Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1930: Meat Your Maker

Episode Date: November 17, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Shohei Ohtani and the Cy Young Award, Buck Showalter and the Manager of the Year Award, Bryce Harper’s elbow surgery, the Angels signing Tyler Anderson, Anthony Rizzo and the Yankees’ record Defensive Runs Saved total, the Mariners trading for Teoscar Hernández, title inflation and the “associate manager,” and […]

Hiding a hole in the ground While the hawk in the fox circles round Black eyes in the vicious sweat gray So tough, yeah, it makes you its prey By twenty you'll feel you'll be done Caught in their buckets we won And we'll stay And we'll stay

And we'll stay Hello and welcome to episode 1930 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined as always, or as almost always, by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. So later in the episode, we'll be bringing on our most frequent guest, Eric Langenhagen, who will be here to discuss a panoply of topics. We'll be talking about how rules changes affect player evaluation. We'll be

talking about when players make changes with one organization, how sticky are those changes when they go elsewhere. We'll be talking about the 40-man roster deadline and roster crunch. We'll be talking about Kode Sanga and other NPB players coming to MLB this winter. But before that, just a few baseball news items that we should probably discuss. We are recording late on Wednesday afternoon prior to the announcement about the Cy Young Awards. Oh, yeah. Can't imagine that there will be anything all that surprising. It seems like Justin Verlander will probably win in a walk, I would think, on the AL side. And I would guess that the NL side will, if anything, be even more predictable.

It doesn't seem like there's a lot of intrigue here. I guess Sandy Alcantara is going to run away with this thing. But it will take two hours for us to learn that. Yes. But we do know the finalists. I can't stand the concept of finalists, but we know the top three finishers in each league. And I just got to say, as the person who always talks about Cho Hyo-Tani, the fact that Cho Hyo-Tani is not an AL Cy Young Award winner finalist, that flummoxes me. Because I don't see why he isn't really. I don't think

there's at least a war-based argument that he should not be in the top three. The top three, Justin Verlander, Dylan Cease, and Alec Manoa, all very fine pitchers. But Shohei Otani, I think, deserves to be in that group. I I was just looking, fan graphs were baseball reference were baseball prospectus were. I talked last time about how I prefer fan graphs were to baseball reference were when it comes to pitchers specifically, but each has its merits and voters look at these things. It's not the only thing to look at, but if you were to look at these things, so Otani ranks in the top three, whichever metric you use. He actually leads all American League pitchers in baseball prospectus warp. He is second,

I believe, in baseball reference war, and he is third in fangraphs war. And so if you average baseball reference and fangraphs pitching war together, he is second in the AL, just a tenth of a win behind Justin Verlander. And if you include all three metrics, then Otani is actually the leader by average and just ahead of Verlander and handily ahead of Cease and even farther ahead of Manoa. So I'm not saying he should win the award or that he's more deserving than Verlander, but I do think he should be in the conversation. As they say, he's in this current conversation that we are having. So I assume he will finish just outside of the top three. But I wonder why it is that he did not among the voters. And it's just a subset of voters, so who knows. But

I wonder whether it's because a so much of the attention is on him as a two-way player that maybe just how good he is at one or the other or pitching specifically gets diluted a little because he was more valuable as a hitter in 2021 than he was as a pitcher and then things sort of flipped this year or whether it's that he did not qualify for the era title until the very end of the season and so maybe if people were looking at leaderboards he would not have appeared on them perhaps so i don't know what it is but he was a really great pitcher this year and he improved as time went on and i'm very excited to see what he can do with hopefully a full healthy season on the mound in

2023 because like the pitches that he incorporated and and just picked up from scratch during the 2022 season and incorporated into his repertoire and and that were just like nails for him I would love to see how he does in a full season but just even this year like i think he deserved to be one of the the top three which is pretty impressive i do think that the qualified thing probably mattered it shouldn't matter like folks if you're a voter just like you know knock that innings pitch down to like 100 and see what happens just do it you know you know just do it as you're assembling things. The fact that it happened so late, I think, does end up kind of dinging, guys.

You know? Yeah, probably. So just knock it down. And if you're of the opinion that you have to be qualified to be a qualified candidate for one of these awards, I guess I get that. There are fewer and fewer qualified pitchers every year,

which is why we've talked about whether maybe they should change how you qualify. So these days, it's much more conceivable that you could have a high finish at least without actually qualifying. So it's even more imperative to lower that bar a bit. But I'm just saying, certainly, Sandy Alcantara was incredible and a big part of his candidacy is that he was by the standards of this era incredibly durable and went very deep into games and was also effective on a per inning basis and Otani did not have the most innings and he obviously was like on the six-man rotation and that was going to cut into his his innings totals but he was just so

good in his innings that i don't think we should discount where he should finish in this race anyway that's all i wanted to say just a little pro tani advocacy not trying to detract from vero enter and alcantara who are very deserving winners and excellent and i'm presuming that they won and and they should have won probably. But just saying. Well, yeah. And he ended up being a qualified starter by the end, right? See, this is why you got to knock it down. Even if you want to use that as a barometer, sometimes people take till the very last day. You know, you don't want to exclude anybody.

Yeah. No, wait to vote until the very end. Yeah. The ballots can be submitted until after the regular season ends. You're in line. Stay in line. And the other award that was awarded that we rarely discuss at any length because who has anything to say about this really, but manager of the year came out, right? And Terry Francona won in the AL, which I guess was pretty predictable.

And Buck Showalter won in the NL. And all I wanted to say about this is that this is Buck Showalter's fourth manager of the year victory. He ties two Hall of Famers, Tony La Russa and Bobby Cox, as the only managers to win this award four times, and he is the only one to win it with four teams. And I believe Showalter is 19th all time in managerial wins. And he is the second winningest manager who has not won a World Series behind Gene Mauck. And Showalter has not even won a pennant, right? So he's like the new Dusty Baker. Now that Dusty won a World Series as a manager, now people will move on to Buck

Showalter maybe as a manager who's had a great career and has lasted a long time and has not had that postseason success. And of course, a big part of the Buck story is that sometimes he has helped get a team almost to the promised land, but not quite all the way there. And then some of his teams have won after he left, et cetera. But we talked about this during the playoffs, I think, when it comes to evaluating managers and front office executives and how often, whether you become a Hall of Famer or you're counted as one of the greats, it comes down to whether you won a World Series. I'm just saying, if anyone puts any stock in Manager of the Year, and I don't know whether they should or whether they do, but if you're a four-time winner like if that's the equivalent of like being a four-time mvp or a

four-time cy young winner or something like you're an all-time great so to do that as a manager in my mind like perhaps that's as impressive as if not more impressive than winning a world series which like that's a team accomplishment. Now, manager of the year is also to a great extent a team accomplishment too, right? Because often it comes down to like whose team exceeded expectations by the most. So even so, like I think you could make a case that like, well, this is a specific manager award. And therefore, if you excel at this, if you are voted the best manager in your

league four times with four teams like that is in its way as impressive as winning a world series or winning a pennant because we know that so much of postseason success comes down to randomness and maybe a little less comes down to full season, regular season success, which is what manager of the year is based on. Yeah. I think that that is a defensible argument. I want to offer a take. Can I give you a take? I don't think that we should vote for manager of the year.

No, I don't think so either, really. I think it's a weird thing for us to vote for. I mean, not you and me. We didn't vote for it this year. No. I famously voted for NL rookie of the year. We have devoted time to that. And it's not that the writers can't have any sense of it, right?

And obviously the folks who cover the teams in question are going to have a pretty in-depth view of the managers. But even then, you don't see everything that goes into being a good manager. And you often intentionally don't see a lot of the things that might make you a good manager. And so I just think it's a weird one for us to vote for. And I know that there's like institutional momentum around it. So we're never going to stop. But it does strike me as an odd one for the writers to weigh in on.

Because like, you know, with the other ones, you can, as players, they create these stats, Ben. You see the stats they make they create these stats and then they they also create this film for you to watch they create all these things for you to engage with and you can you know go around and around trying to figure out how to weigh them against each other and what should should matter most but i just think it's weird we vote for this one i don't know yeah it's definitely weird yeah it's so weird and maybe that is why it it should not be legacy defining because we don't know that it's actually like a good measure of how good the manager was.

It's often just like how many wins was this team expected to win and how many did it actually win? And is that actually a fully reflection of the manager? Who knows? Who knows? reflection of the manager who knows right it comes down to well it's going to be tito because the guardians exceeded expectations or it's going to be brandon hyde because the orioles exceeded expectations arguably by even more than the guardians did poor scott service gets such short shrift in this conversation right yeah well the mariners say they won exactly the same number of games that they had won the previous year right they were better this time when they made the playoffs yeah but they didn't really if you were setting expectations based on

how they did the previous year then i guess they didn't exceed them you're acting as if everyone didn't expect them to just miss the playoffs forever yeah of course yeah well it's weird in the running yeah he was a finalist he was a finalist. The impressive thing is that even though it is so much just like who exceeded expectations by the most, Dave Roberts almost won the thing in the National League. He had the same number of first place votes as Showalter. And that's amazing because everyone expected the Dodgers to be the best team in baseball, but they were so good that he still almost won. And that is just a testament to how good the Dodgers are. Dave Roberts has won manager of the year award, I believe, and it was in his first season with the Dodgers. And I believe the team has been better every year since then,

but he has not won one of these awards since then, which maybe that tells you something about this award. Anyway, it's sort of silly. Yeah, it's sort of silly yeah it's sort of silly i mean i think more often than not we seem to land on the writers do seem to land on good managers right like probably yeah more often than not they they tend to land on guys who have done a good job you know again in the way that we can know these things because it's weird and hard to know but yeah yeah it's a weird one i don't know but congrats to them for yes there doesn't we've dumped on the accomplishment for a few minutes it's not that it's a bad it's not that it's not an accomplishment and it's not that again that there isn't some maybe even a lot of of signal in the noise i just think that there's like this huge you know at some point

they close they close the doors and we're not in the in the clubhouse anymore we're not in there and then like you know a bunch of stuff still happens yeah we just don't see it as opposed to the players where famously they create the stats and then also this film you know yep yeah i don't know that there's anyone more qualified to vote on this than the writers but i don't know that anyone is qualified in the world to vote on this because like you might have a good perspective on your team right how could you possibly know every other team and what's going on behind the scenes there so but maybe that's okay you know maybe that would be okay because like you know other i think that in the i think there are other sports where like

other executives vote and then you have and then you, you know, that can creep in there. Although maybe we should just be like, this is the one award where we've decided it's okay for it to be a little gossipy. You know, that might be fun too. Yeah, like what if you could, and players, I don't think that their voting patterns accord with mine all that often

when it comes to evaluations of their peers. But if you could like have players, if you could survey and poll all the players on their own manager and then poll all of those ratings of like every team's respective player ratings of its manager and then see which which player pool rated its manager the highest. I don't know that that would be a perfect measure, but I'd probably trust it a little more. Like you could probably have some managers who are good managers who are not well-liked and popular maybe among their players. So maybe there'd be some bias that would still creep in there,

but I might trust that a little more if you could do that anyway. So other news items, bits of baseball news, Bryce Harper is having elbow surgery. We were wondering whether and when that would happen. It is happening soon. And they don't know exactly when he'll be back because he has to have his UCL fix. But they don't know whether it will be the full Tommy John or the brace procedure that has a quicker recovery.

And they won't know, it sounds like, until they open him up. that has a quicker recovery and they won't know, it sounds like, until they open him up. So if he has the full TJ, then I imagine that he would miss at least a couple months, probably, I think at the start of the season. It takes a lot less time for a position player to come back and start DHing, let's say, than for a pitcher to come back and start pitching. But I think based on timelines of previous surgeries, he would still be out for some amount of time and might be back in the middle of the season if he has the full TJ, if he has the brace procedure.

I don't know. I guess he could be back potentially a lot closer to opening day, if not by opening day. But it's tough to lose him. Like you have to make some calculation. Well, how much Bryce Harper's bat are we going to lose? But Bryce Harper, he probably wants to throw again. And the Phillies probably want him to throw because they would be a better team with him in the outfield.

Yeah. So it's kind of like a good problem to have that his surgery and rehab were delayed by the Phillies playing deep into the postseason and winning the pennant. Otherwise, he could have had the surgery right after the regular season, but obviously preferable to win a pennant and have to delay your return a little bit. But yes, that is happening. So there's some uncertainty about what that will mean for the Phillies in 2023. Yep. And we had some transactions. Trans. Some somewhat notable.

Yeah. So Tyler Anderson has signed with the Angels. And as the person who drafted him in the free agent contracts over-unders draft, all I can say is you can put it on the board. Yes. Because I picked right with Tyler Anderson. Yeah. So he was...

I really enjoy the moments when we're podcasting where you do something that I wasn't expecting and I just get to like, you know, I get to fill in a little more about Ben, you know, I get to spackle over a gap that existed previously. Like, I didn't know you had that voice. Now I know. I don't know that I do have that voice,

but I did it so there's my hawk harrelson i guess anyway he was predicted to take the qualifying offer by mlb trade rumors unlike martin perez and jock peterson he did not yeah he got a what three year 39 million dollar deal plus plus some details with the angels so that interesting, not only as it pertains to the free agent contracts over-unders draft, but also the Angels. I guess in the World Series odds movers draft, I took the Angels to fall. So in a way, perhaps this hurts me on one of my drafts as well, too. Well, you know, the optimist, from the Angels' perspective, it would say that, yeah, you kind of played yourself a little bit. But the realist might say, you know, the Angels still have plenty of time to goof something up.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. Totally. I will say, and we'll talk to Eric about just the changes that players make, like Tyler Anderson made with the Dodgers and how those tend to carry over to their new teams. But this is the kind of move that I remember the Angels not making last offseason when they signed Cinderguard, right? But there was like so much uncertainty about their rotation. And it was just like, go get like an innings eater or just like go get a dependable like mid rotation guy so that you're not taking

risks because you have Otani but you don't know how many innings he's going to give you as it turns out he gave you quite a few but you've got Patrick Sandoval and you've got Jose Suarez like you've you've got some decent arms there but they just like they needed someone who you could hopefully pencil in for 170 innings or something who could give you like a mid rotation performance just to avoid like replacement level pitchers. And even if Tyler Anderson takes some some step back, he can probably give you that. So I understand why he would not want to take the qualifying offer. We talked about that when I drafted him. And it seems like the kind of player that the Angels have been missing a lot lately.

And it seems like the kind of player that the Angels have been missing a lot lately. So, you know, they kind of had to wait for the Dodgers to go get him and make him better and help him be better and then drive up the price. But whatever, they got him. I guess the only concern might be that the Angels are not the defensive team that the Dodgers were, right? And Anderson, not a big bat-misser even when he was having lots of success. The Angels' defense wasn't bad, but the Dodgers' defense was better. right and Anderson not a big bat misser even when he was having lots of success the Angels defense wasn't bad no but the Dodgers defense was better so that might help him a little bit but that happened yeah now they have Otani Anderson Sandoval Suarez Detmers like you know it's pitching and pitching gets heard and guys underperform and that all happens. But you look at that and you're like, that's a rotation.

That's a real, honest-to-goodness major league rotation. And I hope that they're not done for the pitching-related reasons I just cited. And because I think that you have to operate under the assumption that the baseball gods have placed some sort of curse on you until proven otherwise. It's sort of like Cleveland without fielders. Until you had the year you had this year you didn't know if you had been fully forgiven for not extending a qualifying offer to michael brantley all those years ago so they should keep adding uh as insurance against you know

normal attrition and also supernatural forces but that's like a that's like a real that is a baseball team trying to win baseball games counter rotation that's that's kind of cool yeah anthony rendon made it back this is gonna be the year this is oh boy what's that football for me to kick lucy yeah i'm not gonna get into that now they've had all sorts of problems building a bullpen though which uh like maybe if they had ricela Iglesias, like, that might help. Yeah. What happened there? Anyway.

Yeah. So there was another notable move. Well, multiple notable moves, I guess. The Yankees brought back Anthony Rizzo fairly predictably. I don't know whether people know this, but I was reading my Bill James handbook that just came and always marks the start of the offseason. And I was not really aware of this, but the 2022 New York Yankees, partly thanks to Anthony Rizzo, but also thanks to many others, had the highest defensive run saved total for a team on record ever since they have been tracking that. Really? Yeah.

129 runs above average, which I think almost everyone would be surprised by. Yeah. Even if you are a Yankees fan, maybe especially if you're a Yankees fan. I don't know what to think about that because they did not seem to be an elite defense based on outs above average at baseball savant or even defensive efficiency. Watching. Right? Yeah. Or watching them yeah i mean they weren't bad oh but they don't stand out to me they weren't great either by yankee standards

they were a good defense like they obviously like they made some moves to try to shore up their defense and i i think that worked to a certain extent like they they had the second highest defensive efficiency in the majors after the dodgers. Like, good defensive team, but best? I don't know. That's definitely surprising. And they were above average at every single position except center field. And even in center field, they had Aaron Judge there for more than half the year, and he was above average. more than half the year and he was above average they just had some below average work there in other innings by aaron hicks before he got hurt and then estevan floreal but really like if you

believe the numbers the defensive run saved numbers then when those guys were on the field they were above average everywhere like they had jose trev, of course, was a good framer and that was part of it. And their pitchers were apparently very good at defense, according to SIS and Defensive Run Save. So maybe it was that they didn't have that many star defenders, but they had good defenders, solid defenders, basically at every position. And then maybe you had like pitchers, defense is under the radar and framing is perhaps still somewhat overlooked and you factor all that in and maybe they were just better than the eye test showed. But yeah, definitely made me go, huh, when I saw that. Anyway, Rizzo had a good year and the Yankees wanted him back. Also, the Mariners made a trade. Yeah.

Teoscar Hernandez. They sure did. So that's a big one. Yeah. So not a huge return i guess some people were surprised to see the return but i guess it's that hernandez is only under team control for one more season right and he's in line to to make a decent bit of coin in arbitration so i guess that is why it was perhaps underwhelming. But there's a big upgrade for the Mariners lineup right there, right? Because they had some holes in that lineup late last season. I guess this means that Jesse Winker may be moved potentially.

Potentially, yeah. He's being shopped around and it sounds like they may or may not be done upgrading even in the outfield. Yeah. It sounds like they may want to not hand that position to Jared Kelnick. Look, Ben, when you're given the opportunity to hand a position to Jared Kelnick or to not do that, right now, history tells us that not doing that is the right move, which does not mean that history might not change its mind. That happens.

Guys evolve. Players change. They take leaps forward. So it's not impossible. But I think that operating under the assumption that if you want to continue playing playoff baseball and perhaps longer into the postseason than the Mariners did this year, that continuing to upgrade their bats is a good good idea that's a good idea for them yeah so you know

so they traded eric swanson the reliever who is uh very very good like really really good people were sending tweets and screenshots of his baseball savant percentiles and he's like in the red which is good in this case in everything and i mean just looking at the 1.68 era and the 1.84 fip those are also good and he's under team control for a few years so they got him and they also particularly potent against lefties right at least this this past season so and then they got a an a ball pitcher as well out of macco going back to toronto and i guess this means that toronto has a vacancy in the outfield and and we'll need to make some sort of move there yeah but i guess they figured that they would have swanson longer and really like teoscar hercar Hernandez probably underrated I think as a player

and and certainly as a hitter because like I mean lifetime like he's he's been an excellent hitter just like historically like he's got a 121 career OPS plus like over the past three years I'm mixing my OPS pluses and WRC pluses here, but he has a 132 WRC plus since the start of 2020, which minimum 1,000 plate appearances puts him 21st in the majors. So he's been one of the best hitters in baseball over a period of a few years here and he just like he doesn't give you much defensively or or speed wise or anything he's just you know bat only basically but it's a pretty good bat even in a corner so yeah that's a good guy to have in a lineup that was not a juggernaut no it definitely needs a boost and now you're you know i'm curious to see like what what a healthy for hopefully a whole

season ty france is gonna end up looking like i think that guy is just a good hitter but also it's hard to know because he was hurt and then maybe still compromised from that in the back half but like you have like a good one through five now so that's nice because that wasn't true a little while ago i saw adam macko in fall league and i thought he looked really good but um i think that to oscar hernandez is likely to have a bigger impact on big league club for this year and if you think about it within the context of like the outfielder market like it seemed like very unlikely that seattle was going to say try to sign aaron judge and you know they might have some infields needs that are bigger so's like, who can you get as a one-year outfielder?

You know, if you're thinking about it that way, like, how can you upgrade on sort of a short-term deal with some of the guys who are available there? And I think I'd prefer Teoscar Hernandez to a lot of those guys. So I get what they were doing here, right? Like, do you feel, I feel more confident in, say, Teoscar Hernandez than I do in, well, like Michael Conforto might be someone who takes a one-year deal, but he hasn't played baseball in like a while. So I get it. And I think that Seattle probably rightly assumes that they can deal

from reliever depth because they've done a good job of helping guys get better and at identifying talent that they think is good and maybe just needs a tweak to really unlock. So it seems smart to deal from a position of strength there from their perspective. And I think that Eric Swanson's, like you said, very good reliever. I think Mako is interesting. I really want his name to be pronounced Mako, like the shark.

Right. Yeah. Because then it would be more fun. But, you know, it's not my name. So he gets to decide, I guess. Yep. So, yeah, that's all I have to say about that. Yeah.

Well, the Mariners, they can probably make more relievers. Yeah. It seems like they have a knack for that. Yeah. So I meant to mention, by the way, another important aspect of the Tyler Anderson signing is that the Angels now are equipped with a Tyler and a Taylor again. Oh, no. I take it all back.

It's terrible. That is a garbage rotation that only a garbage team would assemble. The good news for broadcasters is that you're probably less likely to confuse a pitcher and a hitter than Tyler Wade and Taylor Ward were, right? But still. Still. It's going to happen at least once. And the best thing is we're going to hear about it even if we're not watching. I just saw the news, by the way, that the Texas Rangers have hired Will Venable as an associate manager.

What does that mean? What are we doing with these? What does that mean? I don't doing with these? What does that mean? I don't know. I think like Skip Schumacher was an associate manager with the Padres before he has now become an actual manager with the Marlins. Like I get the title inflation in front offices and that like no one's a GM anymore. Or if you are a GM, that doesn't mean you're leading the baseball operations department. Yeah.

If you are a GM, that doesn't mean you're leading the baseball operations department in many cases. You're either the president of baseball ops or you're like the chief decision officer or whatever the heck, right? And you keep having to bump up titles so that people can get jobs and interview for jobs that are technically higher ranked than other jobs, etc. But did we have to do that with coaches too? Associate manager? Associate manager. That feels like you're trying to make someone into Dwight Schrute. Yeah, exactly. Like, I don't think that's bench coach because the Rangers have a bench coach, Donnie Ecker. And usually the bench coach is like next in line, right? It's like the vice president of the coaching staff sort of, but we need an associate manager in addition to, and no one knows exactly what that means. I mean,

I assume Will Venable knows what it means, but everyone on the outside is like associate manager. What is that? So we already have like two or three pitching coaches and hitting coaches, and that's fine because usually it's like assistant hitting coach, assistant pitching coach. Okay. I understand that. Or even like when we get coordinators like these NFL style titles for MLB coaches like offensive coordinator and defensive coordinator. We get like quality control coaches. Like I understand what those things mean for the most part, but I'm still pretty – I think so. But I'm hazy on associate manager for sure. I mean with like coordinators, I mean, that's kind of like, you know, strategy almost.

Some combination of like development and advanced scouting and like almost like a minor league hitting or pitching coordinator kind of position. You know, now that teams are actually making an effort to develop players at the major league level instead of just treating them as finished products. And then often, you know, you'll have like a quality control who's just kind of like overseeing the various processes. And, you know, if it's like defensive positioning and kind of coordinating between the front office and the field staff and the flow of information and all of that. I get all that to some extent, but but associate manager i don't know exactly how that fits in in the hierarchy it's maybe it's just like you're another coach you know sometimes like people will just be listed as coach or something and you know right and it's like how does that do they also have a bench coach they do yeah so how does the associate manager and the bench coach

how do they interact because like those i don't know i think of those as like the same right right like the bench coach is like the second in command you know when the manager gets ejected for being sassy the bench coach yes runs things so who's gonna run things in texas if i don't it's very confusing i don't understand ben it seems more complicated than it's worth. It also really seems like someone watched an episode of The Office and was like, oh, yeah, we should do that. Assistant to the regional manager. What are we doing? Another thing I don't understand is that, or I guess I understand but don't like, is that Royals owner John Sherman is now advocating for a new ballpark in Kansas City, and he put out an open letter, which I will link to, and talked about unspecified sites in or near downtown Kansas City and said, in the spirit of Royals founder Ewing Kaufman, our current mission is to look ahead to ensure that Major League Baseball and the Kansas City Royals will thrive in this region for decades to come, et cetera, et cetera. And the new stadium could cost up to $2 billion and it would be more expensive or as expensive to keep Kauffman Stadium up to

standards. And this is, yeah, I think it's all nonsense. I mean, first of all, I think Ewing Kauffman wanted the Royal Stadium to be where it is. Right. That's why it's there. Right. And it's, you know, like on public land and it's for the public and I assume that is why John Sherman wants a new ballpark so that he can do the real estate development thing that every team owner wants to do these days and build up the whole neighborhood.

And of course this letter includes the usual bogus claims about revitalization and how this is going to be such an economic boon to the community and everything. But like beyond that and beyond the public funding aspect of this, like Kauffman is great. Kauffman is beautiful. I mean, I haven't spent a ton of time there, but I've been there since the renovations. since the renovations. There were, I think, taxpayer-funded $250 million renovations not all that long ago, less than 15 years ago. And it's beautiful, I think, right? People don't

complain about Kauffman Stadium. Kauffman Stadium is great. So I feel like no one should buy this. I mean, I don't know. If Royals fans are listening and have a different perspective on this, please let me know. But that seems like a jewel of a ballpark. And I don't see why anyone should be in favor of this other than Royals owner John Sherman. So it seems like the Royals are like getting with the times, you know, like they got rid of Dayton Moore and they hired Matt Quattraro. And, you know, maybe they're getting more analytically oriented possibly. And part of getting with the times as a major league organization at this point is trying to get a new, at least partly publicly funded ballpark so that you can build it up and make

lots of non-baseball or semi-baseball related revenue. But when you have a great place like Kauffman, I just like we should keep that place, keep sprucing it up as needed. But I don't think they need a new park. I have never been there. That is one of the ballparks that I have not had the chance to visit yet. But it sure looks cool on TV. It's distinctive. It's yeah, it's nice. How proximate is it to like the downtown? Not that like, as I recall, and I've only been there on one trip i think i went there in the world series which is probably a good time to see it right so it's it's like it was a bit of a ride as i recall so you know there's that but the ballpark itself is yeah it's really great yeah i mean i can see if every team had it to do over again,

like I wish that more of them would prioritize having their ballparks proximate to like the urban center. It's like eight miles away, I think. That's not terrible. No, it's not that bad. Yeah, that's not terrible. I mean, but I think that the broader point here is that like if you have a workable ballpark, you should try to stay in that workable ballpark rather than spending taxpayer money on new ones.

So many billions thrown around around the Royals. Yes. I don't want to give Royals fans short shrift or be disrespectful to their franchise, but a lot of billions thrown around the literal Kansas City Royals seems like, I don't know, more billions than I expected. It kind of puts the light of the idea that these franchises aren't profitable, right? Yeah. The only downside, I don't think there's a lot of public transportation to get there. There are buses, but I don't think they bring you right there. I don't, there used to be a shuttle, like a Royal shuttle. I don't know that there is anymore.

I think they might not have that anymore. So you do have to drive, right? Which would be tough for me if I were there. So yeah, like all else being equal, I think it would be nice to be close enough that you could walk or take public transit. Right. But I can't imagine that that is the sole or even main motivation for this. Yeah, I doubt that's the animating principle here, right?

So there's that. Yeah, I think you learn to love the ballpark you have rather than need to. Yeah, if it's a nice one like that, yeah. Yeah, they got the fountain. They got that fountain out there. Sometimes the fountain blows into the broadcast camera and you're like, are you in a hurricane? You're watching a baseball game. I couldn't tell you.

Yeah. It's distinctive. Like, you know, when you watch TV and you turn on a Royals game, you know where you are. Yeah. Yeah. And it's kind of a product of its era, but in a nice way. Yeah. It looks like it's of a time, which is good.

It's not just some generic. It could be from anywhere. Could be anywhere. It's not Yankee Stadium, you know. Right. Exactly. You can get in. Yeah.

They let you in the ballpark. It's great. So. All right. So we should end here before we bring on Eric with the past blast. So this is episode 1930. And this past blast comes from 1930. I actually have a supplement to Jacob Pomeranke's past blast. I have one of my own here, but we'll go first with

Jacob. Jacob is the director of editorial content for Sabre and chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee, and he writes, 1930, baseball's first Bill Veck. As the Great Depression began to hurt baseball teams on and off the field, one team seemed immune to the economic struggles for a while. The Chicago Cubs, led by innovative team president Bill Veck Sr. and one of baseball's first female front office executives, Margaret Donahue, were more popular than ever. The Cubs drew an NL record 1.4 million fans to Wrigley Field in both 1929 and 1930. Didn't hurt that the Cubs were about to go to four World Series over the next 10 years. Many of those fans were women, as the Sporting News noted in August 1930. Quote, for many years, the major leagues have made gestures toward interesting women in baseball through the medium of ladies days. through the medium of ladies' days.

But at Wrigley Field, home of the Chicago Cubs, the problem is not how to interest women in the game, but how to entertain them and still leave room in the park for cash customers. At the outset of the season, two tickets were given to each woman that called at the park ticket windows, good for any Friday home game. But when 21,000 went through the free gates early in June and 31,000 the following week, an effort was made to prevent the same fanettes—we probably don't need to adopt the term fanettes—from repeating each week.

Mr. Vec then set aside the entire upper deck of the grandstand for the ladies, which limited the guests to some 17,500 seats. To facilitate a fair distribution of tickets, applicants were obliged to send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to the Cubs' offices. For the recent New York Giants series, Vec was forced to clamber over 10 government mailbags to reach his office, so now only one ticket is given to each applicant. Baseball attendance may be suffering in some localities, and considering the business depression, it would be strange if the turnstiles did not slow up. But it is surviving the financial drought far better than some of the other professional sports.

And Jacob concludes, VEC and Donahue did not invent Ladies' Day, which had been around since the late 19th century. But they did more than anyone to promote it and encourage women to come to the ballpark on a regular basis. They also hired someone to professionalize the usher staff and keep the grandstands clean. Some of those Ladies' Day tickets, by the way, were mailed out by a teenage Bill Veck Jr., who followed in his father's footsteps and went on to become a Hall of Fame executive in his own right. And I guess aside from the Ladies' Day idea specifically, giving away tickets to fans, that seems to be a good idea. If you're trying to drum up interest, especially in tough economic

times, that could be a good way to hook people just like, hey, come have a free sample of the product and maybe you will want to buy tickets in the future. So there are some teams that do that, right, that give away tickets or they have marked down tickets that they sell at a vastly reduced price. Because like, if you're not selling out anyway, then why not just try to get people in the park, make some money perhaps, but, you know, try to create customers who may be paying clients in the future. So I'm in favor of free tickets and coming out in favor of giving tickets to baseball games away. Yeah, I think that that's a great idea. And then, you know, I imagine that it's a slightly different proposition now than it was then, where it's like the number of ways that you can be separated from your money once you're in the ballpark are legion today. Exactly. In a way that I imagine was a little less true then. I mean, I don't know what the state of ballpark concessions were, merchandise, you know. I'm sure there was

something to buy, but it probably wasn't anywhere near as varied or expensive as it is now. So yeah, once you get people inside, you know, they're going to want a soda or beer or water or a hot dog or something. You know, let them see what it's all about. I think it's nice. And the second pass blast. This is something I've been waiting to pass blast about for a couple of months here. I think I first saw it on the Twitter account that I have shouted out before. Old timey baseball articles.

That's at old baseball news on Twitter, which is run by one of our listeners and Patreon supporters who goes by Sir Parsifal and often post these things on Reddit as well. And this is a news item about a player death from 1930. And I would put this in the category of what the podcaster Mike Peska, former Effectively Wild guest, has called a sad butt death. Not what it sounds like. Sad comma butt. Sad comma butt, which is where you say like, that's sad, but, you know, because there's something perhaps silly about the death, like kind of almost like a Darwin Awards aspect to the death. So this came to light courtesy of one of the great researchers of baseball, Bill Haber,

who was a founding member of Sabre and specifically devoted himself to player deaths, right? And to trying to figure out how players died or where they died and get that death information that we kind of take for granted when we go to baseball reference and there's not only a birth date but a death date on there. And so Bill Haber was able to track down hundreds of players' deaths and the details surrounding their deaths. And I'm reading here from a New York Times article called The Sleuth of Baseball from 1986, which was about Haber. And it says, when Haber came across the name of one Samuel Powell in a baseball encyclopedia, he was intrigued. Powell pitched in two games for

the St. Louis Browns in 1913. Other than the listing of his name, there was not an ounce more of background information about him. Who was Samuel Powell? Haber asked himself. By incredible perseverance over a period of years, says Haber, he found out Samuel Powell was actually Jack Powell, who was actually Reginald Bertrand Powell. Haber traced him to a small newspaper clipping in the Memphis Commercial Appeal on March 12, 1930. And I have also looked up that article and another

article, which was way easier for me to do than it was for Bill Haber at the time, because I just had to put this into newspapers.com. A lot of research is easier these days, but Jack Powell, I learned, was really the original beef boy. Not because he was big and beefy, although he was. He was 6'2", which was quite large for someone born in 1891, but really for other reasons, which I will share with you now. So this is actually from the York Dispatch on March 13th, 1930. And the headline is, Man Chokes to Death. OK, so that is the sad part. And here is the but. And this is the headline. Craving for bigger and better steak is fatal. Okay. And this is an AP story from Memphis, Tennessee. Reginald B. Powell enjoyed only one thing better than a beefsteak, and that's more beefsteaks, he told friends.

He entered a cafe early today and ordered a favorite cut. Calling patrons of the restaurant to his table, he said, here's to bigger and better beefsteaks. Watch me eat half of this one in one bite. Oh, my gosh. He choked to death before he could be taken to a doctor. He choked to death? He did. Yes.

Oh, my gosh. Yeah. He choked to death? He did, yes. Oh my gosh. Yeah. And if you're wondering why Reginald B. Powell is called Jack Powell, I think there was a better pitcher previously for the Browns who was Jack Powell. So it is believed that perhaps he was just also called Jack because he was another pitcher named Powell for the Browns. But here's the longer, somewhat more detailed story that Bill Haber came across and that I've also dug up. So this is from the Commercial Appeal, Memphis, Tennessee, March 13th,

1930. Headline, Man Chokes to Death Attempting to Swallow Half Steak in One Bite. An attempt by Reginald B. Jack Powell, 38, to swallow half of a steak at one bite in a cafe on South Main Street ended fatally last night when Powell choked to death. Powell cut a large steak in half and after telling customers in the restaurant to watch, attempted to swallow one of the halves, Charles Marcos, proprietor of the restaurant, said. After a couple of chews, Powell began choking and grew frantic in his efforts to dislodge the piece of meat from his throat. An ambulance carried the man to St. Joseph's Hospital. While physicians strove vainly to remove the stake, Powell died on the operating table. Thompson brothers took charge of the body

and are holding it pending directions from Powell's wife, Mrs. Emma Powell of New Madrid, Missouri. In addition to his wife, he is survived by one brother, I.H. Powell of 323 North Main Street. Powell had been employed in the office of Frank Gaylor County Trustee. For the past three years, he came to Memphis from New Madrid, his birthplace. Does not mention that he was briefly a former Major League pitcher. But look, it's sad. I don't want him to have frantically choked while trying to remove this piece of steak from his mouth. But he was also asking for it to some extent, I guess. Like, if your idea is like, I want bigger and bigger beef steaks. And also, I'm going to call everyone in the restaurant over here to gaze upon my beef steak feats here.

And I'm going to try to swallow half a beefsteak in a single bite. Like, you know, I mean, look, I don't wish death upon anyone. I wish he had choked that down and had gone on with his life. But if this is the way I go, you know, like, if I go by choking on a beefsteak after bragging about my beefsteak eating acumen and calling everyone around to be spectators at my trying to swallow an enormous piece of beefsteak, then I give future podcasters

permission to say sad, but... Yeah, no, you can, you know, I think if you go that way, you're asking for it in a sense, and I'd hate for him to be defined forever by one ill-advised attempt to eat too much beefsteak. But, like, look, he died doing what he loved, right? Like, it sounds like this is perhaps the way that he would have wanted to go, eating a beefsteak or trying to.

So that's the consolation, I guess. I guess. Yeah, I've never, you know,'s the consolation, I guess. I guess. Yeah, I've never, you know, like the Darwin Award thing always just feels so mean. It does. I don't think you're being mean. I mean, I'm being a little mean. You're being a little mean. You're not being as mean as the Darwin Awards.

Right. That's just straightforwardly mean. I mean, if comedy is tragedy plus time, right? No, I mean, like. It's been 92 years. Right. You wouldn't have made fun of this if it had happened yesterday. would have been that would have been cruel i guess it's it's not like less sad because it happened 92 years ago i guess in the sense that like he would have died

of something else by now if he had if he had managed to get the beefsteak down we might have been able to call him right yeah mid mid choke no but like you know probably no one who who knew him and boring tim is still around that i would be offending here so so i feel a little bit better about it but you know there is there is something to the fact that he both loved steak and was like i'm gonna house half the steak and then it's like no did Do they not like have a Heimlich maneuver then? Because you'd think it's like a big piece so you could just like yank it out of there. It was just too big to be Heimlicht.

I don't know. But no one try this at home. This is a cautionary tale. Yeah I mean look we don't want to take too many bold editorial stances on Effectively Wild lest we be sanctimonious but one we will say is true food you know just your food and cut reasonable manageable um sizes for yourself you'll know how big that is because you know your mouth in a way we don't you know exactly

all right we'll take a quick break and we'll be back with eric with Eric. All right. Eric Langenhagen, FanCraft's lead prospect analyst, is back to extend his lead on Grant Bisprey and Russell Carlton when it comes to being the most prolific podcast guest in Effectively Wild history. I know that's mostly why you're here. You love just dunking on those guys

and gloating that you have added to your lead, but we're always happy to have you. We've got a few things to discuss. Welcome back. Thank you for having me. Yes, I don't know. I'm like the Sammy Sosa of EW or something, or I don't know how to contextualize it. It doesn't feel dubious in any way. Thank you again for having me on. In what way are you the semi-sosa? Are you corking your mic or something? Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. I've got the bass cranked way, way up on my end here. Yeah, that's the corked bat of podcasting is increasing your bass. Yeah. You just ask Dylan to just boost your levels or something on his end or you just do it. Make me sound like James Earl Jones. Dylan just has me sounding like James Earl Jones or that guy who did the Coors commercial who was, you know, in Big Lebowski. I forget the guy's name.

Sam something. Sosa. Different guy. Yeah. Well, we wanted to ask you about the 40-man roster deadline, which was Tuesday. But before we get into that fairly wonky topic, which you have written about for FedGraphs, a couple of things I wanted to ask you about. The last time you were here, which was not all that long ago. We talked about the Arizona Fall League, and we asked about some prospects who had caught your eye. And the AFL season is over now, and the championship has happened, and award votes, award winners came out. I don't know if there were votes. I don't even know who decides these things. But there were awards, not just MLB

awards, but AFL awards also announced this week. And we talked to you about some of the award winners last time, like the Rockies' Zach Veen, who was the offensive player of the year. But I wanted to ask you about the winner of the Joe Black MVP award of the AFL from the Scottsdale Scorpions, Heston Kerstad, who is an Orioles prospect. And not on your top 100, right on the most recent revision. So not a top, top prospect. He was like, I think what, 10th on the Orioles list or in the Orioles system, I think last time you updated this, which is a deep system and list, I guess. But is he moving on up now? Yeah. Kerslott was the second overall pick in his draft. He was a 50 future value prospect at the time he was drafted, which would have put him in that towards the back of the top 100.

And part of the reason that it made sense, he was projected in our mock drafts prior to the Orioles picking him, that he would be in their mix at number two is because he was such a stable collegiate performer in the SEC, and he was part of a tier of players in the mix for that two through six area, if I remember correctly, of that draft. But he was the only one who wasn't being mentioned near the top of it at a certain stage of the process.

And then he had fallout from COVID. He had like mitocarditis and other things that kept him out, which is why he ended up falling in the prospect list. This is one of those weird things that I've never had to deal with before and hope to never have to deal with again, where you're sort of figuring out what to do with these guys from an evaluation standpoint based on unprecedented medical circumstances. But yeah, he looked quite good out here. His return to action has been successful. There's just so much power. He actually hit a ball that cleared the Charo Lodge in right field at Scottsdale Stadium where the Giants have spring training. It's a cavernous outfield. It's like 430 to dead center

and out in right field there's like one of those two tiered party decks where people hang out and drink during the the giants spring training games which are always packed and totally vacant for fall league right but he cleared that one of the nights and it's just all fields spray from line to line with real power so the degree of confidence that i have in the hit tool is still sort of amorphous and whether or not he ends up back on the top 100 will depend upon that like digging into the data is going to be a bigger part of that when the orioles list gets done and when the top 100 gets done but yeah like he's quite good and looks healthy coming back from the long COVID fallout. That's good. And there was also a pitching award that, I don't know, did we talk about Connor

Thomas last time? Cardinals prospect who was the AFL pitcher of the year, Salt River Rafters. You got a little capsule summary of Connor. Yeah, like 87, 89 89 maybe he'll bump a 91 or a 92 i saw this guy like four times over the course of folly he's a nice depth starter sounds cardinal z cardinal z yeah it's sink and cut and curveball command and you know pretty stable sixth or seventh starter stuff maybe if we're talking about a guy who's got seven command or something like that, that he ends up in that like fourth or fifth spot in a rotation consistently. Pretty low impact guy. By the fourth time I saw him this fall, I was like, all right, like I should probably be home more often now and starting to write reports on some of these guys rather than

watch Connor Thomas do his thing. But yeah, in terms of the starters who were stretched out working for plus innings consistently here in the fall league, he was certainly one of them and worked efficiently. It's pretty typical command-based back-end profile. All right. And I gave you a heads up about this that we talked a little bit about Tyler Anderson and the deal that he signed with the Angels in the intro. And I'm just kind of curious. This is a common career progression at this point that someone just goes to the Dodgers and then they rehabilitate themselves and have some sort of makeover. And then they sign either with the Dodgers or some other team for much more money because they got better. It's not just the Dodgers, obviously.

We've seen that with some other teams that have a reputation and a track record for being good at player development. But how sticky do you think that kind of transformation tends to be? I mean, if you're an Angels fan, should you be worried that the magic Dodgers pixie dust is going to wear off when he goes to another team? Or typically, do you think when a team makes those kind of changes with a player that they are able to carry them over wherever they go after that? Yeah, it's such a good question. And I think so much of it is dependent on the individuals who are playing a role in the player turning the corner. So it includes the player. And then obviously it includes the organization that's helping the player to get

better, in this case, the Dodgers. Whether or not the individual player is that Adam Adovino, not the individual player is that Adam Adovino autodidact type and how much of why a team is changing aspects of a player's mechanics or grip, like how much of why they're delineating to that player has to have an individual like team to team, player to player impact on whether or not it is sticky and how much long-term maintenance needs to be done to ensure that someone is staying there. Like think about JD Martinez, right? Like JD Martinez blew up late in his career relative to a lot of other guys.

And it seems like part of it is because of his nature and specifically the way tools around video and being able to to like look at the dailies basically from his bp swings you know it was really important to his breakout and him sustaining that and that's just something that seems very specific to jd martinez so i was standing with a player dev person from a team that, you know, I think would generally be accepted as one of the better teams at developing players, right? This was this fall at an Instructs game. And they said to me, we know as this person came from an org that is not one of those teams, by the way, and has now been with this new team for a little while. So they have context for this. And they said the thing that they are now doing that they

weren't doing with their old org is they have a firm idea as a group of when to intervene, and they don't waste time intervening. They know what they have to intervene on, and they feel like they have people in place who are going to communicate the intervention to the player in a way that the player buys in. But I don't know how much of that process the player is aware of when all is said and done. How much that coach or the player dev person is going to the player with and saying like, here's why we want you to do all of this. And obviously in areas where they are more thorough and explaining that to the players I think the player is more likely to take something away with

them to the next org that can be used either to maintain that their level of play or also spread like have some sort of osmosis of thought that occurs in the next organization but certainly player to player their individual level of curiosity is going to vary. And there are certain players, Hunter Renfro has been mentioned to me just like offhand, like this guy's not receptive to stuff and other things. So I think that there's so much variation player to player and org to org. But yeah, certainly the Dodgers would seem to be very, very good at doing it. Yes. Scott Boris made some comments about that recently. What did he not comment on? But

amid all of the torrent of puns and everything, he also talked about what he called the analytic bridge, I think, just how some people who are disseminating this information are not effectively implementing and executing the information to the player. And David Lorela then asked him, he asked follow-ups about that. And he kind of explained his thoughts at greater length. And, you know, he talked about how some teams like maybe the analytics people just want to prove their worth just to justify their position or something. And so they're just sort of spewing information out there or some teams just don't do it effectively, you know, even if they have good ideas, like they aren't conveying it to the player very well, or they're inundating the player with

information or, you know, we know that like there are differences, not just in, in deriving those insights about maybe this player would be a little bit better if they did this or that, but then also presenting that information to the player in kind of a comprehensible way. But I guess if you're like the Dodgers at this point or the Astros or whoever, and you've done this so many times and you can sign someone and say, we will make you the next Tyler Anderson or Andrew Heaney or any insert Astros pitcher, Dodgers pitcher or hitter here, it's got to be a much easier sell at this point because it's like, look at the contract that this guy got after we signed him.

Yeah, so, and I'll just, I'll say that Dennis Wyrick, he's an agent with the Rosenhaus Sports Group. He's an ASU alum. I see him a ton here in town. One of his clients is Yancy Almonte, formerly of the Rockies and currently of the Dodgers. And when he was on the market last offseason, he told Almonte, hey, I know that your path to a big league role in this org is not necessarily as clear as some of the other offers that we have.

But I think your path to being a good baseball player in this org is more obvious than with some of the other orgs. And I think that that worked out. And so I'm curious, yeah, what you guys think about some of, not just what Boris said, but the concepts that he's addressing. Because I agree that I think that, I don't think every analytics person is necessarily like this, you know, but allow me to make some sweeping generalizations about them. Yeah, like it is just a human thing to be part of a competitive industry and put a lot of stuff out there because you do feel like you need to. Like you need to, I don't know if I'd phrase it like illustrate your worth, but something like that where like, hey, like I'm doing a good job. I want to contribute. And there are some incentives that are bad and lead to bad conclusions. And also it's just so hard to find good coaches in sports. There are 32 NFL teams.

How many of the head coaches are good? Like we can't find 32 good coaches. I'm pretty sure we can't. Right. And so when you start extending that to all of sports and especially in baseball, where you have minor league levels, unlike in other sports, where you just need so many coaching personnel and a lot of the data nerd types are sports fluid. They are not necessarily married to baseball. They are totally fine taking their data crunching brain to other sports. And a lot of the data mining nerds, again, sweeping generalization, they like money. sweeping generalization, they like money. And so they are more apt to go to soccer in Europe or hockey analytics or basketball analytics or Paul D. Podesta made a football move if the money is

right over there. And often when we're talking about being in minor league player development or European soccer, take a guess of where your incentives are going to direct you toward. And so I think it's really hard to find baseball personnel, any kind of personnel who are good at generating the data through technology, especially in creative ways that are helping pull you out in front of the other organizations, and then interpreting that data, and then implementing changes based on that data on the field. It's just so many different things. You need charisma and all kinds of stuff. It's got to be such a difficult thing to find people who can do all of that stuff. Well, and it seems like that might be one of the places where a team like the Dodgers,

not that they're the only team that is good at player dev, and some of the teams that are really good at player dev are far more budget constrained than the Dodgers are, but it does feel like a place where they can kind of press their monetary advantage because if you're willing to spend money on coaching staff and on analysts and whatnot, and that isn't constrained to just a couple of people, well, you don't have to necessarily be good at all of that stuff, right? You can parcel out those skills to multiple staff members. And as long as you have one person who can consolidate all of it and communicate it successfully to the player and sort of facilitate that back and forth, you know, you don't necessarily have to be charismatic and good at the data analysis and

able to break down biomechanical data and, and, and, right? You can do some or one or two of those things and still contribute something meaningful rather than having to be kind of a jack of all trades. Sure. And then the skill everyone has to have is, can I communicate across all of these different channels such that we are not pulling the player in many different directions. We have like a common goal that we are all communicating and working toward and not detracting from one another, which I would not be good at. So we know we've got a few rules changes coming next year. We're going to see no shift or at least greatly restricted shift. Certain shifting has been banned. And then we're also going to see a relaxation in like we may have RoboMaps, the ABS system coming as soon as 2024 potentially at the major league level, some implementation of that, potentially a challenge system. So I wonder how much, if at all, you think these things, especially the immediate changes that we know are coming very soon, are affecting how teams

are valuing players? Because this came up, I guess, the first trade of the offseason was the Braves and the Rockies made a trade, right? Sam Hilliard for Dylan Spain and Alex Isert wrote about this for Fangraphs and speculated that maybe this had to do with the fact that Sam Hilliard is a little more appealing as a player now post-shift if he's a guy who's maybe going to get some more base hits in the balance so I guess there's there's that just like well is this like a lefty slugger who got shifted a lot and seemed to lose a lot of singles and now they won't and I guess that's a fairly easy equation but do you think there's anything else in team's mind like

when it comes to the running game with those changes or just I don't know, like are there players who have been trying to beat the shift and now they won't even have to try to and they'll be free to just be themselves again? Or, you know, like prospects who are coming up, if it's catchers who are really good at defense and maybe that won't be as valued anymore like all these things that are some fairly significant changes to the way that the sport is played and i assume that they will also produce some changes in like what makes a player appealing and what kind of players you target or try to develop yeah obviously with so many things changing simultaneously can be hard to get a grip on how sliding some of these variables are going to impact any one thing yeah i do think there is some basic spray chart type analysis you can do to see how many more hits someone should expect relative to a time when they could otherwise be shifted against. And so, yeah, like the pole-oriented ground ball type guys suddenly become more valuable in a way that is maybe kind of objective,

especially if we're talking about players like Sam Hilliard and some of the other fringe big league type guys who are sort of floating around as like role player types and might suddenly produce more like an everyday player because of some of these rule changes. It is the type of thing that you sit, especially with the automated balls and strikes system, where you do just want to sit as a group in a room for an extended period of time

and just sort of pull the thread of how it might impact the game to make any one of these rule changes. So I think I've mentioned before the pitch clock, in addition to it speeding up the game, which it does as someone who's experienced plenty of pitch clock over the last couple of years in the minor leagues and in the fall league, it is going to accelerate the pace of the games in a way that is very, very nice. I don't know what it's going to do to the pitchers physically at the big league level, especially the guys who have been around for a long time. They're older. They haven't experienced anything like this before. And it requires something of your cardiovascular conditioning to throw a pitch at max effort every 15 or 20 seconds.

There are definitely some young pitchers who feel like they are using it to press an advantage, to keep hitters on their heels. And there are times when there are awkward interactions because the hitter feels as though they're being sped up and they're calling for time. But the pitchers really, really, really want to go. And then you also have the base runners who are timing the pitch clock almost like a blitzer in an NFL game as a way of getting a really good jump. You know the pitch has to come at some point

in the next second and a half, two seconds. And so you're primed to go on first movement. And then you have the pitchers who are adjusting to that and taking advantage of that and saving their pickoff move for a situation like that to try to catch a runner leaning. So I think it's opening an opportunity up for advanced scouting in that space that didn't exist before, because there are just more game theory things to think about and tendencies to watch evolve now that we have some of that stuff looming. I have no idea what the bigger bases are going to do. I've heard scouts ask that the base be

moved entirely so that it's in what they consider the baseline rather than inside the foul line at first base, like put it on the other side of the first base foul line so that the runner can sort of run straight through it rather than interacting with defenders around the base, which is kind of interesting. But the thing that I know that members of this podcast have been skeptical of, and I have probably on this

podcast in the past, is going to a full-on robo-ump thing. I think the challenge system was super cool and fun. It adds a moment of fun and suspense in the middle of the games. There's all sorts of cool work to be done and, and analysis and, and writing to be done around who's good at it and what that means and the value it adds or detracts in the situations in which you, one should consider using a challenge versus not like, I think it's going to be a lot of fun and still has some of the human element of umpiring the sleight of hand framing stuff, which is just, well well i don't know you

know it's nuanced to a game and taking that away feels feels bad so you know i love keeping framing and receiving as a bigger part of the game as you can and robo umps takes away from that and so i know that i the biggest issue for me this offseason will be figuring out how much to dial down what I think of the shift-enabled infielder and how much to ratchet up what I think about the excellent middle infield defender. How does someone who you tell me this guy's going to be Max Muncy, but he's not allowed to be shifted anymore, that guy's probably just a first baseman or a comfortably below average third baseman. How does that impact what I think about him? And so there are, you know, Edouard Julien, who just got added to the Twins 40 man, Michael Bush of the Dodgers. There are plenty of Jonathan Aranda with the Rays. What do you do with those guys who are the Mike Moustakas type shift-enabled second baseman? And then how does that impact the Bryce Terangs of the world

who are damn good defensive shortstops with like one note low impact offense? Is that guy just the top 100 prospect now? And I think the decision I made at the end of the year is right now I've sort of lumped them all in there. I moved that group of premium defensive shortstop up preemptively. And now I'm just sort of deciding what to do with these guys who mash, but really can't play defense anymore. Yeah. This kind of pro framing pandering is why you are the clubhouse leader for effectively wild

appearances. Exactly. Yeah. No, you're right though. Like, and maybe this is a podcaster problem or a blogger problem more so than a fan problem. But having some squishiness when it comes to the strike zone, it's great content. There's a lot more nuance. There's a lot more to analyze. If there's just a RoboLamp system and everyone knows what it is, I totally understand the argument for that and why it's just better to be fair and consistent and predictable but man we get so much to talk about and to analyze just because of some amount of human element whether it's like critiquing umpire strike zones or you know analyzing this umpire strike zone is like this and that umpire strike zone is like that or talking about how the strike zone changes from one count to another, or talking about how a pitcher and a catcher might adapt their game because of how the umpire's strike zone is shaped, or talking about catcher framing and receiving, or as you said, if we get a challenge system, talking about who's good at challenging and who's bad at challenging and like all the

analytical angles that come from that. So I'm sure a lot of fans would say, who cares? I don't care about any of that. Like I just I want there not to be bad calls and for all the calls to be the same always. I get it. But man, there's just there's so much more to talk about this way, which I would really miss as someone who has to talk about baseball. this way, which I would really miss as someone who has to talk about baseball. I think anytime nuance gets sucked out of sports ecosystems, it becomes less good. And so like baseball, recent baseball example is there was a time when data generated by

track man units from college baseball wasn't being shared uniformly across all 30 teams. That teams were paying to install trackman units at colleges, not just little schools, like SEC schools, in exchange for having exclusive access to the data being generated by that trackman unit. And then at some point, Major League Baseball's owners didn't want to, the one, like a certain subset of them, didn't want to have to deal with that. They didn't want to have to put money, you know, into something like that. And so they complained and everyone agreed, let's just share all this data. And if we had an, like, if we had a database, if they had to publicize that that stuff was going on, yes, it would create all sorts of avenues for analysis on our end.

For it not to be public meant that there were all sorts of angles. People actually working in baseball could work to separate themselves and their team. And then all of a sudden that went away, right? Like now they just share it. And then, yes, don't let perfect be the enemy. The good, there are going to be all kinds of weird issues that pop up as a result of some of these changes, decisive things because of the pitch clock and automatic balls and strikes and all that stuff. And just let's let things work out over time. The NFL has made a lot of good changes. It doesn't, you know, when you challenge

a play, you see a face mask on the replay. You can't call the penalty retroactively. It's not a challengeable part of the thing that you're watching. Like maybe that's a problem. But, you know, what we have now is still better than what we had before. Well, I imagine that the challenges that all of these rule changes are introducing to your prospect evaluation process are also weighing on the teams that had to make decisions this week about their 40-man additions. So let's maybe transition to that.

And, you know, we're going to get into some of for the guys who were either added or not to their respective teams, 40-mans? Right. So MLB rules state that depending on the age at which you sign, there are a certain number of years you have in the minor leagues before you are either added to a team's 40-man roster, essentially the big league roster, although not the active roster necessarily. And if you're not added to the roster within that timeframe, it's like players who are drafted or signed at age 18 or younger have to be added after five years and players who are drafted or signed at age 19 or more after four. After that time in the minors is up, the team either puts you on their 40-man roster or you become eligible for the Rule 5 draft in which a team can select

you and you have to spend all of the following season on their 26-man active roster. This is a way of like helping parody along a little bit on the roster margins so that teams can't hoard many, many, many viable major league players. They have to diffuse out into some of the bad teams. And it also is a labor-friendly procedure in most cases. There are some nuances about it that make it not so for certain subsets of players, in my opinion. But mostly it is also

an avenue for guys who would otherwise be held down in the minors, stashed excessively by teams hoarding depth of talent. It gives them an opportunity to find an avenue toward a major league career. And so this creates all sorts of other roster dynamics where you have teams that have, by the virtue of their ability to scout and develop, they have too many good players and they have to do something with them or they're going to lose them for nothing. And so you have a flurry of activity right before the deadline, teams trading guys, talent across the upper levels of the minors and the big leagues gets closer to some kind of equilibrium across all 30 teams because trades are made. Teams like the Rays

and Cleveland and the Dodgers end up with too many players and try to kick the can down the road or consolidate in some way to try to make their 40-man better without losing guys for nothing. And this year is a little bit weird in that last year we did not have a Rule 5 draft because of the lockout. Were there any knock-on effects that you witnessed in some of the guys who were added or weren't to teams' 40-mans as a result of having not had to move anybody or account for anybody last year. People did have to still, teams still did have to add players to their 40 man, but if they didn't, it didn't matter because there was no rule five. Right. And it seemed as though last year, you know, we didn't

have the rule five, as you said, because of the lockout. And there was some thought that maybe once the lockout was over, we would have it very quickly, which theoretically would have made it happen just before the start of a delayed spring training. And when you are a quad A type player, maybe you're a candidate for the rule five and you play for a team in Arizona and like a week before things start for spring training, you get rule five by a team in Florida. That's not conducive or feasible to ask of the people involved and their families. So it was a good thing that they banged it last year, although I'm not sure every team... I think there are some teams who anticipated that they would bang it and others that did not. And I think over the last couple of years, really,

And I think over the last couple of years, really, and the lack of a Rule 5 last year created a snowball effect in this regard, is that teams are much less apt to add guys on the fringe, especially when those players are a great distance from the major leagues. And that's happening, I think, for a couple of reasons. Number one, again, there's like game theory element at play here where there are only so many 40-man spaces available, so many active roster spaces available when the Rule 5 draft ultimately rolls around, that if you as a collective, the whole league, leans on not adding a guy to your 40 man and suddenly the rule five market is flooded with potential players, the chances that your individual unprotected player

is picked go down just because there are so many players available all of a sudden. And I think everyone, I don't think that there's like collusion around this, like a knowing collusion, but I think people see how things are trending and therefore are more likely to behave that way where they become less likely

to protect a player on their rule five. And the reason is often the players who are a great distance from the big leagues, even if they're a premium prospect like Wilkeman Gonzalez with the Red Sox, that's a really good young pitching prospect who is definitely not ready for the major leagues. Even if you were to take him and put him in the bullpen all year, if you want to squint and envision a scenario where you take that guy and he sticks on your active roster all year, you are setting back his long-term development by forcing

him into a low leverage bullpen role all year. And also, if you decide as the Red Sox in this situation to roster a guy like that, when they're that far away from the major leagues, you are typically burning at least one and probably two of their option years while you wait for them to develop on the 40 man and especially with pitchers if you end up doing that you burn roster flexibility if they end up not developing and they just sort of fall into a relief role you would rather have someone of equal talent who you have optioneers left so that you have more roster flexibility overall and this is i wrote you know during prospect week part of why there might be so few latin american starters across major league baseball is because many of

the pitchers sign at 16 that 40 man clock right away. The best ones are being selected out to be added when they're 20 because they're the best ones. They're the ones most likely for their parent club to want to protect. And then all of a sudden they have a truncated development. You cut bait on what they are because you're running out of option years, but you don't want to lose them for nothing. And so they end up becoming a reliever. So like Francisco Morales with the Phillies, who looked really good here in the fall league, he's already had two of his option years burn away because the Phillies felt compelled to add him when he was 19, 20 years old, but he wasn't anywhere near ready. And so now he's got one option year remaining,

and it just feels way worse than he was just sort of languishing away on a team that could use extra bullpen help. Over the last couple of years, there's a guy sitting at AA who can't throw strikes at all, and he's definitely not an option for us at the big league level, but we don't want to lose him. And so he's just sitting there occupying a 40-man spot. Most of the people around baseball who I talk to

would tell you that you have two spots on your 40-man that you can kind of be flexible with. You have a guy who you want to add, who you know isn't going to play a role next year, but you want to protect him because his long-term upside is so big. Maybe you have two or three spots on your 40-man that you can use on a guy like that. And that is sort of it. So I do think that not having a rule five last year contributed to this, where there was an

extra year's worth of players and teams were just more apt to lean into what they were already starting to do. So I don't follow the roster crunch in as much depth as you do. But one thing that I'm always aware of is that the Rays have too many players. It seems like the Rays every year, too many players, they got to do something. And they did a bunch of things this week, right? They made three trades, was it, right before the roster deadline. So why is it that the Rays always have more players than they can keep? And what is their way around that? And was there anything interesting about the way that they found around it this year? Yeah. They seem to prioritize depth as they...

They're very transactional as an organization with an eye on depth as they go about their business. They're almost always getting back as many pieces as they give up, if not more, and just accumulating a ton of interesting players when they sell high on someone, you know, they're getting back two and three players at a time and they're almost always kicking the can down the road where they have no choice but to acquire players who are 40-man Rule 5 eligible multiple years from now because they almost always have a crunch looming in the following year of this group who was part of this year's roster crunch many of them were like the way that they entered the Rays organization is through basically every every avenue if I'm just

looking at the upper level infielders who were part of like the biggest part of this crunch. Ronnie Simon was traded for. They ultimately opted not to protect him. Curtis Meade was traded for. They traded an upper level pitcher to the Phillies for Curtis Meade, who was on the complex at that point. He is now a top 25 prospect. Oslavis Basabe, an infielder who they traded for from texas was that the nate low deal that was part of like a huge wide-ranging deal in which they got back many players greg jones they drafted out of unc charlotte toolsy guy who's absolutely just like a developmental type guy on the 40 man for a year and then you know the guys who were already occupying spots jonathan aranda they signed out of mexico uh obviously taylor

walls and wander franco like they drafted and signed them respectively vidal brujan like the guys who are ahead of that group were mostly signed by the race and like this if we were to go through each area in which they have crunch you you would see this, you know, the outfielders, Cameron Meissner traded for from Miami last year. Heriberto Hernandez was also part of that Rangers deal with Basabe. So, yeah, like it's coming from all avenues with them and they do okay. I think that once you are in the position that they are in almost every year, you are operating with not a whole lot of leverage as the deadline approaches. And so some of it is coming from ownership and their financial limitations, which make it less likely that they would be able to make a consolidation type trade where they package like three or four of these guys together for one star level player. That's not a thing that they tend to do. They're much more

likely at this stage to send one guy away for a player whose timeline is three-plus years away, which is most of what they did yesterday, trading Myles Mastroboni, utility man, to the Cubs for a long-term pitching prospect, Alfredo Zaraga, who's like mid-'90s relief prospect. And Jack Hartman, they traded G-Man Choi to Pittsburgh for Jack Hartman, who might just be scratching the surface. He's been hurt, was throwing really hard in limited action in 2022. He's a converted infielder.

And they're, you know, like now they have a couple years to try to develop something there. One for one with Choi. So the consolidation type trades, they haven't really made the last couple of seasons. type trades that they haven't really made the last couple of seasons and it's it turns out that you know they are they're making the kick the can down the road type deals more frequently now and it doesn't always feel great like obviously to to trade g man choy who he's fine you know he's not an impact first baseman to be clear but he's a fan favorite he has a certain clubhouse presence that feels important to the and to flip him for like jack hartman who's like a maybe yeah reliever a developmental relief prospect doesn't feel good but the rays tend to find a way to get something out of those guys

like calvin foche was just a sweetener who had been passed over in the previous Rule 5, sweetener to balance that trade with the Twins, who is now an integral part of their bullpen, right? Like, you can see with his curveball why the Rays were like, let's, you know, they pick the right type of guy when they tend to do this, and they tend to get something out of them. But, you know, it doesn't always feel great. And I wonder if over time, the way that that feels, I don't know, I do think that they end up dealing from a place of lower leverage a lot of the time because they paint themselves into

a corner through this organizational philosophy, but also they end up with enough good players to compete that way. Right. Yeah. I think Troy was very briefly like the longest tenured Ray right before he was traded. So you're like, well, who else? Who else do fans know on this team? That's not fair. They have guys, but I get what you mean. Are there other teams? You have published your AL East breakdown of 40-man action.

We will have a piece for each of the other divisions in the coming days. But to preview some of that stuff as it is in the queue, are there other teams that found themselves perhaps with not as much of a crunch as the Rays, but who also maybe found themselves needing to seek consolidation trades like this? Yeah. And I thought Cleveland was a great candidate to do it. It's so hard when you're making a consolidation type trade to find a partner who has a roster fit for you and who also has the space to take all of the guys who represent your overage or even just like a good chunk of them. So like Cleveland, I thought Cleveland and Arizona were excellent trade partners entering deadline day. Cleveland has Oscar Gonzalez and Owen Miller playing like first base and corner outfield for them. And the Diamondbacks have all these young outfielders that they don't have space

for and cleveland has like a ton of overage a lot of it includes pitching is there maybe some sort of fit there and they those two teams did make a trade but like not a consolidation trade right but cleveland definitely and this is more because of their ability to develop pitching but cleveland almost always has a crunch as well. So they made some trades. They traded Carlos Vargas to the Diamondbacks for Ross Carver. I actually haven't dug into Carver yet. That's a name that I didn't know until he was traded yesterday.

But Carlos Vargas coming over from Cleveland, he's had some injury stuff. At one point, he was here on the backfield sitting like 99-102, and he looked like he might have the nastiest stuff He's had some injury stuff. At one point, he was here on the backfield sitting like 99-102, and he looked like he might have the nastiest stuff of any teenage pitcher on earth. And just because of what happens with teenage pitching, he's had speed bumps and looks more like a middle reliever at this stage. Nolan Jones, 25-year-old outfielder from the Philly area as a high schooler,

been around forever, super high walk rates. You'll hear mixed opinions about whether he's actually patient or just passive. Plus plus raw power, was a shortstop in high school, trending down the defensive spectrum throughout his pro career, is probably a right fielder or a first baseman long term just because of his size. Will make for an interesting three true outcomes type guy in Colorado. In that trade, Cleveland picked up Juan Brito and put him on their 40 man, a switch hitting second baseman from the Rockies system, part of that really interesting group of young hitters that the Rockies had come up through the complex last year and then Loe Fresno for the most

part. This year, Jan-Kiel Fernandez and Warming Bernabele and that group of guys. Brito, my type of dude, you know, compact, short levered, switch hitting, up the middle guy, good feel for contact, not a really a very good defensive player. Interesting that Cleveland targeted him. They've had a lot of players like this come through the system, including Jose Fermin, who they traded to the Cardinals. It's another like super low swinging strike rate, versatile middle infield guy with not a lot of power. Cleveland traffic's in guys like that all the time. I still think that they have the pieces to make a trade this offseason with some of these guys. Juan Brito is a little further away from the big leagues than some of the other middle infielders on their roster. Guys like Brian Rocchio. We obviously saw some Gabriel Arias this year. But between Ahmed Rosario and Andres Jimenez, Arias, Brian Rocchio, Angel Martinez, who they added to the 40 man yesterday, and a couple others. There's just so many middle infielders in this org that I still think Cleveland is in

position to do something at first base and corner outfield and DH. They need a big bopper. It's just about whether ownership is going to open up the wallet, which they have tended not to do in Cleveland, aside from the Jose Ramirez extension. So that's another group. And then, yeah, let's see. I mean, I guess the Rays traded Xavier Edwards to the Marlins. The Marlins kind of weirdly had an overage and it played out over the course of the last couple of weeks where they ended up losing a bunch of guys off of waivers in ways that make me question how they manage the margins of their roster. They traded multiple prospects away for Cole Sulcer in March or April and then lost him on

waivers last week as part of them clearing spots to deal with the overage that they had on their fringe. And while ultimately I think the Marlins had like a good day yesterday I do think Xavier Edwards has enough bat to ball skill to be a 50 second baseman and it's just uh you know probably an upgrade to Joey Wendell pretty soon uh was certainly an upgrade to Jose Devers who had been occupying a 40 man spot for them and you know some of the pitchers that they added Eli Villalobos has a good splitter and Josh Simpson is you know a pretty standard mid-90s with a plus breaking ball reliever like some of the decision making processes there aren't helping them accumulate the sort of depth that some of these other teams have especially

on the pitching side which is where I think you need it, especially if you're the Marlins and trying to compete in a really tough division. And then just looking at some of the other teams here, I think that's sort of it. The Dodgers for sure have left guys off the roster who are interesting and who I think are going to, you know, are easy rule five candidates to point to Ryan Noda, who they traded for from, I think they traded for him. He was definitely with Toronto a couple of years ago. I don't know if they, if they claimed him in some way or if they ended up trading for him, but Ryan Noda, I think is a good enough hitter that he's almost certainly going to be taken in the rule five. Yeah. This was going to be our last question, by the way, just who you think the most tempting, unprotected players will be who could be top Rule 5 candidates.

Yeah, so the Dodgers for sure have a couple of guys. Noda is one of them. I think you could make a case for Jose Ramos and Ryan Ward both. Jose Ramos is just shy of 22. He was reckless in the fall league. His head was flying everywhere. He's just underneath so many fastballs at the top of the zone, just trying to do damage with every swing. And I think that even though the Dodgers have found a way to slip guys like this onto the roster the last couple of years, like they did with Eddie's Leonard and your beat Vivas last year, and with Andy Pahe's last year, that Ramos fell below their line this season. I think that they're probably deciding between him and Johnny DeLuca at the end.

And DeLuca had just performed more consistently over the last couple of years, and they picked him. But Ryan Ward and Jose Ramos, both outfielders in the Dodgers system. Ramos is more of the sexy huge tools you know if you if you're a team that's got a bunch of roster space maybe you need you know like a glorified fourth or fifth outfielder this year maybe someone will pop Jose Ramos based on upside whereas Ryan Ward is more like the steady performer type of guy in the Dodgers system and then you know all the teams like the Yankees and and and the Dodgers that tend to have a lot of pitching so like you know again I'm just looking at the Dodgers roster resource page here and Nick Robertson, Gus Varland, Jose Hernandez, probably not Tanner Dotson we're starting to get into

into a much more gray area there as I'm just looking at Mark Washington. Some of these guys, like not as obvious candidates, but ultimately the middle relief type guys are the ones who tend to find a way to be taken most often in the rule five. And then you have the scratching the surface type guys. So like Troy Watson in the Blue Jays system,

hurt most of this year, came to the Fall League, sitting 94-96 with two really good looking breaking balls. But fastball playability is not great. three years because of pandemic and injury to take a rule five gamble on someone and say it's going to cost us this much money to take this rule five guy. Maybe we catch lightning in a bottle. We get a look at him during spring training. And if it doesn't work out, then we move on and it costs our org tens of thousands of dollars and that's it. Like that seems fine. So it's so hard to answer that off the top. I'd have to like kind of go through and someone will invariably send me a list of all the rule five eligible names. And at that point, I'd be better at just scrolling and picking guys off of a sheet rather than trying to manifest them like off the top of my head. I see how it is trying to queue up your next effectively wild appearance. Yeah. Leave them wanting more.

Yeah. I mean, I'd happily, because it's what I'm about to do for the next couple of days anyway, sit here and scroll everyone's roster and tell you who I think has a chance to get pulled. Some of the teams who are relatively inactive, like Philly and the Mets. The Mets don't really have, you know, I can squint and see a couple names. Jake Mangum, you know, is a fifth outfield type guy. You can almost see if you just go to the site right now and hover over the player search bar,

any players who you could crowdsource who the zeitgeist thinks is interesting. Like just hovering over the search bar right now, Andres Chaparro in the Yankee system and, and Jake Mangum are the two guys who weren't added, who people are curious about now because they play for the Yankees and the Mets respectively. Right.

And like Andres Chaparro was in last year's fall league. He is interesting. He's the type of guy who like has to have his pants tailored specifically for him because he has a huge donk. He's fine. The power breakout that he experienced at Trenton, wow, he slugged almost 600 there. That's kind of surprising. He struck me as a guy who would be good in asia when i saw him last

last fall so that's you know the snapshot of him just kind of looking at some of the pieces of the track man data that are kind of lurking under the surface 84 in zone contact that's pretty good 75 overall contact that's fair that's a little that's a little south of average at the positions that he would be capable of playing we're talking about like a first like a first base dh type guy probably 38 hard hit rate again that's like you know about average if i'm looking at all of the first base dh types and south of the line if i'm just looking at like the best 30 guys so kind of gives you a snapshot of what we're looking at in terms of the contact

and power piece. You can see how this guy's a damn good double-A hitter and not someone who the Yankees are dying to add when they have Anthony Arizzo on the brain and Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton and those types of guys. Well, where else are you going to get both all of the biggest baseball headlines and also Rule 5 draft preview. We cover all the bases here, one-stop shop at Effectively Wild. And we're always happy to have you on. So thanks as always, Eric. And go to Fangraphs to check out his division-by-division breakdowns of the roster crunch and the roster deadline.

And then Prospectless will be rolling out sometime soon, I imagine. So thank you as always. Yeah, my pleasure pleasure thank you so much for having me on and yeah folks should go to the site and check out these analyses and reactions and then we'll have an updated draft list for 23 and then 24 and 25 and then international amateurs signing in January, as well as the players in pro ball in Asia, mostly that you need to care about for the next handful of years, including Munataka Murakami and Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Jung Hoo Lee and some of these other guys who would be top 100 prospects if they were stateside. But yeah, thanks so much for having me on, guys. Hey, have we talked about Senga at all on this show? I don't know that we have asked you about him. Yeah, we should maybe do that.

I know I just played you out, but give us a quick scouting report if you can. It's mid to upper 90s, up to 102, but more routinely up to 99 in any given start. Plays down relative to velocity. It's not an explosive riding, bat-missing, invisible-type fastball. It relies on its velocity to sort of bully hitters. Plus, Splitter has the panoply of breaking ball shapes and velocities that you would expect for a good Japanese pitcher. Command of the breaking stuff is not great. When he's not commanding the breaking stuff, he is quite vulnerable because now you have a guy who, you know, the fastball doesn't do a lot of end zone damage. It's sort of vulnerable

in there. He's got to mix and match and surprise you with that fastball to get you out with it, you know, and to get ahead because the splitter's not really an in-zone weapon. So the breaking ball component is the X-factor, you know, the command piece of it. And Ben Clemens and I spent a lot of time, I, you know, screen recorded video and we, you know, sort of hemmed and hawed over where he belonged on the top 50 free agent list. I think that he's in that third or fourth starter area on a contending team, where if you dropped him into the Phillies rotation or you dropped him into the Giants rotation, he's on either side of Ranger Suarez. He's on either side of your mid-rotation guy.

So he's a 50 for me. Obviously, when we're talking about a 28, 29-year-old player, it becomes difficult to slide him into the prospect list where the other players are evaluated with a six-year window where I'm saying like, here's what I think this guy is going to be before he's a free agent. So it's not apples to apples in that regard, but he'd be, in terms of where he'd fit on a prospect list, if he had the stuff he did and was like 24, 25, he'd be a 50, probably somewhere close to 50th overall, just because of how ready to go he is. But yeah, he's interesting. And who are the other guys who are being posted? I've got notes on them too. Yeah. Masataka Yoshida. He's already on the board. If I remember

correctly, this is a guy who I identified a couple of years ago just because of his strikeout rate. He is a 5% swinging strike rate guy in 2022, a 92% end zone contact rate. He's super little, In zone, contact rate, he's super little, 173 centimeters high. Anyway, yeah, but the Sengar report I am good on because Ben and I spent so much time worrying about it. Because he was a top 50 guy. Yeah. Okay, so rumors are about Sengar flying already, and I can see why. So now we know more about him, and I will say bye for real this time.

All right, well, as anticipated, the Cy Young results were not close. In fact, both races were unanimous. Sandy Alcantara in the NL, Justin Verlander in the AL, Shohei Otani, by the way, finished fourth, a close fourth or not a distant from third fourth. Struck me that really no one batted an eye at Sandy Alcantara being on a bad team, a fourth place team, and winning this award. Maybe just because he was such a clear leader, at least by many stats, if not necessarily fangraphs were. But it just doesn't seem to matter that much or be that big a factor in many voters' minds whether you were on a successful team in Cy Young voting as opposed to MVP voting, where maybe less so than in the past, but still somewhat significantly, people will bring up whether your team is good, whether

you made the playoffs as a factor. And I can only assume that that is because value, valuable, is not in the name of the award. It's just Cy Young. So everyone says, OK, this is the best pitcher award, basically. Whereas the MVP award, which of course is not position player specific, but does tend to favor position players, it's not necessarily just who was the best player. You also get people parsing the word valuable, and what does that mean, and can you actually

be valuable if you're on a team that didn't make it to the playoffs, etc., etc. I really gotta think it mostly comes down to just not having it be most valuable pitcher, and I'm not mad about it, because that is one of the most tired and tiresome debates there is, especially because it recurs on an annual basis. Anyway, congrats to Verlander. Congrats to Alcantara. Only the second time that both results have been unanimous after 1968 with Denny McLean in the AL and Bob Gibson in the NL. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild.

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Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group. Just need, I think, four more to get to 900 members there. We also record and release bonus episodes every month for our Patreon supporters at a certain level. You can also get access to discounts on merch and add free Fangrafts memberships and more. Anyone, of course, can contact us via email at podcast.fang fan graphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system. We will probably get to some emails next time. So send them in. You can rate review and subscribe to effectively wild on iTunes and Spotify

and other podcast platforms. You can follow effectively wild on Twitter at EW pod, and you can find the effectively wild subreddit at our slash effectively wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you then. Just about a hundred years or so ago Tiffin rode their way

Down the mighty Colorado And as I read about their journey I couldn't help but feel A very similar yearning to Mr. Bell. And I wish that I could have been there with him.