Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1935: How Next Season’s Standings Project Today

Episode Date: November 29, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about their Thanksgivings, Joe Kelly’s comments (10:29) about free agents’ team visits being “outdated and cheesy,” the Astros signing José Abreu (30:25), and some standout totals (45:17) from the preliminary ZiPS-projected standings for 2023, plus Past Blasts (1:15:48) from 1935. Audio intro: The Shivas, “If I Could Choose” Audio outro: Redd […]

If I could choose anything to be, I'd only want to be me. If I could choose anything and I want to do, I'd just spend all my time with you. Sure that I can, sure that I can. So sure the ocean won't swallow the land So sure my line won't break up the band Cause it's all in my hand Just show that nothing grows as grand Hello and welcome to episode 1935 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer.

Ben, how are you? How was your holiday? Doing okay. It was alright. This is the second time that you asked me that for full transparency here. Just to pull back the curtain a bit because Meg tried to commence small talk before we started recording and I said we gotta save this for the episode. This is good stuff. How was your holiday? We can't be giving that away before we even hit record because this is, what, the week before the winter meetings? Yeah.

The week after Thanksgiving? Yeah. Maybe a little lull this week in baseball content. Maybe. We got to save the how was your holiday banter for the actual episode how was your holiday mine was nice yeah it was it was lovely thank you for asking i had a an enjoyable time it was nice to get a little break i personally you know one of my mom's traditions when i get to do the holiday with her is that she, in a way that everyone is always very enthusiastic about and never tires of by

the letter M, ask people to go around the table and say like what they are thankful for. And we do it alphabetically and everyone gets, you know, you start with one or you start with the letter A, you know, cause that's the start of the alphabet. Ben didn't know, don't know if you knew that. And then you proceed alphabetically. So I'd like to share that. One of the things I am grateful for

is all of our friends and former colleagues who work in front offices who decided, actually, I like my family, and I will decide not to transact on this the day before Thanksgiving or indeed really the day after. I know there were some smaller signings, but no one was like, you know, it's a good day to sign carlos correa friday they didn't do that yeah and i'll say today excellent day to sign carlos gray you know i think pretty much every day between now and the star spring training is indeed an excellent day for it but i appreciate them deciding no last year we were really busy but this year we have

like a whole normal ass off season ahead of us so So we'll just like, you know, kind of ease into it. We'll, you know, offer the little amuse bouche that is Carlos Santana and proceed from there. It was a nice little respite. Didn't do any work. There were some non-revelatory rumors, perhaps, but that's about it. And some that were maybe a little bit revealing, but really just not a lot of baseball content. And I had two Thanksgivings really because I had my family's side Thanksgiving and then my wife's family did Thanksgiving a couple of days later. So I had two in a span of three days, I guess. And I don't have

a whole lot of hot takes about Thanksgiving food really. That is well-trod territory, but I will say that having two traditional Thanksgiving meals in the span of three days, it's kind of a lot. Whatever you think of Thanksgiving food or traditional Thanksgiving foods in general. I think the second time in three days, they lose a little bit of their charm. Part of the nice thing about Thanksgiving food is that you really have that meal once a year, typically. And even if it's not your favorite, there's at least some novelty value associated with it. Sure, yeah. Not so much if you have two Thanksgivings.

But it was nice aside from that. And one of my Thanksgivings had a similar tradition about going around the table. Not my favorite. I don't like participatory activities. I'm always worried about being called on in group settings. Don't want to participate generally. If I go to a play and it's one of those plays where the cast members are walking around in the audience and they might call you up to do something, not my scene. And famously, notoriously, when I was a kid, like in kindergarten or something, I led this activity at Thanksgiving and I like sang a little song about what I was thankful for and just like teed everyone up at the table to say what they were thankful for. And so every year since then, in the like 30 years since then, someone has brought up that little song I sang and made me remember that and jokingly asked if I was going to sing

the song. We may have not sung the song, but this year my great aunt came up with a bunch of little slips of paper and put them in a hat and we passed them around and they all had adjectives. And then we had to say something we were thankful for that was associated with that adjective. So that was our version of it this year. It's not my favorite. Yeah. I guess that's the point of the holiday or one of the points if it's not just gorging yourself. Seducing that aren't your favorite? Well, giving thanks for things.

Oh, yeah, yeah. Or I guess it's really about seeing family and watching football and gorging yourself, but under the guise of being thankful for things. Sure, yeah. So it's Thanksgiving themed. I just, I don't love it really. Yeah. You know, it tends to, the enthusiasm around the participation tends to wane as the alphabet

progressives because, you know, it's, well, it's a lot of pressure. And then, you know, you're always sort of worried you're going to forget one of the people there, you know, you get to their letter of the alphabet and you're like oh boy i gotta really gotta remember everybody yeah you know so it's just their stakes they're like surprising stakes for something that is is really kind of silly but you know i'm not great at the alphabet we talked on a patreon episode once about how i wasn't great at telling time on analog clocks. And this is sort of in the same vein. I don't know, like my nursery or kindergarten school teachers must have been falling down on the job because these basic life skills, I just never really mastered. Like the

alphabet, if I don't start at the beginning, I'm lost. Like if you drop me down somewhere in the middle in that like G, H, like K, I, J, L range, I can get kind of lost in there if I'm not doing it in the sort of sing-songy like start from A and just recite it from memory. And if I had to recite it backwards, which is a test that you give people sometimes, I'm pretty sure I'd be terrible at that too. I'd have to really think about it i'd have to like do the whole 26 in my head from a every time and then like figure out what the second to last one was and the third to last one was so yeah not great at the alphabet in general so i might have struggled with that yeah i i would be bad at that i think also you know and like what are you what are you proven really you know it's just i don't think there's any shame in having to do the little song they teach you the little song so you can remember right like the whole purpose of the little song is to be able to remember a thing that you know it's like i've made this comparison on

the podcast before it's like you know you can braid your hair as long as you're not thinking about how to do it for even one second because once you start thinking about how you have to do the over and the under you you lose you lose your ability to do anything really you're paralyzed for the rest of the day by not knowing how the world works so i think we should you know we try to give mom gentle feedback around this on the holiday but she likes likes to do it. And you know, there's something to be said for tradition. So I think as long as everybody is fine with the getting to the point in the alphabet where you're like, has everybody who's here's name been said? Okay, we're good to go now. Right. Yeah. So next week you will be attending the winter meetings, right? In San

Diego. Sounds like a nice time. Yeah. I have attended some winter meetings in San Diego. Sounds like a nice time. I have attended some winter meetings in San Diego. I will not this year, but that's a good time to go. Good place to go. Nice weather, et cetera. Yeah. You should come, Ben. I mean, I know you're not coming to this one, but I think you should come. We could do a live recording of the podcast and then stress everybody out when I have to go edit something in the middle of it. That'd be fun. Yeah. That would be fun. Yeah, it would be a bad time for you to have to do a live episode probably. Not as bad as when the Branzino came, and I just didn't get to eat any of it, Ben.

I think about that Branzino once a week. Yep. Yeah. The winter meetings, it's a lot like Thanksgiving, really. And the people drink too much and act like they have no other choice. Yeah. And that's why most people are there, frankly. Like there are some baseball writers who really are breaking news and are actually meeting. Right. But there's also a lot of just sitting around and blogging about things that one could have blogged about elsewhere without

actually being in the room. But it's a reunion. You get to see all your buddies and you get to network, whatever that means, quote unquote network, maybe in a really concerted, I am actually reporting things and developing contacts and sources kind of way. Yeah. Or maybe just schmoozing and seeing your friends. Love to schmooze. And being able to expense that potentially, hopefully, just having a presence. So yeah, it's been a while, I guess, since we had winter meetings or

normal winter meetings. So that will be nice. And so probably things will be busier next week. Not that winter meetings, yeah, it's not always the way that it used to be where, again, because like even the executives don't have to be there to make moves. They're just constantly texting each other and doing whatever new age ways of contacting each other that they have. You don't have to be in some smoke-filled room with everyone to hammer out trades. So there's, again, winter meetings, like they have a point for like the minor leagues and vendors and lots of business that goes on below the radar. But in terms of major league teams making transactions, they don't necessarily have to do them there. And so they don't probably quite as much as they used to.

But in all probability, it will be a bit busier than it would be in a normal offseason week and particularly this week. Although we have at least a transaction to talk about with Jose Abreu to discuss. But before we get to that, I guess I wanted to just bring up some comments that Joe Kelly made. Joe Kelly is not a free agent, but he had some thoughts on free agency

and he was on a radio show in Boston, WEEI, and he was talking about the free agent recruiting process and the tour and the visit process, which is happening now with Aaron Judge and Kodai Sanga and others. And probably for domestic free agents, this is a little bit different from international free agents. But Joe Kelly was talking about how he doesn't find this whole process to be necessary. He said, I think it's kind of outdated and cheesy, honestly. That kind of recruiting, that's what college kids like. Big leaders are just like, hey, is the team good? Do you have good family?

Is the money the same as the offer from someone else? He went on to say, there's nothing that a team is going to show Aaron Judge that he hasn't seen. So ultimately, it's like, what do you do for family? What are you going to do to give me my alone time? Can I talk to less media here? Wherever you feel more comfortable. Maybe something cited to Joe Kelly's personality, although he was talking to media at the time. Wherever you feel more comfortable, what can you do for me on that aspect? Because money is going to be the same. So he said this free agent road trip would be a waste.

He said we're grown men. You can't ooh and ah me like I'm an 18-year-old. What are you trying to tell a 30-year-old that he doesn't already know about this world? Wow. Yeah. He's an entertaining person, somewhat prickly fellow perhaps at times, but he's got takes. Yeah, he does. He's on the White Sox, so he doesn't have to worry about this now. The White Sox just signed a free agent, Mike Clevenger. They just lost a free agent in Abreu.

They have Joe Kelly, but what do you think about Joe Kelly's free agent visitation take? Joe Kelly, but what do you think about Joe Kelly's free agent visitation take? I mean, I think that there is probably something to what he's saying kind of on average. I think that it is a nice thing to meet with people who you might spend a lot of time with in, you know, depending on who you are and kind of where you are in your career for a number of years, right? on who you are and kind of where you are in your career for a number of years, right? So I think that he's maybe underselling the value of getting to sit down and have an in-person conversation, really have a sense of some, you know, the leadership of a team, both on the front office side and importantly, I think on the ownership side.

I think that there is enough variation among at least the sort of extreme particularly great acumen in terms of developing pitching. And then you go to the Dodgers. I don't know. Just imagine you're Joe Kelly on the Dodgers. Who could ever imagine such a thing, right? And perhaps you're able to have a conversation with them about why you're a good fit that is specific and tailored in a way that you find really useful relative to other teams like i can see there being value in that also i'm sure that you know if you're going to a team that is has demonstrated skill in a particular area of player development they're not going to give away the whole thing for free in your meeting right but they're they're probably

going to be able to talk to you about the ways in which they might improve your game or help you improve your game while you're a particularly good fit for them relative to other organizations. So I don't know that that all has to happen in person. And I imagine there's variance in people in terms of how valuable they find that. But I think he's maybe underselling it a little bit. Yeah. If you're Aaron Judge, I'd like to hear the conversation about here's how we can make you better. I'd like to hear the conversation about, here's how we can make you better. I'd like to hear that.

That would be impressive if you had a way to make Aaron Judge better. So yeah, it's different if you're someone who's maybe been struggling a bit and you're looking for somewhere to rehabilitate your career. If you're Cody Bellinger and you've got upwards of 10 teams seemingly interested in his services, and a big part of that is that you're signing a one-year deal and you want to go somewhere where you can rebuild your value and you might be interested in, well, how do they think you're going to do that? Or how much are they going to play you, right? If there's like a playing time concern. With Aaron Judge, though, he can't get any better than he was this last season and he's going to play every day. So there isn't really a role question or an improvement question. And yet it's for the Aaron Judge level free agent, if there is such a thing. But like the big guys, the big name, the big money, the blockbuster deal types, they're the ones who it seems like get the tour, get the personal reception.

Maybe others do and we just don't really hear about it i don't know but like when when joe kelly was a free agent i don't know if he was getting the roll out the red carpet and and open up the ballpark and and show them everything you know when he signed with the dodgers or when he signed with the white socks That would be a reason to go or if he's saying like he says in this piece or in the interview he said like well the money's going to be the same and i don't know that that's necessarily right no that's not necessarily true although you don't have to go and visit in person to just get a term sheet but but if the money were the same that would be all the more reason to go yeah because then the differentiating factors are going to be things that you pick up on person.

Yeah. Right. So I don't know how much you could actually tell. Like if you're Aaron Judge, I guess you might want to get a feel for the manager, right? Like not that the manager is really going to be controlling your role all that much because you're Aaron Judge. You're just going to be playing every day. But still, you have to spend time around that person. So I guess just talking to them, seeing if you have a connection, if he rubs you the wrong way for some reason,

I guess that could be a factor. I don't think you could really divine all that much about like the long-term trajectory of the team from these conversations. Like they might tell you, yeah, we're going to invest and we're going to do this and we're going to do that. And we've got all these young players come along. Every organization is going to give you some positive spin. Sure. And I don't know how truthful they're going to be. And I don't know how much they can actually accurately forecast like what is our competitive scenario going to be like in a couple of years?

I don't know that anyone really knows that because so much has to happen for those things to be true. And if you talk to ownership and they say, oh, yeah, we're going to go no holds barred and we're going to raise the payroll to this or that. Well, I guess that's worth taking into account. But I don't know. They're probably not going to. count, but I don't know. They're probably not going to, if they're interested in signing you, Aaron Judge, presumably they are willing to spend at least now. And I don't know how much stock I would put in their guarantees of what they're going to do years down the road. So I get what he's saying because I think I've mentioned this before, but I didn't tour colleges before I went to college. Like the first time I set foot on campus was for freshman orientation.

I don't know if that was smart or not, but I just felt like I guess I went to see a couple that were local in the area. But other than that, I just I didn't go to travel at any because I was like, whatever, they're all probably pretty good schools. And I'll just like I end up going where most of my friends were going. Frankly, that was a big schools. And I'll just like, I end up going where most of my friends were going. Frankly, that was a big factor and I didn't want to go that far away. And I just felt like, what am I really going to glean from going and walking around the campus? Is that going to really give me a sense of what it's going to be like to be a student at this school? Eh. So I just didn't. And I don't know, I didn't really regret it. I guess I might not know what I was missing out on, but that's unusual. I mean, I think most people, they do visit the colleges where they might go, right? So that's the closest equivalent I can think of in my life, probably. And I guess I did what Joe Kelly is saying here. I just didn't bother with the tour.

bother with the tour yeah i mean i do think that part of it is like so like let's take aaron judge how much just you don't have to i'm not gonna hold you to it it's not like the contract draft but like what if you had to say ben how eight years and somewhere around 300. Okay. Yeah. Okay. So you think he's going to sign a contract for eight years of his life that'll be worth $300 million? Approximately.

Approximately. And again, we're not going to hold you to it. We just needed big and long numbers is what we needed. So thank you. You've held up your end of this completely arbitrary exercise that we're about to engage in. So you're Aaron Judge, and you're going to commit to sign somewhere for eight whole years.

Wouldn't it be weird if you never met with those people in person? Alternatively, you're the San Francisco Giants. You're about to commit $300 million to Aaron Judge. Isn't it weird if you don't meet with him in person? Like even if it's sort of perfunctory, even if, you know, at the end of the day, it's not like he's going to walk into that meeting knowing what they are offering.

And I don't know what it would have to be, but it would probably take something pretty radical for him to not have an answer before he entered the room right it would probably take him walking in there and being like so hey aaron love what you do think you're a great ball player bad news you'll have to kill a puppy a week as you as a like caveat of this deal like then maybe he'd go well that's real weird and i mean apart from also being terrible like indicates like a lack of moral clarity on the part of whatever team this is that would give you pause. Right. But absent something like that, you're probably going to know the answer before you go in because you've you've thought about like, where do I want to live?

And what do I think the long term prospects of this team are and what is sort of my number that I need to reach in order for me to feel satisfied? But it's still weird. It would still be weird to be like, we are committing $300 million of payroll. We are committing X percentage that is probably not insubstantial to this one player and have not met with the guy. Because if something goes wrong, and again, I don't think that I want to be clear. I don't think that the Giants would stipulate that Aaron Judge has to kill a puppy in order for him to work for them. And I don't think that Aaron Judge seems likely to do anything like egregious that would make us look at that contract and go, whoa, can't believe they didn't do their due diligence.

But it sure would be weird. You know, this is an FTX, right? We have standards. Yeah. This isn't FTX, right? We have standards. Yeah. No, it almost seems like the other way around.

This is always described as the free agent making the tour to visit all the teams. But it seems like the interest would be at least as strong on the other end and in the other direction, not only to persuade the player to sign with your team, but also to decide if you want to spend that much on this player. Although I guess, again, you could just say, well, what are you going to learn from a day with Aaron Judge walking around the ballpark or sitting in a room, right, that you couldn't have learned from watching him and reading about him and projecting him and measuring him and hearing about him from people through the grapevine, et cetera, right? Like you're never going to get a perfect, accurate representation of who that person really is on the outside if they're essentially either auditioning you or auditioning for you. I guess it's a little bit of both, like any job interview, right?

Like you're trying to find out something about the prospective employer as they are trying to find out something about you. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right.

Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yes. Okay. Good point. But like, you know, you're getting the deluxe treatment and they will bring you out to some nice restaurant or whatever, get you tickets to whatever you want and show off the city. And you can, you know, bring your partner along and have a nice little trip and maybe spend some time in that city or whatever.

And if you're a baseball player, you get the whole off-season off. I mean, I know you have to train and prepare and you have various media obligations and charity work and who knows what else, but you get all that time off. So why not just spend some of it jetting around, just being celebrated and being wooed? That's probably pretty fun in a way. So yeah, I don't know how much you would learn on either end. But when that level of investment is involved, yeah. I think you just feel like you're doing your due diligence. You have to meet the person. You have to go see the team. You have to hear what they have to say just in case, just to avoid some truly disastrous

scenario where I can't even be in a room with this person. Like I can't even talk to them. I hate them. Like, you know, you want to have that realization before you sign on the dotted line, not after. So, yeah. Yeah. It just seems like good sense to do it. So.

Yes. But I do wonder like what you could even say to Aaron Judge other than here's the dollar figure. Yeah. Or the puppy killing thing. Yeah. or like what you could even say to Aaron Judge other than here's the dollar figure. Yeah. Or the puppy killing thing. Yeah. As long as you're not doing the puppy killing thing, I don't know what would really sway you, you know, like telling them about the school systems or whatever.

Sure. Like the local income tax or whatever it is. Or maybe as Joe Kelly is saying, it's like how they treat your family and the kind of accommodations they give you and all that sort of thing. Again, like if you're in judge, it almost doesn't matter. Like Sam and I talked about this years ago, the avocado factor, as we put it, because Sam was talking about how like, well, you can only get good avocados in certain parts of the country. That could be a decisive factor. And I argued then and would argue even more strenuously now that those sorts of regional differences with cuisine and all of that, it's a lot less than it used to be for one thing. And also when you're in that tax bracket

and you're making as much money as Aaron Judge is making, that's the thing. If it were you or I auditioning an employer or do we want to live in this city and work in this city? Like that's a big thing. Right. And it's not an insignificant thing for your own judge either. But if you're a judge, wherever you live in the country, you can have a beautiful house and you can live in the nice neighborhood and you can send your kids to the best schools and you can import whatever cuisine you want and you can eat at the upscale dining. The regional differences, I think, probably matter a little less, which is not so – if you're interested in hunting or fishing or whatever baseball players do or skiing or something, maybe you want to be in certain areas, not others. But again, like you can afford to just take trips, you can go places. So I think when you're that wealthy and when you're sort of that insulated or can afford to insulate yourself, I think it matters a little less. You know, you don't have to worry about like, well, is this region affordable and is it a good bang for the buck and all of that? Like you

might take it into consideration, but when you're going to be getting a $300 million payday, like you can kind of afford to set yourself up the way that you want to be set up wherever you are. Yeah. I do think, though, that this is his big shot to make a choice, right? And it is this thing that I think players, quite rightly, hold with some amount of reverence because you probably are only, if you're lucky, you're going to sign one big contract in the course of your career, right? And so I think having a, you know, sort of a deliberative process around that is understandable given the rarity within the course of your baseball career for something like that. And, you know, I think there are plenty of players who like that stuff might matter more maybe you're of the mind i'd like to pick a place where i really want to live year round right like a lot of players like

they live in the city where they play and then they kind of go home during the off season and that place they go home might be pretty far flung from wherever their team is located so maybe you're like one of the things that i'm taking into consideration is that I want to be here all the time. This is the place that I want to be. I get that. I don't know. I would be very particular. I'm going to manage to say that and not say anything I'd be particular about, lest someone who lives in a big league city think that I am, say, making fun of the fact that you put chili on pasta. I'm not doing that. Why would you think I would do something like that? I'm sure you have all kinds of cool stuff there,

but maybe you want to make a home of a place. And I think that that's an understandable instinct, even if it's one that has sort of much greater margin for error given the amount of money that is going to be at your disposal in any of the places that you might pick to play. Yeah. There are other factors that I might be interested in and that might sway me, but that I wouldn't necessarily have to talk to the team about, like the competitive scenario or the long-term outlook or- The humidity. Yeah. Or the ballpark, right? Like, is this ballpark nice or is it a good fit for my skills is this going to enhance my

performance or depress my performance these are all things that the team might try to tell you about but you'd always have to worry are they just putting a positive spin on this like i might get a more accurate reading from an unbiased source and if you're aaron judge and you have an agent who can look these things up for you, I'd be like, hey, give me a projection. What's the park factor? How's this place going to affect me? Whatever. What's the weather? I mean, you can look those things up without even getting on a Zoom call with the people who run that team. But yeah, why not? Why not? So Joe Kelly might be right. That is not necessary in all cases. Maybe it's a little bit of a dog and pony type show, but I don't know. There's no great downside to just having a day of your long, mostly off season schedule be devoted to getting wined and dined. So it doesn't sound so bad.

and dined so it doesn't sound so bad anyway it's definitely a dog and pony show but you only get like one or two of those in the course of being a big leaguer so i think you should enjoy your dog and pony show you know like you don't want to walk in on the first day of spring training and be like oh is it kind of weird i didn't meet with them like in person right yeah i'd want to see the facilities like if you haven't played in that ballpark or you haven't been in the home clubhouse or you don't know what the workout room is like or what's the spread like i don't know maybe most teams have standardized those things to an extent but but not totally or like what's the spring training accommodations like and right you know there are things that are probably worth the trip so humidity man you don't want to like maybe you feel strongly about

that and then the place that you really need to visit isn't the the home park so much as the spring training setup right because you know i'm here to tell you ben not humid in arizona but i'm given to understand that is not true for the state of Florida. So I don't know whether Jose Abreu got wined and dined at all before he made his decision, but he has signed with the Astros. He got three years, so he got that. Yeah, so I guess out with one Cuban-born mid-to-late 30s first baseman and in with another. So Yuli Gurriel, free agent, presumably moving on, being replaced by Jose Abreu. And this is a bigger dollar deal than I expected and that MLB trade rumors expected.

We should have drafted this one in our free agent contracts over under draft because I think they had two years and $40 million. And I think the Fangraphs and crowdsourced estimate was even below that. And instead, he got three years. And it sounds like it's close to 60 million. It's 19 and a half million per season. So three years, 58.5 pending a physical. And he is turning 36 in January. So I did not really expect

that kind of commitment. And actually, it's bigger than his previous extension that he signed with the White Sox, which was three years and 50 million coming off of his age 32 season, I think it was, which was a down year for him. And I remember some skepticism about that deal just because, you know, he's a bat first past 30 guy who's that kind of player like hasn't been paid as much in recent years. And because he was coming off a down year, I guess it was more like a two-year extension on top of the qualifying offer kind of when he signed that. But there were some raised eyebrows, and he was totally worth it. And his bat did bounce back, and he has continued to hit well. Like he was the MVP in the shortened 2020, and then he was good again this year. Like this year was his other than the MVP year. This was his best offensive year since talked about how I think we would think about him differently if he had started in MLB as opposed to playing in Cuba for years young he was and how great he was relative to that league and you sort of retroject and imagine what a full MLB career would have been like of Jose Abreu from day one in MLB, I think we would be talking about him as a Hall of Fame type player depending on how productive he remains during the course of this contract. But he has really remained good and kind

of a different shape to his production this year but still quite good yeah he is not hit with the typical thump that he has uh he had a 141 iso he only hit 15 home runs you know some of that is probably due to the ball but it was a different shape of production but still a productive shape of production that's a bad sentence if i got that sentence and copy i'd send it back and say hey bad sentence do a different one but instead i'll just say it's not a great sentence so you know it the shape of it has changed slightly but like he still walks for him and he struck out less like it it's, you know, I think that if I were giving a contract to Jose Abreu, like maybe I don't give him a third year, maybe I don't

give him quite so much money, but I think he's a productive player. And I don't know, like the Astros could like use more productive players. It's weird. Like they had a terrific offense, but I think we saw places in the postseason in particular where you could see that the lineup didn't have quite the length that we've come to expect from them. And I don't know. He is thought to be a good clubhouse guy. And then you factor in the Jim Crane of it all, and you get a good big leaguer who gets

a slightly longer, slightly more lucrative deal. Fine. Whatever. The Astros should spend money because they want to remain very, very good. If you were to be concerned, I guess you could point out that of the 15 homers you mentioned, I think 11 came in the first half. So it was sort of a home run power outage and progressively as the season went on. But it seemed like, at least to some some degree an intentional change in his plate discipline.

Like he kind of came over as a pretty free swinger. And this year especially, he just did not chase as much. And so he had a much lower strikeout rate and a better walk to strikeout ratio. And that is, I guess you could say it's perhaps concerning in the sense that, well, if he felt like maybe he was losing bat speed or something. Yes. that he can actually be a very disciplined hitter and he can just draw some walks and put the ball in play. And that's a mode of production that he can have. Now, he had a.350 BABIP this year, which is quite high, especially for a player with his speed, although it's not the first time. I guess he had a.350 BABIP during his MVP year and also his rookie year. Yeah, so, I mean, he's hit the ball hard, I guess, and that's another way you can have a high BABIP.

But he fits the Astros mold and an offensive model in that they tend to like high contact hitters. I mean, they've had the best of both worlds in that they have hitters who don't strike out and also hitters who hit for power. That's one reason why the Astros are so good. They just won the World Series. So he kind of fits in that he does not strike out a lot. He had a career low strikeout rate, even though the league-wide strikeout rate has risen since he showed up in MLB. And so he kind of, like you said, prototypical Astros hitter in that respect, a fairly well

balanced hitter. And perhaps the power will bounce back a bit, or perhaps he adjusted in response to the deadened ball and figured, you know, I can just be a 300 hitter and not strike out and get on base a fair amount, and this will be another route to production. So one way or another, it worked quite well and he projects to be a good hitter again next year. So you never know with a hitter in the back half of their 30s, if that will last. Like we saw Gurriel was what he won the batting title two years ago and then he couldn't hit very much this past year. Right. So, so yeah, there's a little bit of a downside risk at that age but like we talked about during the playoffs like the astros as you were saying we're not an offensive juggernaut this year a juggernaut for sure but largely due to pitching and defense and and like half of a very good lineup so so this lengthens it a little and they might have more work to do there.

And of course, you know, like Justin Verlander is still a free agent and I don't know what else they will do. But the other thing about Abreu is that he's just like he rarely misses a game. I mean, other than 2018 when he played 128 games. It's been almost every day, you know. games like almost every day you know 2015 154 2016 159 games 2017 156 2019 159 2020 he played in all 60 games 2021 152 2022 157 so he's just he's a staple and that is perhaps an underrated trait to just being healthy all the time. Plus, he gets high grades for leadership and mentorship and clubhouse presence and all of that. I'm almost surprised that the White Sox didn't make an effort to keep him. I get why they didn't because now they can just move Andrew Vaughn to first base and stop pretending he's an outfielder, right?

And then they have Gavin Sheets who can DH, and then they have Eloy Jimenez who maybe should be a DH. So maybe he occupies that slot at some point. But really, like even Vaughn, Sheets, like Abre, had a better offensive year than they did. And given that that organization just seems to love him so much and like went out of its way to extend him in the past, even coming off a down year, I guess I'm semi-surprised maybe that they didn't make an effort or maybe they did and it wasn't enough. I don't know. But they seem to just really love him. Maybe they did and it wasn't enough. I don't know what the White Sox offered him. And they might have offered him a good deal,

like a deal that if they had signed him to it, we would be like, that feels fair. That doesn't feel like they undercut him at all. But they aren't necessarily dealing with the premiums that it sounds like Crane is willing to pay. Although who knows how involved with this one he was. We don't know, right? We don't know how involved with this one he was. We don't know, right? We don't know how involved with this one it was.

But let's assume that he was involved just for the sake of this part of the conversation. Like, you know, it could just be that Jim Crane was like, no, I really like Jose Abreu and I'd like him to be an Astro. And then the White Sox had a number that they weren't willing to go past and this was it, right?

So there's that possibility. I'm surprised that he has not returned, but I don't know that I... I suspect, Ben, that we will have other moments this offseason where we look at what the White Sox do and say, they should have spent some more money, but I don't know for sure that this is in that category. It could be, but I don't know if...

We don't know, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, I think Rick Hahn said at some point that he expected that the White Sox would be more active in the trade market than in free agency, which seemed to suggest payroll limitations. And the payroll, I guess, is up in the 140, 150 range projected maybe post arbitration raises. But he has just sort of been the heart and soul of that team. So that is a big loss and not just in terms of the projection. And I like Andrew Vaughn. And I think maybe if he doesn't have to worry about faking the outfield every day, like maybe that could help him just focus on what he's good at, which is raking in theory. raking in theory but yeah between that and and i think abreu even said like back in october that he just hadn't even talked to the white socks about a new contract it just like it didn't seem like they were being proactive about that like it i don't think it's it's a surprise i mean i had

read that the socks had planned to let him leave right like that had been reported last month and and that they would just move on back to his his natural position but just saying like even though they they have players for that position and even though those players are okay it's still in theory at least a downgrade from what abreu gave them this year because he was just he was really good and and that was yeah from what i read it was like a reinsddorf decision to be aggressive in resigning or extending Abreu last time. Right. Following the 2019 season and that the front office at the time wasn't totally on board with that and that Reinsdorf made an executive decision himself and that worked.

That turned out to be justified by his production ever since. So I don't know who had reservations now yeah maybe we can say that it's a it's a wag our finger reinsdorf joint we've had a fair number of those i didn't i hadn't heard the part about them not wanting to resign him i missed that in the flurry of i don't know know, the postseason. So shame on me. Yes, right. I know. You were not paying the closest attention to White Sox rumors. No, I wasn't. Yeah, no, the White Sox.

Admittedly not. Famously not in the playoffs, as I recall, despite Jose Bray's best efforts. Yeah, despite his very good season. They didn't squeak in, Ben. They didn't make it. Yeah, I guess they had a record payroll for the franchise this past season. They were close to $200 million opening day and did not make the playoffs.

They were one of the biggest disappointments. And then, yeah, I think they had something like $120 in guaranteed money. And then they had some options that they exercised and some arbitration raises. So it looks like it'll be down from last year by a significant amount, but still maybe, I don't know, in the 170 range or something. And I guess we should also note that they signed Mike Clevenger to a one-year $12 million deal. They did do that. They did spend some money and sign a free agent there. And that move, I guess I don't really know what Clevenger is at this point.

Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what he is either. I'm not sure that would have been the club I would have been like, you know who's going to rehabilitate Mike Clevenger? The White Sox. I don't know. Yeah. I don't know with him whether it's health or whether he needs other interventions. It might be both. It could be both. Yeah. But I guess they're signing him to a deal that reflects that uncertainty, right? It's a one-year deal, $12 million. And for all I know, that is what he was angling for. Maybe he wanted a make good one-year contract to restore

his value and then try to cash in again. And I guess the White Sox don't necessarily need him to be former top of the rotation type pitcher, Mike Clevenger, because they have Dylan Cease and they have Lance Lynn and they have Lucas Gioito and they have Michael Kopech. So really, he just has to be a back end guy for them in theory, even if I guess Crochet won't be back until what middle of next year, best case. And then they probably would just use him in relief again, I imagine. So maybe there's not a ton of depth, but at least going by the names there, it's a pretty solid top five. Like you would think that's a contending team's rotation. So no harm in adding Mike Clevenger. Just don't know how much you can count on him for at this point. Yeah. I mean, if things don't work out for him, he can always pursue his true calling, which is working in a brewery. Because that's what he looks like he does right now.

Yes. So I guess that segues into the one other thing we wanted to talk about, which is that Dan Zimborski of Fangraphs, proprietor of the Zips projection system. You make it sound so formal, Ben. Dan Zimborski of Fangraphs. Son of. Well, I got to specify, because as anyone who follows Dan on Twitter knows,

a lot of people don't know that Dan founded Zips and operates Zips because people apparently regularly write to Dan and are like, how do you know what the Zips projections are? They do do that sometimes and it's like I don't know he knows a guy. Yeah

so evidently not everyone clear on that point but he and Zips jointly produced their way too early preliminary first 2023 projected standings. They they did and this was published on november 23rd so this was prior to the clevenger signing prior to the abreu signing and maybe some

other minor moves but this is just a snapshot of where things stand before most of the off-season activity right and maybe we can talk about a few interesting projections here. And this is just projecting who's under team control currently. So there are some teams that look like they're really sitting pretty just because they have their roster basically set already. Correct. Like the Atlanta Braves, for instance, are projected. already like the atlanta braves for instance are projected i imagine that atlanta will continue to look pretty good even after you know the mets and phillies potentially do some stuff but yes they

definitely the gap will probably not be right now zips has the braves projected to win 96 games compared to the mets and phillies at 84 and I imagine that that gap will tighten at least somewhat in the coming months. But yes, I still think Atlanta will probably come out okay. Right, because the Mets have a bunch of free agents, DeGrom and Bassett and Walker and Nimmo, et cetera, even though they already did bring back Edwin Diaz. And so because the Atlanta Braves have signed everyone to an extension, except the Freeze, apparently. I saw a job listing. The Braves are looking for a new The Freeze, the sprinter who runs between innings and gets a late start and then comes from behind to beat the fan. What happened to the old Freeze?

I don't know. Is he okay? I hope so. I had the old Freeze on a Ringer podcast once. I mean, maybe it's a role you age out of at a certain point. Well, sure. Or maybe you wanted to do different things. I don't know.

But I think they are looking for a replacement freeze. So they didn't sign the original phrase to a long-term extension, or at least not in that role. Okay. But because they have locked up so much of their roster. Locked up. It sounds so negative, so derogatory, locked up their roster like you can't leave. They all decided they wanted to stay. They left it there. They got a lot of money.

I mean, maybe not as much money as they could ever should have gotten. In some cases, considerably less. In fact, one might argue. Yeah. But it was voluntary, right? Yeah. They all decided to stay. So because they don't have as many big free agents, I mean, they have Dansby Swanson sitting out there, but

they don't have as much work to do as say the Mets do. The Mets, they have some holes, they also have some money to spend and yes, they will close the gap certainly. I guess it's good news for the Phillies that they're even on par with the Mets. I don't know whether this projection took into account Bryce Harper missing half the season. I think this was published after Bryce Harper had Tommy John. So I don't know whether Dan accounted for that in his depth charts and projected playing time, which is really just a vague estimate at this stage. playing time, which is really just a vague estimate at this stage. But if the Phillies are projected to be like tied as the second best team in that division, even without Harper for half the season or so, that's kind of encouraging, I guess, because they have some moves to make

still. But yeah, that's the thing. Like some of these projections account for the fact that some rosters are just less determined than others. And some of them just reflect the fact that, well, some teams just aren't that great, or at least don't project to be that great. And that takes us to the White Sox, I guess, because the White Sox, their projection when this was published, 76 and 86. Now, established 76 and 86 now that only puts them six games back of the guardians yeah the al central it still does not project to be the best of baseball yeah can we briefly say can i briefly say that i'm going to be quite fascinated by how the central teams i guess in both leagues really start to approach team building because it's not as if you know

they'll still get to play some powder above teams but now that the the schedule is supposed to be balanced like they really do need to do a little bit more I mean they they all will have to deal with a newly balanced schedule so I suppose in that respect they could say well we'll all just be bad and see which of us is the least bad. But I suspect, I hope that at least a couple of those teams are like, you know, we should really try to make a run at this thing. Right. Yeah, that's the thing. Like White Sox fans, I'm sure they looked at that coming off the heels of this season and were not pleased to see that. But like if you're only six games back of the leader in that division, however bad your projection is, that means that you've got a shot.

So you should be trying to spend. And I don't know how much Clevenger changes this, probably not a huge amount. But really, if there's only a six game gap in projection between the best and third best teams in that division, then you've got the Twins who project to be like a 500 team, a game behind the Guardians. If the Guardians, again, like they're another team that is, I guess, mostly set. Like they had such a young roster and they made so many like promotions and changes on the fly during the year that I guess they don't have as many obvious holes. But there are certainly places where they could upgrade. It's just always a question with them of whether they will.

Yeah. Will they actually spend some money as opposed to fleecing everyone in trades and being good at developing players, which has been quite beneficial. That's been enough for them, but also spending some money might help. Yeah, we continue to say just, you know, why not try both? Just to try it. And, of course they did spend money in a place that they really needed to by extending jose ramirez so we should

make sure to give that credit where it is due because we thought he would just be in a different uniform before the season started and he was not but yes i think you know just just try it and like see how it feels to challenge yourself you know like to be like what does this feel like when we put it on because if you give yourself multiple means of team building, you know, different avenues, then you just have, you have more options and you have greater margin for error if say the trade stuff doesn't work out. That's all we're saying is, you know, we're like, we're not trying to pick on the guardians. I know that some guardian fans who listened to this podcast felt like we were picking on them. We're not trying to do that.

We are simply inviting them to be adventurous in their life choices and see how it feels when they try. Yeah. And especially if the division is that wide open. Right. So if you're the Guardians and you have a projected one game lead over the Twins. Make it 10 and feel fancy. Right. Yeah.

Or if you're the White Sox and you're six games back, like you could say, well, if you're projected to be the winner in this division, you can't feel comfortable with the projected margin. Right. And if you're projected to be second or third in this division, well, then look at the margin there and say, well, we could overcome that easily. So the White Sox still squarely in the contention window, I think, unless they've decided to blow things up, which doesn't seem to be the case. Like, it seems like there's enough there that they could make another run at this thing and stop being disappointing perennially. So you would like to see them do something and not stand pat because, A, the projection is not rosy, and B, they're still within striking distance despite that. So that's one interesting thing that stood out to me, especially in light of Abreu's departure. In the AL East, where you have the Aaron Judge question sitting out there, right?

So the Yankees, without Judge, they project to be a third place team currently three games behind the jays and the rays tied for first in that division the good news i guess if you're the orioles and you're projected to be a last place team is that you're only projected to be 10 games behind the best team so that again speaks well, you could kind of go for it. Like, I don't know that the Orioles are quite in the position where they're actually going to spend. One hopes that they would eventually, but perhaps not for another year. But if you're only 10 games back in projected true talent as this offseason starts, that's a much better position than the Orioles have been in a very long time. Oh, yeah. So, I mean, that, I think, gives you some reason for optimism, especially if they do decide to get aggressive and do some stuff.

Yeah. Then they could close that gap even more, though, obviously, the other teams will not be standing pat either. They will also be trying to upgrade. And that's part of, like, the Rosie Braves projection. Right. be trying to upgrade sure and that's part of like the the rosy braves projection part of that is also that like the other teams that they are projected to play are not currently as good as they will be right so that will maybe knock the braves projection down even as it raises other teams projections up so it's kind of a two-way street sort of thing right yeah a 10 game gap between the best and worst teams in the al east that's probably a lot narrower than it has been in recent years.

I would think so, yeah. And given that you have the Yankees as currently constituted, I should have mentioned playoff odds are also part of these absurdly preliminary standings, a 56% projected playoff probability for the Yankees and a 20% chance of winning the division. So if you're a Yankees fan, again, you're seeing that and you're hyperventilating and you're saying, we got to spend some money. We got to get judged. We got to do other things. We got to make more moves because we cannot go into a season with a coin flip chance of

making the playoffs. So there's a lot to do there too. Yeah. with a coin flip chance of making the playoffs so there's a lot to do there too yeah i mean i think that if you're a team in a hyper competitive division you can choose or a fan of a team because like you know i don't think like we don't work for teams and most of our listeners don't either although some of them do i think you can choose to look at this and be despondent or you can choose to look at it as an opportunity and i don't imagine that this is particularly surprising for any of the organizations that we're talking about. Like, I doubt that the Yankees are like, wait, you mean that if we lose 11 war of value,

we're going to be worse off than we were last year? Like, they know that, right? How aggressive they choose to be in response to that, either with respect to Judge in particular or the free agent market more generally, I think we will see over the coming months. But I think that you can choose to be despondent or you can choose to look at it as this division will be hyper-competitive, but it could also be ours for the taking, right?

If we respond to the moment and say, no, we'd like to really make a run at it. We'd really like to grab this thing rather than count on you know us fighting against each other knocking out a couple of our competitors like that that seems like a more productive means of team building and i also think that like i hope that it drives home to like the yankees for instance like yeah you're gonna have to do some stuff to to make up what you're losing either by re-signing aaron judge or by going out and getting a couple of other guys.

I feel a little nervous for Yankees fans, which I feel silly saying, because they have it pretty good. But if you don't re-sign Judge and you are enamored with your internal shortstop options, where are you spending that money? Right. Where are you going to spend it?

Where are you going to upgrade? There are other places on the roster that they could upgrade certainly but the ones that are the most obvious are bringing back Aaron Judge or signing a very good shortstop so I don't know right yeah it is one of those cases of like well there aren't any positions or a lot of positions that are just complete black holes right right and so it's it's a little harder to upgrade without bringing in a star. So yeah, and then you have some other like immovable parts that are just kind of around like DJ LeMayhew

and you don't really know what you're going to get out of him anymore. And he's just there kind of signed long-term. So yes, I think Yankees fans would see this as White Sox fans would see this and say, oh, boy, we got to do something. Yeah. And I guess what else stood out to you? I mean, even before the Abreu signing, the Astros had a comfortable lead in the AL West. What else is new?

I was just about to say, you know, Ben, I don't know where my Mariners fandom will check in next year because it does feel like having gotten the monkey off our collective backs of them not having made the postseason there's less urgency now I don't want them to rest on their laurels but in terms of how heightened I imagine to feel it could be different

but you know what I didn't like? I didn't like seeing the Mariners and the Angels with the exact same projection I didn't like that at all, I seeing the Mariners and the Angels with the exact same projection. I didn't like that at all. I looked at that and I said, no, thank you. Yes, of course, the Angels have been busier. They've gotten more of their winter's work done early, I suppose, than the Mariners have. We talked about the flurry of average players added to the Angels, so that helps raise the floor but sure yes both at at 84 and 78

six games behind the pre-abreu asters yeah i don't like it i don't care for that i don't reject it because i think it is an accurate reflection of the state of the division that the astros remain the best team in that division but i hope that it will say to some folks who work for the mariners oh we should we should do some work and i think that they should be pursuing two goals right the primary goal should be winning the west which you know it's going to be hard so it's going to take some work but i think the secondary goal should be being better than the angels like i just think that that should i mean no offense to offense to the Angels, but offense to the Angels, right? Like, they should just say, you know, this team that has made everyone want to tear their hair out because they have two of the best players in baseball and they can't make the

postseason, be better than those guys. Like, just as a guiding principle. It doesn't mean that you don't have other goals. Again, primary goal should be winning the West, being better than the Astros because they seem likely to be the best team. But secondarily, as a not very good consolation prize, be better than the Angels. Right. Man, those A's, I don't know.

Yeah, right. I mean, you might see the A's projection 74 and 88 and think, wow, things are really looking up. But that's probably partly a reflection of projection systems just being inherently kind of conservative and not really projecting extreme values at the top or bottom and also the fact that still having sean murphy yes exactly right so not small yeah yeah and then in the nl central i i think zips is uh as dan wrote in his piece the zips tends to be pretty high on the Cardinals and not irrationally so, I suppose.

And that is the case again, where they are projected for 91 and 71, which is just an incredibly Cardinals-y projection even before the offseason starts. And six games ahead of the Brewers and the Cubs 17 games back, not even all that far ahead of the Reds and the pre-Carlos Santana Pittsburgh Pirates. So I don't know if the Cubs are at the point where they're ready to start spending or not. But it looks like regardless, they have a lot of work to do to get back to contention after trading away most of a contending team not that long ago. So they're pretty far down there. This looks currently at least like a two-team race yet again. And then in the NL West, one thing that stands out is the Dodgers look a little vulnerable. Yeah, they do. More so than in recent years. I mean, only a four-game gap between the Dodgers and the Padres, and then another four games between the Padres and the Giants and the Diamondbacks. So other than the Rockies,

all these teams projected to be better than 500. And right now, the Dodgers with an 82% playoff probability and a 50.9% division title probability. I don't know, but I would guess that that is lower than those respective probabilities have been even at this point in the offseason in some time where it seemed like the Dodgers have essentially sewn up a playoff spot before the season starts. And for all I know, they may make some moves and they may do that, right? Because this is, again, like Trey Turner is a free agent right now, you know? So if they were to bring him back, that would change this. If they were to make some other moves to compensate for losing Turner, that would help too.

Like the Padres have already made some moves. I mean, they have Nick Martinez and Robert Suarez resigned and they get a full season of Juan Soto and they get hopefully most of a season of Tatis. So they've made a lot of their moves already. They've made some signings. They've made tons of trades, obviously. So the Dodgers have a little more to do and thus they can improve this projection. But right now, there doesn't seem to be as huge a gap as there has often been yeah i just whacked my elbow so hard ben oh boy it was such a bad elbow whack goodness oh man well they can't get me to pitch this elbow whack is taking me out of it um you know the the projection in the nls that i was the most struck by i agree with you about the dodgers both that they look

vulnerable and also that this is likely not where they land by the time spring training rolls around. But you know what I noticed here, Ben? What's that? How about those Diamondbacks? Yeah, yeah. 83-79, how about that? That's like a real big league club.

That's a respectable big league club. Not one that's going to, I think, win the West because they got three better clubs ahead of them because I think that they are worse than the Giants and certainly worse than the Giants will be by the time the season rolls around. But I don't know, Ben. How about those

Diamondbacks? I've developed a real affection for the Diamondbacks because they're the club that I see the most often in person, at least at the big league level. And look at that. Look at that. That's a real, that's an above 500 baseball team. Did you know that? Yeah. Yeah.

I think it's nice to have like a secondary team rooting interest. Yeah. Even if you're not a fan exactly, like if they're your local club, they're the one you see most often. And plus, like they're in a different division than the Mariners. They're not going to be competing against the Mariners, really. So there's no head-to-head conflict there for the most part. So, yeah, why not? Why not?

You know, they have Seattle's own Corbin Carroll on their team. So that seems to help, at least in terms of my affection for them. But, yeah, that's a real baseball team. That is a thoroughly not embarrassing baseball team. So nice. Yeah. Yeah, we talked about them more down the stretch, I think, during this past season

because we realized that we hadn't talked about them that much. And they had a bunch of interesting players who were kind of under the radar. So we belatedly discussed them. And yeah, the same projection as the Giants, again, super preliminary, but that is intriguing. And it is also interesting because Dan also looked back at his 2022 Zips projections for teams and players recently, and he noted that there just doesn't seem to be any tendency for teams to beat their projections one way or another

in one direction or the other, like for more than one year, like there just doesn't seem to be any signal there for like, oh, this team beat its projections or fell short of its projections by X amount this year. So that means it's also going to do the same thing next year. Not really. Historically, that hasn't been the case. There hasn't really been a pattern. And as Dan noted, the Giants going from 2021 to 2022, kind of the latest example of that, where they way outperformed every projection by like an unprecedented amount in 2021. And then in 2022, not at all. In fact, they, I think, fell a few wins short of their Zips projection. And that's interesting because Leo Morgenstern just wrote a really interesting post for Fangraphs about the Giants and how they were extreme outliers when it comes to pinch hitting. pinch hit like as much as an nl team would have done during the pitcher hitting era if not more so like it was really more pinch hitting than any team playing in a dh league had done on record at

least over the past couple decades and they just they pinch hit early and often and it seemed to really work out for them and you know even despite doing that pitch hitting way more often and getting great production out of their pinch hitters and not waiting for like late and close high leverage spots, but deciding, hey, we might not get a good high leverage pitch hitting opportunity. So let's just shoot these bullets while we have them, essentially. And despite all that, like all that tap dancing that Gabe Kappler was doing and all the value that they got from that, it only matters so much. Yeah. Like they were just kind of an okay team and all of the just wild over performances that they had gotten the previous year and guys staying healthy and veterans playing better than they ever had or better than they had in years and unestablished guys getting better. We all think highly, I i think of their player development yeah process and their ability to get more out of players and yet you just you can't do that

more than one year it was amazing that they did it even that one year yeah so even though they're seem to be smart and seem to be doing the things that they should be doing to make their players better like there's just you can't sustain the kind of over performance that they had now they could go sign here and judge right and that would help right they're not they're not doomed to be bad they're just not likely to repeat an extreme outlier performance yes and if they sign here and judge then their projections will reflect you know i ben i suspect that they will improve you know i think that so i i don't want to i don't want to say anything too wild but i suspect that they would uh they would move in a positive direction you know this is unrelated to the giants but it is related to the diamondbacks

as you know they have a pitcher named zach gallon yep he had quite a good season. He seems like he's a good pitcher. The Arizona Cardinals have a defensive end named Zach Allen. Oh, boy. And every time I end up watching the Cardinals play football, which happens at least some every Sunday because they're like my local game, they say, oh, Zach Allen. I'm like, oh, he's so talented. He's just doing so many different things, which is funny on a team with Kyler Murray. Anyway, that's been a little tour through one of the coldest acts in my brain every Sunday. I was thinking of this past Sunday because Mike White was trending on Twitter all day. I know.

You're like, what's going on? Yeah. It's like the Jets quarterback Mike White, but I thought it was the White Lotus Mike White who writes and runs that show on HBO, which airs on Sunday. So it was just kind of Mike White all day, but different Mike Whites, Mike's White. Yeah. And I've talked before about how we need some way to distinguish between like when we have athletes in different sports with the same name at the same time like jose alvarado the mlb player and jose alvarado the nba player yeah although of course you don't even have to do cross sport like you could just talk about the luis garcias

luis's garcia in garcia yeah you have three of them at the same time like we definitely need some way to differentiate like Like I said last time, like it should be like when you write down a Congress person and you put in parentheses, like D or R, right. We need like parentheses, MLB parentheses,

NBA. And maybe with the, the Luis Garcia's, we need like parentheses and then the three letter abbreviation for the team. I think some of them maybe have accent marks and some of them don't or don't use them. So that's one way to differentiate. But it's not, you know, it isn't a perfect... No, because some sources just never use them, even if they should. And so you don't even know,

like, well, does this mean I don't see an accent mark? Does that mean this is the one Luis Garcia who doesn't use it? Or does it just mean that this outlet is not using one? I think the Astros' Luis Garcia does not use one. I think that that is correct. I think that he is among the unaccented Luis Garcia's. He does not have a diacritical mark. And, like, you know, we use diacritical marks on our player pages still have to get them on the leaderboards which is a thing we know we have to do and we just take this is

just like a feed from mlb is my understanding and so sometimes guys will change things like they will they will start to use diacritical marks or you know they had a junior or you know like d strange gordon started uh hyphenating his last name and then it just gets reflected in our but like like julio rodriguez has a diacritical mark in his last name and there are there is another julio rodriguez who's a prospect he does not so that's useful but yeah it isn't always super clear i mean of all the things that we need to get fixed on, like, say, Twitter, that's probably not the strength. There are other things we hope get sorted. But it would be nice.

Because, like, earlier today, I saw Jose Abreu was trending with the AP poll. And I was like, he's not college football related. Is he? Is that the? What's going on? So, anyway. Yeah. All right. Well, bringing things full circle, the Dodgers are meeting with Justin Verlander. college football related is he is that the what's going on so anyway yeah all right well bringing

things full circles the dodgers are meeting with justin verlander today monday i wonder what their pitch is oh their pitch is hey if you come and pitch for us then you might win a world series i put that has something to do with their pitch He just won one though so how much would that help? He could stay in Houston and win one or I don't know. Yeah, maybe they'll say you know you could come here and you and Clayton Kershaw could be friends or maybe

they would say like you know talking about how you treat your family. Maybe it would be more convenient for your wife's work if you were based in Los Angeles, you know. True. That might be part of the pitch. I don't know if that would be persuasive, but it could be. You just don't know. Good point.

Yeah. People, write in. If you have an idea, let's say you're executive X for team Y and your team is entertaining big free agent Z, what are you going to roll out? What's your pitch? Yeah. Other than just, we're going to roll out? Oh, yeah, what's your pitch? Yeah, other than just we're going to give you tons of money. Right. What's your team slash city specific method of persuading them?

Or what kind of perks could you offer that would not just be like, well, yeah, I can just get that anywhere because I'm going to make $300 million, so whatever. I guess that's the thing. Like any perk you could offer, it's like, oh, give you free tickets to this or that. Like I could probably just afford all of those things, but I guess that's a sweetener. Like there are differences between places. you know, we trudge, you know, slowly or perhaps quickly toward like this weird monoculture,

which is strange at a time when we are fractured in so many places in terms of culture. But it's like, you know, where you can get lots of different kinds of good stuff anywhere, but there are still things that are specific and special. Like, you know, like if I were pitching someone to say, like, go to Seattle to play baseball for the seattle mariners like i might point to the natural beauty which is not to say that there aren't other beautiful places but they're differently beautiful right ben they're differently beautiful so that might be one thing and i would say to you like hey you're a baseball player you can live somewhere else during the off season so you can hang out here and not have sad i, maybe you'll have sad where you live because it might be gloomy. But you don't have to be there in February.

You'll be in Arizona where it is famously not gloomy. Yes. Yeah. Just in case I didn't make this clear enough, I think that if you are a player coming from NPB, let's say, like Shohei Otani, I mean, he did his tour of teams and like every team had to submit their pitch and then he met with some. That made total sense. I think if you're Otani, like still it's not totally clear why he picked the Angels.

But I think they were as surprised as anyone that he picked them. But like he had a lot riding on that decision. Just for him, money was not that much of an object because there just wasn't that much disparity in what teams could offer him. There was some just based on like what your international bonus pool was or whatever, but it wasn't that huge a difference. And so other factors were more important for him. That was a big overriding impulse. And then just like, you know, maybe wanting to be close to Japan and being on the West Coast and wanting to be or not be in the DH League or the pitcher hitting league or just like all the questions about his role and how he would be used and how he would train and various like sponsorship opportunities and media opportunities, which didn't seem to be that huge a deal to him. But for him and for even Senga or anyone else who was coming over, like I think just the acclimation to a different culture and a different country and all of that, there's a lot more riding on whether you go to this team

or that team or the city or that city. So totally get it in those cases. It's more like, you know, Justin Verlander, he's been around. He's seen all the cities. He's seen all the teams. Seen every city. Spent every city. All right. Well, I guess we can end with the Pass Blast. And at press time or podcast time or whatever this is, I do not yet have Jacob Pomeranke's contribution to the Pass Blast,

but I have one that I've been sitting on for a while that was submitted by listener Dan months ago in advance of the 1935 pass blast, and I will read it here. This was not an MLB situation, but kind of a weird and interesting one nonetheless. So I read this from an AP report published December 23rd, 1935. And the heading is, here's a rare one. And it says, another baseball happening was described as follows by the sports editor of the Albuquerque Journal. In a Sunday game between two small town teams in southern New Mexico, the bases were full. The batter rolled to the pitcher, I assume that means like hit a tapper back to the pitcher, I assume that means hit a tapper back to the pitcher, who fielded the ball and tossed to the plate for a forced out. The batter on deck stepped into the batter's box and hammered the throw over the fence.

Five runs crossed the plate. Officials went into a huddle, emerging some minutes later with this decision. Runner from third, out. Batter, the home run hitter, out. Result, a near riot in the stands. I don't know what the aftermath of this was, but just to recap the situation. Bases loaded. The batter taps back to the pitcher.

Pitcher fields the ball, throws to the plate for a force out. the plate for a force out. And yet the batter on deck, the on deck hitter, who's just a bystander here or should have been, steps into the batter's box and hits that throw, the throw from the pitcher to the catcher at home plate over the fence and five runs across the plate, it says. I assume that is the bases were loaded. So that's three. And then the batter who tapped back to the pitcher, he ran around the bases. And then the batter who tapped back to the pitcher, he ran around the bases. And then the on-deck hitter who hit the ball also ran around the bases. So five runs scored, or at least five runners crossed the plate. And then the officials had to huddle to decide what to do in this strange situation.

And so they decided that the runner from third was out. The batter, the home run hitter, who was not actually the batter, but the on-deck hitter, also out. And apparently the fans were not pleased. I guess that the home team must have been the one that tried this tactic. And so the fans were upset. I don't know what the aftermath with the fallout from this was, but that's a weird one. I don't know how I would rule on that exactly. And I don't know what was in the on-deck hitter's head

as he stepped toward the throw home for a force out and hit the ball over the fence. But that's kind of a classic illustration of the old chestnut about how you see something new every time you go to a ball game. That would be new for me. Yeah, me too. Wow.

I also learned in the course of reading about that weird one that Dizzy Dean, the famous Cardinals pitcher in October 1935, this is from a story in the Dayton Herald, October 28th, 1935. And it says, win and loss rung up for Dizzy Dean and all in same exhibition ballgame. This is Los Angeles, October 28th. From the United Press, Jerome Dizzy Dean, St. Louis Cardinal pitcher, was credited both with losing and winning an exhibition baseball game yesterday. Pitching for a team of minor leaguers, Dean was hit freely by a major league group, including his

teammate ernie orsatti archie vaughn leading national league batter and wally berger of boston he switched sides he being dean in the third inning after yielding two runs the big leaguers won 12 to 4 and dizzy was credited with both a win and a loss. So he gave up some runs and was the pitcher of record. And then he switched teams and ended up on the winning team. And so he took the loss and the win in the same game. But it's an exhibition. I guess some weird stuff can happen in exhibition games or in games between two small-time teams where the on-deck hitter decides that he's actually going to go up and swing for the fences.

Wow. Wow. Yeah. All right. And just been here now, I'm going to give you the Jacob Pomrenke submission for the Pass Blast of 1935. Jacob is Sabre's Director of Editorial Content and Chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee.

And he writes, 1935, a sinking ship. New York baseball fans have never lacked for passion in their rooting interests. In 1935, the New York Giants were fresh off two thrilling National League pennant races. Led by future Hall of Famers Bill Terry and Carl Hubble, the Giants won the World Series in 1933 and then fell just short to the Gas House Gang Cardinals on the final weekend of the 1934 season. The Gas House Gang Cardinals, of course, of Dizzy Dean. By the summer of 1935, with the Giants just one and a half games out of first place, a small but vocal segment of New

York fans were fed up with their favorite team. Syndicated columnist Paul Gallico called out the Giants supporters group after receiving an angry postcard in late August. The postcard reads, At a special meeting of the Giants baseball fan club, it was decided to stop patronizing the polo grounds until a team with intestinal fortitude was placed on the field, one worthy of representing New York City. Gallico writes, of course it is the fan's immortal privilege to grouse and beef and complain and yell insults at ballgames, but once he gets to the serious stage where he gathers in conclave and holds meetings and does something about it,

he automatically takes himself out of the cheerful fanatic class and becomes just plain nuisance. The 648 members of the Giants fan club, of course, will not stay away from the polo grounds because in the first place they can't and in the second they wouldn't dare. We have had at times some very weird municipal representation. If you love a ball team, you love it winning or losing, and if you are anything of a human being along with your strange baseball mania, you love it just a little bit better when it is in trouble. Jacob concludes, Giants fans must have been even more disappointed in September as the first-place Cubs went on a

21-game winning streak to clinch the pennant, but the Giants did make it back to two more World Series in 1936 and 1937, where they lost to Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio's Yankees dynasty both times. The Giants led the National League in attendance every single year of their run between 1933 and 1937. And by the way, speaking of that Cubs team that won 21 games in a row and won a pennant and lost in the World Series to the Tigers, they had quite a run-in with umpire George Moriarty in Game 3 of that World Series. Here's an account from Edward Burns of the Chicago Tribune. The Cubs care little for George Moriarty, American League umpire who yesterday chased manager Charlie Grimm, captain Woody English, and outfielder George Stainback out of the third game of the World Series.

They hiss him on whatever claims he may have for gentlemanly and sportsmanlike conduct on the field. They think he is a bully, just as the White Sox claimed when Lou Fonseca gave him a Memorial Day trimming at fisticuffs under the Cleveland stands. Fonseca was a harassed manager subject not only to Moriarty's rulings but to the verbal embellishments which are said to characterize Moriarty's frequent run-ins with the players. Commissioner Landis began an investigation into the controversy between Moriarty and the Cubs. Long known in his own league as a homing pigeon, an official who caters to the home crowd, think we should bring that saying back, Moriarty yesterday belied this reputation. He cursed and ranted at the Cubs in the presence of their home constituency, according to patrons in earshot. He lost his poise completely when he bounced grim at second base in the sixth inning

and later in front of the dugout when he banished Captain English in the eighth inning. Apparently, those ejections were ostensibly for excessive heckling of Hank Greenberg of the Tigers, but Moriarty was fined $200 because he had violated the commissioner's rule against ejecting players from World Series games without the commissioner's prior approval, which is not a rule now, although generally there's more leeway given to players in postseason and World Series games under the understanding that players should decide those crucial contests. Also wanted to shout out an article that Mark Carrigg did for The Athletic on Mr. Sugar Penis,

the number one draftee in our Best of Baseball Twitter draft last week. The guy who got Ken Rosenthal to at him on Twitter, at Mr. Sugar Penis, all caps, read the column. It turns out he had read the column. I don't know if this was inspired by our draft or whether this was already in the works, but if you had questions about who Mr. Sugar Penis is, I mentioned his bio said he was a lawyer. Mark talked to him, provided a bit in the works, but if you had questions about who Mr. Sugar Penis is, I mentioned

his bio said he was a lawyer. Mark talked to him, provided a bit of the backstory, talked to Ken Rosenthal, medded some fences between Ken and Mr. Sugar Penis. And the greatest thing to come of this is that the official at NY Times, New York Times account has now tweeted about Mr. Sugar Penis. So I will link to that on the show page. And also just wanted to give some thanks to Dan Zaborski for making the projections available that we discussed in this episode, because we really are spoiled having year-round team projections. I remember it being such a big thing when spring rolled around and you had expert predictions and projections in baseball magazines and fantasy magazines. And then, of course, the annual unveiling of Pocota.

And you would just kind of be in the dark for much of the offseason. You could speculate, you could guess, but we would not have actual projections until projection season rolled around. And now projection season is year round. So I suppose we have lost something. We have lost that element of surprise when the projections are unfurled, unveiled, uncorked. But we are also probably better informed in that we can look at any time and know more or less how teams are shaping up as their rosters stand today.

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