Wild Episode 2189: The Importance of Umpires in Baseball

July 11, 2024

in Baseball

Reading Time: 3 mins read

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about homerless White Sox second basemen, the recent history of teams with homerless positions, and the upsides and downsides of the trend toward focusing on present-season performance in All-Star selections, then (37:11) answer emails about an award for utility players, a player’s debut age matching his debut number, whether an infielder could rob a home run, whether fatigue would make a four-player batting order of stars worse than a regular, nine-player lineup, whether championships reside with a city or a franchise, whether umpires could wear shorts, the definition of a “clean inning,” what it means for a throw/tag to be “not in time,” and the requirements for breaking out of a slump, plus closing banter (1:33:23) about Paul Skenes as an All-Star starter.

Audio intro: Alex Ferrin, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: The Shirey Brothers, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to 2B HR leaderboard Link to White Sox 2B Link to 2B projections Link to White Sox 2B tweet Link to Neil Paine’s Substack Link to Neil graphic Link to ASG roster rules story Link to WAR and ASG story Link to 1989 Canseco/Schmidt story Link to Reddit post Link to Pujols/Miggy ASG Link to Castro selection story Link to Castro record tweet Link to debut age/number sheet Link to Kenny Jackelen’s Twitter Link to HR hang time comment Link to sprint speed leaderboard Link to Elly speed quote Link to 1917 Stanley Cup info Link to World Series doc thread 1 Link to World Series doc thread 2 Link to 2019 umpire manual Link to umpire shorts forum post Link to EW on pants-splitting Link to Dickson on “clean inning” Link to Pudge/Eno underwear ad Link to Julio power slump story Link to Friends hair scene Link to NL pitcher WAR Link to Skenes gamer Link to Jones max-effort story Link to listener emails database Link to ballpark meetup forms Link to meetup organizer form

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