Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1770: Only the Finest Free Agents

Episode Date: November 10, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley announce new perks available to their Patreon supporters, then (12:03) bring on Ben Clemens, the lead author of FanGraphs’ top 50 free agents ranking, to discuss qualifying offers, early transactions, and Wade Miley and size up this offseason’s free agent class, focusing on the strong selection of shortstops and starters, […]

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I found they were all Like strangers to me. Hello and welcome to episode 1770 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Relia of Fangraphs. I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm doing all right. You're also joined by other Ben. Ben Clemens, who is here to talk to us about Fangraphs top 50 free agents. Other Ben, how are you?

I'm also doing well. You were Ben Prime for a month and then... And now I've been replaced. Yeah, now Other Ben is Prime Ben and we're just happy both the Bens are here. So hi, Bens. Hi. So Ben, you've been talking about this in many places. It seems like you are well prepared to talk about free agents because not only did you rank the top 50 at Fangraphs, but you did a Fangraphs chat about this.

You did an AMA about this. You were doing multiple podcast appearances about this. So you are a free agency expert, or at least you are being treated as one. I was going to say, being treated as one for sure. treated as one and i was gonna say getting a lot of questions being treated as one for sure so we talked yesterday uh with evan drelick about the cba situation and the fact that this might not be a normal offseason at all but if we were to proceed for now as if this would be a relatively normal-ish offseason how would you sum up this free agent class compared to the typical class in terms of quantity and quality or the most exciting names however you want to break it down so yeah i think

that qualification is really important and i would totally agree with it but assuming that the cba negotiations result in something approaching the current state of play, then this class is really deep. I don't think it's necessarily as top heavy outside of the top two shortstops, Carlos Correa and Corey Seager, as some past classes have been. Both those guys will get big deals. But when I was looking through past editions of top 50 free agent rankings and the guys who actually signed, you know, the 20th player on my list is Kyle Schwarber and pretty much everywhere is projecting him to get north of $50 million. That is not normal for the 20th best free agent. This class is quite deep in players

who could get multi-year deals if they'd like and would be eligible for QOs if they'd rather accept those. I think that's the standout characteristic of this class, is that there are good players slightly further down than normal. And in addition, there are a lot of starting pitchers. There were 19 in my top 50, and a lot of those are clustered toward the 30 to 50 range. So if you're in the market for a giant-style offseason, where you sign a lot of pitchers for reasonable deals who might surprise to the upside. This is a good class for that.

And it was almost an even deeper class, right? Part of the challenge of putting the top 50 together is that we have to do that work during the postseason and then in the weird liminal space between the conclusion of the World Series and the deadline for both qualifying offers and for players and teams to exercise options and opt outs. And so this class almost also had JD Martinez, who opted not to opt out in Boston. That's a complicated sentence to say. And then Wade Miley, who became inexplicably available, not through the process that we

were expecting, which was the Reds declining his option and making him a free agent, but then passing him through waivers where he was picked up by the Cubs. So with all of that said, I think it's useful for folks to kind of think about how you go through the process of starting to rank these guys, because there's, you know, I think in this class, there was the clear number one, we were all sort of in consensus around Correa, but then because of the depth of the class, how did you go through the process of sort of differentiating these guys and tiering them? So the first thing I did was pull just a bunch of relevant metrics for everybody. Age, what they did in 2021, what they did in 2020, their projected, I think I used Zip's 2022 war

at the time because we didn't have steamer projections, but a projection for 2022, put down their position, their current contract, whether they were eligible for a qualifying offer, basically just a bunch of data points like that. And then I started by ranking them by 2021 war and then moving people up and down like pretty heavily. So the idea there was the most important thing is being good now, that free agents who aren't good now aren't really going to get paid. And then I started to differentiate from there like marcus simeon had the highest 2021 war of anyone in this free agent class for example he was not my top free agent although he was uh pretty

high in the rankings he was third but i said i looked at his age relative to the age of shortstops ahead of him and his track record and basically repeated that process all the way down when you get down into the call it 35 to 50 range but honestly closer to 25 to 50 in this class a lot of these guys are i'm not going to say fungible but quite similar and if you have really strong views on where aaron loop versus cory kluber versus Alex Cobb versus Eduardo Escobar should rank. I'd love to hear them, but I think a lot of the bottom of the list just comes down to personal preference, the kind of players that I think teams are most likely to shell out in free agency for against try to manufacture from our players and wave of our pickups. I'm sure you were tracking some of the post-World Series developments very closely

as you were preparing to publish this list, the qualifying offer decisions, Seiya Suzuki of the Hiroshima Carp getting posted, etc. That was all changing the makeup of your list probably right up to the point of publication. I don't know whether you've been able to glean anything about the market or what teams expect the market to be based on who got qualifying offers and who didn't or any of the early transaction activity we haven't seen many signings obviously and we probably won't for a while but andrew heaney signed with the dodgers he didn't even make your top 50 right but he got slightly more than mlb trade rumors projected for him did any of the qualifying offer decisions strike you as surprising whether guys who got

offers or guys who didn't get offers? The one that struck me the most was Clayton Kershaw not getting a qualifying offer. And I mean, Meg and I talked late into Sunday night about what to do about Kershaw. Sorry, Meg. It wasn't your fault. But that was a spot where I thought he was going to take a one-year deal with the Dodgers anyway. I just thought it would be larger. And there's not a lot of information about whether they didn't give him a qualifying offer because it's a nice thing to do. And he's a franchise player. And it's a lot of hassle for little return because of where they are in the luxury tax. Or whether they didn't do it because they're worried he's broken.

Or they didn't do it because they think that they're going to negotiate something with him and the qualifying offer might upset that balance. It's not really clear yet why they didn't do it, but that was to me, the most surprising non-extension of a qualifying offer. Runner-up would be Carlos Verdone not getting one. And it's kind of a similar issue where the teams have a little more information than we do, a lot more information than we do, about pitcher health, and Verdone hardly has a clean bill of health historically, and there was a lot of worry that he was just completely breaking down at the end of the season. He didn't look it in his one postseason start,

but I think that was a red flag for me, and I ended up being comfortable with where we put him, but those two decisions, Verdone and Kershaw, were the most surprising to me in terms of qualifying offers not being extended. Yeah, and there were kind of a lot. I mean, 14 players got qualifying offers, which is a lot more than last year. And I think it's the most since the 2015 to 2016 offseason, which is, I guess, before we all started worrying about free agency being broken So that's maybe an encouraging sign I guess the one other guy who didn't get one who raised some eyebrows was maybe John Gray Who did not get a qualifying offer from the Rockies

Which seemed sort of surprising based on the offer that the Rockies reportedly extended to him Which was a multi-year extension offer for a good deal more than the qualifying offer total, lower AAV. So I guess they just thought 18.4 per year was too rich for their blood when it came to John Gray, but on a one-year deal, sort of strange, maybe? And they decided not to trade him at the deadline, right? And part of the reason for that, it seemed like, was that they thought they would work out an extension.

And now it seems like they probably won't. And so they won't get anything for him at all, any kind of compensation. Yeah, I would say that 100% of the reason that they didn't trade him at the deadline was because they thought they had signed an extension. And they said as much in the press. So that makes this look especially bad. I would have extended more people qualifying offers, but I think teams generally treat them differently than I do. I think teams are mostly extending qualifying offers to people who won't accept, as opposed

to people where there's some chance they will accept and some chance they won't. And hey, if they come back, that's fine too. I think the Rockies treated this more as we think he might accept it and we don't want that. I wouldn't have done that. But given the way that they operate, I'm not particularly surprised that they didn't. And there are lots of teams who I would say don't extend qualifying offers to people where it would make sense for that specific reason. That's just business as usual. And as to the fact that there are a lot of

offers in this class, it's partially a good sign. I think that if the CBA negotiations finish without seismic changes, things will go well. But it's also partially, like I said, this class is just deep. There are a lot of guys where it's just a no-brainer to extend them a qualifying offer this year, and enough so that I think we'd have a large number of qualifying offers, even if teams are being penny-pinching. Maybe we can stick on pitchers for a second. I think that one move that might have surprised some people, just given the conclusion to this season that he had was Scherzer at four. I clearly thought that that was a fine selection because I didn't tell you to change it. But talk a little bit about that call

and sort of how you think about his free agency given the end that he had, but also just the fact that he's Max Scherzer. Yeah, Max Scherzer pitched 180 innings this year and was awesome. And he's old and he had five kind of bad starts at the end of the year. Four out of five were bad, but he's great. And I think I caveated it by saying, hey, if there's something bad in his medicals, he probably won't be here and he won't get the most money of anybody for sure. But I think he'll get the highest average annual value because there's just not a lot, again, short of medicals that we haven't seen to make you think, hey, Max Scherzer's done.

He was about as good this year as he's been in quite a while. Yeah, maybe as good as he was in 2018, 2019. But if you could get that Scherzer for two years, not risk some kind of five-year or six-year tie-up with a guy who might be in trouble in three years, I think it's worth paying a lot for. And it's just very hard to get that amount of, I mean, of war, but also of just of great pitching on the free agent market right now. There's no other options for it this year. And to me, that might not make him,

it won't make him the biggest contract awarded. I would be super surprised if he was the biggest contract awarded. And I think everyone would be, but I don't see a reason not to pay him a lot for a few years. And I think a lot of teams will be thinking that way. I wanted to ask about one other guy who did not make your list before we returned to the list. And that's Wade Miley, who I know you were asked about in your chat and that really surprised people that he was claimed on waivers that the reds just let him go and didn't exercise his option or find a trade partner and nick crawl the reds gm said that they tried to find someone to trade him to and couldn't or didn't find something that was to their liking. And so they just let him leave. And Wade Miley, I think all of us in our own time experienced some moment last year or this

year, last season, where we realized what Wade Miley's stats were. We all had that. It's like, wait, what? Wade Miley? Oh, okay. But over the course of his career, he's been like exactly a league average starting pitcher. He has a 100 career ERA minus. But over the past few years, 2018 on, he's been a good deal better than that, at least in terms of results and 80 ERA minus with ERA minus below 100 is better. He has a 130 ERA plus over that span, if you prefer that. Now, obviously the peripherals don't quite match the ERAs, but still a pretty decent track record. And yet he is getting on in years. He's turning 35 later this week. Happy early birthday, Wade Miley. And given the stuff and the peripherals and maybe some of the variability in performance, maybe the outlook for him and what teams would actually consider the surplus value for Wade Miley might not be what you would expect for someone who had a 3.37 ERA in 163 innings this season. So why do you think that situation shook out the way that it did? I mean, part of it, it just seems like the Reds, how did they put it?

shook out the way that it did. I mean, part of it, it just seems like the Reds, how did they put it? They're bringing their roster in line with their resources or some kind of front office language like that. But the Reds and the A's, it seems like, are poised on the verge of a rebuild or a reset or a teardown or whatever you call it. So that seems of a piece with other Reds transactions. But what do you think this says about Miley or the market, if anything? Yeah. So they were aligning their resources with their payroll. Yes. Right. Which is, you know, as corporate euphemisms go, it's not great. Or are they aligning their payroll with their resources? Yes. Right. As corporate euphemisms go, it's not great. I've had occasion to see a lot of these. That's pretty low on the list.

They could have done better. As for the actual decision, I totally take Nick Kral out of his word that they shopped Wade Miley. I totally take him as word that maybe no one gave them incredible offers right now because it's, you know, a few days after the World Series and teams knew that they were going to cut him. There was little question that the Reds were not interested in picking up this positive surplus value option. I think they had telegraphed it with the way they handled Rice Valley Glacius last winter, and just with the way they handled everything this year. I think teams pretty much knew that Miley was just going to either be waived or released into free agency. And that really hamstrings the Reds' ability to drive a good bargain.

Another thing that really matters is that there are a lot of Wade Miley-ish pitchers in this class. And I think they'll all get paid, to be clear. I think that all of them will get some kind of decent deal, people in his tier. But having to make that decision on November 6th or whatever, pick him. Maybe he's your second option if you don't get, just pick a name out of the list, Alex Cobb. You say, oh, I'd like Cobb, but if I can't get him, I would sign Miley to the same deal. But who will go for Miley when there's still so many free agents to be decided? There's just kind of a leverage issue of making the first move for a guy who is pretty close to, like you said, just an average pitcher.

for a guy who is pretty close to, like you said, just an average pitcher. And that put the Reds in a bad situation if they weren't willing to take the risk of having him on their payroll into January and not being able to trade him. He's a positive surplus value player, and I don't think they would have had any trouble trading him for zero if it came down to it. So I think they made a bad decision. But if the ownership said, he can't be on our payroll I don't care what you do but he needs to be out of here by the time that we're exercising or not exercising an option well yeah that makes it hard to trade somebody and I think that's basically what

happened if you look at the fact that the Cubs got him the Cubs were pretty close to the bottom in terms of record this year there were a lot of teams with worse waiver priority than the Cubs and so we don't know who else would have claimed him, just that the worst six teams in baseball didn't. I kind of get that because if you're a really bad team, Wade Miley is not going to make you a really good team next year. Sorry, Wade. That's just how it is. He'll make you better, but he won't make you great. And a lot of those teams are just not very interested in spending money for anyone. And so why would you spend that on Wade Miley unless you think you can trade him later? I think that's basically what it came down to.

I don't think it says much about the free agency market. The Reds were just trying to save a million dollars, and they did. So the Reds didn't have leverage when it came to Wade Miley, but there are a couple of free agents who are going to be in hot demand. They might have a good deal of leverage. We should just talk about these great short stops. And I'm going to include Semien in this group because though he played second base this year, I think it's useful to think of him as part of the Correa-Sieger-Story-Bias group.

So I said that we didn't really have much dispute about Correa being at the top, but how did you think about these guys relative to one another? So to me, there was only a question of who was going to be number one between Correa and Seager. I don't think any of the others are of a piece, basically. There's either age or consistency questions, or are you actually a shortstop questions in some cases. But Correa and Seager, I thought were far and away number one, and they have been for a long time.

Actually, I remember, Ben, you wrote an article about who would you take long term with these guys when they were second year players or something. And they've just continued that obvious top of the free agency class and obvious all-star caliber players thing ever since. And really been kind of similar in terms of, well, kind of similar in terms of batting and health. Very not similar in terms of what's developed with their defense. And to me, that's the just clear distinguisher. Correa looks like a plus shortstop. He's not, you know, the fast twitchiest guy, but he's got a really strong arm and rangey enough to make it work as a very positive defender. And Seager just isn't.

I said he was a 50 shortstop defender. Kevin Goldstein said he's a 45. The point is that you should think of him as kind of average there and likely to end up at third or probably third, honestly, just given his frame. Seems like a better fit for third than second. And when you combine that with the fact that I am more worried about Seager's injury history than Correa's, I think that made Correa a clear number one, likely to get a longer deal. I don't think their AAVs are set in stone. had Seager getting let's see about 30 and Correa 33 those are pretty small differences but I think what's more important is that Correa will get more years the next tier down you could argue like Maddox said Simeon is technically a second baseman I have him at

second base and shortstop because I think I'd rather have him at second. But if you are in a pinch, he can definitely play short for you. And he's great. And he'll get a decent, I think, short-term deal. That just makes sense for a guy who's 31 and who's had two good seasons out of the past three, but a bunch of kind of average seasons before that. I'd be very worried about how pull happy he was and pull and elevate happy. It's one of those things where it looks like he is, he's not going to start hitting for more power, I don't think. And there's not a lot of predictive, like any trend to the fact that guys who pull more age worse or anything like that. But I can imagine teams being a little bit worried about how extreme his batted ball profile is. And so that keeps him out of the top tier. I haven't getting a similar amount of

dollars per year to Seager, but just for many fewer years. And then after that, you got Story and Baez. There are questions for both of them. I think Story has the standard cores questions. I have questions about how great his defense is. I know depending on which defensive metric you look at, he's either awesome or pretty good.

I would put him more at pretty good. And I think if you do that and you then account for his age and the fact that he had it down 2021, yeah, he's like a nice player to sign, but I don't think he's in the very top tier. Baez, similarly, great finish to the season, but there's a lot of questions about the bat. And I think that'll hold him back from getting a very top tier deal. But there are five great shortstops in this class, which is pretty cool. very top tier deal. But there are five great shortstops in this class, which is pretty cool. Yeah. So your top three are shortstops or could be shortstops, four of the top 10,

five of the top 12. Does that matter when it comes to the projected earnings and contract length for these players? Because I think there might be a perception that, well, the market is flooded, right? And it's going to hurt this guy because teams could go get that guy instead but of course we're talking about free agency here and each one of these players created a vacancy on a team when he became a free agent so yes there are a lot of them who could fill that potential hole on a team but they're also more teams with holes in theory i, I guess you could always just slot in a shortstop prospect or something like the Astros could decide to do. But do you think that affects the earnings outlooks if you're part of a class that is particularly strong at a certain position in a given year? So in the abstract, I'd say no, speaking broadly, because like you said,

more good shortstops on the free agent market means more teams who are now missing their good shortstops. There are two factors. Well, I guess I'd say three factors that make this year a little bit weird. One is that the Dodgers already traded for Trey Turner. And so they have a great shortstop if they'd prefer and could sign someone for second base or let Gavin Lux play second base and try to fill in an outfield corner. Well, really left field, not an outfield corner.field corner movie is pretty entrenched I think that they'd still be willing to sign Seager because Seager's a long-term third baseman they don't know if they'll keep Trey Turner and there will be a spot at third base before too long whether it's Justin

Turner going to DH or just Justin Turner not being able to handle third anymore and playing first or something like that I don't know how exactly they'd handle it, but I think eventually Seager can shift to third without too much trouble. The Astros, like you said, might just put in a shortstop prospect. And that is always a question, but the Astros are in a particularly good spot to do that just because of the shape of their upcoming payrolls and how good their offense already was. And then lastly, two of these guys were playing second base, Semyon and Baez, for teams that already had shortstops. So they're not so much in the market to re-up a shortstop. Now, Semyon can also just be a second baseman, so I don't think his market will be hurt by that. And the Yankees are looking for a shortstop,

even though none of these guys were on the Yankees. So I think it mostly offsets in this year. But there is some question of the fifth guy getting a little squeezed. I don't think it's really going to happen for either of Correa or Seager. And I don't think it'll happen for Semien either, just because he's flexible. I have a sort of related question, which might end up just meaning you talk about Jan Goms for a minute. But if we think about the flip side of that, where there might be some positional scarcity at a position of need, the answer I think is probably just Ketcher. But other than Ketcher, are there any positions where you think a guy might end up

getting something of a bump because he's one of the few who is viewed as worthy of a real free agent deal and there's otherwise positional scarcity there? Yeah, basically Jan Goms. It's just Ketcher. I think you could make an argument for Scherzer in that same vein because the other starting pitchers who I have in the top call it 15 either haven't done it for a while or coming off of injury or are more Marcus Stroman types where you're going to get a bunch of innings of pretty good pitching but probably not a Cy Young type. So Scherzer fits there a little bit, but it's mostly Jan Gomes. I put Jan Gomes, I believe 26th on our list. And yeah, he's the only catcher in the top 50. I have him making a lot more than the crowdsource

projections have him making. If you want to sign a catcher who can catch a little bit and hit a little bit, it's Jan Gomes or trade for Wilson Contreras. Yeah. So that I think really helps. And the other thing that helps there is you could say, again, like there's just a lot of teams that don't need catchers because of how things broke. There are no catchers on the free agency market. But Buster Posey retired, and catcher just is a position where people always could use another good catcher.

I think catcher is just a continued positional scarcity. I don't think that means Jan Gomes is going to get, you know, $50 million or anything. But lots of teams would love to have him for a crowdsource projection of one year at, I think, $5 million. I don't think there's much chance of that happening just because of the scarcity. Is there anyone that you get the sense that you are far higher on or far lower on than the consensus, either based on the feedback you got in your chats or comments or just the difference between your contract projection

and the crowdsourced contract projections? Yeah, so Jan Goms is number one. He's my number one just because I had him pretty high, and he's not even ranked in the MLB Trade Rankings Top 50, for example. He's 49, I think. 49, okay, I think. 49, okay. I think I missed him there. But he's at the bottom there.

I have Chris Bryant getting a longer deal than a lot of people do. And that's probably the one I feel least sure on. I'm just not really sure what to make of Bryant. But I think around a $20 million average annual value, which is where everyone seems to have coalesced, makes sense there. I'm kind of low on Kevin Gaussman relative to the consensus.

I know that he's a great pitcher. I don't think the way the Giants used him this year and really the way that just he's been used by them in general is consistent with him being a, you know, top 10, top 15 pitcher in baseball. So I think a lot of his projections for free agency have gone. I think he's nice and in the tier with, you know, Eduardo Rodriguez and who else do I have in that tier? Like a little bit below Stroman and Ray,

but I've seen a lot of people who say he's in his own tier just behind Scherzer. And I really disagree with that. I think Gossman's quite a nice player. I mean, it remains to be seen if he can really keep up the level that he showed for part of 2020 and part of 2021 while throwing only two pitches. And I don't think that normally you'd have a guy who throws two pitches and experiments with adding a change up to his splitter as a consensus second best pitcher

in the free agency class. He was still tinkering, trying to figure out what to do with these pitches like this year. And the Giants bumped him down in their hierarchy. Now, I mean, that's for Logan Webb, who was great. But I don't think that he's going to get the kinds of deals that he is rumored to in places. I don't feel super strongly about that. Like the Jan Goms thing, I feel very strongly about. I think he is just going to get way more interest than everyone is predicting. But Gaussman would be my list for the guy who I was the lowest on relative to consensus. Is there anyone who stands out to you as a player who did the most, this is such a bummer way of asking this question, but sort of did the most damage to their own free agency case over the last year where you're, we didn't rank the pending free agents at the start of the 2021 season, but whose rankings might have diverged most significantly from where they ended up on your list or perhaps not on your list at all, had we engaged in such a mean exercise?

Well, I can think of two guys who fit this bill. One is Zach Greinke. And man, Zach Greinke did not look good this year. You know, he had significantly less war this year than last year. Last year was very short. His peripherals all declined. His velocity, not really there. I guess his velocity was up over 2020, but it's still in the 80s.

It just looked like maybe he hit the end of the road. And you could see the way the Astros handled him in the playoffs really showed that as compared to him being a key part of their playoff runs in 2019 and 2020. So I have him just in that bunch of pitchers who will get, you know, high seven figures, low eight figures on short-term deals. And I think that before this year, if I told someone that Zach Greinke was going to maybe sign for one eight after this year, they'd say, really?

Like, he's been really good for a long time. And he still looks like he can get by throwing 89 with an 89 changeup because he has been for years now. And that didn't quite work out. On the hitting side, Michael Conforto is the guy. And he is, I don't know if he's actually turned down the qualifying offer already or rumored to be turning down the qualifying offer. I don't think he's going to get a better deal than that. I think there's some chance he just really wants out of New York.

And there's some chance that this is just a bad decision to turn down a qualifying offer. But his star has really, really dimmed in the past, I don't know, call it year and a half, really year, because he was quite good in 2020. Maybe he can be the GM. Yeah. Injuries and ineffectiveness just didn't necessarily go great for him this year. And I thought that he was going to take a qualifying offer just to rebuild his free agency, you know, resume as it were. And so I'll be interested to see what becomes of that, but there's not been a lot of smoke around teams looking to hand out a big free agency deal to a corner bat who just had a bad season.

You put Suzuki at 34 on your list. He's 20th on MLB trade rumors list. I'm sure you probably were not a say a Suzuki expert until recently. I know Eric Langenhagen wrote the blurb on the fancraft's top 50, but you presumably spoke to Eric or other evaluators and have the Zips projections too. So just the general overview, what should people expect out of Suzuki, who is a 27 year old multi-position player, but primarily an outfielder. Yeah. So like you said, multi-position player, primarily an outfielder. I think there's some DH risk. I mean, he's DH occasionally in NPB, but that is not a question, right? He's probably the best hitter in NPB, I would say.

And he's 27, so he's still projectable. The question really becomes, so he's a righty and a corner outfield guy, really. So is a righty bat really special in a corner outfield? If so, then you can get a pretty big deal. And there are guys in Major League Baseball who do that and earn a lot of money doing it. I just wasn't willing to basically assume that he would be one of these like Nick Castellanos type hitters without any at all history of seeing that in the majors and I think that teams are they're willing to give years to guys like that but I think I'd be surprised if I see a really high average annual value the crowd and I both came in pretty similarly I had four at 10 the crowd had four at 11 for him. And there's a lot of error bars in this projection.

I think I could pretty easily be wrong there. But to me, this is just not the style of hitter that gets like a long, high average annual value deal, particularly given the way posting works. So yeah, teams are spending some money for that. I wouldn't be surprised if I was wrong. This is definitely the projection with the highest error bands around it. But I find it hard to believe that given the way that teams have been spending in free agency recently and the way that they value each position, that a corner bat in the outfield

who's a righty is going to get that much money. You mentioned Castellanos, and I think we can probably put Soler in this category. And obviously, we still have the ageless wonder or continuing to age wonder that is Nelson Cruz. But I'm curious how much you think the universal DH meaningfully alters the market for those guys. Obviously, there are many more teams that would be sort of available for their services. And someone like Castellanos, the worst part of his profile gets hidden if he doesn't have to field. But in terms of the difference that it might make in terms of either the duration of their deals or their AAVs, how meaningful a flip do you think that actually ends up being?

I think it's more meaningful for the marginal guys. So I'm not sure it matters that much for Nelson Cruz. There's going to be a market for Nelson Cruz to go somewhere for one year and just clobber baseballs. There's going to be a market for Nick Castellanos, who was good enough to be a valuable player playing the outfield just abysmally for an NL team for years. And there would have been a market for JD Martinez if he opted out. And Mark Khanna can play outfield. So he's not really part of this group. But I think that for guys like Soler, it's a really big deal.

And if you have to play Jorge Soler or Eddie Rosario, who did not make my list, but was pretty close to making the list. If you have to play one of those guys in an outfield corner, that hurts. They're not good defenders. And at the very least, you'd hope that you can get them some rest days at DH whenever whoever your primary DH is is resting so that can play you know real outfield defenders over them no offense guys but they're just not they're not what you'd prefer to have in your outfield and so for those guys where no one's gonna say like this is a top of the market DH and also no one's gonna say this is a guy that I feel comfortable having in my you know right field every day their market does get a little bit limited and depending on what teams want to do you know there are several teams who might trade for Matt Olson and move a first baseman to DH. And that's a spot where Jorge Soler can't play. And NL teams won't give him as much money if there's no DH. So these marginal guys, I think, could see largely just increases in the number of years they get and the amount of teams showing interest to where they have to go up a year as a

way of tie-breaking the deals if there's a universal DH. I don't think it matters at the top. I think it matters a lot at the bottom. And I also just think it's very likely to happen. So I think that makes Solera and Rosario maybe good picks to click on this list to go up if it turns out that there is a DH. I wrote the list assuming that there would be no change. So I think that's the easiest way to do this. There will just be enough changes in the CBA that I assume no change and we can go from there But if there is a universal DH, yeah, the marginal corner bats get better You don't predict where players will sign on the FanCrafts ranking Which I think is smart because not only would it be a lot of work

But who knows whether there would be any predictive value in your predictions I would say there would not be. I'd love to see a study of that, actually, because MLB Trade Rumors has been predicting destinations for years and years at this point. And I'd love to know whether there's any value to that because they assess the market and they know which teams are theoretically in it and they put a lot of thought into it. And I would still bet that there's little to no predictive value over the dartboard method I mean I guess it would be better than just random you know one out of 30 chance of getting any one prediction right because you know which teams historically have been the big spenders and which have not and which might be in the mode that they're spending now and which are not but if you could somehow adjust for that just kind of the baseline knowledge that almost any fan would know heading into the offseason, yeah, probably not a whole lot to it.

But as you were making this list, I wonder whether any potential fits or matches stood out to you in particular, either like, oh, this guy has got to go there because it's just such a perfect fit, or even ones where you think it would be just fun if a team ended up signing a particular player so the most obvious fit to me is carlos correa to the yankees the yankees need a shortstop just so so badly sorry to all of the guys who play shortstop for them in the past year but they don't really have a true plug and play shortstop everyone who they've put there is a natural defender further down the spectrum moonlight moonlighting. Correa is the best free agent available. He's young. You could plug him into the core for a long time. He was in New York taking pictures in Times Square on Instagram

week after the World Series, maybe even less. I mean, less because it's a week after the World Series today. Yeah, I think that is just a very good fit. I think right up there in terms of just excellent fit is Chris Bryant on the Giants. And I don't know if that means that he's necessarily going to stay because in his case, there is a somewhat close substitute in Chris Taylor. I mean, I guess Seager's a close substitute to Correa too, but I think the Yankees are just going to be the main players on Correa. I think Bryant makes a lot of sense in San Francisco unless they'd prefer to go lighter, basically, and get Chris Taylor. And that's kind of... Those are the two most obvious fits. I had one that I kind of liked, which was Carlos Redon going to the Tigers. And my thinking there is that the Tigers

are kind of likely to run a six-man rotation next year. They have a lot of young arms they'd like to protect. You need, I think, to plan on a six-man rotation at least some of the year if you're going to have Radon. And also, I think that the best deal for him is going to be a kind of long but low average annual value deal. He's only 29. If you could sign him for my projection, 415, then he could be there for a bunch of years as the current pitching core is in the majors and the current hitting core reaches the majors.

He's naturally just a fit with the way they want to build their lineup and they're trying to improve this offseason. So I think that would be very interesting. And I mean, honestly, pretty fun, too, that that adds another electric arm to an already pretty cool young pitching staff. So last question, just about the movement of the market or the lack of movement on the market. We talked a little bit to Evan about this yesterday, but do you expect really anything to happen before the CPA is signed? I mean, if there is no lockout, if everything is done on December 1st, then that wouldn't really affect free agency all that much. If there is a lockout and a free agency isst, then that wouldn't really affect free agency all that much. If there is a lockout and a free agency is frozen, then you could get a really compressed signing period.

It could be like another sports free agency sort of when things start up again if they do. But if you're an agent or if you're a prominent free agent, are you just waiting it out? Or even if you're a team? And I know that there's also the question of like, well, should you game plan in some way for what the CPA could look like? I know, Meg, you just asked Jeff about that last week. And he said that it seems like teams just mostly assume things will be the same or just don't really have enough information to project how they'll be different. But if there is any way in which you think there could be some advantage to be gleaned or if you were assigned to be the person in the front office who is supposed to figure out what the impact of the new CBA could be and how that might affect free agency, I wonder when or anything has occurred to you.

A few things have occurred to me about that. One is I think a lot of the end of the top 50, out of the top 50 guys, the pending CBA negotiations won't really affect their market too much. If you're Ryan Tappera and someone says, here's $6 million a year for two years, that's the trade rumors projection. Great. I don't think you're getting a more, a meaningfully different offer in January, you know, middle relievers with MVP votes, but not actually MVP deserving resumes. That's kind of what they're getting. And so if someone offers him that tomorrow and for the team, I mean, I don't think you're expecting to get a much cheaper Ryan DiPera replacement in January. could see a lot of those kind of decent middle relief arms or decent fifth starter types or you know i guess the similar in hitting is the the fourth outfielder or corner bat without an obvious standout skill a lot of those guys who are going to sign cheap one or two year deals i don't think their market will be meaningfully impacted by this i don't think anyone in my top 15 will sign

before the cba is negotiated unless they're accepting qualifying offers or signing an extension. And aside from that, the main thing that I think you could glean in a team front office is if you have any view on the way that arbitration is going to change or years to free agency is going to change, there are some types of players, mainly the corner outfielders I'm talking about, who just have no value in the current economic climate because you can just fake that with cost controlled players for so long and the cost controlled players just don't cost that much if you think there's a major change coming there and I don't to be clear I think that's pretty unlikely but if you do think there's a major change coming there then picking up some of those guys for cheap would be smart but I think it's just not going

to happen so if you do that there's it's a cheap option on something good happening that would make you have a bunch of undervalued players. But the odds of it happening are very low. under draft and what we do is we take the MLB trade rumors top 50 list which comes with contract predictions and we try to divine which players will get higher numbers than MLB trade rumors projects and which will get lower numbers and we're not picking on MLB trade rumors it's just that they have been doing this I think the longest and in a kind of consistent format. And so it's easy to standardize. And the way that this works is we just pick over under. And generally, we end up being right more often than we're wrong about these, which again, is not a knock on MLB trade rumors. I don't think I would be particularly good at coming up with contract predictions for an entire free agent class. But if you give me someone else's list and tell me I can just cherry pick the ones that

seem strangest to me, then I guess I'll be right more often than I'm wrong. I'm pretty glad we're not drafting my list, for example. Right. So the way that it works is you pick a player and you just try to get it directionally right. And then there is a bonus if you do get it directionally right. And then if you do get it directionally right, then you also get added to your ledger the amount that there was between the predicted contract

and the actual contract. So for instance, last year, MLB Trade Rumors predicted that Charlie Morton would sign a one-year $8 million deal. I took the over on that. He ended up signing a one-year $15 million deal. So I got the $10 million bonus from being directionally right plus the $7 million that separated his predicted and actual contracts, and that gave me a plus $17 million. So I actually did win the draft last year.

I will just mention that for anyone who is keeping track Sam and I drafted last year and I ended up according to official effectively wild stat keeper John Chenier at 136.7 million and Sam ended up at 114.5 and we were yeah it was a pretty close one and we were both right on six of our eight picks each so generally we had some idea what we were doing here and as i recall last year i think we took the over on most of our picks and i don't know whether mlb trade rumors was low across the board but it just seemed like there were more potential over values to me, maybe because MLPTR expected the market to be very depressed by the pandemic and the lack of attendance and everything. And it turned out not to be that much, fortunately. But I don't know about you two, but perusing the list this year, I ended up with way more

potential unders, which I don't know if that says something about me or the list or our understanding of the market or what but i was hard pressed to find very many compelling over prospects yeah yeah i hope i'm wrong i guess like i if if only because it suggests a healthier market that i anticipate you know for have. But yeah, I messaged Clemens before this and I was like, yeah, I got a lot of unders here. Yeah. So I guess that's a bit of a bummer here because we're all going to be like, nope, I don't think he's going to get that much. We're not really rooting for them to get less. We want to win our draft, I guess, but there are zero stakes associated with that.

So we would rather have healthy free agency than be right about our under picks here. get less we want to win our draft i guess but they're zero stakes associated with that so we would rather have healthy free agency than be right about our under picks here but i guess ben you're the guest you want to go first generally we take eight players a piece but since we have three people on this draft we'll just do five a piece 15 total picks all right yeah i'll kick it off i will take the under on max scherzer yeah yeah i think that their projection for scherzer generally makes a lot of sense they have uh three years at 40 million dollars per year i think that there's a chance he just takes a two-year deal and that he's not gonna be 260 so i'm just gonna win automatically on the number of years right so

i think that's a it's unlikely that he's gonna get meaningfully more than that so i think that's a it's unlikely that he's going to get meaningfully more than that so i think that's a safe first pick yeah and we should say we we judge this by guaranteed money so if there's deferrals or options or opt-outs or whatever we're not really trying to price those in it would get too complicated so we're just going by guaranteed dollars meg you want to go next oh sure i will take cory seager and i am also taking the under trade rumors has him at 10 years for 305 guaranteed and i think that while the the under might not be dramatically under that total i think that it will be under and i wouldn't be surprised if he gets fewer years than 10 i think the injury stuff is just going to make people a little nervous and nervous enough to bring him below that. And especially when you factor in the likely positional change in some portion of this contract, which,

you know, as, as Ben said, in his top 50 write up will still make him a very good player, but just wanted an easier defensive position. I think I take the under on Seager. All right. I think I'm going to take an over just to make sure that I get one. I want one over here somewhere. So I'm going to take the over on Carlos Rodon at one year and 25 million. I know that obviously he does not have a long track record of health or effectiveness. And his 2021 successful season surprised a lot of people first time all-star and he broke down later in the year and they really tried to rest him and

it just didn't work i mean he was effective at times when he was starting sporadically but then even in the postseason it seemed like they didn't really trust him and so it's hard to see him as a safe long-term investment but of course he is still 28 he turns 29 next month and he's just coming off such a good year and as you noted ben he did not get a qualifying offer so no draft pick compensation attached to him that's dragging him down and i just have to figure he's gonna get more than one year i would think that someone would give him a multi-year offer and that that would inevitably take him over the total of 25 yeah that was actually gonna be my next pick okay so am i up again yes all right i will take kevin gausman under yeah that was gonna be my

next pick too. And kind of just what I said earlier, I could see him getting the average annual value they project. I could see him getting the years they project, but I don't think he'll get both, which is six years at more than $20 million a year. Yeah, 38 total. Yeah. I think he'll end up compromising on one or the other.

Yeah, because he's another guy who I guess didn't really break down necessarily, but was less effective and ate fewer innings as the season wore on. And also someone who I guess had more of a recent track record of effectiveness than Rodan, but still was like semi surprising. So, yeah, I'm with you there. Okay. I feel bad about my picks. I mean, I think they're fine, but I feel bad about them. I'm going to take the under on Freddie Freeman.

Trade Rumors has him at six years and 180, and I think he will probably be closer to Ben's estimate, which had him at five and 135. I think Freeman will end up testing the market. I doubt they get this done before the CBA expires but I think that like at the end of the day he wants to be in Atlanta and Atlanta wants him there and while that maybe reduces each of their leverage a little bit like I think that tends to hurt Freeman more than it does Atlanta and so I'll take the under on Freeman even though I like Freddie Freeman He's a good player. Yeah. Okay. I guess I will take the under on Castellanos at five and

115. And I guess this is mostly just based on him not being a good defensive player and being 30 years old and he is coming off a great offensive season. He has really dependably been a very good hitter but i guess it's just kind of you know limited defensive home and yes the dh helps maybe opens up more potential suitors but also makes him less valuable or i don't know in his case it might not actually make him less valuable if he's a th he might be better suited to be a dh but there is sort of a ceiling i think on what teams are willing to pay a dh type and from the looks of it it seems like the fangraphs crowd and also you ben clemens would agree with me on the under here but it just seems like castellanos kind of like the model of the type of player who used to really get paid in free agency and now

not so much just because of the age and also just because of the limited you know base running and defensive ability but he really can rake and this year for the first time in a while it wasn't like his uh stat cast stats were better than his actual stats like he really produced this time. Yeah. I will say that of the six picks I thought were the best, we've now picked all six. Okay, then. All right. I'm going to take one more under.

I'm going to take the under on Starling Marte. And I actually like their projection okay. I just think Marte is going to take a short higher average annual value deal. Yeah. What do they have him at? $420,000, so $80 million total guaranteed. And I predicted him for $250,000. And I think that he just makes a lot of sense as a short-term, high-dollar deal.

So while I think that they're in the right neighborhood, I just think that the shape is going to be different enough that I'll win on that. Okay, I'm going to take an over. All right. I'm going to take an over. All right. I'm taking the over on Jan Gomes. They have him at two years and 10 million. I think that he, Ben, you're so good at your job, Ben.

You're both good at your job. I mean, Clemens in this particular instance. I think that Gomes will sign a one-year deal, but I think that it will be for more than 10. So I'm taking the over on him. They're just so, like we talked about it when Perez was cut loose by Cleveland. Just like, do we need another catcher on this list? Because there's only Jan Gomes and we talked about it a little and I think it only took a minute to decide. No, it's Jan Gomes. So the market is so thin that I think he'll he'll be able to

extract a little bit extra as a result of that and outdo 10 million so be well Jan good luck okay all right I guess well I've got this under guy I've got that under guy which under guy am Guess I'll go for Jorge Soler Under at 3-36 And Maybe the upside is a little Limited with this pick I don't know He should make some Significant amount of money but He was so bad with the Royals

Before that trade So bad Everyone has forgotten that now Because of the way he ended that Season with Atlanta in the regular Season and in the postseason but He spent most of the season with The Royals and boy he was bad

With them and really Other than that 48 Homer home run king season With the Royals you know it's Been up and down to say The least and he's never been a great On base guy and It's possible that given his postseason

Showing and the way that he finished that season That someone really will Want to go big with Jorge Soler But I don't know he turns 30 by the time Pitchers and catchers are reporting roughly Theoretically if they report At the typical time

and i just kind of wonder you know again like not a great defensive player like he has to mash and at times he has mashed but he hasn't really reliably mashed and he has some recent history of being bad as well so gonna go with the under on that yeah i think i think that people are really overrating the the world series and postseason in general premium on that i was looking at the the way the braves were managing at the start of this postseason and they were pinch hitting for solera and eddie rosario frequently you're just trying to lull their opponents into a false sense of security right i'm gonna take an over i I'm going to take the Mark Kana over. And this is somebody I also could have listed as someone I was highest on relative to consensus.

I love Mark Kana. I think he's super underrated. I think he's much better as a hitter and as a flexible defender than he gets credit for, like, basically by us. I think that there will be a lot of demand for him on teams because he fits a ton of places. He doesn't embarrass himself in the field. And I don't think it'll take a lot of years to get him, but Trade Rumors has projected him for $24 million guarantee.

And I think he'll outdo that. Okay. There's like, you know, there's an incentive to go with some of the bigger guys because if you get the direction right right the gap might be meaningful after that and with that in mind i guess i can't it was my next pick i'm gonna take the under on semian they have six years and 138 and i think the age and the fact that he will have to go back to second base, even if he starts at short in the course of this contract, means that he'll do less well. I think both in terms of years and guarantee, but he might end up being around there.

So yeah, Semyon, sorry. I love your career turnaround, but I think you're going to make a little less money than they think. Okay, I think I will take another under. I'll take Alex Wood under, I think I will take another under. I'll take Alex Wood under, I think. They have Alex Wood at $3,030. Yeah, they have them. It's still pretty good. Seems like a lot for Alex Wood.

I'm just going to put that out there. He signed last year for one year and $3 million, and it took until January for him to sign with San Francisco. And he had a good year, you know, but it wasn't like an amazing year. It was like a slightly above league average year, I guess. And mostly stayed healthy, which is encouraging for Alex Wood. But yeah, I don't know that he did enough to be a year older and go from one year and three million to three years and 30 million. That's a pretty big jump. So I'm going to guess that that does not happen. I'm very disappointed you picked him. I had a little box of two low dollar players who I still wanted to go under on. It was Solaire and Wood. Alright. So he scooped

me on both of them. I'm going to take one last over. I don't know how I feel about this one, but I think there's a good chance it's right. I'm going to take the over on Kenley Jansen. He's projected for two years at $13 million per by Trade Rumors. I think he'll get a three-year deal.

I'm going to take the over. He certainly rejuvenated himself seemingly. So he did. What do I want to do? So many equivalent unders. Right. I guess I'm going to do that thing I do where I call an audible at least once and effectively wild draft and then end up being mad about it later.

I can only be true to myself, you guys. draft and then end up being mad about it later. I can only be true to myself, you guys. Drafts are so agonizing for you. I know. I really – I love listening to it. It's always like when I propose a draft, it's like, oh, no. Have I got to put Meg through this? Did you see the minor league free agent list draft today, Ben?

Yes, I did. I'm going to start preparing tomorrow. I'm going to clean you a cluck this year. I'm going to start preparing tomorrow. I'm going to clean your cluck this year. I'm ready. I guess let's stay with postseason performers who we think will underperform. I think the amount of underperformance here is probably small, but I think we'll be directionally accurate. I'm going to take Eddie Rosario here because I think the teams know better. What do they have him at?

They have him at two years and 15. And I could see him getting like a one year and 10. I could see him getting one year and 10. I could see him getting two years and 12. I don't know. I'm calling it an audible. I think that Eddie Rosario is a good, fine player. I think the fact that he was readily available is surprising,

given how he did but i think that he is uh defensively limited in a way that makes him less useful than you might expect and he really still will just swing it pretty much anything so his approach makes me nervous and i'm taking the under yeah i wouldn't be shocked if I haven't really looked to see like how he would fit on Atlanta but he does seem like a prime candidate for the like post-world series glow halo effect sure we just won it all and this guy was a hero for us and let's bring him back kind of like the Red Sox re-signing Steve Pierce after 2018 not that they gave him a huge deal Or anything but he wasn't Very productive after that point But yeah I mean he's

Better than Steve Pierce probably but But yes Alright so this is My last pick the last Pick right yeah I guess I will take another Under and I'll go with Rysell Iglesias

Under at 4 years And 56 million dollars And he got a Qualifying offer I don't think he'll Accept the qualifying offer but there is An outside shot I suppose Just really loves being with the Angels Maybe just such a great track record

With pitchers and postseason success But I always like to take a qualifying offer guy because occasionally I'll be rewarded when a player surprisingly accepts one. Like Marcus Stroman last year was one of my picks. That's a windfall, not for the player, but for me. But also he is kind of older than maybe people think of Rysel Iglesias being. is kind of older than maybe people think of ricel glacius being he will turn 32 in january and he is pretty homer prone and he has been very effective nonetheless and he does rack up innings for a closer in this day and age and you know you can't really knock his performance. He did give up home runs last year, but he also struck out 13 per nine and walked 1.5 per nine.

And if you're giving up solo homers, it's not so bad. And he can obviously miss bats. And some team will probably be very interested in Reisel Iglesias. But I just don't know that combination of age and contract length and AAV and qualifying offer attached to him if he doesn't accept it, that all says to me that maybe he will end up under 56. Yeah. I ended up changing my actual official projections the last minute, but I had Jansen and Iglesias as basically the same player throughout my rankings,

and they're $30 million apart on the MLB trade rumors list. So that did surprise me. Did anyone have any almost overs that they considered taking here? I had one, which was Brandon Belt. They just have him accepting the qualifying offer from the Giants. So one year and 18.4. And that might happen, but I wouldn't be surprised if they worked out some kind of brandon

crawford type multi-year extension if he turns it down it's for multiple years so right you would win on that yeah i would think so i mean he's good and even in the last few years since they changed that park like it doesn't even seem to be suppressing his offense as much he hits for power obviously not durable and he's good for an injury or two every year. I don't know if you can blame him for a thumb fracture or not, but it seems like injuries always find Brandon Pelt one way or another. But even so, when he's healthy, he has been very productive. I considered the over on Eduardo Rodriguez just because I think he's good and I think there's some chance that the pitching market just develops in a way where he gets a lot,

but not as much as I like my other picks yeah he would have been someone who was underrated probably 10 years ago or something you know before people realized that his peripherals were really good even though his cra wasn't so great i'm looking through here again seeing if there's anyone who i was like oh the clear over i don't know. I could maybe see John Gray doing a little bit better than this. What do they have him at? They have him at four years and 56. I think the number of years is right. I could see him doing slightly better on the guaranteed dollars,

but probably not by much. I don't know. I feel like there's always one starting pitcher where you think that they are part of a group of roughly equivalent guys. And there's a team that just really likes some weird part of their peripheral profile that makes them make five to 10 million more than you'd expect them to. But I don't know who that guy is in this. I could see Cruz doing slightly better than he did here. But like, again, not by very much.

One year and 12 million is probably about right for a guy who's going to be 42 next July. So I don't know did either of you think about taking the under on korea who was at 10 and 320 and if you were just gonna go by like zips projections or something that would probably be higher and so i considered it just because of what you said meg about how if you take someone who has a huge dollar value you know even if they're off by a small percentage basis, it could still be a bigger gain for you than it would be if you're going for some one-year deal type guy. Ultimately, I just assume this would be roughly right, even if it statistically might seem like a slight overpay just because he's the number one guy and you figure that there will be bidders for him. And we have seen shortstop deals of that size and length for comparable players so it's definitely not out of the realm

of possibility yeah i considered it i just don't have a good enough handle on whether he's gonna get 10 years or 9 years or 11 years and it seems like that would be the determining factor there and i don't know it just felt like there were better choices but I think I would have picked an under two if I were going to pick one or the other yeah yeah Chris Bryant was one where I was really unsure like I projected him for more than they did but I didn't that was one of the predictions that

I feel least confident in and it seems like the kind of thing where he might take a very long deal and he might take a very short deal I just have very little idea there so that one needs to stay away they had 6 160 and you had 8 200 yeah so a similar like average annual value thing and he's one that i he's the one that i'm most worried i'm high about basically and they would kind of agree on that so i just stayed away I thought about taking the under on Baez. Was he 500?

500, yeah, 100. Brendan Goloski wrote a convincing reason why a team might give him a short but higher average annual value deal, and you'd do well if that happened. Yeah, so I thought about that. I don't know. It's just so hard to feel confident.

I had a bunch of other potential unders on my list. Anthony Rizzo, 3-45. Another ex-cub, Kyle Schwarber, 4-70. And who else? I wrote down Verlander at 2-40 just on the thought that maybe he would either accept the qualifying offer or settle for some sort of one year deal but doesn't seem far-fetched that he might get to from someone and then I guess I had Avi Sayil Garcia under at 3 and 36 you say Kikuchi 2 and 20 just because of how he ended that season and I guess the possibility that he could go back to Japan,

which I don't know what we would do in that case. I don't know if we count NPB salaries and sometimes those aren't even released, but- You'd do well because I think they can only make one-year deals, right? Oh, well, yeah. So he turned down, the Mariners turned down their, what, four-year option on him. And then he turned down 113, I believe. Yeah. So he thinks that he could get more than that presumably and if he's right then there wouldn't be much gain between that and 2 and 20 that they projected for him but he could be wrong so i always kind of liked you say kikuchi and i

was sort of surprised that he didn't do better in his rookie year and was vindicated by the All-Star first half, and then the wheels kind of came off. Yeah, that sounds about right. Meg and I were very, I would say, surprised by his declining the option. We were. So he made it onto our list as number 50, but there was a lot of, like, are we mostly putting him here because it's interesting? They turned down this option?

Yeah. So I thought that was quite strange. I think that there is a good chance that he ends up back in the NPB next year. Yeah. All right. So that concludes this exercise. And I guess we will probably have to wait a while to score this one because who knows how this market will develop or if it will develop at all but thank you for coming on ben and at least allowing us to pretend that this is a normal hot stove sort of situation and that contracts could

get signed any day now you never know it's about as normal as the past few years where you know big contracts happen and after december 1st and exactly hopefully not too long after december 1st. Hopefully not too long after December 1st this time. Yeah. All right. Well, follow Ben on Twitter at underscore Ben underscore Clemens and read him regularly at Fangraphs. You can also sometimes hear him on Fangraphs Audio and Chin Music as well. Always a pleasure to do the double Ben thing. Thank you, Ben.

Yeah, thanks for having me. All right. That will do it for today. As a reminder, you can access the results of all of our drafts and predictions and competitions over the years. There is a big Google sheet with all of them there going back years thanks to John Chenier. I will link to that on the show page. If you're planning to listen along with us when we discuss it starting next week, we'll be talking about at least the first four episodes in one of our episodes next week. As a reminder, if you are one of our non-North American listeners, you should be able to find it on Netflix. If not, you can find it on multiple streaming services with free trials. I will link to those on the show page as well. And we're already receiving testimonials from listeners who have gotten started on their binges. The baseball writer and former Effectively Wild guest Russell Eason just tweeted, I had Stove League on my to-watch list for a while but never got around to it. All it

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