Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1933: Bats, Bets, Ballots, and Blasts

Episode Date: November 23, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about omissions from their Baseball Twitter draft, a few transactions (including the Kyle Lewis trade, the Gio Urshela trade, and multiple shortstop swaps), the Angels acquiring average players, the Dodgers non-tendering Cody Bellinger, the Phillies extending Dave Dombrowski, the new BBWAA Hall of Fame ballot and Ben’s ballot decision, […]

And I'm calling on angels now I want them to set me free I hope that they're real Though sometimes it feels Like nobody's listening And the moon and the sun and the stars Shone bright and high And I can't help but wonder the way that the world goes by

Well I hope that they're real and I hope they can hear me cry Hello and welcome to episode 1933 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, although not from where I often am. Ben, how are you? I'm doing all right. You sound the same. I don't think anyone would have known. Oh, I'm glad to hear that. You know, you never know what new Wi-Fi networks and a lack of a mic stand will do. I feel like Frankie at the Sands. Just got my mic in my hand.

Hopefully that does not result in a lot of weird sounds. But anyway, the day before Thanksgiving. You're potting without home field advantage. This is a hotel pod. We'll see whether anyone can notice now that we've alerted everyone. Gave it away. I'm giving thanks that I have not been bombarded by suggestions for baseball tweets or

baseball Twitter traditions that we overlooked in our baseball Twitter draft. It seems like we did a decent job, at least so far. I'm sure some more suggestions will trickle in, but it seems like people have enjoyed that. I have collated a short list of the submissions that I've seen of oversights

on our part. And one of them is John Boyce, just in general, which did occur to me after we finished drafting. How did we not have John Boyce represented here? I couldn't really think of a specific John Boyce tweet because almost every John Boyce tweet is good. But people suggested that one thing would be John Boyce's watching baseball tweets, his series where he just tweets some strange screenshot or gif or video clip that happened during a baseball game and says watching baseball just to represent the strangest of the things that sometimes happen in baseball games. And then also the Jeff Sullivan, John Boyce, years long ongoing baseball reference name threads. Yes. Back and forth, which are one of the joys of baseball Twitter for sure, where they will just find some obscure, strange name, sometimes a themed name, and then the other one will have to respond in kind. So that is a great baseball Twitter tradition that I'm sorry that we neglected. Also, editor and producer Dylan Higgins, he nominated a great tweet by Bill Bayer. This is an old one.

This is 10 years old, and it's a lose-yourself adaptation. It's Zito's palms are sweaty, Curve's weak arm is heavy. There's vomit on his uni already here comes Dave Righetti yes very good it's a good one also gets retweeted often and somehow we neglected a Nightingale tweet despite drafting every other Nightingale tweet seemingly and it was one of the simplest ones this was January 10th, when Bob Nightingale tweeted, MLB. Yeah.

That's it. Yeah. That's the tweet, as they say. I think that if it had been the MLB, it probably would have made the pot. Yeah. I mean, kudos to him for at least leaving that out.

I don't know what he was going for here. Some people pointed out that it sounded as if he was reporting that there would be MLB action and then there wasn't for quite some time because it was 2020. So in a sense, I guess you could lump it in with the Bob Nightingale incorrectly purports things genre. But I enjoyed that one. And also the fact that the at MLB Twitter account responded to it and just tweeted back Bob, which was good. I thought about whether we should tweet like sassy team Twitter accounts.

But I'm not sure whether that's a good thing or not. Like, especially when they go back and forth with each other. Yeah. And there's some like good natured ribbing and trolling. Not always good natured. I mean. No, sometimes it gets a little. Yeah. It gets a little personal.

You're like, are they okay? Right. Like I'm never sure if it's a work, like if they're putting on a show, if they're like pretending that there's bad blood because a lot of the team Twitter accounts, it's centralized now, the social media people, right? Like they work for MLB. So I assume that there's some kind of coordination and inclusion going on here probably where you don't really have people going rogue on the team Twitter

accounts and trashing other team Twitter accounts. So maybe it's kind of a choreographed dance that they do for our entertainment. So because of that, because I'm never sure just how authentic and sincere it is, I didn't draft draft it but there certainly have been some good ones over the years yeah i feel like we are um you know we are lending to baseball twitter a patina of peace and humor that is not always present there but if it is to to meet its end that's how i i prefer to remember it right you could You could decide that what matters is the brainpower we all spent debating the intricacies of FIP. But why? You know, like why?

We could all let things go more. I mean, there are some things we shouldn't let go. But some things we should. And I think that baseball Twitter is home to a lot of them. She says, having never overreacted or held on to anything for too long ever in her life yep no glass houses here nope i'm always a little suspicious of brand tweets that has well you should be yeah like there are some good ones obviously like it's a little bit played out because that that became a trend where you would have certain brands that would tweet with a distinctive voice. And that was kind of weird and entertaining at first.

And then it caught on and now everyone does it. I don't love the first person brand tweets where it just kind of calls attention. Yeah. But MLB team Twitter accounts, I guess it's okay. They don't pretend to be people usually, or they don't pretend to like be personifications of a person or use first person singular. Maybe sometimes they do, but I don't know. I just, when it's a corporate kind of thing,

I just, I never know whether I should authentically laugh or whether. Yeah. You know the ones that I find to be the most disturbing, honestly, are the mascots that have their own. Oh, yeah. You know, because every, it feels like every mascot Twitter account went through a phase where it was like,

what the kids will like is for this mascot to be vaguely horny online. And I could have done without that, you know? I don't want to yuck anyone's yum. And if that's your thing, you know, God bless. As long as everyone's saying yes and having a good time, it's none of my business. But I don't need to think about, like, what the moose likes, you know?

I don't. And there are times that you see these tweets about the mascots, and you're like, do they think that we want to, you know, with the mascot? Like, is that what they? And I know that there is a subset of the population that says enthusiastically yes to that. And again, that's it's your deal. That's fine. That's not my deal, but that can be your deal.

But I don't know that we needed to be like an aspect of Twitter. And it seems like every brand, every mascot Twitter went through a phase where they're like, you know, we'll get the kids going. And I don't know about that. Call me old fashioned, but I don't need that from my brands. It's like when all the brands were like, we too have clinical depression. I'm like, no, you don't. You're a multinational corporation worth billions of dollars. It's okay. The stars, they're not like us yeah the other omission which i think was submitted by multiple people was another john hayman tweet he was represented in this draft but you can't accuse us of not giving john his shine is that the right way to refer to what we did i don't know my bbwh

after head i'm sure it's fine but. Yeah, we were close to the target. We picked the right people. We didn't always necessarily pick all of the right tweets. Right. But this one was from July 7th, 2013, 3.52 p.m. John Heyman, this is when he was with CBS still. Huge homer by Adam Jones at Simply AJ10. Two runs shot off Mariano with one out in ninth for 2-1-0's lead.

Hashtag huge tits. Oh, no. Oh, no. I assume it was supposed to be huge hits. I mean, who knows, you know? Who knows? I'm not sure that one exists anymore, but it has been preserved for posterity. There are many screenshots circling.

So, yeah. Wow. That's kind of magical. Boy. Wow. Thanks for people who nominated tweets that we overlooked and neglected. And you can feel free to to keep them coming but i feel good about the draft i mean mostly craig goldstein was just so comprehensive in his accounting of

every tweet ever that oh yeah couldn't possibly have missed that many yeah i mean like like he said he prepped more for that than he maybe has for anything yep in his life and um it just is a testament to how everyone tweets too much really that, that we were able to miss any. Because I felt like we really gave it a thorough canvas. But apparently, you know. There have been a lot of tweets. Yeah, there are a lot. You know, sometimes, Ben, I will, like, notice that someone has tweeted something.

Often a piece that I might want to read. And I forget about it. Or I open it in a tab, but then I close the tab because I'm in constant battle with the tabs also newsletters you know everyone's thinking about doing newsletters now even more everyone that is already doing newsletters is thinking about doing newsletters and i have a folder in my gmail that is just newsletters and i like to think that it's like someday i might read that and i know i never know but i can't have stuff in my inbox it's extraneous anyway that's not the point of this story. But there's like a whole folder of newsletters.

And it's like, I bet there's good stuff in there. I'm never going to find out. But anyway, so I will go back to people's Twitter timelines to be like, oh, yeah, I know that Craig tweeted that thing. And then I just am like, there's so many tweets. And I don't want to pick on Craig because this happens with a lot of different people. But with Craig specifically also and I will just sit there and be like

how are there this many tweets and Craig does a much better job I should praise Craig as I'm making fun of him like you know because my baseline tolerance for Twitter is a lot lower than any of the people that were on that podcast I probably don't do as good a job as I should of

tweeting all the good stuff that people write for fan graphs and craig does a very very good job of that for baseball perspective so this is me giving a hat tip to our friend craig for that but sometimes i'm like the you know i already read those things like bp is a place where i reliably read you know yes i'm trying to find that other thing you tweeted and i can't because there's been you know an entire like human historical record between now and this morning anyway twitter i don't know if i'll miss it i i suspect i won't another friend of ours in the biz in the industry was like so what's everyone gonna migrate to and i was like i don't know i don't think i can figure out mastodon it seems too complicated and i guess

i'm gonna have to though and another friend was like do you? Like, we're over 35. Can't we just be done? Do we have to learn a new thing? Yeah, right. Yeah. People sometimes ask, like, well, do you have to be on Twitter for your job? And no, not necessarily. I have colleagues who are not on Twitter or at least don't have Twitter accounts and don't tweet, they may lurk. So if you have to be there, then I guess it gets to be an imposition. And I don't necessarily have to be there. I find that it is helpful often for my job. It's helpful often for reporting, just in contacting people.

And it's helpful for learning things and seeing things and becoming aware of things that I wouldn't have become aware of, which is not always a good thing, but it is sometimes a good thing. So I do find it's helpful. And as you said, like, even if we forget to read some of the things that we see on there that we meant to read, we still see some of them. So it helps. But could I do my job not being on there or if it were to cease to exist? Yeah, probably. helps but could i do my job not being on there or if it were to cease to exist yeah probably so well and here i think we will both acknowledge that we sit in a pretty fortunate position and that like we are already full time yes and established and so it is much easier for us to say

no i don't have to be on there i don't have to be active on there because we're not you know living the freelance life anymore so you, people's mileage on the necessity of the app is really going to vary, I think, for reasons beyond us all, like being brain poisoned by the internet. But yeah, I think it's just like, you know, anything, you got to know where your own boundary with the thing is, and it might be different from other people's. Like, I'm less anxious if I'm not on there a ton. And so I not to be but i also walked into this hotel room said hey i can pod and then immediately open twitter so you know who who am i to judge really no one i'm no one to judge i am trying to be less judgmental was there any baseball news today while i was not a ton no not really

there hasn't been a ton of baseball news since we last actually talked about baseball news. There have been a few transactions. I guess we never actually circled back to talk about the Kyle Lewis trade. I don't know if you have thoughts about that. We talked about the Teoscar Hernandez trade, but there was also a Kyle Lewis trade. So if you have belated thoughts on the kyle lewis cooper hummel mariners diamondback swap well i have a couple of things to say about that the first of which is that i just i think that we can sometimes get like overly enchanted with makeup as a concept not like the kind you put on your face but uh in the baseball sense i've never heard anything but just like really wonderful things about kyle lewis and i feel badly for him as a human being and for the rest of us as people who like watching good baseball players that he just has struggled so much to stay healthy. He, you know, blew out his knee in a in a freak terrible way when he was still a prospect. So I don't know what the Diamondbacks will really be able to get out of him. We have seen what the good version of Kyle Lewis looks like, and it is rookie of the year caliber, albeit in a compressed season. I don't really think that Kyle Lewis can play center field anymore just because of the toll that the injury has taken on his speed, but I also think that the diamondbacks have a lot of other options there including

dalton varsho for reasons that will remain mysterious for the rest of our lives and i like i like it for the d-backs because like kyle lewis is not often healthy but can be very productive and impactful when he is and so if he can stay healthy he seems like the kind of player who a team in the d-backs position I thought this was a very good point that Justin Choi made when he wrote up the trade for us like this is exactly the kind of guy who the D-backs should try to cycle through and hopefully because I like Kyle Lewis and think he seems like a good dude like hopefully this works out for him specifically but more generally like them moving through sort of post-prospect

guys to see who are players who can supplement what we're trying to do as we're breaking this you know emergent core in at the major league level like this is what they should do we have seen the Giants do this to pretty great effect right where they kind of cycle through guys and they have a good sense of what they're looking for and if it's someone who proves better or fixable or compatible with what they're trying to do great and if not they do move on from them but like that's kind of what teams who are on the rise should be doing in terms of seattle like they have a lot of options in that outfield i think we will probably see further consolidation from them but you know they're gonna have julio and center tay oscar will play one of the corners and then they have a lot of internal candidates for the other corner even with hanager departing

in free agency and presumably jesse winker may be being a trade candidate himself i will say my primary impression of cooper hummel having seen a surprising amount of cooper hummel because i live in arizona and have just seen him back there. You know, sometimes, Ben, you're someone who watches catchers. When you watch catchers, do you ever go, that guy seems small? That's just been my primary impression of Cooper Hummel as a player, which is unfair to him because he does other stuff, although hitting was not one of them, at least at the major league level last year.

He has been better in the minors over the years. But sometimes I'm like like you just seem like you're kind of tiny to take the abuse that guys take back there but yeah i don't know they'll see they'll kind of see what he is they uh they definitely need someone behind cal raleigh whether that will end up being cooper hummel i don't candidly know but if he ends up being either a kind of interesting versatile bench piece or a guy who just like hangs out in AAA and does AAA stuff. I don't know. It seemed like it's, I like one for one swaps, like as a category of trade. If we were drafting categories of trades, that would probably.

There's an idea. File that one away. Yeah, that would probably be high on my board because I just like one for one challenge trades. one-for-one challenge trades. And from organizations that are not in the exact same spot, obviously, like Seattle is further along in their, you know, ascent back to being relevant than Arizona is. And even though they have to deal with the Astros,

I think they have an easier divisional path, certainly, than the D-backs do, who just have to contend with, like, a lot of the best teams in baseball, some of whom have a lot of money, and one of which has A.J has aj preller who's willing to just do crazy stuff to get good players so anyway those are my that was a lot more thoughts about kyle lewis and you had a lot of thoughts i wasn't expecting that many thought i would have but here i am um but yeah people should check out justin troy's piece uh typical of justin it is good. And the other notable transactions, well, stretching the definition of notable maybe, is that there were a bunch of shortstop swaps,

just sort of a shortstop merry-go-round. Or as Michael Bauman put it, a short swap. Good old Michael. Always good with the witticisms and the wordplay. Yeah, he's clever. And the biggest one, like the headliner here, I guess, would be the geo urshela trade so not that huge a deal but the angels got themselves a geo urshela and the yankees

re-signed isaiah kiner falafel who is already under team control this is just a avoiding arbitration deal and then basically each shortstop who went to one team, his old team replaced him with another shortstop from another team. And then there was just a chain of shortstop replacements. So Urshela went from the Twins to the Angels and then the Twins needed someone. So Kyle Farmer went from the Reds to the Twins and then the Reds needed someone. And so Kevin Newman went from the Pirates to the Reds. And I guess that's where the chain stopped for now. The Pirates, maybe they just don't need anyone

because they're the Pirates. But not huge news, obviously. If I said shortstop news, people might get excited because it could be one of the very famous and superstar shortstops. And not even that guy. No. Keep going down the list.

One more. Keep going, though. Technically kind of a shortstop even. Right, yeah. In some cases, I'm stretching that definition too here, talking about Gio Urshela. Right, I love that the biggest name that moved is a guy who has played not a lot of shortstop at the big league level. is a guy who has played not a lot of shortstop at the big league level in fairness like he has been blocked by francisco lindor and then he was blocked in new york by i guess glaber torres at the time and then also later by carlos correa so you know those guys are good shortstops well

glaber not so much but the rest of them yeah yeah yeah So I don't have as many thoughts about these moves as you had about the Kyle Lewis trade, even though this is multiple trades. But the Angels, they're going for it. I guess we say this every offseason. They're making moves. Yeah. Those moves actually pay off. Probably not. But they're doing stuff.

I mean, I like that move for L.A. I like everything L.A. has done so far this offseason it's very disorienting because like i think that one of the things that we have asked over and over in increasingly pleading tones when it comes to the angels is like just put a 500 club around these two megawatt stars that you have on your roster and like geo urshela isn't you know a superstar but he is a good and competent big leaguer just gets some average players like yeah i've watched a lot of angels baseball the last few years not enough average players on the team yeah yeah and like sometimes urshela is better than that. Right. Like he has flashed better than that at times. And, you know, it's not like Anthony Rendon has lately been the paragon of health. So if you assume that he might end up having to moonlight at third occasionally, if like there's any issues with Rendon's health at some point, I think that's you know know what? I think it's a good move. I think that it is a good, solid move.

You know, this is just, it's kind of like the rotation stuff. We're like, this is just a normal, regular ass major league rotation. This is a rotation that plays and you're like, it's not bad. And some of it is really good, right? And if they keep doing that, and then they get, you know, Trout and Otani, I don't know, maybe they'll get to do one more hurrah before Otani becomes a Seattle Mariner, which I...

Have they had a hurrah? Well, you know, there was that one time that my crowd went to... They looked like they were going to have hurrahs. Yeah, like, but maybe they can have a hurrah. They can go, hurrah. Yeah. They had a hurrah pre-Ohtani, and then they've had some times when it looked like they might

be in position to have a hurrah, but then ultimately... Like early last season. No hurrahs were had. Yeah. No hurrahs. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know if this is a vote of no confidence in Rendon or whether it's just a depth move, just hedging against his eventual injury or whether they will actually play him regularly at shortstop or what or whether Rendon would DH at some point.

I don't know, but it seems helpful to have competent players around, which is something that they haven't had enough. By the way, I made a crack at the Pirates expense there. I know they have a shortstop. He is very big. You can't miss him. Yeah, you can't. As long as O'Neill Cruz is around and at shortstop, they can do without Kevin Newman, I suppose, although he had a fairly good season by Kevin Newman standards. So anyway, that's that move. And that basically takes us to the end of the trades and sightings that have happened so far that we haven't discussed. There was a Hall of Fame ballot announced. I don't know whether you looked at this in depth.

Well, I did because I edited Juan J. Jaffe. Excellent. This is Jay in his prime is when this season rolls around. Yeah. There's a lot of guys. When do you become eligible to vote for Hall of Fame stuff? Let's see. My first year in the association was 2019.

Ah, okay. So it's going to be a while. Yeah, I have a little ways to go yet. All right. Well, you don't have to worry about any dilemmas about what you will do. And I don't know that you have felt that there will be a dilemma the way that I was feeling last year. Yeah. I guess every year I have to now reconfront that or I could just default to not voting like I did last year.

I got to say, I haven't rued my decision at any point. I have not felt remorse. I have not experienced regret. It's been fine. I opted not to submit a ballot, didn't penalize anyone. You didn't submit a blank ballot. Just withdrew myself from the process for various reasons, which I detailed at some length on this podcast, which I think episode 1792 maybe was the one where I went through that. And some things have changed since then in the sense that the most reprehensible slash problematic people who were on the ballot there, whether for on or more famous ones, have at least migrated to whatever we are calling the Veterans Committee ballot these days. And so it's no longer the BBWAA's problem. And there are not many new viable candidates. And each of them, if you want to be generous and say there are two, each of them comes with some kind of baggage. It seems like there's not a lot of uncomplicated, unproblematic Hall of Fame candidates these days. I don't know whether that is just a reflection of

the fact that we pay attention to things that we didn't used to pay attention to. It's certainly partly that, but it also seems like, I don't know, over representation of just like issues. Of stinkers. Yeah. And I don't even mean pd issues i mean off the field issues and this year the only really i think legitimate candidate or likely to have

gotten in aside from baggage candidate is carlos beltran yeah and i don't know that he would have necessarily been a first ballot guy just because the traditional stats, the counting stats, he's not in the big round number clubs. He doesn't have a bad argument by back of the baseball card stats, but maybe a somewhat stronger argument by advanced stats and jaws and war by which he seems to be pretty much a shoe in. He's like a top 10 center fielder of all time. The only issue with him, though, is that he was an astro science dealer and not just any astro science dealer, but per various reports, one of the masterminds. Yeah. So I assume that that will be held against him for some period of time.

I don't know whether that will be considered as big a strike as PDs or positive tests or anything like that. But it's hard to say how voters will weigh one type of cheating against another type of cheating. he was probably not a slam dunk shoe in first ballot guy, regardless of the science dealing, even though statistically maybe he should have been, that this will hold him off for at least this year. And we will see. And he's one of the few who has not really been welcomed back with open arms into the baseball community, right? Like he actually did suffer a consequence. He lost his job as manager of the Mets. He's not gotten another one. He was a Yankees broadcaster this past year, but he hasn't had an in-uniform job, even though he was looked on as a pretty hot prospect as a manager.

So that still seems to be held against him to some extent in baseball circles and maybe in media circles, too. The only other perhaps, if you sort of squint, candidate who's a new addition to the ballot who could be a Hall general. Jay made the point in his piece that you can come up with some comps of candidates who are in the hall or who have made real runs at it, who have had comparable careers to Rodriguez. But between all the off the field stuff and him not being a shoe-in either and Billy Wagner still being on the ballot and not being in and everything, I wouldn't expect that he would have a very strong case. I'm sure he will stay on the ballot and not being in and everything. I wouldn't expect that he would have a very strong case. Like he, I'm sure, will stay on the ballot probably, or I guess I'm not totally sure,

but he could stay on the ballot. But that's about it. And so because there are only those guys added and neither of them is going to get in, I would wager this year. And then you have all of the players who fell off, who have been hanging on there forever, then that would seem to open up spots for the holdovers who have had high percentages and who have been making some gains. Prime among them, Scott Rowland, who I would guess he's going to get in this year.

And if he doesn't, then he will almost certainly get in next year. And he's not close to the end of his eligibility. So I'm sure he would want to get in as soon as possible. But there's not that much suspense. Like he seems like he's got to be a gimme at this point pretty much. Yeah, I think that that seems right. But I don't know, especially given that, what is it called now? She asks as she has edited like a jillion pieces it's impossible to

remember we should just bring back veterans committee because that's the only thing anyone can remember i cannot remember the name remember them contemporary baseball era committee is what it's called this year i think yeah i think you're right yeah contemporary baseball era committee i just edited the dale murphy one my goodness jay i'm sorry i i promise i paid closer attention when editing than it's been able to stick in my brain but you know particularly given some of the weirdness in that ballot there were guys who weren't supposed to be on there who we haven't seen there are a bunch of guys on there who seem to have no chance at all for election it might just be a weird year in cooperstown this summer if this coming summer rather if roland doesn't get in this time around so let's hope that he does because otherwise i don't know

yeah it could be a shutout which which has happened before it has happened before right the the players on the i have have already forgotten. Contemporary Baseball Era Committee. Thank you. Bonds, Clemens, Palmeiro, Schilling, Albert Bell. Oh, boy. Yeah. Mattingly, McGriff. Yeah. Yeah. And right. And Dale Murphy, you mentioned. Yeah. Dale Murphy. Yeah. And then some notable omissions. I don't know what Lou Whitaker did to anyone there. Like why will they not even put him on the ballot here?

Or Kenny Lofton or others who have strong cases. David Cohn. But that'll be sort of interesting I guess. Boy Evans. Like where's where for? Just to see how differently the

baseball veteran types treat those candidates whom the baseball writers snubbed. I don't know whether they will be more or less likely. I would think in some cases even less likely to let them in, which would seem to favor the likes of McGriff, for instance, Dale Murphy, Don Mattingly. Well, they have varyingly strong cases. You can always play the, well, Harold Baines got in game with players like this who were great for a time, some for a very long time, and would not be the worst players in the Hall of Fame. You could play that game always. They would not be even close to the most questionable statistical selections by the various committees over the years. And because there are a few, quote unquote, good guy candidates here where you could kind of check the box without having to worry about what they might say at their speech or what message you would be spending by inducting them, maybe that means that they're more likely to get in. And on the BBWA ballot, by the way, you also have Todd Helton

and you have Billy Wagner and Rowland. And those are the guys who have been over the 50% threshold and, in Rowland's case, over the 60% threshold. So I imagine they will all make gains. So I still haven't decided what to do and I don't want to belabor it really, but I haven't regretted just sort of checking out of the process. Like it's been kind of nice not to. Part of me also wants to support Scott Rowan. Again, like I don't feel a great urgency because I don't think he needs my vote necessarily, maybe this year, but he's going to get in. But it would be nice to check the box next to Scott

Rowland's name. But the problem is that my objections or reservations last year, they were related to the specific players and names on the ballot, but they were also largely about the process, really, and the process hasn't changed. So in a sense, it would kind of be a cop-out, I think, if I were to say, well, now that I no longer have to make a decision about Barry Bonds or whomever, then now I can just jump back into the pool because it's an easier decision. Not that it would be super easy because there are still players on that ballot who not only have pd issues but domestic violence issues which was an even bigger issue for me really so nothing actually has changed like i i wanted there to be some kind of clarity

as it pertains to the character clause like either get rid of the character clause or provide some sort of way that we could kind of account for character, like not necessarily wholeheartedly, unreservedly celebrate someone. Just like note the whole legacy and the whole life and career as opposed to just reducing everyone down to a plaque with some numbers on it, which kind of elides some of the more unsavory stuff there. And there just didn't really seem to be a mechanism to account for that, at least in the plaque hall that everyone thinks of when they think of the Hall of Fame. So for that and other reasons, I just didn't feel great about it. And none of that has actually changed, even though some of the names have changed. And there are still some shady names and there will be more shady names in the future.

So I don't know how consistent it would be for me to vote this year, having not voted last year, unless I totally changed my thinking on things. And I don't know that I have. So that's sort of where I am. And I don't know that I have. So that's sort of where I am. If I don't vote this year, I would feel a little pang of regret for not getting to help push Roland over the hump. But again, he'll get there. Yeah, I think that that is likely to be true.

Yeah, you really kind of put yourself in a bind there, Ben. Yeah, I guess I did. You put yourself in a little bit of a bind. I'm kind of okay with it, though. I know. It's fine. It's always easier to not do things. It is easier not to do things. Yeah, it's true. And I know this is like kind of a cool thing. And I certainly like for a long time thought it would be a very cool thing and didn't think that I would have any issues or hangups about this and would not have envisioned myself not voting. So things have

changed with my thinking and the collective thinking and just the people who were on the ballot and all of that. And it became less of a cool thing or less of an uncomplicated cool thing. And I just kept going back and forth and I didn't feel great about either course and ultimately decided, well, I don't really want to endorse the process as it currently works. And I feel OK about just kind of either kicking the can down the road or just being, I don't know, a conscientious Hall of Fame objector or whatever it is. Just not having the headache of it. I felt fine about and have continued to feel mostly fine about. It's just a decision that will recur every year for as long as I'm eligible to vote and a member of the Baseball Writers Association. God, can you imagine the weird noises I'm going to make when I have to fill out a follow-up ballot?

Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Oh, yeah. I was so nervous to do like a semi-complicated, controversial rookie of the year vote. I'm going to like have a stroke or something. Oh, my goodness. I'm going to reach a register only dogs can hear. It's going to be something. Yeah. We have to keep podcasting so that you can hear it.

I would feel better about a regular season, an end of season awards vote. I just, they never give me one. So my name never comes up. You gotta move. Yeah, I guess I gotta get out of this crowded New York chapter. But that, if we're just talking about who is the best baseball player this year, I'd feel better

about that. You can join the long tradition of people penning Here's Why I Left New York stories, but you can uh you can join the long tradition of people penning here's why i left new york stories but you'll be the very first one to be like no i just really want to vote for mvp you know i never get to yeah exactly i forgot to mention one transaction because it's not a player transaction but the phillies decided that they want to be in the dave dombrowski business for a few more years yeah he was already under contract for, I think, two more seasons. And now he is under contract for three more seasons beyond that. So another

half decade of Dombrowski coming, which is interesting. I guess we had a long conversation about Dave Dombrowski and his legacy and his accomplishments and how his modus operandi has changed as he has gone from place to place. And we kind of talked about him later in his career as the closer, you know, like you bring him in to put the finishing touches on the roster and just that last push to get into contention, win your ring. And he nearly got one for the Phillies and they won a pennant. And sometimes he will then move on or the team will elect to move on from him having kind of got what they wanted out of him.

And the Phillies have decided that, no, we want this to be a long-term relationship. So we will see whether the shine wears off the rose at some point or not, whether they continue to be pleased with him. Because I don't know that the Phillies, they had a great outcome and I think he deserves some credit, even though he didn't engineer the majority of that roster, obviously, which predated him. But because he is someone who comes in and spends a lot of money and trades prospects, and spends a lot of money and trades prospects, if there are any who are not nailed down.

He's more of a short-term executive these days, or at least lately. And then someone else has to come along and cope with whatever state he left the farm system in after that. So I guess we'll see how that works when he's the one who has to deal with what Dave Dombrowski did before. But who else could have come in with the approach to defense that Dombrowski did, which I would describe as roads? Well, we're going. We don't need roads. You know, like, it's just like, I'm going to do it. You had no notes or very few notes. I later had some very specific notes.

They were mostly for Reese Hoskins. I stand by them, even though I do enjoy watching him hit home runs. But I think I'm right about the first base defense, which remains not great. But I guess the only other real transaction was the Dodgers non-tender in Cody Bellinger. Yes. Yeah. Not a shocker, I guess. I mean, a shocker in the sense that if you had told

us that a few years ago, we would have said, well, wow, that's shocking. Yes. But more recently, not as much. But it seems like he has a healthy market. Plenty of bidders for Bellinger who were banking on a bounce back. Well, that was a lot of B words. Yeah, I was going to say, oh. It was not intentional. I just found myself continuing to say, oh. It also seems like we might just hear, you know, in a couple of weeks, like he's resigned for a deal that is more financially palatable to them. So, yes. And it sounds like he wants a one year deal. Scott Boris has said, which makes sense. He is still young.

Try to rebuild the value. Bollinger bounce back. Yes. Rebuild. Bollinger's bounce back. Pillow contract kind of screws up everything. Yeah. Well, we're going to we're going to workshop it.

We can send it as an exercise to like drama kids trying to get ready for, you know, a show, a big show. Yeah. They might be sick of talking about red leather, yellow leather or whatever it is. The other thing which I saw actually on Twitter and I think on your Twitter initially. I saw actually on Twitter and I think on your Twitter initially. So Twitter working as designed, spreading articles to readers was the New York Times investigation into sports betting, which was like a four-parter, like a multi-pronged deep dive into all aspects of sports betting and how it has taken over everything. Sports and the media and the country and lobbying. So there was one investigation that was about how sports betting became ubiquitous. That was a lot of B words, too.

to make many legislators positively inclined toward sports betting and getting it legalized pretty much everywhere. Not everywhere. What, 36 states now? California recently heartily rejected that, which was somewhat surprising. I heard from one Ben Clemens that that was maybe the best funded on both sides initiative in state history. Yeah, I read about that too right and yeah apparently it was like maybe bad messaging choices because uh the pro sports betting forces were trying to sell it as not this sort of selfish like hey just legalize sports betting so that we can make more money but like i think they tied it to a measure that was like reducing homelessness. And basically, they tried to just like,

don't look over here at the sports betting, like we're doing this so that we can share some subset of the proceeds and try to deal with this other problem that people are concerned about in California. And basically, no one was buying that. And then there was a counter campaign that was maybe more effective at pointing out the hypocrisy there or the lack of sincerity there. Anyway, that was roundly rejected, but for how long, I wonder. And then there was another deep dive about how states are quite soft when it comes to regulation and legislation here, both because of the lobbying, which is happening on a federal level, but also because states are often partners with the sports books. And they're making money off this, too.

So they don't want to look too hard at it. And then there was a Dave Portnoy piece about how he's become a big public spokesman for the sports betting industry despite having accrued gambling debts of his own in his youth. Yeah. And despite, well, everything about Dave Portnoy. And despite. It's like you reach this point sometimes with a person where you're like, are we going to talk about this very briefly in a way that does not do it justice? Or is it a three and a half hour long podcast and i think you made the right choice here but yeah despite the dave portnoy of it all

just gestures at everything yeah and then the last one i think was in a way like maybe the most surprising and sort of disturbing yeah which was about colleges partnering with sports betting companies to basically try to get college students hooked on sports betting. And not just college students. Like there does seem to be an effort to early betters of college students. Yeah. attention. And there are certainly some outlets that are less likely to publish investigations like these because they're reliant to some extent on sports betting money, which is also true to some extent in the Times' case, right? Because The Athletic has a deal with something or other. Correct. And to the Times' credit, they went ahead with this anyway. So it's hard to find really any

media outlet, any sports media outlet that does not have some tie to sports betting. I guess fan graphs might be one potentially. So there's that. Can't say the same for The Ringer, right? The Ringer has a big longstanding partnership with FanDuel, which is not something that has really directly affected me. I have not really created sports betting centered content and have not ever been instructed to say or not say anything because of that partnership. It finances the business to some extent. Obviously, I have nothing to do with deciding to make these deals or not make these deals. And I'm not getting a cut of sponsors of The Ringer, but in the sense that it underwrites the business to some extent as any advertiser or

sponsor does, that adds to my job security, I suppose. So it's so pervasive. There's been such a spending spree on all sides and all platforms and by all companies that it's just hard to find anyone who has no ties at all to this. And we've talked about this before. And I think if I could sum up our general stance, it's like you can do what you want with your money if you can enjoy that responsibly. I have no problem with people being able to bet on sports. It seems OK. People spend money and waste money in many ways. So that's all right if you're not someone who has a problem with it.

But A, there are people who have problems with it. And that seems to be a part of the business model, not even just kind of collateral damage. But it's based on attracting those people to some extent. And there hasn't been a ton done to protect them. And then B, just we're not personally that interested in this stuff. And it's so ubiquitous and unavoidable that we get sort of sick of it eventually. struck me as particularly troubling, I guess would be the word, is that, you know, that's not what the mission of a university, particularly a public university, should be. Like, a university should not be trying to make customers or consumers or gamblers out of its student body. It should be

trying to produce citizens, right? It should be trying to educate citizens right it should be trying to educate and like the the pedagogic mission of a university is not to log into draft kings you know and i'm sure that there is a percentage of the u.s student body you know university student body across the country that is already gambling, right? And that is already participating in sports betting. And it might be sports betting related to the university that they attend. But it feels very different to have a stated invested financial interest in your students betting on stuff, right? Knowing that the reason that these industries are so lucrative and that these sports books are so lucrative for

their parent companies is because people lose and they often lose often they lose often sometimes they lose a lot so i think that there's a much larger conversation to be had about where this fits into you know how education in this country has become about, you know, making state universities profit centers and trying to make them have a business model that's about money and not about teaching people things and equipping them with skills and helping them to be sort of informed people out in the world. But this feels very much in that thread. It's like, you know, know well i guess i guess that not

everybody's necessarily going to get student debt relief but like you know it's like you just got some people out from owner of student loans and it's like well what's one what's another way to extract some money from them we'll make them all sign into draft kings or fandle or whatever so it's just it's a bummer because it's like that's not what that place should be for that place should be about helping you discover things about yourself and learn things about your the world and your community and kind of equipping you to be an adult in whatever you know profession or vocation or passion you're pursuing it should be about that and it shouldn't be about like extracting every last possible dollar from these kids you know i i don't want

to infantilize them but i also don't think that it's you know appropriate or consistent with like what the mission of these places should be for their schools to be like no don't you wanna don't you wanna don't you wanna you know like that's it's not like i don't know it just bums me out it bums me out that's not what like the university of Colorado at Boulder is for. It's for looking at the mountains and public ballpark funding where it's like this will be a windfall for everyone. And then it doesn't really turn out to be the case. And that's also the case with some of the rationales that the lobbyists have used to convince legislators that not only will this be a good deal for the gambling companies, but this will be just a good deal for everyone. This will be a public good. And unsurprisingly, a lot of that is exaggerated, if not outright fabricated. So, yeah, this isn't going away. And as that Yasiel Puig scandal that surfaced recently, where it turns out that he seems to have had a gambling problem on top of

everything else that's gone on with Yasiel Puig. And he was placing many, many bets and was not initially truthful about that. And as far as was reported, he was not betting on baseball, but it does seem just sort of inevitable. But at some point, there's going to be some sort of betting scandal, and that will be another reason to care about this. And then what's the Associated Press going to do? You know, what's the Washington Post going to do? Because

this is why these outlets having like clear defined partnerships where they have a vested financial interest in the well-being of the gaming industry is a problem because you can disclose those conflicts. And I don't want to impugn any of the reporters

who work for those outlets. I'm sure that there are people on their sports desks or on their investigative news desks who would be great at sussing that stuff out, but it's part of why it's a problem because you can't know for sure the cleanest way to do it is just to avoid those kinds of relationships and it seems like such an uh it just seems like a matter of when and not if when it comes to a big scandal impacting a

major u.s sport and then what are they gonna do you? Seems bad. Well, in more heartening college-related news, did you see the announcement that Brown University student Olivia Pichardo is going to be the first woman on an NCAA Division I varsity baseball as a utility player, it sounds like. So there have been other women who have played college baseball, but not on varsity teams in D1. So this is another nice milestone. So she has a ton of baseball experience and has played at many levels and many kinds of competitions over the years. But yeah, she just walked onto the team and impressed everyone. And that's kind of cool. Yeah, very cool. Very cool. All right.

So we can end. Maybe I have some stat blasts and the pass blast as always. It's been a while since we stat blasted. Also, Inbox, Scoop, not Scoop at all, but Inbox, Justin Verlander and Albert Pujols just announced as the winners of the Comeback Player of the Year Awards that checks out I'm laughing and that feels mean

but it's just funny because one of those guys came back from Tommy John surgery and one of them came back from being bad just bad, yeah I think that those are fine. It's fine. It's fine and cool that Pujols won.

Like, that is a cool sort of feather in the cap, you know, little end note to a very neat season. I'm glad we got the season from him we did in his final year. But it is funny when the thing they were coming back from is just being bad. Right, yes. That's funny. Yeah, and in Verlander's case, case like Tommy John seems so routine at this point in some cases that like oh only a TJ that's it but when you're 39 40 and you come back from that and you win the scion award I think that qualifies as quite a comeback so yes he was injured he

actually missed a year Pujols just uh well he missed many years in a sense, but he was present the whole time. I think Dan Zaborski in his review of Zip's projections, Pujols unsurprisingly was the hitter who exceeded his Zip's projection by the most. And that was one of the best stories of the season. So well worth the hardware here. All right. So I was building up to the StatBlast and the StatBlast song. Discuss it at length and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's today's stat blast. All right. So today's stat blasts come from our listeners and also from frequent stat blast consultant Ryan Nelson, who is also on Twitter at rsnelson23.

So I guess I will start with this one. This is Aaron Judge related. I am enjoying, by the way, all the headlines about Aaron Judge meeting with the Giants. Yeah. It just always seems very appropriate. Like he is himself a Giant. He's meeting with Gi giants. Yeah. Because it just always seems very appropriate. Like he is himself a giant. He's meeting with giants. You're always meeting with a giant when you meet with Aaron Judge.

So that would be fitting if he ends up in that uniform. But this question is from Brian, Patreon supporter. And this was from late September. He wrote, I have a war leaderboard question I was hoping you could help me out with. I was playing around with the Fangraph's combined war leaderboards for this year and noticed that Aaron Judge's war total to date was significantly higher than the next closest player on his team, Jose Trevino, 11 versus 3.4. I thought that disparity was weird, but after a little more searching, realized it wasn't unusual. Shohei Otani had a not as big but still pretty big difference last year, eight versus Max Stassi's 2.9. What I am wondering is if that level of disparity is unusual for a

good team. A cursory search of playoff teams this year has bundles of players at similar levels of war at the top of each team's leaderboard, which makes sense. Good teams usually have a bunch of good players. So is Aaron Judge's value in comparison to his teammates on a good team unusual? Could this be an argument for Judge's MVP case over Otani? Well, that ship has sailed. I don't know that he needed another argument. But Ryan wrote back that Judge this year isn't a record, but it is fairly historic, which I guess you could say about many things that Aaron Judge did this year. fairly historic, which I guess you could say about many things that Aaron Judge does this year.

Judge had a difference of 7.5 war between him and the next best player on his team. The average team has a difference of merely 1.4. So Judge is way higher than normal. But the record is actually by the 1923 Yankees, who had a 15 war season from Babe Ruth, no biggie, and the second best was 4.4 from Aaron Ward. The 2022 Yankees slot in at 7th all-time, funnily enough, 5th all-time for the Yankees, since four Ruth years are above Judge, but in modern times, 2022 Judge is second only to the 1972 Phillies, Steve Carlton, 11.1 war, Wayne Twitchell, 2.7 war. The Otani year he selected was tied for 23rd all-time, 9th since integration, so also way up there.

And teams actually tend to have a slightly higher difference between best and second best players as their record improves. So I guess a good team more likely to have a special superstar season, perhaps. I don't know. That's semi-surprising. It doesn't look like it's the strongest relationship, but there is some kind of trend there. We need more people whose last name is Twitchell. Yes, I agree. I will, as always, link to the data on the show page. So that was one question. As always, link to the data on the show page. So that was one question. Now we had another question.

This is from listener Dennis, who asked a question about the most players managed by a manager, which was answered in a previous stat blast. And Dennis has followed up to say, similar to my question about the most players managed, I was wondering which fielder has put out the most unique players. Jake Beckley has the all-time put-outs record, but Eddie Murray has the record after 1952. That is the period during which play-by-play data is guaranteed available or fully available via RetroSheet. So my question is whether there is a player who, through playing in both leagues for several teams over a longer career in the expansion era, in the interleague era, etc., who has put out more different players than Murray or Beckley, though I guess the latter would require too much guesswork. The obvious candidates to me would be Fred McGriff and Andres Galarraga.

So Ryan wrote back. Andres Galarraga. So Ryan wrote back. Now this is entering 2022 because Retro Sheet play-by-play data has not yet been released for the 2022 season. But Ryan writes, this is a timely question. Cardinals legends, Yadier Molina, 1777, and Albert Pujols, 1742. The top of the list is littered with modern, long-time catchers and first basemen. Playing in both leagues helps, too. Todd Helton, Brad Ausmus, Jason Kendall, Pudge Rodriguez, Brian McCann, Andres Galarraga, Joey Vado, and Derek Lee. Molina, Pujols, and Helton are in a league of their own, 1,700 plus putouts. No one else has 1,600. Murray is 32nd with 1,221. Beckley's total is unknown since it was before play-by-play

as mentioned. Fred McGriff is 14th at 1,402 and Galraga is 8th at 1,459., yeah, I think Dennis was onto something there, but Yachty and Pujols, most put outs. I don't know how I feel about catchers getting full credit for the put out on, like, strikeouts on outs like that. Pitchers should get some credit for that,

I feel like. I don't know. But you're going to get a lot of catchers in first baseman on this list obviously so that's why we see Yadier and Pujols in Helton all right that was the second stat blast here is the third this is from Taylor from Tampa who in early October wrote the Yankees hit into a double play in six straight innings last night against Texas, submitting for the listener-based podcast segment, Is This Something? So Ryan said, yes, this is significant. It ties the record. The record for most double plays turned in a game period is seven. The most consecutive innings with the

double play turned is six, which has happened only twice before. The Angels on May 1st, 1966, and the Blue Jays on April 16th, 1996. The Angels game was the fourth through ninth inning, all of which were inning ending as well. So yes, that was something, that particular one. And lastly, this stop last question comes from the Facebook group where it was posted by Brent Blackwell who wrote, Does anyone know where to find a breakdown of how frequently the game-winning run is scored in each inning if such a thing exists? And so Ryan looked this up too. He made a pretty graph, which I will link to on the show page. But essentially, it's relatively even through the

first nine innings, no pronounced trend toward the game winning run being scored in any particular inning. There is a bulge, though, in the middle innings, which is probably when starters start to get tired. And so maybe you're more likely to score the winning run there. So it looks like the fifth and the sixth are the leaders roughly tied. Looks like 11% or so of game winning runs are scored in those innings. And Ryan went above and beyond and he broke it down several ways just by era. So he gave me all time. He gave me divisional era since 1969. And he also gave me since 2000. And then I think maybe an even more recent period. And he found that there is a small but statistically significant

difference in recent years where the winning run is more likely to be scored in the middle innings and less likely in late innings which ryan speculates is due to the rise of modern bullpens which i think that russell carlton and perhaps others have have looked into just it you know you're less likely to blow leads and and have come. Not as much less likely maybe as you would think, just given the wholesale restructuring of pitching staffs, but there is some trend there. Since 2018 is when Ryan looked at here, I guess not including 2022 yet probably, and it does look like there's a spike in say the seventh inning relative to these previous periods. So it does look like there's sort of a soft underbelly of the bullpen where game winning runs are more likely to be scored in those innings than they once were.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I guess also if you look very recently, probably you're going to see some tendency toward zombie runner skewing things in early extra innings, most likely as well. So that's a thing. In fact, you can see that if you look at since 2018, there's a big spike in the 10th inning relative to all of these previous periods. So you're just more likely to get a resolution there. Not a surprise. We've lamented this many a time. So that brings us to the past blast finally. And this is the past blast from 1933 and for episode 1933. Also from Sabre editorial director Jacob Pomeranke and Black Sox

expert. And his headline here is 1933 Royal Rumblings for Relocation. He was very into the alliteration here. So during the first half of the 20th century, Jacob Wright's relocation wasn't a hot topic in baseball circles. When new stadiums were built, they were paid for by the team's owners instead of being used as a threat for cities to cough up public money. But times were so tough during the Great Depression that some teams began to look elsewhere. Airplane travel was a few years away from making the West Coast a viable option, so Montreal emerged as a leading contender to land a major league team. Here's a report from Collier's Eye in June 1933.

Quote, Montreal has been Major League Baseball mad for the past four years, and it is no surprise to the writer that the high moguls of the Diamond pastime Quote, few better moves than planting one of their white elephants in Canada. Montreal is larger than Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Washington, D.C., and has a greater population to draw from than St. Louis. Eventually, Canadian ballplayers would be developed, and especially those bearing French names. Only one hitch is seen in the St. Louis to Montreal transfer. It would create an unbalanced division of five Western teams and three Eastern teams in the American League. However, all club owners are known to favor the deal, as clubs

visiting Sportsman's Park when the Browns are the home attraction many times do not receive railroad expenses, meaning low ticket sales did not even cover their travel costs. Jacob concludes, Montreal would not become the major league city until the 1960s, but the International League Royals remained a popular minor league team for decades, helping to integrate organized baseball in 1946 when Jackie Robinson played there. Meanwhile, the St. Louis Browns did not move to Canada in the 1930s, but they came very close to moving to Los Angeles in December 1941 until World War II disrupted their plans.

The Browns eventually moved to Baltimore after the 1953 season. So there is an alternate history of the Expos or non-Expos, but some kind of team in Montreal could have been Canadian Major League Baseball decades earlier than there was. So that's an interesting one to contemplate for Montreal fans who are still mourning the loss of the Expos and hoping that they get another team someday. Yeah, yeah. Good to know that baseball fever goes back much farther than the Expos do. I guess that makes sense. You would not expect the city to have gotten a team immediately after getting into baseball. So there were decades of interest and fervor, and it was a baseball hotbed long before they actually got a big league team and a minor league team even. All right.

So that will do it. Yeah, that'll do it. All right. Well, one late-breaking transaction that would have been handy to have on our radar a few hours earlier. The Angels made another trade after we finished recording. They have acquired Hunter Renfro from the Brewers in exchange for three pitchers, including the wonderfully named Jansen Junk. So Tyler Anderson, Gio Urshela, and now Hunter Renfro, who is probably the definition of an average major league player. Two war in 2021, 2.5 war in 2022, and his projection, according to the Fangraph's depth charts for 2023, 2.0 war.

That is exactly where we typically situate average, is 2 war. So the Angels are pursuing a strategy of radical averageness. Not just stars and scrubs, not just two of the best players in baseball and a bunch of replacement level players, but competent performers. They are lengthening the lineup. I will not fall for the Angels as a contending team in 2023. I will not fall for the Angels as a contending team in 2023. This is a new approach, at least. This is what they've been missing.

Players in the middle of the scale. One more year of Otani, one more Angels run. See how many more average players they can acquire between now and opening day. And that's not even the headline here, that this is an average player. This is also Mike Trout's lookalike. As we have joked many times, Hunter Renfro, the most Mike Trout-looking player in Major League Baseball, not named Mike Trout. I imagine that this will prompt many emails and effectively wild style hypotheticals. Now that Renfro and Trout will be wearing the same uniform, they will be even more difficult to tell apart. If they don't do a position swap and a jersey swap just to see if

anyone is noticing at least once, then they will be wasting a wonderful opportunity. If they ever bat back-to-back in the batting order, or they converge for a fly ball, there will be major Spider-Man meme potential. Not to mention some broadcaster confusion. Taylors and Tylers, lookalike outfielders, Hunter Renfro and Mike Trout, who is a hunter. What a wacky team. And we could even get some great tweets about it. Speaking of which, one more great submission for a favorite baseball Twitter tweet. We did draft Jose Bautista following everyone as a great baseball Twitter tradition, but another nominee is a specific Jose Bautista tweet. And this was from October 1st, 2014, when Steve Simmons, who I believe is a sports columnist

for the Toronto Sun, tweeted, the Kansas City Royals made no trades at the non-waiver deadline. The Oakland A's made two huge trades. Does at JoeyBats19 know about this? And at JoeyBats19, that's Jose Bautista, replied, at simmonsteve, who are you and why are you talking to me? 3,500 retweets and counting, 7,000 likes, 200 plus quote tweets, and the tweet is still up. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad-free and get yourself access to some perks.

Sean Hoer, Vince Capodano, Alex Harrison, Sean McLaughlin, and Daniel Endin. Thanks to all of you. Remember, this is the one oasis on the internet, on podcasts, in sports podcasts specifically, where you will not be bombarded by sports betting ads or any ads for that matter. We'll see you next time. streams that get ad-free Fangraphs memberships and more. They can also contact us via the Patreon site, and they, like everyone else, can email us at podcast at Fangraphs.com. You can all join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively

Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can, of course, follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. One more episode coming your way before Thanksgiving.

And then we will clear out and give you the rest of the week to have holiday festivities. Talk to you soon. Never ramble, never gamble, never roam. For someday you'll find her all alone. Don't be a fool to like me or have me, you won't be. Never ramble, never gamble, never roam. Never ramble, never gamble, never roam.