Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1939: It All Happened

Episode Date: December 8, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley break down the rest of the action from the Winter Meetings, including Arson Judge not signing with the Giants, Aaron Judge re-signing with the Yankees, the Padres missing out on Judge and Trea Turner, the Dodgers’ lack of interest in Carlos Correa, the Giants signing Mitch Haniger, the Cardinals signing […]

Some suspect there was an arsonist Who had drawn two leases If that's the case, then someone else Would be picking up these pieces I wish I could leave When I never know Rushed by a big old saloon Just smoke is in my bones

Smoke is in my bones, yeah! Hello and welcome to episode 1939 of Effectively Wild, the Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lundberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I am glad that you're back just in time because we are taking on transactions faster than we can bail over here. And over there where you are. Yeah.

I'm also happy you're back just because you're not as sick as you were. Oh, gosh. Glad you're doing a bit better. Yeah. Thanks. You know, I'm here to tell you me too. I appreciate, I feel like I've been gone a lot. I don't like it, Ben. You know, the holidays are like- Especially not when it's because you had the flu. That's not as good a

reason as seeing family or taking a trip or something like that. Yeah. Like the holidays, that's a good reason to miss the pod but getting laid out by the flu you know i i once again missed branzino in san diego yeah i just put some branzino in the fridge to defrost from the freezer my branzino from trader joe's can't wait to dig into that later but yeah i mean i don't want to make you feel bad about your branzino ben i'm sure it's gonna taste delicious but i doubt it'll be as good as the branzino at ironside and i was so looking i'm telling you this trader joe's fish it's just it's as good as any restaurant is it a whole branzino though it's not like encased in the salt with all the bones and the head and everything

it's just not a whole no it's not yeah it's the important part it's the part i want right i mean like for for the for the home chef that's also a more manageable yes cut of fish because it's a cut you know rather than the whole fish but um yeah i i missed i missed winter meetings and that means that next year they'll be somewhere less good than san diego probably i don't think we know yet but almost everywhere is less good than san diego probably certainly a longer flight unless they put them here in arizona you know what baseball you know what you should do yeah enough about brenzino they should put them here in arizona yeah no that would make sense yeah yeah it's kind of a hub and it would be convenient for you. Oh, it would be so nice to sleep at home during winter meetings.

That would be great. Well, neither of us got to go to San Diego. We didn't get to meet, but we're meeting right now in a way on this podcast. And we have a lot of transactions to talk about. Oh, my gosh. It is all happening. It all happened already. I mean, much of the off- off seasons business has been conducted this week this was just some old school winter meetings

activity not much on the trade market i guess just because everyone was so busy signing it seems like left and right but yeah many of the top free agents off the board. The taps are open. The spending is happening. Deals are exceeding expectations. Money is flowing. Exciting times. Yeah, I'm overwhelmed. I have to say, I'm going to take this opportunity. I worked today.

We're recording on Wednesday. But thank you to John for really keeping the site humming while I was just laid out with the flu and a fever. And also to all of our great writers who did good work. But yeah, it's been busy. Ben, we published 10 signing reaction pieces today. We published a couple of other things too, which is why my math was initially off. That's a lot.

It feels like a lot. And some of them, to your point were big including should should we start with the biggest kahuna both literally and figuratively i think we should erin judge forever yankee yeah now and forever seemingly so yeah i guess it would have been more interesting if he had gone anywhere else yeah but like for bad reasons for bad you know it would have been yankees haters would dispute that yeah but you know we don't have to we don't have to listen to the haters ben you know we don't have to we don't have to indulge the haters no i guess not although probably much of our audience could define itself as yankee haters

sure but like they also would define themselves as baseball lovers, right? And I think it would say not awesome stuff about the sport if to Dan Zimborski's point when he wrote the quick zips-based react before Jay's much longer other react. Like, you know, for the most storied team in baseball in its biggest market you know one of its most valuable franchises to let its franchise player walk after the year that aaron judge had not a not an easy sell to fans seems like it would be a bad indicator for the sport would have been better for my free agent contract draft results but we can we can talk

about that we were both doing so well. We were. I don't know if we were. I was like horizontal for a couple days. I'll vouch for both of us doing well up until very recently, and then that changed. But yeah, I hadn't actually thought of that because we take it as maybe a negative sign for the sport

if a team that typically doesn't spend so much trades away a player and feels obligated to or tells everyone it's obligated to. But in a way, I guess it would also be a negative sign if the Yankees then were in that group of, well, we can't bring this guy back or we draw the line. Because if the Yankees have a a limit then who doesn't i guess or if the yankees behave as if they have one so right and maybe that is partly why the mookie bets trade was so distressing to red sox fans and maybe to some others because you're the red sox like right can keep whomever you want right i say that as we're waiting for news about xander bogarts and that is not finalized yet but but they did they did get a signing done Ben as opposed to all the times when they were

like trying they really they did push one over the finish line today they did yeah you know can't let Jansen do Chris Martin I suppose so that's something okay anyway so air judge air judge first of all this news broke in the most amusing way possible. So we have to, we got to get Craig Goldstein and Jake and Jordan back to redraft the best of Baseball Twitter. Because there might be a new number one. It might be recency bias, but it also might not be. Because John Heyman's performance on Tuesday afternoon, that's about as good as it gets for baseball Twitter. I'm glad that Elon Musk didn't kill Twitter at least before that happened. Yeah.

Because whatever else is happening on the platform, I don't care. It was all worth it for Arson Judge. Arson Judge. The Arson Judge tweet, it lived a short life. It lived for no more than a minute or two. But in that short life, it was retweeted hundreds, possibly thousands of times, and it will live on forever in our memories. So this was a double whammy, really. Not to pile on, but also to pile on. I think we got to pile on in this case.

Not only was it the typo. I mean, look, the typo would have been funny on its own. Okay. We would have liked the typo. We would have made fun of the typo, but the tandem of the typo and the incorrect report about Arson Judge nearing a deal with the Giants, right? And then delete the typo, resend the tweet with Aaron Judge, but still the erroneous or misleading, at least, report. And then shortly after that, the retraction and the apology, and actually the Giants haven't heard from either Aaron or Arson. So that will live in infamy and also fame in our hearts forever. So really thank you to John Heyman, who was represented in our Best of Baseball Twitter

draft, but he would really climb the rankings here. Yeah, I would like to acknowledge the excellent work done by a random Twitter user who I was not previously familiar with named Mike Beauvais, who took the... Are you familiar with the Grink tweet? Yes. Yeah, I saw a few variations of this, but I don't know who had the, are you familiar with the Grink tweet? Yes. Yeah, I saw a few variations of this, but I don't know who had the best or the original, but I enjoyed all of them.

John Heyman telling his story how he survived a plane crash and lived on a deserted island for a year. It was crazy. John Heyman's friend who once saw a tweet from him where he accidentally called Aaron Judge, Arson Judge. Was Arson Judge there? And I will say I thought of the Grink tweet immediately, which just goes to show that, you know, like I guess we could say we're not creative,

but why don't we instead focus on how much we all have in common, you know, like that can be the point of emphasis. But yeah, Arson Judge, man, what a... The memes were explosive. They were wonderful. They were wonderful. They were fiery. So thank you, John. Just thank you.

And really, I appreciate the chaos energy that Heyman and Bob Nightingale bring to the baseball news breaking space. Because, you know, you have Passan and you have Rosenthal. Yeah. Passon and you have Rosenthal. And look, they have senses of humor and they give us, read the column in all caps, young horse cock, and they give us Jeff Passon dunking on people from time to time, but they're pros, right? And generally when they report news, you can kind of count on it. Not a hundred percent of the time. There have been occasional times maybe when they jumped the gun slightly or had to amend or retract something. But generally, when they say something, you can kind of take it to the bank. You can almost take it as gospel that they're not going to fire off a tweet before they're fairly sure of something. You cannot say the same about every baseball

newsbreaker. And so you get Haven and you get Nightingale and you get entertaining typos and sometimes you get incorrect reports and they're volume shooters, right? So you can't like unfollow them. It's not like they're spam accounts. I mean, they get a lot right. They do break news correctly.

They have sources. You could speculate about what those sources are and when they are more reliable than at other times. But I'm saying, you know. And I may have, you know, kind of done that a little bit. I mean, you know, about them, who could say? Like, was it me talking about them during one of my picks on the Twitter? I mean, like, I mean, who could even, you know, who knows? But look, they have broken a good deal of news in their day.

And the Passons and the Rosenthal's, I'm sure, have had to say first John Heyman and first Bob Nightingale many times. Sure, yeah. So they are reliable enough that you have to kind of take it seriously when they say something. Right. But also in the back of your head, you're thinking, is this just an arson judge tweet? I don't know. So I kind of just love that they bring that to us. Yeah.

You know, I feel like I was more firmly in the camp of Twitter being bad for the planet and certainly democracy when we did our draft. And I don't think my stance has changed really that much. But I will say, days like yesterday do make me think about it a little bit. I consider the option that I might be wrong. So it got intriguing at the end, not just because of typos on Twitter, but because it looked like perhaps Judge might be leaning toward the Giants. magazine profile where he kind of threw some shade Brian Cashman and talked about how he wasn't thrilled by Cashman's tactics prior to the season coming out and leaking or I don't know if you can even call it leak if you just we've been working on this story

for a year and he just tweets it out to reference another old viral tweet. But Judge at least said he wasn't thrilled by that and he dropped some hints about how he always wanted to play for the Giants or he said he would one day, et cetera. And so just as we're thinking that, then the Padres swoop in. And Dan and I talked on the last episode about the reported Giant offer that the Padres made for Trey Turner and they missed out on him. I think Dan may have mentioned the prospect of, well, maybe they bid on Aaron Judge. And it sounds like, according to some reports, that they may have bid as much

as $400 million over 10 years for Aaron Judge, who I suppose would really fit their roster probably better than Trey Turner would have. But that would have been quite an outfield if they had landed Judge. So the mystery team comes in at the last minute to make things really interesting and then ultimately when the news finally breaks that the initially expected thing has happened and Aaron Judge has resigned with the Yankees it breaks at like what 5 30 in the morning San Diego time where every single baseball writer is yeah I mean it was it was early enough that like i woke up and my first thought was wow i no longer feel like i'm dying so that's nice and then my second thought was okay so i feel well enough to work today i'm gonna check the fan graph slack and see where we've landed you know i knew we had some some write-ups coming in over night. I wanted to see where they were.

And then, yeah, 6.20 a.m., I think local time, which I assume that John Marossi was in. Yeah, off the top rope, Marossi with the snooze, yeah. Yeah, I assume that he was in San Diego. And I was like, okay, so I know a few things. First of all, Jay is probably asleep. I mean, he should be. I don't mean it in like a that Jay, he's always sleeping kind of way.

Like, you know, it's a time when you should be asleep, particularly if you are on a trip where you don't have to take care of your small child, you know, for a change. So I said to Dan, I was like, can we get a little Zips Instagram, you know, a little something until Jay is up and about and ready to write this deal. I was like, it's very funny. It's just like a very funny. Then Ben had to redo part of his Mitch Hanegar react.

We'll talk about Mitch Hanegar, I suppose. Yeah, despite re-signing with the Yankees, Ben, it's a giant contract. It is. Yeah, it went down in a pretty spicy way. So $360 million, nine years. That'll take him through his age 39 season, I think. So he will be a Yankee for the rest of the way, barring something very unexpected. And Yankees fans can heave sighs of relief.

And it's just, it's the move they had to make. Right. And I'm not surprised that Judge made them sweat. That was good negotiating on his part. I don't know how much of it was just negotiating and posturing or how close he actually came to departing. But you always had to expect that the default assumption was that he was likeliest to stay with the Yankees where he's been his whole career and where he is beloved and where he is an icon and where he rules the city and et cetera, et cetera. So it's not shocking that they signed him because if the Yankees want someone, generally they get him, right? Especially if he's been a Yankee his whole career. I'm not saying they can sign any free agent they want, but generally they don't let franchise players leave. Or, you know, like if one does leave, it's because they decided that they were okay with that.

Like Robinson Cano maybe being the rare example of a homegrown Hall of Fame caliber player who was on the Yankees for a while, and they just didn't make that much of an effort to retain him. With Judge, I mean, that offense was Aaron Judge this past year, which was partly a testament to the fact that he had one of the best offensive seasons ever, and partly a testament to the fact that the rest of the lineup just kind of fell apart. So you subtract Aaron Judge from that lineup. There's no way to replace Aaron Judge, certainly with one move, and they just didn't have that many openings.

So there's just no way that they could have lost Aaron Judge and really returned as good a team, I don't think, given what was out there. I mean, they could have pivoted to Carlos Correa or who knows what else, so perhaps. But it would have been tough because Aaron Judge, whatever he'll be by the end of this deal, he was the best player in baseball this past season and projects probably to be the best or second best or third best this coming season. And their whole team is just built around him. So they had to have him. They don't lose players like that when they set their mind to it. And ultimately, they had to raise their offer a few times to come close enough to retain him. But the sort of expected thing happened. You just you had to assume that the remaining Steinbrenner was going to pony up and do some sort of impression of his dad enough to keep Aaron Judge in pinstripes. Well, they had to keep raising the offer, Ben, so that the stack

of money would be as tall as Aaron Judge. I wonder how tall it would be. We should figure out. So much taller than Aaron Judge. I mean, it would depend on the denominations, but I'm confident that regardless of the denomination, it would be so much taller. But you could stack it like, you could have multiple

piles, right? Like a big, like in, you know, like in Batman. And then, but unlike in Batman, you're not lighting it on fire because instead you get to watch Aaron Judge play baseball for nine years. And I think that that sounds great. Yeah, I agree with you that when you're thinking about the Yankees and what they need for next season and for the forthcoming seasons, not that there were a limited number of places to spend and not that there weren't other good free agents available who could have potentially upgraded on some of the positions they already have. whether you're thinking about how much you're paying for it or not, the obvious places for them to really spend big money and get a star was to retain Judge

or to dump a lot of money into shortstop. And if they had ended up signing Carlos Correa instead of Aaron Judge, I wouldn't have thought that that was a waste. I would have worried and wondered who's going to play the outfield for them. But it was like they had this situation in the outfield where they needed to either retain judge or they were gonna have to find some alternative who wouldn't be as good and certainly the internal options they have to play in the outfield namely jason dominguez who's you know we should do a whole like separate segment on

like how his prospect fortunes have changed over the years and you know separate from the card speculation around him but like i think that jason dominguez is actually rounding into a pretty good prospect in a way that seemed kind of dicey at times over the last like 18 months but when you think about him in comparison to their internal shortstop options who are close to the majors you know it seems like they will be able to home grow at shortstop probably more reliably than they would be able to find an immediate replacement in the upper minors in the outfield. And then we think about value. It's like, yeah, OK, you can talk about it in a pure dollars per war sense.

But that's kind of boring. And I think that one of the ways that that misses the complete picture is really illustrated with a signing like judge which is in some ways he is the most valuable to the yankees right because he's a homegrown guy because you can now say this franchise player is going to be i mean maybe he signs another deal at the end of this but like probably not right when he's gonna be 39 so it's like, here's a guy, he's a franchise icon. He just had one of the best seasons, not only in Yankees history, but in baseball history. He wants to be a Yankee if we make it worth it to him. We get to say, that guy's not wearing anything but our pinstripes. We do need to pedantically clarify which pinstripes, Ben, because there are a but our pinstripes we do need to pedantically clarify

which pinstripes yes because there are a lot of pinstripes in baseball now but this guy's gonna wear our uniform for his entire career being able to you know market that from a ticket and merchandising perspective is sort of uniquely powerful for the Yankees, I think. Not to mention, he's a remarkable player, and he just had an incredible season. So you're right that it's less intriguing. It's maybe the most boring outcome, but in terms of what it means for the Yankees as a franchise in baseball as a sport, I think it's the best outcome that we could have expected because we really would have had to look long and hard at that if he had ended up in San Francisco or San Diego.

As an aside, we need more good chaos teams like the Padres. There is a lot of chaos, but they are a good, there is a lot of chaos, but they are a good chaos team. I just, I think that they are such an important and powerful rebuke to all of the like owners and front offices and media people and even fans at this point. We're like, why would we spend money in the Padres?

Because we want to win a World Series and we haven't done it yet. So we're just going to keep spending money because who cares? Yeah. Rob Manfred in his winter meetings address, he trotted out that tired line about revenue and just competitive balance. And he said, on the downside, I think everyone in this room understands that we have a level of revenue disparity in this sport that makes it impossible for some of our markets to compete at some of the numbers we've seen. And, you know, that's not a positive. It's like everything else in life. There's good and bad in it. We've talked about this. He said this so many times. And so did his predecessor,

Bud Selig, who sort of sold everyone on this idea. And yeah, there is some level of revenue disparity and there's a greater level of payroll disparity. But as we have noted, as Rob Means and others have written, there has been pretty good competitive balance in MLB, especially compared to other sports and especially with the expanded playoff fields now. It is not prohibitive for a lower revenue team, certainly that actually spends the way that it's able to, to get to the playoffs and make some noise there. And you have the Padres who, yeah, they missed out on their top targets here in San Diego, and they're the hometown team and they were throwing money around. talked yesterday about the idea of the team that basically leaks news that's like, well,

we tried, you know, we were interested in so-and-so or we offered this or that and how sometimes that can be kind of a face-saving measure. Yeah, like pick a random team. You could call in the Boston Red Sox. Sure. But the Padres, we know that they're willing to spend. And if the reports are accurate that they were throwing around 300 plus 400 million dollar contracts, even if they don't get their guy, like that's serious money. So if the player doesn't pick them, there's nothing they can do about that. It's hard to woo an Aaron Judge away from the New York Yankees where he spent his whole career and the advantages of that market and everything.

where he spent his whole career and the advantages of that market and everything. But still, if they had that money to spend, that suggests that other teams that do not throw that kind of money around also would have that money to spend. And look, frankly, this is not perhaps the time to talk about teams not spending because teams are spending right now. Not every team, but lots of teams. But the fact that the Padres have done that consistently over the past few years and are still doing that when I didn't necessarily even expect them to be players for big free agents like that on those kind of terms at positions even where you could argue that they don't have the strongest need of anyone and they're still coming out,

firing on all cylinders here. kudos to them even though they missed out i guess you could call them a loser of the winter meetings and that they did not get their top targets but still i mean the fact that they were flashing that kind of cash yeah that's pretty impressive yeah i agree but we don't have to it's weird it's i was gonna say we don't have to spend this entire segment talking about the Padres when it's about the Yankees and Aaron Judge. But it's weird when a guy re-signs with his team because we're like, well, we know what that looks like.

Right. Yeah. You know, we know the fit. It's very tall. But, you know, the fit here was obvious. The need was apparent. And they got it done. It does add, Ben, an interesting case study to our conversation about what free agents

prioritize in making their decisions right because if the reports are true there was more money elsewhere and he he decided to get more money from the yankees his home state and his hometown team even so yeah yeah and he decided to you know get more money from the yankees as well he should as you noted uh but seemingly to leave the biggest offer on the table because he wanted to return to New York. Now, there might be a financial motivation to that piece of it, too. As you said, if you're a Yankee, in addition to your salary, your marketing opportunities, one would imagine, are pretty substantial. He's already availed himself of that on his current contract but yeah interesting an interesting little case study i was watching um monday night football on monday night uh and he was in tampa bay for the bucks saints game which you know feels mean to make aaron judge sit through because like that game was a stinker but you know i was like oh i guess we know where he's going to sign. And then I was like, you know, he is one of those guys where you look at him and you're like, you could be a tight end, you know?

Yeah, sure. So maybe he was contemplating a career change briefly, but then was like, no, I'll just go make $360 million with the New York Yankees. That would have been a much more interesting outcome also. So I'm sad that that didn't happen. I'm not because, you know, we don't need any more of these look at how bad baseball is. People want to play football instead. It makes us look bad. We're already competing with Zell and Crocs and that cream cheese brand for growing brands.

So we don't need to compete with the NFL. We're going to lose that every day. Right. And so anyone who's wringing their hands over what this deal is going to look like when Aaron Judge is in his late 30s yeah who cares really like you know as long as he is great for the next few years which is enough for the Yankees to maybe kind of transition to their younger hitters and younger position players coming up who will be inexpensive right and then they can deal with the contract like yeah, yeah, they have three players now on $300 million plus contracts,

and they're all in theory on the downside of their careers. And obviously there's nowhere to go but down from the season Aaron Judge just had. But that is okay because they're the Yankees. And the only reason why it would be a problem is if they don't continue to act like the Yankees and they impose some constraints on themselves or they say, we don't want to go over this threshold or trigger this penalty or whatever. Then you could say there's some kind of opportunity cost because if they have this guy for this many millions, then they might not go get that guy. But I don't know, direct your complaints about that to Hal Steinbrenner if that happens.

I think they can afford it. They're the Yankees. It's okay. And if he's not good by the time this deal is done, which most players are not by that point, who knows how he'll age. People have concerns about his build and his health history and all the rest, and that's all reasonable. But if he remains a superstar for a few years here, then the Yankees can just deal with whatever comes after that. They had to have him now.

Bringing him back now makes them a contender immediately, even if they don't do anything else, which it sounds like they probably will. But as it is, they could go into that season right now, and there would be problems and issues and vulnerabilities. But the difference between no judge and judge is just, it's enormous. So yeah, I'm not even attempting to make any kind of like puns about his size here, that it's hard to avoid. But I don't think the Yankees lowballed him prior to the season.

Some people have said that. I really don't think they did. I didn't either. I thought it was respectable. I thought it was a perfectly respectable offer. It was fine for him to not say yes to it, but it was fine. Yeah, right. And do they wish now that maybe they had sweetened that offer then? Yeah, probably.

Yeah. Because maybe they would have saved some money, but who could have known or predicted that he would have one of the best seasons ever, essentially? That is what he did. So kudos to him. And, you know, I think they publicized the terms of that because they felt like people would say, oh, well, that was actually a pretty reasonable offer. And I think it was. I wasn't out here saying, shame on you, Aaron Judge, for not accepting that contract.

I was just thinking, all right, well, he obviously has confidence that he's going to have a good year. And did he ever. So he made himself a couple more years of contract and dozens of millions of dollars more. So he bet on himself and it totally paid off and it backfired for the Yankees. But I don't really see it as like a hoisted by their own petard sort of situation because they cheaped out then right he just he really he believed that he could do better and he did oh boy did he yeah I think um I I think it was an understandable first offer I think it was an uh a confident but understandable betting on oneself.

This is the risk you take. You take a risk both ways. If you don't offer more, you take the risk that the guy is going to dramatically outperform your expectation that year and change people's expectations of him going forward. If you bet on yourself, there's the possibility you blow out your knee opening day. Thankfully, for all of us, the risk that had to be carried here was by the Yankees

because we just got to watch Aaron Judge have the season that he did. So I think it's pretty cool. Yeah. I mean, it's a record-setting contract, average annual value for a position player. And you might think, well, it must be a short-term deal if someone is breaking the AAV record and getting $40 million a year. But no, it's not. But that's okay because Aaron Judge and the Yankees, they're the sort of player and team that should be getting record contracts, right? So it is striking that I believe to this point

in his career, Aaron Judge has made $39.5 million. Yeah. And he will basically be making that much every year for the rest of his career. That's how baseball contracts work. So he has been way underpaid relative to his production to this point in his career. And he may be a bit overpaid relative to the production the rest of his career, at least on the backside. But that's all right. He may be a bit overpaid relative to the production the rest of his career, at least on the backside. But that's all right.

And by the way, according to Zips and Dan's post there, it's not like a wild overpay even by like dollars per war projection, right? Without accounting for just the funny money that we're seeing tossed around this offseason just based on Zips' projection. Like it had him at something like $311 million, I think it was. So, you know, that's not really that much of a premium, especially considering, as you said, just any ancillary marquee value that the Yankees get from Aaron Judge just being a superstar in the face of their franchise and their new captain, it sounds like, whatever that's worth. Yeah, I don't know what that's worth, but it's worth something to somebody. So there you go. I don't know. I wonder if the padre is offered to make him their captain come on in you could be captain whatever sure that might be one of the tamer things aj preller offered yeah sure we'll

call you whatever you want general president you can just name your position as long as you want get the big beard oh wow aaron judge with a beard. That would be wild. Anyway. So that's Aaron Judge. That's the big news. And we'll just run through the rest here. I do want to talk about or touch on the insider report that dropped because that was Aaron Judge adjacent.

And that came out right during the arson judge madness and everything else. I wonder if they wish they had saved that story for a different day when there was a little less news. But that's Aaron Judge related. I have a few thoughts on that, but I'll save itfielder, just not the number one that they wanted. But Mitch Hanegar to the Giants for three years, $43.5 million with an opt-out after the first two years. So that's also more than I think I would have expected Mitch Henniger to get. Seems like a pretty reasonable fit for the Giants. And, you know, he's a good defensive outfielder when he's on the field.

And he hits lefties and they need those things. And he's a fairly good fit for the park from all appearances. So, you know, whenever he's been on the field, he's generally been good and he finished the season pretty strong. But, yeah, I mean, coming off of his myriad injury woes, which hopefully are not things, at least for the most part, that will be repeated for his sake, at least. But even coming off of this past season he played 57 games and he was you know okay he wasn't great he finished well i believe but you know you would not necessarily think that uh entering his age 32 season he would be in line for this kind of contract i guess but uh i suppose that is why you took the under on Mitch Henniger's contract prediction as well.

Oh, did I really? Oh, I don't remember doing that.in at a predicted $22 million, according to MLB Trade Rumors. So easily exceeded that. Yeah, good for me. Yeah. And then you took the under on Andrew Heaney at a predicted $42. And that worked out for you, too. Not for Heaney, but he signed with the Rangers for $25 million over two. So, so far, so good.

You also took the under on Justin Verlander at $120. So that's a score for you. That was a big one for me. It was because you bet on him not getting the third guaranteed year. And he did not get the third guaranteed year. So, yeah, so far you were right on the money. And I was two. And then things fell apart a little bit for you just in the last day.

So Judge, yeah, you had the under on Judge at 332. And then you had the under on Hanager at 39. So that was a close one, but went the wrong way. Yeah, so you were on a roll there. But the streak was snapped. And then as for me, I'm still doing well here. I had the over on Tyler Anderson at the qualifying offer amount, and he signed for 39. And then I had the under on Josh Bell. We'll talk about that. So that was one of my, I think that was my first pick. I felt strongly about that one because MLB Trade Rumors had him at a $64 million prediction. And I did not think he was going to get that much. And he did not. He got 33 from the Guardians over two years. at $21 million, so he just snuck under there at $14. And finally, I think I took the over on Wilson Contreras, who maybe we'll talk about next. And they had him at $84, and he signed with the

Cardinals for $87.5 over five years. So that's just, that was almost a coin flip there, just squeaked on the right side of things for me and for Wilson Contreras. So that's where we stand. But we were doing all right there. And even though you'd think that probably taking the over would have been the safer bet given how this market has gone, I guess that is true. But we both hit on some unders as well. So I think we're doing decently. Anyway, Hanager, you've gotten to see a good deal of him with the Mariners.

Yeah. Hoping for better health for him. And I guess that is essentially the whole story of why they want him and whether it will work out is whether he's on the field. Yeah. I think that this is just a really excellent pairing of player and team. I think that, and Ben Clemens touched on this when he wrote it up for us today at Ferris, but you think about the Giants, or at least this version of the Giants and the things that they have proven themselves to be particularly adept at.

One of those things is playing matchups and rotating guys with an obvious desire to both optimize their lineups against not just handedness, but particular pitches and pitch locations and what have you, and also to keep guys fresh and healthy, which was, I imagine, a particular necessity in 2021 when their entire lineup was made up of guys RH. That's not quite true, but it was close, right? And so they're really good at

that. And then you think about Hanager and to your point, sort of how he is likely to play in that ballpark, how he is likely to supplement a lineup that, uh, in addition to some of the, like the niftier matchup stuff that the Giants do is pretty left-handed heavy. And while he's not great in the field at this point, he is serviceable and I think better to some of their other options. This allows Jock Peterson to play at DH. Play at DH? That makes it sound like he's sort of like flirting with it or like, you know, faking it. No, but be DH.

It allows him to DH. There we go. More often. We've definitely done a pedantic discussion of whether you play DH because you're not actually in the field. I think we agreed that you do. Yeah, but it allows Jack to DH.

Hanegar, I'm sure, will cycle through there as is needed to keep himself fresh. So I think it's a really nice pairing. It is funny, and Ben made note of this as well. We spent all this time thinking, oh, going back to the Bay Area will be such a huge draw for Judge. And maybe that was a draw,

but ultimately not the prevailing one. But Hanager's a Bay Area native too, so another Cali guy going home. But I don't know. Everything that I've heard about Mitch from people who cover the team is that he's a serious, at times to the point of being boring, competitor and seems like a nice guy who has just been dealt some truly horrific injury luck over the course of his career, much of which is not remotely... You hope that it's not repeatable because how many times are you going to get hit badly in the head and or balls? But if he is able to stay healthy, I think that he's a nice supplement to that team.

I think that they will use him in ways that play to his strengths and allow them to paper over some of the other weaknesses they have and certainly keep themselves fresh. keep themselves fresh and you know now that they have missed out on judge well first of all i wouldn't be surprised to have them sign another outfielder just to deal with some of the defensive stuff but also like i do wonder if this giants team now says we should be in the carlos correa business like i wonder if they will shift their attention to the infield. Although it does seem like a reunion between them and Carlos Rodon is like a thing that might happen to the point that we're going, oh yeah, of course, we all thought he was going to go back there, didn't we?

Because he had such great success with them and is probably apart from Correa and Bogart's the best remaining free agent, right? Yeah. Certainly the best remaining free agent, right? Certainly the best remaining free agent pitcher. So I think that San Francisco, who we keep hearing the last couple years, is really keen to splash cash.

They got opportunities to splash more cash. They didn't have to splash a lot of cash, more than we thought, but they splashed a moderate amount of cash to retain the services of Mitch Hanegar. I hope he has a great couple years here. He seems like a good guy. When he's right, he is a lot of fun to watch.

It was like he came back from the injury and was really good, and then he slumped, and then he finished strong. It would be nice to see what he is able to do at this phase of his career with sustained health. Because, you know, when you're always coming and going from the aisle, it's like you never really get in a rhythm and get started. And I feel like they have the potential to unlock something in him, even if what they unlock is just sustained good performance, provided he's able to stay healthy.

Yeah. And it's been a fascinating few days for the NL West because you had the Padres just jumping up and down going, pick me, pick me, with just like fists full of cash. And no one has said yes yet. And then the Giants didn't get Judge. And then the Dodgers, they didn't get Verlander and they watched Trey Turner leave yeah and meanwhile there's been a report from Ken Rosenthal that the Dodgers sounds like are reluctant to pursue Carlos Correa because of lingering concern that their fans would not

welcome him because of Astro's sign stealing animus yeah not pursuing shortstop Carlos Correa in part out of concern that a sizable portion of their fan base would not welcome the move, which is interesting. I mean, I don't know whether that is the real reason or whether they actually will not pursue him or what, but it does seem like wherever Astro's sign stealers have gone, if the players are good, fans eventually are fine with it, right? Yeah. Now, I know that Dodgers fans bear a bigger grudge than most toward the Astros and toward Correa. But I don't know. If Correa said the right things and showed up and played like a superstar, I feel like he would be forgiven eventually. But I get it. Yeah. I feel like he would be forgiven eventually, but I get it.

Yeah. So I don't know whether the Dodgers will eventually spring for some marquee free agent or whether they feel like they're okay as they are. But right now, I guess they've got Gavin Lux penciled in as the shortstop. So that is a different cause for concern than signs doing. So Dan and I touched on it. I mean, there are some holes by Dodgers standards on that team. And so their main NL West rivals didn't really catch up with them that much this week.

But you do wonder whether the Dodgers are just going to sort of sit on their hands or whether they will just wait for their moment to strike as they sometimes do or whether they will eventually pony up. But it's been, I guess guess a frustrating week for fans of NOS teams that were hoping that their teams would emerge from the meetings with some new superstar

yeah I think that like the Dodgers are a great example of a team that like yeah of course they're going to be like looking in their rear view at at the other teams in their division but I think that LA properly understands that like the teams that they are worried about are the ones that are going to play in October, right? As long as they are able to get to the postseason, that's where they kind of understand their challenge emerging, which doesn't mean they can't have down seasons or get it wrong or what have you. But they have been, for whatever else you might say about them, very clear over the

last many years about like what their aspirations are and it's to win World Series. So I would be surprised if they're done, but you know, I've been surprised before, Ben. Yep. And I don't know whether they'll decide that, well, there's only so much we can do about what happens in October

because we can construct a juggernaut team and we can get bounced right quick. Sure. So I don't know whether that is leading to less spending now or, as Dan and I discussed, whether they are seduced by the potential to be under the threshold and reset penalties or what. Anyway, we'll see. There's no telling what the Dodgers would do, but they haven't done much yet. So another major move that happened is Wilson Contreras

to the Cardinals. Yeah. 87 and a half million, five years. And there's some kind of cognitive dissonance here when I think about this. Not about the terms at all, but just about any other catcher siding with the Cardinals. It's weird to think of the Cardinals being a big player in the catcher market because they've been set there for so long. Cardinals being a big player in the catcher market because they've been set there for so long. And Wilson Contreras, kind of the polar opposite of at least late career Yachty, just in the sense that he's a bat first guy. So this is going to be maybe just kind of a culture shock for Cardinals fans. I mean, it might be a welcome one in a sense that this will be a big bat coming from the backstop, which has not been the case with Molina lately. But you're going to have some defensive issues and you'll still get a good arm.

He is a strong thrower and he does back picks and he can nab base runners. But the framing and the rest of the job perhaps not so much. And it sounded like Rob Manfred kind of maybe pumped the brakes a bit on the automatic ball strike system in his comments this week. You know, he said there's still a lot to learn. It doesn't sound like it's a done deal that we will see this at the big league level as soon as 2024, but perhaps at some point during the course of this contract, which was part of my rationale for taking the over on his predicted contract, was that maybe some team would say, well, by the time this contract is over, he won't have to frame anymore.

And so he will be more valuable. And in the meantime, or even in the long term, he can DH, he can play a little third, he can play some corner outfield. So he's got a little flexibility there. But yeah, it's going to be a big change to have anyone other than Molina there but right but they went from really having a hole at that position to signing one of the very best hitters and really just all told just the complete package even with the uneven defense one of the best catchers in baseball and the best one who was available at

least just for money so unless you wanted to part with many prospects to try to get sean murphy this was the biggest upgrade you could make so it's it's really a big move for st louis it is right because because otherwise you're looking you know and they have their merits i guess but you know you you dip into the christian vasquez you know homeraya's territory, not just quickly, but immediately. That's the gap. I'm sorry, Ben.

I don't want to keep giving him in the business, and he's already deleted it, but there's been another typo, Ben. Oh, no. What is it? Coe Camels, still only 38, would like to pitch in 2023. His longtime agent, John Boggs, said last pitched in 2020. Is it a bit at this point? That's what we wondered about Nightingale, right?

Is he doing a bit? He deleted it, which makes me think it's not a bit. I guess not, because Bob doesn't always. But if he's thinking like, hey, look at all the engagement Bob gets over here with these typos constantly. But I guess I could get like, hey, if you get a tip, which turns out to be erroneous, but you don't know that yet, that maybe your own judge is going to the Giants, like you're in a lobby with five other newsbreakers and you got to type really fast. I mean, you would think that you might take just a second to proofread that. But look, You would think that you might take just a second to proofread that.

But look, autocorrect can get the best of us at times. So fine. But like Cole Hamill's news is probably not like burning up the wires. Like I got to be first on the Cole Hamill's news. And after being burned by the arson judge the day before, don't you just read it over twice, three times just to make sure? Coke Hamels. Coke Hamels. Oh, gosh. It's great.

It's so good. What were we talking about? Oh, Wilson Contreras. Yeah, like it'll be – sorry, I'm still thinking about Coke Hamels. No, I think you summed it up well. I mean, the exact sort of at least war-based value he's going to generate on the defensive side of the ball will probably depend on the timeline of the robozone. I was so happy to hear, not in person because, again, I had the flu, but that they were like, we've learned a lot about the robo zone. It's taught us we need to learn more about it. I was like, hey, what a measured scientific approach to stuff.

That's great. Thank you for not rushing us into this robot. I mean, maybe they aren't actually worried about the zone. Maybe they're just like, wow, we saw how the chat AI thing. What is it called? Chat GPT. Yeah. What happened during me having the flu?

I'm really glad we're podcasting because it'll help me remember where Judge signed and where Trey Turner ended up. Could just ask chat GPT. I'm sure it would tell you. I'm sure it would, but I don't know what happened. We were all raised on movies that taught us that the robots were going to kill us, and then we became adults, and we were like, let's be their friends and have them take our jobs. Yes.

Anyway, that's neither here nor there, but go rewatch The Terminator, friends. Good flick, especially the second one. The way that she does the shotgun thing will make you a feminist. It's cool. Someone in the Facebook group did a chat GPT transcript of Effectively Wild of like AI Meg and AI Ben bantering. Oh, no. Yeah.

It was – look, it was not great. I don't think it's going to put us out of business. I mean it was on topic. They were like talking about sabermetrics and the upsides and the downsides. Like it all made sense. It was just – it was kind made sense. It was kind of pat. It was sort of rote. It was, I guess, probably ideas we have expressed, hopefully in a more compelling way at some point. So I don't think that the AI is ready to take this job, at least,

and hopefully not our writing and editing jobs just yet. But yeah uh you know not the worst impression i've ever seen so semi-disturbing anyway so contraris's uh old team also made some moves so right i mean they they did sign cody bellinger who got in the end just about what he was due in arbitration. So the estimate was like 18 or so, and he ended up getting 17 and a half, even though it seems like he had half the league after him and that he did have multi-year offers. But he and Scott Boris said that they preferred a single year deal, a pillow contract, try to rebuild his value and then cash in long term. So to get Bellinger for 17 and a half when every other team seems to want him, I mean, I guess it's surprising for people who looked and thought, wait, the Dodgers just cast this guy loose. He got non-tendered and now he's signing for 17 and a half million dollars. But between the offensive bounce back potential and the fact that he still gives you a lot of value in the field and on the bases and everything, and he projects to be basically like a league average player even if he doesn't hit well then there is some value there and of course there's some hope that you can fix him or that he can fix himself in your uniform and then

it will just be a windfall and you'll have the inside track on extending him perhaps although maybe not with scott boris anyway chicago is where we will find out whether Cody Bellinger can be Cody Bellinger again and see the next act of that saga. And that was not the only Cubs signing because they also signed Jameson Tyone for, what was that one? Four years, $64 million, I believe, which was one that neither of us drafted, but could have taken the over on that one too, and that would have worked out for us as it did for him. So I guess you could almost lump together the Tyone deal for 468 and then Tyone Walker signed with the Phillies for a somewhat similar deal for 72, 64 for Tyone. I don't know if I screwed that up. But really, I guess two takeaways from this is that people maybe should have offered more qualifying offers because Walker and Tyone and Hanager did not get qualifying offers.

They got the contracts that they got, but it suggests that even if they had had a qualifying offer attached to them in a draft pick cost that they would have made much more than the qualifying offer amount. So I guess you could say in retrospect, those were miscalculations or underestimates of the market, maybe that they ended up getting so much more than that. Maybe that they ended up getting so much more than that. And it is interesting also that like really people are paying for starting pitching now, even though you expect less and less out of any individual starting pitcher. It's interesting. Like you would think, I mean, you still have to cover the same number of innings in a season, essentially, maybe a few fewer extra innings thanks to the old zombie runner. But beyond that, you still have to have someone pitch those innings, but it's distributed over more pitchers, which I think is one factor, as Rob Maines has noted, that maybe has depressed payrolls and salaries in recent years. And yet pitchers who are at the top of the market or not even quite at the top, mid-rotation guys, they're still cashing in here even though it's not even like, well, we just won an innings-eating 200-innings guy. There are so few of those anymore, and you can't really count on Walker or Tyone to be those guys. So now it's like the new 200 is 170 maybe, like roughly. And yet it doesn't seem like there's any less of a premium associated with starting pitchers. So teams still seem to want these guys quite a bit, even though they use them less and less. So I don't know which of those is a better pitcher or which of those contracts is a better value.

I could kind of go either way. I could see the case for Tyone maybe being the better signing here, given that the terms were even more favorable to the Cubs than Walker's were to the Phillies. But, you know, I guess they're semi-dependable rotation type guys. And both of those teams needed that type of pitcher. Yeah, they did yeah i don't know that i would have gone four years on walker if i were like handing out contracts but i don't know ben i just find myself in this position where i'm really even less than usual struggling to care yeah the extra years or the extra money like clearly the market

is different than what we you know maybe it's just that like everyone's experiencing inflation you know they're all like here we are in an era of inflation but I don't know I appreciate like in the Phillies case like them just saying like you know we didn't win the World Series

last year and that sucked we'd like to try to win it next year you know we didn't win the world series last year and that sucked we'd like to try to win it next year you know so we're gonna go get some dudes like these are the dudes we're going to get because we think that they will help our team be better and we'll worry about what we look like in like i don't know when you and i are in our 90s i guess at a later date and it's not that this stuff doesn't matter and you know there will come a point where i imagine like dave jimbrowski is unable to convince philly's ownership to like keep spending um but we seem to have not brushed up against that cap yet and in the meantime like i think they've rightly diagnosed that they are a team in a really hard division and that one of the ways that they're going to remain competitive in that division especially when you think about how incredibly cost-controlled atlanta's core is

is to spend like that's the way that they're going to deal with that problem and i think in chicago's case like i still i still need to formulate my my sort of theory of the chicago cubs for 2023 i don't i haven't decided how good i think they're going to be. Not that anyone is waiting for the thesis of the Cubs from Meg, but I don't have my thoughts altogether on the Cubs and how good I think they're going to be. But I wouldn't be surprised if they looked around and said, okay, so our division is going to be harder next year in some respects because we're going to play a lot more games against teams

that are trying as opposed to just the central. But everybody's going to have to do that. And what if we kind of start to push in and say, get some of the guys who we think might be useful to us for a couple of years, even if we aren't ready to compete for a wildcard spot next year, like maybe we will be soon. We like this guy. We think he'll help. So I wouldn't be surprised if that is starting to brew a little bit for them, even as we acknowledge that like they just lost their best player to a division rival.

So like, you know, that's gutting. But once they're done feeling sad about that, maybe they will move on to the feeling of like, okay, so what are we going to do? And like figure this out. And this might've been part of their answer there. Man, I need Dave Dombrowski to teach all the other GMs the words he says. Does he use the voice?

Yeah, what is it? So Trey Turner and Walker and also Matt Strom, Red Sox reliever, who maybe has some starting pitcher potential. So they've added all these guys. Who knows if they're done? Who knows if they're ever done? And you can pour one out for Dave Dombrowski's successor in six years and whatever the team will look like at that time and the payroll, who knows? But for now, he's going for it and he's not content with one playoff appearance and even one pennant. And I really I do wonder what it is like. Could he go anywhere and talk any owner into doing this? Or is it just that the teams that hire Dave Dombrowski do so knowing what the expectation is when you hire Dave Dombrowski at this point in his career. And, you know, the entrance interview is, hey, are you going to spend? Because if you're not, then why am I wasting my time with you at this point? Right.

But even so, like, there's got to be some kind of cajoling or sweet talking or berating or like, I wonder what his method is. Berating? Who knows? What are you suggesting? I mean, I don't know what his tactics are. If he were to go to the A's, could he convince John Fisher to spend on someone other than Oled Mestias? Like could he do that?

Does he have that skill? Does it work on anyone or not? Because I almost wonder whether it's maybe he does like a I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed routine, you know because it's like like he's Dave Dombrowski and he's just like this eminence in the game and he's a silver fox and he's distinguished and he's accomplished and he's won titles and he's won pennants and he's been everywhere

and like just imagine if he just was like I'm disappointed in you you know when he gets the budget and it's low and it's this is not up to Dombrowski standards, this is not how I've done business elsewhere. I'm not saying I'm going to denigrate your name, but if this gets out, I mean, I can't help what anyone draws conclusions from this. And I'm the legendary Dave Dombrowski, and I can't believe that you're nickel and diming me here. I would love to know what his tactics are, but whatever they are, I mean, whatever his other shortcomings as GM at this stage or failures of long-term planning or whatever you want to call it, like, just his ability to pry open the pocketbooks and loosen the purse strings here, it's just, it's really impressive.

the pocketbooks and loosen the purse strings here it's just it's really impressive yeah i'm trying to like mentally reconcile the potential domination themes with the silver fox stuff but i mean i think that the the likely answer is that it's a combination not of those things but like a combination of a baseline willingness to spend and the way that he sort of presents the case for roster building, right? Because I think you would be correct to say that like, I'd be surprised if the Cleveland Guardians ever hired Dave Dombrowski, right? Because they understand that part of the skill set and part of the approach is going to be one that deploys financial resources to construct the roster. And I think owners are pretty clear-eyed about what their expectations are,

and there are probably folks who kind of do better from an interview perspective based on their ability to say, I can build you the cheapest potential wildcard contender that you've ever seen, right? And I don't know that they put it exactly that way, but maybe they do. So I think that there are teams where you know if for some reason like dombrowski came loose from philly tomorrow that would just they would not call him to be like hey are you you know still thinking about working in baseball but i i do think that he has a demonstrated capacity to make the case to ownership to to spend And it is certainly one that is taking

advantage, not like in a mischievous or sort of conniving way, but like is speaking to a underlying willingness, but he still has to make the case and he seems to do it in a way that's pretty compelling. So I think it would probably be good for us to think about whether we're starting to or continuing to, to think about that as a skill. Like we should think about it as a skill in the same way that we think about being able to build a hyper-efficient roster as a skill and one that seems to be in fairly short supply. Because maybe if we think about it that way, teams will view it as an inefficiency and then they will hire more people who want to spend you know and i think that you know there are a lot of ways to build a team we've talked about this before right like you can you can be the race it's hard it's a lot harder to be the race in some respects than the dodgers which i don't say to downplay or denigrate the skill that the folks that work for the dodgers bring to bear every day either their players or their staff but. But when you artificially constrain your means of talent acquisition, you do make things harder for yourself and it makes it very important that

you hit on the stuff that you are good at. If you're willing to do a lot of different stuff and you're able to do player dev, if you're able to properly assess and acquire players through trade, and then you're willing to spend on top of that, you just give yourself more safety valves in the event that the prospects you thought were going to be really good don't pan out, or the free agent you signed for a big contract blows out his knee or his elbow or whatever. So I really like it. For the second off-season in a row, Ben, you know what I'm going to say about the Phillies? No notes. I have no notes. I just don't. For the second offseason in a row, Ben, you know what I'm going to say about the Phillies? No notes. I got no notes.

You know? I just don't. I think it's great. I think it's going to be a good, fun time. You know, it doesn't address the, like, specific concerns I have around Reese Hoskins' first base defense, but, like, who cares? Because now they have Trey Turner.

No notes. No notes. No, but I'm saying their decisions this offseason are in some ways addressing the late emerging notes that we maybe developed as time went on. And I think we should also take a moment to recognize the chef's kiss perfect tweet that Taiwan Walker put out. We're spending more time talking about tweets

than I'm frankly comfortable with, but here we are he he tweeted out the like beginning of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air opening credits but I just I'm like you know they seem to identify guys who just like really want to be in Philly and who are good at at making that known you could call it pandering if you if you wanted to and i've maybe called it that with bryce harper before but like at the end of the day everybody seems pretty happy so why do we have to judge it you know why do you gotta judge it yeah so i guess that the contracts that walker and tyone got that's just kind of the going rate for a roughly average starting pitcher at this point so that's that's the market now. Make of that what you will.

And the Phillies projected payroll now. So this puts them, I think, third. Am I right? That puts them third behind the New York teams, the Mets and the Yankees. So, yeah. Yeah, the Mets now are projected to be over $300 million when it comes to the luxury tax projection and just under when it comes to the actual payroll. And that's pending any more moves because they made yet another move. They signed Jose Quintana to a $26 million two-year deal.

And they are just going all in on the oldsters in that rotation. they are just going all in on the oldsters in that rotation so man i mean verlander scherzer as an ancient top two and then carlos carasco and jose quintana as uh well mid-30s i don't want to call it ancient because that's what we are but uh by baseball standards it's getting up there that's your your middle of the rotation so just uh we could call them experienced we could call them seasoned the mets they're veterans they certainly are so they've got moxie in spades moxie yeah i don't know how durable and healthy they will be but yeah they're uh they've been around the block a few times and so now we will see whether the Mets are done or whether Steve Cohen just doesn't care. And he's just going to continue to blow by the Steve Cohen tax and just spend freely because there's still a Brandon Nimmo blowing in the wind and other moves that could be made.

But look, DeGrom left. They got Verlander. they've got Quintana now, they already brought back Diaz. They've been busy, they've done some stuff, and there are still some questions to resolve there. And so we'll see whether Steve Cohen has any limits or any self-imposed limits or whether he's just going to blow everyone out of the water payroll-wise. Maybe. Steve Cohen looked around and he was like have you gotten a load of these san diego padres yeah right if they can do it then they can do it because they're fourth now in projected payroll so yeah almost uh well a good deal lower than

than at least the top one but still yes san diego currently has a like a an 83 million dollar gap between them and the mets in terms of projected payroll and then a little less than that uh in terms of luxury tax stuff right so yeah there is still there is still a gap there you know a team sort of sitting right right in the middle of the pack well siano mariners yeah we don't have to talk about the mariners stuff because you guys already talked about it you talked about colt long i'm just saying everyone should dream big you know have aspirations it's not your money who cares yeah don't worry about 2026 the timing of me saying hey the mariners should should do big stuff if they want to unseat the Astros getting

grief for that and then you know having DeGrom sign with the Rangers like a couple of hours later was well it was funny Ben we'll call it funny how about that and I guess while we're touching on the Rangers here I mentioned in the outro last time that Heaney had signed

I don't know how much more there is to say but I guess this is the Rangers just kind of doubling down on hope and potential and projection and peak as opposed to dependability. So they've got DeGrom, now they've got Heaney. Dan and I talked about them as a potential wildcard team

and really anything else they can do now to supplement what they have pushes them that much closer so heaney i mean he's always tantalizing and talented and just uh doesn't give you a lot of length and a lot of innings or hasn't historically so they're hoping that that will be the case and you know that you won't have to like combine de grom and heaney to get one slot in that rotation that you might actually get something approximating full seasons out of both of them but they've got good stuff not that i'm lumping heaney together with jacob de grom who is in a class of his own but i guess

they have a type here they're they're basically betting on the upside of the volatility in these two right yeah i think that that is a fair assessment it's so interesting to see we have so many like former dodger reclamation projects that are just sitting there to like have us look at at the end of next season i'm sure we won't draw overly broad conclusions from that at all but yeah i still would like them to have more depth, you know, in that rotation. Cause I think that there is tremendous upside. There's also the potential of both of those guys missing like three months of the season.

And so I think that they will need, they'll definitely need to cover innings despite the signings they've made so far and the, and bringing Perez back. But I like it. I like it for a team that has really invested a lot in position players who are going to be around for the long haul. Not that DeGrom's going anywhere anytime soon, but for them to say, we've invested a big chunk of change in this roster. One of the

ways that we might be able to sort of perform over our skis, over our skis is a negative expression. Yes. You know, we might outperform expectations is through variance, positive variance, and that we might see that in these guys. And, you know, if DeGrom is healthy, then he's just the best pitcher on the planet. I love how the Mariners are like,

oh, we don't have to deal with Verlander anymore, but we do have to potentially deal with DeGrom. You'll see DeGrom less often, but he'll be better when you do see him, maybe? Hard to say. Tricky. So we've touched on almost everything. I guess there's the Red Sox, as we noted.

Kenley Jansen, which I'm still just not used to Kenley not being a Dodger, even though I know it's been a while at this point. It still seems wrong, though. It does. But yeah, I guess he'll be in another reddish uniform now. Yeah, there you go. So two years, $32 million, and that's on top of the Chris Martin move that they already

made for similar terms, as I recall. It's all blurring together at this point. Yeah, so many of the same kinds of terms, maybe. Yeah, but they needed bullpen help, and they got some. The most obvious observation I could possibly make about these moves. But yeah, as we speak here, we're still waiting for some sort of smoke to go up to announce Xander Bogarts' destination. Last we heard, there was momentum between bogarts and the red sox whatever that means they are meeting they're in heavy discussions so hopefully uh for red sox fans

the yankees having brought back their big free agent superstar red sox fans are hoping that their team will hold serve there you know it's like we're never going to be able to teach the AI to take something as dry as transactions and make it sound like therapy. You know, we're not going to be able to teach it to do that. And I guess the Rule 5 draft happened like just as we were about to record. So I have no hot Rule 5 draft takes. Sorry, that'll have to wait. There were also draft lottery results well wait we should say

one thing about the rule five sure go ahead i will say one thing about the rule five draft which is interestingly the philadelphia phillies selected noah song from the boston red socks and i will tell our listeners who don't know why that's interesting as opposed to you who obviously does why that's interesting which is that we don't know what noah's log is going to be able to pitch because he was you know he was drafted out of one of the service academies he thought he was going to have an exemption from his mandatory service because of laws that have now changed like four different times hasn't pitched uh at least in a competitive setting as far as we know in a very long time so kind of interesting he'll go on Philly's military list,

and he clearly was left unprotected in the Rule 5. I imagine that Boston thought no one would take him given the lack of clarity there seems to still be around his service requirements, which is sort of strange. But yeah, Noah Song, now a Philadelphia Philly. And the draft lottery, the first draft lottery. This is a feature, at least in theory, of the new CBA that supposedly is designed to deter tanking because you can no longer be confident now that if you're the worst team, you will get the top pick. But I guess the Pirates will not be dissuaded based on the results of what happened here because the Pirates got the top pick. So that was fairly predictable. They didn't have the worst record, right? I guess the Nationals probably had the worst record.

But I think the odds were similar for the bottom few teams there. The big team that lucked out in the draft lottery was the Twins, who were like 13th. So the way it works is that if you don't make the playoffs, then you're in the running here. So even the Brewers were in the field because they just barely missed out on the playoffs. But you get a tiny little sliver of a chance to get the top pick if you're like the last team that was disqualified from playoff competition so the further removed you are from contention the better your odds are it's just not automatic anymore that if you're the worst you get the top pick so the twins who were in line for like what i think like the 13th or something lowest chance at getting it i mean they got to

move up so they were like outside the lottery and they got the fifth overall pick and then the pirates ended up getting the top pick anyway so if this was intended to dissuade bob nutting from continuing to not then it it did not achieve the intended purpose in this particular draft so it's now pittsburgh and then the nationals and then the tigers and then the rangers and then the twins and the ace do you worry about the podcast getting hornier over time i don't worry about that at all in fact i'm excited about it um yeah i don't really have anything else to say they other than what you just said um i think they should do the the thing live though i mean it was cool that that jj cooper of baseball america got like an inside look i'm not saying they're wishing it again yeah how did they did they do like the

the lottery like the ball spinning around and someone pulls it out is i think so i i know that i have like jj's piece open in a tap and i haven't gotten to it yet ben because we had to publish 12 million transaction reacts today i know that he was in the room that is what i'm given to understand but um i don't know i think so i know that they i saw ahead of it that they had been keen to sort of take best practices from other leagues that do lottery style draft order selections up to and including retaining PricewaterhouseCoopers to audit and oversee, I think, the selection so that if there were accusations of impropriety, there was a an outside a third party there to sort of you know make sure everything was above board but yeah i don't know it's a it's it's a

new era it's a new yeah not like the hat people like it's a new time we are in a new condition it's weird. Two years, $33 million with an opt-out after the first year. So I took the under on the predicted deal for Bell just because I felt like this is not the type of player who gets paid anymore. Yeah. And I guess that is somewhat true, but he got a decent deal here. And if he has a great year, then he can opt out and he can kind of put the stain of his San Diego tenure behind him. He did not end the walk year on the up note that he would have wanted. So I never know what to make of Josh Bell, really. Kudos to the Guardians for actually signing someone.

They have already, I guess, maybe been more active on the free agent market than they were last offseason. So it's a bat. It is a big bat in the sense that he is also a large man and he does hit the ball hard. Yeah, he sure does. Sometimes he is actually a good hitter too. Not always, though. So that's the uncertainty. Like he fits like they needed.

It's just a masher, like a dh first base type raker and they got one at least in theory here it's just that really like as bell's ground ball rate goes so goes his wrc plus i suppose like sometimes he just seems to get in these funks where he hits the ball on the ground a lot and And even if he's crushing it, he can only do so much damage. And his fortunes really have fluctuated based on that. And so he started last season great with the Nationals and then finished it terribly with the Padres. And he's been kind of up and down from season to season and team to team. And obviously he's not giving you a ton of value outside the batter's box.

So I guess he basically projects overall as something like an average player. So it's not necessarily a huge difference maker impact type. But if you had put Josh Bell in the Guardians lineup last October, well, if he had been the Padres Josh Bell, then maybe that wouldn't have actually helped. But if he had been career average Josh Bell, then that would have helped. And they just they didn't have really someone who could hit for a ton of power. I mean, they're a team that makes a lot of contact and doesn't have a lot of thump. And I guess he does make a fair amount of contact for someone that you think of as a slugger so he sort of fits the mold in that sense but in no other sense I suppose but but maybe compliments

the mold in ways that they wanted so yeah I get it I get it I think that you know he does confound in the ways that you have described like you you never quite know what version of him you're getting but the good version of him you're getting but the good version of him is very good and i think is an obvious help to them especially since we spent much of their post-season run talking about like wither the home run on the guardians like where where is it we need more of those you need them and they didn't have many of them and now they in theory will have more so I think that it's fine. I think it's fine.

Well, there's some late-breaking news here. Just as we were potentially about to wrap up, Jeff Passan has reported that the Red Sox have come to an agreement with outfielder Masataka Yoshida. Oh. Yeah. So that's interesting. Yeah.

How about that? Mm-hmm. So we were expecting. Yeah. How about that? So we were expecting Bogart's news, maybe, instead we got Yoshida news. So that was fast. Yeah. Because it was long rumored and reported that he was going to be posted, but he was not officially until Tuesday. Today. Today. I'm reading this post. I'm so confused which day he was not officially until Tuesday. Today. Today. I'm reading this post.

I'm so confused which day he was posted. Wednesday. I don't know. Wednesday. He will post on Wednesday. Will post. That is. Reported on Tuesday that he would post on Wednesday.

Which is today. That is today as we speak. Okay. We're settled on what day it is. So that's good. So they wasted no time. No time. So I don't know if they were able to talk prior to the posting or what but uh they got that deal done quick so i guess there were only so many

corner outfielders left at this point on the market i mean with with judge, with Hanager gone, there weren't that many potentially impact corner outfield types. Yeah. I mean, yeah. You imagine that, I mean, like Nimmo will want to stay in center and whatever team signs him will probably sign him with that idea in mind. And then you have what, like Andrew Benintendi? Right. And Conforto, and who knows what you're getting in Conforto at this point

just because of the layoff. So yeah. Interesting. I doubt that he will have exactly that ratio in MLB, but obviously a selective and patient hitter. And, you know, he hit 21 dingers over there. I don't know how well that will translate. But generally, I would say that, like, contactability and patience and all of that, like, that transfers over fairly well i would say power not always it depends if you're shohei otani sure but uh but not in every case however i would think that there's a lot to like in that skill set so yeah yeah he's led mpb

and ops the last two seasons so yeah five years and more than 85 million according to passon and then they have to pay the posting fee which is 15 million so total sort of money spent not all of it goes to yoshida obviously but total money spent around 100 million wow to bring him over from japan so that is a lot. Yeah. I would have probably taken the under on that if that had been on the MLP Trade Reapers Top 50, which I don't know if he was even on there. I don't think he was because that was prior to the official posting. Yes.

Yeah, he has been very consistent. Like he's a 300, 400, 500 guy for, I think, six seasons in a row now. So he's not exactly a slugger. I guess he's topped out at 29 homers in NPB, but he's more just about the contact and getting on base. And I'm sure he'll hit a bunch of doubles in Fenway. But that is, wow, that's a significant deal. And that kind of came together extremely quickly. He's not a big guy. He's like a Pedroia-sized player with an uppercut. And he just kind of doesn't get cheated on his swings. But he's got great plate discipline.

And I would think that even in a more strikeout heavy league with better stuff on the hole, that that would translate fairly well. So intriguing, very intriguing. Intriguing. Wow, I like it. It's amazing how quickly these deals can come together, Ben. I know. Apparently, he was also shifted often according to the Sports Info Solutions scouting report.

And, of course, he will not be shifted. So that may help bolster his average. So that's something. However, according to SIS's defensive evaluations, he is likely limited to only left field. And that is, of course, a tricky left field in Boston. But he's apparently it sounds like he's just going to be a corner out there and he doesn't have a great arm for right field either. So runners will take an extra base against him. So he's been below average, it looks like, on the whole for his career in left field in NPP. So don't expect a whole lot of him defensively, I guess, but they're really obviously banking on the bat translating for those terms.

played a lot of games. I guess he hasn't played every game in the field of late because in the last couple of seasons, he's missed some time. He's DH'd a bit. So like last year, he played left field, SAS says, in 39 of his 119 games and DH'd otherwise, which was partly because of COVID and a hamstring injury, et cetera, but was not really a defensive standout anyway so what with the speeds limitations and and the defensive limitations this is a play for on base ability so i like that kind of player and boston is hoping that that will translate here so how about that just out of the blue lightning bolt big money signing there just to cap off the winter meetings. So somehow while they were having these heavy discussions with Xander Bogarts, they were working out this deal at the same time with Yoshida. So good multitasking.

Multitasking. All right. Well, I think we have just about covered everything unless I refresh MLB Trade Rumors and there's something else that has happened. But 90 million. Now it's 90 million according to John Heyman who actually it looks like managed to – he did not attempt the first name. Did not attempt Masataka but he did nail Yoshida. So congrats to John on that one.

I got very nervous there for a second. Yeah. I don't want to know how he would massacre Masataka. You know, I don't want to know how he would massacre. You know, I don't want to. Boy. All right. So I guess we can close with the past blast as always here and try to get this episode up before five other moves break. Yeah, seriously.

We'll see how we do and how much I have to add in an outro here. We'll see how we do and how much I have to add in an outro here. But this Pass Blast comes from 1939 and from Jacob Pomeranke, director of editorial content for Sabre and Black Sox experts. So this is 1939, the Hall of Hooray. in 1939 with a lavish ceremony in Cooperstown honoring some of the game's greatest stars, including Babe Ruth, Walter Johnson, and Ty Cobb, who showed up late and missed all the photos. But already the grumbling had begun about who deserved to be inducted. So that was a day one bug or feature of the Hall of Fame. And who was left out, as syndicated columnist Joe Williams pointed out in this article that ran in the Knoxville News Sentinel on January 13th, 1939. Quote, we feel the system of immortalizing baseball ivory on exceptional ability alone tends to ignore some of the most celebrated individuals in the sport.

Unless this system is modified, we fear the hull of hoopla is liable to become a handicap to civilization. I think that has probably been borne out in some ways. The Hall of Hoopla. The Hall of Hoopla, a handicap to civilization. Yeah, that's fair, I think, at least in the last decade or so. It will discourage the weak of spirit from ever hoping to crash the sacred portals. And this is contrary to the best interests of humanity. It being generally agreed,

the strong do not need to be encouraged. If necessary, we would have a separate section in the Cooperstown Cathedral for these precious souls who either because of circumstances over which they had no control or because of their own peculiar mental equipment wrote gaudy and bizarre chapters into the history of the game. True, it may be argued that the section would speedily become overcrowded with Brooklyn heroes alone,

but we would dismiss this as flippant. Cy Young and Larry Lajue, also known as Nat Lajue, were remarkable performers and they properly belong in the Hall of Hooray. So he's switching from Hall of Hoopla to Hall of Hooray here. But we seriously doubt they achieved half the headlines that came to Fred Merkle of the Giants the day he failed to touch second base. We shall continue to idolize Mr. Merkle for contributing what is probably the most historic boner the game has ever known. historic boner the game has ever known. Williams also highlighted the contributions, quote-unquote, of other historic boneheads, such as Hank Gowdy, who tripped on his own catcher's mask and dropped a foul ball in the 1924 World Series, and Heine Zimmerman, who chased a runner across home plate

during a rundown in the 1917 World Series. While Cooperstown may not ever create bronze plaques for these characters, the Los Angeles-based baseball reliquary remains alive and well with its quirky Shrine of the Eternals, celebrating the likes of Jim Bouton, Bill Buckner, and Charlie Brown. Last month, the baseball reliquary held its first induction ceremony since the pandemic, honoring Negro League's founder Rube Foster, baseball clown Max Patkin, and broadcaster Bob Costas. We should talk more about the baseball reliquary. Maybe we should do an episode on that because it's when everyone says like it's the Hall of Fame. So if you're famous, you should be in there.

That's what the baseball reliquary is for. That is kind of the need that has evolved to fill. And sometimes it could be someone who's famous and sometimes it can be someone who's notorious and it could be some perpetrators of famous boners but if their names live on forever then they get to be in the baseball reliquary and they achieve a certain type of immortality i think we really should rethink the phrase perpetrator of famous boner i don't know about that one ben maybe maybe maybe you're right i will i'll consider that yeah you know it's funny you you talked about the thirstiness of the podcast lately and i was looking at a recent tweet from katie casey who has been on the show to talk about a

great book unwritten rules about a romance between catchers that is very framing centric and was asked to recommend baseball podcasts and said, number one, effectively wild, informational, often silly. Okay, I'll take it. I'll take number one. And I think those are both accurate. Number two, tipping pitches, socialist, thirsty, and silly. Oh.

So not informational. Sorry, tipping pitches. But they get socialist and they get thirsty as well as silly. We get often silly. We're not always silly. Right. We're just often silly. Yeah.

And then third, batting round, which gets gay, socialist, thirsty, and silly. So we all fit our particular niches i guess we all have varying degrees of silliness but i i envy the thirst that apparently they have exhibited and we have not so if anything we need to ramp up our thirst quotient i guess yeah i mean do i not talk about shohi otani enough is that the problem here i know but like look you do but i just want to say it's you know it's maybe not you thirst for his game you know there are other ways to thirst ben absolutely there are many ways to thirst after shohi otani don't discount any of them that's true i don't know i guess look if anyone's gonna be up

to the challenge of talking about him more it's gonna it's gonna be you all we can hope is that he stops thirsting after crypto eh yes ah i mean look an effectively wild listener was kind enough to mail me a giveaway from an angels game recently that that has shohei otani's face in it you can see it in my my twitter profile picture where my dog grumpkin is sitting on the pillow i am also currently sitting on the pillow so you could say that i am sitting on shohei otani's face right now i had to mute to cough um It was not just an awkward silence. It was a cough muting silence. Yeah, but I want you to know that there was a silence that persisted after that.

Okay. I want you to know that it wasn't just one kind of silence. All right. We'll see if that gets us upgraded to thirsty enough in the next tweet. I don't know. All right. I think we could probably end there before this gets any thirstier

or before any more news breaks. Yes, we will talk about the many baseballs. Yes, yes. The next time. I said I wanted to say some stuff and I do still want to, but we've talked a lot. Yeah, we got to get this out

before there are more deals. So we'll hold it until the next go around. Yes. I've been in contact with Meredith and Bradford who have authored that article just to clarify some points and inquire about some things. So I could use a little time and we will talk next time about that piece. But we'll link to it on the show page for now. so you can be prepared for that discussion. All right, well, we made it to finishing and posting this episode without any other transactions transpiring except for Atlanta trading for a replacement for Kenley Jansen, Joe Jimenez from the Tigers for a couple of prospects. Not missing a beat in that bullpen. However, although we didn't miss many moves, we did miss a Bob Nightingale tweet when we were talking about Nightingale and Heyman somehow amid the arson judge fiasco. I missed this response from Nightingale the following morning. The hashtag Yankees believe Tuesday afternoon that their offer was similar to the hashtag SF Giants, but still don't know yet which direction Stanton would go.

Obviously, it doesn't come close to topping arson judge, but I guess he had to respond in kind. I should also note that it was Bob who reported that the Padres offered Aaron Judge $400 million over 10 years. Ken Rosenthal, in a parenthetical aside in a recent column, said that the Padres clearly have $300 million plus to burn, perhaps $350 million plus. No, they did not offer $400 million to Judge. So we have a dispute between Rosenthal and Nightingale. We report, you decide. Or they report, we report what they reported, you decide. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about which of those reporters is more trustworthy. That'll do it for today. Also wanted to pass along a message from Patreon supporter and recent Effectively Wild guest Peter

Bonney who wrote in to say, before I came on the podcast because I could have looked like a soothsayer, but it's pretty obvious in hindsight that contracts should jump this offseason in both average annual value and years simply because those future dollars cost a lot less in today's terms than they did last offseason. Good point. Or at least I assume so. Peter knows more about finance than I do. That'll do it for today. That is a wrap for the winter meetings. But not for us. This week, we have one more episode to come. For now, though, 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 themselves access

to some perks. Samuel Huff, Lisa Holt, Wyatt Curtis, Jacob Pumrenke. Look at that. He's our past blaster and a Patreon supporter, and Toby Ma, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to monthly bonus episodes, as well as access to the Effectively Wild Discord group, now many more than 900 members strong, and chatting up a storm this week during the winter meetings. The stove is always simmering in the Effectively Wild Discord group. this week during the winter meetings. The stove is always simmering in the Effectively Wild Discord group.

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Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance amid his winter meetings, duties, and travel. And as mentioned before, we will be back soon with one more episode this week. Talk to you then. Sweetest I'd ever seen And the night followed day And the storytellers say That the score braved souls inside

For many a lonely day Sailed across the milky seas Never back, never fear, never cry