Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1585: The Not-So-Deadline

Episode Date: September 2, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley recap and analyze the trade deadline, concentrating on the Padres’ unprecedented activity, Cleveland dealing Mike Clevinger, the Blue Jays buying, the Diamondbacks selling, several other contenders retooling, and why the deadline was busier than expected, followed by banter about a second Clayton Kershaw tire commercial and an example of Honus […]

A lot of moving, a lot of rolling, a lot of driving, a lot of strolling, a lot of leaving here, arriving there, trying to go just about everywhere, a lot of thinking about where I'm going next. Hello and welcome to episode 1585 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing okay. How was your trade deadline day? What was the Fangraphs tally for posts published? I think we landed at 29. Very nice.

Yes, that includes, well, it's sort of as these things do. It depends on how you count it. Yeah. But we had 31 total pieces that were tagged to our trade deadline category. That included a couple of trades that trickled in in the late innings last week. And that also includes Eric's ranking of the prospects who moved and craig edwards roundup of winners and losers and surprises that both of which went live today so 31 so it was busy uh by comparison's sake last year we had 47 things that were uh that were

tagged to the trade deadline category. And some of them were about deals and some of them were reacts after the fact. But I think that for a 60-game season where we thought we might not have really any activity at all, we had a nice little day and we appreciate everyone reading. And by the time this has gone live, there will be a little roundup post of all of our various pieces available for folks who are like, it's too many things, Meg. Can't sort through all these things. It's too many. So we'll have that available for people shortly.

So, yeah, it was a good day. Yeah, it was busier than expected. And maybe we can talk about that. I have a couple bits of banter, but maybe we can backload it and just get right to the trades because that's probably what the people want so yeah i think we thought that it would be a pretty slow deadline pretty uneventful and there were a lot of reasons to think that and my pal zach cram at the ringer summarized some of them last week just you know small sample stats not being able to trust evaluations of players, not being able to evaluate minor leaguers. There's no minor league season. There's not a ton of transparency about

what's happening in alternate sites. So it was kind of hard to figure out what exactly you would be getting if it wasn't a player who had been in the big leagues and even then kind of difficult. And then the expanded playoff format, you know, there are a lot of teams that are basically virtual locks already. And there's just so much uncertainty about everything. Uncertainty about finances heading into an offseason after a pandemic and roster rules. And just so many reasons to think that teams might just be kind of like, well, we'll stand pat. We'll just see what happens. You know, we're a month into this season, and usually the trade deadline comes a lot later than that into a season.

So you would have thought it would be slow, and yet it was quite busy, I think. And, yes, a large percentage of the activity was the Padres, and we'll talk about that. And Jerry DiPoto held up his end of the bargain as usual too but it was still more active than I expected and I guess maybe partly that's because of all the injuries and all the pitcher injuries in particular you just have to fill those holes somehow and if you are a presumptive playoff team then you know that you need a 28-man roster heading into the playoffs. And there's always room to upgrade when you're talking about 28 players that you're taking to the playoffs.

And there's some 40-man roster crunch going on, as Eric Langenhagen wrote for Fangraphs, that may have made some teams more eager to deal. But on the whole, it seems like a lot of the teams in what would be buying positions kind of acted like buyers not all of them but it seems like teams do sort of value the playoffs this year and winning this year yeah i think that i was particularly surprised by i think the pitching is a good place to start. We may as well start there. I was surprised both that the Padres were able to secure Clevenger just because, and we'll talk about the Padres too, I just appreciate a team that was already good being like, here are all of our vulnerabilities.

Let's address them in order. But also was quite surprised by the pitchers who didn't move. I'm still surprised that Lance Lynn is a Ranger and that Dylan Bundy is an Angel. And those pitchers have value to those teams beyond this year. And I think we can take it as a positive sign that both Texas and Los Angeles plan on competing next year, that they looked at the additional year of control they have over those guys

and thought, well, this is useful to us in 2021 when things will be more normal. So that's good in a way but surprising nonetheless but yeah i just i guess we should start with san diego let's talk about san diego interesting in that so i think at the end of last week jj cooper at baseball america reported on oh excuse me it was josh norris at ba j Josh, I apologize. That there were 10 teams that had opted out of sharing their video and among them was the Padres. So teams were getting excited about Padres prospects without having seen them recently. But goodness, AJ, take a nap. Yeah, seriously. Yeah. I wrote about the Padres and they're just so fascinating and Preller is so fascinating. Sometimes he colors outside the lines, as I wrote, and sometimes he does that in a way that gets him suspended by MLB in the industry and puts him into ethically questionable territory. So

I don't want to celebrate that tendency, or despite the fact that I am a person myself who doesn't sleep all that much at times, I don't want to praise him for not sleeping, which is another quality that he supposedly possesses. But he does operate differently from just about every other GM out there, and that makes him entertaining. It's kind of fun and refreshing to have Preller and the Padres in after he was hired in 2014 when he had a somewhat similar trading spree. And yet the circumstances are totally different and it made a lot more sense for him to do what he did this time. But as I wrote, he traded 26 players in the past three days, you know, exchanged 26 players when you add up the players he traded for and the players he traded away. 26 players in the span of three days, that's including a few players to be named later. And the only person who's ever come close to doing that in a three

day span before is AJ Preller, who exchanged 24 players in a three day span in 2014, or 25 if you count Ryan Hannigan twice, because he traded for him and then traded him away almost immediately. No one else has ever traded more than 20 players in a three-day span even once, and Preller has now done it twice. So no one has ever showed, I don't know what you want to call it, the impetuousness, no one has ever showed, I don't know what you want to call it, the impetuousness, the boldness, the fearlessness, whatever it takes to make that many moves in quick succession and to sort of put your reputation on the line because you won the offseason or you won the deadline or you went all in. No one has really gone all in on the trade market the way that Preller now has twice. And so the first time he was doing it with a losing team, a team that had been bad for quite some time, that really needed a rebuild, and his attempt to just sort of patch over the holes in that roster and trade for veterans just didn't work out and kind of backfired and didn't get them anywhere. And they ended up selling midway through that following season and being bad again.

And maybe it sort of set back the Padres' rebuild, although there are ways in which it kind of worked out in their favor. Like they traded James Shields, one of their signings that year, for Fernando Tatis Jr. So that sort of worked out in the long run. that year for Fernando Tatis Jr. So that sort of worked out in the long run. But, you know, he really tried to just sort of skip the rebuilding phase and turn a bad team into a good team. And it's pretty tough to do that. And he didn't do that. And now, you know, he is one of the longer tenured GMs in the league. He's like the eighth longest tenured as opposed to a rookie as he was when he made that first trading spree. And the Padres are good now because he went through that process of tearing it down, building it back up again. He used his strengths as a scout and player development person to build up that team the long way, the thorough way, the sustainable way.

And now he's not trying to take a shortcut he's trying to put the finishing touches on this roster that's already good and that was already a lock for the playoffs this year and boy i mean i expected him to tinker but i didn't know that he would just reshape the roster acquire the best player traded at the deadline and the most players traded at the deadline and when you try to break it all down now that the dust has sort of settled it really made the padres better for this year and for future years at not too terrible a cost yeah i think that when you there are a lot of different ways in which i admire kind of what happened yesterday and i think that you're right that or over the last few days i yesterday. And I think that you're right that, or over the last few days, I should say, and I think that you're right that whatever we want

to call this, this proclivity, this inclination, it has led Preller in bad directions in the past, both in terms of the quality of the trades that he's made and the legality of some of his moves. So we don't, we don't want to look at his sort of resume or tenure uncritically. But I think that, as you said, and as Dan Zimborski wrote in his analysis of the sort of major league side of the Clevenger deal, you know, the real issue before was that he had role players and they just needed to fill in role players. And I don't say that to diminish how good Mike Clevenger is, but, you know, they had subpar catching and now they have Austin Nola who, and Jason Castro who, you know, Nola is an interesting case just from a valuation perspective because he has been very, very good this year on sort of both sides of the ball. His track record of being that good,

both in terms of his hitting and his ability to catch because he is a convert to the position is pretty short and he's on the other side of 30 but he also has team control remaining so he's an interesting case you know they had injuries and sort of underperformance in the bullpen well now they have Trevor Rosenthal who we should just note this because I don't know if you watched the padres game last night ben i had it on because i had you know that terrible thing that happens after you work a lot and you're very very tired but then you can't sleep because you're still kind of wired from it and i was like go to bed but actually what i will do is watch the padres play the rockies in colorado where they were up by six

runs and it was pouring rain, pouring rain, torrential, that kind of special rain you get in Denver sometimes where you look around and you're like, what is this? And six run game, Trevor Rosenthal just came in in the ninth to throw and they're off today. So I think they wanted to get him an inning, but he fielded with a plumb, a comebacker. But I was like, is, is AJ's blood pressure just through the roof because his important bullpen piece is pitching in a game that they probably have in hand when it's pouring rain and he almost just got taken out by a comebacker. Anyway, that's not the point. Fortifying that bullpen, given the injuries and some of the underperformance, it was important, but those are sort of smaller moves.

Then you have Clevenger for the next couple of years. And I think that this is what teams that have gone the long way, as you called it, can go where they have good homegrown pieces. They have free agents that they've brought in who they feel good about, or in the case of Eric Hosmer, who were performing slightly better this year. And they're able to supplement that core with the pieces that they need. And it is just a testament to the depth of the Padres system that, you know, I'll remind people that our farm system rankings at FanGraphs update dynamically as guys move around.

And Eric has gone through and moved everyone who all of the prospects who moved over the last couple of days and even sending the best ranked prospect to move at the deadline away along with a couple of days and even sending the best ranked prospect to move at the deadline away along with a couple of other pieces the Padres still have the second best farm system in baseball the gap has widened between them and Tampa a bit they are no longer just a Wander Franco away but they still have exciting young guys who will no doubt contribute to the Padres in 2021 and beyond and who if you

know there isn't an obvious place for them on the roster as there wasn't with Trammell will probably go be good prospects in someone else's farm system so it's just uh it's exciting it's exciting for a team that isn't in a major market to both spend the way that the Padres have over the last couple of years to develop talent the way they have and to be willing to make big moves to address you know weaknesses in order to get their team back to the postseason like again I don't want to gloss over some of the unsavory things that this particular administration in San Diego has done. But absent that chicanery, I think this is the way that we would prefer franchises to operate where the goal is clearly to win. There is a willingness to spend when it's clear that the young talent is sort of coming up. Even if it's

not perfectly aligned from a timing perspective, when there's a guy like Manny Machado, you're going to go out on the market and get him. And when there's someone like Mike Clevenger available, you're going to go out and trade for that guy so that you can put a really great team on the field and bring championship baseball back to a city, hopefully. And especially in a place like San Diego, where among the major four sports,

the Padres are the only game in town. I think we talked about this when the Machado signing happened. It just seems like a really special opportunity for San Diego to be a baseball town. I think moves like this help to solidify that. Imagine how it's going to feel for Padres fans in San Diego when they're able to go to the park next year. They're going to be so excited for baseball. This is exactly what we want for the health of the sport to have young, exciting talent with personality and flair that is driving a competitive roster that the team isn't afraid to supplement around. I think it's really great. And I'm not just saying that because I want

the playoff picture to be dominated by former Fangraphs employees, although that doesn't hurt. Yeah, that is sort of happening. Yeah, it's, I mean, the Padres have been nothing if not entertaining, really, during Preller's tenure, whether it was with that first attempt to get good, which was ill-conceived and didn't really work, but at least briefly vaulted the Padres into national notoriety, which is just not a position that they had often occupied before that. And then more recently, whether it was signing Hosmer, which again, maybe that wasn't the wisest signing or there weren't a lot of teams lining up to sign Eric Hosmer on those terms. But it's kind of fun to have someone like Preller in the mix who would make a deal like that when most teams wouldn't.

And then a year after that, there was the Manny Machado signing, which gave the Padres a legitimate superstar. And they are a franchise that has been starved for superstars for years now. And even if it was like in 2017 when the Padres were bad the Padres carried three rule five guys from like a ball or below on their major league roster and it was like no other team would do this and one of those guys Luis Torrens was one of the players traded on on this uh this week to the Mariners so that was just all about stockpiling talent, even if it meant doing something

that most teams wouldn't be willing to do because you generally don't devote a significant slice of your roster to A-ball players or like rookie ball players, which is what they did. And they just carried them for months in order to have them for future seasons when it would matter.

And all the moves that they made, you know, even though you think of them maybe as a sort of homegrown team because they have promoted a lot of players who debuted with the Padres a lot of those prospects were originally with other organizations the Padres have like more than 60 percent of their 40 man and more than 60 percent of their active roster are players acquired via trade, which is the highest of any team except the A's, who are always trading in order to sort of stay in contention with a low payroll. So they just have kind of churned through all these players, and they've kept all of these really promising players, and now they're in great position for this year and also beyond. For this year and also beyond, as Dan Simborski wrote in his recap, the Padres project to be the National League's second best team in their position where if you're a division winner if you're a great team like the dodgers maybe it hurts you a little because now instead of just jumping right to a like division series you have to play an extra best

of three round and that's another impediment to making it further. But if you're a team like the Padres that would have been in wildcard position, now instead of that one game, you get three, potentially. You get an almost real playoff round. So there's more incentive to get good and upgrade for that round. And if you're a team like the Padres, it's 22 and 15 right now that has underlying stats that match that record that just legitimately has been good. Then you can actually separate yourself from the other potential teams that you might be matching up with in that round. And there are real reasons to get better. Plus, a lot of the players they got, like Clevenger, like Nola, are under team control for years to come and at pretty reasonable rates from a team perspective too. So this wasn't just a short-term upgrade, although there were some rentals that they got here. There were also some long-term oriented moves. So they did that all. I'll just read their total haul here

from the first paragraph of my piece. They made six trades. They got Clevenger and Greg Allen from Cleveland, Austin Nola, Austin Hedges and Luis Torrens, a couple of catchers, reliever Cal Quantrill, outfielder Josh Naylor, infielder Ty France, and nine prospects who were ranked 5th, 11th, 12th, 16th, 18th, 20th, 25th, 29th, and 39th on Eric's preseason Padres prospect rankings. And then there were three players to be named later that they subtracted or added. So four of the best five prospects to change teams at the deadline, according to Eric's rankings, were Padres prospects, including the best one, Taylor Trammell. And yet they didn't trade their best prospects and they didn't trade their young core. They didn't trade their best prospects and they didn't trade their young core and they didn't really have to subtract from anyone who was making them good in 2020. They just kind of found ways to upgrade and Taylor Trammell, who's maybe the best prospect to change teams, well, this is the second time that he has been the best prospect traded at a deadline and that's maybe kind of concerning because there is some research that shows that when top rank prospects are traded and treated multiple times that doesn't tend to auger well for their long-term prospects maybe it shows some lack of confidence on the part of their teams

and he's a guy who had sort of a disappointing 2019 and was going through a swing change of sorts or kind of going back to his old swing. And so the lack of playing time this year maybe hurts him disproportionately. But the Padres did all that essentially without really doing anything that hurts them too much because they had a lot of depth and redundancy. They just had so much young talent that really they could kind of rob those strengths to shore up their weaknesses such as they were. And, you know, they have the best offense in baseball this year so far. They've scored the most runs. They have the highest WRC+, which has never happened before.

Padres have never finished higher than sixth in the majors in WRC+, in a season. And they found the one spot where they're not producing offensively catcher and upgraded that then they upgraded their bullpen which has been their weak spot and their rotation which has been another sort of relative vulnerability they got the best starting pitcher available so they really kind of remade themselves on the fly just by pouncing on all of these opportunities in quick succession and it was a lot of fun to watch yeah i think that you're right that the the current format of the playoffs really helps a team like san diego but i also like that you know it's really

hard to catch the dodgers and i don't know that san diego will ever necessarily be in a position to do that but i appreciate that their approach does a position to do that. But I appreciate that their approach does not seem to be sort of defeat in the face of a very good Dodgers team both this year and in any other year. So I appreciate the approach that they're taking because I think it's really easy to be a team in a division with a dominant force at the top and sort of accept your fate as an also ran and i know that this year the the best also ran in every division is guaranteed a playoff spot so it's not terrible to be an also ran in 2020 but i don't think that their sites are set that low for 2021 so it's just an exciting thing also can we take a moment to talk about eric osmer

oh sure just because i think that we we've been denied so many moments of like hey ben have you been looking at this guy but here's one where we're gonna look at this guy so eric cosmer's still still having a good little year yeah so he is no longer boasting the the 311 wrc plus that he put up in July, but in August he had a 130 WRC Plus. He had a 130 WRC Plus, but that's a respectable major leaguer. That's 30% better than league average based on how WRC Plus is scaled.

I just think it's funny and delightful that a guy who has just been so bad would be good in a year when um this team is fun and exciting and has tatis putting up a an mvp case and jay cronin worth of all people uh making a case for rookie of the year so yeah let's go padres i guess plus they got the uniforms yes i resisted editing all of our pieces about clevenger to make a joke about dads wanting to give him a talking to for his COVID violations because I am a professional with self-restraint. What do you make of Nola just because he's such a late bloomer and because he's been so good since he came up? so good since he came up and as a friend of the show patrick debuke tweeted just a couple days ago he leaves the mariners as the sixth best catcher in franchise history by fan graphs were

after 377 plate appearances yeah it's quite grim yeah so do you believe in him i mean i don't know that he is a 146 wrc plus hitter over the course of, you know, an actual season's worth of baseball. I think that he did go through an appreciable swing change. And so that appears to have assisted him quite a bit, added some loft and power to the swing. The receiving seems to be good. It is borne out by our stats and also by VPs. these are small samples but i would imagine that his bat will settle somewhere between the 114 wrc plus that he put up in you know limited action last year and the 146 that he's boasting now but he does seem to be a viable everyday catcher which is quite exciting for san diego and even if he were to settle down to the 114 WRC

plus last year, I think San Diego might throw him a parade because, you know, compared to the offensive production they were getting out of Hedges in particular, although he has not been, his bat has not been anything to write home about this year it's a notable boost he's not the defender that hedges is but you know very few people are so i don't know he's an odd case i think that he's definitely one of those players where you want to see him sustain something over the course of a longer stretch of games than he has but it isn't as if there weren't developmental changes and tweaks that might account for the improved production. So I don't know.

He's sure an odd one. It's sure an odd thing because he's like almost 31. He's not a young 30. He's almost 31, but he's not a free agent until 2026. So and I don't think are eligible until 2023. So he'll remain. He's a very low-risk proposition for San Diego, even though they gave up significant prospect capital to get him

because if he ends up being not very good in the future, then I don't think that they will look around and say, good God, this guy's so expensive that we can't move on from him. I mean, they clearly didn't make that determination with Eric Cosmer, who's been worse, but decidedly more expensive. And he has some positional versatility, right? He can play other infield spots competently. So he's an interesting guy. I think later in this week, Craig Edwards is going to take a look at him sort of in context to see how players like him have been valued or how rare they are relative to other catchers. But yeah, he's, he's an odd one, but he also, you know, he's one of those

guys that people in the org seemed to like a good deal and I think would have been a useful player for Seattle to retain for their next, their next competitive team. But I think that the, the offer they got was just too compelling for them to sit there and say, well, no, we won't take, even after a down 2019, we won't take one of the better prospects in baseball so that we can retain an almost 31-year-old catcher. Yeah. I love that the Patriots and the Mariners made two trades in two days,

even though they had made the seven-player trade earlier. Then they hooked up for another one because just like i don't know preller and and depoto just needed to do another deal and so they traded another you know reliever for player to be named later with taylor williams i don't know if they just like they did the first trade and they were like well that was fun let's do it again or hey we forgot this other reliever we'd like him too can we just kind of tack him on but that was very preller and depoto to just make that into two trades for some reason yeah well and we were wondering you know the days

leading up to the deadline especially when they fall before a monday like this you know we had we had people sort of on deck over the weekend to cover trades, which we ended up doing a fair amount of on Sunday because you don't want to get a backlog and then an already kind of overwhelming queue becomes even trickier to manage. And so that NOLA deal came down kind of late in the day on Sunday and on Monday morning, the various pieces that were covering it were getting wrapped up. And Ben Clemens said to me in our Slack, he couldn't have done this deal today. Like, come on, what's going on? And then I think an hour later, the Clevenger deal hit and it's like, oh, I get

it now. He was busy with other big stuff. But yeah. So the Padres, they were not the only team to do trades. No, no, they were not were not yeah so let's talk about the others yeah we've got just you know it's it's easy to talk maybe too much about the Padres because they are breaking unwritten rules and swinging at pitches when you're not expected to swing and Manny Machado's catching balls in places where you're not supposed to catch balls and they're setting records for grand slams and consecutive, and they're breaking their own records for players traded in a short span of time. And they're remaking their whole catching core on the fly at midseason, which is daring. Even if the guys you get are good, you have to learn a whole new pitching staff with no lead time.

That's pretty tough, but they're watchable. They're entertaining. It's easy to talk about them. And that's nice because that hasn't been the case for the Padres very often historically but yeah so maybe we can talk about the team that traded Clevenger to San Diego Cleveland so yeah this is the third prominent pitcher that Cleveland has traded in the past year or so with Bauer and Kluber and Clevenger. And as was the case with Bauer, this trade comes after clubhouse concerns. You know, Bauer had his throwing the ball over the outfield fence before his trade. Clevenger had his violating curfew and getting in hot water with his teammates before his trade.

It's not clear how much of these deals was motivated by those sort of off-the-field concerns and how much was just motivated by Cleveland's desire to not spend a lot of money and keep contending without spending a lot of money. So this team has traded a lot of its stars and entertained offers for other of its stars. And that must be sort of frustrating for Cleveland fans because they had this really championship caliber core and instead of supplementing it, have mostly subtracted from it or made lateral moves. And I guess it's a question of whether you think they got enough, you know, whether you think this will benefit them in the long term, because obviously they have demonstrated some aptitude for pitcher development. And so they do still have sort of a strong rotation with Carrasco still in the mix, even after moving Clevenger. There's something to

be said for wanting to always be in contention. Like a couple of years ago, I feel like it was clear that Cleveland was kind of coming to the end of its window maybe and wouldn't have many chances left. And now they haven't made the most of the chances that they did have, but I think it's less clear that they can't keep competing. I think the returns that they've gotten from some of these trades have made them sort of more sustainable long-term, which is good, I guess. And yet, you know, just like last year, they have this weakness in the outfield that they really could have used an upgrade guess. And yet, you know, just like last year, they have this weakness in the outfield that they really could have used an upgrade in. And obviously someone like Clevenger goes a long

way in a playoff rotation and they keep dealing guys away instead of acquiring guys. So on the one hand, I see the sense in it. It's almost like a raise-like attempt to just stay good without spending very much, which they've either decided that they can't or won't do. But on the other hand, when you have such a wealth of talent as they had a couple of years ago, you'd like to see them supplement that instead of just keep picking pieces away. Yeah, I think that... So the Clevenger case is a little more complicated because we don't know. I think, as you said, that we don't know what role his personality has played. I think that the fact that they traded, I imagine based on what we've heard reported after both him and police acts, COVID-19 protocol related violations, that there's bad feeling about both of them in the clubhouse,

how significant that is, how much it will drive further transactions down the road. I think it remains to be seen, but it's not surprising to me that Clevenger, who I think is more highly regarded than police act and a more established entity was the one that was sort of brought up from the alternate side to showcase before trade. But I think that you weren't going to see them make a move for Lindor this year just because of the lack of a minor league season and the lack of information. I don't think that they were going to find a fit there that they were satisfied with and they could really justify, but they do seem to be a team that's on the side of, well, don't you normally trade for guys like that rather than trade guys away who are like that? They seem to always be on the wrong side of that coin, and I think you're right that they have managed to remain competitive. They clearly have very real player development acumen. And I don't

think that that is simply a means of justifying their cheapness. But I also think that they seem unlikely to extend Francisco Lindor, who is one of the best players in baseball. And so my thing with Cleveland just remains like, why are you in the baseball business if this is the way that you're going to approach payroll because you have one of the best players in baseball you have not committed to that player long term you develop really good players and then you often send them away for hopefully younger versions of themselves which sometimes does work out as you noted they've managed to maintain a very good and competitive rotation but not every you know not every 2018 uh shane bieber becomes a 2019 or 2020

shane bieber so i think that if you as an organization want that to be your approach to roster building and you have sustained success with player development and you scout well and you bring guys in like that is definitely a way to run an organization but i think that when you're willing to spend money you just have more buffer you just have more buffer for those guys to not work out because all free agents cost our dollars. They don't cost prospects. It's a lot easier to have money than it is to develop good prospects. So I just think that you narrow your margin for error. And in a year like this, that doesn't matter very much because they have a competitive team that is probably playoff bound.

But in a year like last year, it means that you're sitting on the outside when October rolls around. So I would find that very frustrating as a fan because it's just nice to have room to breathe. Yeah, and it's interesting that some of the players they've traded have gotten some credit for their pitching development.

I don't know how much of that is merited, but guys like Bauer and Clevenger some credit for their pitching development. I don't know how much of that is merited, but guys like Bauer and Clevenger and maybe even Kluber have been credited for being mentors and helping pitchers like Bieber develop. And so was that those pitchers in particular, or is that just a product of their player development system that makes it possible for pitchers to share that knowledge and for guys coming up to sort of be indoctrinated in those ways. I don't know, but clearly they seem to have a system that's working there in that respect and that has helped them strike this balance that

they're trying to strike, which has been frustrating for fans and yet not as bad as it could have been. for fans and yet not as bad as it could have been so i think maybe one of the other interesting buyers is the blue jays yeah jays were also quite active and after they remade their entire rotation over the off season they sort of did it again in the last week they traded for robbie ray they traded for tywin walker they traded for former Effectively Wild guest Ross Stripling. They also added Jonathan Villar, who will help fill that hole that was created by Boba Shett's knee injury. So I think they probably were a big winner with the playoff format, just like the Padres were in the NL. And the Boudreaux have been kind of one of those teams that was on the bubble, and they have also made themselves better. You know, they added these three pretty solid starters to Hyunjin Ryu,

their big centerpiece signing of the offseason, who has been very good in his own right, and this is, like the Padres, kind of another entertaining team with a lot of really young, excellent players who are really fun to watch. And they supplemented that core with some additions here who shored up some of those weaknesses. So we'll see if that's enough, but that certainly helps them sustain this strong start. Yeah, I liked the moves that they made. It seems like they were unwilling to sort of play in the Clevenger space in any kind of a sustained way, although they were linked to him at one point, I think. But I think that the guys they brought in on the rotation side, you know, like,

I think there's reason to the look kind of askance at Tywon Walker's performance so far. You know, Robbie Ray was better last year than he is this year. You know, Ross Stripling has been sort of clearly perceived as a not wholly necessary member of the roster by the Dodgers for a minute now, but all of those guys are competent pitchers. All of them can eat innings and it does provide some amount of versatility to their roster when you have, you know, like Nate Pearson come back and then you don't necessarily have to force him into the rotation. Maybe he pitches in relief instead. You know, if Matt Shoemaker comes back healthy, you have some versatility there. So I think that

it gives them, it gives them options to sort of piece together the next month of the season. And like Jonathan VR, I am sure that Toronto's great hope is that Beau Bichette, who does not have a definitive timeline for return yet, but has resumed baseball activities, will be able to come back and slot back into short and resume his really sterling season. But even if he's able to do all of that,

like it doesn't hurt to have a Jonathan Villar as an option, either if Bichette goes down again or if you just need a good bench bat. So I think that they did well. They did well. Those Sestoulis, we're going to call them the Sestoulis. I imagine them all wearing glasses.

And funny mustaches and facial hair. Yes. So while those teams were buying, the Blue Jays were adding Robbie Ray from the Diamondbacks, who were sort of the ying to the Padres yang in the NL West. And while the Pad Bradley to the Reds and they sent Starling Marte to the Marlins. The Marlins are deadline buyers all of a sudden. That's fun. So yeah, the Diamondbacks were trying to contend this season to some extent. And I mean, they traded for Marte to get better for this year. And then they had that one in 10 stretch and were sort of plunged to 14-21 and pretty much taken out of the playoff picture and so they basically decided to pack it in and get what

they could so they've been sort of a tough team to evaluate over the past few years because they have traded a lot of really good players and yet they have also acquired good players like they've sort of been straddling the line between buyer and seller and playing both parts and you know dealing zach cranky but then signing madison bumgarner and it's been kind of hard to figure out which way they're going and so now they have at least temporarily changed directions again plus they're facing the prospect of now two long-term tough-to-beat teams in their division instead of one. Yeah, I think they probably want the Bumgarner signing back. They are a team that has, you know,

if we wanted to offer some optimism to Diamondbacks fans, I would say the following things. The first of which is that they, you know that they are possessed of a good farm system. I think that they are ninth now after the trades that transpired over the last couple of days in terms of total farm system value. So it is not as if they do not have some young talent that might come to supplement that core. And then when you look at their payroll commitments beyond this year, it's quite light past 2020. So I think that they are a team that if they wanted to supplement with some signings, they certainly have the means and the money to do so. Now, these moves seem to have been somewhat financially motivated in addition to sort of the Arizona front office

having an accurate understanding of what their playoff picture looks like this year. So that's a bit of a bummer, but they were doing this, you know, they were doing this funny thing where despite being in a position to have a historic draft in 2019, they were trying to stay competitive while in the midst of their step back. So I think that there is sort of the outline of a good roster here, but their farm system is not as stacked as San Diego's and they have not shown the same willingness to spend big money, at least not yet. So it'll be interesting to see kind of where they land in 2021. But yeah, kind of a bummer for for D-backs fans. Not a not a great year in the desert, as it were. So you had the Rockies go get Michael Gibbons and Kevin Pillar and the Mets brought back Todd Frazier and added Robinson Chirinos and Miguel Castro. The Cubs were pretty busy sort of tinkering around the edges of that roster. Maybe now finally gets a path to playing time and just gets to DH to his heart's content. And also a couple of lefties, Andrew Chafin and Josh Osich and Cameron Maben, whom the Tigers traded for the third time.

And the Rangers held on to Lennon Gallo, but traded a couple of more minor players. And yes, I didn't even intend to do that. Then you did a funny though. I guess I did. but traded a couple of more minor players. Yes, I didn't even intend to do that. Then you did a funny though. I guess I did, yeah. And yet there were some teams that sort of just stood pat. You know, like the Rays made some minor moves. The A's traded for Mike Minor.

We talked about the Rockies. We talked about the Marlins. Like there were a lot of teams that were making these improvements on the fringes, but then there were teams like the Dodgers. They don't need to do anything because they're just the best team in baseball without doing anything. And they were reportedly exploring Lancelin trades, but didn't feel that that was necessary or the price was too steep perhaps. But you had teams like the Twins, the Yankees, the Astros, who perhaps could have used some upgrades and have had some injuries and could have used some replacements and either didn't opt to do anything or weren't able to find the right move.

So I don't know if that's just a product of the fact that there are only so many players to go around and they just missed out on the ones they wanted or they just didn't feel like the incentive was there because of this weird short means or what the benefit was of improving at this deadline and going into these expanded playoffs. But there is sort of a striking differential between teams that are in the playoff picture that really went for it and teams that did not, including the White Sox and the Brewers, two other mostly idle teams I didn't name, although the White Sox obviously had a huge winter. Yeah, I would imagine that it's all the things that you brought up at the top of the episode, and then just an understanding that you just really have to get in, and then who knows what's going to happen.

I do think it probably says something about the personal psychology of the individuals involved, about what they think of the validity of that ring that might be a thing we've gained some insight into but like i don't know i didn't really expect the the twins to do very much or the dodgers so the dodgers are like we're the dodgers yeah we're fine right yeah and there are a lot of teams here who made a lot of upgrades over the offseason so that's sort of when you do your work, when you trade your prospects, when you spend your money, whatever it is. So I wouldn't want to be too hard on teams that were active over the winter. Although there were teams like the Reds who were very active over the winter and then went out and still added RG Bradley, Brian Goodwin, etc.

and still added R.G. Bradley, Brian Goodwin, et cetera. So some teams just tried to put the finishing touches on their rosters and others said, no, we're good for whatever reason. So there was a disparity, but on the whole, I think teams were pretty aggressive and it was fun to follow because we were not expecting that much activity and maybe that was tough on the editors of the world of sabermetric sites but it was pretty fun for fans so i don't know have we left out any moves any teams any players that you wanted to touch on i thought it was funny i guess is the

word i would use that even though it became clear that Jason Castro was going to be traded, that he was still warming up pitchers between innings. I found that delightful. We did get a couple of, hey, you're getting traded in the dugout moments. We saw Tommy LaStella give Mike Trout a hug, and we saw VR get pulled pulled i think that i'm glad that it happened i appreciate everyone reading i'm glad that it's done now yeah i feel tired castro and nola those teams were playing each other in anaheim and they both got traded to the padres right they both like took a car together and flew together on the padresres owner's private plane to go to the rest of the Padres. So that's unusual. Yeah. Also, so the Padres uniforms, the new unis are just

delightful. I think that the deadline made me appreciate the uniforms anew because every team, even when there weren't transactions relevant to the particular team you know they all have their little trade graphic ready right like here's the news from the whip around from around the league and there's just a very nice breaking up of the typical colors that are listed around those transactions when you get the the padres brown and yellow in so it made me appreciate those great uniforms anew it's also nice when the rockies are in the mix because then you get that splash of purple and the the marlins got starling marty and so you had the lighter brighter marlins blue um so it was an aesthetically pleasing trade deadline for

those reasons also again as i watched the rockies and the padres play in the rain last night it occurred to me that every padres catcher looks like a bumblebee when they are in their catching gear because they have the chest protector and it's that brown and yellow so these are the these are like the really sharp and incisive bits of insight that i as the managing editor of fanCrafts were bringing. I just, I think the other thing I will say is that they made a bunch of moves and they were all pointed in one direction and I still have absolutely no confidence in the Phillies bullpen.

So I would like to extend to the Phillies fans listening just my great sympathies because I know that they did a lot of stuff and I don't know that any of that stuff is gonna help so that's what I will say I think that if we're gonna crown a winner to the deadline it's it's clearly San Diego although the Blue Jays are a close second in my mind and I think everyone else who didn't get starting pitching and needed it is they are not losers that's a mean word but they didn't do as well as they probably hoped to although i applaud

them for opting not to overpay for dylan bundy because that still feels ridiculous to me yeah so anyway year one of expanded playoffs i'm assuming it will be year one and not the only year, but I think it's the position of one Dan Szymborski and maybe one Ben Clemens, or maybe one Craig Edwards, or maybe all of the above that on the whole, you would expect a 16 team playoff format to disincentivize getting better and building the best team possible just because there are extra playoff rounds. It makes it tougher to advance in the postseason, and it's maybe just easier to fluke into it with kind of a lousy roster. And you can sort of see that in what happened at the deadline, I think. It was the teams sort of

in the middle, the mid-resource teams, teams like the Padres and the Blue Jays and the A's and the Reds and the Marlins even were making most of the additions. And if you didn't have the expanded playoff field, at least some of those teams just wouldn't have been motivated to do anything. On the other hand, you had the best teams,

the Yankees, the Twins, the Astros, not doing anything, the Rays and Dodgers trading away players. They just didn't have much incentive to get better. And maybe that's okay because they already got better. You know, they made moves before they built great teams, but they also didn't have much reason to do any deadline dealing because their spots are so assured and because they may have even harder roads ahead of them once they get to October. So the fact that the deadline was pretty active, maybe you would say that that reinforces the large playoff field,

the late trade deadline. Maybe it makes it easier for those things to stick. Long term, I am not sure it's great for giving teams reasons to keep getting better and for making the regular season mean something compared to the postseason. But at least in the first year of this experiment, it seemed like it did not dissuade teams from trying to get better on the whole. We were all winners of the trade deadline in that we had something to talk about

and transactions to dissect. Yes, and now the thing that we all, because I'm just going to bring us down, make us stressed. I just hope that everyone was doing a good job with their COVID protocols before the deadline because we just had a bunch of people move around. Yeah, let's hope.

Yeah, Emma Batchelary wrote about that for SI. It talked about just the logistics of making all these things work in pandemic times. And it's pretty difficult. So yeah, let's hope that people are not spreading diseases to different clubhouses. I've been accused of being a bummer about it, but I think that it's an important thing to think about

because we finally, finally, I don't say that like, oh, yay, but just it seemed an inevitability. You know, the shutdowns made their way to the West, right? We have delays in the the mariners and a's uh series this week because of a covid test although it seems like there have not been subsequent positive tests out of oakland so we all just still have to keep our eye on the the stay healthy prize i am so tired ben it hit me as we were recording i think that if people had been speeding uh like slowing down or speeding up,

do you think people listen to us sped up more often? Sped up, yes. Yeah. So I think that at some point in the midst of this episode, someone who's looking at it is going to say, did I push the button? Did I unpush it? Because I think I have slowed down in the rate of my speech.

As we speak. because I think I have slowed down in the rate of my speech. You're just winding down as we speak. We also on deadline day got an all-time fan graphs reference on a broadcast courtesy of John Sterling, who I have some fondness for just because I grew up listening to him. And objectively, I don't know that I could maintain that he is necessarily a good broadcaster, but he is a character for sure. He has a distinctive voice and way of calling a game.

And because his voice is associated with fond childhood memories for me, I think I am more tolerant of his foibles than many would be. his foibles than many would be. But on Monday, I think he revealed his perhaps lack of familiarity with the state of modern baseball analysis when he cited some Fangraph's playoff odds, but in the process said, I don't know who Fangraph is. Don't know. Well, anyway, this is Fangraph. I don't know who Fangraph is. You know what the percentage was for the Mets to win? It was 99.8%. They didn't win. No.

I am Fangraph. I actually, oddly enough, I'm going to betray something of my own listening preferences, and I want to communicate to our listeners that you should listen to whatever booth you like it's fine if they're not i don't know if they're not having you know slur hot mic moments go with god in a good wind i i think you should like what you like on a broadcast it's fine i'm not a huge fan of the s booth i like listening to susan so sometimes i will do

the radio overlay even though i i also acknowledge john sterling's limitations as a broadcaster he is not my favorite but i enjoy listening to susan so i actually heard this live really which what a funny thing because you know what a what a good little pitching matchup we had in the Bronx. And so I was watching this game and I had the radio broadcast overlay. And I wish that I could create in an authentic way, recreate in an authentic way, the depth of my laugh. It had been a long day, Ben. I was still editing. And it was, man, it was still editing yeah and it was man it was great i enjoyed it there were people who were like kind of getting fussy on our behalf and i want to invite all of you to just enjoy this

because it was great it was so funny it was just so genuine he was just being himself in a way that made me the managing editor of fan graphs laugh so. So I am inviting and allowing all of you to enjoy it too because it's... Yeah, it's on the pantheon of mentions of Fangraphs along with Daniel Murphy's Do You Go to Fangraphs at All? and the Tony Kornheiser Pardon the Interruption episode from almost a decade now. We're all going to go dateless oh yeah episode but uh things

have changed a lot since 2011 when that mention on pti happened and i think fan crafts is very well read within the industry and just among fans in general and so we can laugh about john sterling not being among fan crafts readership these days just because he is in the distinct minority when it comes to people in baseball so fancrafts has already won over everyone and it's fine if there are a few holdouts who are just maybe not going to get on board and hey even John Sterling even if he didn't know what exactly he was citing, he was still citing a fan graph stat on a broadcast. Yes. I would imagine that a very helpful producer helped him to that.

But yeah, it was good fun, and I laughed. And you know, on deadline day, sometimes you need a laugh. You need to laugh because you're very tired. Later in the evening, I was editing and I found my way there. So don't fret. And I will not betray whose piece it was. But there was like a typo in a thing, like a stat, a number in a stat had been misplaced. And so I was going to have to go find it, which was fine because that's part of my job.

But I said out loud to no one in my living room, who are we even talking about here? So we're all just doing our best yeah and sometimes our best isn't quite enough but then uh but then we find our way so all right well to end i'm just gonna read an email from listener ben who was responding to our segment the other day when we talked about the Clayton Kershaw Hankook tire commercial, the one where he is pitching and he gives up the longest ball ever hit, but he gets in a car with the Hankook tires and he manages to drive fast enough to catch the ball. And we were very perplexed by why Clayton Kershaw would want to be in a commercial where he gives up the hardest hit ball ever, and also why Hankook would think that he is the most suitable spokesman for that commercial.

And we wondered, I think, well, if you're going to have Clayton Kershaw, why wouldn't he be doing something more pitching-oriented? Why would we be talking about whether pitchers can field? That's not really a frequent topic of discussion. And listener Ben pointed our attention to another clayton kershaw uncooked tire commercial so if you're going to be the spokesman i guess you might as well just get your money's worth or they get their money's worth and stick the the spokesman in multiple ads so this is another one where he does stay on the mound fortunately but it is still kind of

perplexing so i'll link to it, but here's Ben's description. There's another commercial where Kershaw is debating which pitch to throw. Kershaw's voiceover standing on the mound goes as follows. What's he going to chase? A slider? And then you cut to a Mustang that's drifting on open roads. It's sliding around. Okay. Then he says, nah, a change up. And then it cuts to a Jeep bouncing through open terrain. I don't really know how that is emblematic of a change up, but okay. Then he says, oh, I've got it, curveball. And then there's sort of a super cut of cars and the pitch is spinning in the air on its way to the plate. And then there's more cars and then the batter swings and misses and the catcher catches the pitch and the car

stops with smoking tires and then there's the tagline never halfway and as ben says there are so so many problems here so many number one is that this is supposed to be a chase clayton kershaw is trying to throw something that is going to get the batter to chase and yet the catcher looks to be set up directly over the plate the ball seems to cross the heart of the plate and it's belt high so it does not at all seem to be a chase number two change up the fact that clayton kershaw is mulling a change up before he thinks about throwing a fastball is kind of mind-boggling because kershaw has thrown 2% change-ups across his career. Yes. And only 0.6% of his pitches since 2015 have been change-ups. Also, the batter is left-handed,

and Kershaw has thrown 0.08% change-ups to lefties in his career, seven out of about 8,500 pitches per Brooks baseball. So he would probably not even be considering a changeup in this situation. Also, the spin, he settles on the curveball, but the ball is traveling in slow motion, and you can see that it has backspin, not topspin, although the batter does at least seem to swing over it, which is kind of curveball-y. And then there's the tagline, never halfway, which it's hard to see exactly what that has to do with anything else that's happening in the commercial and ben writes it reminded me of the famous bugs bunny slow ball

clip where he says i think i'll perplex him with my slow ball proceeding to throw a change up which comes out of his hand with backspin but once the clip cuts to all three batters swinging and missing three separate times each at the same pitch the pitch is traveling with top spin the whole time still i can't hold a 1946 bugs bunny cartoon to the same standards of 2020 commercial featuring clayton kershaw this is just another entry into what i'd like to call the jack ryan home runs per three game homestand pantheon of for god's sake please consult effectively wild for any baseball related nuggets in film or TV. Thank you, Ben. It's just a very easy problem to avoid. Yeah, just get a baseball consultant.

It doesn't have to be us, but someone. Yeah, it doesn't have to be us, to be clear. We're not so fancy. We're not so assured of our own skill. If you wanted to ask someone else, like literally Clayton Kershaw. Yeah, right. That's the part of it that i don't understand because i i appreciate that you know the the accuracy the baseball accuracy of the commercial might not be top of mind when you're putting together your ad pitch and maybe the the honkuk tower folks are like we gotta we need the jeep people love the jeep and they love the

swerving car and they're gonna go whoa swerving car our tires are great and so maybe you get to the shoot and you're like oh man we kind of forgot that baseball part don't you literally just walk up to cleaton kershaw and say hey man like what do you throw yeah right yeah or did he not have notes like you know sometimes an actor they see the script and they say, I don't think my character would say that. Say that, yeah. And maybe they share that input with the director or the writer or maybe they just ad lib something. So I don't know whether that means Clayton Kershaw is endorsing the idea that maybe he actually would consider the change up here. Or whether he's just kind of cashing the check

and doesn't really care what he says which like as an aside if that's the answer like i actually if i'm the dodgers i wonder if i look at this commercial being a little bit wrong and say that means to me that clayton kershaw spent zero time thinking about this and i'd prefer he spend what time he spends thinking about baseball stuff thinking about actual baseball stuff that would benefit the Dodgers and they're like this is great right maybe that's the approach maybe Clayton's like whatever I'm just gonna cash the check I don't care what this says no one's gonna remember it except for Meg and Ben because Meg is still obsessing over the weird narrative that his appearance on New Girl seemed to present about him as a human being which we have never gotten a good answer for.

But I admit that I am probably an extreme edge case when it comes to my inability to let anything go. So perhaps I'm not the target audience for these. But just ask Clayton Kershaw what he throws. If you look at our pitch values, it's not like his changeup has been that great over the course of his career, which is probably why he doesn't throw very much i don't know yep yep all right and i'm gonna leave you with an anecdote that i saw courtesy a former guest john thorn who

is the official historian of mlb.com i saw this on his facebook page and he posted the story that he found i think via dick kramer and this is from early in hann via Dick Kramer. And this is from early in Hannes Wagner's career. And this is from the year before Hannes Wagner was traded from the Louisville Colonels to the Pittsburgh Pirates, with whom he spent the rest of his career. This is a story from April 25th, 1898, Cleveland at Louisville. And John writes, Hannes Wagner and A-Rod, two peas in a pod, and here is the clip from the newspaper. The incident referred to occurred in the third inning. Ritchie got his base on balls and was forced at second by Stafford's grounder. Wagner hit one at Childs, who threw badly to Thibaut, and both runners were safe.

Nance struck out, Smith lined out a hit to right field, Stafford scored, and Wagner landed at third. Now here's the relevant portion. While the umpires were not looking, Wagner snatched the ball from Wallace's hand and threw it away. He ran home. Of course, the Clevelands called the attention of the umpires to Wagner's act. Wagner was put out of the game, but umpire Swartwood allowed the score to count as there is no rule by which he could have been declared out. Then Cleveland kicked, which I think means that they stamped around and threw a tantrum. Umpire Woods came in from second

and declared that Wagner should go back to third, that he was not out, but that his score did not count. Then Cleveland kicked some more. Thibaut said his men would not play unless Wagner was declared out. After 15 minutes wrangling, Wood decided that Wagner was out, that his score did not count, and that he could continue playing. Clark finally accepted the ruling under protest, and the game proceeded. So this is Hannes Wagner, all-time great baseball player.

He was on third base in this game and he just decided that he would take the ball and throw it away. He'd take the ball out of the fielder's hand, just throw it away and run home. And then the opposing team was understandably upset about this. And the umpires didn't know what to do because this doesn't happen. This is maybe an example of an unwritten rule that we have to have because otherwise it would be complete chaos. I don't know if there's actually a rule against this now or whether it's just convention that this doesn't happen, but the umpires had no idea what to do. So at first they said it was fine because there's no rule against it and that he could score. Then another umpire came in and said, well, he's not out. He has to go back to third, but his run doesn't count. Then the other team just protested so much that the umpires came in and said, okay, fine, he's out. I guess you can't do this. And then they played the game under protest. So that's Wagner sort of pulling an A-rod, pulling a Bush League play, and taking advantage of maybe sort of a loophole that exists

and that we generally don't expect players to violate the rules in that particular way. I mean, there are rules about runners and batters interfering against them interfering with fielders yes so i imagine that this would would go under that yeah you'd think you would think that i kind of love how brazen this is i've often wondered like how long a player who almost robs a home run at the wall, but doesn't quite get it, like go jumps up and reaches over the wall as if he has snagged it from the air. Like how long he could keep up the charade that he had made an out before

the umpire was like, we haven't seen the ball though. You haven't shown us the ball, which is typically what you would do. So I've often wondered like how long one could stretch that but i think that in that situation a fielder would understand that he was going to be caught and not expect it to actually count as an out but i wonder if in this case he thought it would work i'm curious if he really thought it would work or if he thought this probably won't work but i'll give it a shot anyhow because it's never been done before and then and then you sit there and you think to yourself if it did work it could only work the

the one time yes right because after that the powers that be are going to get together and be like well we didn't think we needed a rule about this but apparently we do so we're going to write it down there are a lot of things that there just were not rules for or against in early baseball. And someone had to exploit that. And everyone realized, oh, I guess we have to prevent this or people will just keep taking advantage of this. So you sort of salute those players who were brazen enough to do that when it was not against the rules. And they found a loophole and maybe it worked for them or maybe it didn't but you needed someone like that to come along and violate that norm to show that you needed some sort of

protection on the books so whether it was like you know bill veck moving the the outfield fence in and out during a game or like eddie stanky jumping up and down in the field to distract the batter in the batter's line of view. Like these are things that might seem sort of bush league, but on the other hand, it was within the rules at the time. And then, you know, they did it once or twice and everyone realized, okay, well, we need to actually legislate against this. So you can't do that anymore. But you know, I, I sort of salute the ingenuity of the person who did it for the first time so well done honest it was not very sportsmanlike of you but uh hey it was it was fair at the time

i'm just imagining someone doing that now with no fans in the state and the ball like you know him throwing it and then the ball clanking down each step and everyone in the field looking at him like what are you doing man yeah right now i want to see it ben i kind of want to see it too yeah all right so we can end on that boot that will do it for today thanks as always for listening i should note that i don't know who Fangraph is. T-shirts are now available through the Fangraph store. Quickly capitalizing on viral fame or lack of fame in this case. I will link to that on the show page if you want to pick one up. By the way, in our preceding episode, Sam and I talked about Luis Robert coming very close to entering the exclusive Immaculate Golden Sombrero Club.

There have been three players since 1988 who have had four strikeout games on 12 pitches. Robert had a four strikeout game on 13 pitches against Udarvish and Cubs. And in our Facebook group, I saw listener Graham Stewart point out that in his 26 plate appearances following that near Immaculate Golden Sombrero,

Robert had a 7.7% strikeout rate and a 7.7% walk rate with a 435, 462, 913 slash line. Not too shabby. So it would not appear that he suffered any ill effects from that humbling performance. You can be like Graham and join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can also rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes, Spotify, and other podcast platforms. And please support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild.

The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Isaac Stewart, Lars Vance, Samuel Giddens, Adam Turchiak-Morgan, and Jonathan Miller. Thanks to all of you.

Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and Sam coming via email at podcast at fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. We will likely answer some emails next time.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back to talk to you a little later this week. I don't know But I don't know I don't know I don't know I want you