Effectively Wild Episode 2368: F Everything, We’re Doing Five Taters

by
August 30, 2025

EWFI
Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about John Brebbia’s return to the big leagues, Kyle Schwarber’s four-homer game, the potential for a position-player-pitcher-assisted five-homer game, Heliot Ramos and dingers on extremely slow pitches, an interminable inning, whether the playoff race is over and, if so, whether that’s an indictment of the 12-team format, and the profusion of recently promoted pitchers potentially in line for postseason starts, then (55:50) answer listener emails about season-ending injuries, accounting for player intention in WAR, “rounding home,” giving pitchers tall shoes, making baseball less random, the worst on-field feeling, pitcher aesthetics, and mid-PA pitching changes, plus (1:36:34) follow-ups.

Audio intro: Beatwriter, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Nate Emerson, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to MLBTR on Brebbia
Link to The Onion headline
Link to four-homer-games query
Link to Schwarber’s dingers
Link to article on Suárez game
Link to Ramos homer
Link to slowest HR pitches
Link to Rob Arthur on exit speed
Link to pitch-count tweet
Link to Nats-Yanks game
Link to pitch-count query
Link to Keyser on the playoff race
Link to Sheehan on the playoff race
Link to Baumann on the playoff race
Link to Andrews on the playoff race
Link to the AP on strikeouts
Link to McLean info
Link to Tong info
Link to Tolle info
Link to Baumann on Rodriguez
Link to Marucci email
Link to Seinfeld clip
Link to possessions info
Link to Ben on mid-PA pitching changes
Link to listener emails database
Link to Rounding Home book
Link to Rounding for Home book
Link to Rounding Home movie
Link to “Rounding Home” headline
Link to Berkson’s paradox
Link to Berkson and baseball

 Sponsor Us on Patreon
 Give a Gift Subscription
 Email Us: podcast@fangraphs.com
 Effectively Wild Subreddit
 Effectively Wild Wiki
 Apple Podcasts Feed 
 Spotify Feed
 YouTube Playlist
 Facebook Group
 Bluesky Account
 Twitter Account
 Get Our Merch!

Podcast (effectively-wild): Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

You Aren't a FanGraphs Member
It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed.
We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member.
1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other.
2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off.
3. Dark mode and Classic mode!
4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them.
5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects.
6. Remove the photos on the home page! (Honestly, this doesn't sound so great to us, but some people wanted it, and we like to give our Members what they want.)
7. Even more Steamer projections! We have handedness, percentile, and context neutral projections available for Members only.
8. Get FanGraphs Walk-Off, a customized year end review! Find out exactly how you used FanGraphs this year, and how that compares to other Members. Don't be a victim of FOMO.
9. A weekly mailbag column, exclusively for Members.
10. Help support FanGraphs and our entire staff! Our Members provide us with critical resources to improve the site and deliver new features!
We hope you'll consider a Membership today, for yourself or as a gift! And we realize this has been an awfully long sales pitch, so we've also removed all the other ads in this article. We didn't want to overdo it.




 

1 Comment
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Yer Main GuyMember since 2024
2 months ago

Thanks for the Berkson reference, it puts a name to what bugged me so much about this article from a few weeks ago.

https://blogs.fangraphs.com/riley-greene-is-luis-arraezs-wario/

“slow swingers will always come out on top, because swinging slower allows for greater barrel accuracy”

Kinda makes it sound like one can just swing slower and hit more balls. However I think that just gets you swinging slower, hitting the same number if balls, and unemployed. The supposed correlation comes from selection.

0