Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1944: The Christmas Socks of Free Agents

Episode Date: December 21, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the differences, if any, between a two-year deal with an opt out after the first year and a one-year deal with a player option for a second year, then discuss the Dansby Swanson signing, the destinations of the winter’s top four shortstops, and the state of the Cubs, […]

If you dream of a girl for you, then call us and get two. For the price of Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. So here is a discussion topic that came up in our Patreon Discord group, and it's kind of a pedantic question, but not purely pedantic. I think it's also semi-consequential. Okay.

How do we decide on the terminology of a two-year deal with an opt-out after the first year versus a one-year deal with a player option for the second year? Because we're seeing a whole host of these deals get signed. I think Seth Lugo, Josh Bell, Andrew Heaney, Adam Adovino, Omar Narvaez, there's just a lot of these two-year deals that have an opt-out after the first year. And you could, in theory, describe those as a one-year deal with a player option. It's sort of the same thing either way. You know that they're there for the first year, and then the player can decide what they want to do with the second year. Either they opt out or they opt in. I mean,

it's materially sort of the same. And some of these deals have been described more that way, like Justin Turner's deal with the Red Sox or Matt Carpenter's deal with the Padres. Ken Rosenthal at least has been describing them that way, where he said that Justin Turner's deal is a two-year deal if he exercises the player option for 2024 and a one-year deal if he does not. And then he said that Matt Carpenter, he's guaranteed $12 million for this next year, but he could earn a maximum of $21 million over two years if he exercises the player option and gets his incentives, etc. exercises the player option and gets his incentives, et cetera. So I'm trying to decide why it's described one way or the other, because it does seem like it is usually called a two-year deal with an opt-out more so than a one-year deal with a player option. Maybe there's some

slight distinction between the two, but I think it might actually matter to some extent in some ways the way one frames that. Their effect in terms of what the player's situation is going to be for the following season might end up being, you know, sort of the same distinction without much of a difference. But like they are different mechanisms within the contract, right? You are opting out versus opting in. And so I think you just described them that way. We're about to have 4,000 characters on Twitter. We don't have to be brief. We don't have to.

I don't think it really expends all that much more energy to say he has a two-year option with an opt-out after the first season or a one-year deal with a player option for the following one. But how do you decide what it, or how to structure the contract if it comes down to the structure of the contract, I guess? Oh, that part I don't know. I mean, like, but in terms of describing them, I think that the reason it's important

to maintain the difference actually isn't related as much to, like, the two-year deals, right? But, like, there are contracts that have both things, right? That might have opt-outs or club options is more the combo that you see, right? Where you'll have like a player can opt out after a certain amount of time

and then the potential final year of the deal is a club option that can also, you know what I mean? Like Edwin Diaz has an opt out after two of the seasons in his contract. And then I think there's a club option on the back end of the deal that the Mets could exercise. So I think you just want to use all the words you can. I'm a fan of using a lot of words. Yeah. Our Hall of Fame profiles are so long.

Yeah. Our Hall of Fame profiles are so long. Yeah, I think I read that when Twitter doubled the character count from 140 to 280, the average tweet length didn't actually go up that much. Really? Yeah. I'm shocked by that. If you give me a higher word count, I will probably use more words, which is probably not what I should do. I should just use as many words as I need to say whatever I want to say.

And sometimes shorter is better and brevity is good. But I don't think I'll be tweeting 4,000 character tweets. No, that's just a blog. At that point, just write a – especially for folks like us who work in media, like just write a blog at that point. But you view words like a gas, you know, expanding to occupy. Isn't that how gases work? Expand to occupy space. Yeah. I don't know what that will do to the timeline if we have 4,000 character tweets cluttering things up there. I guess that's one of the least of the problems with Twitter right now.

Yeah. I was going to say the platform is going to be unusable long before they actually implement the 4,000 character. Yeah. So I think this distinction can make a difference in a few ways. So one of our Patreon supporters, Matt, pointed out framing it this way as a two year deal with an opt out turns it into the player chose to leave the team if they opt out as opposed to the player chose to stay with the team if they were described as exercising an option. exercising an option. So maybe it puts the onus on the player differently or changes fan perception of whether they stay or whether they went. And then Mulder Batflip, another Patreon supporter, noted maybe it's an artifact of the clause in the contract, right? So the player is required per the terms to opt out as opposed to having the option to extend the contract terms for an additional period of time. So that's sort of what you were saying. But also pointed out that fans can be fooled into thinking something is a longer term agreement than realistically it is. Like if any Twins fans kind of talk themselves into, hey, we signed Carlos Correa for three years. And I think people who understood what the actual import

of that was were saying from the start, hey, if he has any kind of typical Carl's Gray year here, he's going to be gone. But still, not everyone sees it that way or understands the complexity of contracts. Contracts can get pretty complicated these days. Fortunately, the really, really long ones that we've seen this offseason have mostly been pretty simple. But there's just a lot more creativity and flexibility when it comes to options and opt-outs and all these things. And it's probably good for players to have that freedom.

I'm not knocking the structure of these deals. It's just the way we talk about it, which I think can kind of color fans' expectations for what players are going to do or whose quote-unquote fault it is if someone leaves. So those are considerations. And also, and this might have something to do with it. I asked RJ Anderson of CBS Sports about this, why he thinks these typically get structured

or reported that way. And he said that there are potentially some tricks that play into it. Like if the buyout in the contract is more than 50% or 50% or more the second year, then it's treated as a two-year deal for the purposes of the competitive balance tax. Yeah, so there might be some sort of shenanigans, some sort of bookkeeping stuff that's not totally visible to us, but maybe it's more advantageous in some cases for the team. Yeah, some tricksy accounting. Yeah, to have it be a two-year deal instead of a one-year deal so you can slightly lower your average annual value of the contract or your CPT hit, something like that. So I suspect

something along those lines is going on, but there may be more to it. I will report as I hear more about this very important question, which actually isn't all that important to most people, although it's probably important to the players and the agents and the teams. While you're asking those questions, will you ask them if making it seem like the deal is longer than it actually is, is the motivation for mutual options. Yeah, right. I still am not satisfied, Ben. Yeah. I'm not satisfied.

It does happen. They do get exercised every now and then. Another listener was pointing out that at least as recently as late 2014, the Brewers and Aramis Ramirez, they both exercised a $14 million mutual option for the 2015 season. I don't know if there's been a more recent one, but it has happened at least several times. It's weird. You're describing a couple of mutual options. I don't know if that is several mutual options.

I think there are more examples because there was a fan graphs post by Wendy Thurm a decade ago at this point, and it was headlined, what are mutual options anyway, which is still a very good, relevant question. But there were some other examples in that piece, like the Cubs and Daryl Ward for the 2008 season, or Miguel Olivo and the Royals for the 2009 season. This is turning into remembering some guys. It has. Yeah. The Astros and Brian Moeller for the 2010 season, the Rockies and Jason Giambi for the

2012 season. So I think we're up to several if we include the Matt Belisle Rockies example that I mentioned last time. So I don't know that it has happened recently, but it has happened. Yeah. All right. So we do have some other transactions to catch up on. Some of the two-year deal with an opt-out or one-year deal with a player option variety, but many not. So we can just do a little roundup here because we haven't recorded for some days. And we recorded prior to the Cubs signing Dansby Swanson.

We did. We knew he was going to sign somewhere sometime soon. And that's where he went, which was not a huge shock. Indeed. I think we talked about it as the most likely outcome. Yes, probably. How prescient. So it's seven years. It's $177 million. So I guess one interesting thing is the four top shortstops on the market all change teams. No one stayed where they were. It's just musical shortstops everywhere. And some of them lost one guy and signed another guy or not even that so much really, right?

Because the Red Sox lost Bogarts and they didn't sign one of the top four. And then the Dodgers lost Trey Turner. They didn't sign one of the top four. The Twins lost Carlos Correa. They haven't signed one of the top four. And then Swanson leaves Atlanta and they are, I guess, going to trust Grissom to take over and hold down that spot. So that's kind of surprising, I guess, that none of them stayed where they were or there was no sort of swap of superstar shortstops on the same team. They all went to new destinations. And once the Cubs missed out on the other guys, then there was a ton of pressure on them to get the Swanson deal done.

And they did. And they're also close to re-signing Drew Smiley as we speak. So I guess we should talk a little bit about what we think of Swanson and also what we make of the Cubs at this point, because I'm having a hard time deciding what I think of this roster as currently constituted. So Dansby Swanson coming off a great season, a superstar season, an MVP type season, a season that compared favorably with the other elite shortstops who signed sooner and for bigger deals. So how do you think he stacks up to those guys and

how close can he be to what he was in 2022? Well, I think he is likely to be, well, I think he's likely to be less good than he was in 2022, which doesn't mean that he will be bad, Ben. You know, like there's a lot of room between what he did in 2022 and being bad. And I imagine that he will fall not only in the middle ground,

but like in a place that Cubs fans are pretty excited about, right? That they feel animated by and say, hey, that guy that we signed, he sure is good. But the closest that you can really come at least to the offensive production that he demonstrated this year is the shortened 2020 season, right? He played in all 60 games he posted a 115 wrc plus he hit 274 345 464 he certainly did that over a much larger sampling of games indeed he played in every braves game this past season so i think that if you are cubs fan and you're like meg allow me to be optimistic after sometimes being quite frustrated with ownership's approach to

assembling this baseball team. I would say that what you seem to be getting in Dansby Swanson is a guy who is quite durable and has taken strides with the bat. We'll have to see how sustained they are and is a good defensive player, although he, again, had quite the year, Ben. defensive player although he again had quite the year ben he was he was quite good by the metrics so you know i think that there is enough room in what he has done here to say there might be a touch of aggression both at the plate and in the field but that you know he's he's 28 and he's a durable guy and he's a good contributor and he allows you to put together one heck of a middle infield, even if he isn't quite as sterling in the field as he was this year. And so, you know, I think I would say good for Dansby Swanson.

He exceeded my expectations in terms of how much money he would garner and how many years, but who isn't that true for this offseason, right? Like, I think it's totally fine. And I think that they're an interesting team like you. I don't quite know like what I think of the Cubs just yet. Like they certainly have pieces of a good team and then they still have work to do. But I appreciate them taking the approach of saying like you know they clearly made the determination because you don't give a guy seven years and 177 million dollars if this

isn't your determination that danis b swanson is someone who they want in the fold for a long time that he's going to be a part of the next good cubs team and that they clearly think that they are if not on the verge of that in 2023 sort of within shouting distance of it in the years to come because you don't sign a guy to just be like, all of your prime production years we're going to be indifferent toward. And they have a lot of payroll space coming loose next year, so they'll have opportunities to spend. I think that if you're a central team, even with a balanced schedule,

your approach should always just be like, what if we tried though? Because if we do that, we might just win this division. I mean, I still think that they are not as good as either the Cardinals or the Brewers, but as Dan noted in his Zips projections, I'd also like to, Dan goofed and attributed Wade Miley to the Cubs

as like a still active player and he is not. And then his editor, that's me, also goofed and we made the same brain mistake which is wade miley and drew smiley sound the same yeah so apologies readers that was a double goof on the on the part of the fan graphs team but you know like they as dan noted if injury stuff goes a bad way for the other reasonable teams in the central and stuff goes okay for the Cubs, they'll be in that mix. I think that when you look at their roster, I'd have some concerns about this rotation, even with Tyon in the mix. I think that they, like I said, have room to improve places, but I don't know. I like it. I don't know about these Cubs, man. I just don't know about them.

Me neither. Yeah. I don't know what to make of them, but I think I like a lot of the stuff. Like, it could be fine, you know? Yeah. If they hadn't gotten Swanson, then there would have been wailing and gnashing of teeth and justifiably so. And there should be, yeah. Yes.

Ricketts promised that they were going to be active. Yeah. They've been somewhat active now. Yeah. And I like Nico Horner, who was their incumbent shortstop. And if you look at some projections, at least there's not a lot of daylight between Horner and Swanson, but you can shift Horner over and then you've got great middle infield defense and you have Cody Bellinger up the middle. So that's a hope, I guess, if you are banking on the Cubs exceeding expectations, maybe is that the defense, which often goes unsung or overlooked, maybe that will be really solid in a way that could propel them higher than you'd think just kind of looking at the other numbers on that roster. like a one-year wonder. I mean, he might be a one-year wonder as a superstar type player

potentially, but there's a lot to like. He's only 28. He'll turn 29 in February. So you can sort of look ahead a few years to when the Cubs are hopefully graduating guys and he can still be projected as your starting shortstop at that point. It's not like he's going to have to move imminently. And he's never been a great hitter, but he's gotten better. And he does hit the ball hard. And he also strikes out a lot. And there's been sort of a sense that maybe there's more in his bat than there's been. And he has gotten to the power more than he used to. So there are things to like, like he's not super patient and he's very much a fastball hitter, just like to the exclusion of everything else, especially sliders. So he's limited in some ways offensively, but on the whole,

fairly solid and dependable. And you could dream on a little bit more out of him than he has given you on a career level thus far. So there's a lot to like, even if the defense isn't as spectacular as StatCast would have you believe. His arm's not spectacular, certainly. But yeah, it's a solid player, right? And you didn't have to sign him for 11 years or 300 million. It still sounds like a lot, seven years and 177. But in the context of this market, it's not. And also the Cubs have tons of money and they would have you believe that they don't at times. And they might not spend all the money that they do have, but they do seem to have a lot of it. So when I look at that roster, there are some pretty glaring holes. And I'm sort of sad as a big Nick Madrigal fan that he just doesn't really have a place on this roster right now, or at least a starting spot. And maybe he will get traded again. Who knows? Maybe the ship has sailed. I still have hope that he could hit at some point. He did kind of hit when he came back last year before he got hurt again. I'm clutching at straws at this point.

So I like Seiya Suzuki. I think he could be potentially better than he was in his first season. But I don't know. Everyone on the roster is like, yeah, he's kind of good. If Dansby Swanson is the best player on your team, that's not great. Yeah. Really? It would be okay if he was as good as he was last year.

But if he's as good as he's projected to be, which is good, but not amazing, then that's not the greatest start. And that's sort of the problem. When I look at the roster, there's not like a lot of elite talent. And then you just lost Wilson Contreras to your division rival, so there's sort of a hole at least offensively there

and there's just kind of a lot of... I can't believe you talk about Jan Gomes that way. I know. Sorry. But there's a lot of like wishing and hoping and wish casting when you look at that lineup and penciled in at fifth in the lineup according to roster resource right now is cody bellinger which hey if you have the bellinger

bounce back great if not not so great and then you're hoping that you can continue to get good work out of christopher morell and that matt mervis is really good yeah kind of coming out of nowhere so nervous yeah i kind of i like the of the lineup, but it feels like it never quite gets to like the heart of the lineup, the meat of the lineup. And then the bottom of the lineup is also somewhat disconcerting. And then I think the rotation. But other than that, everything is fine. Yeah.

Except for the bullpen, which look, who knows anything about bullpens? I know they signed Brad Boxberger, but not a lot of really recognizable names in the mix there, which doesn't Hendricks and his offseason velocity program that I think I read about that maybe he's up to like 89 now and that makes all the difference. Who knows? Justin Steele is decent. Everyone there is kind of like at least three or so guys are like, OK, I'm happy to have this guy in the middle of my rotation. But where's the top of my rotation, but where's the top of my rotation? So it's not really there either. So unless they have more rabbits to pull out of hats at this point, and there's not a ton

of high ceiling talent left on the free agent market, if you go get Nathan Evaldi or something, maybe, or if you pull out a trade somehow. Otherwise, as they stand right now, they don't seem like really a competitor for the Cardinals and the Brewers to me. I mean, they could be if everything broke right and things broke wrong for the other competitors. It's not out of the question. And it's not like there's a super team in that division that they couldn't hope to compete with. But as you look at it right now, it seems like you're looking at this team and kind of comparing the Cubs to the other teams that are going for your wildcard spot, maybe your third wildcard spot. And I think Dan in his Zips post said that they project to be a roughly 500-ish team. And if that's the case, then that's all you really have to do to get within striking

distance for a playoff berth at this point so it could happen like they've gotten close enough now that you could squint and see it which is progress yeah i think that that is right like you want to get you want to get to a point as a franchise i think where you're you're not counting on misfortune befalling your foes in order to be in a competitive spot. But being in a position where if things break well for you, if a couple of the guys who have either flashed in prior years continue to flash or somebody takes a step forward or surprises you, that piece of it is good.

You just want to be in a spot where we're looking at the roster and going, you've got more than average with some good to very good sprinkled in here, right? Like the average part is important. A lot of teams fall down because they don't have quality depth that can kind of bolster the roster when guys ahead of them either underperform or get hurt or what have you. But there isn't a ton here where you're looking at it and going like yeah this guy would be like one of the best guys on a more competitive

team and you want i think there to be more of that than the cubs are showing right now but part of the way you head towards stuff like that is through you know signing guys like danis b swanson so yeah you know it's a mixed bag like i don't want to let this doesn't say to me like this is a team that doesn't care about potentially competing which hasn't been something we can always say about the cubs in recent years which is wild like you know you're sitting you were talking about how there's just you get past the top of the lineup and it's not what it was and then i like, it was that so recently. Like within such recent memory, you were like, wow, that Cubs lineup, man, it's killer. And we're not there, but we're closer

than we were a couple of days ago. So that's something. Elsewhere in Chicago, Andrew Benintendi blew up your free agent contracts over under draft by siding with the White Sox for 75 million over five years. Yeah. So that's something. It is something. Yeah. It's not where I would have expected the number to be when the offseason started. Having seen everything that has happened since, almost nothing surprises me at this point.

And so if you project him as roughly an average player, which would be reasonable to do, and you factor in that he'sitenti. He had a decent season before he got hurt. And it he will hit for more in his new ballpark than in his old ones. And he also depends on BABIP, and he has lost some speed seemingly. His sprint speeds are just down, down, down. And that's kind of concerning both offensively and defensively. But the White Sox needed someone, right? They needed someone to play that position. And I guess they needed someone with his skill set, like to the extent that it matters having complementary skills and hitters in the lineup that could use some on-base ability. And there's

Andrew Benintendi. So they could have spent that money maybe elsewhere or at some other point on someone who might excite you a bit more. But I guess the time to criticize them for not spending is not after they dropped $75 million on the true pen tendie, although I guess you can still quibble with the way they decided to spend it. Right. That's the deal yeah it's you know it's like a partial credit kind of situation for me you know this is sort of how i oh i'm gonna i'm gonna say something and i want the white socks fans listening to to know that it is a limited comp okay it's a limited comp so don't it's okay don't freak out it's a limited comp there So don't, it's okay. Don't freak out. It's a limited comp. There are ways in which it reminds me

of the Colorado Rockies in so far as like, and it's better than the Rockies, right? Because to your point, they needed to sign someone to play out there, right? And Andrew Benintendi isn't a reliever. So it's also different from the Rockies and where they tend to spend money in an important way. And I think the upside of the signing is better than it is for a lot of the Rockies signings.

But it's like it's one of those times when a team like they spend money and we we want them to spend money in service of making their teams better. Right. And to deploy resources to try to put a more engaging and competitive product on the field. But like there's a reality with teams like Chicago, and by that I mean the White Sox, where I think that we can say that we have a realistic sort of, we can make a realistic guess about how much more spending might come because they don't tend to spend a lot, right? They make a point of not. I think I read somewhere that this was the biggest, one of their biggest free agent deals ever. Yes, I think so.

Might be the biggest, in fact, the biggest. Yeah, inflation unadjusted at least. Sure, right. Sure, sure. And so I think that teams like the White Sox put us in a weird spot because, like you're right, I don't want to knock them immediately upon them having spent, which is a thing that we've said that they should do, but knowing that they are not likely to run a super big payroll

even with this signing under their belts, and certainly not one that is going to remotely rival any of the clubs that we've talked about this offseason when we've been like, how high can they go? And made big sounds. That it becomes important to maybe do a little bit better than a fine player, a goodish player, right? Particularly when you look at Benintendi, where his ability to create value at the plate is pretty narrow. And so he might continue to do that. Some of the, you know, like he's an on-base guy

and there are a couple ways to do that. But with the speed slipping, which is part of that piece of his game, like there just are downside scenarios where you look around in a couple years and you're like, eh, like Andrew Benetton, he's just like a below average bat, an okay defender, and he's not contributing a ton on the base pass. And then, you know, you're sitting there going,

well, they're not going to spend another $75 million on one guy maybe. So that seems like they kind of missed an opportunity to deploy those resources as optimally as possible and we want them to continue to spend like part of part of why we always say like it's good when teams spend is that if they've demonstrated a willingness to do that like the margin their margin for error is just greater because if any individual signing doesn't pan out the way you want it to, which happens in baseball, that doesn't mean that that's going to be the end of them utilizing payroll.

So when you have a team like Chicago where it seems like it might be, signings like this make me kind of nervous. It's interesting to think about him in sort of conversation with some of the other like, you know, guys who have signed. And it's like if they had been willing to spend a little bit more, would they have been able to get someone slightly higher profile? But then you can think about how like, you know, the Red Sox spent more than this to sign yoshida and like one of his like kind of recurring comps has been intended so you know there i guess there are ways that they could have spent more to get the same guy you know than they did we don't talk that much about

opportunity costs when it comes to contracts anymore, at least monetarily, because it just seems like everyone has all the money. And so who cares about the average annual value anymore, at least relative to the way that we used to talk about these things and analyze these things in terms of, oh, you could have gotten this guy for a little less money per year than that guy. Now that doesn't seem to matter all that much. But for some teams that operate as if it does, then it does. Yeah, then maybe it does. And also, if you just don't think the player is a great fit, or you just don really, the fact that that was juxtaposed, at least in my mind, with another AL Central outfielder move, the Twins signed Joey Gallo for one year and $11 million. And those guys are just sort of linked in my mind, even though they are very dissimilar as players, but they're linked in my mind mostly because the Yankees had both

this past year and they decided they wanted to move away from Gallo and get Benintendi, but also because if you just asked me like a year ago or a year and a half, but even a year, if they would have gotten these kind of contracts respectively, if Joey Gallo would have gotten a one-year deal for $11 million and Andrew Benintendi would get a five-year deal for $75 million. Gallo was twice as good or twice as valuable as Benintendi, if not better than that, prior to this past season that was so disastrous and his previous half season, I guess, ever since he's left Texas, essentially. He's kind of in the Bellinger camp of, well, maybe he's not quite as much of a drain on your performance and your production as you would think, just given the bat, because his defense and base

running, et cetera, are surprisingly good. But other than that, what a difference a year makes and the trajectory is just completely different there because Gallo has just seemed sort of broken, broken by New York, broken by whatever else, broken by pitchers and just kind of crossing a threshold into not making enough contact to make his game work anymore. And so I guess the hope is that either you can get him making slightly more contact, not a lot of contact, just like an acceptable for Joey Gallo kind of contact, or maybe you hope that the rare times that he does make contact now, the shift is banned or at least, you know, the full overshift.

And Gallo was always hitting into that. So maybe that helps him here and there. Maybe that gets him over the playability bar. I don't know. It doesn't cut down on the strikeouts, though. It does not. Although, as Russell Carlton has pointed out. It's not going to knock his strikeout rate down 20 points or anything like that.

No, but some hitters are more prone to strikeout when the shift is on. That is a fair point. Maybe it gets in their head or they're just trying to adjust their approach or whatever. I don't know that Joey Gallo was trying to adjust his approach. But yeah, with him, that's like the difference between a 40% strikeout rate and a 39% or maybe I'm being generous. I don't know. Yeah, it's a drop in the bucket. So it struck me just because they both went to the AL Central on just dramatically different terms.

They both went to the AL Central on just dramatically different terms. And if you had asked me as recently as a year ago or even more recently, I might have said I would rather have Gallo than Andrew Benintendi. It's possible that that could still be the case, but that's quite a disparity in terms anyway. Does it surprise you at all. Do you have any doubts, by the way, I meant to mention about the Braves entrusting shortstop to Von Grissom, who is very young and really hit the ground running as every Braves rookie did in 2022, but just didn't have a ton of upper level minor league experience, played 41 games for the big club, did great. And obviously they've had no trouble trusting young players and rookies with prominent roles, but they are really kind of saying, okay, we'll let Swanson leave and this is your job to keep now Von Grissom. So it's a lot of pressure, but maybe he is quite equipped to handle that. The projections are pretty rosy. Yeah. i think you just laid out all the things that i would possibly say in answer to your question um i think that it could be fine i think that it is a lot to

ask i think that there is reason to believe based on the limited play that we have seen at the big league level that he might be up to that task. I think they better be right. But also the flip side of that is that, you know, I just spent 10 minutes talking about how I think that 2022 was in some ways like an aberration as far as Swanson is concerned. So like is the gap between what he would have regressed to and where Grissom ends up over a full season's worth of play, like is that gap sufficiently narrow that shortstop isn't a problem for them?

Sure. I could definitely see that being true. Like this is a guy who you're right. Doesn't have a ton of upper minors experience, but performed reasonably well at double ALP to 98 point appearances. Wow. It sure is a, it's like a real,

it's a real directional bet they're making there. But I guess one might look at his 156 plate appearances in the big leagues and be encouraged. And one might also say he ran a 350 BABIP over that stretch. Will that look like what his production is in the bigs going forward? Anyone? No? I don't know. i don't know i know that um he projects for about two and a half wins at least by you know by our projections so far our

depth chart projections i don't believe are are folding in zips just yet the difference there is probably it's a playing time one if anyone's like listening along and has navigated to his fan graphs page and it's like well why is steamer in the depth chart projection different if zips isn't in there and it's because of the playing time but i mean they have a lot of other options here but yeah at least they have like orlando arcia's around as a veteran like booing the lineup they have uh Yes, signing someone else. Yeah. Or yes, it's a deep lineup as it is. So they could kind of live with a little less offense

than they got out of Grissom this past year. Yeah. Anyway, good luck, Rook. It's just your job to lose. Yeah. We've seen very recently that there are ways that rookies can, like, you know, like think about Jeremy Pena, right? Like Jeremy Pena had to shoulder the burden of taking over for Carlos Correa. And like he stopped being able to do that quite as well as he did early in the season with the bat later on.

Like he ended up being kind of a league average hitter. But he was like a good, you know, he was a good, he was a really good defender and so it bolstered his value but he he had played a little more in the upper man i don't know man like we're gonna we're gonna see that's why they play the games ben yes yeah pena was older considerably older and of course he got his mojo back at the end of the year and certainly in the playoffs. Oh, did he? Did he? As I recall. Yeah. Did he now?

I don't know if you remember anything specific. But yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I guess Grissom will probably be next up on the extension list, right? He hasn't signed one yet, right? He's under team control forever just because he's so young. Correct. But, you know, they sign him up early over there.

Yeah, they sure do. Okay. So a couple other moves maybe we should mention. So the Mets and the Padres, they're not quite done yet. They keep adding minor for them moves, but still somewhat significant. So the Mets have added Omar Narvaez to the mix. Adam Adovino is back. Omar Narvaez to the mix. Adam Adovino is back. And the Padres have signed up Seth Lugo, who leaves the Mets, and also Matt Carpenter and another catcher. They got another catcher too,

Pedro Severino. So you keep wondering, are they done? Have they hit their max? And nope. So they're just kind of climbing the payroll leaderboard or I guess not even climbing at this point, but just raising their numbers because they're already up there. So no limits, at least no practical limits. Here's the part of it that I find so fascinating, Ben. They still only have 38 guys on their 40, man. How is did they like are they hiding some of them the padres yeah yeah doesn't it feel like they have like they should have like 47 yeah it feels like they have no fewer than 50 guys on their 40 man roster you know so it feels like yeah yeah and look carpenter is intriguing obviously coming off what he did before he got hurt for the Yankees last year and his swing rebuild. And that's just another thumper in that lineup, potentially, if he can be anything close to, Adovino 214, Lugo 215, Carpenter

I guess is 112 and again some of these are like the are they two years or are they one year kind of deal but it's good to get someone like Lugo because they lost a couple starters granted they didn't get a ton out of the guys that they lost like Naya or clevenger but they had some work to do in the pitching staff and also the dodgers wanted him which it's always sweet if you can steal someone from your division rival who you're projected to be neck and neck with in fact so neck and neck that the addition of seth lugo has jumped the padres projected starting pitcher war past the Dodgers. They're both kind of middle of the pack or a little bit better than that, and it's a meaningless distinction.

It's like less than one war. But still, that's how close they are. So if you can get that guy and keep him from going to your division rival, like Lugo seems like someone who would have been great depth for the Dodgers because we talked about some of the undependable but good options in that Dodgers rotation. And he can be that great sort of swingman type, although I guess he's hoping to start more in San Diego, which he's probably earned at this point. So it's a kind of signing that doesn't make the headlines that some of these teams' other moves have made. But I think that could be some some really valuable depth at some point this season.

Yeah, they're the moves that tend to get lost in the shuffle, particularly in off seasons like this. We have so many guys signing big contracts, never mind contracts that are going to last until like we're middle aged. But I think that they end up being incredibly important because guys just get hurt or guys underperform. I mean, I don't know what, speaking of guys who you don't know what they're going to be like next year, I don't know what Matt Carpenter is going to be, but if he's anything like he was, cool, that's really valuable depth.

Every team needs more pitchers than they are budgeted for. Every team would like to have more spots on the roster for guys, even if they couldn't have them active every day just because they know they're going to end up needing them. So it's less sexy, but it's like, you know, like we'll use a holiday analogy. It's like getting socks for a holiday, right? It's not, you know, it's not the flashiest present that you could get. And maybe when you open it, you're like another pair of socks. But then you go through your sock drawer and you're like i should have thrown some of these socks away

why are these socks still in here why do i keep washing them and putting them back in the drawer when they have holes in them and then you finally do a culling because it's the new year and you're trying to have like a refreshed presence in the world and you have these socks you got for christmas and you're like i'm so happy to have these socks I needed them and that's what it's like Ben and then you know it's 120 degrees in the middle of the summer and you don't wear socks for six months the analogy starts to break down but what I'm saying is perfect up to that point yeah like Seth Lugo is socks that's kind of underrating Seth Lugo but like you know what I mean it's like you need socks

there are some guys who don't wear socks and I always I look askance at them when they don't wear socks frankly I'm not like I don't have very strong opinions about wardrobes and fashion and style and dress but the whole look where you wear like

dress pants and then no socks or like socks so short that you can't see the socks if The whole look where you wear like dress pants and then no socks. Yeah, you're not into that. Socks so short that you can't see the socks if they're there. Yeah, I don't love that. Like putting aside the whole like hygiene issue about feet and socks and shoes and all of that, just the look of it. It doesn't tickle me. It's not for you.

No, it's not. Yeah. Seth Lugo, I'm really sorry if you think that the sock thing is insolent. I really love a good pair of socks. So I mean it in a praising sort of way. You're just like really, you know, you're important to the ensemble even if you're not the flashiest piece of it. Maybe that's a better way of me making this work

as like a description of roster building. It's not the thing that you're gonna notice first but to your point if you see someone sit down and they reveal a bare ankle under dress pants you're going what is that about whereas if they have socks you're like normal person you know that's what it's like exactly yeah it's got a great curveball too yeah there's that and i guess the only really other notable move or or series of moves the dodgers and Red Sox essentially swapped DHs. Yeah, they sure did, didn't they? This was sort of fun because these are two players who were kind of linked in my mind.

So J.D. Martinez went from Boston to L.A. and then Justin Turner went from L.A. to Boston basically to replace J.D. Martinez and maybe play some first base too. So these guys, they are kind of linked for me just because they were a couple of the forerunners, the most front-facing members of sort of the flyball revolution or even just kind of like the swing change mid-career reinvention kind of movement, I think of them. And I think that is maybe part of why JDM wants to go to the Dodgers, because he can be reunited with Robert Benz Goyak, right? His former hitting coach and now hitting coach again. And Mookie Betts as well. And he's just, even when he's not hitting as well, he's a very smart hitter.

And he seems to have some ability to make players around him better by breaking down their swing. So he's giving you some extra value there. The rare value that I really do feel probably doesn't show up in the box score, or at least is not attributed to J.D. Martinez when it shows up in the box score and is not captured in his war. But if anyone has that kind of ancillary value of being basically an extra coach, not that teams have any shortage of big league coaches these days, but sometimes coming from a peer, coming from a player, a message probably penetrates more than it could from a coach. So that's good. And also he's still a pretty good hitter. Like he's not as good a hitter. He's coming off a down year for him when he was still like 20% better than we average, just didn't have the pop

that he has had. Perhaps he can recapture it. But if not, he's going to give you some good professional at-bats, just like Justin Turner is in Boston now. And Turner, he started super slow. And I think maybe he blamed that a bit on the lockout and being an older guy and taking some time to get started. But then he just went gangbusters down the stretch and looked like his old self or his young self in his old body again. So still some juice left in these bats potentially.

So they just sort of swapped him. That's basically how it worked yeah and you know like turner can unlike unlike martinez i guess the most notable place where there's divergence is that like if pressed he could field right where you don't want to you just don't want to entertain that with jd martinez which is fine because he does other things well but you know if he you know they need to give devor some time off at third like he can handle stuff over there. He could probably even play a little first base if need be. There's other stuff

that he can contribute other than the bat, but I imagine the bat is the selling point. I am a little nervous about one thing about Justin Turner with the Red Sox. Are you ready? Yes. Sometimes they wear the tops that are red and then he has the red beard and it's

like how's that gonna look i worry yeah you know again we're not fashion people but it's like yeah you know when andy dalton was a bangle this was a problem this was i know that that's a football reference so it's not in your wheelhouse but it was a clash you know and so they're gonna have to avoid the red all red tops i think um in indifference to the beard because it's you'd think it might be matching but it's not though no it's like it's just different shades right it's close and but it's not the same and so then you look at it and you're like i don't know about that and i could be wrong but you know it's like if he's if he ever crouched down and he put his beard by the little red number on the Dodgers uniform, did anyone go, ah?

This is the kind of analysis you expect from Effectively Wild. So here I am giving it to you. Is he like socks or not so much like socks? I don't know what he's like. I don't think he's like socks. Yeah. Orange socks, it's a loud choice. Loud.

Yeah, it is a loud choice. Unless it's a loud choice but loud yeah it is a loud choice i don't you know i don't want to be too harsh on orange as a color because i don't think that i look good in orange and i don't want but that doesn't mean other people look bad in orange it just means that i don't look good in orange although a lot of the orange in professional sports you know when you go with the all orange top it's like are you wearing a jersey or are you a traffic cone? Who could say? Yeah.

Yeah. The Red Sox are sort of hard to figure because losing Bogarts the way they did, that produces one perception of their offseason. And then you look at other things they've done. And I guess this is really largely a lateral move here, swapping Martinez for Turner. But then there was the Yoshida deal, which surpassed everyone's expectations for what he might make. And then Chris Martin and Kenley Jansen, like they've been doing some stuff. an absence of a cohesive philosophy or approach or at least explanation so that we can understand exactly what the plan is here and whether there is one.

Yeah. Which I remember that being an issue. I think there was some Alex Spear reporting about internally the Red Sox front office people or scouts or whoever, they were kind of confused about like, what's our strategy here at the deadline? Because like they traded away Christian Vasquez, but then they also added some players. And it's like, what are we, how do we define ourselves here? And I think Heimblum is all about not really defining yourself and being flexible and being

able to sort of sell and buy at the same time and just do whatever move makes the most sense. But it is just kind of hard to figure from the outside. And obviously, we talked about Bogarts and bets ad nauseum, so we don't have to rehash all of that. But they spend on some guys, at least. So it's kind of confusing. It's a really weird org. It's like they seem conflicted internally about what they really want to be. They can't because reducing

cost is such an obvious motivator, but one that they on some level know to be a distasteful motivator. They can't like really talk super honestly about that piece of it. And so there ends up being like weird platitudes about it and then that doesn't really make sense and i don't know they're strange they're strange org you know it feels like they've like like they don't properly understand or want to reckon with like who their real peers within baseball should be in terms of other teams like i I know that there is raised DNA in that organization now, but it's like, you're the Red Sox.

Like the rays aren't your, that's not your comp, or at least that's not the comp that your revenue and market share and stuff suggested should be. So I don't know. They're weird. I wish that they would, I wish they would be comprehensible in a more fun way.

Cause right now, like the, the animating purpose seems to be being able to say they tried while not spending a whole lot. And it's like some of the rhetoric that's coming out of that front office around getting a Devers deal done makes it sound like they're kind of preparing their fans for another future disappointment. And it would be nice if that didn't happen.

But like, if you're Raphael Devers, do you want to stay in Boston at this point? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know. I mean, I guess we're going to find out, but it's just so, I don't know, it's an odd one. I don't love it. And while we're wishing things for AL East teams, the Orioles have made some moves, but they're just, if you thought Andrew Benintendi was unexciting, how do you feel about Adam Frazier for one year and eight million, Michael Givens back in Baltimore for one year and five million, Kyle Gibson, what was that, one year and 10 million? I forget the terms because it's Kyle Gibson. Kyle Gibson. They're kind of just making these moves around the margins. Dan Siborski wrote about the Frazier signing and made the case that it may not even actually make them better compared

to the options that they had in-house. But also, just like, look, I don't know that they are prepared to win that division, but it's not inconceivable that certainly they could contend for the wildcard because they just did. And you would think that they'd be getting better and they have more prospects on the way. And they just had a huge leap forward and they surpassed everyone's expectations. So sort of the old Bill James plexiglass principle, if you have a huge step forward, then you might expect some step back the following season. Although in their case, you can kind of project, okay, we have a full season now of all these great blue chip prospects

we promoted during the year. And also we have more on the way. So that might make up for some regression, but also you can make up for regression by signing some guys and making your team better. And they have made these marginal moves, not the kind of moves that say, let's build on the excitement that we generated here. And they have the second lowest projected payroll for 2023. And not only that, but they have essentially no commitments beyond that. Obviously, their young guys will be arbitration eligible at some point. like in terms of 2024 commitments they're down at two million right so that is the least of any team and then zero in years beyond that so like don't spend indiscriminately like pick your spots like set your targets like go get your guys. But there were some pretty attractive, appealing players on the market this winter where even if you don't think that you're fully ready to be the team you want to be yet, like you could project them still to be good when you're that team in say two years. And also in the meantime, you're still like a legitimate wildcard contender if you add to that roster. So I would like to see them kind of capitalize on the excitement that they generated last year and say, hey, yeah, we're for real now.

Like you can buy into the Baltimore Orioles and we're going to buy some new Baltimore Orioles that you can get excited about. So I hope that they will spend at some point like obviously, obviously, they have had some ownership drama and uncertainty, and I don't know how much that's playing into this, but you'd like to see them splurge at some point because they've got this great young core. So this seems to be the time to start supplementing. Right. See, like, you don't want Sox to be your whole holiday haul is the thing, right? Like, Adam Frazier, I mean, like, I kind of agree with Dan, but like, you know, Kyle Gibson is, well, okay,

maybe he's not fine, but like, you know what I mean? Like having these depth and supplemental pieces is like, that's good, but do other stuff too, right? You don't want your whole holiday haul to be socks. That's sort of underwhelming. You know, it's like um you have to assemble the rest of the outfit i don't know if this really holds as like a way of thinking about roster building but like it's uh you know if what you're wanting is to get spiffy right to

get spiffed up to go celebrate something your outfit's not coming together around the socks you need to have them but it's not gonna be even if they're coming together around the socks you need to have them but it's not gonna be even if they're like fun christmas socks you know or like they got little the centerpiece yeah yeah they're not the centerpiece even if they're festive even if they have little like i have a pair of halloween socks and it has little ghosties and they're each all dressed different you know like some of them are vampire ghosties and one of them is a pirate but that's not a costume. Anyway, close.

Let's use them to understand baseball. Yeah. And the Astros re-signed Michael Brantley. I guess we should mention that. One year, $12 million. I love Michael Brantley. That is true. Everyone loves Michael Brantley. Man, yeah, they do.

It's just like speaking of professional hitters, whatever the heck that means. He's like the leading guy who gets mentioned as a professional hitter, I think, and also a pure hitter, all these nebulous terms. But he's just he's really fun. Like, he's just he's got a he's got a good idea up there, as they say. Like, he's sort of self-possessed. Like, he's got an approach. He makes contact. He gets on base.

approach. He makes contact. He gets on base. And all of that is subject to his shoulder being functional, which is why he got a one-year $12 million deal here. So you hope that he's the same player that he was before that injury in absence. But I guess they know enough to think that he potentially could be. So I like any lineup with Michael Brantley better than that lineup without Michael Brantley, assuming he's healthy and still good. Yeah, I agree. I think that we saw in the postseason in particular the ways in which they really missed him in their lineup. He's just, you know, there's injury risk and all that stuff. But like when he's right, he's just one of the most he's just one of the most enjoyable hitters to watch in baseball. And everybody seems to watch in baseball and uh

everybody seems to really like him and seems good yep and i really have uh not a ton to say about the other smattering of moves that less interesting sorry teams have made which is you know the pirates signing austin hedges so get your austin hedges hype video going pirate social media people they also traded for connor joe great candidate for a hype video. And then the Royals signed Jordan Lyles. The A's signed Trevor May, probably as trade bait. So those moves happened. Anyway, I don't have a ton to say about all of that.

I just wanted to say that the Orioles have let me down. I'm disappointed. And I think they're my second most disappointing team this offseason behind only the Marlins, my most disappointing team. Yeah. The Marlins just, they're sitting on their hands like, come on, get in gear. Like, you got to do something. Got to do something. If you want to make anything of this team, you got to make some moves.

And I think the ship has sailed at least for 2023 at this point. and you got to make some moves. And I think the ship has sailed at least for 2023 at this point. Do we think that they're waiting for more of the free agent dust to settle to trade some of their pitching? Maybe. They don't have that much starting pitching depth that they can construct an entire lineup out of the proceeds of those trades. Why don't you just make the whole lineup out of what you can construct?

Yeah, it's a problem because their offense was like yeah that offense was putrid last year it was so bad and they're not the orioles with the the core that the orioles have developed from within so they really got to go get some guys i just i don't know what they're doing over there i guess they're doing marlins things the things that the marlins mostly do but it just sort of know what they're doing over there I guess they're doing Marwyn's things the things that the Marwyn's mostly do but it just sort of sucks that they're still doing those things yeah and it's like even you're right that they don't have

they just don't really have the same kind of depth to trade from that they once did I think the book is kind of out on Sixto like people know what's going on there and he's injured anyway and like Max Meyer needs Tommy John and

I don't know you have Joey Wendell? Yep You know? You have a Joey Wendell so that's something but it's

not nearly enough. It's not nearly enough. And they've had like J.J. Bladale is just a mess. So yeah, I don't know, man. I don't know, man. No one clamors for more Marlins talk when we don't discuss the Marlins. No one's like, you guys never, you know, like we get, you'd ever talk about the Reds discussion because that's been a running bit back to the

beginning of the podcast, right? But we don't really get that much, talk more Marlins. But they need to give us some reasons to talk Marlins. I'm willing, I'm here. Remember that Chris Bryan is a Rocky? That just came to my mind. Because you were saying earlier, like, the Rockies and their love affair with relievers. Yeah. But also with Chris Bryant. Yeah. Every now and then, it pops into my head.

I clearly didn't remember, as it happens by me not referencing him, a position player, which might have been better. Well, why would you? Every now and then, it just surfaces in my mind. Like, I wonder what Chris Bryan is up to these days. Yeah. Anyway. hurt such that you only play in 42 games right after you've signed a big free agent deal but there are probably worse times just like personally right you get to spend more time with your with your wife and babies and i think they have a kid already so you know like in that respect good for

chris bryant but yeah i totally memory hold his signing because it has had so little impact on that franchise. You know, like 42 games, it's not a lot of games. No. Not as many games as they were hoping he would play. No. Or as well as they wanted him to play. Yeah, I mean, it's funny because I may have mentally overcorrected for how he has done in that limited stretch. Like I know that he did pretty well when he was on the field.

When he played, yeah. You know, he played like 10 more games at home than he did on the road. And I think that I thought he did worse than he did. He didn't do, you know, he still had like a 125 wrc plus it was only 181 play appearances but like you know sometimes you over correct on the core stuff which isn't to say that his season was good because again he only played 42 games and that was not what they were hoping for but he was better at the plate when he did play than i thought he was but who knows you know who knows Ben yeah somehow he was uh yeah he was negative five defensive runs saved in 250 innings or so which uh is either extremely concerning or not

concerning because right yeah it's nothing in and it's like probably nothing in between right either it's like mostly attributable to just being a very small sample of innings for defensive stats, or it's going to be an uh-oh. We don't know. We don't know which one. We'll find out. Hopefully, we'll have a much wider sample of games to assess that over next season. Yeah, one would hope. In 2021, he was in the second percentile in outs above average.

That's not great. That's not great. That's not the best. It's not, you know, as they say, it's not what you want. All right. So maybe we can wrap up with a stat blast and a pass blast. And the P-R-A-M-I-N-E-S-O-R-O-B-S-P-L-U-S And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit Discuss it at length and analyze it for us In amazing ways Here's to Deist-O-P-L-A-S-T

It's been a while since we stat blasted. So this stat blast is about something that we've been talking about quite a bit already and that I may write about as well. So this will not be breaking news, but contracts have been really long this winter so far. Yeah, I know. have been really long this winter so far. Yeah, I know. And we have discussed the many reasons for that, and I will not get back into the causes, but the results,

now that the top 20 on the MLB trade rumors list, it's all said and done, although I should caveat this, that as we record here, there is some uncertainty about the Carlos Correa contract situation because he was due to be introduced by the Giants on Tuesday. And then they called an audible and called a halt to those proceedings.

And we have not learned the reason why it has not been publicly reported. But there was some testing that needed to be done and results that needed to be awaited. And of course, we will discuss that when and if we know more. But using the reported terms, the intended terms, and just looking at all of the contracts that have been signed by the top 20 guys, I went back to the beginning of MLB Trade Rumor's Tim Dirks doing this. So he has been ranking the top 50 free agents every offseason going back to the winter of 2005 to 2006. So I collected all of his top 20s from all of those years and then also the terms that those guys ended up signing, just excluding anyone who did not sign for some reason, and just looked at

the magnitude of the difference this offseason and the length of the deals signed by the top 20 and also the top 10. And the answer, unsurprisingly, is that, yeah, these deals are really long. These are unusually long deals, really notably long by a lot. It is probably better in a graph. And so I think I will write about this, and then you can look at the graph. But for now, the audio version of a graph is me sort of explaining this. garnered by the top 10 free agents and about, I think, a 67 or so percent uptick relative to the top 20. So it's especially the guys at the top, the top 10, who have really gotten extraordinarily long deals. And it's a lot longer than any other year during this period that I looked at. It's a lot longer than any other year during this period that I looked at. So if we look at the averages, like this year, it's 7.7 years is the average contract length for the top 10 free agents.

And then 5.5 years is the average length for the top 20. It's just really, really long. Last year was somewhat long, but it was like 5.7 years for the top 10 guys. So two full years fewer. And even that was above the average heading into this year, which was more like 4.3 or something. So it has exceeded it by a wide, wide margin. And last year, if you look at the top 20, it was 4.9 relative to 5.5 this year. So that's not as big a jump, but still like the average was about 3.3 over this whole span heading into this year. So it's really notable, as notable as you would think. And this is why we have devoted some time to talking about why this is. And also, it's not, of course, that the average annual values have been lower than they

used to be. It's just that everything has kind of gone up. So the average annual value just for all of the top 10 contracts so far is like 28 million this year. And that itself would also be a record over the span. And same for the top 20 guys. It's like 24.4 is the average for them. That is also a record higher than any previous year. Last year was kind of close in both of those categories. But yeah, this is just kind of confirming what we knew and thought and suspected. This is really anomalous in terms of the length of these deals. And just looking at them relative to the MLB trade rumors predictions coming into this offseason, they were way more off on, I think, the length than the AAV. I mean, those things are kind of

tied together because the longer the length, the lower the AAV. But generally speaking, looking at the top 20 guys, so basically they predicted a total of 95 contract years, and the top 20 have gotten 110 instead. And then that's a much bigger difference than the average annual value rate, just not the length. They were off on that by, I guess, close to a year on average for the top 20 guys. And it's even more striking if you look at just the top 10, because for the top 10, they predicted a total of 59 contract years, and those guys have actually gotten 77 contract years. So that's 18 extra years over 10 guys. So almost.8 million per year for the top 10 guys, and the top 10 guys have actually gotten about $28 million per year. So that's close to $3 million fewer on an average annual value basis for the top 10 guys, but they have gotten almost two years more on average per contract. So probably if you had told MLB trade rumors and Tim Dirks entering the offseason what the contract lengths would be, I think they probably would have underestimated the average annual values.

But really, the notable thing is that the contracts are a lot longer than they thought, than anyone thought that anyone thought that anyone thought just uh kind of confirming what we knew and yeah i do wonder though like we're front offices all aware that the offseason was gonna be like this did it just like was it like past the word oh wow contracts are really long all of a sudden it is like a handful of teams that are driving the most of this offseason. It's like your Yankees and your Mets and your Padres, etc. So it's, like internally, did teams know that we were in for this? Or was it just like the second you started submitting offers? Like if teams have, they've submitted these offers.

So I guess they knew that they were going to submit this kind of offer if they were one of the teams that has done that. And so then they might've also expected that other teams would do that. But I wonder whether there has been sticker shock, like if you're bidding for a player. We know there has been for some small market teams whose front office executives have complained anonymously to Jason Stark and others. But for the teams that are spending, I wonder whether they had a good grasp of what this market would be or whether they were sort of surprised too as soon as the bidding began and they learned what kind of offers they were going up against. Maybe it shouldn't surprise us that like the finance guy was like, allow me to make a directional bet on interest rates. You know what I mean?

Yeah. I imagine there's some variation front office to front office. And it's always hard to – we don't know, right? Because they have incentive to, on the one hand, they have incentive to say that they had the market perfectly pegged and they just opted not to participate at this level. But then that makes you look cheap, but you also don't want to be the front office that's like, a big part of my job is properly assessing what the market might look like for free agents as we try to project payroll both this year and into the future. And we got it totally wrong.

So there are weird incentives on both sides around how transparent they might be there. Yep. And then I'll give you a quick little chaser to that. This is a question from Christopher, and it was answered by Ryan Nelson, Frequent StatBus Consultant. Find him on Twitter at rsnelson23. So Christopher asked, I have an easy question to answer if one had the right tools. And Ryan does. And he has upgraded, souped up his RetroSheet database.

They just did their annual release. So we now have even more data at our disposal. So Christopher says, this might have already been addressed on your podcast, but it concerns effectively wild favorite Rich Hill. And you would think that most things concerning Rich Hill have been addressed on this podcast, but I don't know that this specifically was. In looking at his career record, I noticed that Rich Hill has two seasons in which he started 30 games. The first was in 2007 when he started 32 games for the Cubs. And the second was in 2021 when he started 31 games for the Rays and the Mets.

And even though he started 26 games for the Red Sox this year, he'll be 43 in March and probably won't get there again. Although he does want to pitch. Free agent, Rich Hill. Someone sign him at some point, even if it's at midseason. So here's my question. Christopher says, will this be a record? Is Rich Hill the only pitcher in history to start 30 games only twice in his career and

have them be separated by so many seasons 14 in his case has anyone ever gone 15 it seems unlikely to me for a variety of reasons but they're always outliers well rich hill is the outlier and that's why we love him so ryan says yes this is an easy question. And Rich Hill is the leader by far. His gap, Ryan says it's a 13-year gap. I guess it depends on how you do the math. But it's a record by five years. So five players had eight seasons between their 30-start campaigns. So Red Ames, 1905 to 1914.

Steve Gromek, 1945 and 1954, Joe Necro, 1970 and 1979, and the immortal Jamie Moyer, 1988 and 1997. Also, Brett Saberhagen in 1989 and 1998. So those were the only two 30-plus start seasons for Gromek and Ames. The other three pitchers had more than two seasons of 30-plus starts, but they still had that large separation there. So, yeah, Rich Hill, again, not telling you anything you don't know. Rich Hill is extraordinary, and that is why he is so near and dear to us. So I hope he continues to pitch. I hope he has another 30-start season.

Yeah, fare thee well, Rich. And lastly, we have the Pass Blast. So this is a Pass Blast from 1944, because this is episode 1944, and it comes to us, as always, from Jacob Pomeranke, Sabre's Director of Editorial Content and Chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. 1944, Blue Jay Way. In 1944, the Philadelphia Phillies decided they wanted to add a little pizzazz to their brand identity and their uniforms, a common marketing strategy for teams today, but pretty unheard of in those days. More than 5,000 designs were submitted by fans during the offseason. Wow.

Meanwhile, the baseball establishment mocked the Phillies' plans, offseason. Meanwhile, the baseball establishment mocked the Phillies' plans, as Sporting News editor J.D. Taylor Spink wrote in this editorial on February 10, 1944. Quote, Not since Philadelphia entered the National League in 1883 has such a revolutionary change been proposed to Quaker City fans as to change the nickname of the team, which has been known as the Phillies for 61 years. Suggestions are sought, with prizes of a $100 war bond for the best and two season passes as additional prizes. Ideas have even been received from baseball writers, with pepper pots and wildcats springing from the nimble brain of Stan Baumgartner, Quaker sports scribe.

In extenuation, it is pointed out that Mr. Baumgartner started life as a southpaw pitcher. Doesn't President Carpenter recall the unfortunate experiment undertaken only a few years ago in cultured Boston when an effort was made to rechristen the Braves as the Bees? Gleefully, the Wisecrackers referred to Stengel's Stingless Bees when the team under its new name showed no more ability than formerly to revel in first division clover. So the familiar name of Braves was quietly resumed. True, the fans have called the Phillies by a variety of names in recent years, many of them highly uncomplimentary. But if they want to be known as Pepper Potts, Wildcats, or some other

sprightly term, wouldn't it first be better to change the club's losing habits and then change the name? Until then, nickname contests are likely to bring the Phillies some dillies in suggestions. So Jacob concludes a few weeks later, the Phillies announced the winning nickname, wait for it, the Blue Jays. They wore a Blue Jay patch on their jersey sleeves and began using a Blue Jay image on signage, scorecards, and other areas around the ballpark. This was, of course, decades before the Toronto Blue Jays. But because they also continued to use Phillies on the front of their jerseys and everywhere else, fans and sports writers were mostly just confused by the new nickname. The Blue Jay jersey patch lasted just two seasons before the Phillies

redesigned their uniforms again. They dropped the Blue Jays nickname entirely before the 1950 season when they won their first National League pennant in 35 years. So I guess the lesson there, I guess there might be multiple lessons. First, there's value in having a very established brand identity. Yes. And if everyone associates you with something, then that's great. You don't always need to switch things up. Sometimes it's good to be the brand that people can count on. If you know the HBO static noise that plays before your HBO show, you don't need a new one.

Everyone associates that instantly with HBO. There's like a Pavlovian response. I'm about to watch a prestige drama or comedy or something when I watch that. And then beyond that, I guess there's limited utility to rebranding when your team is not very good. Yeah. You can't really rebrand your way out of that. No, you just got to play better, Ben.

You got to play better. You do. Yeah. rebrand your way out of that no you just gotta play better ben you gotta play better you do yeah and then i don't know i guess the specific choice of of blue jays was also not all that well received but if you're gonna change it you gotta commit to the bit right yeah and you you can't still be going by phillies but then also have a blue jays patch it's like you can't be half in and half out you gotta go all in so in. So in 1950, they stopped pretending. They stopped trying to make Blue Jay happen. And then they were the WizKids and the late Kurt Simmons, who we talked about the other day. He got to win along with all the other Phillies who had a historic and pennant winning season.

So they did that as the old fashioned Phillies. So, you know, I guess stick with the tried and true name sometimes or fully go all in. But you can't kind of stick with your name that you've had for many decades and then also be like, and we're the Blue Jays sort of on the side. I will say, given the year, that this was a lighter bit of fair than I was necessarily expecting. So that was a pleasant surprise.

Oh, yeah, definitely. Anyway, I will link to a case study on sports logos, the 1944 Philadelphia Blue Jays slash Phillies. They're still like their logo. They still had the Phillies logo that you know, but then they had just like a Blue Jay perched on top of it. It's just, that's kind of a half-assed rebrand. Yeah.

Yeah. That's a weird, I don't know. That's a weird one. That's a weird one. Yep. All right. We'll wait for next time to catch up on some late breaking news like the Angels signing of Brandon Drury

and how their off season stacks up. But I do have one follow-up for you. Two episodes ago, we talked about a notable Hall of Fame ballot, that would be a charitable way to put it, that was submitted by a now-retired but longtime editor of sports sections in Massachusetts, Art Davidson, and the ballot drew a lot of attention and ire because the only name checked was Francisco Rodriguez. And it caused consternation and condemnation not only because, again, only Francisco Rodriguez, but also because Art Davidson had voted for some other better players in the past, players who had been associated with PDs such as Alex Rodriguez. And so we wondered why vote for Francisco Francisco but not Alex now? Some people had

wondered whether he had voted for the wrong Rodriguez. And no, he had not, at least not unintentionally. Well, we have a listener named Alex, who's an acquaintance of Art's, and wrote to him to ask for his explanation of the ballot. And he gave Alex permission to share his response, so I will read it here. I have to admit that this year was difficult. I considered turning in a blank ballot, something others have done but I have not. I eventually voted for K-Rod based on So I will read it here. by the new modern era committee. I couldn't justify putting in Rodriguez without Clemens and Bonds from the steroid era. Nobody else on this year's ballot, I felt, merited election. Although maybe I could understand

someone voting for Rowland and or Sheffield, but I felt each of them fell somewhat short. So I appreciate the explanation. I don't know what I was expecting. I guess I wasn't really expecting whatever the answer was to make me think, oh, that makes perfect sense. What a wonderful ballot. I guess I would say that if he thought A-Rod, Bonds, and Clemens should all be in,

then Bonds and Clemens not getting in doesn't necessarily mean you have to stop supporting A-Rod, unless, I guess, he thinks the whole exercise is pointless now that two of the best players ever were excluded, in which case maybe it would be better not to vote at all, as I have opted to do, not send in a blank ballot, but just refrain from voting. Beyond that, it sounds like he's just a small hall guy if Rowan and Sheffield, etc. don't clear his bar. Or Beltran, for that matter, maybe a small hall slash old school stats guy, which I guess would explain his affection for closers. Although even there, and putting aside character clause considerations too, I don't really see the Francisco Rodriguez over Billy Wagner argument. The 15 saves between them really doing a lot of work there.

Anyway, that's the answer, just in case you were wondering what the thinking was. 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, get themselves access to some perks and help us stay ad-free. Callum Aldred, Jacob K. Redman, Sam Johnson, Michael Zadra, and Sam Minter. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the wonderful Effectively Wild Discord group just for Patreon supporters. If you join at any tier, the red rope will be lifted and you will be beckoned in. You also get access to monthly bonus episodes, one of which Meg and I published this past weekend.

We recommended some of our favorite books and movies and TV shows and podcasts and music from this past year. And you can get access to playoff live streams and you get discounts on merch and deals on ad-free Fangraphs memberships and other goodies. By the way, if I could ask for a personal favor for the holidays from you all, I recently hosted a couple of episodes of the Ringerverse podcast at the Ringer about video games. I'm trying to do more video game content at the Ringer, podcast content specifically, so it would help me make the case that more is justified if some of you go listen and download, especially if you stream on Spotify, though you can listen anywhere. We did one episode on Marvel's Midnight Suns and the state of superhero games. And then we did another episode just on the best video games of the year. I'll link to them on the show page.

Both published in the last couple of weeks. Would appreciate any listens and streams and recommendations. You can contact me and Meg via email at podcastoffangrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Your positive ratings and reviews are very much appreciated. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWPod and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance.

We will be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. I ever got. It doesn't need for buzz or bop or rattle in the box. Why'd you waste a paper on a lousy pair of... ...swords? Hello and welcome to episode 1944 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from... Leave it in, Ben. What was that? I don't even know what that was. All right, that could be a little Easter egg for the fans who listened to the very end. There's a treat for you.

There you go. What's up?