Effectively Wild Episode 2532: Can the Public Still Teach Teams?

After a brief PSA about an open producer position (email wanted@fangraphs.com with the subject line “Podcast Editor 2026” to apply) Ben Lindbergh (kind of) continues his quest to temporarily resurrect a few dearly departed baseball podcasts by bringing on MLB.com’s Mike Petriello, former host of Ballpark Dimensions, to banter about a record home run trot, which “Statcast era” records they’re most confident are also all-time records, Junior Caminero’s defense and the value of small-sample defensive splits, the latest Statcast tools, Statcast WAR, predictive vs. descriptive stats, a divisive standing ovation for Pete Alonso at Citi Field, and this week’s White Sox-Guardians series. Then (58:25) Ben chats with former Astros AGM Andrew Ball and former Phillies quantitative analyst Tom Kim about Tom’s new command metric, OpenCommand, whether public baseball research still has something to teach teams, the public-private knowledge gap, and overrated secrets.

Audio intro: Philip Bergman, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio interstitial: The Spaghettis, “Effectively Wild Theme”
Audio outro: Justin Peters, “Effectively Wild Theme”

Link to Ballpark Dimensions podcast archive
Link to Caminero trot
Link to Caminero LIDOM trot
Link to Langs post
Link to Tater Trot Tracker
Link to exit-speed contributions
Link to Mike’s post on Caminero’s defense
Link to Mike on the Williams homer
Link to Mike’s last EW appearance
Link to 2024 bat tracking
Link to 2025 swing tracking
Link to Nats farm system article
Link to 2026 scoops article
Link to scoops leaderboard
Link to “I’m tired, boss” meme
Link to predicted xwOBACON
Link to VAAAA
Link to Baseball Savant
Link to “last mile” wiki
Link to standing Alons-O article
Link to team 1B WAR
Link to Piazza ovation
Link to Seaver ovation
Link to Pujols ovation
Link to Pham story
Link to White Sox-Guardians gamer
Link to Peters PA article 1
Link to Peters PA article 2
Link to Davy on Jack Reacher
Link to Andrew’s baseball bio
Link to The Athletic profile on Andrew
Link to Tom’s OpenCommand thread
Link to OpenCommand account
Link to OpenCommand github
Link to The Athletic on OpenCommand
Link to OpenCommand validation
Link to OpenCommand accuracy
Link to computer vision article 1
Link to computer vision article 1
Link to pitch-tipping detection info
Link to Tom on miss distance
Link to Tango on miss distance
Link to Sam on misses
Link to Ben on COMMANDf/x
Link to The Athletic on Command+
Link to “Stuff” model command stats
Link to BP on command 1
Link to BP on command 2
Link to team targets article
Link to team targets graph
Link to command value post
Link to Tom’s post on baseball analytics
Link to Andrew’s Substack
Link to Andrew on public baseball analysis
Link to Andrew on idea value
Link to Ben on baseball secrets
Link to Andrew on idea value
Link to Andrew on draft performance
Link to Hustle+ paper
Link to Ben on hustle
Link to Andrew’s podcast post
Link to Andrew’s podcast
Link to Marvel’s Wolverine clip 1
Link to Ben’s first Wolverine pod
Link to Ben’s second Wolverine pod
Link to previous Winquest banter
Link to Gasper story
Link to Paine on position-player pitchers

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