file. know, it's something interesting. You can look it up on Statcast. It's interesting. It's It's baseball. Well, baseball's advanced that gas. Right. Right. It's interesting to think about how the stadiums affect the players.

You know, if you're going to, cause we always talk about Coors Field being a stadium where, it's the power. It's not so much the power, it's everything else. When you hit balls in Coors Field, they just fly better. So you not only have more home runs, you have more doubles, you have more triples, you have more hits, you have more power because the ball flies there better, not necessarily the ball flies further there. Right. They actually, Coors Field is, it over indexes by 10%, but it's not anywhere near the top parks. And there are plenty of parks.

that actually have something like their home run ratio, but for every other stat, as you said, triple. Chase Field is the field with the highest. It's a two eight team for triples. It's the highest index is higher than any other stadium for triples. That's in part because their outfield is insane and the ball kicks all over the place. And in part because also they have Corbin Carroll there and he's faster than, you know, light. And so he gets a bunch of triples throughout the season. Right, right. And the Yankees, you know, we think of the cavern is Yankee Stadium.

⁓ They actually under index for triples as is the case at Citi Field. Not a park with a lot of triples. I don't really think of it that way. You know what I also credit that to? Two of the slowest footpeed speed teams in the MLB. That's true. That's good. But that's important because when the home teams are slower than SIN,

Who on the Mets and the Yankees are getting triples? So when the home team is playing 82 games there and they don't have guys that are fast, they're not going to get a lot of triples. Well, and one of the guys I heard talked about is potentially he's a free agent. He's been a Met before and he's a walking out at home plate trying to run actually. That's Wilmer Flores. you talk about it.

Does he ever get any triples? That's for. Yeah. Does it? Will we even have any career triples? Yeah, I'm sure he does. But maybe one. It does happen. So this week we're going to record a podcast with our friend Tom Stone. Talking about, you know, weekly baseball and in his case, daily baseball updates and what it's like. Yeah, yeah. He's a machine. Yeah, yeah. We're going to talk about is beyond the box score and his daily.

blog, newsletter basically highlights everything that happened the day before during the regular season. So he did it for not only all 162 games of the season for all the teams last year, he also did it for the playoffs in the World Series. I don't know when the guy sleeps because you wake up in the morning and he's got the night's recap.

right in there and it's like he's writing it as the night's ending. So we look forward to having him. He'll be on our podcast next week. In the meantime, you know, we're real close to actual Major League Baseball games being played with the ABS during spring training. And that's going to be interesting to watch to see how that that works out. Yeah, yes, spring training is coming, but let's be honest, we're all looking forward to the WBC. Some real baseball covered up soon. We're going talk about that in a couple of weeks.