Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1772: Bananas in Pajamas

Episode Date: November 17, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a flurry of signings and other transactions, including the Tigers signing Eduardo Rodriguez, the Angels signing Noah Syndergaard, the Blue Jays extending Jos�� Berríos, and the Mets (finally) hiring a GM, Billy Eppler, plus musings on the Tigers and Mariners “turning the corner,” followups on player rankings, unorthodox […]

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Hello and welcome to episode 1772 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing okay. How are you? Stove. It is starting to get hot. Not even Stove League, which is also hot, but yes, the Hot Stove League. Pitching market is moving. Moving, moving. Yeah. So we got some stuff to discuss today. So we have the Jose Barrios extension with the Blue Jays for seven years, and we have the Eduardo Rodriguez signing with Detroit for five years, and then we have the Noah Sy cba negotiations would slow things down but not

in every case at least it seems like some teams and players are motivated to get deals done before that other deal gets done yeah i think that we had talked about the possibility of some of the non marquee guys going in this little bit if they found a deal that suited them although i didn't think that it would be like the rodriguez's and the cinder guards like i was expecting we'd have like a flurry of reliever moves yeah in this early going so this is a higher profile of player and a potentially more impactful profile of player just by virtue of starters instead of relievers than i was expecting but it's nice to have a little transaction news to tide us over for what might be a long couple of months.

Numbers 13 and 15 on Ben Clemens' Fangraphs top 50 free agents list. So let's talk about Rodriguez for a minute because this is one of my favorite offseason things when a team to use an old Effectively Wild reference turns the corner. You know, when you exit the rebuild and you signal that you are ready to compete by making some big free agent splash. And Rodriguez on his own may not constitute a big free agent splash. It sounds like the Tigers are continuing the corner without everyone noticing necessarily, but they started off so slowly with an 8-19 record in April. And not that April doesn't count or that you can toss it out entirely, but they were a winning team from that point forward. They trailed only the White Sox in record among AL Central teams after April. So again, they seem to have the makings of a competitive team already. And now it seems like they are ready to spend, maybe not to Mike Illich levels, but at least to Chris Illich levels. I guess we'll figure out what those levels are. But this is technically a five-year $77 million deal. There are some incentives there that could bring it up to 80. And there's an opt-out after two years. So if things go well, then Rodriguez could test the market again when he's still 30 because he's only 28 now. Or maybe he'll just be with the Tigers for

the long haul. But either way way it's one of the things that they needed because they have this young exciting rotation with scooble and mize and manning and those guys all showed promise at various points but they needed some innings they needed someone dependable to round out the rotation and rodriguez has had his issues and his ups and downs but he's coming off a good year at least if you dig a little deeper than the surface stats because I'm sure that there are some Tigers fans who are looking at this and thinking what we got a guy with a 4.74 ERA and I'm supposed to be excited about that but the peripherals are strong yeah he he had a career best I believe in strikeouts and a career low walk rate.

And I think that, you know, the Tigers infield is not like especially sterling. Their defense generally is kind of below average, but it's not as below average as Boston's was this year. Good God, Boston had some bad floating. And so you might expect that some things will kind of rebound for him if things shake out well. He had just a ridiculously high BABIP allowed. I think when Ben wrote about it, it was second worst in the majors. Yeah, 366. contact quality. It wasn't like he was giving up a ton of hard hits or anything like that. His hard hit rate was below average. So I think that, you know, when you put him in front of a marginally better defense and, you know, one that could get, say, better if Carlos Correa is part of it. And maybe a better park too than the old lefty and Fenway situation.

Yeah, absolutely. And so I think that there are a number of things here that could move even his surface level stats in a good direction and in a hurry. And, you know And when you look at the Zips projections for him, they're pretty optimistic. And like you said, if things go well, he has the option to test the market again. But if things go well, maybe he looks around and is like, I am part of a resurgent Detroit Tigers team, and I'm just going to stay put and help them win some playoff games. So I really like this move for them. I think, like you said, they have these young starters.

I think having a guy who is reliable, who ended up being very durable this year despite missing an entire season because of heart concerns. So I like this a lot for them. I thought it was good. He outperformed, I think, both Ben and the crowd source estimates in terms of years. I think in terms of dollars, he was right around where we expected. So like, you know, I thought this was a quite good move for Detroit and it's exciting to see them say,

we're ready now. We'd like to try some stuff and do some things. Yeah. So sometimes if you're a team that's coming out of a rebuild, you might have to pay a little bit of a premium to convince someone to come. I don't know if that is the case here but it's like that message signing sort of to signal okay we're one of the big boys now yeah and yeah if you look at like his expected eras on his fancraft page based on batted ball quality he's been very consistent 3.68 3.61 3.55 skipping over 2020 as he did and the eras have fluctuated a little but yeah the core skills are there and if anything improving and it seems like pitcher development is a strength of this tigers organization and they seem to have started to supplement that with some interesting position players too whether it's Candelario or Badu

or, you know, others in that vein who've kind of come along and have contributed and made the Tigers a more watchable team when they weren't a contending team. And then of course you have Spencer Torkelson and Riley Green coming along. So it's starting to shape up, you know, and, and the central has hardly been a powerhouse. And I think the White Sox are certainly set up to continue to contend. And the Royals are trying. I don't know if they're succeeding yet. And the Twins seem like bounce back candidates, but definitely not like leaders in that division the way that we thought they might be or some of us thought they might be

heading into last year. And then Cleveland's just kind of hanging around. At least they have their name now. There was an agreement between the roller derby team and the Cleveland Guardians baseball team. So they both get to share the names now. We don't know the terms, but at least that particular crisis has been averted for now for the baseball team. So there are no truly terrible teams, I suppose, in this division, but it's definitely there for the taking. I mean, depending on the White Sox, what they do, they will probably enter the season as the favorites again, I would think. But based on how active the Tigers are between now and opening day,

like, who knows? They could get there. And certainly in the next couple of years, as they start to mix in some of their other prospects, good things on the horizon. And the Royals certainly think that they're contending. And if they back that with a willingness to spend money, you know, they do have some guys who I like on the younger side. So it's not as if the Tigers can sign one more guy and then they're there, but they don't have a powerhouse in that division. There's no, you know, there are no Dodgers or Giants. They don't have a Giants team, Ben.

Like, you know, they don't have to figure out if the Giants are a powerhouse. I'm sure we'll be talking about that before next up. Yes. So yeah, I think that there's room for them to make moves, and they could be one of those teams that has enough in-house that when they make a couple of signings, we look around come March and are like, oh, I guess we kind of have to deal with the Tigers when we're making our preseason predictions, don't we?

So that's pretty exciting. All right. And then another team that is of interest to me, certainly, and is poised on the precipice of contention, always seems to be and never gets beyond that, the Angels, who have signed Noah Sindergaard to a one-year $21 million deal. They also have to surrender their second highest draft pick because he had a qualifying offer from the Mets that was declined. So the Angels, when I asked Dan Cymborski for projections for the AL West, like right at the end of the season, and this is just based on who the Angels had under team control and who everyone else had under team control, he had the Angels projecting as a 500 team.

And it seems like they have often projected as a 500 team or maybe even a little bit better than that. And then they've ended up right around there or worse than that. And pitching, that is the consistent theme. They always need more pitching. They always have pitchers get hurt. And this, like the Tigers move, seems like it's probably the first of multiple moves, I would think. And their GM Perry Manassian has talked about the need to sign starting pitchers. And this is a start. It's not clear how many innings they

can expect from Zindergaard. He just barely made it back at the tail end of last season after Tommy John surgery, pitched a couple times in relief, didn't even use all his pitches. In theory, he should be good to go and back to full strength by the beginning of next season, but you never know for sure. And sometimes there's some rust and he did have some setbacks during his rehab. So they've tried this gambit before of signing guys who maybe have been hurt or have some injury risk. And often they have not really panned out. But Cinderguard is a higher upside, higher ceiling sort than they have traditionally pursued. And so I'm sort of torn between wanting the Angels to get pitchers and then fearing for any pitchers that the Angels get.

So I don't know. This is not like your bulk innings guy that the Angels have needed necessarily, unless everything works out really well. But at least there is now a second non-Ohtani high upside ace type potential in that rotation. And I don't mean to sell others in that rotation short like patrick sandoval who looked really good at times like there's some talent there there's some young guys who are coming up and and mixing into that team too and reed detmers and so on so there's again always the makings of a contender when you have trout notani but maybe

this will be the year that they finally surround them with a supporting cast. I have two thoughts about this. Well, I have several thoughts, but two come most immediately to mind. The first comes from a friend of the show, Emma Blatchelary, who tweeted when this deal was announced, much as I like to think I'm decently immune to superstitious thinking, I know that I'm not, because my immediate reaction to being approached by the angels as a pitcher with an injury history would definitely be sorry thanks but the weird vibes i can't it does feel like the angels pitching stuff and the mets general inability to keep anyone healthy stuff are colliding in a way that seems very dicey although is not in any way like predictive of what will happen with Cindergard in this season. I do find here's a thing that I was struck by. I was talking about this with

Ben Clemens in the Fangraph Slack, and he pointed this out. And I tend to agree. Kind of weird that it's a one year deal. Yeah. Yeah, I guess so. Like I get it from Cindergard's perspective. I if I am him, I want to reestablish value and show that I can throw maybe not a full complement of innings, but very good innings when I do throw them. And the Angels have said they're going to go with a six-man rotation. And so I'm going to be in a position to manage my workload and hopefully stay healthy and then launch into something greater. But I find the decision on the Angels' part to go one year to be kind of odd because it's like if you're surrendering the draft pick like don't you normally i think we often see these deals for more than one year i guess is the point that i'm trying

to make and so like that part of it is a little bit strange i mean like there's the there's definitely the possibility that in july we look around and we're like god the angels rotation it's fantastic and there's also the possibility we look around in July and we're like poor Noah Syndergaard that guy just can't get help yeah I guess sometimes you see those multi-year deals with a pitcher who's still rehabbing like still working his way back and it's like hey we'll just we'll sign you for two years and we don't even

expect you to pitch the first year or maybe you'll be back late in the first year but we'll have that cushion and if everything works out well then it'll be good for us because we'll have you for a second year Synderndergaard, maybe he feels like, hey, I'm just a healthy starting pitcher now. I made it back and my rehab is over. But yeah, there's definitely a bigger error bar and more uncertainty there. I mean, you can look at the rotation and say, okay, Otani, Syndergaard, Sandoval, Suarez, Detmers, you've got a couple other guys

in the mix, Griffin Canning, Jaime Barilla. I mean, Cobb and Bundy are both free agents, but really that's another case of like, well, if everything works out, okay, that could be a contending team's rotation, but when has everything worked out for the Angels? So I would not be comfortable unless they were to sign at minimum one more dependable starting pitcher. And I know that they've kind of talked about short-term options and they've been linked to like Verlander. And again, not that like Verlander would be a safer bet than Sindergaard either coming off of his TJ and at his age. So it would be kind of nice if they signed like I don't know Eduardo Rodriguez

for instance but someone who is still available who does not have some serious injury issues attached to him prior to his arrival on the Angels and then Brios you know it's an extension so I don't have

as much to say about it but this is a case where the Blue Jays gave up a lot of pretty good prospects to get Brios for the stretch run. They're a team that was kind of like in the Tigers boat last offseason where they were ramping up and the rebuild was done and they were going to throw some money around and they did. some money around and they did and then they continued to show their willingness to upgrade the roster in season and brios was a big part of that and ultimately unfortunately they fell short but they were just tough to beat down the stretch and they're bringing back most of that team not the entire team robbie ray is a free agent of course but having brios who was under team control for one more year to begin with now they've locked him up long term and they don't have to worry about that part of the rotation for a while so again like they have the great young position player core and the question all along has been where are they going to get the pitching and they've developed some and they've

imported and signed some and traded for some and now extended some. And it was actually a really good starting rotation and a good pitching team down the stretch. Didn't necessarily start out the season that way, but it was won by the end. And Brios was one reason why. Yeah, I really like this. I enjoy it's sort of a funny way to think about this, perhaps. It's sort of a funny way to think about this, perhaps. But I really enjoy when guys who have been traded for and to a team had to surrender a good amount in terms of viable prospects, in various cases, top 100 guys to secure that

ends up being extended and staying, which is funny because it just is a doubling down of your resource commitment, right? You gave up the prospects and now you're giving up money. But there's something about it that's like, yes, this worked out the way we wanted it to. We really like this guy. We think he's a good fit for the team. He makes us better. And we're not going to be intimidated by the prospects that we traded in order to secure his services. We want to keep him around. There's just something about it that I find very satisfying.

It's like validating the trade once more, which was a trade we liked at the time, despite it being aggressive in terms of how many guys they had to give up to get him so i like it i kind of still would like to see them bring robbie ray back i don't think that they are perhaps in the robbie ray sweepstakes anymore i don't know i don't say that no in anything i just wonder if like now that they've extended burrios and they will want to continue to spend on the market that they will shift their focus to the position player side of things because they have indicated that they want to still be active there but yeah this is exciting like i like it jose burrios is really fun he's a great pitcher he'll be good for them for a long time it's cool yeah i guess if you're a twins fan

you're sort of sad to see it just because you must feel like, hey, we could have signed him to that deal, you know, seven years, $131 million. I mean, I think people understood why they made that trade because they had fallen so far out of the running in 2021 and they got good prospects back. like that away is the fact that the other team gets a chance to keep him for as long as it wants, gets to talk to him about an extension before he hits the free agent market. And maybe the Twins might have told themselves, you know, we can sign him when he hits the market in a year and a half, but that is not going to happen now. So the Twins have to figure out where their pitching is going to come from, but hopefully the prospects they got back will develop in a way that will make it a little more palatable that they won't have Jose Barrios. Now Minnesota needs to sign Robbie Ray.

And then it's like no trade happened at all? Question mark. I don't know. And I guess there's one final transaction we should talk about, which as we speak here on Tuesday afternoon has not been officially reported, but it sounds like the Mets' long national nightmare may be over. I mean, it's too soon to say that the Mets' nightmare is over, but at least their search for a baseball operations executive would appear to be over. And reportedly, they have agreed to a deal with Billy Epler. be over and reportedly they have agreed to a deal with Billy Epler. Speaking of the Angels, former Angels GM, former Rockies scout and high level Yankees executive.

He has been a guest on this podcast. I met him when I was interning for the Yankees and got to know him a little bit there. So this brings the weeks long, maybe more than a month-long search for a Mets first baseball operations president. And then when they gave up on that, eventually just GM to a close. organization and really even about this baseball operations department because initially they were planning to have a president of baseball operations who would sort of supplant Sandy Alderson and Alderson would transfer to the business side now that they've hired a GM I assume that Alderson will remain involved to some extent in baseball moves and obviously if you're Epler, you must know that you were, what, the 12th choice? I don't know how far down the list they got, but it was really like one of the most public and protracted and frankly embarrassing executive searches that I can recall, you know, usually it's just, hey, Team X has a list of Y candidates and now they will interview them and then they will hire one. Whereas with the Mets, it was just week after week of, oh, so-and-so turned down the opportunity to interview.

So-and-so has taken their name out of the running. You know, they set their sights very high, unrealistically high, really, with Theo Epstein and Billy Bean and David Stearns. And, you know, it's fine to ask, I suppose, and with the understanding that you're probably going to have to set your sights a little lower. But after that, it was like, well, then they went a tier below that, and then they went a tier below that. And no one wanted this job, seemingly, which I guess is understandable given the steve cohen-ness and the fact that he will likely be meddling to some extent or at least tweeting and then you have alderson and the complications there and you have alderson's son who is the assistant gm

and then you have just the organizational rot that seemed to have set in over a period of years and just the general reputation of the Mets. So it makes sense that this position was hard to fill. But ultimately, they ended up with at least someone reputable, like someone who has done the job before. We could argue, I guess, about whether he did the job well. But they got someone you've heard of. So that's something. Yeah, I think the way I would describe it is that the Mets nightmare never ends. It's just punctuated by brief periods of wakefulness.

Yep, yep. That makes sense. It is. I mean, I think, I don't know that Billy Epler is necessarily the indictment on the process, but the fact that they went through all of this, presumably because they were in some cases waiting to hire guys who were involved with teams that were in the postseason to then end up hiring Epler who was just like around.

You know, it's like you could have, and obviously they didn't know where they were going to land, but if they had, it's like, oh, you could have just gotten going. Like if Billy Epler is in place a couple of weeks ago, is Bob Melvin the manager of the Mets? Yeah, that's a good question. So they're going to continue to have organizational pain points that they have to address and hiring they have to do. They somehow have another person who has been associated with Mickey Call strangeness there with his son being involved has really created further issues for them here. So I don't know. I don't know. I didn't really have like very strong feelings about Epler when he was with Los Angeles. Like the fact that you were able to get Otani seems fine yeah when I talked to Epler about that like he didn't seem to know how they got Otani yeah I mean you know I'm sure they must have done something right but I think even they at the end of that process were left wondering like why did he pick us I mean I guess they you know gave him assurances that he would be able to do his two-way thing and and they have lived up to

that right so it's worked out in that sense for otani although obviously he wants to compete but yeah that's a feather in the cap however it happened he did sign trout to that long-term extension yeah it's weird it's like yeah the the Mets have hired someone who has hired Mickey Calloway in the past and also was working for an agency shades of Brody Van Wageningen though not really because he's only been working for an agency for a couple months and obviously has been a GM before unlike Van Wageningen but I don't really know how to grade Epler's tenure in Anaheim which was was what, 2015 to 2020. They didn't make the playoffs. Obviously, that is a failure on some level, how much is attributable to him So what's another meddling owner who's like in the public eye and is maybe inclined to intervene on transactions, which I guess we don't know for sure that Cohen will be yet. teams were not necessarily clamoring to have him take the highest job in a baseball operations department over the past year or so. But who knows? I think he maybe had some family stuff going on. I remember speaking to him. I think he had just had a kid and he was kind of enjoying

the time away as well. But it's hard to judge based on that Angels track record and say, oh yeah, this is exactly who you would want. But also, can you completely condemn him and say he can't win based on that? Probably not. So there's a lot of uncertainty that still surrounds this whole situation. But at least they have resolved this single piece of the uncertainty. And now they can move on to some other aspects of it, like figuring out what transactions to make and which players to sign and which manager they want, et cetera. I'm sure that won't take many, many more months. No, not at all. I mean, they're in this great window

where they have two weeks to get anything done before everything freezes. I mean, you can hire a manager, I guess, while the CBA is getting sorted out. So they have a longer runway on that. But yeah, it's been a curious winter for them. It doesn't mean that they can't emerge from it as a competent team, but they've made things harder for themselves. Stop playing on hard mode.

You could just be a team in an enviable media market with a very wealthy owner and win some baseball games. That's hard. It's hard to win any baseball games, but I don't quite understand their need to make it harder. maybe some people just didn't have what it takes to come be a GM in New York or something. Obviously, Epler has been an assistant GM in New York, but I doubt that is what was the big obstacle for many people. And then there was that anonymous quote that was in the post or something where some anonymous executive was like, why wouldn't people want to go to the Mets? It's like the pinnacle of baseball or whatever. And it's like, what sport, what league are you watching exactly? But yeah, it's always seemed like the foundation was there. There was talent. It's a big market. You have the richest owner in baseball. There are the seeds of something. There are the ingredients for what

could be a winning organization. It's just like they can't get out of their own way. And this search does not exactly inspire confidence. But maybe the results will be more beneficial than the process would suggest. Yeah. I mean, like anything can happen once you start like playing games, and they do have a foundation of talent that is pretty enviable, and they have the ability to spend, but they need to demonstrate process proficiency, I guess, for lack of a better term, whether it comes to this kind

of thing with hiring or the rocker debacle still looms for them. I think that it is not that they can't, in do that and i don't i don't have a great sense of how skilled a leader epler in particular is at those kinds of things so i'm not knocking him i just don't know one way or the other but you need to like demonstrate process proficiency before we're going to assume that there is like good logic and cohesive logic to the process yeah they're not in the benefit of the doubt stage and it might take them a while to get there so uh do that and then and then we might stop making jokes about it maybe it'll take some time but but yes it'd be nice if they would i enjoy when we have the opportunity to make fun of the Mets for silly stuff.

Like I need them to stop screwing up in ways that are like damaging to human people. Like when it's the mascot flipping off fans, like that's the good, that's the spicy meatball that we're interested in. We are not interested in the like, my life is permanently altered because of my interaction with this organization meatball those are bad meatballs yes all right by the way i guess the mariners are sort of in the same situation as the tigers what i was talking about like the the team that is ready to go all in after completing a rebuild or at least getting a long way along in its rebuild who do you think i don't know what the best way to ask this question is, spends more money this offseason or enters next season with a better wins projection or whatever?

Mariners or Tigers, which one would you take today? What an interesting question. Hmm, Ben. So I think that it might be Detroit, if only because they have more of their young pitching up, although they still have position player work to do, obviously. But I think it might be Detroit. The funny thing about Seattle, the reality we all have to prepare ourselves for is that like I could envision a scenario where they end up winning the exact same number of games next year that they did this past season and they'll deserve it. And that'll be the difference, right? We'll look at it and be like, this is a good baseball team. And like they won, they won games. And like they, you know, there's, there's like heft behind that record. There's,

you know, you pull back the hood and it's not just like a bunch of springs. Whatever fun differential is made out of. So I could envision them doing that. I have seen the bubblings. I took a little bit of a Twitter break hiatus, if you will. And before I did that, I noticed just a lot of consternation among the Mariners fans I follow that they are, you know, they want to know who is being signed, who is being brought in, you know, it is November and they are antsy and I can't blame them because it's like

now you get to be excited. And so there are stakes in a way that there's often aren't when it comes to Mariners baseball. I think the good news for Seattle, this is going to sound like a backhanded compliment and I don't mean it that way. And they still have to sign good players, obviously, but there are a lot of places that this roster could improve, right? They have work to do kind of, they need two starters and they need infields help. And, you know, despite having some really exciting prospects in the outfield and some good

regulars there now, you can never have too many good outfielders, right? You really can't. So I think that from Seattle's perspective, as long as they sign good players, they'll get better no matter what because they have a lot of work to do. It's going to be very strange to engage with the projections.

We'll have to have we'll have to have schusterman on when the cba kerfuffles are over and players have been signed and guys are getting ready to report to camp and we can like really look at the roster and then it's gonna be weird because we're gonna look at it and i expect to be like the prices team are really good and that's gonna feel so strange yeah in a good Yeah, in a good way, hopefully. In a good way. All right. Last thing, quick follow-up from our discussion on the last episode.

You remember I suggested the idea of a rankings system, something akin to tennis or golf or chess where you turn on the TV and there's a number next to the player's name. And I suggested that something like that, in theory, could work for baseball. And what I didn't know is that they have that in cricket already. You know, the Simpsons already did it meme where whatever joke someone makes, it turns out it was on the Simpsons already. Often that turns out to be the case with cricket, where we suggest something wild and hypothetical in baseball and it turns out that cricket already did it so cricket has a ranking system i'll just read an email that we got here from mark who says with regard to the discussion on the effectively wild podcast about ranking players there are individual rankings in cricket another team sport at the international level

established by the icc, International Cricket Council. Therefore, fans know who is the number one ranked batter or bowler at that moment. What's good about it is the methodology has been applied retrospectively, so there's an all-time rankings list allowing modern-day players to be compared to previous greats. And right now, we know that England player Joe Root just takes the top batter spot ahead of New Zealand's Kane Williamson. player Joe Root just takes the top batter spot ahead of New Zealand's Kane Williamson. I'm not entirely sure how the rankings are calculated, though sustained performance is part of it. They're adjusted after each game and players have a score that goes from 0 to 999. The widely acknowledged greatest batsman of all time, Don Bradman, had a peak score of 961 in October 1948.

A similar system for baseball would be tricky due to the various performance metrics and fielding prowess most likely ignored. But maybe an analysis for batters based largely on OPS plus sustained over time and weighted to include strengths of opponents could yield something. Although the likely answer would be Mike Trout. Yes, of course. Thank you, Mark in England. And also, I note that these rankings are sponsored. So MLB, got to love that idea. They are sponsored by MRF Tires, a tire manufacturing company.

That seems right up Rob Manfred's alley. So you could have the official MLB player rankings. And I asked Jared Kimber, the cricket analyst who's been on the show before, whether these rankings are generally seen as accurate. And he said, not by anyone with eyes. So that's a problem. I guess he said the test ones, test cricket rankings are OK. That's the multi-day high level rankings. But the shorter versions of cricket, ODI and T20, are apparently not very reflective of the player's actual performance

or talent. But generally, it seems like this is accepted and it can be kind of nice for casual fans to see. And also when you have international competition and maybe you're not seeing the players all the time, it's nice to know where they rank and the schedules can be sporadic. There's no set season. So it has been advantageous in certain ways, apparently. And sample size is apparently an issue with the rankings in some forms of cricket, but wouldn't be as big an issue with MLB. So there's more precedent here. It exists in maybe the closest relative to baseball among the major sports. Yeah. and maybe the closest relative to baseball among the major sports. Interesting.

I know we got an email too. Someone brought up the pro football football grades that are on NBC broadcasts. I don't know the answer with this when it comes to cricket, and I don't mean to speak ill of football analytics, but I do wonder if part of this is just like the stat environment that fans have operated in in those sports is a little different than baseball. I think part of why it hasn't it didn't resonate with me when we talked about it was that I felt like we already really had a framework to do this. Right. We had a means for debating.

Well, we had a means for ranking. And then I was comfortable with the debate that that was right. Yes, this could be a monkey's paw situation where we get the official mlb player rankings sponsored by doosan and then the rankings are completely terrible and we're just mad all the time that they're so wrong about the actual ordinal rankings of the players but you know there's some precedent and one other follow-up to something we discussed, we answered an email about the lowest value thing that teams would trade if they could. And we said, well, maybe they could trade broadcasters. We didn't know whether you could actually do that, but we suggested that maybe if they could do that, then they would.

And there is a little precedent there, and it's notable precedent. Ernie Harwell was traded when he was a young up-and-coming broadcaster. He was broadcasting for a double-A team in a minor league at the time, the Southern Association. And Branch Rickey, who was with the Dodgers at that time, thought that Harwell could be a good substitute for Red Barber, the Dodgers announcer who was recovering from an ulcer. So Ricky, in one of his many fine moves, traded catcher Cliff Dapper to that team that Harwell was broadcasting for in exchange for breaking Harwell's broadcasting contract. And as far as I know, that's the only instance in baseball history of a player being traded for a broadcaster. But I would say that worked out pretty well for the Dodgers and for Harwell. that's the only instance in baseball history of a player being traded for a broadcaster. But

I would say that worked out pretty well for the Dodgers and for Harwell. So there's precedent there. And I think you also suggested maybe a mascot could be traded. And then we kind of shot down the idea because, you know, in most cases, a mascot is associated with one team and wouldn't really have the same value to another team. But there's at least a little precedent here in that Yuppie, the famous Expos mascot, was, I don't know if he was traded, but he was sold, I suppose. He was transferred to the Montreal Canadiens. So after the Expos moved and left Montreal, the Nationals initially said that Yupi would still be part of the team, but then the Nationals adopted their new mascot, Screech, and Yupi was just kind of hanging out

in limbo for a while. And then eventually the Canadians made Yupi their mascot. So there was some sort of six-figure transaction there and obviously staying within the same city and his old team left so it makes sense that that would be the situation where that happened yeah did you see the phillies won there i would get to have yes i did fanatic yeah as well on mascot land i don't know the mascot thing is it's interesting to me because it's like if you there are people who have very positive and very negative associations with mascots some people love them and some people hate them and it does seem like you're rolling the dice to trade them it seems like you're you're making a bet on the balance between those things yes and lastly kazuto yamazaki patreon supporter wrote in in response to the question that we

discussed about the best way to end a series what type of routine play would you want to end a series on? And Kaz said, funny enough, Meg said the only bad way to end a World Series is a controversial play. And that is exactly how the 2014 Japan series ended. looked initially like a botched double play attempt by the softbank hawks the umpiring crew decided that the hitter was running inside the line and called him out and the hawks started to celebrate around the mound as the hanshin tigers manager argued near the dog pile as someone watching it live it was one of the most surreal moments and i will link to the video for anyone who wants it but yeah that is not an ideal way to end you don't want the outcome to be in doubt in the final play when you were trying to celebrate yeah no definitely not okay i just

received an email as i was about to wrap up the segment that greatly disturbs me here is the subject line shohei otani joins ftx as global ambassador through long-term partnership. No. The following press release was issued today by FTX, the official cryptocurrency exchange of MLB. Oh, no. FTX Trading and West Realm Shires Services, the owners and operators of FTX, blah, blah, blah, today announced a long-term partnership with global icon

and history-making MLB superstar Shohei Ohtani. In addition to being an FTX global ambassador, Mr. Ohtani will receive all of his compensation in equity and cryptocurrencies. No. Illustrating his strong belief in both FTX and the crypto industry. No. Oh, no. Shohei, no. Milkshake duck for Shohei.

No, I don't think this quite rises to that level. No, definitely not. It's a little disappointing. He has been pretty judicious when it comes to being an ambassador and a spokesperson for things. I have read that he's left a lot of endorsement deals on the table, although he certainly has signed a lot, especially in Japan. But this is not what I would have chosen for him to rep crypto. Oh, well, I guess I'm glad he's making money

even if it's in the form of crypto. Sure. There's obviously a limit to this logic, but I generally don't begrudge athletes trying to make money through endorsements. You have your bright shining time and it is sometimes not as long as you hope it will be. And so I understand making money while you can, but I just will forever resent anyone who tries to make me know more about this.

Yes. Well, maybe we will touch on Otani again later in the week, depending on how some awards voting goes. Now we will take a quick break and then we will be back Otani again later in the week, depending on how some awards voting goes. Now we will take a quick break and then we will be back with a guest. And this interview falls under the category of can't believe it took us this long to talk about this. It's like when we had the creators of Blaseball on the show. And I thought, how did we not do this before? Because that whole game is about what if baseball was different? If baseball were different, how different would it be? And that goes for the Savannah Bananas as well.

So many of you, I'm sure, have heard of the Savannah Bananas and Banana Ball, their attempt to debut a dramatically different and perhaps more exciting version of baseball. and perhaps more exciting version of baseball. This is a team that is in Savannah, Georgia and is playing exhibition games and is part of a college summer league, but also has this traveling team that plays banana ball. And it's basically like every Effectively Wild email show question put together into a game. And we will be talking now to Zach Frangelo,

who is the director of entertainment for the Savannah Bananas so we'll discuss how the Bananas came to be and where their future lies and what if anything could be borrowed from Banana Ball to make Major League Baseball better. We'll be back with Zach in just a moment. Savannah, tell me what you have in mind Savannah, this weight is only multiplying Maybe you can't lift it, at least you're trying

I'll keep running and you'll keep fighting Savannah, tell me what you have in mind All right, I want to start this segment with an excerpt from an article that J.J. Cooper wrote about the Savannah Bananas back in March. He wrote, let me describe to you a new game. There's a pitcher. He throws a ball to a catcher. There are other fielders, nine in total. There's a batter. He tries to hit the ball thrown by the pitcher. Yes, there are umpires and foul poles. A ball that clears the faraway fence is a home run. Three strikes is an out. Four balls allows the runner to reach base. Sound like baseball? It's not baseball. Each game has a strict two-hour time limit. Innings end immediately if the home

team takes a lead. Each inning is a point. Win an inning, win a point. First team to five points wins the game. A fan catching a foul ball counts as an out. Walks have a batter speeding around the bases while the team in the field tries to throw the ball around the diamond. It's baseball-like, but I promise you, you are more likely to enjoy this game if you don't think of it as baseball. Just try to enjoy it on its own merits. Batters can't step out of the box. Coaches can't visit the mound. Instead of extra innings, any tie at the two-hour mark is settled by a batter-pitcher face-off. Each one of these showdowns results in either a point—remember, first-team to five points

wins—or an out. In the showdown tiebreaker, there's a batter against a pitcher and a catcher and sometimes one fielder. They're figuring this out as they go along. The batter is not looking to get a base hit because he has to go all the way around the bases before he's tagged out. Imagine a batter slapping a ball down the line and then racing to get back home before the pitcher can run the ball down and fire it to the catcher. It's crazy. It's unlike anything you've seen on a baseball field. But if you start thinking about what the Savannah Beninist traveling team is doing as baseball,

well, that's where your brain may begin to fry. So let's fry our brains a little bit today with the director of entertainment of the Savannah Bananas, Zach Frangelo. Hello, Zach. Welcome. Hi, guys. Thank you guys so much for having me on. I'm smiling ear to ear just hearing that. That's awesome. Thank you guys for having me. Yeah, well, the team has gotten a ton of attention, not just from JJ, but from many other major media outlets. And now from us, we're a little late to the party here. So I know that this was your first full year with the Bananas, so you haven't been with the team since its inception, but can you give us a little high-level summary? Who are the Bananas? Where do they play? Why do they play?

Who plays for them, et cetera.? Where did they come from? And how did this become such a sensation? Yeah, absolutely. So I'll kind of dive into my story just on how I got here first, and then I'll head into the Bananas history along those lines. So like you said, I just finished up my first season here with the Savannah Bananas. Jesse Cole, the owner of the team, actually reached out to me personally at the time I was working in Vegas with the Vegas Golden Knights NHL hockey team. And he called me, he said, I'm looking for a director of entertainment. I don't know if you know what we got going on over here, but I think you'll like it. I have a baseball background myself and kind of grew up in baseball. So it was kind of a no brainer. You know, if you're in the baseball world, you know what the Savannah

Bananas are doing, but I don't think people quite understand the extent of how incredible this team really is. And I came in and, wow, I was absolutely blown away of just the culture that has been created here in Savannah with the Bananas. But going into the history of the Bananas started here in 2016. And, you know, it wasn't always sunshines and rainbows here of selling out every game. You know, at first they came into a market where professional baseball had ruled since 1926. So a long history here at Grayson Stadium and a whole bunch of different teams playing here.

But it just seemed that baseball hadn't worked out quite well professionally. So, you know, Jesse coming in from Gastonia and wanting to take over this market, they started out by only selling two tickets. And they know they needed to change the way they were thinking. And so they had a name your team contest. And lo and behold, the Savannah Bananas came out. And like I said before, without being sunshines and rainbows, there was a lot of backlash with that. However, as time went on and things started to change, they started to sell out and they started to create fans. And it took off globally through the power of social media and viral videos. This place became heaven for a fun, entertaining aspect for baseball.

And, you know, as time went on, we have two teams. So that original team would that started in 2016 was our collegiate team, which is a member of the Coastal Plain League. And then as of this past year, I believe it was 2020. We created our premier team, which is really exciting. This is the team that plays banana ball. And they're hold them a whole bunch of different levels everywhere from you know former major and minor league players um to indie ball guys but just an insane talented group of guys that came together and and we created uh this new form of baseball in banana ball and it's been nothing short of of incredible to see the reactions that we've gotten and and

the the good publicity from from it as well. So a little bit more about you. You have a degree in dance, right? Correct. Then you worked in hockey with the Golden Knights and with UNLV, and then you joined the Bananas this spring and have graduated to Director of Entertainment, which is a great title. So tell me a little bit about the baseball background of yours that you mentioned and then also how your previous jobs in sports and also, I guess, your background in dance prepared you for the bananas job.

Yeah. So I didn't think there was a place on earth where I would combine my hockey, baseball, dance resume quite like it has here. But no, like you said, yeah, I grew up playing baseball my whole life, all through high school, I was playing at a pretty high level, and was fortunate enough to get a couple offers here and there, but nothing quite to where I wanted to go. And then I also was playing hockey throughout throughout my life as well here and there. But once I once I got to school, unfortunately, I was medically disqualified due to concussions. And so that pretty much put an end to the baseball dream of mine. But throughout high school, I had started performing, performing and dance, you know, with my two older sisters, Lisa and Lexi. They were both involved in musical theater.

And they were having a show called Anything Goes, which is if you're familiar with your musicals, it's a tap dance musical. And so they wanted to get me involved. And I got involved, started taking tap dancing back in my freshman year, and just kind of continued on that route, and I fell in love with it. And so I knew that there was something there with dance. I started taking more technical dancing with ballet and jazz and modern and all that kind of thing throughout my junior and senior

year. And then once I went to college and I got medically disqualified, I switched that over to dance. And I just kind of went along with the performance and choreography aspect, which was awesome, you know, performing in front of crowds and learning about the history of dance and all that kind of thing. But shortly after, it was around my junior year is when the hockey team came to Vegas. And it was really interesting because I knew I wanted to be involved with it, but I didn't know how that was going to happen. It's kind of like, yay, they're coming, now what? So saw an audition for their promo team in Ice Crew and having that hockey background, it was pretty much a no-brainer to join those teams. Did the audition, went really well,

was fortunate enough to get a position. And then after the first game, we did our first game and they were short on stage managers. They didn't have people that could like set up everything that was going on. So myself and a couple other guys, we took over that role in that first year

and never looked back. And that's kind of where my entertainment and sports passion started to grow. I was under a great leader, Johnny Greco, who's now with the Seattle Kraken. He's been a great mentor to me since day one. And he's really pushed that love for sports entertainment. And then as three years, three, four, year three and four go by, it was time to take that next step. And I wasn't really sure where I was going to come to until February 17th. I was playing golf at Revere Golf Club in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'll never forget. I was playing with my parents and I get a video message from a 9-1-2 number.

Who the heck could this be? Take a look at it. And it's a man in the yellow tux. And, you know, thankful is an understatement for that connection to have happened and him wanting to just have the conversation and we had the conversation and here we are, year down the hatch and not looking back, that's for sure. It's been amazing. So this is an undeniably fun way to interpret the game,

but I'm curious how you guys think about balancing that fun and the entertainment value that you're getting with sort of maintaining some semblance of baseball as we understand it. And I think we talk a lot on this podcast about how different baseball would be if it were different. And we often arrive at things that we find to sort of stretch a bit too far. So I wonder if there's maybe a better way to ask this question is, have there ever been any either rule changes or structural changes that you guys have thought, eh, that's a bridge too far? If we were to do that, we would stretch

baseball beyond even what banana ball will tolerate. Yeah, absolutely. And it comes back to our core values of who we are as a foundation. We say it every day, fans first, entertain always. So no matter what we do, and no matter what way we stretch the game, we want to make sure that it gets back to being fans first, you know, is this really fans first? Is this really what our fans want? And is it is it entertaining? Is is is it really doing that and getting to that final goal of fans first entertain always? And absolutely, you know, we were very big in the what if game. So what if the third inning was a circus? You know, what if, you know, we throw these ideas

and Jesse and I have gotten really good at idea creation. And, you know, throughout the season, we're doing 10 ideas a day. We have a repertoire of 200 plus promotions. We're doing four new promotions every game, which include, you know, player walk ups, player celebrations, new promotions in game and during our pregame, you know, we have a full script that is longer than a lot of pro teams regular script just for our pregame. So yeah, and we're always stretching it. And there's always those, there's definitely been some, some interesting ideas that come along with that, that maybe stretch a little too far, but that doesn't mean that that idea became a diamond in the rough. And for example, with banana ball, with the showdowns, the original idea was that it was one-on-one.

So pitcher versus hitter, no fielder or anything like that. And we were finding that there was no way that the pitcher could get off the mound and go feel the ball and get it home in enough time to, you know, for a player to get around the bases. It just wasn't happening. And it wasn't creating that ideal, that perfect scenario. So we looked at the showdown and what is the perfect scenario of a showdown? Well, you know, either pitcher strikes out and celebrates, or there's a hit and there's a play at the plate. And it's this really awesome moment. And, you know, you feel the tension in the crowd of the ball coming in. And then it's making a play at the plate. And boom, he's safe or he's out and everybody goes crazy.

So that wasn't happening with it just being the pitcher. So that's when we implemented the fielder. So the fielder aspect of it, of having a guy be on the infield grass, taking off once the hit is made. During Mobile last year, one of the most electric plays I've ever seen in baseball. And I've watched baseball my entire life. This

play was just unbelievable. We have a guy that's, you know, one of the fastest human beings I've ever seen, Malachi Mitchell. He's playing behind the mound. A ball gets hit out to the wall and it's like, there's no way that there's going to be a play here. This is too, it's like too perfect. He takes off in a dead sprint, gets to the wall, fields the ball, throws it in a perfect relay, play at the plate. And he's called out and everybody just goes nuts. And that's like the perfect situation. That's the perfect scenario. And it, it evolved from asking those questions from the beginning of like, what if the perfect scenario happens? So there's no such thing as a typical banana ball game. I guess it sounds like it's

different from day to day, but can you give us an example, maybe walk us through a script for a game, maybe hypothetical or a very memorable game that you have had just in terms of the quantity of in-game entertainment that you have between innings and then also what's going on on the field? Yeah. So I'll kind of do both, which I'll walk you through kind of a normal game day for a banana ball game and what it looks like for myself and then everybody else. But we're showing up. I'll probably be there around 9 a.m. on a game day, making sure all the scripts are finalized, getting those out to everybody. Our scripts don't just go to our entertainment team. They just go to our entertainment team.

They also go to our marketing team. Our ticket team takes a look at it. Everybody's involved in the script because everybody has a hand in it. And so obviously our marketing team wants to capture some of these incredible moments that we're going to do for the upcoming game. And then from there, we'll have an all-staff chat that starts around noon. And that's where all of us come together and really go over fans first moments that we're going to execute throughout the game. Whether it be someone's

birthday that we're going to make them feel special or someone's traveling in for their anniversary, whatever it may be, we're going over all these moments and making sure that we're putting our fans first and doing unforgettable moments for all these fans. And then we hop into the actual game aspect. And so that starts around four o'clock. And that's when guys start to show up. So four o'clock is our call time for all of our characters and our players and all that kind of thing. At a at a it's about 350 right before batting practice, batting practice will start at four o'clock, we have our player meeting. And this is led by me. And this is where I go through the script with the entire team. And I don't know another team where the director of entertainment actually gets into the locker room and really starts to go over some of the crazy antics that we're going to be doing. But it's very important that we're all on the same page. You know, I'm down there in the dugout with them all game. And so we all need to make sure we're on the same page and they know where they're going to be used, whether that be in the player dance or in the celebrations or, you know, walk-ups, whatever it may be, we're all on the same page. And that happens right at three 50, right before their batting practice, batting practice starts right around four o'clock. And then at four 30, I'm jumping into our cast, cast and crew staff chat, basically. So now I'm going through with all of our characters, our princess, mananas, our dad bod cheerleading squad, banana nanas, our grandma cheerleaders,

split. Anybody that is seen, we're going through this script and we're talking about what's new, what's exciting, where they're going to be for certain things, and really getting into the details. Because if we don't nail the details, you know, things start to get a little gray area. And we don't want any gray area. We'd rather everything be yellow, be in the yellow as staying on brand there. We want to make sure that everything is yellow. So that's kind of where a normal game would start. And then right after that, we get into our cast march or our full march.

And this is right before the doors open. So our doors open at 530. So around 545, we're lining up and getting ready. Our entire cast, all of our players and all of our coaches are involved in this March with our full pep band and everything. And this is how we open the doors. You know, we can easily just say, all right, doors are open and you can start scanning your tickets now. No, we have a full show that happens before with Hey Baby, which is one of our traditions, you know, throwing out foam balls, giving high fives, all that kind of thing. And then we do a countdown 10, 9, 8, all the way down

to one. And now the gates are open. And it's just showing that extra appreciation. And then all of our guys go through and high five everybody in line. And then from there, we get into all of our pregame traditions, which start usually right around 645. Pregame traditions being our banana baby, where we hold up a baby in a banana costume and play the Lion King theme song. You know, we have a home run hitter who's going to be the first home run of the game. It's usually Kitty. It's an off a tee and runs around the bases, makes this really awesome moment.

First banana, you know, everybody does a first pitch, but we do a first banana. And it's actually called the golden first banana because we combined it with one of our promotions. So we blindfold that person and they have to find the banana based off of crowd participation, you know, cheering and booing to find the banana. Then they get up and then they throw the first banana. So it's adding those extra little details for fun. And then we go into the game from there. And from there, it doesn't stop. And it reminded me of when you said like a specific game that sticks out to you. This past season on July 3rd,

we did banana ball. And you know, going through the CPL season, you get into a rhythm, like the innings are going to last so long. So we have, you know, a certain amount of time between innings to prepare for the next promotion that happens in the next half inning. Well, banana ball, that could be a total of a minute long, like an inning could like legitimately be a minute. And we weren't exactly ready as an entertainment team to get back to that speed, we had kind of forgotten about it. And so that first inning hit, I think the inning was maybe I don't know, maybe three minutes. And then the next inning had happened in another two minutes. So in five minutes, we had gone through a full inning and our entertainment team, we just kind of were like, oh my gosh, we forgot about the speed of this because it's so fast and so just energetic. So it really got us back onto our toes and getting back into that banana ball rhythm of like, hey, this better be ready because it's happening real quick.

ball rhythm of like, hey, this better be ready because it's happening real quick. Have there been any promotions or rule changes that you expected to go over like really well with fans that kind of fell flat? And were there any that have become mainstays that you guys were sort of surprised caught on to the extent that they did? Absolutely. So that kind of reminds me of the beginning of banana ball, you know, how this first all came came about, you know, it's, uh, you know, three years ago, they, we tested this with college players and they got, they started it out and they had a nine inning game happen in 99 minutes. And so we're like, all right, we're onto something here. This is, this could be something in the future. Like this is we're, we're on the right

track. And then eventually we brought it to our college guys here and did a game here. Well, the first walk, as you know, a walk is actually a sprint. So once ball four hits, the runner takes off and every defensive player has to touch the ball before the ball becomes live. This usually creates an almost an automatic double or, you know, a play at third or sometimes other situations. But the first time that we tried this, nobody knew what to do. So Bill Leroy, our catcher, and he's still with us on our premier team. He he takes off running after walking and he automatically gets a home run because nobody on the defensive side knew what to do.

So the ball went into left field. The center fielder wasn't ready, got thrown over his head. And now immediately we have a home run and we're like, wait a minute, is this correct? Well, then we refine. And now we're seeing strategy be put into play with walks. So like the outfielders converge, the infield converges.

And then, you know, we're seeing plays at second, we're seeing plays at third. And so the one fail, we didn't like throw it away, because we're like, there's no way this is going to work, we refined it and made it better. And now it's it's a staple, you know, like, make sure you're watching it's ball three, if ball four happens, you got to be paying attention, because he's going to go out into a sprint, it's going to create this amazing situation. So I hope that that answers that question of like, you know, originally it didn't quite work, but then as we've, you know, grown and done more testing and tried it more so many more times, it's created an absolute win.

Tell us about foul balls being in play and fans being able to make plays on foul balls in the stands, because this is a hypothetical that we have considered on the podcast a couple of times what would happen if mlb teams did this and we've considered that it would probably be a disaster at that level because you would have filling the stands with ringers or there would be fights people would die it would be a disaster but i'd imagine in an exhibition contest things are a little different the stakes are a little lower so how has that gone over and how does it work in practice so i'm gonna i'm gonna kind of I'd imagine in an exhibition contest, things are a little different. The stakes are a little lower. So how has that gone over and how does it work in practice? So I'm going to kind of walk you through.

So we've only had this happen one time. And I need to paint the picture for you guys just to put you in the seats there with me. So if you're thinking about fan catches a foul ball, you're thinking perfect scenario. So in regards to us, it's bananas versus party animals or whoever it may be and you know a party animal hits a ball into the crowd it's two outs in a big situation and a fan catches a ball and he's out and now it's the bananas turn to hit and the bananas have a chance to win the inning in the bottom of the inning so that's perfect scenario perfect world the players are getting up there you know he's treated like a celebrity everybody the players go up

there celebrate with him he's doing like a celebrity. Everybody, the players go up there, celebrate with him. He's doing post-game interviews, the whole nine yards. This is perfect scenario. Well, this was during our past season and it was on tour. It was the start of our tour here in Savannah and the Bananas are starting to rally. We got runners on second and third with a chance to win the inning, two outs and a line drive foul ball, basically.

One of those screamers just goes up into the stands and a guy's trying to protect himself and he catches the ball and it's against the bananas. And all of a sudden I'm getting ready for the next promotion. And all of a sudden I'm hearing in the background, people are starting to boo. I'm like, what's going on? Now look up onto the field and the party animals are just going nuts. They're celebrating, they're going crazy. They got out of this inning and they actually won that inning. And we're like, what just happened?

Like the perfect scenario is out the window. It went the exact wrong way. So as everybody's booing, we actually take a police officer and we take him up to this fan and we actually kick him out of the stadium. Now, granted, we get him like all the way down to the bottom and bottom and we're like okay we're not actually going to throw you out we want you to enjoy the game but oh my gosh we have this perfect scenario built up for so long of like

we're gonna it's gonna be against against the party animals but the first time it actually happens it was against the banana and such a big against the bananas in such a big spot which is pretty awesome. It created such a great environment for all the fans. And we talked to that guy afterwards and he's like, you know what, I felt so involved even if it was the wrong way and I'll never do it again. But now it's happened and we've seen it happen and we know it works.

And it's just so funny and it's amazing and it gets our fans engaged and they're paying attention to the game 24 seven because they know, hey, at any given moment, you can be called on to make the next play. That's great. We've talked a lot on this podcast about how to deal with pace of play and what to do when games get to extra innings. And we've bemoaned Manfred Ball. And you guys have come up with your own solution, both to time of game and how to conclude games when they get to the two hour limit.

So for our listeners who aren't familiar, tell us about showdown tiebreakers. Oh my gosh, the most electric plays in baseball. I'll tell you what. Those showdowns, so like you said earlier, two hour time limit and it's first to five. So every inning counts with the opportunity to walk off every inning. So obviously those are pretty important.

So if the game does not get to five points and the two-hour time limit concludes, and it's really funny, that's part of my job as well, is monitoring time. Being the director of entertainment, I'm making sure, usually that's the umpire's job, but that's very much on me to make sure that we're staying on time and that we don't exceed those two hour time limits. And we won't start knitting a new winning after like an hour 50 because we know we have to get to these these showdowns and how the showdown works. And like we kind of

talked about earlier, we touched on it, but it's mano a mano. So pitcher verse hitter, and I kind of had dove into the the failure of the just the pitcher and then we added the fielder so putting that in mind you have the fielder who is on the infield grass before the pitch can be thrown the pitch is thrown if the ball is put in play the fielder has free rain and the batter takes off as if it's an inside the park home run so it's pretty much an inside the park home run or nothing and this is created plays at the plate. This is created walk off strikeouts. I mean, we have pitchers, you know, you hear about hitters pimping home runs and bat flipping and all that kind of stuff. We have

pitchers that are throwing their glove to the ground getting fired up the guys come running out of the dugout, because they just struck out the last guy and that creates this walk off moment for a pitcher, which is so rare, like you don't even see that in baseball. But that's kind of what these showdowns are. It's settling it with the most entertaining way possible. And it's getting back to that, this is the fans first and the entertaining aspect of the game. And we're making it more exciting to end that game as opposed to going into, what, 17 inning games, which are just grueling. You see people falling asleep at the actual game itself. And we've completely eliminated that with all of the rules.

But the showdown, especially there at the end, it just makes it so entertaining for these fans just to get so excited for the final outs of the game. So tell me how you find players for the pro team, not for the collegiate summer league team. How do tryouts work? Do you call them tryouts? Are they auditions? How do you figure out which players are not only going to be good, but also are going to be entertaining? And then how do you tell them what to expect so that they know what they're getting into? Absolutely. It's a very unique

balance for sure. It's funny that you say it's like an audition because there are different, there's different, every baseball tryout has been the same for a long time. You know, you feel ground balls, you hit, you maybe do some live ABs, whatever it may be. We have to do it different, you know, because you never know in the third inning, you may be called on to do a player dance. And that's not something a normal baseball player has probably ever done. I can go out on a limb and be pretty confident that the overwhelming majority have not done a player dance in the third inning. So, yeah, we have a tryout. And, you know, tryouts, those get posted. I believe ours is in February to get ready for the spring series.

But, yeah, we're looking for guys that are going to be entertaining, as well as a high level of baseball. Like I've said before, we, you know, last year, we had Jake Peavy, you know, he's on the Hall of Fame ballot. He, he threw out our first banana last year. And he told Jesse and I, he's like, next year, I'm pitching. So, you know, we have these professional guys that have pitched at such a high level, that we need all of our other guys to match the same type of skill level. So we have these highly competitive games because we have the best of the best of these guys coming in wanting to play but we're not just looking for good talent we're looking for the buy-in we're looking for the people that are willing to get out there and dance you know we had a guy that was

on stilts he took an actual at- bat on stilts. You know, those types of crazy people that we're looking for all the time that can also bring a high level of baseball. Just for the fan experience alone, like you don't wanna have this game be filled with errors because that's actually gonna slow the game down even more. And we're actually creating a new stat, which I'll let Jesse kind of touch on

when you guys talk with him because that's gonna be an awesome conversation, but minutes per inning. So how long is an inning? How many times can you hit the strike zone? And this is for pitchers. This is a stat for pitchers. Like how fast are you working through an inning? How many pitches are you throwing in an inning? And how many times are you pounding the fastball into for a strike? Like how many strikes are you throwing? And that all gets back to that, you know, speed up the game with good play. And that's how we're trying to find these people and these ballplayers. There are obviously parts of this that wouldn't necessarily translate to major league baseball, even just beyond the self-seriousness of

the league. But I'm curious if there are any of these innovations that you think with modification could find their way to affiliated ballated Ball in some sort of meaningful way? Yeah, I think it's a slow grow, I think, with Affiliated Ball and them starting to adopt some of our identities and what we're doing here. The first thing that I want to see, honestly, is the celebrations, you know, and the fan engagement with the guys. We have a promo and it's called the sweethearts of the game. And basically what it is, is each one of our guys gets a rose and they go up into the crowd and they get on a knee and give a rose to a little girl. And I'm telling you, every time I see this happen, you make a fan for life and you just see these little girls faces light up like the night sky

it's unbelievable and i really want to see those kinds of interactions happen at the pro level i mean i want to see guys bat flipping we want to see pitchers celebrating we want to see these guys personal side every time major league baseball posts something about you know a guy being personable for example the uh anth Anthony Rizzo and Freddie Freeman, when they were in the rundown, automatically you know what I'm talking about because it was posted so many times. But these guys were seen as humans for once,

as opposed to just incredible baseball players. And I think the more personal that these guys get and the more fun they have, the better the game is going to be. And it's going to start to draw more of that fun fan base. And I think that's step one. And then step two is starting to look at some of the more details. But for me personally, and I think everybody in our office and Jesse himself, I think he would have a different answer because it is a personal thought, but that's mine personally, if that makes sense how much do you and jesse look to

the precursors kind of other exhibition teams whether in baseball or softball or other sports that have tried similar things i know that the bananas get comped to the globetrotters a lot but there is a lot of baseball and softball precedent too even you know going back to bill veck and and the showmanship there and the promotions, or Eddie Fainer, the softball exhibition team, the king and his court that traveled all over the country, or Max Patkin and the other clown princes of baseball. So is there some inspiration there, either specific ideas or the ethos or just sort of business strategies that have worked for those other teams and leagues? The first thing that Jesse told me, and this was after, you know, starting here,

it was one of the first things that he said to me was everything that you know about baseball, we're going to do the exact opposite. So yes, we look at other baseball teams, but very little. In fact, just last week, instead of going to a baseball game or something like that, I went and saw the circus. So I went to Florida State because they have a circus program. And I went and watched the circus. We're looking outside of the box of baseball because we want to take the best things of other sports and other events and put that into a baseball game? Like I said earlier, what if the third inning is a circus?

So we're looking in pretty much all other directions other than just baseball. Jesse's a huge fan of, and myself too, and our entire team takes a lot after the Walt Disney and what he was able to create. And like you said, the Bill Vec and what he did with baseball, which is kind of what we're doing along those lines, if that makes sense. But we're looking at so many different places.

We had a video go viral a little bit ago, and it was a golf batter. You know, we had a caddy go up to home plate, and he took the range. He had his range finder. He had a book. They were looking at the book as if it was the Masters. We had the Masters theme song playing in the range. He had his range finder. He had a book. They were looking at the book as if it was the Masters. We had the Masters theme song playing in the background. We had a golf bag full of golf clubs and the whole nine yards of golf before and at bat. And then he pulls out the bat and then he goes to hit.

So we're looking at all these different sports and entertainment pieces like the circus. And we're trying to bring that into baseball just to make it more fun and more entertaining because you never know when you're going to get a diamond in the rough with that. But when it comes to baseball, we don't really look too much at it because that's in our box. We're looking to get outside of our box and get more creative outside of that world. So the team has a big social media following, particularly on TikTok, where it has an enormous audience. How does that translate to revenue, I suppose, for the Bananas? If you're just playing locally, are people traveling from far and wide to see Bananas games?

I know that this has led to a lot of media attention and a lot of follows and a lot of sellouts in the local market. And we can talk about your plans for the future, but has not had a global tour or anything yet, although maybe that's in the cards. But how does that online following translate to dollars for the bananas right now? Yeah, no, it's really interesting that you say that. I've kind of coined it myself,

and I don't want Disney to come after me, but I've called it the circle of life in banana land And here's why so if we look at me you can take it this from every every single person that's in our front office You can start with them and get back to me. You know, it's like the six degrees of Kevin Bacon on Wikipedia I don't know if you've ever tried that but it's the same thing you know Jesse and I start with idea creation and we create 10 ideas and then we put together a script and we have a script for the night of everything that we're going to do with new walk-ups, with our four new ideas, with walk-ups, celebrations, a new promo on field

and new pregame activation. We have all this. And then this script goes to our marketing team and our marketing team, you know, they plan out their plan of attack of okay we need to capture this this and this we're going to capture this celebration this celebration and this player walk up and then we're going to schedule out a post for that so now we've entertained as the game is happening we've entertained our live audience and then our marketing team has captured that moment that we have inside the stadium.

And now we're going to blast that out to the world on our digital audience with TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, all the social medias that you can think of. We're going to blast it out to them. And now those people see it. Maybe one of those goes viral. Okay, now they look into who we are. They become fans.

So now we've created maybe one new fan. And then that person goes out and talks to 10 people. And now we've created 11 fans. So now we've created, you know, maybe one new fan. And then that person goes out and talks to 10 people. And now we've created 11 fans. And then those 11 people go out and talk to more people. Okay, well, a couple of those people are likely to go in, buy merchandise, you know, that's just kind of a logical next step, they want to rep what they were, even if they were there, they want to rep the bananas, and they want to show off and they're, you know, they're going to wear their shirt out in public. And someone's like, well, what is that? That's an awesome logo. You wouldn't believe what they're doing out in Savannah. I went to a baseball game and had the time of my life. Again, another fan was just created. Well, you know,

we're creating these fan moments. And then that gets to our merch team, which in turn sells more tickets, which in turn, you know, brings more people to the ballpark. And, and it's this circle that now we're back to me, you know, tickets were sold for this game. What are they going to see? And now we've created this circle, like I said, the circle of life of what they're going to see, how it helps everybody and how we become one cog, basically in a machine that's just running perfectly over and over. And it's creating new ideas and all that and all this thing. But like I said, you can start with the people that we hire from from day one, we've been very particular on who comes on board here, because it is that important to us. And it's very, it's just an

important cycle that we keep sticking to. And you know, it's created those nine hundred thousand fans on TikTok and however many over the world, but more than any major league team and more than any minor league team on all of our social medias because of this cycle and just pushing the envelope and being different. I don't want to make you spoil anything here, but last month in the Effectively Wild Facebook group you posted, if you are someone you happen to know has extensive baseball knowledge and has trained in dance and performance, please have them reach out. And I always joke that anytime I ever post a question or ask something in the Effectively Wild Facebook group, I get an immediate answer. There's always someone who fits the description. And within a couple of comments, you got a response from a member named justin who said i'm a former tap dancing theater kid and current ncaa umpire does that work and you said you'd send him a message it's right up your alley so what were you looking for there if you could say yeah yeah not i don't mind at all it is funny i i got a response so quickly and it was the perfect place to post it

you know what if the umpire after striking someone out goes into a choreographed dance to strike him out? Sure. Why not? You know, why, why, why not? Why, you know, you see those videos kind of pop up, um, usually around like the Dominican Republic of like crazy strikeouts and, you know, strikeout calls from umpires and stuff like that. Or naked gun even. Yeah, exactly. Like just so many different, and it's always entertaining and people are laughing and phones go up, they start recording it and it's just so entertaining it's like why would we not have that you know that seems like it's right up our alley so we're always looking for for new people and that seemed like pretty much a no-brainer of a dancing umpire of some

sort and especially if you can call balls and strikes and master the game of banana ball and be dancing and get the rules right i that's a win win win all the way around for our fans online our fans in the stadium and and just us in general because we gotta watch it and be fans of our own work i am explicitly going to ask you to spoil something and if you can and share with us are there any uh anything that you guys have cooking for next year that you can share with our listeners a little preview you don't have to give anything big away but yeah i mean like i said we're always pushing the envelope of what's new and fun here we're always gonna anytime you come to a bananas game and especially banana ball game you're gonna get something new and unusual and different and you're gonna be, as you're leaving this area, you're like, I can't believe I saw this at the game. And one that I've been kind of working

towards a lot is a group called the Banana Splits. And obviously, that name makes perfect sense. But it's a group of young dancers, that instead of like normal cheerleaders, like we have our like normal, we have our dad bod cheerleading squad and our grandma dance team. But what if we had little kids and you know, like a dance studio type group that is doing dances that every dance ends in a split. And they're wearing bright yellow, and they're called the banana splits. Like how fun would that be? Like, first off, you're playing on the cute where everybody's like, Oh my gosh, that's the cutest thing I've ever seen. And they're talented. And they do the splits at the end. I mean, that's just unbelievably big. So that's something that we're looking to add

this year, without giving too much away. But we're always adding new stuff. So you're never going to get the same game twice here in Banana Land. I'll tell you that. And there will be more places to see Banana Ball next year, right? I know that this year, there were a couple of Banana Ball games in Mobile. It was the 2021 One City World Tour, right? Yeah. But next year, you seem to already have some dates lined up for several locations in the spring, right? Yeah, we're continuing to expand this game in Banana Ball and going from One city to, I want to say it's seven now,

seven cities, including Savannah. We're going to all these different cities. So we're going to Savannah, Daytona Beach, Montgomery, Alabama, West Palm Beach, Florida, Columbus, Georgia, Birmingham, Alabama, and then Kansas City. And you know, obviously changing from one city to that many is pretty amazing. But we're taking banana ball all over the place. And because people want it, you know, when we first asked, where should we go, we have over 4000 cities that are saying, hey, bring banana ball here, we want to see it here, we want to see it, we had, I don't know how I want to say we had over 20 international requests. Like this is something that will go worldwide, but we have to be very smart on where we go next.

And we like to test things and we do new tests and we're going to these ballparks that have so much history. I mean, we're going to the oldest ballpark in America and we're playing the newest game, the most exciting game. So we're going from the, from the oldest to the newest. And then we're playing at the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals spring training

facility in West Palm Beach. So we're trying all these new things. And then Kansas City, we're going to be playing someone, we're playing another team. So we're playing the Kansas City Monarchs, as opposed to just playing the party animals or our own groups, you know. So we're playing the Kansas City Monarchs as opposed to just playing the party animals or our own groups. So it's really, really exciting of where we're going and what's to come. And like I said, it's just the beginning. I mean, shoot, we went from one city to seven now and it's just unbelievable the growth that this thing has taken off like nobody's business. It's moving and it's moving quick. Yeah, I wonder. It's a lot of fun, clearly, just as an exhibition. But it kind of reminds me maybe of 2020 cricket or T20, as it's known, which was just this shortened, sped up version of the game, a new format, supposed to be more exciting.

But initially, it wasn't really taken very seriously. It wasn't intended to be played internationally. But then it blew up and now it's played at a really high level. So who knows? Maybe banana ball follows a similar trajectory. But even if it's just for fun, that is okay too. And maybe MLB teams could take something away from it. So hopefully we will be able to talk to Jesse at some point in the future, maybe when the bananas go back on the road. But in the

meantime, tell everyone where they can find either you or the bananas. How do they watch? How do they follow? How do they get tickets, etc? Yeah, absolutely. So I definitely I highly, highly, highly recommend talking with Jesse because, you know, hearing the story of how this thing came to be back in 2016 is nothing short of inspiring, honestly. And where it is now, it's unbelievable. So the sooner you can talk to Jesse, the better because man, it's pretty special and I'm super thankful to be here.

You know, where to get tickets or where to find us, you know, at the Savannah Bananas or at the Sav Bananas on most of our social medias. If you just look up Savannah Bananas, I'm sure you'll run into us. Getting tickets, joining our priority list is pretty much the best way to go about it as you know, it has become pretty tough to, uh, to buy tickets. You know, we've seen scalpers try to sell our tickets for, you know,

four times as face value, which is just unbelievable because it's an all inclusive ticket. So, you know, that's the best way to find tickets is just go search us up on our website and how to find me. Um, you can find me on pretty much all social medias, Zach Frangelo, Z-A-C-K, and then my last name, F-R-O-N-G-I-L-L-O, you know, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, pretty much anywhere you can find me. And I'm always open to talking and, you know, talking bananas because it is fun. I love it. And I love to talk about it. And I love to, you know, share what we're doing here, because I think I really, truly believe in what we're doing is making baseball fun.

And we're making new fans every single day. And we're inspiring this younger generation of baseball fans. I'm realizing now I shouldn't have introduced you in this segment. I should have asked you to introduce yourself. That's what bananas players do right on their plate. They announce themselves. So that would have been appropriate. But thank you very much for joining us. This was Zach Frangelo and we enjoyed talking about the bananas today. Appreciate it, Zach. Again, thank you guys so much. I really hope to have you guys out at a game soon. as always for listening and thanks to everyone who has signed up on Patreon. As we announced last week, we have added some new perks, including Patreon exclusive monthly podcast episodes, AMA style Q&A type pods, and access to a patron only Effectively Wild Discord group, which is approaching 400 members already. Annual memberships to Patreon are now available as well, so you can support us month to month or do the lump sum, whatever you want. Go check out all the rewards

and options at patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly or perhaps yearly amount to help keep the podcast going and keep us ad-free and get themselves access to those perks. Eric Cumming, Jason Koenig, Dave Halzing, Dan Hopkins, and Sean Kuhn. Thanks to all of you. Next time, we will be answering some emails. So send us some, please, at podcast.fangrafts.com. You can also send them via Patreon message if you are a supporter.

And in our third and final episode this week, we will be discussing the first four episodes of Stove League. I've heard from many of you who are already watching, but please do go check it out. Again, the links to stream it are on the show page. 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. There is an Effectively Wild subreddit. It's called Effectively Wild. There's an Effectively Wild Twitter account at EWPod.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. And we will be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then long enough to steal my heart Till eastern seaboard storms Held you as we fell apart Savannah, I love you like my own Oh, I never, never, never could make you mine