Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1360: The Team Fun Draft

Episode Date: April 8, 2019

Ben Lindbergh, Sam Miller, and Meg Rowley banter about Mike Trout leading MLB in WAR and follow up on the bad ad from Episode 1358, then draft all 30 teams in terms of how fun they are to follow in 2019. Audio intro: Smash Mouth, "Fun" Audio outro: The Knack, "Serious Fun" Link to list of drafted […]

Let's have some fun while we're still young. Turn off the sound till your feet leave the ground. Yeah, let's drive the car till we've gone too far. Then we'll pick up the pieces and push it back home. Good morning and welcome to episode 1360 of Effectively Wild, the baseball podcast from Fangraphs.com, brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Sam Miller of ESPN, along with the whole gang, Meg Rowley from Fangraphs, and Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hey folks. Hello. Hello. How are you both doing? Well, good.

Oh, good. You're both here because we're going to do a draft, a long draft. So it might be a good idea to keep banter to a minimum, particularly because this draft will provide lots of opportunity for banter. So if you wanted to, for instance, banter about Chris Davis, well, I guarantee you we're going to be talking about the Orioles at some point in this draft and whether Chris Davis is soul crushingly depressing right now. But that said, do you have anything that simply must be said? Well, I just wanted to point out that, as you note, another hit list day for Chris Davis,

another outlist appearance for Trevor Rosenthal, and another home run for Mike Trout. And so if we look at the Fangraph's live leaderboard right now, we see that Mike Trout is leading all other baseball players in wins above replacement. And I wonder whether we have to revisit our podcast maxim, that stats become real, that we can start trusting them when Mike Trout is the MLB war leader, because I think Mike Trout has gotten too good for that to be true. He's the MLB war leader now on, well, the end of April 7th, and it is obviously too soon to trust other players' stats. So what do we do about this?

Perhaps we could introduce a caveat, which is that, yes, he is. He is right there in the leaderboard, but perhaps he needs to also not share our most searched players list with the likes of, say, Tim Beckham or, you know, Chris Davis or even Dansby Swanson. Sorry, Dansby. Think you got to go. So maybe there are conditions to his arrival while the rest of the goofiness sorts itself out. Yeah. I personally would say that it is not too early.

The maxim is true. The maxim holds. The main thing is that that was always more about trying to say something about Mike Trout than trying to say something about the stats. So I still think we can indulge. Yeah. It feels like he's gotten better again. I'm sure we'll have time to talk about that some other time.

But in this very episode, in fact. In all likelihood, yeah. It feels like about time to write the annual mike trout is better again article so yeah see yeah writes it first all right real quick the l russell email address ad we got a we got a we did get a few people who replied with very satisfying explanations for why this ad exists in the format it does uh and so i'm just going to pick one of the responses from rob who says i think the radio spot you played in Thursday's episode was a program electronic review management radio ad. If a U.S. employer wants to hire a foreign worker

for a given position, it must prove that doing so would not effectively take a job opportunity from a U.S. citizen. PERM, Program Electronic is essentially a shorthand for this process. The employer certifies that it has tried without success to hire a U.S. worker for the position in question. Among other requirements, the employer must advertise for the position in a variety of outlets. The process is criticized for being pro forma. It is thought that some employers game the system by placing ads that are extremely unlikely for one reason or another to attract a significant number of applicants. So some people suggested that this ad could be intentionally opaque or difficult to follow. Some suggested that it's simply an ad that nobody really cared about. And so therefore,

it was sloppily done and nobody minded if it was difficult, or perhaps something in between. it was sloppily done and nobody minded if it was difficult or perhaps something in between. I think that seems very reasonable, quite possibly, maybe true, who knows, but I'm certainly accepting this explanation. And I don't know whether it makes it more fun or less fun to think of this as that, but I feel like we have to be honest with you. I think it made it a little less fun for me. I enjoyed thinking that it was just a really incompetently produced ad and that they just didn't realize how impossible it was to contact this address. If it's actually this nefarious attempt to skirt regulations and exclude some people from applying, that is a little less fun. Little less fun. But also to think that this is someone's job was to conjure up El Russell and all the circumstances by which they could create this email address for him. And I don't know. I mean, I like to hear about people's jobs. And this is a person who I'd love to meet at a party and ask about their job.

Not El Russell, but the creator of the El Russell email address. but the creator of the L. Russell email address. Certainly better than the suggestion we received that this was some nefarious, shadowy criminal organization activating a sleeper cell. Right. Multiple people suggested that. So I like it better than that explanation, which sounds very scary.

Maybe L. Russell will email us and let us know. Yeah. Okay. All right. So the draft that we're doing today is uh all 30 teams drafted by how fun they are uh this is inspired by the twins email question that we answered last week which was are the twins suddenly fun i think we could all agree that for a long time unless you were really interested in the twins they weren't a particularly fun team they were

sort of notably unfun notably blah but they have arguably become fun. We will find out just how fun when we draft them at some point in this draft, but we're just going to go around and everybody is going to get to draft whoever they think is the best, most fun, sorry, most fun team still on the board. So specifically not the best. You can be fun and bad. You can be boring and good. each of us will have our own definition of fun and we'll probably get into that uh expose some of our biases learn in fact i would say learn some of our own biases that we didn't even know we had and uh and get through all 30 teams i would maybe suggest that we pick the team and then uh while when we pick the team

also maybe name the player that first comes to mind to you as the fun player on the team or a player you particularly think is fun or who you think of first as fun, if that works. Okay. Sure. In some cases, I won't be picking teams primarily because of the players on them, though. Sure. You can say, yeah, I guess you could say whatever you find fun about them. Okay. All right.

So let's do that. I've got mine all ordered. So whenever you guys pick a team, I'm probably going to tell you where they were on mine. Yeah, I have mine all ordered also. I don't. I'm the least prepared for this draft. Yeah, but you probably talked to some scouts. Yeah, I just ran out of time.

I planned to rank them all, but but i'm just gonna be waiting this thing you got your baseball reference to run you a query to order them somehow right all right uh well ben why don't you uh why don't you lead off okay well i think i will actually take the Angels as my most fun team. Wow, not me. Yeah, that was not. Wow, okay. Yeah, I think I will. And that is primarily because Mike Trout is the most fun player, I think. And secondarily, because Shohei Otani is the second most fun player,

and they're both on this team. Andrelton Simmons is also on this team, and I find him very fun. Last year, the Angels were absolutely bar none the team that I watched the most. They were my go-to MLB TV team, less so as the season went on because Otani got hurt and the Angels just fell out of it. But because of Trout and Otani, and because they're moderately competitive, they're like one of the few AL teams that are kind of on the bubble somewhere. Like if I had to dispense with a whole team, I think it would pain me the most not to know what some players on the Angels were doing. And that's how I think of it.

Like Trout to me. Well phrased. Very narrowly defined. Well, yeah. I mean, there's potential for the Angels to be just an interesting team and to be in a pennant race and to be contending for a wild card and all those things that might make a team more fun. But to me, Mike Trout is just the most compelling ongoing story in baseball.

Every plate appearance he makes feels like it is adding to a two-decade long story and is just building on the previous plate appearance. And we know that he's the best player ever through this age. Will he be the best player ever through that age? Will he be the best player ever? That is just, I think, the most ongoing constant in the sport for me. And that's the most indispensable thing for me. But so, okay, so you have Trout as the most ongoing constant in the sport for me and that's the most indispensable thing for me but so okay so you had you have trout is the most interesting player on that team and then otani is the second most and then simmons is the third most but who's the fourth most interesting angel i don't know that it matters i mean well it's clearly it's clearly no it's definitely

either leadoff hitter tommy listella or number three hitter Justin Boer right I mean or it could be it could be opening day starter Trevor Cahill or closer Cody Allen I mean those guys are all like knock your socks off ballplayers I mean okay Pujols is interesting to me in kind of a sad way is he fun

though not fun but but must watch in a sense and I am eager to know what happens to him. And like, does it become a political diplomatic issue at some point where you just can't play him anymore? And how does he handle that? And so that is somewhat interesting to me, but it almost just doesn't matter to me. from those top two to all other players in baseball, except for perhaps one that we will also be talking about during this podcast, is so huge for me that they are the ones. They're like two of the only players in baseball who would get me to change the channel. Honestly, there aren't that many players who would get me to change the channel. I might choose one team over another because it has a bunch of players, but I'll just change the channel to watch those two guys play. And that weighs pretty heavily for me.

That's fair. I had them 13th. Yeah, I had them 15th. Which makes me worry that I would vote against Mike Trout on an MVP ballot. It's something uncomfortable about myself. I don't like it. Trout is very fun. And they're number 15 because of Trout.

The thing about Otani is that he is very fun, but he's, well, for one thing, he's not playing right now. And I don't know. I mean, all these are ephemeral. I don't know how much we consider who's playing today versus who's playing in a month versus what he's going to be doing a year from now. A year from now, he's more interesting than he will be when he comes back in a month and he's just a DH, right? So that's one thing. But the other thing is that it will be interesting to see how fun Otani is going forward just because he doesn't do both things at once. And while he is very interesting as a thing that exists, when you're watching him, you never actually get to see the two things at once. Like it's two really good ingredients that just don't make, they don't, they're never in the same recipe, right?

And so I, I, I had a good time with Otani last year. He was a rookie. And I, I don't know if, I don't know. I just don't know yet whether the interest is going to totally hold. I'm more interested, I mean, I guess. I'm interested in him as two individual parts. But I don't know. I can't promise I'm going to be totally like turn the game over to him when he's in year three or year four or year five of this.

Yeah. If it were an NL thing and there was a chance that he might be like running around mid inning, then that'd be interesting. Yeah. I hold out hope that one day he will play the field, but not this year probably. No, I definitely watched every Otani start last year. And so I guess I am curious to see if my level of excitement, if he performs in such a way with just the bat that I feel compelled in the same way that I do

when Trout is at the plate to be like, oh, I got to switch over there. Got to make sure I see that. So I suppose that there is like an explored upside there in terms of my level of enjoyment. We're not saying it's a bad pick, Ben. We're just saying it's a much higher pick than either of us were willing to make is all we're saying. Well, Fudd is subjective, I suppose.

But yeah, I mean, the Angels right now, in a sense, it's almost like, I guess it's not fun, but it's something to marvel at just how much better Trout is than everyone else in that lineup and how terrible the lineup has been other than Trout. I guess that's not an argument for picking them, but they're going to get some guys back and they'll be better and they'll be kind of competitive. So it's something. I am interested in Otani just because he was a top 10 hitter in baseball last year on a per plate appearance basis. And now if he is just focusing on one thing, does that mean he can be even better? And if he is, then does that jeopardize the two-way thing because you don't want him to get hurt again or distract him? So all of that is compelling and interesting to me. I'm even kind of interested in like Brad Ausmus the second time around and seeing if he actually

has evolved and is different this time as has been suggested and reported. So it's enough for me and i understand why it would be a lot lower for a lot of people all right uh meg you're up oh i get to go i am taking the phillies and oh gosh the most fun player you know like harper feels like an important part of this is definitely a part of the pick, but in terms of the most fun, the most fun, I think it probably is Harper, but that feels obvious. And we try so hard to be clever.

So I, I actually might go with real Muto just because he is in a, in an environment where we know pitching is important, pitch framing is important, but at times know that it is sort of flattening in terms of the difference in skill. He is actually one of the few catchers where I appreciably notice the difference in the way that he frames versus other guys. And yeah, I just think that the position players are great fun. Even the ones who are kind of on sort of the tail ends of their careers, like McCutcheon's been playing great.

That's delightful. Everybody looks good in those Phillies uniforms because they're great. You know, Aaron Nola is great fun. That bullpen has been weird and okay. So, yeah, I'm curious to see if the defense is any better than it was last year when it was very, very poor. And I think that they are going to have a long playoff run, and I also think they have the potential to, you know, at the deadline,

make some moves if they want to to ensure that long playoff run. And so I'm picking the Phillies. Yeah, that's a good pick. Bryce Harper is always fun, and it is not a cliche the Phillies. Yeah, that's a good pick. Bryce Harper is always fun and it is not a cliche to acknowledge that. Yeah. He's a fun ball player and right now it seems like he is very eager

to make me like him. Like that really seems like he is in full like, like I'm going to do what it takes to make you like me and I'm enjoying that. Yeah. I mean, I don't know. Like that, I feel, you like me and uh and i'm enjoying that yeah i mean i don't know like that i feel i i feel i don't this could easily turn to sound like me being cynical and and the opposite of like appreciating

it but like the bat flip i felt like the bat flip was was pre-orchestrated like i felt like yeah he he thought like what i'm gonna flip a bat i'm gonna hit a home run and then i'm gonna flip a bat and he practiced that bat flip And he practiced that bat flip. He practiced that bat flip a bunch because he wanted people to write columns criticizing the bat flip. And then other people to write columns talking about how good the bat flip was. And I admire the need to be liked. I mean, we're social creatures. We build our self-identity through the reflections of other people.

And I have great empathy for that feeling that he has, that he wants me to like him. And so, all right, I'm on board, buddy. Yeah, I feel the same way. I said the same thing to Michael Bauman last week that I always kind of liked A-Rod because I had the feeling that he wanted me to like him. Yeah. Yeah. Still, to me, it's a human emotion that these athletic, super wealthy god-type people actually care what we think of them. Well, and I think that there's something about, you know, I appreciate good stagecraft. Like, this is an entertainment product at the end of the day, and I think that he has a very good sense for drama. Like, he knows where the beats are.

Like he knows where the beats are. You know, he knows where he needs to fill a beat in a game and do a thing and, you know, send a ball very deep into the stand. So I just, there's a, I think, a human need to be liked. But I also think he has an appreciation for the art of stagecraft. And I like that. I think it's good. Yeah. I had the Phillies. This is going to sound, I had them 10th, but I have a tier of 10 teams that are all fairly

closely. Yeah. There's a lot of compression at the top. So they were the last in that. Yeah. They were the last in that tier, but I like them. They're fun. All right.

My pick is the Dodgers, who I think are, they're just so fun. For one thing, they throw strikes. They are the strike throwing-est team in baseball. And a ball game is just more fun for one thing they throw strikes they are the strike throwingest team in baseball and a ball game is just more fun when you're throwing strikes there's just few things are less fun than watching a team try to find it and so i appreciate that but also they are you know what they remind they have so many good players like they go like 29 guys deep like they're so deep with good players that it reminds me of like, like, like really good seasons of Lost or Game of Thrones or something where there's like seven storylines going

at once that are all solid. And you just flip from one to the other and everyone you're like, oh, yeah, like, I want to hear about this. And so I appreciate that there's always a good ball player on my screen when when they're playing and i like the way that they can use those ball players in in interesting ways i like that i still think puig is there like i still give them a little bit of credit for having puig even though like my the front of my brain knows that they don't so uh i like all of them i also feel like remember in 2017 when they had they were on pace to win 119 games

through July, and then they collapsed, and then they weren't very good last year either. But in my head, I've never really re-evaluated them since they were on that pace. I still think of them as just this incredibly good team that is just dominant. And it seems like they're always crushing teams. And so I just like, again, you don't have to be good to be fun, but I just appreciate how just nonstop they are. They just keep coming at you with good ballplayers. And I think that Julio Urias is my favorite one. I mean, he's really still very young, and And he's very good And I like watching him pitch

Okay well I think for my next pick I'm going to make sort of a similar one Maybe I'm going to take the Astros I think I would have taken the Phillies probably If Meg hadn't But taking the Astros just because I think they're the best baseball team And that is not necessarily

The same as the most fun baseball team I guess I don't think they're the best baseball team. And that is not necessarily the same as the most fun baseball team. I guess I don't think they're the most fun baseball team, but I think they're close. And I appreciate the way that they have gone about this. As someone who just wrote about player development, I am kind of fascinated by the breakthroughs that they've had on that side of things. Obviously, they are not always the most likable team and the easiest to root for team. And you have to deal with Roberto Asuna being there and having that constant reminder

of the way that they operate. So that is the opposite of fun. On the other hand, they also have just, I mean, it's kind of like you said about the Dodgers. There are just so many good players on this team and so many fun players. I guess Altuve is kind of like you said about the Dodgers. There are just so many good players on this team and so many fun players. I guess Altuve is kind of the default obvious fun guy on this team. But I'm also really interested in Carlos Correa and seeing if he can have a big breakthrough season.

I like watching all of their pitchers, basically. basically. Their pitching staff is just, I mean, in terms of just stuff and just ratio of like really nasty, gif-able pitches, it's probably the highest with the Astros. You get Verlander, you get Cole, you get to even watch like their annual guy who they make much better. And Wade Miley will probably be that guy this year and he'll just be amazing all year and that'll be kind of fun. And then you get to watch like the wave of young guys come up who are also amazing so you get to see Josh James and you get to see Forrest Whitley and on and on there's just a you know an endless bottomless well of those guys so just in terms of sheer dominance and I mean you saw the run differential last year and if anything I felt like they underachieved potentially last year. So they probably won't be involved in a close race. I don't know if that counts or not, but that's something.

You'll get to watch a lot of Astros. It's just you want to watch baseball in 2019 and see the team that is most emblematic of how baseball works now in a lot of ways. I think it's them. And you get to also watch their lineup, which used to be very strikeout heavy and now just kind of does everything well and doesn't strike out and yet also hits for power and doesn't chase a whole lot they're just kind of the model team right now for better or worse i can't believe that you don't think that the nine and two mariners start is sustainable to challenge the west for the west yeah how dare you sorry i uh i i don't know if I think that playoff,

future playoff appearances affect my rankings, but past playoff appearances definitely do. Having seen players on the postseason stage gives me more interest in them. I think if Raphael Devers, for instance, was like, I mean, sorry Meg, but a Mariner, I wouldn't be that excited. But I really like Devers for instance was like I mean sorry Meg but Mariner I wouldn't be that excited but like I really like Devers

like I'm excited to see him you know come up because like I think of him as like that guy who always hits in October and George Springer is kind of the same way and those moments sear into your memory I mean Lance McCullers will always be Lance McCullers from the postseason that one time

yep he was fifth I'm sorry they were fifth on mine by the way okay And Lance McCullers will always be Lance McCullers from the postseason that one time. Yep. Was it my turn? He was fifth. I'm sorry. They were fifth on mine, by the way. Okay. I had the fifth on mine too. Oh, no.

We're going to make runs at similar teams, I suspect. It's my turn. I'm taking the Padres. I swear that I am not taking any of these teams based on their affiliation with Fangraph Solums. That is a coincidental sort of thing. There are so many now. I know. Every team has one. Can we stop for a little while, please? I think there are a lot of things I like about this Padres team. I mean, in a lot of ways, this is acknowledging that the Padres have likely not quite arrived yet, although, you know, they are playing quite well right now. But they have a very fun mix of having been

willing to spend money in anticipation of being good, which is like a strategy I support. So it's cool that they were not deterred by the sunk cost of Eric Hosmer when they went out and signed Manny Machado. I appreciate that their ownership appears receptive to the idea that they should just put really good players on the field and worry about service time and where they are six years from now, six years from now. So the story that Machado and Hosmer went to ownership and said, you know, Tatis should just be up and we should just start the year with him up. I find, uh, lovely and charming and indicative of the sort of brand of baseball they want to play and an acknowledgement of where they sit in the sports market in San Diego, where they're like the only game in town. Chris Paddock was my, uh, rookie of the year pick for the NL. So I'm very

invested in him and his fastball, which just comes in at a really uncomfortable, funky, you know, uncomfortable, funky way. And so it was fun. And I think that they are one of those teams that is trying to win and also lends itself to a really interesting player development and sort of consolidation story around the deadline. So they have all of these very talented young prospects who, you know, we're getting ready to do the NL West as part of our list at Fangraphs. And I have been assured that the Padres list will be at least as long as the Rays list was. But figuring out how they move some of those guys and then pick the guys they want to keep and shift some of them at the deadline to get other pieces, I think, allows us to enjoy the strategy story while also like having

guys like Tatis up and them spending money so we can enjoy it, but not feel kind of icky about it from a labor perspective, which is nice and kind of rare in baseball right now. So I just, I just like them. They have good uniforms. Also, they play in a cool ballpark. And I think that it'll be nice to have some real competition in the West for the Dodgers. And I expect that that will be them for a long time. So I had them as my second team behind Philly. And I feel like I've either done my draft rankings wrong or I'm running away with this. I can't decide which. I can't decide.

We're all gonna win uh this yeah because it's just fun everyone just gets to have fun that part's cool yeah yeah yeah completely agree with you on just about everything you said yeah i did a whole podcast segment with bauman on the ringer show this past week just because like we didn't know what to talk about and i was like well i've been watching the pod race and he was like i've been watching the pod race and then we just talked about watching the Padres, basically, which is not something you've been able to say for a really long time, which I think is a big part of their appeal. It's not just that they're fun and they're young and they're up and coming

and you can kind of root for them guilt-free because of the decisions that you mentioned. But also, it's just like a first or at least the first in a really long time that we've been able to say this about the Padres. And it's like, hey, new blood. This is fun and interesting. So I would have taken them very soon if you hadn't. And my only hesitation is that they may very well end up with 70 something wins or something, which, you know, they're more of like a long-term play in a way, but a lot of the guys who are going to be on the next Padres' great team are already on this Padres' team, and maybe they're not quite as good as they're going to be yet,

but you can see them every day, and that's a lot of fun. Oh, I didn't pick the most fun player, and it's Manny Machado, but in a particular way, which is that them having Tatis up to start the year has allowed us to just watch Manny Machado play third again. Yes, he is fun as a third baseman, and he is not fun as a shortstop. He's not, or at least he's not. It's the whole difference.

Right, he's not as fun. I was talking about this this week. Like, it is just, it's just a joy. He's just a freaking joy to watch at third, and it is so, it is so easy and fluid and there is no, you know, I, um, so I've been watching Manny Machado play third base. And then I've also watched Ryan Healy play third base. And those are like, they're not playing the same position. It is a different, it is just a different thing. You can see, uh, the movements chopped up into little

itty bitty pieces and they all feel uh sort of janky and stitched together and bad when ryan healy plays third base sorry ryan healy i'm sure you're lovely but like you're not very good at third base and then you watch machado and you're like oh okay now i see this is what like this is what a seven or eight at third is and it's just the best so it's manny it is weird how the good third base defense is the best good defense to watch even though it's not the most important position it's you don't you don't run around all that much it's but yet it is the most fun position it's those throws it's all the throws and the charging and the and the to the left that the reactions going to the left i mean

when you see a look a lot of good baseball, if you're a center fielder or even you're a middle infielder, the play is the range. And, you know, it's like, OK, he got there. Like what I saw is a guy get there. But you don't really see the process of him getting there. Like you can't, you know what I mean? Like your eyes can't be like another guy didn't get there. Right. You know, you don't have overlapping eyes can't be like another guy didn't get there, right?

You don't have overlapping other players who were coming up short. And like they just ran fast. Like, I don't know. It's like hard to see. But third base plays are all right there for you to see. Like they're very visceral. Like you can feel them because you tried and failed to make them. Whereas we all caught a ball at the edge of our range at some point.

We've all done something in our life that was at the edge of our range. I don't know. All right. I also like the, yeah, anyway, the Padres are great. I agree. They were number three for me. And so now I'm, unfortunately, I'm now going to have to pick my number two, which I would have rather have talked about the Padres. I don't trust my rankings. These are very these are these rankings are arbitrary. I will pick the Brewers. No.

most fun hitter to watch in baseball right now and it's partly because he's been on an unholy terror for the last 90 games or whatever he's played and some you know that probably i found that probably won't last but to see the hottest hitter in baseball or one of them at his absolute hottest is is very fun so that's probably that's the main that and that and josh hater just like the the existence of josh hater looming in every game is actually the main reason. I forgot. That's what I wanted to say. The way that, Ben, I'm going to, nobody steal this from me. I've already stolen it from Ben.

Ben, I stole, I'm stealing something from something that you said on an episode maybe a month ago. I think it was the Brewers preview episode where you referred to, maybe it was a different episode, but you referred to somebody as that team's hater, or maybe you referred to hater as being the hater, where it's the guy that the whole bullpen strategy is built around and the whole other team's late inning strategy is built around.

Like you know he's there and you're like figuring out how to use your lineup and how to play to that pitcher and it's like the andrew miller we've just switched to hater now basically it is like the andrew miller except for i feel like i want to steal this idea because i think that you can be the hater in a lineup without being used like hater is you maybe you're a maybe you're a lockdown lefty specialist maybe you're a one inning righty maybe you're uh something else maybe you're the closer but every team has somebody in the lot in the bullpen that you sort of think all the other pieces are built around and uh and

and haters is just the the most outlandish of them at the moment and probably even more outlandish than miller was it seems to me, it feels like he goes longer, more regularly, and he's better than Miller was incredibly enough. And so just watching any Brewers game that's remotely close, you're just thinking about, thinking about Hayter. Yeah.

Right. Well, and I think it's like their rotation is very not fun, but even this not fun thing facilitates this other fun thing. I like their rotation is very not fun. But even this not fun thing facilitates this other fun thing. I like their rotation. Burt's is fun. Woodruff is fun. Woodruff's fun.

How is Peralta's? Peralta's totally fun. It's just been less, it's just been less sure. Let's put it that way. It has bummer potential, right? Like, you have the potential to be like, oh, that's a bummer. Yeah. Chessing's sort of fun, I i agree i like their i like their rotate i see the thing about um like

everybody talks about how uh it's bad for baseball that you have the opener now because you don't go to the game knowing who the you know you don't know who the starter is right it's not in the newspaper you can't go see the starter because now it's the opener or it's the bullpen game or whatever. And I feel like I basically agree with that. But I do kind of like getting to the bullpen early. I feel like a lot of the more fun stuff happens when the bullpens in the game. And so not early, like the first or second inning, but early, like the fifth or sixth is good with me. And the Brewers are like the the third time through the order team like they get these guys out. And I kind of like that they have all these guys

who just go in there and just like pump everything they've got for four and two thirds innings and they leave with a three to one lead. And then the bullpen comes in and I sort of feel like that kind of baseball suits me right now. It feels like, you know,

because it feels like playoff baseball. Yeah, sometimes a little too much maybe. But I like that kind of baseball in October because it's only a month and because all the games mean so much that you put up with the delays and the waits. But during the regular season, it can be a bit much. But I think their rotation is better this year and more watchable this year than it was last year. So that helps. Also, Albers.

Oh, I know what you called him. You called him, here's the term you came up with for hater. And this is what I was going to steal. I was going to do it. Do you remember this term, Ben? Is it the poochie comp? Yeah. See, I think I stole the poochie comp from Jeff.

Oh, okay. So this is like third hand stealing. Well, now I'm not going to steal it. Bullpen poochies, which is the, that's right. It's the player that you're, that is, that you're always saying, where's he? Like you're thinking, where's he? Where's he? Right. Well, now I'm not going to steal it. Bullpen Poochies, which is the, that's right. It's the player that you're, that is, that you're always saying, where's he? Like you're thinking, where's he? Where's he? Right. Yeah. Yeah.

All right. Bullpen Poochies. There you go. That's a great term. Whoever, whoever came up with that. So I think I'm going to take the New York Mets with my next pick. I'm curious to see where they ranked on your lists. Mets with my next pick. I'm curious to see where they ranked on your lists, but with the Mets, you've got two guys who give you a shot to see maybe the most impressive starting pitching performance in baseball, at least two guys. You've got DeGrom, who's just on an incredible

run right now, and he's kind of a must-watch every time. You've got Sindergaard, who in some ways is even more fun to watch than to grom and then the rest of the rotation is fun too except for jason vargas which almost like saps the fun i feel like it's just like it's hard to even have a team that's fun with jason vargas on it can't believe jason vargas is still on this team but he is so you've got that and then i feel like the lineup is is pretty fun too i think robinson cano remains one of my favorite hitters to watch, just aesthetically speaking. You've got Pete Alonso now, who is just like this beefy slugger and is a lot of fun so far. And then you have other interesting hitters in that lineup, too, like Nimmo and Conforto. Even the bench is, I think, better than most teams' benches. And so you have guys like Jeff McNeil and Keon Broxton on the bench and Lagaris, it depends who's starting that day,

but that's kind of interesting. And then, of course, you have Edwin Diaz as your bullpen poochie, I guess, who is also really pretty fun. So I think that that coupled with just like, you know, the whole Mets thing, which has been very unfun for years now, but if they were good again, I think it might be even more fun just because of all the baggage that has accumulated with this franchise. And, you know, they're in the NL East. I think every NL East team except the Marlins gets a boost just because that division is a lot of fun and the Mets are off to a good start in it. They're also one of those teams that has like a, you know, 50-50 shot right now to make the playoffs according to the fan graphs odds and 50-50 is fun, I think. So New York Mets for me. I had them 11th and I they have a lot of hitters that I think are good but that I

don't necessarily, pretty much all their hitters I think are good but I don't think are that fun. I don't know why. So I don't know. I just don't. They're fine. They're fine. They're 11th. I had them 7th. Driven mostly by the pitching but also I think, yeah, you're right. It would be

good for people to just remember, I was thinking I was still pretty good at baseball. And Alonzo was fun and, you know, yeah, I had him seventh. Yeah. I might have had him higher if I had done this before Zach Wheeler started today. I was all in on Zach Wheeler as like the real deal, as like the next great pitcher. You know, the second half was totally real last year.

And I thought this team was going to have like, you know, three guys win 65 games. And then, I don't know, he just hasn't been there quite really. And he walked seven today. Did he really walk seven today? Yeah. I was doing other stuff. I didn't see that.

Seems bad. So now I'm kind of so one start basically or i push them down this is a i mean really this is like a really arbitrary process like at one point today i spent like 12 minutes trying to decide if i thought that rimel tapia is fun and rimel tapia is fun I just couldn't decide. And then I didn't know where to put the Rockies, so they ended up 13th because of that. It's really weird. Yeah, this could definitely change on a day-to-day basis.

If we redrafted in a week, it'd probably be different. Sam, I have them 12th. Oh, no. I mentioned to a friend that we were doing this today. And so far, my prediction is right. I was like, I think that Sam and I might have very similar rankings and that Ben's might be a little bit different in like appreciable and interesting ways. Like it's not a bad thing at all.

And so far, concerning. Yeah, the funny thing is that we haven't, so far, we haven't even named Ben Ben's second team and he's going to hold until like his second to last pick because it's going to be the Royals. Right. Oh, Lord. I'm souring on the Royals. I'm down on the Royals. We'll see where they go. All right, Meg, you're up. I am taking the Nationals. No one else is taking the Nationals yet, right? I was close to them, yeah. I was thinking today about pitchers who I enjoy.

Who are the ones where I don't miss a start and where I genuinely just enjoy pretty much every pitch they throw? I think Scherzer is very high on that list. So he is great fun, and I think Scherzer is very high on that list. So he is, he is great fun. And I will say that he is the most fun, but I don't feel confident in my own assessment of the funness of this team because it's really hard to pick between him and then, you know, Anthony Rendon, who's just like an underrated fun player in all the, like in many ways that he's underrated. It's very strange to look at this team

and think you know that outfield's probably fine without Bryce Harper that's weird to be able to say but like uh you kind of feel a little bit confident doing it because they have Soto and they have Robles and you know Eden's all right and so I just uh I just like them a lot I think that they are going to be very good I I do worry about the bullpen some. So, but, you know, having things be dicey late in games and then work out okay can be fun, especially if it's not a team that you're, like, super committed to as a fan. This is the whole reason that we like Fernando Rodney. So I'm taking the Nationals.

And as we've said, any team in that division, well, almost any team in that division is going to be fun because they're just going to push each other all year. And I'm sure that the playoff odds will move around quite a bit for them. So I'm taking the Nationals. I feel bad saying it. I had them 21. Really? Wow. And not for any real reason.

Just, I don't know i mean looking thinking about it now i could have very easily talked myself into having them at like number four because it's juan soto right yeah i don't know i feel like i have fatigue on some of these guys there's a lot of guys on that team who've been around a long time it's an interesting concept though that you introduced that if you're not a rooting fan right that in fact, the bad bullpens are the fun ones, maybe. Or at least the bullpens where you feel, where it feels a little, it feels dicey, right? Like Sean Doolittle is a legitimately good pitcher. And I suspect that he will have moments of being quite good this year. But they also, you know, they have Rosenthal, they have Barraclough, they have Tony Sipp, who is just kind of weird in a way that I appreciate.

So, you know, I haven't even mentioned Strasburg among their starters. So, yeah, I just like them. And I want them to get through. I want them to get through. I want them to advance in the playoffs because they also are one of those teams where I, as a fan of the Mariners, have sympathy for the persistent and disappointing playoff narrative. It's just not fun as a fan. It gets thrown back at you all the time.

It's not your fault. You didn't do it. You didn't pitch any of those innings. But you have to contend with it anyhow. So I hope for their fan base that they can move on from that this year. And I think they will be quite good. I agree. I almost took the Nats with my last pick.

And I do think that that narrative adds something. And the fact that they lost Harper and might be better without him or just as good without him, might not miss him. I think that's sort of fun. And just seeing whether they can actually win that first playoff series finally that is something I'm sure Nationals fans are sick of it but for a neutral it is something else to watch and I think Robles is fun I think he's maybe your leading contender for rookie of the year we're close to it and he is kind of unpolished in some ways like I watched him he was like misplaying balls when I was watching him play the Mets. And yet he's really good and talented. And I think Soto's a lot of fun just

because he's so precocious and advanced beyond his years. And I don't actually, I'm not sure whether Rendon is fun. I mean, I think he's great and I take every opportunity to point out that he's great, but I wonder whether his lack of reputational greatness, at least, you know, given his abilities and performance, has something to do with a lack of fun. Because he's one of those guys who's just good at everything and, you know, like really good at everything, but not necessarily the best at things. So that hurts a little. not necessarily the best at things. So that hurts a little. And I've never found Scherzer to be quite as fun, like commensurate with his greatness,

which I think he's the best pitcher in baseball, but I don't think of him as like on the really short list of most fun pitchers in baseball, but maybe I'm wrong. I don't know. I could be underrating his funness. We've talked, yeah, we've talked, I think many hundreds of episodes ago about how Max Scher about how Max Scherzer is this guy who has like three of the five best starts of the last 15 years. And yet when you watch, you're not ever really sure how.

It doesn't smash you over the head with it. Right. Yeah, that's how I feel. So I'm not picking them necessarily just for, I don't know, there are guys who are fun, but that's why I didn't take them earlier. Just there wasn't the standout individual guy for me, but I think the sum of the parts

and just the position of the team, again, NL East bonus, and the added storyline of the Nats trying to get there. For me, they're pretty fun. I'm going to pick the Twins. Oh, wow. The email swayed me. I've been thinking a lot about the Twins.

Somebody else followed up with a couple of cases for individual Twins. And I have decided that I really like the Twins. I think they are a very fun team. And I will just highlight as one, as one very obvious one, not the most obvious one, but one very obvious one is I don't think that there's any player that I want to watch be awesome more than Byron Buxton. I think that not only am I severely rooting for him to be awesome, but if he is awesome, I think that he is the most fun kind of awesome that there is. He's incredibly fast and incredibly strong.

And he's the best center fielder in the world. And those are fun things. He steals bases at will without getting caught. That's also fun. And this is obviously it's for a weekend of the season. This is an absurd thing to point out. But he has the third highest exit velocity in baseball this year and the third highest average launch angle in baseball this year and you could just imagine something clicking

there and uh you know i mean you could have 51 home runs and 72 steals sure with a gold glove i like it so there's other things i like about the twins but um we're on nine we're on team nine. I had them at 18. Uh-huh, yeah. Yeah, they are still the twins. Yeah, I think they're fun. We talked about it recently, so we don't have to rehash the whole twins conversation, but Asadio alone, obviously,

he's the most fun thing in baseball right now, so that gets them up there. All right. I will take the Rays with my next pick, I think, and kind of conflicted about it because, you know, I don't want to like celebrate their lack of spending and yet succeeding. But intellectually, there are things about it that are interesting. And they're obviously in a division where they're going up against the Yankees and the Red Sox and so they do kind of get the underdog narrative behind them I think a little bit and they're good they've got a lot of good prospects they've got a lot of good players they just do the most interesting things on a consistent basis in terms of in-game tactical decisions. I mean,

just today, they brought in Chaz Rowe to face Evan Longoria, and then they moved Adam Kolarik to first base so that he could go to the mound to face Brandon Belt. I mean, you know, they do the Waxahachie swap. They do the opener. They pioneered the opener. There's no telling what they will pioneer next. Their R&D director is now a coach on their bench and in a position that no one has ever really occupied before. So just over the last decade of baseball, they've kind of been the greatest source of innovation, I think, and in pioneering tactics that other teams have adopted. And so there's always the question of what will the Rays do next? What will the thing they do? You know, it was shifting, obviously, and there's just a whole lot. And they seem to also maybe have that ability to like take Tyler Glasnow and make him really good all of a sudden and uh there's a i don't know who the most fun player on this team is maybe maybe it's kiermeier if he's healthy maybe it's blake snell just because he's really good but uh i think just the team itself is kind of fun even though it sort of stinks when they don't spend money on players i love yandi diaz and i think that he's gonna internet blow up. Uh-huh yeah that's possible. The other thing that's about this is that while we all like it when our team

has continuity and like the young star signs an 11-year contract and you get to see him go through his whole career with you and all that for another team it's fun fun to see churn it's fun to see new players in new circumstances doing new things and uh so the raised churn kind of works for this exercise yep i had them eighth i had them 12th all right i am taking the yankees. This feels very strange. I know that they're weirdly super hurt right now, but who's their most fun player? Aaron Judge is very fun. I will always have a very large soft spot for James Paxton because he's just a joy and a delight, both as a human person and as a pitcher. So it's a tie between those two, I think, for me, in terms of their most fun guy. But I love that bullpen.

I love how many different looks that bullpen offers in terms of guys who are good in different ways, even though they are all, as we covered on our preview episode with Lindsey, just giants. They're all just giants. That's a team of all the different kinds of big boys, as it were. And I think that we sometimes do not appreciate teams that are just like very, very good and deep and rich all at the same time.

Like we, we tend to be annoyed by those things. Cause it's like, oh, it's everybody that those guys have all the luck, but I don't think that we should think about it that way because a nice thing about teams that have a lot of really good players and then also spend money is that they spend money on good players. And that's the thing that we should support. I think just philosophically, it's nice, but it's also cool when they're able to develop young guys out of nowhere and they have all of these young arms in their farm system that for some reason throw a hundred miles an hour now. It's the wildest thing. So I just, I like the Yankees as a Mariners fan, sort of. That feels weird to say, but I like them.

And I think that they will be good, even though they are pretty injured sometimes. And yeah, that's my pick, the Yankees. Yeah, I think the Yankees were more fun a couple years ago when some of these guys started coming up. And Judge kind of burst onto the scene and it felt like they were still the Yankees, but like for a while, at least you could almost root for them if you weren't a Yankees fan. And now it kind of feels like they're back to a team that most people hate, but I agree with you. I think they are pretty fun. They've got a lot of fun players. I had them sixth. So I also think they're very fun. They would have been my next pick i like when you mentioned judge i like big guys who are faster than yeah their size and

yeah uh judge is uh fun because he can move i mentioned i i forgot to mention that that's one reason that i like cody bellinger and the dodgers is that he's another guy who's fast right he's fast it's surprising how fast he's judge this is one of my favorite uh two names in relationship to each other from last year's stat cast front leaderboard aaron judge faster than jean segura yeah that's wild yeah yeah i mean that's it's it's not like there are like it's not like he's number 32 on this list sure but still he's up there he's barely behind he's one foot per he's one tenth of a foot per second behind mookie vets this is part of why i delight in watching this is not a player on either um the dodgers or the yankees but this

is like part of why i really enjoy joey gallo because it's like he shouldn't be able to move like that that's that's dumb yeah but he can it's great yeah adam't be able to move like that. That's dumb. Yeah. But he can. It's great. Yeah. Adam Adovino is really fun. He is, yeah. Just on a per-pitch basis. He's up there in terms of bullpen guys. Cody Bellinger was faster than Jose Peraza and Yohan Moncada.

That's fast. Fast than Ozzy Albies. It's pretty fast. That's what I'm saying. All right. Who's your team? Faster than Ryan Miltapia It's pretty fast. That's what I'm saying. All right. Faster than Rymel Tapia. My team is the Cardinals.

It was more fun before they sent down Alex Reyes. Alex Reyes is a player I really like watching right now. Although not like literally right now, because right now he's struggling a little bit. But Alex Reyes is, if you were listing players that you switch over because they've come into a game, Alex Reyes is like in my top four right now or was to start the season.

But also my sleepers, I just really like watching Tyler O'Neill. Tyler O'Neill to me is like kind of a just a like a aesthetic freak show. He was he was 95th percentile sprint speed last year. He was 95th percentile sprint speed last year. He was 95th percentile exit velocity last year. And he was last, dead last, in contact rate. And that's just a fun ball player. He also is kind of jittery and sort of just like is a bundle of nerves out there. He reminds me a little bit of a guy, Ben, in the Pacific Association who association who remember i liked and everybody else hated uh remember who i'm talking about no johnny juco oh yeah uh he doesn't remind me of johnny juco in

the way he plays but just in like the sort of energy that he exudes like i'm just captivated by it he also wears uh high striped socks and also has a striped tattoo covering his entire left arm and so if you squint it sort of looks like he's tattooed his uniform on his arm for some reason i don't know why i like that i don't know why i think that's fun i will probably hate tyler o'neill by mid-may but right now i really like him i like watching him him. He's fun. Yeah. That's all. I saw, I've seen, I think it was Tyler O'Neal, saw a video of him hitting a home run like just off a tee. Yeah, right?

And you're like, wow, what's it like to be strong like that? I don't know. I've never experienced that in my whole life. Yeah. And then he ran and caught the ball in the air. And then he went back and he swung and missed at the tee. Yeah, that sounds right. All right.

I think we've reached a point now where this isn't coming as easy to me anymore. So maybe we've gone down a tier in funness. But I think I'll take the Red Sox here. They are the best team, I think, still on the board, but they have Mookie, and Mookie's kind of an outlier in terms of funness on this team. I don't find that many other Red Sox that fun, which is maybe why they're still available here. Mookie himself is so fun that That kind of makes me want to Take them here and I think

JD Martinez is fun Just as a craftsman A technician of hitting And also just one of the best hitters In baseball period I think their outfield as a whole is fun Just defensively, Jackie Bradley Jr. Is a lot of fun to watch in the field

But there's not that much more to them in terms of just player by player. I mean, Evaldi is kind of fun. At least he was last year, but I don't know that he'll be consistently fun. Chris Sale, obviously, if he's going well, is very fun, I think, and one of the most obviously dominant pitchers there is. So it sort of depends on how good he is. And then the whole bullpen experiment of just kind of not having one, I think, is sort of fun from afar. Definitely not fun for Red Sox fans.

But if we're going with the theory that it is fun to watch bullpen meltdowns, then you have the potential to see some here while still having a good team in a potentially good division race. So all of that. And obviously it's the defending World Series winners. So we've seen these guys in the playoffs and that helps a little bit. So Red Sox. Yeah, I had them ninth. And I find the roster spots 22 to, I guess, 4 to 25 to be more interesting than the Angels 4 to 25, but not like all that interesting.

And then they have, you know, Mookie equates to Mike Trout and Jackie Bradley is like a lesser Angleton Simmons in that he's just gloriously fun to watch on defense. Mookie doesn't equate to Mike Trout though. Well, no, they're both lesser. Sorry, they're both lesser. Mookie is like 85% Trout, and Bradley is like 85% Simmons. But the rest of the team is more interesting, and so I had them higher. But I agree, they're not a team that's all that fun to watch. I end up watching a lot of Red Sox games anyway because they always play at 4.05, and I like their broadcast crew.

Yeah, I wonder whether does broadcast crew? No, no, no, no, no, no, certainly not. But I just I watch a lot of their games for that reason. Yeah, well, aesthetically speaking, I like watching Fenway Park too. So I don't know if that's part of it, but just the nooks and crannies. And that is something that's kind of visually interesting. Just what you said about Mookie and Trout, I think is interesting because Mookie is probably the second best player in baseball. And like last year, he was as good

as Trout probably, but because he doesn't have the history of being as good as Trout, he's so much less interesting to me just because, I mean, even if he were as good as Trout from now on, and he were as good as Trout this season, it still wouldn't be as interesting because he's not building on quite the early career legacy that Trout did. So the whole thing with Trout now is, is he the best player ever? And every season tells us something about whether he will be. And Mookie probably doesn't have that case. I think I just have fatigue with them.

I think I'm just a little i think i'm a little worn out on the red sox everyone listening to this podcast just relax he's wonderful he's great i'm not tired of watching mookie yeah it's fine we're not tired of the dodgers though right even though they're always there that they've been there more consistently than the red sox have but maybe it just is that the Red Sox have won the four World Series recently, and that makes all the difference. And I think we see them play on Sunday so often, so that might have something to do with it.

And I'm just, you know, I think that there is some value in enjoying teams that are not the reigning World Series champs because we just had a bunch of fun with you. We had an extra month of fun. So I think I'm maybe just a little fatigued. Although you're right to maybe make me wonder why I don't feel quite the same way about the Dodgers, who for all intents and purposes I should, even though they didn't win. Yeah, well, because the Dodgers haven't won.

I mean, with the Red Sox, you're going to be like, okay, go away now. Like, you did it. What are you still here for? How come you're still buying lottery tickets? You just won the jackpot. I don't feel that way. I still basically enjoy the Red Sox. I love Red Sox-Yankees games on Sunday night,

and I wish they played them every week. And I also think that Mookie, while I totally agree with you that the Trout, the fundamental question of whether you're watching the greatest player of all time put up the greatest career of all time is what makes Trout so interesting to watch on a 30-day basis. I think that Mookie is a more interesting defender and a more interesting base runner. He does more things that surprise me. And I would rather, I think I probably would actually enjoy Mike Trout more. I mean, I don't think this is what they should do or that he'd be better, but I think I'd probably would like Mike Trout more if he were in a corner and his, his excellent defense stood out in the way that Mookie's does.

sort of underrated people call him boring and i find his particular interest kind of charming but but bets does have significantly uh greater on-field presence and so that part is more fun right he's just got you know he's got a little dance moves and everything so it's great yeah you're short too yeah oh is it me yep yep i am taking the rockies wow are we already there we're already to your number uh what'd you have in 12? I had them 12. Wow. We have gutted your rankings. I've made a call. I skipped 11. I just decided. I just decided to do it. I skipped my number 11 team, which was the athletics and I went straight to the Rockies. There is something, and we will talk about Nolan Arenado in a second. I really enjoy watching Marquez pitch.

I like it very much. I'm very curious to see what happens with John Gray this year. I find Kyle Freeland is fine. He's fun to watch, but like he's – I mean, he's a very good pitcher, but he's fine. I just – I like very much the idea of a Rockies team who in some respects appears to be built around a pitching strength because it's just that's dumb that shouldn't be true but it is which is so cool and then they decided to keep

nolan arenado around and he is great fun i continue to be fascinated by trevor story and exactly what he is going to settle into as a big leaguer because i think we still have a sort of pending question there i will never understand chris ion at framing numbers. It is going to be like my final case as a worn-down detective that I will never solve. It will be the file that sits in a desk drawer that I pass on to a younger subordinate to figure out. I'll never get it. It doesn't make any sense, but I remain fascinated by it. And I am so happy in some ways even though he has not been good that ian desmond remains on this team because for about five seasons now i've had a

mental block about where ian desmond plays baseball and it makes it much easier to remember if he just stays on the rockies and is bad but is there as a rocky now in center field that's the thing i have managed to worm into my brain and i think rymaltapia is great fun just because like skinny little dudes like that should not work as baseball players, but do sometimes. And when they do, it is delightful. And I guess we're consistent with my, um, powder's pick. I just really enjoy watching very good third baseman be very good third baseman. And Aaron Otto's, uh, you know, he's right there as probably the the best of the bunch so

i am picking the rockies and also they have the the advantage of cores because i like weird stuff and cores lends itself to weird stuff on many occasions um both for the rockies themselves and for the people they're playing so i'm picking the rockies i I've always hated Coors. I've hated it. I have not considered Coors baseball to be fun at all. I've hated Coors games, all of them, every one, until now. Now that they have good pitching, I like it. To me, it's extra fun now. It took 25 years, but they finally got a pitching staff that can make me appreciate that Coors is a weird outlier stadium and not a farce. Yeah.

It's such a just an entirely homegrown rotation, too. I mean, it's so impressive. It's one of the more impressive player development feats any team has managed. I mean, it took them 25 years, but still that it happened at all, think is is something to marvel at and some of the individual pitchers are fun to watch too yeah my pick i can't believe honestly i cannot believe this team made it this far but my my next pick is the braves um who obviously have ronald acuna who is mike trout at 20 like like he's He's that guy right now. He's not. He's not.

I shouldn't have said it. I'm going to get struck down. But he is really something special. And in a way that, I mean, Juan Soto is also something special, but Acuna I think is more fun to watch, or at least more obvious to watch. But I also, what I really like about the Braves

is that they are a team that puts strikes in play. That is a team that as hitters, they hunt strikes. And it's a little bit of a different, it's not, I mean, it's not every guy, but it's a little bit of a different team, team-wide philosophy than we're used to. And it just feels to me like when I watch a Braves game, it clicks along.

It's, there's things happening. Hannah, Hannah, the two-year-old would a Braves game, it clicks along. There's things happening. Hannah, Hannah the two-year-old would like Braves games. You know what I mean? I really like Freddie Freeman. I've thought that I want to spend like three weeks on Freddie Freeman and just watch every at-bat and then write about him because he's also like he's, I feel like Freddie Freeman is in a lot of ways

the inverse of Joey Votto, but every bit as in control of his game as joey vato and i really like watching his at bats they feel very purposeful and in a very different way so i like watching the braves bad i i'm not that into braves pitching to be honest as a as a fun thing but the the 15th pick i can't believe it ronald acuna made it to the 15th pick yeah i don't think the braves are super into Braves pitching either, in fairness. Yeah. Josh Donaldson.

Being sassy. Tyler Flowers. Josh Donaldson's on the Braves. I'm going to forget that the whole freaking year. Pitching stuff is a total enigma to me. I don't know what to make of them. Yeah, a lot of young guys, though. It's fun, right?

It's fun in that they're all young, and they're all fairly recent arrivals for the most part, and so they could be something. So there's promise at least. All right. So we are halfway through the teams in baseball and we are more than an hour into this episode. So we're going to speed up. We're just going to fast forward through these picks and justify them a little less than than we have been or not at all yeah or not at all all right so my next pick i think i will take cleveland i guess i'll take cleveland yeah i had them 17th so yeah they're right around here 16th yeah lindor is the most fun player so a week ago two weeks ago they would have been higher when i mean they have i know that the stats aren't aren't real until maybe they are real but we're overreacting to early season stuff but cleveland's fun stats have definitely taken a hit yeah recreation's really good really top to bottom yeah so that's something all right wow i can't believe i got to start. So I'm taking the A's. I'm taking the A's.

I like Matt Chapman. He's quite fun. Laureana throws the ball. Oh, my goodness. So much fun. And some members of their rotation who are hurt will be fun once they're not hurt. And Trinan's fun when he's not giving up walk-off walks. So if it was L2B. And sometimes even when he is so they're my pick i had them 16th so they they were also in just the right spot for

me but i don't like turning on a game and not being sure whether edwin jackson is on the roster or not like there's just something about the a's that's it's like looming threat of edwin jackson you could feel that way about every baseball game. Where is he? I need eyes on him at all times. All right. So my next pick is the Reds. Eh. Yep. They're there.

Yeah. All right. Gosh. I guess I'll take the Cubs. Someone has to take the Cubs, right? I had them. They were my second to next. I had them 18th. I had them 23rd. Off the field. Probably the least fun, right? I had them. They were my second to next. I had them 18th. I had them 23rd. Off the field, probably the least fun team. Not fun at all.

No, terribly unfun. But on the field, well, not all that fun either. But more fun than the other remaining teams, I guess. I really do like watching Rizzo play. And Rizzo, I'm like five years late on the not not late because I've been repeating it for five years but everybody's bored of this now but Rizzo fielding a sacrifice punt is

to me still like a top five thing in baseball right now like when he comes in and he's like standing in the left-handed batter's box yeah yeah you know so brist is still sort of residually fun and Chris Bryant is fun. Javi Baez is fun.

So, yeah, there's some guys. All right. I'm taking the Blue Jays. Oh. Because Vlad will be up at some point. But he's not. And Bo will be up at some point. He's awesome.

Doesn't it make the Blue jays even less fun though that they're not up yeah but um like what are we talking about at this point you know we're in we're in that range and uh i have now acquired uh corinne's team and dave's team and carson's team and i guess i've only lost out on uh on uh august and uh jeff's team so it's not a complete set but go fan graphs i don't know vlad's gonna be so fun it'll make up for this you know three weeks or whatever i didn't know this was a keeper league i don't know i don't know this is the season league they'll be up this season they'll be up this season they'll be up this this year as soon as vlad's better i would imagine uh i have uh my next team is the rangers whose lineup i think is generally fairly fun and extremely young i think they had this i think they had the youngest maybe the second youngest

lineup last year and a lot of guys weren't that good but they were young and i think they still might be i really like nomar mazara their pitching staff is as unfun as it gets their starting pitching staff i mean those guys are neither good nor novel um but you know you take what you get i like the lineup yeah gallo is really fun yeah and maybe better now we'll see so i think i like the value i'm getting here i'm taking the white socks with my next pick and And I think the White Sox are a fairly fun team. Just, you know, they're like the Padres, but less promising. They were like the Padres. Like, you know, they had the prospects and the prospects got there and then they didn't all get good all at once, but they still might.

And so like when Yohan Mankata is off to a really nice start, that's interesting. Or like Tim Anderson's kind of fun. And it's interesting, I guess, to see like will Giolito be any good? Will Carlos Rodon be any good? Reynaldo Lopez? All these guys who were supposed to be good who better be good if the White Sox are going to be good. You get to find out if they'll be good. And, of course, Eloy Jimenez is there too.

So that's kind of also fun. No strikes, though. That's a strike-unthrowing team. Yeah. Can we go back to the Rangers really quick? Sorry, no, I'm not helping. Joey Gallo is fourth in baseball right now in terms of walk rate. Yeah.

And his walk rate and his strikeout rate are identical. Yeah, how about that? They're both 26.3. Wow. We needed to remark on that for a moment because like that's freaking crazy for Joey Gallo. So that's a fun Joey Gallo fact from media. It is. Although I remember a Fangraphs post last year from Jeff from late April.

The astonishing development of Joey Gallo. And he ceased to astonish. Yes. It will likely not sustain. But for today, that is our fun Joey Gallo fact. Why do we all remember that Joey Gallo post? Jeff wrote four articles that day. Why did that one stand out? I remember that one too. I could probably recite it. Well, he's usually so pressured to bed things that when someone doesn't continue to be good after one of his posts, I remember it. Also, I just like Gallo, so I pay attention to Gallo. posts i remember it also i just like gallo so i pay attention to gal yeah one time i tried to find a post of jeff predicting something that turned out embarrassingly wrong and i ended up in like

2009 mariners posts trying to find something and like it's hard he's he's got a good record i tease him about from time to time meanwhile mike trout has walked only just slightly under a percentage point less often and has a 7% strikeout rate. God, Mike Trout's great. Amazing. You guys, Mike Trout's really good at baseball. Most watchable team in baseball, really. Fun fact.

Although, you know things are weird when Tim Anderson has a higher WRC plus than Mike Trout does. Anyway, fun facts. All right. You're up. Oh, I'm up? Oh, crap. I'm taking – wait. Ben took the White Sox.

Okay, I'm taking notes as we go. I guess I'm going to take – I don't feel great about this. This feels like a very Homer pick, but I'm going to do it anyway. I guess I'm going to take the Mariners. The Mariners are not fun. Despite all the home runs, this is like very early season mirage nonsense. But I think Kikuchi is legitimately fun to watch play baseball. So that's good.

And Marco Gonzalez is fine. I watched him pitch live on Tuesday. That went well. They tried to make him go a complete game. That went almost less well, but it's fine now. And let's see. What else do they have that's good? And I think the young prospects are going to be

really quite fun to watch and i'm excited to hear uh more about julio rodriguez who is now stateside so we can actually watch him on milb tv that's hard to say i'm done now i'm taking the orioles mostly just to make a statement about the other teams that are left. Sure. Yeah. You know, the thing about the Orioles is that there is something fun about seeing a team shoot for 130 losses. And then there is something interesting about watching that team go four and two or whatever to start the season. And so as long as they're around 500, they'll be interesting. But they've kind of shot themselves in the foot 130 loss wise.

And so this is a very short expiration date on my interest in the Orioles. But I don't know. No, no, no, actually no. All right. Well, I think I'll take the Diamondbacks. I don't feel great about it, but I feel better about it than I would about any of these other teams. I had them 28.

At least you get Grinke. You get, gosh, I mean, Cattell Marte is kind of fun. Maybe Merrill Kelly. Oh, boy. David Peralta just as like an indie league guy who's been good. That's old. That's too old. I know, but he's gotten better recently, so that's kind of fun.

It's Slim Pickens, but I just, yeah, I'm timing facts. Oh, no. Is it really me again? Wait, Sam, what was your most recent one? The Orioles. Oh, that's right. I have it right here. Oh, I had 30th.

Crap. I guess I'm taking. I had 30th. Crap. I guess I'm taking the Pirates. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They were actually ahead of the Orioles on my list. I'm taking the Pirates. Yeah.

I stopped getting in fights, but I'm taking the Pirates. You know, when I was doing this, I forgot about Starling Marte who I've always been a huge huge fan of watching like physically I he is my favorite physical physical player physical physical baseballer like I just like him he's strong and fast I like him always have

I'll pick the I'll pick the Royals they run a lot they sure do run actually Mondesi Mondesi is a genuinely potentially incredible player right now, and it's happening. We're watching it happen. At the moment, we got a half DiMaggio going.

What? Doesn't Whitmerfeld have a 28-game hitting streak? Oh, it does. Is that real? Isn't that right? Oh, across seasons, right oh across seasons right but yeah sure yeah doesn't it it does does it not count i think are we not counting it i've been counting fans too are we counting down okay good yeah it does so it's still active isn't it yeah for 28 28 games

so that's a thing would it be tarnished for you if he uh if the guy who matches or surpasses dimaggio does it across seasons, is that? No. I think it's, no? No, not at all. I think it's a little less impressive to me. In a way, it's, I don't know, you're just a different guy in those two seasons. And I think maybe the pressure of it building up within a single season might be.

But I don't know. I guess the pressure doesn't start building until later in it anyway. So maybe it doesn't matter. I guess the pressure doesn't start building until later in it anyway, so maybe it doesn't matter. I guess it's the same. Yeah, and why wouldn't it be more pressure? Because you've had five months sitting on the pressure. Yeah, well, I mean, if you were at like 50 games or something and then the season ended and then you had the rest of the—

that would be more impressive for sure, yeah. I thought you were going to ask if it would be tarnished by it being Whit Merrifield and that's a fair that's a reasonable question would when we said when i said a couple weeks ago that a 57 game hitting streak is the most fun that baseball could offer right now i wonder if that only applies if it were maybe one of two dozen players who i think you know are you know, are, you know, like superstars. And I mean, I hate to say this, but kind of merit it. I hate that I said it. Feel bad. Yeah.

Well, I was kind of the Royals guy before the season started. And then they didn't run in spring training. And they've kind of run like they're tied for the third most steals in baseball right now with eight. I don't know if they do it. If they start running run like they're tied for the third most steals in baseball right now with eight. I don't know. If they do it, if they start running, then they're fun. But if they don't, then they're extremely unfun. But there's the hope at least.

And that's better than what we have left here. So, gosh, we have Giants, Marlins, and Tigers left on the board. Oh, my. Where do we go with Giants, Marlins, and Tigers? Oh, my goodness. I think I'll take the Marlins just because I don't know who's on the Marlins. And so when I watch them, it's kind of fun to find out who's on them. So that's my rationale. It's like a little surprise every time I tune in and it's like, oh, I heard of that guy I'll look him up I don't know why

I've heard of fewer Marlins than I have Obviously like you know all the Giants Because they're still hanging around from Good Giants teams but You know like even the Tigers feel a little less Anonymous to me than the Marlins do And the Marlins are also in the NL East and so

They have some potential to be The terrible team of 2019 like if if the Orioles are off to to get a start to challenge any records Marlins are your best option and they're in such a good division that they'll just be beaten up all year long so there's potential for them to be the team that tests the lower bound this year uh crap oh Sam I feel really mean because i'm gonna take the tigers uh-huh well i would have taken the i would have taken the giants oh but didn't you have you you struggled so mightily to find something interesting to say about that i did you're right meg knows this i'm sorry i'm revealing all sorts of things i'm being especially mean terrible i'm sorry well should i

tell this story yeah i had to write something and basically i had to write a fun fact about every team for the opening day package and i the first you know the first 29 the first 20 teams took you know whatever x period of time and then the next nine took also x period of time where X is the same because it got harder. And then the Giants also took X. And Meg was watching me for like literal hours, literal hours trying to find something that I thought was fun. Not fun about the team, but a fun fact about the team.

It was a very difficult time. And so it's true. They are not the most fun fact team no um but i you know why they're 29th over the tigers at 30th for me is this is this is not a fair reason this is not a reason that anybody should care about but they play on the west coast which means that um they're more likely to be the only game going and i'm grateful for those games yeah i was gonna pick the tigers because uh we'll see here i'll i'll pay back a little of my um meanness in in kindness which is to say that i think one of my favorite things uh i've read on baseball internet in the last couple years was when you wrote about josh harrison and pickles that was you right yeah about josh harrison yeah i'm

remembering all the essential facts of that story correctly. And Josh Harrison's on the Tigers now. And he's going to get a lot of played appearances, you know, because they're really bad and he's fine. So that's a reason that I'm excited. And I guess it continues to be fascinating that Gordon Beckham has a major league job. So that's a thing to look at. And I

guess I like designated hitters as a position. And that's basically all the Tigers roster is, is a bunch of designated hitters playing out of position by playing one at all. So I guess that's why I'm doing it. And I don't know, I'm from Seattle and Matt Boyd's from the greater Seattle area. So there you go. Those are my reasons. All right. And I'm taking the Giants. And I would just like to say that I've thought about it in the last four minutes. And I have decided that I completely 100% reject the concept that only some players merit a record of such stature as the hit record. And I would be extremely welcoming of any player, including Whit Merrifield, who is an extremely good ball player and worthy of everything he accomplishes.

Yeah. All right. Well, we got a lot of enjoyment out of Orlando Cabrera's assault on the on-base streak. So in a way, it's more fun if someone completely improbable does it. You know, I mean, I'm to the point where I'm watching the Tommy Pham record. I mean, it is watch it, watch it status. I don't know if he did it today, so I guess I didn't watch.

Well, that's my team, the Rays. They're fun for that reason. I like Pham. Pham did. Pham got on base. You know, Pham's got a 640 OPS. Should I, I'll see who picked what teams and maybe we can put this up to a vote. See what people think, who got the most fun team or selection of teams.

I've recorded all of our selections. Yeah, me too. And we all have 10 based on my sheet. So I think we did it right. Great. Yeah. So let's poll the listeners. See who got the most fun assortment of teams.

All right. Okay. That was fun. This was a fun episode. That was fun. Alright. Okay. That was fun. This was a fun episode. It was fun. Every time I do an all 30 teams article, I'm just reminded anew how many teams there are. It's a lot of teams.

So many teams. Alright. We did it. That was fun. Thanks, you guys. Meg, thanks for coming. Oh, it was my pleasure. Ben, thanks for pulling this together too did i well you sent out the the podcast link that's true you kept the podcast going while i was away yeah that's right you kept me going at episode 300 when i said that was enough

yep and here you are almost 1400 you love. Okay. Talk to you both later this week. All right. See ya. Bye. Okay, so that will do it for today. I will link to the sheet with the 10 teams that each of us drafted from the show page and in the Facebook group. And I'll put a poll up about this, which I will also link to.

By the way, if anyone had trouble listening to 1359, we had an issue uploading on a hotel Wi-Fi network, and evidently there were some skips from time to time in the episode. Should be fixed now, so if you delete and re-download, it should be okay now, thanks to those of you who let me know. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already done so. Martin A. Miller, Jesse R., Steven Dennison, John Gallo, and Jason Sidesick, thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms.

Tell a friend. Word of mouth helps us too. Keep your questions and comments coming for me and Meg and Sam via email at podcast at fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. You can pre-order my book, The MVP Machine. It's about the ongoing revolution in player development. Your pre-orders really help us. And I'll be back next time with Sam, followed by another episode with Meg. So I'll talk to you then. Go ahead. I'm going to need a 3, 2, 1. 3, 2, 1.

Good morning. I'm hearing it. I got to switch headphones. i'm hearing an echo i'm sorry i'll be right back okay ben how was your weekend