Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1834: Your Moment of Zen

Episode Date: April 9, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about their impressions of Opening Day, the “baseball zen” interludes on MLB.TV and Apple’s proposed broadcast innovations, Joey Votto’s in-game interview (and in-game interviews in general), a tasty new MLB sponsorship, PitchCom and pace of play, the fraught relationship between Ronald Acuña Jr. and Freddie Freeman, the Padres-Twins trade […]

Say you'll always be here by my side With the house of continuity I'll always be here Walk in a dream and be filled with the cause Married in a dream Strange as it seems and we know Because, because Life has just begun

Life has just begun Life has just begun Because Life has just begun Hello and welcome to episode 1834 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? I am doing great.

I do not currently have a cold. So I'm doing a little bit better than you. I have a cold. It's not COVID. It's fine. But yes, I think this is not an unusual occurrence for me, not only in the aftermath of opening day or the lead-up to it but also like i would always get sick like after finals in college and stuff you're just uh you're vulnerable a post-positional power rankings cold yeah i mean it was it was a end of positional

power rankings cold and i felt like i could feel myself getting sick and so editing every blurb i felt like i was laying track in front of a moving train like i just gotta get this done before it really whammies me but it'll be fine it's friday we have baseball back i have a weekend to sort of recover and chill so uh here we are uh post post openingening day pod. Yes, indeed. Baseball back. I guess there's a nice little silver lining to just the common cold now, right? It's not COVID. That's something that cheers you up.

Exactly. This is like, again, when I got sick in college one time, and they thought I had mono, and it was just like really, really bad strep. And I was so relieved because I was like, well, you can give me antibiotics for strep and I was so relieved because I was like well you can give me antibiotics for strep throat uh so yes we've we were um we're covid adjusting illness now it's a weird time to be alive Ben yeah but a good time at least baseball wise so yes as you said we got to enjoy opening day on Thursday or as it's known in my household showpin and Hay. And it was great. It was wonderful. It always is. There were a few games that were postponed, but really it was just fun. And I'm not at all discerning when it comes to what I watch on opening day.

Like later in the season, maybe you pick your spots and you're not going to just watch anything. And you look at the pitching matchups and you look at well are these contending teams granted you're gonna get good pitching matchups generally on opening day but even so it's like oh baseball's on okay i will watch that whatever you put in front of me i will turn on and be happy to see it because it's been so long and because we didn't know whether we would get to this point or when we would and that adds a little extra pleasure to it. So it's great to be back. Yeah, I had a moment the other day

where I was preparing our staff predictions for the season, and it's a thing we do right before opening day kicks off, and I got a little emotional. We were still firmly in the range where I thought we'd be locked out. Six weeks ago, my expectation was that we were looking at an opening day starting in mid-April at the earliest and May as the likelihood. It felt nice to be preparing the predictions of our staff for ridicule on the internet.

It was good. Jeff Passon had a story at espn earlier this week about just the beat by beat how did the cba happen and he did make it pretty clear in that story that it could well have just gone completely off the rails and really just could have lasted indefinitely just because if they had not approved that last offer from mlb and there were quite a few players who didn't want to or thought it wasn't advantageous, but ultimately most of them just really wanted to play baseball, it seems like. And so they ratified that deal and agreed to it.

And if that had not happened, if that latest deadline had been blown, and then the players had probably pulled expanded playoffs off the table. And MLB had said, we're not paying you for a full season. We're not playing Andres Exigidio games. Then who knows? Like it could have spiraled. It could have lasted weeks or months. So we have to be grateful, I guess.

I mean, there are still some players who feel like maybe it wasn't the best deal. But ultimately, most of them really did seem to want to get on the field and yeah they voted that way and i'm not sorry about it right now yeah it's sure nice to be you know getting excited to see julio rodriguez's big league debut then stressing once again about whether or not we'd get baseball so you know it's it's not an uncomplicated situation and our reaction to it is definitely tinged with you know an understanding of what what problems still persist in the game but we get to be excited about opening day it's a good day yeah anything in particular you enjoyed we're gonna get to some

other banter and there's been some non-opening day related news and extensions and non-extensions and trades what are you all doing with these opening day trades aren't you busy with bunting suddenly it's overshadowed by actual baseball games like a trade i mean chris paddock for taylor rogers and others like that's a big deal there were many months in the off season yeah we would have been desperate for we would have spent days talking about chris paddock we would have been desperate for days talking about chris paddock we would have been we would have spent days and days trying to figure out if you know minnesota's the right team to help him figure out a third pitch and also the shape of his fastball

but yeah so we'll get to that but yeah i enjoyed i mean i guess just staying on the idea of of julio who obviously we won't see until a little later today when Seattle is able to play Minnesota. Very funny that that game got postponed, by the way, because apparently it was like 70 degrees and sunny in Seattle yesterday. It was like a perfect day for baseball. But sort of sticking on that theme, it was really exciting to get to see a bunch of top prospects

make their debuts and have an impact in the games that they were in right we got to see bobby wood jr we got to see steven kwan like or you know there's just like a lot of a lot of guys who we've been sort of looking forward to for a long time and and now a lot of them are here and not all of them obviously both because we didn't play a full slate yesterday that that is the one thing about sort of the the lockout postponed opening day typically on opening day we get like 15 games and we we got a smaller slate not only because of weather postponements but just because they were like look we've already goofed with these series enough we cannot possibly shift

them around anymore but it was it was very cool to like get to to see those guys making their debuts and i don't know we're we're part of the the kwan hive over here at fan graph so yes right we're we're very excited for stephen kwan and the guardians yes you've uh planted your flag yes eric logan hagen has. Well and truly stuffed. Not the only good Guardians news this week. No. Which we will get to also. Yeah, gosh, wow.

Yeah. So obviously the highlight for me was Otani, watching Otani and the two-way action. And it ended up being a typical Tungsten Armo Doyle start

where he was great for four and two-thirds and he struck out nine and gave up one run, which he was really kind of let down by his defense on that one. Joe Adele and then was just generally let down by the team's offense. And also, I suppose, his offense personally. But the Angels didn't get anything going. But it was great to see him.

And he's just a really good pitcher. We talk so much about his hitting. He's a good pitcher, too. Maybe that's how he can top last year. This year he can win the Cy Young as well as the MVP I don't know he probably won't get enough innings it would be tough in a six starter rotation but he's great it was a lot of fun to see him again and also a healthy trout and yes you know striking out nine Astros that is difficult to do because the Astros are always tough to strike out. So that was the highlight.

It wasn't necessarily the best game. There was, of course, the Seth Beer walk-off on National Beer Day, National Cerveza Day, we could say. Can we talk about this for a second? I put that game on. It was one of the later games. And Yu Darvish is pitching for the padres and you darvish carried a no hitter for a while like you know to the point that i was kind of surprised we didn't get an alert about it maybe we did i don't know i was very tired and also i am sick so

you know the the d-backs get a hit against starvish and i was like i can go to bed now because i'm not going to miss the back half of a back end of a no hitter. And like if you Darvish no hit somebody, I want to be there to see it. I want to watch. So I went to bed fully expecting the Padres to win that game. And then this morning after I had done some editing and was like catching up on yesterday's scores, I was like, wait a minute. The D-backs won that game. How is that possible?

So despite their recent trades, the bullpen might still need some work in San Diego. Yes, possibly. Although Taylor Rodgers had not arrived yet. Exactly. Yes. That was why. But yeah, that was fun. And that reminds me, since I just made my little beer cerveza joke at MLB's expense there,

there's a new sponsorship that everyone sent us. I guess this is now going to be one of our new beats on this podcast weird sponsorships sponsorships so dairy queen now was named the official treat yes mlb and its signature stack burgers are now the official burger of mlb actually more specifically i guess it's the dq blizzard treat which has been named the official treat of MLB. The official treat. Yes. Which seems like too broad. Yeah. MLB's given away a too broad a category here.

They need to specify, especially because it's Dairy Queen, famous for their frozen treats. Right. I can't believe that the sponsorship is not just from day one, the official frozen treat of Major League Baseball, from day one, the official frozen treat of Major League Baseball, because all kinds of other treats out there that, you know, like you could, you can have both human and non-human treats, right? Like there could be an official dog treat of Major League Baseball on unexplored potential advertising to the dogs. You could have, you know, you can have a salt, I guess you would have salty snacks more than

you have salty treats, but all sorts of treats. And apparently none of them count except for the ones from Dairy Queen. Yeah. I mean, you could define almost anything as a treat. MLB's other sponsors could say, hey, we're a treat. We're the official beer or cerveza of Major League Baseball. I mean, a nice cold beer slash cerveza on a hot day. That's a treat. How are you giving away official treat? So I don't know. Maybe there will be some conflict there. But they could always subdivide it, as you said, and you can have official treat and official frozen treat and official salty treat or just use a different language, whatever you want to do. But, yes, that's our latest beat here. I guess this is we're playing right into MLB's hands.

I know. We're giving them the promotion that they beat here. I guess this is we're playing right into MLB's hands. I know. We're giving them the promotion that they crave here. This is probably why they do this stuff, but it is amusing the way that they use this language and all this amplification and leverage and synergy

and all of the press releases just are filled with business buzzwords and it's like, hey, it's Dairy Queen. We don't have to dress this up as anything it is not. Yeah, you don't have to make it more complicated than it is. It's Dairy Queen. It's a tasty frozen treat. I'm surprised that you haven't brought up the one that I have received the most notifications about, which is MLB TV's Baseball Zen.

Oh, yes. I was going to bring that up yeah we should absolutely talk about that so for anyone who was not watching on opening day the new between innings thing instead of the old riff which you want to do it one more time so instead of that energy for that yeah sorry sorry to put you on the spot on this day. But after that, you would just see highlights and often the same highlights over and over. Over and over and over again, as if baseball was like six games that had ever been played. It's so bizarre.

I didn't mind seeing highlights, but I was just, you know, let's expand the studio space here. Let's see some more highlights, open up the archives and the vaults. But now instead of that, at least for now, we have Baseball Zen, which is just this moment of it's almost like ASMR sort of. That's basically it's like slow motion footage of something happening on a baseball field. It could be the groundskeeper spraying water on the grass. It could be a pitcher scraping his cleats against the rubber. All of these just moments of, well, baseball zen, I suppose, accompanied by the sound of that action occurring, supposedly. And there are just a few of them. And I don't know how you felt about it,

supposedly and they're just a few of them and i don't know how you felt about it but i like it i like it a lot ben i love it yeah it's great it's so it's so nice it's just like and look i'm sure that there will be ads we we have i'm gonna say another thing i immediately regret but i'm gonna do it look we're broken dicks that must be fixed, okay? So we're going to see ads. Oh, yeah. New ED ads dropped. I saw back-to-back competing brands of ED ads. Well, yeah.

I mean, apparently, it's a thriving marketplace. It's a lot of work that needs to be done in that space. We're given to understand. of work that needs to be done in that space yes we're given to understand but um i think that we have both commented in the past on one of the the nice things about baseball is that it is from a sound perspective like you can be engaged and thrilled by a game and like really into it but you also if you want can do what i did on the for the first part of opening day which is take a baseball nap you know you can have yeah that's right take a nap with a game on in the background and it it's really lovely and sometimes the baseball nap is disrupted by and you you're shaken awake by an

unpleasant sound and instead we got baseball zen where it was just, you know, it was rain falling. It was cleat in the dirt. It was, it was great. I, you know, sometimes you feel like somebody makes art just for you. And I feel like I wouldn't actually dream of laying personal claim to this as if I'm the only one to appreciate it, but it's, it was, it was nice. It made me feel calm. I like it. I think that – It feels too good to last. It's like I'm just happy to have anything that is not a sponsorship, that is not an ad, even though we're paying the subscription for MLB TV, but it's MLB. So I still expect there to be ads just in every crevice.

But still, I mean, even if it doesn't last, I'd be sorry to see it go. But hopefully it stays. It's really nice. I mean, sometimes in the past we've just had the, like, you know, break in progress screen. Yeah. Which I would certainly prefer. That's fine, too. To ads.

Totally fine. But this is even better than that. Yeah. It's really nice. I wouldn't mind if, you know, this is probably complicated from an engineering perspective in a way I don't understand. Just like I don't understand how I can search for one thing and immediately be advertised to it on Instagram, but these sites don't remember my password even when I tell them to. So this is probably

complicated, but they should like shift their advertising depending on the time of day. Like we should see the baseball Zen more as the evening goes on, right? Like, you know, you're settling in for West Coast baseball. For some of you, that means it's very late. For me, it means it's 10, which is late for me because I fall asleep earlier and earlier these days. And so it's just like to lull you into a pleasant, it's nice, it's good. They should do it like that.

I was worried at first because I thought it was going to have the same issue as the highlights, which was repeating the same things over and over. Because I think the first couple of times I saw it, it was like the same moments of baseball Zen. But then they varied it up a bit. There's a little bit of a library. One thing I did wonder, though, initially i thought that the sound was actually coming from the highlight that they had picked up the sound from that footage and seemed to totally be true i don't think so no which is why i wondered like how they are recording these sounds like there is there a foley artist in a booth somewhere who is like scraping cleats against a rubber like

watering grass or or rain, probably. Like it's not actually from the field at that moment, I don't think, which it seems a little artificial at times to me. And in some of the clips, it's more obvious than others. Then this cannot have been making that sound. But I still appreciate it. I'd like to know exactly how this came about. Whose idea was this? Who recorded it?

Let's get the baseball Zen people on the podcast. But generally, I'm in favor. This feels like an M.M. Bachelorette piece waiting to happen. Yes, for sure. Go talk to the Zen people. And I was so pleased because in the beginning, I was like, oh, this is going to be an ad for a meditation app.

I'm going to sold like over the computer therapy here like that's what i thought it was gonna be and it was like no it's just like you get to listen to the rain and see rain on the field at a baseball game it's nice wonderful yeah and you know i watched during the angels game after otani left when he was still scheduled to hit thanks to the Otani rule. But there was a lull there where my wife was up with me too. And we realized that the season finale of Severance had just dropped because it was after midnight on the East Coast. And we've been watching that. We were excited to see the season finale.

So we flipped over to Severance on Apple's streaming platform, which is, I guess, where I will be watching the Angels game tonight. And I think it was, we flipped over as the bottom of the seventh was starting. We watched the entire season finale of Severance, which was a more than 40 minute drama. And then we flipped back to the Angels game and it was still the top of the eighth, which was not ideal like i don't want to be you know the day after opening day the baseball sure is slow and the games are long guy

but if you could watch an entire tv drama and then flip back and less than an inning has gone by i don't know could potentially be a problem granted it was an eventful inning the angels had a little rally and the astros scored a couple of runs and maybe there were pitching changes too. So it was not a crisp inning, but then that's often the case in the late innings when you this sport and I had the option to go just watch a good TV show in the time it takes to watch one inning of a baseball game, well, that might be a tough choice. So anyway, looking forward to the pitch clock next year. I mean, yes, I think that that's right. But also, I don't know. It never bothers me on opening day just because it's been such a long time. But yeah, there are definitely moments where you're like, this could improve in the future and it no doubt will.

I enjoyed sort of in that vein of like rule changes both now and in the future. Did you have an experience of Pitchcom yesterday? How did Pitchcom hit you? I like Pitch Calm. Yeah. It's totally fine. I don't know whether it improves pace or not. I mean, it seems like it should

or it shouldn't hurt it at least, but it's quick. It's unobtrusive. It seems like everyone who's used it has had pretty nice things to say. This is for anyone who has not seen this already. It's the electronic pitch calling system where the catcher taps in something on a wrist pad and the pitcher has a thing under his cap and it plays a voice that says what the pitch is someone and a few of the fielders behind the pitcher have pitchcom devices too so that if they're an infielder they know which pitch is coming and

they can lean this way or that way so i like it i'm totally in favor i think that it will absolutely speed things up as as guys get used to it i mean i think you know people have to get used to it although i did notice so i was watching the back end of the cardinals pirates game and aaron fletcher was in poor aaron fletcher he had a real rough outing but that's not the point of this story and aaron fletcher wears glasses and you know he was sort of adjusting things and at one point the the pitchcom receiver fell out of his hat but he got it back in there just fine. It was interesting to see who... It's voluntary. You don't have to use pitchcom if you don't want to,

and there are some pitchers who seemingly aren't. Yu Darvish wasn't when Yu Darvish was pitching the Padres. This question came up in the chat. I know there's some customization available, but someone in the Fanraphs chat yesterday asked, well, there's only so many buttons, so how do you account for a Udarvish? Because he has like 14 pitches.

Yeah, and I don't think they have Japanese as a language option yet. That's right. It is available in English and Spanish, but I don't think it's available in Japanese just yet. But so anyway, it was interesting as a catcher nerd. I was very into the the pitch comm experience yesterday i wonder if there will come a time because you know especially if it's going to be a night game catchers will paint their their fingernails so that the signs are easier to see

and i wonder if there will come a moment where like the the pitch comm goes down and you have to use signs but your fingernails aren't painted Are you just always going to paint your fingernails? As a backup, is it part of your business continuity planning? These are thoughts I have. Yeah, I don't think it'll dramatically speed up pace because I don't think the main source of the pace problem is pitchers or catchers having a tough time getting on the same page or even going through multiple signs so that they can deceive someone on second. Like, definitely things slow down when there are runners on base or when there's someone on second.

And there will occasionally be pitchers and catchers who aren't on the same page. And then you have to have a mound visit. So certainly it should cut down on that. I think most of the source of the slower pace is just the fact that, well, it takes a little time to recover when you're throwing really hard. And also maybe just to think about what you want to throw. And, you know, it's advantageous. I mean, some studies have shown that it seems like players do a bit better when they take a little longer, which kind of makes sense. And so if no one is forcing you to hurl

you along, then you're going to take that extra rope that they give you. But I think maybe it will help just because, well, if you get the sign passing and receiving business out of the way very quickly, then you'd just be standing around, right? Not doing anything. And you might feel more pressure to, well, okay, I know what I'm throwing now. So I guess I better throw. I can't just stand here and look like I'm doing something. So I don't know that it'll be a dramatic improvement, and I think you absolutely need the pitch clock yesterday or 10 years ago,

but I think it could help. Yeah, I think that that's right. I think it could, and provided, I know when Jaffe wrote about it for us, he sounded not an alarm. Alarm is too dramatic, but sounded a not an alarm alarm is too dramatic but you know issued a reminder that when when technology is introduced to try to curtail nefarious pursuits that new nefarious pursuits can find their way so obviously you know we want to make sure that like this stuff actually works and the encryption is as tight as it's supposed to be etc but it seems like a good

development so yeah you know that's cool hopefully the pitch comms won't get hijacked by any nft people who will start to promoting nfts in pitchers ears as they're trying to pitch yeah terrible the only other nitpick i had about broadcasts on opening day was that the in-game interview is back apparently now this was the best case for that right so i don't know if anyone saw the reds game joey vato was miked up on are you about to complain about this yes briefly then i'm sorry okay let's hear it this is uh look this was the best case scenario for this sort of thing because joey vato is an international treasure obviously and he didn't have any balls hit to him or

anything so it wasn't awkward and maybe first baseman is the best case scenario just in general yes jenny searle made that case at baseball prospectus today noting that you know as opposed to the ramon Laureano example a couple of years ago that bothered a lot of people, including me, he was running all over the place. He was fielding balls. He was making throws. He was out of breath. It was like, leave the poor man alone and let him do his job. Whereas Joey Votto is just standing there and obviously like he's still engaged in the game, but first basemen move around a lot less. So that's an advantage of this. I still don't like it. I still just don't. Like, I want to hear from Joey Votto in every possible way at every possible time. And now we

can follow him on every social media platform. If we want more from Joey Votto, and I want a Joey Votto podcast. And when Joey Votto retires, I want him to be in broadcast booths. Absolutely want to hear more from Joey Votto, but just don't want to hear from players while they are playing the game. I just don't. I guess this makes me old fashioned. But, you know, he even said, like, playing defense by itself is hard. Hitting by itself is hard. Doing it with a microphone in my ear is foreign territory.

And, you know, he was sort of saying that tongue in cheek, but it's true. There is truth to that. And, you know, he said, also, I'm talking right now, but my heart is beating through my chest just because I know how every single moment counts. And I guess that's what bothers me. It's like, yeah, maybe if you're getting a little insight from the player about how they're playing it could be valuable otherwise i don't know could we not just hear from them like when they're on the bench or between innings or just in a different platform just because i feel like to me it it almost makes the game feel exhibition-y which is maybe because this has mostly happened in exhibitions at this point. But it just feels to me like this is an important moment.

Like, you never know what could happen here. Like, he might have to field a ball like he's holding on a runner. And yeah, that leads to a fun interaction with Asialbis, who was on first base. Delightful. Yeah, Vado's asking him if he should get a gold tooth to further his midlife crisis i mean wonderful interactions and everything but it still just makes the game feel like a little bit of a sideshow to me which is kind of a constant in a lot of espn broadcasts where it's just like the game is on in the background but we're basically

like doing a podcast or something while we watch the game but it just kind of like cheapens the action a little bit to me and i don't know i feel like a baseball grump saying this but it's like this is important like this is a real game this counts like let him focus like how could it not possibly like if you're trying to conduct a conversation and be entertaining and watch your words because you're on TV and tell the player who's on first base, hey, I'm mic'd up. Be careful what you say. It's just a lot to handle, even if you are Joey Votto and you're a veteran and you're great at your job. It's hard for me to imagine that it could not impair your performance in some small way. And maybe that's worth it because if this grows the

game and appeals to a broader audience and makes baseball players more personable, shows their personality, maybe that's worth it, I guess. But I don't know. It just feels like it matters too much to me, like an actual game that counts toward the standings to be talking to players while they're actually in the field. And it sort of stresses me out too, because it's like, I don't know, like let him focus. Like what if a ball's hit to him? What if a runner like runs through him or something? I don't know.

It's just got to be slightly distracting. Yeah, like I'm sympathetic to all of those concerns. And it could well be that like what we want to, maybe we just want to limit it to, you know, to like the all-Star game. Like the All-Star game is the perfect time to do it because nobody cares. Yeah. Freddie Freeman was mic'd up at the All-Star game and it was great. Yeah. Yeah. So like I have some sympathy for the concern and I'm probably more tolerant of it in this precise moment just because of how good a hang Joey Votto was.

Right. Of course. in this precise moment just because of how good a hang joey was right of course and so you know we are not guaranteed that kind of a presence all the time although i think that the broadcasts have gotten better about like knowing who they should mic but you're right that we are not we're not guaranteed that all the time and so the the balance really does depend on the the fields are being good but i am so happy to know that joey vato thinks of himself as being in a midlife crisis like that is that's yeah that's a great one he said every day is a midlife crisis you hope you are in the middle of your life so you hope it's not a crisis necessarily but yeah i mean i love joey vato of course everyone he's a treasure so it was just, hey, we happen to have Joey Votto playing first base while we're doing this game. Might as well take advantage of that. But I don't know. It's potentially all downhill from there. terrible if you know i think the worst case scenario isn't that someone like vato makes

a terrible misplay but rather that somebody like gets injured and then we really hear it you know like we really hear them that would not be a moment of baseball zen no oh gosh it would be terrible so it's a very very slow motion crack yeah that would be pretty bad but i yeah i don't know this one was just fun i think that if we're gonna do it in game that maybe opening day is just the right day to do it if you're gonna do it in game in a game that counts like do one on opening day do the all-star game and then and then be done i think that that's perhaps the balance to strike because you you know it's not like the games on opening day don't count toward your final record, but I think it's easier. I mean, it clearly wasn't for you.

So maybe I'm, I'm just wrong about this, but for me, at least it's easier to be like, it's one game when it's opening day. Like it's literally, you got 161 more of them. So yeah. And the Laureano case in 2020, that was a playoff game too, which the stakes were even higher, so that made it worse. Yeah, that was very stressful. It was not, as you said, not baseball zen. It was incredibly stressful.

He seemed stressed. The booth seemed to realize as they were doing it what a bad idea it was. It was just kind of bad all around. This struck me as different because, as you said, it's first base. So like you're able to sort of handle things a bit better. And I do appreciate, though, that the etiquette around this has been established like very, very swiftly, which is the very first thing you say when someone comes into your range is, I am miked. Miked here. I am miked.

into your ranges i am miked yes miked here i am miked it's like you know it is always funny to see how we establish social norms with those in our community and the social norm here is don't say anything dumb or offensive because everyone will hear you yeah you should wear a big sign on your back or something on the air here or like yeah like a hat that has like a red light that goes on when you're mic'd like in a radio booth yeah all right i am also kind of looking forward to this apple broadcast we've talked about uh the idea of splintering all of the games among various platforms and how that could be a double-edged sword or possibly just bad and how it's hard to find these things, although at least this is free for now. But it sounds like Apple is actually investing in its baseball broadcasts and is going to try to do some interesting things and have supporting shows.

And just reading from a press release here, I haven't seen the broadcast yet, obviously, but supposedly it will incorporate new on-screen graphics that include innovative new probabilities based forecasts of different situational outcomes so not just win expectancy i guess but maybe what are the odds of something happening at this particular time which i think i've seen that before but not for a while and then they're also going to have like highlights and live look-ins from other games and then on-screen call-outs about batters walk-up songs from apple music just some corporate synergy there i guess you can identify what the walk-up songs are they're gonna make my iphone talk to

them hate this oh yeah because then it says uh test their knowledge of baseball trivia with help from Siri. And in a first for MLB games, Friday Night Baseball will feature rules analysis and interpretation from former MLB umpire Brian Gorman, which is interesting. I mean, that's a staple of NFL broadcasts, for instance. I don't know whether we need that in MLB broadcasts, which is, I guess, why we haven't had it up to this point. I would think that like a lot of games, I don't know that Brian Gorman would have that much to say about rules analysis and interpretation, especially if the umpires are now addressing the crowd and the people at home on the mic when something happens with a replay. Like, how often would

an umpire really have anything substantive to add i mean umpires are interesting i'm interested to hear from umpires happy to to hear from them but you know maybe we should have umpires in the booth just full-time as analysts like why not we have former players former umpires could be interesting but yeah there aren't that many times that i'm watching a game and i'm thinking i wish a former mlB umpire were there to explain this to me. Like, I guess if you get the right game, then it could be great if it happens to be one with some kind of controversial or cryptic call. But most of the time, yeah, he was out because he beat the throw to the bag there and and he was not tagged, and therefore he was safe. I don't know that there's all that much to add in most instances.

Yeah, it doesn't seem like there's going to be a lot of variability of use there. And it's weird to do it now when we have the umps explaining replay review on the field. Isn't this the least useful time to do this because we were getting better rules explanations in game yeah i don't that seems odd i was surprised that um the during the ncaa tournament they had gene steratore doing reviews in basketball and he he was a football guy famously so i don't know i feel like the former official input into game still has some optimization right yeah all right so a little bit of news before we wrap up so we had extensions we had non-extensions we also had some ronald acuna comments about freddie freeman that got a lot

of attention here acuna was doing an interview and sounds like there's no love lost between those two or that there just wasn't really any love or relationship to begin with, other than the fact that they were on the same team. Acuna was asked what he would miss about Freeman and he said nothing. He basically said that they didn't talk, that they were workplace proximity associates. They played for the same team in the same stadium in the same clubhouse. But other than that, it sounds like they didn't interact a whole lot. And Acuna also seems to be holding a bit of a grudge over Freeman doing some enforcing, it seems like, of standards and anti-rookie rules early in Acuna's career, kind of upholding the this is the

way we play and this is the way we look kind of thing, which, you know, Freeman, I mean, we think of him as a friendly and personable person. He certainly comes off that way and seems that way. He was also, you know, kind of taken under the wing of Brian McCann and Chipper Jones and sort of the old school right way to play type Atlanta players. And so Freeman said, you know, he responded to Acuna's comments and he said he misses Acuna and loves Acuna. of copped to being the clubhouse police and basically said like well the organization had some standards about you know where you wear your eye black or how far down your face it goes and that kind of thing and so it sounds like he was one of the people talking to Acuna as the upstart rookie hey that's not how we do things or how we wear things or whatever with the Braves. I mean, you know, it's not necessarily that he was like giving him grief about bat flips or whatever, but it sounds like there was a culture clash there, which is maybe not unexpected,

given the different places they come from, the different ages. Like, I don't know that I expected them to be besties or anything, but still it's notable just because when a player leaves a team after being there for a long time, especially a player with the standing of Freeman, generally former teammates will be like, oh, yeah, he's the best, going to miss him, et cetera, et cetera. It's just kind of a courtesy, you know, whether they really mean it or not. And Acuna was just not going to play that game. So those comments made the rounds. Yeah. I hope that there can be some reflection. Well, I hope there can be two bits of reflection. The first is that we are all well-served to probably remember that we don't have a great

sense of, or we might not always have a great sense of what the dynamics between players are and how this stuff is litigated. And we should you know be mindful that we're not we're not in the clubhouse and so you know we we don't want to assume good things or bad things about guys based on what we think we know but i also hope that there's some self-reflection on the part of of guys in freeman's place where it's like yeah maybe you're you're you think you're helping out because you're trying to help a younger player understand sort of like the, how we do things of a clubhouse, but you're also in a position where you can be like, we have this young dynamic player and he's super exciting and like what he's doing and the way he plays the game, isn't harming anyone. And it's, you know, inspiring a lot of people to like care about

our team so maybe we should reassess some of these roles because who are they serving right like i know that okunye was very new in his career when this happened and so maybe freddy didn't anticipate like the the impact that he would have on the franchise or the fan base but like i don't know i think that the part of this that i found the most like i don't know disappointing might be strong but disappointing is like the year in which it took place like this was pretty recent like i just i hope that we are continuing to move past this stuff and that veterans who are in positions of authority within the clubhouse and are better positioned with respect to the organization to like be like hey this is the way that we need to do this we'll take advantage of those moments so that younger players aren't always the ones sort of put in a position of having to

litigate this stuff and like defy an org when they're in a more compromised position relative to established vets even even a top prospect who was like understood to be very important to his organization like you're just in a different spot when you're the new guy so you know i think i don't want to like be again i wasn't there and if these two are eager to move on from it like that's they get to say that that's their prerogative because it's their relationship but right you know i just when you're when you're established you have more wiggle room to kind of put your foot down and be like hey is this the right way for us to do this so i hope that you will take advantage of those moments when they're presented to us you know like in life or in a clubhouse yeah acuna said it was

blown out of proportion i don't know if it was but he didn't seem happy that this was picked up so much and he even tweeted a denial that he said it or said something initially, even though there was video and multiple sources saying what he said. But, you know, I think maybe he didn't anticipate the way it would blow up. It's just it's not common to hear these sorts of statements. Not that he was saying, like, I hate this guy or anything. Like, he's just saying, like, you know, we weren't close. Like, we didn't get along. We had some clashes. I mean, whatever. It's not that big a deal, but it's just not what you normally hear. And for Freeman to say, you know, he's like, those are just organizational things. I guess I was one of the older guys that did have to enforce those things in the clubhouse. But when you put on a Braves uniform, those are kind of what happens there. And it's, you know, talking about like Acuna saying, when you come up as a rookie,

there's always someone who wants to tell you how to do things. You come up from the minor leagues with the big eye black, the sunglasses, the hat low, and a lot of people see that as wrong. And the other person doesn't see it as wrong because it's part of the game. A lot of veterans picked on me when I was a rookie and they called me into the office themselves and told me no you can't use that and they took the eye black off me with a towel like that which that sounds like a bit invasive if that's what happens but it's like you know they apparently have these rules about like not wearing earrings and like not covering the a on your hat with your sunglasses and having your hair a certain length and where your eye black is yeah like all that sort of stuff like freeman's

you know he says it's unfortunate that he viewed it like that but we were always told you put on a brave's uniform you're supposed to act a little differently hold yourself a little differently and i just tried to uphold those rules as good as I could. And, you know, a lot of organizations will have rules like that. Oh, it's a little different. You put on this uniform, blah, blah, blah. You can talk about the Yankees facial hair policy in that genre. But really, like, who are these sorts of rules targeting? You know, like, what sort of standards are they upholding?

Like the fact that it is institutionalized in this way yes where it's like you can't wear your hair this length you can't wear earrings it's like who's making these rules like you know who has been in the privileged position of enforcing these standards historically in baseball or in the country as a whole so you know i'm not saying that like there was racial animus on the part of Freeman or anything, but I'm just saying that like the rules themselves, I mean, it's almost kind of baked in, right? It's like you have to look this way and not that way. Yeah. I don't think that there's a way to interpret those rules without seeing them as freighted with, you know, a bunch of both past and present sort of racial animus and certainly intent,

again, not specifically on Freeman's part necessarily, but like, you know, the guy cutting his hair doesn't always look like Clint Frazier. And that's not who they tend to describe as like not looking like a ballplayer. And so it's a very weird thing that this persists and is sort of hand waved away from from the club's perspective where it's part of the you know expectation of being a big leaguer like there's nothing about wearing your hair long that inherently has to like be cast as unprofessional or unprepared so i just you know every opening day lately mlb has released an ad about like the excitement of the game and all the different kinds of people who play it and them all being welcome and how we should all be excited about that.

And it's like, cool, someone somewhere in your organization views this as an important value. And yet some of the clubs are able to like enforce something that that feels like it's automatically going to denigrate people who are just there to play baseball and have some fun and like it's fine so just like let people be themselves it's it's okay like you know that doesn't that's not a slippery slope to anarchy it'll be okay and if we let people like feel welcome and as if they can be themselves like it it often puts people in a better mindset to do their job well so it seems like everyone's interest should be aligned here. What are we doing? that Ronald Acuna came up as a rookie and like he was featured if not in that like in the the We Play Loud successor to that like you had this MLB marketing which I mean I think it was smart and a good campaign and everything but on the other hand you have like players veterans coaches managers teams that are doing the opposite of that and And, you know, sometimes it's clubhouse rules like this. Sometimes it's, you know, unwritten rules on the field and players getting brushback pitches and all that sort of thing. So it's kind of at cross purposes. And, you know, I guess it's good for MLB still to put that message out there and hope that it does resonate and catch on and that that normalizes that idea.

I hope that it does resonate and catch on and that that normalizes that idea. But there is still like in the short term kind of this cognitive dissonance where it's like let the kids play but don't let them play with their hair beyond a certain length or while wearing earrings or with a lot of eye black or whatever. Or with a beard on or with sunglasses on their brim. Like, you know, clearly the Yankees thought that Miguel Castro could add something to their ball club because they traded for him. So why does he have to shave his beard and his dreads in order to be part of the organization? Like, it's just, it's not, it's not important to any of the stuff that's important that he do that. And you're telling people who might enjoy that as a form of self-expression that it doesn't have a place in the game and that sucks yeah so don't do it i say do better please like come on there's gonna be some degree of conformity because it's a sport with uniforms and you know like there's gonna be some commonality to the way that you look on the field but there is a little bit of room for pieces of flair and for personal expression. So just allow a little leeway.

No one is going to be harmed by hair beyond a certain length. We shouldn't be managing to a particular mental image of a big leaguer because if we're doing that, it's going to exclude everyone who doesn't look like that person. And I think that we're right to point out that historically, like that person has looked a particular way. And it's been someone who's... Like Freddie Freeman.

Right. Just kind of like your all-American boy. Yeah. So I think, you know, if we're going to say that the game is inclusive, that it's international, that it's a place where the kids can play, then we got to like mean that. And it's weird. It's weird that they don't put their names

on the back of their jerseys. I could go on and on. All right. So a little bit of extension talk here. We had some extensions that were not signed, including Raphael Devers and Xander Bogarts with the Red Sox. Also, no Aaron Judge extension.

And Aaron Judge, right. Yeah. So that was announced just a little bit before we started recording here. And atypically, Brian Cashman, Yankees GM, announced the terms of the Yankees offer himself. He said that they offered Judge seven years $213.5 million in addition to the $17 million that they have offered him in arbitration for this year. So that would be 8,230.5. And I haven't heard from Judge yet as we are recording this, but if that is accurate, then Judge found that lacking seemingly. And this probably means that he will become a free agent. Not necessarily. He doesn't hit free agency until the end of the season, but he has said that he does not want to negotiate in season.

And so if he sticks to that, then there's only a very brief window after the end of the season and before free agency where he could potentially work something out. So it doesn't mean he's going to leave, but it does increase the odds. And maybe that is why Cashman came out with this. I think partly, you know, he said, well, it was going to leak anyway. And I would just be confirming it to a bunch of different reporters via text, which is true. On the other hand, it is not the way that things are normally done. And you have to think that part of that is the idea that, well, we'll put the terms out there and we will at least make it look like we tried. And potentially we will make Aaron Judge look greedy because otherwise

there's going to be a backlash about us not signing the franchise right fielder, especially after not spending a ton of money over the offseason by Yankee standards. So anyway, I mean, the terms themselves, they aren't bad. It doesn't seem to me, you know, I mean, Judge clearly not going to take any discount here. I don't know whether this even is a discount. He is going to turn 30 later this month, and he does not have the greatest track record for health and durability. And there have always been concerns about, well, a big guy like that, how is he going to age?

Is he going to break down? He's been fantastic when he's on the field, and he hasn't been quite what he was during his rookie of the year year but he has consistently been a 140 to 150 wrc plus guy with good defense so obviously you want to keep him around but you know do you want him making 30 plus million a year until he's 37 well you, you know, it's the Yankees. They'd be fine if they signed him to that contract. But I don't know that he would get much more than this on the open market.

Right. And I'm misreading this. I mean, it depends how he does this season. Obviously, like if he has a monster year, then maybe. But if he has another typical Aaron Judge year where he plays well when he's on the field, but he's not always on the field and he hits free agency heading into his age 31 season, I don't know. I don't know that there would be a much bigger payoff out there for him at that point. Yeah. It's hard to separate for me how I feel about the terms of the deal as they were communicated and how I feel about them

having been communicated you know like I I don't I don't disagree that when you look at Judge so I think there are a couple of things that we can say here the first of which is you're right that you know this is a guy who I'm less concerned about the body in isolation than I am with the track record of health. I think that if Aaron Judge had had sort of sterling health to this point and he was the size he is, I wouldn't be like, oh, he's huge, so he's inherently going to break down. But he has had a number of health issues over the course of his time in New York so far. So I think having injury concern with him is reasonable, particularly given his age now and what the age would be at the end of his time in New York so far. So I think having injury concern with him is reasonable, particularly given his age now

and what the age would be at the end of the contract. That said, I think particularly in New York, the Yankees would be silly to think that he doesn't have incredible value to the franchise, not only in terms of what he does on the field, but just in terms of the Aaron Judgeness of it all within their market. How many tickets and jerseys and what have you are they able to sell

because this guy is their franchise player and he is so incredible when he is healthy and he has posted such amazing seasons when he's been able to be on the field and pretty great ones when he's been compromised even. There's that piece of it i don't know that i like i'd need to sit and think on the the exact terms longer to see if i think that they're like i don't think they're insulting i do think it's weird to do this kind of stuff in public with the guy who is ostensibly the face of your franchise like it's just, it's just, the Yankees have had just like a really weird vibe

for a couple months now. Yeah. Like, I know that that is an imprecise way to describe it, but it is just a, it's a fundamentally strange thing for one of the most valuable franchises in sports, forget baseball,

to decide that like, this is the way that they are going to conduct themselves, that they are going to be so fixated on the luxury tax thresholds that they are going to put out a number that i agree with you is clearly meant to make their like again franchise guys seem like he's not grateful for taking it so i think that the contract offer in itself is fine i think that aaron judge is fine to want to test the market like if he thinks he can do better than this like that's his prerogative he gets to say

like i think i can do better and i'm gonna see if the rest of the league agrees and like he's assuming some risk in doing that both in terms of his performance this year and even beyond that the rest of the league's willingness to like offer him more but he gets to take that calculated risk if he thinks it's worthwhile but i just think it's really freaking weird to like have your gm go up there and say the exact terms that were offered like it's weird yeah it's so bizarre like you could say it's it's cutting out the middle people because like it's gonna leak anyway right and it? And it's going to get reported probably. And why not just put it out there, I guess, and judge can confirm or deny it if he wants.

I see that side of it. On the other hand, like you just have to ask, well, why now in this case? Like who does this serve? Who does it serve? Apart from giving you cover later when he ends up going somewhere else. Yeah, right. And, you know, he said some complimentary things about Judge and the same address. Like, you know, he's making it clear, like, oh, we want to keep him and we think he's great and he's a great player on and on.

But, yeah, you know, probably don't put this out there if you think it makes you look bad. Yeah, I just, I find it to be a kind of odd series of events. And I wouldn't be surprised if he ends up back with the team on an extension at the end of the year. But here's the question for the Yankees. Let's imagine for a second that Aaron Judge has a really amazing year. Like he stays healthy. He produces at the level that we know he's capable of. You know, last year he played in 148 Yankees games. Like he seemed to have turned the corner. It was his highest total since 2017. So let's say he goes out and he has an amazing 2021 and he puts up, I don't know, like he puts up a season similar to what he did in 2017. Are you upping your offer like are you gonna let that guy walk now you're in a really weird spot because people are managing to a specific number this is how you've decided to conduct yourself and you've just had the face

of your franchise put up potentially a year that would net him a much more lucrative offer somewhere else like what does that do so i don't know it just seems i know that you're right that this stuff ends up leaking and getting reported and that like sometimes it's the the player and his agent that leaks those numbers it's not like it's exclusively the province of teams to like leak a contract figure right so like i don't want to be naive and pretend that that's true but there's something about like choosing to step into the public and be like here i am at a press conference with the logo behind me i don't know i just don't i don't especially care for it i would have had more respect if he had i wouldn't have had respect because he would have been violating aaron judge's privacy but part of me would have been like well

we're worried this guy's not going to be able to play sometimes so we're low-balling him i mean that would be bad too to be quite right cashman would say something like that. If anyone's going to, that is one thing I appreciate about him. It's going to be him or Randy Levine being like, well. Yeah. Yeah. Randy Levine, not as much admiration there. But Cashman, I do sometimes value that he will just sort of, you know, pretty straight talker. I want to be very clear that I don't think that employers should be in the business of publicly discussing their employees' vaccination status. Don't get it wrong.

Yeah, there's that too. That's not, but it's a question to ask. I mean, it is a pertinent question to his potential contract value, particularly if he's playing for an AL East team, although I guess that's less of an issue starting next year, so whatever. Yeah, I mean, Cashman, he's had that job for so long and seems to have such great job security that I feel like he's just like, yeah, I'll just say this, you know, whatever. Like, I'm not going to mince words. I'm not going to dance around it. But yeah, in this case, it seems to be somewhat motivated, ulterior motives, perhaps. Anyway, just before we get to Ramirez and Hayes and their extensions, anything you wanted to say about the Padres-Twins trade? So this was Chris Paddock and the reliever Emilio Pagan for Taylor Rodgers, Brent Rooker, and 6.6 million. So Padres got another good bullpen arm, Twins got a starter, and a starter who is under team control for three years as opposed to Rodgers' one.

But they had to give up a good arm to get an arm. So in the short term, I don't know that you could say that they're necessarily improved. I mean, it just depends on how good Paddock is, which is really an open question. Yeah, I mean, I think that if you're Minnesota and you think you can help to fix what ails Chris Paddock, like this is an obviously good trade. I think that my thoughts on it are mostly about how, and I know that the Padres have made some recent changes in this department that surely have not yet had time to sort of bear fruit,

but it does seem as if San Diego has a hard time getting the most that they possibly can out of their guys. It seems like they are relative to some other orgs that we think of as being particularly skilled at player dev that San Diego struggles, especially on the pitching side of things. And so this is the kind of trade that you're going to end up making

when that's the state of your organization, where if you feel that you absolutely need pitching, like you need a stable bullpen arm and you don't view guys like Paddock as as fixable, at least by you, that you're going to make swaps like this where, you know, you might look back later if Chris paddock is like lighting it up in minnesota and go well what you know what are we going to do but there's like a strange acceptance or has been a strange acceptance on their part this is like a you know a issue that their organization has now we'll have to see what the new player dev regime does because it could be that they write the ship and then we look back and are like wow it's too bad that you let chris paddock go before you knew if it worked like that's the other thing about it i'm like didn't you just change player dev guys right so anyway i think that like it makes a ton of sense for minnesota because they still need help on that pitching staff and if they're able to get paddock to blossom great and even if they don't like he can throw innings probably so that makes sense i do like

that the the rogers's are now in the same division there was a great quote from one of them don't know which one can't remember now that now the nls is the best looking division in baseball which i found delightful because they're twins you guys if you didn't know this that they're twins yes so not know watching them pitch necessarily but yes yes You would not know watching them pitch necessarily, but yes. Yes, you would not know watching them pitch. I'd like them to try to do like a Freaky Friday and see how long it takes us to be like, what is going on in San Francisco? Why has this changed? Yeah.

Anyway, so I don't know. Those are my thoughts on the Padres and pitching, I guess. Yeah. I mean, we've talked a lot about how the twins need pitching. It sort of sucks for them that they had to give up a really good reliever to get a starter. So that takes away some of the enthusiasm. You just hope that things will click for Paddock and that he will be a good starter for you for years to come. But in the short term, I don't know that it resolves their pitching issues.

Well, and Pagan has had stretches of being very good, but it's been a little while since that season in Tampa now. So we'll have to see what he's able to muster this year. Okay. So the big important extensions that were signed, Cabrian Hayes signed an extension with the Pirates, eight years, $70 million. And Jose Ramirez signed an extension with the Guardians, five years, $70 million. And Jose Ramirez signed an extension with the Guardians, five years, $124. Also, JP Crawford signed a five-year extension with the Mariners too. So that is notable. Good job, JP. Not mention that. But Hayes and Ramirez, those were big ones because these are organizations

that are not known for spending. I believe that their respective record contracts prior to these deals were both $60 million. In Cleveland's case, the Edwin Encarnacion deal, and in Pittsburgh case, the Jason Kendall deal way back when, which if you adjust for inflation, that was still probably considerably bigger than this contract. Well, and I think Jay Jaffe pointed out when he wrote about this extension for us today that if you tack on the option year to McCutcheon's deal, the total value of that contract ended up exceeding Kendall's, but it was not part of the initial, it was not part of the sort of stated initial term. So I think that the point still stands that the record was Kendall and boy, is that embarrassing.

Yeah, it is. So this does not blow that away or anything. Bob Nutting, still Nutting. But they got to keep their players. And that's got to be very encouraging and a great relief for both of these organizations, particularly for Guardians fans, because Ramirez was closer to a potential trade and because Lindor was traded so recently, I mean, it's just the modus operandi of this ownership group. And so to see an exception to that is pretty exciting and heartening. I would think like there were trade rumors flying about Jose Ramirez like up to the day he signed this deal, basically, which I don't know if there was fire there or whether that was just smoke or whether it was like, well, if he doesn't take this, we're just going to deal him immediately.

So we want to have some framework in place. But ultimately, he did. And I'd say both of these players probably took at least a slight discount, right? Just Ramirez is incredible. He is great at everything. He is absolutely on a short list of the very best players in baseball. He is kind of the go-to most underrated player in baseball. And when you reach that point, which was Anthony Rendon prior to Ramirez, probably once it's like the obvious, oh, he's the most underrated, maybe you're not the most underrated anymore. But no no i think he still is just because he is the exception that proves the rule i think yeah he's so good he's such a good hitter he doesn't strike out he walks more than he strikes out he hits for power he is a great base runner he steals bases he plays great defense i mean there's just no flaw in the game of jose ramirez really. So, you know, he's like almost Aaron Judge's age. He's like 29 and a half. And so maybe he was thinking,

I don't really want to hit free agency when I am as old as Aaron Judge could potentially be when I'm 31, the way that free agency works these days. And he seemed to really like it there and he seemed to really want to stay. And I know that Francisco Lindor said he wanted to stay, but he also didn't want to take a discount which why should he so he didn't want to ramirez maybe was more willing to for better or worse certainly for better

for guardians fans who are thrilled not to have to lose another great franchise player obviously they still have to surround him with good players which is something that they have not done of late they have managed to stay like within hailing distance of contention primarily because of the pitching development and ramirez and then a lot of the rest of the offense and particularly the outfield has just kind of been a gaping hole so you would hope that this would be a prelude to more spending. I don't know why it would be given the track record of this ownership group and the fact that they had Ramirez on just one of the most team-friendly contracts in baseball for years and

at least recently had not spent and used that advantage. So I don't know whether this presages more spending on their part or not but at the very least they get to keep one great player and i believe he has a full no trade clause too right so yeah yeah i think that if you're a guardians fan this has to feel a lot better than seeing jose ramirez like suit up for the padres which is one of the rumored trade destinations before this deal got done. I think it's great. I mean, he's a fantastic player. He'll stick around. There's definitely still work to be done with that team, but he is young enough and good

enough that he will still be youngish and pretty good when more of their prospects start to arrive. I think we'd probably be naive to think that that this is like the start of more spending but maybe it it's sort of them planting a flag saying we're not going to be the absolute cheapest team in baseball and while that is not something we need to applaud overly much it is better than the alternative so there's that but yeah i mean like he he would clearly matters to him to play there and now cleveland fans get to watch him do it for a long time, so that's fantastic. When it comes to Hayes,

the fact that it took this long for them to eclipse the prior high is pretty embarrassing, and that they only did it by, what, $10 million, plus whatever the option is valued at, because I don't think we know that yet, is pretty gnarly. I have to imagine that if he had been healthy for all of last year, that that extension value maybe gets pushed a little bit higher, right? Part of, it does feel like they are getting him sort of at a low moment. You know, he was never going to

replicate the BABIP he did in his very limited sample when he first got called up because it was something insane. But you know, I imagine that given how he was compromised with the wrist injury that he probably will hit better than he did last year you're sympathetic to the fact that like a lot of his value even if he becomes a league average bat is still going to be tied up in his defense which is really superlative but is something that doesn't tend to get compensated in quite the same way as being an offensive force. So he manages his downside risk. If he stays hurt, doesn't develop into a league average bat, is a guy who's just primarily defense first,

they get to keep him at a rate that they can handle, I guess. So I get it. It does. I still think that he, even given what his profile looks like, might have done better in arbitration if he had gone year to year. We always seem to forget that when we talk about these. There are guys who just make a lot of money in ARB. Not in the first year generally,

but there are guys who do really well for themselves. So when we're analyzing these deals, I do think it's important to remember that while you're obviously not going to make free agent money until you're a free agent, you're not making the league minimum those full six years either necessarily. So I'm curious how agents think about balancing that, but they might look at a guy like Hayes and say, as I said, a lot of your value is tied up in the

defense and go like, eh. I don't know. Yeah. I think the Zips projections for these contracts, according to the posts by Ben Clemens and Jay Jaffe. I'm cribbing from here. And of course, Dan Szymborski's projections. Zips had Ramirez at five years and 137, so not a huge amount more than he got. And for Hayes, Zips spit out eight years and 78 million or nine years and 86 million. So Jay said it was about 10 10 below what would have been projected but you know not embarrassing numbers not albies or or acuna kinds of contracts or evan longoria old school

extensions anything like that so i i think you know those fan bases they haven't had a whole lot to be excited about lately and it's still a limited amount of excitement because it's not getting someone else it's just keeping who you have already and maybe not sometimes but that's that's a win yeah if you're a fan of one of these teams so i think being able to i mean not that we have to reduce fandom to this but i think that there's a lot to be said for being able to walk into the team store and buy a jersey and know you're going to be able to wear it next year and that that guy's still going to be on the field i think it means a lot i mean this is something we talked about with the

franco extension too like it is just it is meaningful to have it be about more than the laundry generally to have it be about a particular guy who's your guy and is really really good and to know that the organization is committed to keeping that guy around. I mean, it's a little different with Hayes because I think that one thing we should also keep in mind with guys who sign these pre-ARB extensions is that in some ways, especially when they're for a reasonable amount like his is, it can make them more tradable because you know exactly what the cost is going to be if you're the team acquiring them you're not having to sort of like model out what an extension of your own might look like what a departure and

free agency would be like you know exactly what you're going to pay for exactly how long so it doesn't necessarily mean this is such a mean thing for me to say to Pirates fans who want to be excited. But I do think that it is useful for us to remember that sometimes it makes you very tradable, but not necessarily. And you get to go buy a Hayes jersey and be stoked on that. You get to go buy a new Ramirez jersey, a new Guardians jersey and be like, that's my guy. That's so cool. Or you could buy a Stephen Kwan jersey because everyone should join the Kwan hive. I sound worse as this recording is going, don't I? Well, I'll give you a little break from speaking and end with a stat blast here

that will be related to these extensions. And I'll also say, it sounds like Cabrian Hayes is okay and healthy because there was a bit of a scare when he left the game on opening day and he hadn't actually signed the contract yet. It turns out that it was just cramping in his left thumb and forearm and evidently the hot tub loosened things up. So it sounds like he's okay. He was not cramped from signing his contract or anything. And so people were kind of worried, uh-oh, the pirates are going to slip out of this spending too, because he will hurt himself before he has actually put his name on the dotted line. But no, it doesn't sound like that will happen. All right. Cue the song. We are a minus, we're OBS plus. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to Daystablast.

Okay, so a little bit of news about the StatBlast today. Yeah, the segment itself is not changing. Everything that you know and love about the StatBlast will continue. However, we have a sponsor for the StatBlast, and it is the same sponsor that we used to have way back when before it was even called the StatBlast. So longtime listeners will remember that for a period of two or three years prior to the segment being called the StatBlast, it was called the Baseball Reference Play Index. And Baseball Reference presented the podcast and the segment. And we used the Play Index to do the segment. Usually Sam did. And that relationship went on for a while.

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that's out there in the internet, not just for baseball, but for basketball, for football, for hockey. And as I noted, they have redesigned and redone the whole thing to make it more powerful now. They just updated the season finder. So they added postseason stats, which is wonderful because it's very hard to find postseason stats and almost annoyingly so. Now you can find them on StatHead. Weirdly hard. Yeah, it really is.

I mean, I know we don't lump them together with regular season stats, but they shouldn't be like impossible to find. So that's great. And, you know, now you can find like all-star appearances. It used to be when you searched on Stathead and you put the little all-star flag on there, it would be like anyone who is an all-star at any point in his career. Now it's like, were you an all-star in any given season? So you can look up the best or worst all-star seasons or whatever, which is great. And, you know, they've got the season finder and the game finder and the comparison finder and the event finder and the span finder. If you want to look for the most productive player over a certain span of time or a certain span of

games, and they have, you know, a daily breakdown of batter versus pitcher matchups, which is something you can look at if you want to follow along with the games from day to day. And they have a pivotal play finder that uses things like championship win probability added that we have used on here and neutralized stats finder. So you can look up what Barry Bonds would have done in peak course field, pre humidor, et cetera. So it's just an invaluable essential tool. I use it all the time in my work and we will not be using the stat head tool exclusively for the stat blast segment we will continue to use whatever tools are at our disposal but i rely on it i mean i use it and cite it and people will email us

potential stat blast questions sometimes and i'll say we don't need to do a stat blast because i can look this up in two minutes on stat head and i will just send them a link to that so it's great go get it and you can sign up with a promo code we have an effectively wild promo code wild 20 that gives you 20 off in annual subscription to any of the StatHead single sports or the all sports subs for new subscribers. So you can just go to StatHead.com. It usually costs $80 for a year, I believe, for baseball or any single sport. So you can get it for $60, I guess. $20 off, that's a pretty significant discount.

So StatHead.com, use the code WILD20 so that Baseball Reference will be happy that they have resumed this sponsorship and want to continue the relationship. And otherwise, happy to have them back in the fold. Yeah, very happy to have them back in the fold. Happy to be able to do a sponsorship, like you said, with a tool that we use that is baseball related in keeping with the pod. And you don't have to hear either of us uh read you ad copy about underwear so exactly everyone wins except for me undies i guess yes sorry all right so the step last today does rely partly on some data from baseball reference just by coincidence

so i was kind of wondering about and this was actually prompted by a question from a listener and effectively wild supporter, but it is timely, I think, because of the Jose Ramirez extension. And I think Jose Ramirez, at least up until this point, has been extremely underpaid if you are just going by his market value or free agent value or what a win goes for on the open market, he has not been on the open market. He has taken himself off of the open market because this is the second extension he signed, right? He signed a five-year $26 million extension before the 2017 season. And since then, he's been like, you know, what, a top five player in baseball, right? And also two team options for another 26 million.

So that just given how well he played, I mean, that cemented the fact that he's been relative to just how great he has been. One of the most underpaid players in baseball. So if you go to his Fangraphs player page, there is a value tab at the bottom, which will just sort of sum up. Well, here's how many war he was worth. Here's what the going rate for dollars per war in that season was and just multiply it. And if you do that for Jose Ramirez, you get $275 million point two dollars. And he has made a small fraction of that in his career. He has made 37 million.

has made a small fraction of that in his career. He has made $37 million. So, you know, now he will hopefully equalize things a bit over the life of this current contract, but probably will not make up much of, if any, of that deficit that has already happened. And that is, you know, partly his own decision. He decides to sign that extension. And partly it's just the way that baseball's salary structure is set up,

where you just don't get paid much in your early years of service time. But we got a question from listener Matthew, who says, we hear so much after contracts about how the team overpaid or the player underperformed. But what about the all time most exact values? exact values. Is there any fun in searching to see if a player in a year or a contract or a career made close to how much he should have quote unquote made? And so I looked this up with help from people at Baseball Reference and Fangraphs, multiple stat sites working together to produce the stat blast here. So first we have these Fangraphs dollar values going back to 2002. And Baseball Reference has pretty complete salary data

going back to that point. Things get spotty a bit before that. So it's okay that we're only looking to 2002. But I asked Dan Hirsch, friend of the show, Patreon supporter, Baseball Reference employee, to first send me the total money made by every player who had a complete career between 2002 and now. So everyone who is no longer active whose career started in 2002 or later. in 2002 or later. And then I also asked FanCraft's Sean Dolinar

to send me the totals over the same span for the player dollar values, according to FanCrafts. And then I put all of that together in a spreadsheet, or to be transparent, my wife did.

She has better spreadsheets than I am. And she did some magic and we ended up with a spreadsheet that has both what the player would have made in theory on the open market based on the Fangraft's dollar values and what they actually made. And so I was able to just match them up and see who came closest. And so if you're curious about who was most quote unquote underpaid or quote unquote overpaid over this period, Chase Utley shows up as thequote underpaid or quote-unquote overpaid over this period chase utley shows up as the most underpaid so he made about 125 million dollars in his career and according to the dollar values he was worth more than 400 million so a difference of about 280 million dollars for chase utley and

then some of the other guys at the top are players who do very well, according to Fangraphs War, because of framing. So Buster Posey, Russell Martin, Brian McCann. They are the next few who are all like around $250 million under what their market value would have been. And then Ben Zobrist at about $230 million, Ian Kinsler $225 million, Curtis Granderson, 215.

Now, interestingly, if you want to look at overpaid quote unquote players, the numbers are a lot smaller. Like the gaps are a lot smaller because the way that this works is, I mean, look, people look at Albert Pujols, for instance, and they think about the Angels contract and how he was paid more how he was paid more than he was worth on the field during those years. But he was worth so much more than he was paid during the Cardinals years that he actually comes out as being like $110 million underpaid by the end of this year and the end of his

career, which were at the end of this year. So he just racked up so much surplus value during those early years that even if you play like and are paid like Albert Pujols for like a decade after that, it still just like doesn't really come close. So if you look at like significant size contracts, like there just aren't many that are really underwater so to speak to any great degree it's like just a handful really and the most quote-unquote overpaid according to this well it is the flip side of the framing value question it's our old friend ryan domit oh no yeah sorry Ryan Domet. Oh, no. Yeah. Sorry, Ryan Domet. So Ryan Domet was paid $22 million in his career,

which does not sound like a enormous number. And, you know, you would think that, well, he couldn't have been so overpaid only making $22 million. But if you factor in the framing and the fact that he was the worst framer on record, basically, at a time when, you know, the ranges of framing value were very wide. According to Fangraphs, he has a like a negative nine war for his career, which again, like he was a league average hitter, but the framing was so bad. It was so bad bad so bad that he was like hundreds of runs below average on defense and so therefore it shows up that he should have been paid in theory like negative 55 million dollars and then therefore he is like 77 million dollars under so sorry ryan domit but not so sorry because hey you made 22. Yeah, he know, again, though, like the numbers are so much smaller on that side of the scale

just because of the way the salary system is set up that it's so much easier to cumulative be worth way more than you're paid than it is to be worth less. So that's worth keeping in mind. Yeah. Well, and it's a funny thing, too. And I guess you could say this about the contracts that are quote-unquote underwater, but it's like when you look at the team, if you were to look at this on the aggregate level of the value that teams enjoy relative to what they end up spending on payroll,

even when they spend big money, it's like they're fine. They're doing fine. Yes. Can I guess who the most on the nose pitcher or player is rather you can't sure is it max scherzer oh good guess let me see it it's not max scherzer i'm shocked by that because like let me tell you ain't never been a better contract ever than that oh yeah you know what it is national steel is it because he was worth so much before he signed the deal no it's because he's he's not in the sample because his career

isn't isn't over all right well only inactive players because you know active players sure it's hard to yeah yeah it would be all it would be all players who hadn't hit free agency yet and back sure there is uh still making money and still accruing value fair enough i guess you could compare to this point in his career right you could go to his fancraft player page and yeah and see what it says so uh maybe you can do that as i continue to speak here but the record for just most on the nose on the money literally player i mean if i'm not using any sort of salary minimums here, then it's Evan Scribner. Stop it.

Cool. Evan Scribner, as everyone expected. That name was on the tip of everyone's tongue. If the snap last ended there, that would be a bit of an anticlimactic conclusion. Yeah, it would be. Evan Scribner is a reliever who pitched for the Padres and the A's and the Mariners from 2011 to 2017. And he pitched 169 innings and he was worth like one baseball reference war. I don't know what he was worth in fan graphs war, but not a ton.

And he didn't make a ton of money either. He made $3,227,500. And in theory, he should have made $3,226,975. So he was $525 away from his calculated contract. So congrats to Evan Scribner. You were properly remunerated during your major league career. And see, the thing about it is that he had previously only been known for my very strange Bartleby the Scrivener jokes. So I'm glad he can be known for something else because that would be a terrible thing to go down as.

Yes, exactly. By the way, Max Scherzer is at like $500 million, right? Yeah. So he's like, I would argue that he is probably like right on the money for his national steal but yeah he's just been worth so much more he's like double what he's actually yeah because he's incredible and like the way that we pay baseball players is a weird racket so but yeah his his national steal he pitched great and they paid him a lot it was one of those times where you're like this works out well for everybody right you could do this for individual contracts it would be harder

to do yes and wrangle that data so and i also think that you're the way that you approached it is is more in keeping with the spirit of the question because it's very strange to not account for all of the surplus value that a player provides when he's making the league minimum or even just being compensated in arbitration and only hold him responsible for the the back end of his career so i think your approach is more sort of intellectually sound than than mine but i just know this about max scherzer and so i wanted to talk about the all-time great free agent signings yeah just really spectacular really spectacular. Good job, DC. And I should say, my accounting here is kind of fuzzy because this whole dollars per win model is based on, well, we have free agency that's set up a certain way, and so there's scarcity, right? And so if I'm saying, well, this is what this guy should have made on the

open market, if he was always a free agent, well, that's just not the way the system works. And if the system did work that way, then the dollar values would be different if everyone was a free agent every single year. So in a way, this is like a theoretical exercise where like everyone's always a free agent, but the dollars per win values are the same as they are now, which is like not really a world we would be in. So you could imagine this is like the system is the same for everyone else but for some reason like this guy was always a free agent and so he got paid that amount so anyway if we raise the minimum a little just to like 20 million dollars just to like have players

who made a significant amount of money during their career then the most on the money guy is actually Alan Craig. Alan Craig, who played from 2010 to 2015, mostly for the Cardinals, for the Red Sox and Padres, he made $31.3 million and quote unquote should have made like $31.8 million. So he was less than half a million off from what he should have been. And he had kind of a weird career, right? Like it ended early. He kind of came out of nowhere and was great replacing Pujols, actually, right? And, you know, was good for the Cardinals, at least after that first year. And then just like collapsed and had a terrible year.

But then he continued to be bad with Boston at the end of his career so just like kind of a confounding career and not a very long one but he ended up being paid roughly appropriately now the other guys who are very close like actually I guess the the closest is Junichi Tozawa who was like 200,000 off and then the closest big contract like over 50 million is Daisuke Matsuzaka who made 53.2 and was expected to quote unquote to make 52.2 so that's interesting because you do see players a lot of like japanese players who signed in the middle of their career who ended up being like fairly appropriate pay which makes sense because like they skipped the whole like under you know pre-arb and arb right and they just like got paid

kind of like free agents from the beginning of their mlb careers and so you see tazawa you see matsuzaka and tanaka and jojima and matsui like a lot of them are in this range you know hideki and kaz like a lot of them are very close which makes sense i think given the structure of their career and so you know people might think of dice k as i don't know is he seen as semi-disappointing, perhaps, just in terms of his MLB career, although his NPP career is legendary? But even so, in MLB, he justified what he was paid, given the market rate. He was still good enough to do that. If we exclude those players, I think maybe the most interesting one, and this is a big money person who also had his career end early and somewhat disappointingly due to injury prince fielder basically right on the money with 177 million in actual earnings and

like 181 million in expected earnings and i guess that is a case where, you know, ultimately he got that big contract and then like had to retire because of what his back injury. Right. And so he didn't produce value then. And I don't remember, I guess, did he technically retire or did he still remain active so that he was still earning that money, I guess so you know he made more than he was worth early in his career but then that contract didn't work out because of the injury and so ultimately he ends up being right on the money basically so that's like kind of an exception that tells you what has to happen in order for a player to be good early on and still not end up like worth way more than in theory they should have been and other guys in that range adam laroche is right there at like 70 million and 72 million brad lidge right there at like 54 and 56 jp howell 25 and 26 mark trumbo very close like 60 and 58 mike morse 35 and 33 mark repchinsky 20 and 18 so it's really a mix of guys but i guess prince fielder would be like the biggest you know big earnings like 100 million or more who was not a player from japan and you know had kind of of came up through the usual system domestically and

still ended up very close. So it's either Evan Scribner, if you set no minimum, or Alan Craig, if you set a moderate minimum, or Matsuzaka, if you count him or Otozawa. And then if you're going to go with the big contracts, then it would be Prince Fielder with Francisco Rodriguez right behind him at 84 and 88. So what you're saying is presented with the opportunity to make this about Evan Scribner, you'd prefer not to? I guess I would. Yes, you could say that. So I'll put the spreadsheet online and please use the numbers responsibly.

I'm so sorry. Baseball reference, this is what you're getting. Yeah, you never know what you're going to get with the stat blast from week to week. But thanks, Dan and Sean, for help with this data. And thanks to Baseball Reference for sponsoring us, at least through this season. So it'll be through this whole season. We will shout out StatHead when we do the stat blast. And that is the extent of it. So that's that. All right. Well, this was fun and I will just leave you all with a recommendation to not just watch baseball this

weekend, but also watch this video that I sent you Meg right before we recorded, which is a video. It was tweeted out by KNBR, the San Francisco radio station, the other day, and it's of Joey Bart, the Giants catcher, working with Giants bullpen and catching coach Craig Albernaz during spring training, and they're going through catching and framing drills, and it's just like a two-minute video, and I love it. I could watch this all day. I wish this were like Drive to Survive-style documentary about like learning to frame. Like this is great. And it makes me sad about Robo umps.

And I realized while watching this that like, you know what? Like I don't know that I can be swayed from being anti Robo ump, even though I realized that most people will probably prefer it. And maybe it will even be better for the sport as a whole because i just love this stuff i just love this it's like one of my very favorite things about baseball catching is so cool catching is so cool it's my favorite position there is so much skill and technique and art that goes into it and you know albernaz is coaching him about like how to receive the high pitch and how to receive the low pitch. And some of it is about like, yeah, you want to present it a certain way and look a certain way to the umpire. Some of it is just like, oh, well, Carlos Rodon's slider moves like this.

And so I have to catch it with this glove movement. It's just it's so cool. And there's so much skill and prowess and subtlety to it. And all of this will be lost if we have robo umps, like all of it. And I just hate that idea. And it's not even about like, you know,

cause I have praised John Lipka, the new full-time umpire before, because he's super accurate. And I guess you could say, well, why don't you like the most inaccurate umpires? Because maybe they allow greater framing ability or something and i guess that's a fair point but i still think that just some amount of leeway there is preferable just because it

preserves this art of receiving and catching and framing because it is such an art it's such a tradition that has been emphasized and revamped of late. And I absolutely love watching this. And it would be so sad to me if catchers just sat back there. Like, you know, they'd still have to do some stuff. They'd still have to block. I get that. But the fact that they could catch the ball just any old which way, and it just wouldn't matter even slightly because it's about where the pitch crossed the plate like that would

just deeply sadden me for this not to be a part of baseball anymore yeah i agree i think that first i appreciate the existence of something like this because it does i mean it it really demonstrates the skill and the art and the craft that goes into this and i know someone will watch it and be like meg they are like acknowledging you know umpire tendencies to be fooled by particular things. But this is a skill. These guys are doing a thing. They're not just engaged in cheap sleight of hand. There is a lot of subtlety and art to having soft hands

and catching the ball well and following a slider into the zone in a way that isn't herky-jerky but allows you to really present a pitch in a compelling way,'t herky-jerky, but allows you to really present a pitch in a compelling way. And it's really cool. And I agree with you. I'd be sad if we lost it, if it can just be this like, I shouldn't be able to be a butcher back there. I've said it before on this pod in mostly a joking way,

but I have a hard time respecting catchers who can't frame. It's not aesthetically pleasing. And I think we will lose the incentive to do this in a way that is is subtle and compelling and and it'll be a real shame because they still gotta catch the damn thing so have them do it nicely yeah it's just it's a personal preference i know this is maybe a niche thing that we share that maybe a lot of our listeners is like, I don't care. Like, I'm not even paying attention. I don't notice this. Or just saying, like, it's unfair to the hitter. Like, why should it count against the hitter that the catcher is doing this stuff? I get that. Like, it is unfair to a certain extent, although it's an unfairness that has been part of the sport from the beginning, which doesn't mean it should be preserved just on that basis. But we watch the sport because we're entertained by certain aspects of it. And this is an aspect of it that just entertains me more than almost anything. Like really, like watching the art of framing, I'm not trying to sound like some sort of hipster or like I'm, you know, a super

baseball knower who's like paying attention to things that no one else notices or something. But for whatever reason, and I've talked before about like how i fell in love with framing when i was working for the yankees and then writing for bp and grantland and everything and you know it was like part of my career kind of and and one of the things that i focused on as a baseball writer early on but just beyond that i just i love it i love watching a good framer as much as i love watching a good pitcher pitch or a good hitter swing the bat or a good fielder field at any other position, except I like it even more than most of those things. almost all of the art of receiving and catching. It's just, it's not worth the trade-off for me. And I get that many people's mileage may vary and I'm like trying to resign myself to it,

but I would so, so miss this if this went away. Yeah, I think that for me, it was like, I felt more confident, like after talking to people about it, like more confident in my ability very early in my writing career to like diagnose it as good as or bad accurately. And so like that felt really nice.

I don't know. I just, I've always, you're, you're, you're staring at it almost all the time when you're watching baseball. I think that's the other thing, right?

It's like, you're just watching guys do this so many times in a, in a game and in a season and so yeah you take it for granted yeah once you and once you start paying attention to it you like can't help but notice who's good and who's bad like it it really is there almost every second of the game right so i don't know i think that's part of it too so and people should stop saying it's like flopping because you got to catch the ball you're right you don't have to fall over you have to catch the ball though several episodes but yes yeah all right well i will link to that video on the show page it's always yeah all right

well baseball season has started mlb is back we are excited and we hope you are all too yes well i'm watching the inaugural apple tv broadcast as I speak these words, Mets Nationals. It's a bit of a mixed bag so far. The picture quality is great. The cameras are good. They miked up players during the game without interviewing them. Just played the highlights later. It's got kind of a clean, minimalist, Apple-esque look.

No giant bottom lines or chyrons or overlays. Also, nice not to be blacked out of the game as a New Yorker with a New York team playing. So I'm on board with that. That's the good. The bad, I did get booted out of the app and missed a couple of bats. Granted, that sort of thing still happens to me with MLB TV after all these years. And it's just day one for them. Maybe they're working out the kinks. There are no DVR features. Hopefully they figure out that futuristic advanced pause technology. But the big thing is the real-time updated probabilities in the bottom right corner that really never go away. I mentioned this earlier in the episode. They were teasing this feature, and here it is.

And my early review is, it's a no from me. There are a few issues here. For one thing, the metric keeps changing. It goes from hit probability to walk probability to reach base probability to out probability. So-based probability to out probability. So I find that a bit distracting. Also, it goes out to two decimal places. Not necessary. But beyond that, it just seems to be borked. I don't know if I missed an explanation of how this works, but sometimes the probabilities seem to move in the wrong direction.

A strike will be called on a hitter and his reach-based probability will go down, that sort of thing. That seems to be happening often, and there's some unreasonably low or high numbers, a lot of big fluctuations. So I can't tell if it's based on the hitter's performance in certain splits historically or against that pitcher or something. It seems like it's possibly oversimplified or based on not enough data or not the best data. I bet they'll fix those things going forward, drop a decimal place, maybe fix the system itself so it spits out more reasonable numbers, but even if it did, I'm not sure I need it. Not sure it's adding anything for me. Maybe it would if I didn't have a sense of those things in my head anyway, if I were new to the sport, but as of now,

not into it. Not into the betting odds either, but I'm getting used to those. And as I've been saying this, Francisco Lindor got hit in the face by a pitch, and the bench is cleared. And Apple did not show me a brawl probability, though it would have been low. It usually is. Lindor looks okay, although he is leaving the game. And so is Steve Ciszek, who got ejected. The good news for Apple is that that means there's something for umpiring consultant Brian Gorman to talk about. All right, let me leave you with an update to an old stat blast, because there have been some developments in recent days. update to an old stat blast because there have been some developments in recent days. On episode 1523 back in April 2020, we did a stat blast about teams that had the longest streaks of having

different players start on opening day at the same position. So no repeats, different player every year throughout the span. And that question was inspired by the Giants who had had a revolving door of left fielders ever since Barry Bonds left or was prevented from returning. And that question was inspired by the Giants, who had had a revolving door of left fielders ever since Barry Bonds left, or was prevented from returning. And that revolving door has continued. They have now had 16 different opening day left fielders over the past 16 years. Jock Peterson became the latest this week. So that means they have gone 15 years now without a repeat. And that, when we ran the stat blast, would have been the second longest

streak of all time. At the time, the longest streak was 16 years, again, left fielders for the St. Louis Browns and Baltimore Orioles from 1940 to 1955. However, we did note at the time that there was also a long active streak in left field for the Padres, which was 14 years at that time, from 2006 to 2019, Eric Young to Will Myers. Well, that streak has been extended. So in 2019, it was Myers. In 2020, it was Tommy Pham. And in 2021, it was Jerickson Profar starting in left field on opening day for the Padres. So that brought the Padres up into a tie with those Browns and Orioles for the longest streak, 16 years. However, that streak was snapped this week because Jerickson Profar started in left field again, back-to-back years. So the Padres are now atop the leaderboard, tied with those 40s and 50s Browns and Orioles teams,

but the Giants' streak is still active. So if they have a different opening day left fielder next year, they will tie. And if they have another year beyond that, they will then be on top. And I don't think it's a coincidence that left field is where these longest streaks are, because left field is often just sort of a holding pen for different players who revolve around the field. Maybe there aren't as many franchise left fielders. It's just where you stick the weakest defending outfielder often, or the one with the weakest arm. There are exceptions to that, obviously. Anyway, Padres' historic streak stopped. Giants' potentially historic streak continues. Meant to mention earlier when we were talking about things we enjoyed on opening day,

Meg mentioned Bobby Witt Jr.'s first hit. In that same game, I enjoyed the old guy, Zach Granke, going 5-2, allowing only one run against Cleveland. Is it good that he struck out only one guardian over those five and two-thirds? No, not exactly. But that's a worrisome sign for another day. An opening day, it was about Granke being effective and having his homecoming. Also, a brief mea culpa on our previous episode. I mispronounced the first name of the new AAA infielder for the Tampa Bay Rays

who was acquired in the Austin Meadows trade. I said his name is Isaac Paredes. It is actually Isak Paredes. It is actually Isaac Paredes. That is how he pronounces it. This week, MLB released its new guide to player name preferences and pronunciations, and I learned that Paredes pronounces his first name Isaac. It is spelled I-S-A-A-C, which is what tripped me up, but I wanted to mention it because I do make an effort to try to get pronunciations

fairly accurate on the podcast when I can. Not saying I always give it the right intonation or accent, but I at least try not to butcher these things. And we do go to an effort to try to figure out, okay, how is this name pronounced? How does the player say it? Look it up on Baseball Reference or look it up according to MLB's guide if it's an active player or watch a YouTube video and maybe they will say it themselves. Many times when I'm not positive, I will check first, and I'm sure we still screw it up sometimes, but it drives me a bit batty when I hear on other podcasts just names constantly being mangled. Anyway, I guess I wasn't watching a lot of Tiger's broadcasts last year, and so I did

not hear that it was Isak if the broadcasters were pronouncing it the way he wants it pronounced. And usually, I just will know that I don't know how to pronounce it or I know I'm not sure and so I will look. But when it is spelled like a name that normally I would know how to pronounce, it didn't even occur to me that it might not be pronounced that way. So, Isak Paredes, a name to know because he will probably be a big leaguer again at some point this year. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon

by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help us keep going, keep doing this thing for another year, help us stay ad-free aside from our stat head sponsorship, and get themselves access to some perks. Caleb Cabo, or Cabo, there's no pronunciation guide for Patreon supporters' names, unfortunately. Wes Rumbaugh, Kevin Philip Torres, Jonathan Johnson, and Kevin King. Thanks to all of you. If you haven't already signed up, one incentive too is that the Patreon supporter Discord group is hopping these days. It's got game threads and live game chats and a lot of people participating now that the MLB season has started. There are individual channels for each MLB team, and you can join and talk to your fellow fans, and you know it will be enlightened and courteous Thank you. Among many other extras. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod. There's an Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild.

at EWPod. There's an Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks as always to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend and we'll be back to talk to you early next week. you cause so long came you oh you changed my life and I wonder if I know what you've begun cause so long came you oh you changed my life and I

wonder if I know what you've begun