543 | MiLB's Historical Offensive Spike with BA's JJ Cooper

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2:05Not to right. Welcome to the show. Welcome back to the call up your go-to podcasts on the future stars of Major League Baseball. As always, I'm your host, Adam Layton, and we have a special episode today because I'm joined by the editor-in-chief of Baseball America, JJ Cooper. JJ is awesome and was the perfect person to bring on to talk about the offensive onslaught that we've seen all year across Lowe, Hayae, AA, in the minor leagues. And what's going on with these baseballs? JJ did an unbelievable job breaking it all down. We had a great conversation, but also in his piece that you can find linked in the episode description where he just goes so granular, which JJ does such a good job of. He's one of the best in the business, obviously, and has been so inspirational for me, him and Baseball America in general, for everything that I have settled into doing in this space and grown to love in this space. There's a lot of it's because I was reading Baseball America and seeing what they were putting out and just enjoying so much the type of content

3:07that they put together, the research, the e-vows, the info on the minor leagues. And if you aren't subscribed to Baseball America, absolutely, it's one of those things that is worth it without a doubt. And we talk about it at the end. They're running a promo. I think you've used a code Anderson. You get 30% off on your subscription. It's definitely worth it. Baseball America is still an incredibly helpful and insightful resource for me. They are so good at covering everything across the entire minor leagues in the game in general, but just to give you so much more information consistently across all 30 ball clubs. So without further delay, let's get right into it. We had a blast of a conversation. I wish we could have went even longer. The JB show right up against it. JJ had somewhere to go. We probably could have talked shop for 45 minutes an hour about all of this because there's so much spin off and extension from just the baseball's flying, like player e-vow, just the fallout of that. How does it even happen? How do you assess certain players versus others, ground ball pictures, five ball pictures, which home run hitters or which hitters in general,

4:09excuse me, are benefiting more? Is it the home run hitters? Is it the more contact oriented guys? We get into all of that. And so let's get into it. Here's the episode with JJ Cooper. We've got chaos in the minor leagues when it comes to how the baseballs are flying. And we've talked about it a lot in the show. We've tried to figure it out and break it all down, but you decided to just bring on the expert on it. The guy that can break this down for us better than anybody. We're going to talk about some other stuff as well because anytime I get a chance to talk to JJ Cooper, the editor in chief of baseball America, or we're going to end up having a long conversation. But JJ, first and foremost, thank you so much for coming on. Second, this piece is what I think so many people were waiting for. I've tried, I dove into a bunch of different little aspects about it and I'm excited to unpack that with you. But I mean, nobody has been more thorough on offense being up in the minor leagues and why and what it looked like than you. The piece is linked in the episode description, but thank you so much for coming on to talk about it.

5:09I'm happy to join you, Aaron. And it is, it's been one of those things where it was like, I got to be honest, I was kind of like, we saw it early in the season, you're like, okay, is it going to stay this way? Is it going to stay this way? And the way I would summarize it is, the Florida state leagues now wrapped up the regular season. And it's 5.46 runs per team per game in the Florida state league. Now, I don't know if I ever would have imagined that to be honest. Like the flaw I'm used to, the Florida state league is the league where it's like, oh, the home run leader this year had 12. You used to be a graveyard. Yeah, not this year. There are no graveyard anywhere in the minor leagues this year. And it's one of those things that I find kind of fascinating because, okay, we've seen ups and downs, but until I really dove into it, I knew offense was up. I did not fully fathom that it's like, no, no, no. I mean, I went back, you know, again, I,

6:12I would say that when it comes to the minors, we, I always get a little bit reticent when people say it's a minor league record. It's like, okay, we know Joe Bauman hit 70 homers in a Roswell or 77. And that's a record. We know that. When someone says, like, oh, you know, when, uh, earlier, here, Mike's road is like, yes, an on-base record. It's like, I promise you, there's no one out there who can tell me that what every player in the three I league in 1912 did. But when it comes to the minors and things like this, I would say, 1963 is a good part to start no longer class BCD. Like the minors are at least structured like they are now. And we can say this is the highest run scoring environment that we have seen in the minors since 1963. And that's the most wild part because I mean, you have so intimately been intertwined in the minor leagues, coverage wise watching, um, of course, whether it's on the, analyzing things and breaking down players. And we're going to talk about trying to assess players and how that has kind of been difficult

7:15this year to a degree because of the variable that is the baseballs and how we have to recalibrate. But you mentioned like in the early going, if there's one thing that more that you cover minor league baseball, the more you realize, like, there's chaos and sometimes there's flips and, and anomalies or just, just weird trends and data and then they'll start to level out a little bit. Uh, we picked it up early in the season. Just the thing that stood out to me was how many balls at like certain angles and exit velocities and like that got out. And it was almost more anecdotally. I would just see a swing and be like, that got out. How many, and then it happened too many times where I'm like, something's going on. When did you start to really realize like, oh, something's going on. So I think it was, I didn't, again, you don't want to go three, four weeks in the season, even if you're seeing stuff, you really want to be like, let's let the season have a little bit of breathing room to it, right? You kind of have to because like where things can happen, it can be cold, it can be warmer than normal, all those kind of things.

8:18I'm the time we got to may, though, to kind of go back to your point. That's what it was also standing out for us was like, the way I would describe it is, is you will sometimes see a hitter, fooled on an outside pitch and kind of throw the bat at it, right? And then you see the outfield or drifting back, drifting back, drifting back. And then looks up and goes, oh, that's gone. And you're like, okay, I've been doing this long enough that I have a reasonable calibration like, then I look, you know, like, okay, maybe it's okay for old school Lancaster back was and the winds at 40 miles an hour, you're like, okay, I have an explanation. But you've seen that more and more. And the funny thing about it is is because we've seen this in college baseball, a couple of years ago. And I would say that kind of with that, it evoked a lot of the same memories, because I would say in college baseball, there were two things going on. You would see like a couple of years ago, you start seeing balls where it's like, he didn't really get that and that easily went out.

9:19And then you would see like, he got that and that ball disappeared into a different galaxy. And it was like, okay, this is not the same as what we were seeing a few years ago. But so by mid-May, it was like, okay, there's really something going on here. At that time, there was that weird little blip that the North West League was the one league that wasn't showing this. And then it's kind of even now that it's part of the, it's joined the club. But I remember talking to a couple of people I knew it had to be and they're like, yeah, we kind of figured you'd be calling about this. And they're like, we don't know what's going on either. And it's like, okay, you know, and that's I think the key part of this is, I know a lot of people understandably they carry, you know, we are, we live in a conspiracy theory age. I can't come up with why anyone would want this. Yeah. I don't have anyone, I don't think if anyone in baseball, I can tell you that minor league operators are not like, you know what, we want, we need more 12, 10 games. Yeah, they don't want that. The game goes too long. Developmentally wise, you don't want, you don't want pictures getting absolutely pummeled

10:23for like, you know, a ball go in the egg like there, this is something that is absolutely happening. And I do think it really is just kind of like, oh, it just happening. And who knows if it'll keep going next year or not? You could make the case that they would honestly not want it to happen. With, with the roster shortages we've seen, like the trimming down levels, the lack of pitching, we've seen position players throwing more and you guys have covered this too. We've seen them throwing too much, too much. We're seeing position players throw it leverage because they're out of, they're out of arms. So in offensively, in environments, the last thing that they need, this is the part that I think extends beyond. And I'm excited to just get into the numbers with you, but I'd be remiss if I didn't bring it up before we get into the numbers. How does, how does something like this happen? I understand like, we've seen it major league baseball, there's variables and sometimes it happens. But to this degree across, you know, the entire minor leagues, how does this happen? What I would say, the best dance rocking give is that, and again, these baseballs are well with it. They are, they meet, there's nothing like these are

11:29within, they meet certifications. From what I understand, especially over the years of doing this, is that is something that could basically be said that the certifications are wide and broad enough that one baseball that you couldn't, they proof couldn't hit out. And another baseball that basically you look at a little bit funny and it flies out both fall within it. And so like, I mean, the way in this kind of maybe gets us into a little bit of kind of some of the data on all this, like one of the ways I tried to study this was having some fun with programming and all and going into it looking at it's like, we know with a Florida state league, like the key thing when we say we know as the minor league ball, or at least we, I should say no, we have a strong theory and a hypothesis and evidence that it is the minor league baseball is AAA uses the major league ball and AAA is having a normal year. Now, it's an offensive year because AAA has been offensive ever since they added ABS and ever since they added the major league ball, which used to be the hot baseball

12:33and the minor league ball, which is more machine made and which is used for double A and below, used to be kind of the dead or ball. Sure that it's the live ball, but what was said is so we know we have AAA and we can measure, we have, you know, all the data, analytical data of every ball's exit velocity, its launch angle, its sprangle, you know, was it pulled, was it hit Oppo, all that. So with the FSL, we have that too. So we have these kind of, we do have kind of the perfect environment here of you can compare. And what we found is, if you look in AAA, put balls in the same ball parks, hit the same ways, it's like, okay, they perform roughly like they did last year. And then you put them, you look in the Florida state league and you have balls hit the same EV at the same launch angle, at the same spray angle, in the same ball park, in the same time frame of the year, right? We did not control for, hey, it has to be 82 degrees this day, but we did it, we did say we're not going to look at like I did

13:35the study in mid mid to late August, we didn't look at anything past that from last year, we're like, we're going to compare apples to apples. And what we could say with that is, if you hit a ball, let's say 95 miles an hour with a 20 degree launch angle and you pulled it at, you know, a certain spray angle, balls generally traveling about four to six feet more this year than it was last year. If you hit the ball harder, it even travels further more than it did last year. So we can say with that, yes, you are getting rewarded more this year. If you hit the ball in the air, it's going further. And I know some people may say, well, what's four feet, what's five feet? If you're hitting balls that were wall scrapers before, it makes a very big difference. And you mentioned, like, how it gets rewarded even more so as guys are hitting balls harder. And that's the fun part that you also account for. So there's something to do with the hitters too. I'm even just looking at a lot of the lower-level hitters. When you look at the EVs, it feels like just with the way that we're

14:38trending, guys are hitting the ball harder every single year. Even in the DSL, the amount of like one-thirteens we're seeing all of a sudden, we're like, these to be excited about a kid popping a 110 down there, right? Or a 108. And so that, I think, you know, in this instance with the ball, do you feel like that's exacerbated the way that the ball is flying that guys are already starting to hit the ball a little bit harder? And if the average EV in the league is up, let's say even just a half mile per hour, I don't know what the year-over-year would look like there. How much is that just maybe catapult this already increased flying of the baseballs? So the Florida State League, and this is in the story, Florida State League, the average EV on line drives and flyballs, because to be honest, for Tomah homeruns, we don't care about ground balls for this. But the average EV on line drives and flyballs in 23 was 90.5, 90.8, and 24, 91, 1, and 25, 91, 3, and 26. So it is getting there as part of this is that hitters are hitting the ball harder. There's absolutely a part of this, like by the best that we could estimate it, looking at this, and we tried to study it multiple ways,

15:40and we kept coming up with kind of a very similar answer. Looking at the FSL, and again, we could then extrapolate and say that this true in other leagues too. But you could say that maybe 50% or so, 40 to 60%. Let's put some pretty big air bars of this improvement in run scoring and homeruns, is being driven by hitters doing a better job, right? If you hit the ball harder, if you hit the ball in the air, especially your pull side more often, all those things will be rewarded. However, studying it multiple different ways, modeling it, looking at EVs, looking at different ways of looking at it, we kept coming up to again that somewhere between 40 to 60% of the improvement couldn't be explained by hitting the ball harder, hitting the ball in the air more often, all these things. There is a part of this that is, hey, maybe hitters are, we know that every, the emphasis on bat speed training, we know the emphasis on getting to your power, all these things are evident.

16:46And it is, I would say, a largely home run driven exercise of why this is up this year. But okay, to just share a stat, a random stat from it. Looking at, like I was looking at the home run by fly ball rate in the Texas League. In June, it was 19.5%. Across the league, right? Across the league, if you're a pitcher who gives up fly balls in the Texas League in June, I feel for you. I really do. By the way, it makes what K-Danderson did really impressive. But like, I really do feel for you because just think of that. If you say, if I give up five home fly balls in a game, one of them on average is going to go out. If I give up 10, two are going to go out, two home runs in a game. That's probably three or four runs right there. And it could be like, okay, again, that's the normal. Most years, we see that that rates much closer to like 10. We've seen 8% in a lot of leagues. So, now that was the extreme, but we are seeing

17:53the home run to fly ball rate overall, really up this year. And just home runs in general. I mean, to see other aspects where, of course, it's surface level more just like identifying the top end. And now it's not even really analysis compared to what you dove into, but you just see the home run totals from some of the better power hitters in the minor leagues. And you say, okay, these guys are obviously having great years, but everybody's having a better year than the top guy last year. It starts to get a little bit just spooky. You mentioned that it's about a 40 to 70% of the home run increase coming from better contact. And then the rest kind of come in from, you know, what you could look at from just the baseballs. How do you account for like what would, and maybe this is oversimplifying it, but for people that are trying to make sense of what a good season is and what a great season is like, how much do you really think it's impacting? If all things are neutral, let's say for just keeping the 4 to 8 league and you play a full season there. A guy that

18:53would typically be hitting 20 home runs like is he hitting 27 28? Okay. So I didn't put this in there. I'm still working on it. Maybe I'll put it out there at some point. I'm not comfortable saying that I feel like that this is bullet proof enough to put out there. And so, but I did try to model in the Florida state league like every hitter. And there were hitters who if you modeled their ball flight this year. And you said, okay, now put that into last year. You were seeing guys who hit 13 homeers this year who would hit six or seven. Now that's extreme examples of it. And there are other guys where you could be like, I'll use an example. Tony Blanco Jr. Tony Blanco Jr. His you say, well, look at how many home runs he agrees, but I'm out of the Greeks bro. Again, I would not want to pitch there this year. But like he had a weakened bowling green where it's like, okay, if every ball you hit leaves the stadium, I don't care what basically it doesn't matter, right?

19:56But I will say like I did find his little bit counterintuitive this. So I thought when I was studying this that it would be the the guys who were hitting the just over the fence homeers who would benefit the most. That makes and that makes sense to me. But I will say it did find like because we did see in the FSL that the biggest increases like if you hit about 105 miles an hour or harder, we didn't see an increase in home run rate this year compared to last year looking at different launch angle buckets and all. But again, if you hit about 105 miles an hour in the air, part of that is that it was a home or last year. It's a home or this year. It was in that 90 to 100 mile an hour EV in those 20 to 30 degree buckets that you saw the biggest increases. So you would I would say like the hitters who were good, you know, we're hitting them all relatively hard. We're we're seeing bigger benefits. But it does seem like it's kind of almost across the board.

21:00It's funny when you said that about like trying to calibrate for this. It's a YouTube comment. So you know, it's the best, the, you know, there's a little bit of snide, you know, comments there. But Carlos for us, you know, talking about Kate Bodine, it was like, you know, the power is kind of a question for them. And the commenter said like kind of crazy to say that a guy who has 13 homeers this year doesn't have power. And then I'm kind of just jumped in and was like, do you know how many hitters have 20 homeers this year? And it's like like we're it's it's we're going to we could end up with almost an average of two hitters per team across the miners who get to like 18 to 20 homeers again. And a year this year, it's hard to calibrate for this because it the flip side of it too. Like, you know, oh, someone says not having a very good year as a 4-E-R-A. Like that might be an ERA plus of, you know, of 115, 120, 130 this year, depending on the league, trying to fit a 38% increase year over year. Our brains, I think, as humans are just not very

22:04well equipped to fit that into, oh, it's this is normal now, it's a post-lusture. So to that point, I definitely want to get into arms. So based on the way you laid out, the top end power guys, there's a little bit more, I don't want to use the word like validity because it's all valid. It's the league. You could only play with the ball in front of you. But it's it's a little bit more standard, would you say? Because I just go to Andrew Fisher and like you look at his home runs. I mean, only at least what I have in front of me, only a handful of them, maybe a little bit more than a handful, but not a ton are below 100 miles an hour. Like, there's one that's it's like 90 miles per hour at 44 degrees. And there's some pockets and that's field and block scene. Sometimes there's a jet stream out the left, whatever it may be, but most of them aren't cheap. So like a guy like Andrew Fisher is like, is that pretty authentic at 46? I don't know, man. That's a great question. Because I would say in some ways, obviously, yes, because you, I mean, even if you take the environment of this year, Andrew Fisher is,

23:08he might he's kind of come close to 50 home runs in a year where we don't know if anyone's going to get to 40, right? So yeah, there is a certain degree of even within the bounds of this, this is not like, oh, he has 28 and everyone else has 26. This is your at a different level. At the same time, it's a home run to fly ball rate that Aaron Judge would look at and go, well, don't sir, like it's a, like there's two different questions there. It's absolutely legit what he's done. It's also absolutely legitimate as we get Brewers fans who yell at us, you know, like, why don't you have him rated higher? It's like, it's also nice little legitimate to say, is this a sustainable skill? I'm not so certain because it's it's also a 34% trek out, right? Yeah, for us. And that that's that kind of, I would say, like we do have a number of players this year, like you got the him and then you got like the says arenas of the world, right? Like, you know,

24:08like Ryan says, Rene for the Guardians has had a great second half of the year. But he's the flip side of this. I went back and counted every one of his homers and like, okay, if the outfielder jumps at the wall to try to keep the ball in the park, I'm calling that a wall scraper, or if the outfielder stops, you know, before the warning track to play the caram off the wall and the out leaves, that's a you just barely got out. And I could get up to about 45% of his homers fit within that criteria. And this is the the follow up question to this, though, is is, okay, so we can 100% say with that, he would have fewer homers last year. No question. But how useful is what minor league baseball was last year? We don't know if this is going to be the new environment going forward. Is this whole one year blip? But also to be honest, this minor league environment for double A and below is more similar to the home run rates that we see in the major

25:11leagues than we did before. Now, I don't think that it makes a whole lot of sense that 19 year olds in the FSL who don't hit the ball as hard as 26 and 27 year olds in the major leagues are having similar home run rates. But I don't know. I can't tell you that it's not maybe a useful learning lesson for both the hitters and the pitchers. At Edward Jones, we believe rich is about taking care of what gives your life meaning. That's why your financial advisor personalizes your plan to help you preserve your progress and create something that lasts. Let's find your rich Edward Jones, member SIPC. Chatchy PT can do more than answer questions. It can help you get real work done. Chatchy PT work is built for bigger projects with multiple steps. You bring the goal along with the information it needs. Like briefs, notes, files, feedback, calendars, data sets, or project plans. Then, Chatchy PT can help turn all of that into something useful, an analysis, a tracker, a deck outline, a prototype, or a workflow you can keep shaping. It can also use approved apps,

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29:12That's where I'm saying I think it's useful to be on these things. Sometimes it's like I have theories but I don't have enough to really like because I have a theory going entirely the other way, which to look at the major league level. When we had a really big increase in home run rate in the last decade at the major league level, I actually would propose at least that that helped the Kevin Newman's, the David Fletcher's of the world, right? Because those were guys who if you say why that guy, I would say both of those were fringy regulars is what I would generally describe in this. But if you said, well, why is that? It's like because they just don't hit them all hard enough to be regulars. But again, all of this is kind of yes, it's almost kind of by a player by player standpoint because those players in those years, the ball carries more and all the sudden the ball that was being caught by the outfield gets over his head. And so if you turn, let's say 10

30:16fly ball outs into doubles in a year, that pretty much could transform your year in somewhat. Now the flip side of that is is I made giant Chandler Simpson fan been watching him since he was at Georgia Tech. I will tell you right now, if anything, this kind of environment for Chandler Simpson was in the minors, all it could do is hurt him because all that it could do, he's not going to hit homers, Chandler Simpson doesn't hit homers. But if it meant that the balls that are landing in front of the outfielders now are getting to the outfielders, well, how useful is that for him? It's like, wow, I used to be able to get that guy that balls the land in front of him and it was a single. And now that's an out. I what I would say with all of this is, again, I've tried even do some modeling the FSO. No, it's like, it's so complex. There's such a multi variable question that I don't think that we're, I think we're going to best, we're going to do the best we can. But

31:17I also think to some, the answer is going to be, we'll know in a few years, right? Like, and I say that from a standpoint of like, we see this, like, the thing that everyone wants in this, right? Is certainty or fans understand we want like, Hey, I'm sure you hear it too. Like, you were wrong on this guy, you know, it's like, okay, the Dodgers just went out and signed Cal Tucker, right? Cal Tucker has a major league track record that is very long at this point. And I would say that everyone would say that this has been a massively disappointing season. And obviously not something that the Dodgers or Cal Tucker or anyone would have predicted. But these are like, there are variables every year. And so, I mean, I would say that with like a guy like Andrew Fisher, we know that he's having an incredible year. One of the best years we've seen in the miners in a long, long time. If you say, what does that mean for the long term? I would say that you kind of have to say, it gives you a percentage chance of this, a percentage of this and a percentage of that. And that's really,

32:20that's the most intellectually honest way I think that you can answer it. Not, oh, well, this means this or it means this. And trying to recalibrate for those percentage range of outcomes is the hard part here with with this. And I think with the pitching side, it can almost make it a little bit easier when a guy's shoving to buy into it, right? Where you see, you mentioned Kate Anderson and what he's done. Of course, he has to make the leap and get used to the big loop baseball and how that's going to, you know, just adjust his arsenal and stuff looked a lot better last time out. But some do it a little bit, but when you look at like an Ion sin or a jerwar or so many of these other guys that have had the success that they've had and been able to keep the ball in the yard, how much more confident does that make you and you guys in this process when you're going through the top 100 update team updates when you're seeing these pictures succeed. And also, how much more leeway does it give? Maybe some guys that you love the stuff, but they're just struggling from an ERA standpoint. I would say again, you have to go by context because like, I do think that actually if you are someone who's a strikeout, because obviously strikeouts don't leave the yard. And

33:23ground ball pitcher, especially like if you can do both of those things, then there might be a little bit of a false indicator here, right? Oh, this year, this year is so great. It's like great point. Okay, if you hit them on the ground, it's like they're not getting punished the same way as someone who's a very fly ball oriented pitcher gets penned. But the other thing I would say that's like the human component of this, right? I, I love Indie Ball, partner leagues now, but I covered Indie Ball. One of the first things that I did at baseball America for years was cover Indie Ball, right? And you would see examples of hitters who had really struggled in affiliate ball. And they would go to Indie Ball and they would have this monster year. And then they would come back and there would be much better hitters in affiliate balls they were before. And you could say, Oh, so they did they rework their swing. They discovered a new training tips, you know, they're stronger, and like that. Sometimes, Balbino Fennmaior, good guy, like I really like talking about Bino, but Balbino Fennmaior, I think really what it was is when you struggle, that can create a cycle of further struggling, right?

34:31And when you're successful and you buy a confident hitter is a better hitter than a not confident hitter, a confident pitcher is a better pitcher. Your next pitch is better if you believe it's going to succeed than if you believe it's going to fail. We've created the environment this year. I don't care how much you have your coaches and front office officials in all in your ear, telling you, I know it's a 5, 8, 8, 8, 8, I know, you know, I know it looks bad, but you're actually having a good year. There's a human component to this where some of those players may not make it back from that. They may be like, I'm not good at this. And they spiral that way. And there's going to be, I promise you at least a couple of hitters who they're going to ride this and they're going to be like, I see I'm the man. And not that it's going to make them a star. And they would not even have made the majors, but it's going to make them a little better in the long run than they ever would have been because they're going to go into next year riding this wave of like, you better

35:37not challenge me because if you do, I'm going to punish you. And they've never felt that way before. It's a great point because we were talking about the opposite of that. I was talking to some buddies that were in the Southern week and when they had to deal with the tax base of the possible. And we were saying, how many guys that were maybe up against it, maybe it was their last year, it was a do or die season. And you're seeing 2022 vert. And in these sharp breaking malls and you're punching out 35% of the time and you start pressing and you're like, how am I going to, in my make or break here, survive with the blitzball. And you imagine the mental aspect of that challenge. That was the last thing I was going to ask you before we plug, you know, some of the things that you guys have coming up. That was also, you guys were on the forefront of that. But it was another one where somebody's in the league texting me, like, these balls are different. This is weird. We just saw a guy get 24 per yesterday, you know, blah, blah, blah. That was obviously more premeditated and that was a whole plan. So that was, yeah, that was an announced experiment. Did they announce that all? And that was very

36:39yeah, they said like that was one of the things. So every year we tried to a story of here are the rule, like, I'll say this for MLB again, going back to the conspiracy theory component of this. When it comes to like the, I will say that MLB, you can fall in a lot of things they've done. But one thing that they very clearly have done over the last like 10 years, I would say is that they've been up front about the AFL and the minor leagues and to some extent even partner leagues have been kind of the rooms for their experiment, right? They they moved the mound back in the Atlantic League, perhaps, as easy as much to the anger of a whole lot of pictures and that league and all that. But they've done these things where you either find that the answer, yes, it helps, no, it hurts, doesn't make a change. They've done this where they generally do it where you have this experiment and then you have a control for it, right? Well, they've done that pretty publicly in those cases. Hey, we're going to put beans up baseball, you know, pizza bags, you know, like the big pizza bags in half for half the year and not for half the year. We're going to do ABS

37:41challenge system on weekends and we're going to do a full ABS on weekdays and we're going to do, you know, all these things. And we haven't obviously this has been something where it's like this just happened and it's like there is no control, there is no of that. But with all of it, it is something where the tough part of this is is what you just said, which is these are players careers, these are players lives. And I can tell you they're going to be affected by this. Now, you can say like it affects everyone, right? Like it is the same. It's not that some guys are affected and some guys aren't. Some guys because of their attributes may be more affected or not. But the game, the ball is the same ball for everyone. But if you say, is it going to have long term effects? Probably so. And that was the surprising part of experimenting in double A of all the places. You may be like, get to understand different level. They have, they make sense. That's where it was surprising that year and it was worth a shot. See what you could do would. I mean, if they still want to find like because again, the whole goal of this,

38:44I would say was they want to find a Japan seems to have done it better so far. But a tackier baseball that doesn't require the mud rubbing, but still provides that same feel. We just found that no, like the problem with that is, is that if you go beyond what you had before, well, then you basically it's like you've essentially, you've got a bullfrog, you know, what we were seeing in the late, you know, the 2018-2019 range where it was like, oh, yeah, I can hold the baseball, you know, on my fingers like that. But by the way, I'm getting, you know, six more inches of IVB than I was before, you know, that kind of thing. Exactly. Exactly. Which is a crazy part. And I'm excited at the end of the season, we'll have a little bit more data and we can just really dive back into it. I know you're going to be going even further into things. So what love to have you on is a follow-up when you break it. For the fun topic. Oh my gosh. The thing about it is, is like, you again, every year,

39:49it's like every year in the minor leagues is going to have its story. Well, we know what the story of the 2026 minor league season is. We know that. And again, I would say kind of rooting for Andrew Fisher, like if we got to a 50-homer season, that would be the perfect caper. Even if it gets one more, if you could say that you have the most homers in a non-PCL season in the last 50 years, that would be special. That would be special. Especially when, like you said, it's still the same baseball by a lot of the everyone else getting to hit it too. Still got to hit it and still coming in faster than ever. A couple of final things. You guys brought on James Anderson. So excited about that. He is awesome. I know you guys are running a promo. Yes. I would like to think that the vast majority of our audience is already subscribed to baseball America. If you're not for some reason, this is the perfect time to do it because you guys are running a discount. Code Anderson, through September 13, gives you 30% off on your first year of a baseball America subscription. And yeah, we don't do a whole lot of offers very often. So this is a perfect

40:51time. And obviously, check out James has his first, you know, he'll be like, it bringing James on board has been really fun just because like, again, same thing that you know, like it's like, it's fun talking baseball and having people smart people that I can learn from on a daily basis. And hopefully every now and then throw something out that they also are like, oh, I hadn't thought about that. Is a very fun way to kind of dissect a game we all love. Well, and you did plenty of that today with us here. You gave us a lot of who we haven't thought about that. There's even more linked in the episode description on J.J.'s piece of baseball America. It's an awesome read and a ton, a ton of information. JJ, thank you so much for taking the time to come on and it's a long time coming. I'm so glad to have you on. I love to do it. Great. So, you know, great though. We finally did this. And I would say with that though, but I will also say like, hey, I am not saying I have all the answers. I try to be clear on this. If someone has an idea for something, if I haven't looked at it, sometimes it's like, hey, you know, like I got a lot of the, oh, it's they're doing this for this. Like, no, we tested for that. But if someone has an idea for something that we

41:53haven't, I love looking into this. So, hit me up. Let me know. I love it. And there's nobody better to do it. Thank you, Gany J.J. We'll talk soon. Thanks.