Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1652: The Best of Tweets, the Worst of Tweets

Episode Date: February 6, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest developments for their minor league free agent draft teams, then discuss the Dodgers signing reigning NL Cy Young Award winner Trevor Bauer to an unexpected and unusually structured record contract, touching on the good and bad of Bauer, the incredible Dodgers-Padres arms race, and much more. […]

🎵 🎵 Did it ever betray you three times? Did it ever betray you three times? Hello and welcome to episode 1652 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? I'm doing quite well. Are you excited to talk about the most important pitcher signing of the day?

Indeed, I am. The most important, at least for your and our purpose. Your and our? What? Oh, no, Ben. Your and mine? Your and my? Your and...

Leave all of this. Leave this, Endelin. That sounds right. Your and my. Your and my minor league free agent draft purposes. Congratulations. I mean, I'm not saying you're going to win, but I think that when Mike Fultonavich signs with the Rangers

on a guaranteed major league contract. Yes, three words, read them and weep, major league contract. $2 million plus incentives, Ben, and they're a bad team. So I think he's going to throw as many innings as his health allows. So, Ben, congratulations. This is a punishing blow for my chances, and I am sad and a little defeated, and I do not know if my ragtag band of misfits can equal guaranteed major league innings on a bad team. Yeah, I don't know how many innings his health will allow.

Yeah, I guess that's a fair question. But at least he's getting the shot. And my minor league free agent team did suffer a setback, though, in that the Angels traded for Dexter Fowler, which is bad news for, I think, my seventh or eighth round pick, Scott Schebler, backup Angels outfielder, just got bumped down a spot on the depth chart. So you can console yourself with that, I suppose. But yeah, feeling pretty good about the faulty signing. Kicking myself about not taking King Felix.

I thought about it. I wanted to do it. Now he's on the Orioles and you couldn't ask for a better assignment than that. So wish I had done that, but I will be happy with what I have, which is faulty in the Rangers rotation. I should have fought harder for that first pick. Yeah, it was one of those years where it actually did make a difference,

I think, who had the first pick. It did make a difference. So congratulations. Thank you. I guess we should talk about the other significant free agent signing of the day. Did another pitcher sign today? It happened, Ben.

Our long national nightmare is over. Yeah. I will tease that we have a draft coming up later in this episode that we're looking forward to. I think it'll be a fun one. But yes, we must dispense with the Trevor Bauer business. So I'll say this. I'm glad that Trevor Bauer signed somewhere because the Trevor Bauer free agency experience was about as inescapable as we expected it would be. The only thing more unavoidable than Trevor Bauer being on one team is Trevor Bauer potentially being on any one of 30 teams.

Yeah. So we now know which team he will be on for at least the next, well, we don't know exactly how long, one, two, or three years, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Somewhat surprisingly in that as you and I speak, we're coming up on 24 hours since Bob Nightingale reported that Trevor Bauer and the Mets have a deal. And that tweet's still up there. For all we know, they might have a deal for something else. Maybe it's some sort of side deal. I don't know. Maybe his deal with the Mets was that he would not sign with the Mets. Or maybe Bob just jumped the gun on that one. Anyway,

according to Joel Sherman, the Mets did make him an offer for more money on the whole than the Dodgers offered him three years and 105, but he chose his hometown team for in 2022 and then $17 million in 2023. So this would make him the highest paid player in baseball this year and presumably next year unless someone gets a massive raise. But he has opt-outs after each of those seasons. So on the whole, it comes in just under Garrett Cole's record average annual value, which Bauer probably isn't thrilled about given how he feels about Cole. But it's a strange contract, and we can talk a little bit about that. We can talk about what he does for the Dodgers. But there is always so much more to say about Trevor Bauer, and perhaps more has been said

about Trevor Bauer than anyone wants to be said. But there are certain things that probably bear repeating. Yeah, I think that, you know, I was sitting today as I was waiting for Ben Clemens to file so that I could edit this piece of Fangraphs, which I will say, you know, we managed to break our streak of major free agent signings happening after like 7 p.m. Yes. So I guess that's something. But I was thinking today about kind of what I, if I had my way, if I could just unilaterally say and get what I wanted, what is my water expectation here? Because on the one hand, I find Trevor Bauer to be pretty odious as a person.

I find Trevor Bauer to be pretty odious as a person. I think that he has demonstrated time and time again that he is sort of, how do I want to characterize this, indifferent to the power that he wields when it comes to social media. And that indifference tends to manifest in putting non-famous normal people sort of in the crosshairs of his pretty significant followership and that leads to harassment very often harassment of women sometimes uh trevor bauer engages in a lengthy bit of twitter engagement of his own often with a pretty unpleasant tinge to it so on the one hand there's there's. And he's been doing this long enough that he has been told what it means for him to quote tweet someone who is mildly rude to him on social media and what the repercussions of that are going to be for thatful. I think that it's always kind of gross to try to place these sorts of things precisely on a spectrum of behavior, but we can acknowledge that this is different than some of the more extreme behavior we have seen at late while still acknowledging that it exists somewhere along that continuum and makes life really hard for people in the moments and days and sometimes weeks that that goes on. So I find him pretty odious as a person. I don't know that like my expectation is that he never pitch in baseball again. And I don't know if my inability to muster that as an expectation is just a sign that I have been worn down by the reality of this stuff just clearly not mattering to teams i mean when

the mets are entertaining uh trevor bauer and making very serious offers for him and you know seemingly being used as leverage against the dodgers but trying very earnestly to secure his services like clearly no team is gonna like you know have a hard line on this stuff because if any team should right now it's the Mets but I don't know that I you know I'm not thrilled about him being the highest paid player in the game just from a moral perspective like if I'm gonna anoint anyone with that like I'd like it to be Francisco Lindor or Mookie Betts or you know and and some of the guys who are in that category have been in the running or have had that title in the last couple of

years. But it is, it's hard to know quite what to say about it other than what Ben wrote about it when he wrote about it for us. And will you allow me to just quote a paragraph here? Yeah. Ben says, viewed then through the lens of savvy cat maneuvering or netting a large payday or maximizing the quality of an already very good rotation this deal checks all the boxes we're trained to like these sorts of signings combining as they do smarts with a stated

desire to win a desire that is sadly often in short supply in today's game but it's hard not to look at this through another lens one that prioritizes accountability and how we treat one another over moving up the wind curve and find it wanting. Trevor Bauer got a clever deal, one befitting the sort of person and pitcher he sees himself as. He got paid. The Dodgers got better. I'm just not sure baseball did. So, you know, Trevor Bauer's going to pitch for the Dodgers. He will probably pitch in the postseason. His platform will only grow. And I think that in purely baseball terms, I understand why LA was moved to do this. But I'll mark myself as a little disappointed that a team that really didn't have the need for this signing is the one that did it.

There's not even a desperation that I could point to and say, well, I wish that the other stuff mattered more, but I get why they did this, because all of their other pictures are ghosts or whatever. That's very much not the case with LA. I find myself in a sort of uncomfortable, squishy place that is not unusual for me as I react to parts of the game that I don't love super much. And, you know, I don't think that we have to like belabor the point, as you said, his tactics on social media and some of the wackier stuff that he has said on that platform. And, you know, some of the very offensive stuff he said on that platform have sort of

manifested themselves over and over again and you know he's not an uncontroversial person within baseball either right like he has had a falling out of various you know degrees of sort of severity in arizona and in cleveland and you know he threw the ball over the center field fence and he messed around with the drone and introduced us to like body horror on a baseball broadcast so you know i like again i don't think we need to belabor that part of it because i think it's pretty well documented and i will admit that i don't quite know where my expectations lie in a moment like this because i do do think that it's important for us to acknowledge that there are forms of this stuff that have varying degrees of severity while also not diminishing the seriousness of them in any given moment for any given person. And so I just find myself kind

of uneasy about it. And so that's where I sit, I think. Yeah, I understand all of that. I think that probably for a lot of people who are less extremely online than we are and that Trevor Bauer is, I don't know if anyone is more extremely online than Trevor Bauer, so it would be hard not to be less. But I think probably a good number of people and a good number of Dodgers fans are saying, hey, we just won the World Series and we just signed the reigning Cy Young Award winner. What's not to like about that, right? Because a lot of people don't know the Twitter history. And even if you told them the Twitter history, I mean, we know the demographics of baseball

fans, right? I mean, most of them are not on Twitter in an active way, right? And so even if you told them what he did and what he said, they would probably discount the severity of that, I think, more than they should. As you said, it's hard to weigh this against some of the other, perhaps even more heinous behavior that we've had occasion to talk about on this podcast. And this is a league where people routinely get chances after domestic violence incidents,

after drunk driving, after homophobic words on the field, after headhunting, after all kinds of terrible stuff. And so there was never any realistic outcome where the Cy Young Award winner is not going to get a job, right? And for me personally,

I wouldn't say that what he has done would rise to the level of he should be blackballed from the league. I think it would be nice if he never tweeted again. And I think he has proven that he is incapable of restraining himself there. And Cleveland essentially took the keys to his Twitter account away for a while, just sort of imposed a suspension on him. And there have been times where he has behaved for stretches or he has made some semi-contrite sounding statement after transgressing and then abided by that for a while, but clearly cannot control himself for the long term on there and either doesn't seem to understand the ramifications of what happens when he sixes followers on someone with a much smaller audience

or doesn't care. And there are certain things that he's said in the past that are objectionable, but all players have their personal opinions and many of them are different from ours. And with him, it's hard to tell whether he's trolling or whether he's serious at times. But regardless of his motivations, there are real ramifications that come from those incidents. And I didn't even remember all of them. I mean, there have been multiple fairly recent incidents with women. multiple fairly recent incidents with women. I came across one I had entirely forgotten about from 2018 that was actually with, I think, a boy or man who was in high school or college at that time, and he did the same thing, and he sent his Twitter army after him in a very explicit

way. So don't want to shortchange him. He is equally capable of bullying behavior with all comers on there, but certainly it has been concentrated on women as of late. And I think there is real damage done there. So I think it's something that deserves to follow him around. And I think that he gets probably a disproportionate amount of both positive and negative attention, possibly certainly positive attention. I think that's fair to say. And I've contributed to some of that myself. My name is on a book that he is prominently featured in. And I think there are worthwhile reasons to talk about him in both a positive and negative light.

while reasons to talk about him in both a positive and negative light. But even so, I was trying to come up with a comp for Trevor Bauer, just purely performance-based. And I was just looking over his career since his first full season in the major leagues. So starting in 2014, the closest comp, and it's dead on by almost any stat you could come up with over that whole period is Jose Quintana. Now, Bauer is clearly a better pitcher than Jose Quintana at this point in their careers. But over those several seasons, they have been equal in value in just about every respect. I mean, their wars are within one-tenth of a point at baseball reference depending on which fancrafts pitching war you use. Bauer is maybe one win ahead or a few wins behind. Their ERA minuses are like 89 to 91. Their FIP minuses are 89 to 85. Their XFIP minuses are 93 to 92. Their strikeout minus walk rates are less than two percentage points apart. They have the same innings total or two innings apart. I mean, they have been essentially the same pitcher on the field if you add up their cumulative value over that period.

And Trevor Power has been mentioned countless more times than Jose Quintana. He's so much better known than Jose Quintana. He has about 19 times as many Twitter followers as Jose Quintana. So that's probably because of the way that Bauer approaches pitching. And I think there are actually ways that he approaches pitching that have been influential and have really made a mark on the game above and beyond his actual performance. But he's had struggles at times, and he's won a Cy Young Award, and he came close to winning another one, and he's had some subpar seasons mixed in there. So if you look at just the total track record, the attention that he gets is outsized, I think. And if anything, maybe that makes people even more eager to bring up

the negative and for there to be a backlash, because if people just very unquestioningly praise him and say all the good things that he does and just sort of sweep the bad things under the rug, then I think people feel it's even more important to point those things out so that that's part of the record too. And the end result is that there's just an ever escalating cycle of trevor bauer discussion which of course he does his best to fuel and he seems to seek that out and cultivate that and thrive on that and so probably we all talk too much about trevor bauer and the best thing we could do is maybe to talk about him a little less but all all of these things have to come up. It would not be right to pretend that he is not bringing something of value to a baseball team, but also that he brings this baggage with him.

What you said is interesting because I was noticing that too. The fact that it came down to the Mets and the Dodgers, these are two teams that seemingly had less need of Trevor Bauer's services than most teams because according to the FanGraph's depth charts projections, they had the third and fourth best projected rotations in baseball prior to Bauer signing. And I think it's now gone from Mets at three, Dodgers at four to Dodgers at three, Mets at four. So they both had really good rotations already. And I think that if this were anyone but Trevor Bauer, we would probably be wholeheartedly saying, hey, way to go Dodgers, right? Because they're already good. And they just blew by the competitive balance tax threshold. I mean, they went, what, $30 million over now, and probably maybe at this point they'll add Justin Turner to that. So the fact that they were not bound by that, the fact that they're coming off winning a World Series and still signed the top free agent pitcher available and set up this really incredible race with the Padres, which just seems to get better and better by the week as they just take turns acquiring aces. So that they did all that and that they gave Bauer the highest single season

salary ever, which he may not be your ideal person to have that salary. But I think maybe that does sort of bust a ceiling because there has been kind of this artificial constraint on what even the superstar players are worth. Even if you're Mike Trout, you don't make $40 million a year, even though you're clearly worth that. It's just sort of this artificially suppressed thing. And because Bauer was seemingly willing or eager to take a shorter deal, he did break through that ceiling. And does that help other players follow him through there? I don't know, because probably not many of them would want to take a contract that's structured that way, but it does establish that precedent. So I think there are positives to that even. And if it were a player, I wish that because there are things about Trevor

Bauer that I think have had a positive influence or at least an interesting influence. I wish that it were possible to just sort of focus on those things, but he makes it impossible to do that because he constantly does these things that make you focus on who he is as a person and the things that he says in tweets, it's a shame because I'd much rather focus on his pitching, but he makes that impossible sometimes. Yeah. I mean, we've talked about this before. If you were to transplant his personality, and I should be clear about this, I'm not laboring under the delusion that the sort of median political view in Major League Baseball is close to mine.

It's not. There are plenty of guys who I know based on some comments they've given or their campaign contributions or what have you, where I know that they fall in a very different camp than I do, but they're mostly quiet about their business. And maybe that might, you know, that might be an easy out for me. Like perhaps someone could accuse me of there being some cowardice there that I'm like, pleased that for the most part, like, you know, Anthony Rendon keeps his business to himself or Bryce Harper keeps his business to himself. And so I can enjoy

them in a less complicated way because they are quiet about it. Now the counter to that is that like they're people with huge platforms and so maybe there's some value in them being you know sort of circumspect about this stuff because they're not amplifying stuff that i find harmful that's not the point of this conversation but if we were to transplant a different personality into bauer like there's a ton here that i would find interesting and weird and like noteworthy, right? Like I remember watching him. I've seen him warm up live in a ballpark.

That is like deeply Meg shit to be excited about, right? Like that is right up my alley in terms of something that I'm going to find interesting, both like aesthetically, but also from a baseball perspective. And I think that there are a lot of things that when he first did them were very novel and are now, I guess things can't be very novel, but were novel and are now pretty commonplace. And I don't think that, you know, his brand of peculiarity is all that peculiar anymore, at least from a sort of baseball methods perspective, but there was a time that it was. And so that part of it is interesting to me. But I think that he is apt to continue behavior

that he's been told is harmful. He has this entire media apparatus he is trying to build to establish his brand. All you had to do was watch the video he made, which as an aside, no better moment in that announcement video than at the end where it says, written by Trevor Bauer.

And I want to be like, yeah, we know, we know, pal. Trev, we got that. We honed in on that one early, early on in your YouTube. Yes. In the last like five seconds of that, the rest of the video is just generic.

Like he could have had it ready to go no matter where he signed, basically. Right. And it's just sort of very saccharine, just sentimental stuff about baseball. I sort of tuned it out. But then just at the very end, there's the reveal, right? And I bet he was probably annoyed that John Heyman or whoever reported it just right before he put this YouTube video up because I assume that he wanted to have the reveal. But you see him in the Dodgers uniform and he just says, I can't wait, Dodgers fans. And he tosses the ball up. And I just have been picturing in my mind the production process here. And at

some point he must have made this video before he knew where he was signing. And I'm just imagining him making it like at the beginning of the offseason, and he's doing 30 takes with 30 different uniforms. I can't wait, Orioles fans. There's no way I'm going to sign with Baltimore, right? But whatever, we might as well have one in the can. I assume that's not what happened here. Earlier in the video, I think you actually see a Mets uniform. You only see Mets and Dodgers. So probably this was produced late enough in the process that he didn't have to do 30 takes with 30 different uniforms, but I hope he did because I would find that very amusing. But that sort of thing, the brand building and all of that, again,

if not for the problematic aspects of his personality, that might be something to celebrate too, because I like the idea of baseball players having a personality and trying to be celebrities of a sort. There aren't many baseball players who qualify as celebrities and taking us behind the scenes or showing us their process or talking to other players, having interesting conversations about the mechanics of what they do with anyone else, that would be great. And I can't say I consume much of the content that Trevor Bauer produces on those channels, but I'm sure that some of it is interesting and enlightening. So if not for the terrible tweets from time to time, then I'd be okay with that too. And that would even be

something that could possibly be a positive example for players. So if you could somehow perform some sort of surgery to just remove the part of Trevor Bauer that is so thin-skinned and prone to picking fights and responding disproportionately, then what was left would be a pretty compelling personality. But unfortunately, there's the Jekyll and Hyde there. And maybe it's not even Jekyll and Hyde. Maybe it's just both blended together. And at certain times, you see one aspect of it more than the other. But here we are talking about Trevor Bauer a lot, which is, I'm sure, what he would want

us to do. Right. Yeah. And I did my first thought though, when I watched that video, Ben, was I was like, oh, you saw Rudy G's thing. And you were like, I got, I can't top it. Yeah. Has to one up. He's just being true to his personality. Yeah. I think that you're right. There's a lot here that if it were packaged up with anyone else that I would think was compelling and interesting and i know that there are people who think that what he's doing is good for the game and that there are fans who he reaches who other people can't and i will refrain from commenting on what those folks characters must be like um but you know i

am not insensitive to the fact that like we all sometimes let twitter get away from us and if it were one moment and and an apology was made that appeared sincere and then there was improved behavior on the back end of that like i would be sympathetic to that but i think that there's just been too much water under the bridge and too obvious and indifference or lack of care around the power dynamic here and you know even the way that he and and his agent have deputized her gender as a supposed shield against the accusation that he could mistreat women who he doesn't know is you know something i find pretty odious on both of their parts and so i just i wish that we didn't have to deal with this you know something i find pretty odious on both of their parts and so i just i

wish that we didn't have to deal with this you know keep getting complaints about all the yucky stuff we have to deal with in the game and i'm like we'll take it up with the news makers we are not the makers of news simply react to it i mean we should spend a moment talking about you know we we talked about the improvement that this makes to the Dodgers rotation and their prospects in the West. That rotation. That rotation is stacked. I imagine that at some point we might see movement at the back end of it as they try to, you know, turn Tony Gonsolin or what have you into prospects because, know maybe they're they're comfortable doing that because their their depth is just wild here i mean ben wrote about this and i think that this

is accurate like bauer from a projection perspective is is sort of neck and neck with walker buehler i suspect that the dodgers rotation order will have him slot into sort of the third spot we don't quite know what we're going to get from david price after such a long layoff but like you know they've got urius they have price they have dustin may they have all of these guys and this is an incredible counter to all of the great moves that the padres made um that race is going to be even more dynamic than we yeah yeah than we expected it to be and their rotations now are separated by 0.2 war. Right. So they're the same. Yes, they are essentially the same. And the Yankees are

ahead of both of them. But I think given all of the injury risks there, I'd be more comfortable taking the Padres or the Dodgers rotation now, especially the Dodgers because it's just so deep. mean david price dustin may tony gonsolin bueller bauer kershaw urias incredible yeah so it's you know that as a counter to what all has gone on in their in their division is pretty spectacular and as you said you know this is a move that we've we've been talking in the last little bit about how, you know, not only do we not have a bunch of clubs in danger of sort of repeat offender competitive balance tax threshold penalties. That's just a real mouthful of a thing to say.

But you know what I'm trying to say? We didn't we didn't really have anyone within real striking distance. And I think that what other Ben said when we were talking to him about this the other day is a really astute point, which is like if you're going to push through that number, you want to do it not only for a good player, but like the worst thing is to go a million over because you're not sort of reaping the full benefit of that player. If they sign Justin Turner, depending on the construct of that deal, like not only have they gone through the first competitive balance tax threshold, they're in danger of actually incurring draft pick penalty stuff, which we hardly ever see anymore. No one ever goes close to that. So like, again, there's a lot about this that I really like.

Yeah. And then. The one-upsmanship of the Padres and the Dodgers here is just so much fun. It's like, we'll go get you, Darvish. Oh, yeah. We'll go get the only guy who finished ahead of him in the Cy Young race last year. And there's something that's really interesting to me about this organization being the one that's like, we're going to invest this amount of money into someone who we have seen sort of openly experimenting with sticky substances seemingly and so like that is an interesting wrinkle because i think there was you know at least some not trepidation but some curiosity on the part of public side analysts how

teams were going to interpret that spin rate change and sort of what the longevity of that change was going to be and what that said about him as a player given this spike in performance and how sort of good but not great he has been in most of his seasons of professional play and so the fact that the dodgers who are pretty savvy about this stuff were like yeah like there's something here for us either because they're having all of their other guys doctor the ball or who knows? I'm not, I don't know anything. I'm just saying, like, that could be a possibility, one we must acknowledge, lest we be naive.

So, you know, that part of it is interesting, too. And I just, maybe you could wear a mask, Ben? Or, like, go to therapy? We've definitely done an email hypothetical question about a player wearing a mask. So, yeah. Yeah, the sticky stuff question. we've talked about that with Bauer multiple times. And right, I mean, he was obviously very good, arguably better in 2018. So it's not as if he's only been effective when he is doing this. And I don't know how much to malign him for this, because it seems as if he just started doing what everyone else was already doing.

So it's maybe more obvious just because he suddenly started doing it after not doing it. But he has really maybe just brought himself up to par. I mean, he may be using a more effective mix of sticky stuff than the typical pitcher. But if that's the case, then they should all get better sticky stuff or something. But right now, as Ben mentioned in his post, he does project to be the fifth or sixth best starting pitcher in baseball, which surprised me really that he was that high. And that obviously takes into account his performance using that sticky stuff, or it certainly seems as if he was, but there's no

real prospect of him not being able to do that anymore, you know, unless he decides to. It's not as if MLB has effectively cracked down on that yet. So it's not as if it wears off at a certain point. He gets to keep applying it every time he pitches until someone tells him to stop and no one is. So it's quite an intimidating top of the rotation and middle of the rotation and bottom of the rotation and people who aren't even in the rotation and everything else. Yeah, yeah. And just to put it into perspective, Sarah Langs tweeted this courtesy of Elias Sports. If Mookie Betts, Cody Bellinger, Clayton Kershaw, David Price, and Trevor Bauer

each plays at least one game for the Dodgers this year, they would be the first team to play three former MVP winners and three former Cy Youngs in a single season. Of course, Kershaw was both an MVP and a Cy Young award winner, but that is just being stacked with star power. And the last thing I'll say, I guess, is that he is someone who has said in the past that he only wanted to ever sign one-year deals, right? And so he has kind of gone away from that, but I think you can certainly understand why this contract was attractive to him. He gets the opt-outs after the first two years, so he can make it one-year deals if he wants to, but it seems quite unlikely that he would opt out after the first year with $45 million due to him in 2022. So

it would seem like the odds are very high that he will be with the Dodgers for two years, probably not very high that he will be with them for three years, at least under this contract, Probably not very high that he will be with them for three years, at least under this contract, like unless he gets hurt or really suffers a dramatic decline. It's hard to imagine him wanting to take one year and whatever, 17 million. So it seems like this is probably going to be a two year contract if you had to guess. So that's obviously unusual for a pitcher who is, what, 30 years old and coming off a Cy Young season to settle for that. Most pitchers, even in a pandemic winter, probably would have taken the six or seven or eight or however many they could get year contract, and he did not do that. So this is unusual, and that's why he ends up with this extremely high number. And I

wonder whether teams were more interested in him on those terms. Because it's like, hey, even if we don't really like having Trevor Bauer around, we don't have to have him that long. And there are teammates that he has clashed with, and there are teammates who have liked him and learned from him. So it's sort of a mixed bag there. I don't think you can say he's like a clubhouse cancer across the board. There are pitchers and players who have cited him as a positive influence and someone who's made them better. And he does seem willing and eager to instruct players and help out his teammates if he can, although he obviously rubs some of them the wrong way. But Andrew Friedman has signed players with character concerns before, particularly

when he was with the Rays and didn't have the budget to be choosy. In this case, well, the Dodgers tried to get Cole, Bauer's arch enemy, last year. They didn't get him, so maybe they figured we'll take Bauer. How bad can it be for a couple of years? We can put up with him for that long at least. Right. When Ben designed an opt-out model, basically, that he has applied, he's had bizarrely frequent occasion to use in the last little bit here. And his conclusion was the same as yours, that the odds that he opts out after the first

year are pretty slim the odds that he opts out after the second and that doesn't preclude him if the dodgers like him from them sort of working out a new contract right but um they've shown a willingness to do that with players in the past but basically he would need to even if he only thought that he could get 17 million av after after that second year, the odds that he would be able to tack on at least another year to that on a new contract with a new team are pretty high or a new contract with the Dodgers. So, you know, barring him being injured, I don't imagine that we won't see an opt out, which again, doesn't mean that he won't return to the Dodgers, but probably means that this deal is effectively for two years, but this is a clever bit of business.

The way that they have constructed this is clever on the Dodgers part, right? Because while they are going to blow through the CBT threshold this year, the AAV of the deal is what determines the hit in any given year. So that's useful for them. We don't have to feel totally settled about everything all the time maybe he'll just log out i don't think it'll happen no i don't think so i would not say there's anything in his past that suggests that that might be in his future i just would well i don't know i don't imagine that trevor bauer listens to this podcast and i

don't imagine his reps do either but i just think it's useful to remember that a moment of rudish behavior does not equal your followers going after someone for a week and sending them terrible messages. And it is irritating to be irritated, but you got to eat it when you're in a position of that much power. And to be indifferent to that power differential is really harmful to people. And he's got to figure it out. You're too old to not know this stuff. Yes. You're 30, Trevor. He's 30. People say that he doesn't explicitly tell his followers to say the

nasty things that they say but yes he knows and if he didn't know the first time he should know after the first time or the second time so and even if he says you know he doesn't condone it or something there's clearly a pattern here so learn learn from those mistakes. I'll give him the credit of saying that they were mistakes. Let's hope that he learns from them. My only disappointment with him going to the Dodgers is that we don't get to see someone indulge his desire to pitch every fourth day. He claims that he can throw on three days rest with no ill effects based on whatever data he has, based on a couple times that he has done it in games. Bradford Doolittle at ESPN wrote an article last month where he looked at what this would entail, and he found that it would be plausible, if Bauer's body can handle this, for him to make

44 starts in a season, like a true Mickey Lulich season. And it wouldn't take starts away from your number two guy or number three guy. It would really take starts away from your fifth starter and to some extent your fourth starter. And on some teams, if Bauer could do it, that would be worth that tradeoff for sure. With the Dodgers, though, they're so deep that there's just no way. And I don't know if it would have worked anywhere. And who knows if he would have held up over a full season of doing that, let alone multiple seasons.

But I would have liked to see him try. Okay, so shall we get to this draft? All right. Oh, yeah, Ben. I'm excited about this draft. I'm excited for this one, too. This is fun. We'll try to keep it semi-snappy here, but we're going to balance out the bad tweets

talk with some good tweets talk. This should be fun. So on Tuesday night, Sarah Griffin, who is a writer for Pitcher List, made a tweet. And this tweet got around. And I think pretty much everyone on baseball Twitter responded to this tweet in some way, including you. You had a good response to it. And here's the tweet. She tweeted, everyone reply slash quote slash retweet slash whatever with your worst or most problematic baseball takes. This produced more than 4,000

responses as we speak here. Everyone weighed in on this one. I actually messaged her to ask about the experience of having been the person who tweeted this. And I just wondered, was she just blowing up with good slash bad baseball takes all day. And she said she ended up turning off her notifications because she woke up and went to scroll through them to read all the new ones. And after like 10 scrolls, she was still only seeing tweets from like the last hour. Oh my God.

Yeah, so she was bombarded, deluged with tweets. And the way that she phrased it was sort of open-ended enough that there were all kinds of responses to this. So, I mean, she said, give me your worst slash most problematic baseball take. So some people actually did do that. Like some people, you know, said things that they had been horribly wrong about. Some people just said very obviously good ideas, about. Some people just said very obviously good ideas, I think. And then other people, which is kind of the way I took it, just took like a hot takey approach to it. Just like, I kind of believe this, but it's also potentially problematic or people will be mad at me for saying this sort of thing. So what we wanted to do is just draft our favorites here so we we just browsed through them

i looked at hundreds i didn't see all of them i don't know if it's even possible to have seen all of them there are so many but i went through a whole bunch of them and we didn't talk about what we meant by favorite so it it could be ones that we wholeheartedly endorse or agree with or it could be ones that we think are the worst take ever and we admire how terrible the take is, or they could be somewhere in between, just so weird that they made us laugh or something. So we didn't really lay the ground rules down here. So we'll just each take our approaches and we'll just say who tweeted what and why we liked it i guess yeah and i i did not really order mine in terms of preference i just found ones i liked and i didn't pick this aired very much toward the silly for me uh there were people who had had you know they weren't actually bad but like serious

takes like pay minor leaguers more and like yeah but like that was not how i interpreted this exercise so while i agree with that i i went a different direction with my selections yeah so there are some that i agree with here but they're not like standard things that i agree with that we've probably talked about before on this podcast like there were a lot of people whose worst take or their one take that they wanted to share with the world was no DH or universal DH. Come on. That's the most basic take on either side that anyone could have. Get creative. Get weird with these things. So yeah, I don't know. You want to go first? It doesn't really matter here. I don't think this is a minor league free agent draft case where there really funny if we had a faulty out there

it would be very funny if we had overlaps fun yeah um sure i this is from jack with a q sucks sorry whoever jack is they should give each batter comically oversized clown shoes that grow in proportion to their batting average i love that it's a terrible idea but it's great that is a good one yeah so would you have to i know so wait as your batting average gets higher you get bigger and clownier shoes so it's like it hurts you that or i guess it hurts you going in either direction. If you have tiny shoes, then that's going to hamper you too. shoes would start, I would imagine, to affect the way that a batter performs. Because, you know, especially for guys, I mean, at a certain point, this is just going to be comic and impossible for anyone to walk. But, you know, for speedy dudes who sort of leg out hits or whatever, you get big shoes,

you fall down. You're not able to get down the line as fast. It would be tremendous for like clocking home to first times so anyway it was a long week ben and this just made me laugh out loud sitting at my desk today that's a good one how many uh points of batting average do you think you have to fluctuate to go up or down a size oh Oh, I think like 10 at least. You know, you need to have reasonably sized increments or you're going to come up on the two big shoes too fast.

Right, yeah. Okay, I've got some here that I think are just genuinely creative and good ideas that I hadn't thought about before. This is one of them. This is from someone named Christine at Seapoint Raph. She says, cost of food and drink at the concession stand should be reverse proportional

to the team's win-loss record. Much more difficult to watch your team lose all the time at the stadium, but easier with $1 hot dogs and sodas. Team having a great season, regular price food and drink for you. And then if the team is having a lousy season, well, hey, at least you get a discount on concessions. This is brilliant. That's a great idea.

Yeah. They'll never go for it. No. But I think this is great. I mean, that would give you incentive to make a competitive team, right? Because teams make some money off of the concessions. Yeah. And even if they didn't, even if they said, well, it's not worth our while, we'll sacrifice the concessions. Well, at least then you get cheap food and you can bring your family to the park without bankrupting yourself.

So I think this is a brilliant idea and we're going to need some impartial regulatory body to impose this. But yeah, it'll be like variable pricing every game based on your win percentage. You get to get a little bit of a discount or a price hike at the concession stand. I think that's great. I'm going to use this as an opportunity to say a nice thing about the Rockies because we've just been so hard on them, opportunity to say a nice thing about the rockies because we've just been so hard on them which is that one of the really great things about that franchise is that they they have known when they've been bad in the past and they do and they're not the only team to do this but they you know they'll do a deal where it's like you pay 20 bucks and you get a ticket and you get a voucher for like

a beer and a hot dog and that's a that's a screaming deal That's a screaming good deal to go hang out at the ballpark, which is beautiful, and watch a team that is bad. But you're having a hot dog and a beer, and you feel great about your life. So yeah, I think this is lovely. All right. This is from Georgia39410. Ben, I'm going to confess that I looked at all of these people's

Twitter accounts to make sure that I wasn't talking about someone not nice. Yeah. Would be ironic on the day that wasn't talking about someone not nice. Would be ironic on the day that we're talking about Trevor Bauer if I was like, go check out Georgia. Oh no, terrible. Okay, the batter, this is a little baseball after dark, the batter should have to remove an article of

clothing for every strike. Oh yes. I have a lot of questions about this one. Do they get to get redressed yeah or are they just by the time we hit the ninth is everyone just nude it's strip baseball yeah i imagine the commissioner would intervene on that if the the rules of the game required like a bunch of mostly naked men with like their cups because you can't take that away that's a safety issue yeah there were some thirsty suggestions that came across here i saw one that was like the batter and the fielder have to kiss yeah each time the batter gets to a new base the thread devolved from there so yeah this is a fun one i don't know would they have discretion

as to which articles of clothing they would remove. I mean, I guess they would all probably follow a similar progression. Although there are some players who seem to be happy not to be wearing very much when they have the ability not to. So, you know, they might just put it all on display. Well, and would all of the armor that guys wear when they get up there, would that count as clothing? Because then you can really elect to be fairly modest. It would be funny if it didn't and you had to take off your jersey, but then put that stuff back on. Because you're like, look, I'm not going to risk my elbow.

If I get hit there, it really hurts. Ouch. Right. So that part of this made me laugh. You can't just daintily remove your batting glove one at a time or something. It has to be. You got to show some skin. There were also just a lot of tweets in here that suggest that you guys want people to fight a lot in baseball.

Baseball and wrestling should basically be one sport. Violence was high on people's lists. A lot of people suggested that you give the players guns. Yeah, what was with that for what reason these people maybe they just feel very strongly about their second amendment rights i don't know but i can't imagine any good coming of that no i'm like they should be able to take their bats around them yeah right and i was like oh no that's bad too yeah okay okay you're up all right let's see this is from the category of quasi real suggestion this is from

c baseball one who says no set lineups managers can send whatever batter up to bat whenever they want, but no batter can bat n plus one times before all the other batters bat n times. More opportunities for the league's best hitters to bat in the most important spots. And I think this is a good balance because some people suggested like a no batting order at all, or you reset the batting order every inning so you just get to see Mike Trout hit nine times per game or something. And I don't want that. I still want some structure. I think the lineup, the batting order is good, that there are some constraints there, that there are nobodies who get the opportunity to be the hero. But I think it would probably be good if there were

some discretion there and if you could rejigger the lineup a little bit so that you could bring up say mike trout in a big spot and he can't bat you know three times to anyone else's once or something he can only bat one more time than all the other batters have batted but it gives you a little leeway to say this is the moment when I want my trout I'm sending up my best hitter and it still retains most of the structure and the limitations which I think is good limitations can create art and I think that can be true in baseball too but I think it's also sometimes a bummer that you can't just have the best players playing at the most important time so I feel like this is a good compromise and I haven't thought about it in depth. There may be drawbacks here that I haven't considered. Maybe it should be N plus two instead of N plus one, but I like this as a balance between those two extremes.

Yeah, I think that's terrific. Okay. Okay. This one's from the John Quincy Adams project. Oh, I think I saw this one. Let's say you're in the deciding game of an important series, such as the World Series, and say you're losing by a lot, such that a comeback is all but impossible. Why not filibuster by intentionally walking every batter? The score will approach infinity, but you won't lose. Yep. This was on my list. And there was a follow-up tweet that said eventually the other team will be forced to negotiate a bipartisan compromise which might result in what our first mid-game trade and an important one yeah we will stop but you have to give us a reliever

yeah i like this one you can't force us to lose we it will never be over if we don't want it to be over now i i think what would probably happen is that eventually all the players would just get ejected, right? They'd probably just eject the pitchers at a certain point. The umpires would probably have the discretion to do that if they refused to pitch. And then eventually you would run out of players and then you would forfeit because you wouldn't be able to field a team so it seems to me that that might be the actual outcome here and you also would not get an award for sports person like conduct here this is like the definition of uh sore loser i guess in that you are refusing to lose but i admire it i think i like the pettiness of this and the never say die attitude because

I refuse to lose. Yeah, I'm into it. Okay. Okay. All right. This is from Lindsay Ellefson at Ellefson with the O as a zero. And she says, one run is a slam, two runs a good slam, one run is a slam two runs a good slam then great slam grand slam etc so a solo shot is a slam two runs is a good slam three run homer is a great slam and then a grand slam is still a grand slam it just makes sense i love this not only because it makes good sense but because you know me i'm always up for pedantic terminology clarification so i i vote yes to this this is delightful yes okay this is from matt underscore santan ceremonial first pitch should actually be the first pitch of the game no more bullshit yeah i like that one too that's great i. I know. There would be a race though. It would just result in more analytics nonsense, Ben,

because teams would get discerning about that first pitch because you don't want the other team's leadoff hitter up there while you have the, I don't know. You would somehow have to enforce the current quality of ceremonial first pitchers. You'd have to maintain that. And I don't know how you would do that because people, you or something, even though ceremonial first pitches are sometimes former players. But this would deprive us, I think, of the drastically terrible ceremonial first pitch. Oh, yeah. Because you would rule out anyone who just could not complete the throw, right?

And that would be a great loss to baseball, I think. I mean, blooper reels would never be the same without people getting beamed by ceremonial first pitches. So that would be a problem. You'd have to combat the gamesmanship somehow. But if you could, if you could just have these sacrificial lambs and celebrities out there to throw the first pitch and you could ensure that consistent lack of quality, I would be all for this. Well, but wouldn't it be really great to have like there to throw the first pitch and you could ensure that consistent lack of quality i would be all for this well but wouldn't it be really great to have like like a nice nun give up a home run to mike trout because like she'd be like this is thrilling and my trout would be like

he'd have a sheepish look on his face while he ran around the bases because he's like oh no i got the nun i didn't mean to do that and you wouldn't even be you can't get mad at a nun she probably did a good thing that's why they asked her to throw out the first pitch right and the other thing is that the home team has the ceremonial first pitcher right so unless you imposed like both teams have to have one but if you stuck with the current system, it's the home team that has that person throughout the pitch. And so this would probably single-handedly erase home field advantage forever.

Just the one pitch that this non-pitcher has to throw. So that would change things too. I think that what would really end up happening is that every time the ceremonial first pitch would be from a member of the best local Division I baseball team's staff. And so then it would get exhausted. So yes, there would need to be rules that enforced some level of fun and silliness, but I think this is great. I'm really glad we had this draft as a counterbalance to the top of the show.

I think it's a nice little bit of balance for everyone. I hope people made it this far. Yeah. So, all right. I don't know if you noticed this, but basically every fourth tweet that was sent was bring back steroids, give everyone all the steroids. People, the number one request among baseball fans

who responded to this tweet was more steroids. I don't know what this means, but people miss the steroid era. People just want everyone juiced to the gills here. And if not for the health ramifications, I could get behind that. I don't know. If you had a whole league of consenting adults who agreed to just be the juiced league or something. And I don't know, you could administer them relatively safely. Fine. I think the problem with that is that there may be health issues and then you put pressure on people who don't want to take PDs.

So it's not really workable in the major leagues, but everyone seems to want it. In fact, Chrissy Teigen responded to this. I saw that. This is like a bunch of people with zero followers and then every now and then like some big celebrity right and chrissy tegan said monster ball league everyone takes steroids bigger fields and also everyone has to pitch i was with her up until everyone has to pitch i that would just be miserable i don't want to see people who can't pitch pitch any more than i want to see people who can't hit hit people more than I want to see people who can't hit hit.

People were giving Chrissy grief about her wine tweets. I'm surprised this was not at the top of other people's lists. Anyway, I brought up the fact that everyone wants PDs back if they're gone. Not that they're gone, but, you know, back in a more visible way because this is my actual choice and this is from prazmaster who says there should be a hall of shame for players who took peds and still sucked that's fantastic and then he said looking at you fernando vina i could come up with worse players who were yeah than fernando vina but i like this because hey i, I mean, you cheated. Maybe you deserve a little bit of shaming.

But also I like this because I think it would disabuse people of the notion that PEDs automatically make you into Barry Bonds, which I think some people are still laboring under that belief that it's just a magic happy pill that turns everyone into a star. And that is decidedly not the case there. Maybe some players it enhanced more than others and some who maybe were really good already and got a clear boost from it. But for the most part, I don't think it tends to take terrible players and make them great players. And I think that people still assume that that's the case.

And so having a hall of shame for players who took PDs and still sucked would remind everyone that most players who take PDs are actually not that great. They do not turn into Barry Bonds. And so therefore, we should not automatically assume that everyone who is great is taking PDs or that everyone who took PDs was only good because they took PDs, et cetera. So I would like to decouple those things a little bit more than they are currently decoupled. And I think this would accomplish that. I think that's a great idea. All right. Gosh, voting for that ballot.

Now we have two ballots to vote for. Yeah, we'd have to decide ballots to vote for. Yeah. We'd have to decide if they sucked enough. Right. Fernando Vina, he's not a first ballot hall of shame guy probably, but he might get there in the Veterans Committee. Oh, no. Okay. This is from Ellie Ellie Hart who says,

if high socks are better than low socks, then the natural extension of that is the entire pant should be made of socks. Love this one. I had this one too. Which is basically tights. Yeah. I was trying to picture it, and it was like I almost couldn't. I was thinking myself into knots about what this would look like.

But yeah, it's leggings basically, right? Yeah. It would be like, well well i guess leggings is probably a better comp than tights because you know socks are thicker than tights most of the time um so yeah and i just the visual of like their their jerseys being normal and the bottoms being leggings and i just think it's just delightful i like it yeah i love it i had this one too and because there were a lot of people who suggested well i want all high socks or i want all low socks and this is just no it's just all sock it's all the way down and i like that a lot

just it's an elegant solution it's like the splitting the baby or something. No one's happy with it. Everyone's just wearing pant length socks. But at least we ended the argument. So someone else suggested that everyone wear gray sweatpants too, which I thought was pretty good. I like that too. All right.

You're up. All right. I believe this one is from Nicole Treska at Ntreska. And she said, baseball fans who call it a thinking man's sport aren't as smart as they think they are. Oh. I like this one. I mean, first of all, no need to call it a thinking man's sport. We could call it a thinking person's sport.

sport. We could call it a thinking person sport, but even beyond the maybe misogynistic aspects of that, I think it's snobbish to pretend that baseball is a thinking person sport any more than any other sport. And look, baseball is my favorite sport. I consider myself a thinking person, but I think that every sport is to some extent a thinking man's sport. And I'm sure that there are others that are maybe more thinking man's sports than baseball is just because baseball is slow and allows more time for thought. I guess that is legitimately true, but that doesn't necessarily mean there's more food for thought or that there's more strategy. for thought or that there's more strategy. Every sport requires thought. So I don't think we need to pretend and be intellectually elitist about baseball. I mean, there's a lot to think about, but there's a lot to think about football and basketball and basically every other sport that's

played at a high level. So they're all thinking person sports. So they're all thinking person sports. Yeah, I like that. That's good. I have two. So like I picked 10, but I'm realizing that two of them are sort of related to one another. Should I just do both of them at once? Sure.

Okay. So one of them is from Dan E, who is bro hamulet on Twitter, who says every stadium should have its own little signature obstacle in the outfield trees, moving walls, artificial wind hidden pits, the pits are back etc and then Ben Collins who is a reporter for NBC responded the team at the plate should be allowed to have a free

safety that is allowed to roam the outfield and interfere with the play, full contact yep I like that one too yeah they seem like they were complimentary even if they are privileging different sides of the contest.

Yeah, I like the image of that one. I guess I don't like the fact that there will be full contact between stationary fielders and someone who has a lot of momentum and is charging into that person at full speed seems like it could lead to some catastrophic injuries but i do like the imagery of uh just one rover who's just sprinting all over the field trying to get in

the way of someone who's fielding it so even if it were like not full contact but they were just you know trying to distract them in some way that might be amusing too yeah i think that we don't want players to be at heightened risk for injury but i think we all miss tall's hill we all miss we all miss that weird feature of the outfields in minute made tall's hill tabs hill tages hill towels hill i think towels hill it's been a long week ben but we we miss it because you know we just aren't satisfied with all the ballparks having their own weird dimensions we have to make it harder yeah so yeah i'm i'm into it yeah i could never shake the feeling that that was like too artificial or just like too self-consciously quirky because like the old timey ballparks

were quirky for a reason it was functional quirkiness it was like we have to fit this ballpark in this tiny piece of city so we just have to have odd dimensions whereas with the modern retro parks it's like well let's just make it retro for the sake of it and i still kind of like it i guess but i'm aware of the artificiality of it. And I had one in that genre, too, that was from Mr. T. Barnes, who said, allow more ground rules at each ballpark. Example, at Fenway, base paths are only 85 feet. Mound at Dodger Stadium is one foot taller than the rest of parks. Baseballs at Coors Field are 10% larger, etc. are 10% larger, etc.

So basically supercharging the differences that already exist, which would probably put some players' noses out of joint a little bit and would make it easier for you to kind of customize your team to exploit the ballpark, which would be kind of cool. So that was in that genre. All right. Wait, hold on. I'm sorry. I have to say something really quick.

The fact that Tall's Hill was a thing on its own wild the fact that there was a pole in the middle of it remains the wildest thing that has happened in baseball in the last hundred years that's not true at all but it is it is on the list even if it is pretty far down yeah i mean they had the monuments in monument park in play in yankee Stadium for years and years. So there were a lot of bad ideas. Just a whole big poll. And they're like, we're going to wrap it in the stuff that you ran into in your gym in elementary school. And that'll be fine. That's enough. Yeah.

The union was like, that's OK. Don't worry about it. This one, I'm going to choose to misinterpret what the person meant and read it literally, I think. So as you may have noticed, there were a bunch of people who quote tweeted this, what's your worst or most problematic baseball take and just said, it sucks. I don't like baseball, basically, which disagree with that one. But this one comes from at Tommy Canely, except that the L at the end is an I, I think. It's not the actual Tommy Canely. And he just said, the MLB sucks. Now, what he meant, I assume, is that he just doesn't like baseball. But I am choosing to assume that he means that people who say the MLB and saying the MLB sucks.

And I wholeheartedly agree with you, Tommy, even if that's not what you meant. I try not to be super pedantic about baseball terminology. And if you want to say RBIs or RSBI or whatever, you do you. I don't have that strong a preference for that sort of thing. But one that really does get my goat is the MLB. And I understand why it happens. It's not fair. If you're someone who follows multiple sports, easy for me to say, I'm pretty much only ever talking about baseball. If you're someone who is regularly saying the NBA and the NHL and the NFL. I understand why you have to adjust your frame of reference and not say the MLB, but it grates on me.

It really deeply grates on me when people say the MLB because I just can't help thinking, you know what you're saying, right? You're saying the Major League Baseball and it just doesn't make sense. Say it out loud. And they never do so tommy you were probably committing the same sin that i am faulting here but i'm going to choose to believe that we are kindred spirits and you are agreeing with me that saying the mlb sucks oh yeah that it is a really rough one. It's a real rough one. So I like your reinterpretation of his sassy tweet. Okay, this one is going to come from a friend of the show, Patrick Dubuque,

who has many good ideas on how to make baseball better. Runners should be out if you peg them with the ball on the base paths. I like this because that's, I mean, it's not often, it's clearly not often intentional. You are disincentivized from doing this but it's also hard because your legs are small and space is large so i think that's a great idea although this does veer uncomfortably close to the idea of like you know violence so i don't think patrick means it that way because patrick is a gentle soul we wouldn't want them to be like really you, you wouldn't want them to like really with force. But like if you're a shortstop and you're thrown across to first to get a guy and you get him in the butt, he should be out. That's good enough. baseball history. They did this. They called it soaking, I think, or plugging. It was like there were the competing early rules of baseball, the Massachusetts game and the New York game,

and the New York game sort of won out and we don't have this anymore. But there was a point where this was a thing and it did not continue. So maybe that means survival of the fittest. It just wasn't a good rule and it was let go. Or I don't know, maybe it means that we gave up on it too soon and we should bring it back. So I always loved dodgeball as a kid, one of my favorite athletic activities in school. So this would kind of combine dodgeball and baseball in a way that would be fun. So if you could keep it like below the neck or something, you know, that wouldn't count. So it would have to be a body blow just to minimize injuries. And like, you know, unless you're someone with a really great arm, you're probably less likely to

hurt someone than a pitcher is throwing off a mound. So, you know, it probably wouldn't be too terribly damaging, but there would be times when it was. And I don't know if it's worth it, but it would add some entertainment value to this. All right. This one is from Vlay Kirshner. And they say the team in last place should have to wear shorts like the 1976 White Sox. Oh, no. Yeah. Like to be sexy i don't think to be sexy maybe that would be the effect i don't know but probably as punishment right can i just thank you for coming up with the idea for

this draft because like you know there's a lot of heavy stuff to deal with with Bauer. And then I got to say like to be sexy. So really picked me up at the end here. But wouldn't it make things worse for that team in a way that would just snowball uncomfortably? Because you're going to get all scraped up. And probably, I mean, like they stopped wearing shorts while playing baseball for a reason. You get destroyed. Clearly a terrible idea from the start so on the one hand it makes them less likely to escape last place yes on the other hand it gives them greater incentive not to fall into last place like

i mean what if you're free agent and you're thinking am i going to go to this team that's not doing anything and might end up in last place and I'm going to have to wear shorts all season? And, you know, maybe I don't like how my calves look and maybe I don't want to slide on my knees all season long. That might actually affect your decision, right? And maybe it gives you a little extra motivation. Like, you know, it's not quite like fighting for a division title, but suddenly being in the cellar really comes at a cost. I mean, you've got to wear shorts. I don't know if this is for like the worst team in baseball or like the last place team in every division or what. We'd have to work that out, but there would be a real disincentive to be bad. And I'd feel a little bad, I guess,

punishing the players for this like if it's not their fault if they're on one of these teams that like has a combined payroll that is less than trevor bauer will be making in the next two seasons and even talk about that part i know well oh well we'll get there but if you're on one of those teams that just didn't invest in the roster you know i feel bad if like you're the one who has to wear shorts all the time. The owner should be wearing the shorts, right? But still, like maybe it makes you play a little harder because you don't want to be wearing the shorts. I'm sorry.

I'm thinking about some of the owners being in shorts. I'm thinking about… Not to owners being in shorts. I'm thinking about... Not to be sexy, probably, in those cases. No, I'm mostly thinking about what it... I mean, I hope people won't find this unkind because he's dead now. But I'm just thinking about Mikey Lich. The hair, walking around in shorts. You know he'd wear high socks with his loafers.

He's got that hair just be an old guy i'm like anyway oh it's my turn okay um i will end with the serious one so i'm gonna do this one next this is from nathan mcdermott who is nate mc McDermott on Twitter in terms of his handle. They should replace the baseball with a tennis ball in the seventh inning, then go back to a baseball in the eighth and ninth. It would really spice things up. I like this because especially if we were to couple it with your rule change about adjusting your lineup, I would just be curious how managers would want to scheme that inning.

Who would they want up there hitting tennis balls versus having to hit an actual baseball? And also it would be funny. So I like it for that reason too. I like this semi-related one from Betty at Bferny who said, I think the game of baseball should continue, but I don't think baseballs should exist. I've been thinking about that one for a few hours now. I don't know what that would entail exactly. Okay. I'll do a lightning round because I have a bunch here.

I'll just read out some others I considered. The Yankees should bring back Dandy, their old mascot. That is from BJ Mendelsohn. I think they should. As a former Yankees fan, I can say the Yankees sometimes take themselves too seriously. They put on airs. They have no facial hair policy. hair policy, bringing back Dandy, who is just an embarrassing mascot who George Steinbrenner disavowed all memory of, and so did other Yankees leaders. And it's almost inconceivable that the Yankees had this mascot, and not ancient history.

This was between 1979 and 1981. He's like Yankee Doodle Dandy. I mean, can you imagine the yankees having a mascot yeah so i think the yankees should have to bring back dandy so that you know when they're airing the 50th edition of yankeeography on scott brocious or whatever on the yes network or something it's like okay guys but you also have a mascot named dandy so you know you're not so special so i like that one wait i'm sorry i have to engage with dandy for a minute because i ben i have never i have somehow never seen this before yep i have never seen so he appears to have his clothes and his his body

hair be the same material so like is his skin supposed to be pinstripes this is maybe he's all sock this is a lot ben this seems a lot yeah he's got a big bushy thurman munson mustache yeah it's uh yeah he looks like a very muppet sesame street-esque shaggy yeah yeah gritty before gritty yeah the fanatic looks at this and is like, guys, tone it. Tone it down. Too much. Yeah. I think it actually was created by the creators of the fanatic.

This was not their best work necessarily. Yeah. Gritty gets away with a lot because he looks, I say he, I don't know what Gritty's gender is, but Gritty has a wild look to the mascot, but has crazy eyes, so it's fine because it's like being consistent with himself. He's being true to who he is. Okay, sorry, I interrupted your lightning round

because I had to, you know, provide new nightmare fuel to myself. Yes. LoganRJ9 says, there shouldn't be any bats or balls or equipment. They should just play a normal game where they pretend to bat, catch, throw, etc. like mimes.

That's great. Very good. Yes. Nate Silver, one Nate Silver, you may have heard of, said, you should be able to keep rounding the bases as long as the ball is in play. For example, make a quintuple.

So you just keep going around. If you have an inside the park home run, you cross the plate, you can then continue rounding the bases and go to first. And this would very rarely happen. It's very rare that we get it inside the parker or even like a triple and the guy scores in an error or something. Very rare that we get it inside the parker or even like a triple and the guy scores in an error or something. But it does happen occasionally and you'd have to have some wild like multi misplay incident for this to happen. But imagine how exciting that would be. You're expecting the guy to just run right back to the dugout.

Suddenly he's going to first and he's on base again. It's kind of crickety. So I like this a lot. I have one more. Okay. I saw this from a lot of different accounts the one that i pulled it from all when i did some investigating was like retweeting barstool unironically so i'm gonna anonymize it because it's my show along with yours and i get to there were a number of people who called for a promotion relegation system in baseball. Yes, yes. This is the most serious of all the ones I have picked, clearly.

And I think that that's a not bad idea. I think it would be very complicated, but I'm into somewhat trying because I desperately want us to recouple sort of financial success and stature with winning. So I support this. Even if it seems like, even if it's just leverage, like it could be the Mets to the Dodgers-Trevor Bauer deal.

It's leverage to get people to be like, I got to spend more money. I think we talked about that ages ago on the show, and I don't know what we said. I think it would be fun, but probably impractical for various reasons. But I would like to see it like the worst team has to play the best AAA team or whatever just to get to stay in the league.

So, all right. And I will just mention this one from MoEgger1530. No level above Sandlot should have base coaches. I think players can handle rounding the bases on their own i know that base coaches do things but really do we need them actually given players tips on like okay uh you should be running on this pitch or whatever i mean i know there are other things they do they hold their shin guards they uh tell them to get back they tell them the pitcher's time to the plate, whatever. Like just a heads up, keep your eyes open, memorize all that stuff. I don't know. In other sports, do they have like coaches who are that actively involved? Like, like a base coach is like, you know, they're technically in their little box, even though they're never actually in it, but like they're on the field, like they're basically in the game and they don't need to be we don't need base coaches i mean i'm sorry if any base

coaches are listening i don't mean to put you out of work it's just that i think uh the big leaguers could probably handle it if they needed to the rams employ a human being who i assume has other duties apart from this but one of their duties is to grab Sean McVay's belt and pull him out of the way because he can't interfere with the officials as they're going down the sideline. So his job, because McVay gets very animated, is to grab him and be like, come on back, pal.

So there is some precedent for it, but I imagine that guy has other responsibilities on the team. I don't know what they are, but i assume he does something during the week don't yeah don't coaches have like people who are supposed to stop them from like getting ejected or something like they're supposed to stop them from yelling or charging the field or something because they're so angry and manly that they can't hold themselves back i don't't know if that's as big of an issue. There definitely are people whose job it is to be like, don't throw that challenge flag.

The person whose job that is for the Seahawks, I think, is now a ghost. That's a little joke that you don't get quite so well, but our listeners who are also Seahawks fans will be like, yeah, Meg, it's real rough. It is kind of a weird, you know, there were a lot of tweets that replied to this about how great but weird it is that the coaches wear uniforms because that is a strange thing about baseball, but I like it.

Yeah, I like it too. And this one is from Alan Capps, 1995, who says, the fact that you can catch a ball in foul territory to get an out is stupid. Is foul territory in play or out of it? Pick one, you stupid sport. I like that. I like that one. I like that.

Yeah. That is a weird quirk about baseball that, like, it's not on the field of play, really. I mean, it is, but, like, no good can come of of it but it still counts against you it's weird and then real billy zabka said every baseball stadium should be required to have a retractable roof especially in the north i believe that too yeah it's 2021 what are we doing here rain delays we've solved this problem technologically let's make that happen and And then Alain Focal said, I want to see more variation in what time games are played. For example, let's see games at 11 a.m., 1 p.m., 4 p.m., 6.30 to 7.30, and 10 p.m. weekdays and weekends.

And I like that too, because there would always be baseball on and different groups of people would be able to watch and go to games. And some would not be able to, but I like that variety. Last one, I guess this is from the will thee who says my million dollar idea is that umps shouldn't call balls and strikes out loud. Just keep track in their head and let everyone know if an at bat is over. oh i like that that's a good one to end on because it would get it would get goofed at least like probably once a week not always with the same person and it would be it would just be a nice moment of humanity it would also be funny if if there was conflict but yeah this one is probably better to end on okay dylan i'm gonna do a a swear. Yes, I'm going to do a swear.

This is from at SoulServe Chris who says, there shouldn't be more than like three rules. I don't know what the fuck a strike is. I just want to have fun. Then he says, rule number one should be run as long as the ball hasn't been caught. Rule number two, question mark, question mark, question mark. Rule number three fun sounds good to me yeah that seems like a very good note to end on all right thank you to sarah

for inspiring all of these wonderful responses indeed hey ben have a good weekend you too all right i just realized that we never said what meg's contribution to that long list of suggestions was. And it was pretty good. She said, kind of weird that the players take snacks with them onto the field, which when you think about it is extremely strange. Not something you see in other sports. Baseball is a snacking person sport. I also really enjoyed this exchange.

It involves three people. Okay, so Guy1 says, Inherited runners should count against the new pitcher, but proportional to the base they were on when they were inherited. Like allowing an inherited runner to score from first counts as 0.75 runs against the new pitcher and 0.25 to the guy who allowed him to reach first. Okay, I like that.

Clearly an accounting hassle, but seems sort of fair. So now guy two says, I like this, but I think the minimum the pitcher who let the runner get on base is charged should be 0.5 runs. Guy three wades into the discussion and says, I disagree with the minimum. If you let a runner score from first with two outs, that's on you entirely. If you come in with first and third, no out and induce double play, that's totally on the last guy.

You did your job. Guy two responds, I was thinking about it some more, and now I think it should be contingent upon number of outs and placing the order up when the reliever came in. Two outs and you let the sixth place hitter who got on first score,.90 to the reliever. No outs leadoff guy was on,.10 to the reliever. Guy 3 says, I was thinking that too. Either a complicated chart like you suggest, or if we really want to fuck things up, let the official scorer assign the runs. Guy two says, I am all for both introducing needless complexity into a situation and fucking things up. Putting it all on the scorer would accomplish the latter, and I lean towards it

because it would give people a new pointless thing to get mad about, whether that was an error or hit is old. And Guy3 concludes the discussion, I am intrigued by your ideas and wish to subscribe to your newsletter. And scene. I enjoyed how they took something that's essentially a non-problem and came up with an incredibly complex and convoluted solution that would cause way more trouble than it's worth. But the thought process was sound.

And since she inspired all of this, I will give Sarah the last word here. I asked her what her favorite ones were, because she presumably saw more of these than we did. And she said her favorites were one from at Bandini Baseball, who said any person within 10 rows of the dugout should be required to take a baseball aptitude test before entering. Not bad. Hopefully there's some special dispensation for kids there so you don't keep kids away from the field because they don't know enough about baseball yet. You want people to become baseball fans. And one way to make them baseball fans is by giving them great seats, let them go to a game. On the other hand, it is nice when the people right in the front rows who are on TV are paying attention and seem to care about the baseball.

And Sarah's other pick was from Allie Rich Them, who said, I think it actually is fun to watch baseball. I think so too. That is not a bad or problematic take at all. By the way, there was one significant signing after we recorded this episode. The Braves brought back Marcelo Zuna on a four-year $65 million deal with an option for a fifth year. So maybe we'll touch on that next time. Not the best day for the Mets, though, I suppose.

At least not in terms of projected place in the standings. You wake up thinking that you're going to get the best pitcher on the market. Then you don't. And then your division rival brings back a big bat. You can support Effectively Wild 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. Dane Runestad, Maxwell Rowe, Ben Axelman, KDB, and Brian Hare. Thanks to all of you.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter.

Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we will be back with another episode early next week. Talk to you then. Change is a monster And change is hard So he'll freeze away his summers In his underground yard

Cause he's a dandy in the underworld Dandy in the underworld We'll see you next time.