Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1946: I’ll Be Home for Correa-mas

Episode Date: December 24, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest Carlos Correa-related reporting, the Giants’ signings of Michael Conforto and Taylor Rogers, the hijinks potential of twin teammates Taylor and Tyler Rogers, the final results of the free-agent-contract over/under draft, their cautious optimism about the Angels (28:35), the Reds’ spending constraints (39:19), owners complaining about Steve […]

And I know that I can't pick up my mind I can feel it, there's two of me inside Inside Make way for the administration Make way for the end of frustration Make way for the unit of hearts Won't fall for a new situation Hello and welcome to episode 1946 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon

supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. I cannot get enough Carlos Correa details. There are only so many out there, but I've read, I don't know how many inside accounts of how Carlos Correa came to not be a giant and provisionally be a Met. And if you send me 10 more, I will read 10 more. Yeah, because each of them has at least one little tidbit somewhere that was not in the others. So as we record here early on Friday afternoon, Carlos Correa is still not officially a Met,

I suppose we should stipulate, because it has not been announced. I mean, Steve Cohen's been talking about it plenty, but I guess it's not a done deal. He is not past the physical, or at least we're not aware that he has. Seems relevant to mention that considering the circumstances. But here's what we have learned about Carlos Correa and why he is not a giant. about Carlos Correa and why he is not a giant. So Carlos Correa, I mean, we talked about how, according to the Verducci inside story, that he was all dressed for success and he was ready to go to the press conference. Apparently he was also, according to another story, house hunting. Yes.

With his family. So he was with a real estate agent and they were touring and they looked at a house and it was all happy and the birds were singing and they were ready to be San Franciscans. His in-laws were there, Ben. His in-laws. Yeah. Someone tweeted or pointed out at some point that on Instagram, he had followed a bunch of accounts that were just like luxury manners, like luxury mentions. It's like, okay, I guess he's in the market. And he was in that market. It sounded like they were ready to settle down. And then the rug was pulled out from under them. So it sounds like the Giants communicated, I guess, the physicals, the tests,

et cetera, were done on Monday, maybe. So it's not necessarily that they were pouring over these results for days and days. I guess it just hadn't been done for much of that time yet because he had to be there in person and be scanned, et cetera. Teams get some details and medicals before there's a verbal agreement and a letter of agreement, et cetera. But then there's some more in-depth analysis that's done. So the Giants had some concerns. It sounds like, by all accounts, citing sources, et cetera, that their concern was this 2014 leg injury that Carlos Correa had when he was still in the minors and he had arthroscopic surgery to repair a fractured right fibula and minor ligament damage.

And this was apparently what the Giants were so concerned about, according to Jeff Passon's inside story. The team's fear, according to people with knowledge of their assessment, concerned the long-term stability of his leg and the potential for Correa to quickly lose the mobility that won him a platinum glove in 2021. Correa to quickly lose the mobility that won him a platinum glove in 2021. So it was the lower right leg, which had been surgically repaired in 2014 after he broke his fibula on a slide during a minor league game. It was an injury Correa hadn't thought about in years. So according to the reporting, it seemed to take him and his team by surprise that this was even an issue because this wasn't even one of the things that had cost him time as a major league player right everyone was thinking oh is it the back is it one of these

other things that has hampered him but no it's something that seemed to be behind him like i guess it's not out of the question that an early injury could have been repaired in such a way that it would not bother him or recur for many years, but then eventually recur. I guess if you're signing someone to a 13-year contract, it's something you have to consider. But if I were Carlos Correa at that point, just thinking I've had basically half a Hall of Fame career at this point on this leg, which has not caused me to miss any time. And you're telling me that you won't sign me because of this leg? And you knew that I had this injury. I mean, maybe you didn't see the scans, but what are you seeing here that is so concerning? So I'm not a doctor and I can't pass

judgment and pronounce whether this makes sense or not. But it's very surprising. And as we were saying, if you're really going to scuttle a deal of that magnitude and of that importance to your offseason, then it really better be an acute concern. And it's just hard to imagine it being that acute a concern, given that it has not bothered him, or at least he's not missed time, and he's been an extremely productive player for eight years in the big leagues at this point. Yeah, I think that there is an explanation here, sort of a set of facts that would lead one to believe like this is an extremely conservative reaction to a minor, what has seemingly been a minor concern for a player who's going to be signed to a very long-term deal like there is a scenario where that's just what this is they are like this guy's gonna this guy's gonna be a giant until megs is middle-aged you know and so we really want to be certain but it it feels ticky tacky

ben you know it feels like you know perhaps the the takeaway from this is not that the giants didn't want carlos crea to be their shortstop but that they felt a bit of trepidation at having committed so much for so long that at some point someone in the front office looked up and was like weren't we gonna do this judge? And then saw potentially an opportunity to bring their number down. We're not going to know more certainly than what we've had reported and then their statement, but it sure does feel like they either had buyer's remorse and decided this was their way of exiting. Or they thought, well, we can probably shave a year and maybe a couple tens of millions of dollars off this deal. And isn't that worth it?

What's $35 million between friends? And the answer is that Carlos Correa plays third base for the Mets now. So I don't think that I just I worry worry for them and, you know, they're going to be fine. Maybe who, who knows if they aren't, it's a bet of their own making. But I think that free agents and their agents, they remember stuff like this, you know, and that isn't to say that they won't be able to sign a marquee free agent in the future, that they won't be able to have that free agent sign with them enthusiastically, right? Yeah. We know that they can sign Scott Poirier's clients because they already have subsequently.

Yeah, we're going to talk about that. Yeah. But I think that it will inspire a bit of trepidation. And while the money, as we have discussed, seems to win out most of the time, if you're in a tiebreak and you remember this, maybe it makes a difference the next time you want to sign someone. So I think that it can have knock-on effects, not just for what we end up making of their 2023 season, but for future free agency periods as well. So that seems bad.

I mean, when guys' in-laws are in play, you know, like it's bad enough to have the rug pulled out from under you in front of your own parents. But to have that happen in front of your in-laws and then have to be scrambling, you know, it can't feel good. They were all there, you know. And like what if they had picked a house, you know? Like, real estate in the Bay Area is a nightmare. I mean, not that it's much better in Manhattan, but it just seems like a real disaster situation, Ben.

It seems like it was calamitous. Hopefully he avoided signing, getting a deed or anything before this deal was done. Oh, sure, yeah. That probably would have been rash. But yes, I think he'll be able to secure fine housing in any part of the country, whatever his contract ends up being. But yeah, and it's interesting because there's an anecdote in one of these stories about how he just basically like tackled Boris on the bed when Boris told him that the Mets were signing him now. He was so excited

to get that deal, which I can't imagine just the whiplash of it. Now, I mean, granted, okay, $350 million one place, $315 million another place. I'd probably be pretty happy about either of those outcomes personally as well. But to think that you're playing shortstop for this team on the West Coast and then like a day later, oh, nope, I'm playing third base for this other team on the East Coast. It seems like he was just happy to have it resolved after just the uncertainty of whether it was going to happen and the uncertainty of last winter too. But it's a weird job. It's a very weird profession and industry where we know what you make. And also this is how you get to decide where you're going to play if you even get the freedom

to decide, which most players don't for a big chunk of their careers. So a couple other little tidbits from some of these stories. So this was I think this was the lead from the Andy McCullough, Ken Rosenthal athletic inside story. On Tuesday afternoon, about two hours after the Giants postponed a press conference to introduce new shortstop Carlos Correa, Correa's agent Scott Boris pulled out his phone and sent a message to Mets owner Steve Cohen. Correa miss may have come early. Oh, my God.

Boris told The Athletic he texted Cohen, you have a minute. You have a minute? You have a minute? Yeah, this is how it happened with Coriamis, which really is not even, like, it starts with a C, but come on, Coriamis? He seems like he's very proud of that one, though, because it is everywhere, and he is correcting people when they get it wrong. So I think he thinks he really nailed that one, Ben. He's like, yeah. He really loves the C4 one. He's used that multiple times.

But the Coriamis, I just – anyway, the fact that this is how this sequence of events started with Scott Boras super agent, just, you know, zillionaire, like multi-multi-millionaire texting multi-multi-billionaire to say, Coriamus may have come early. That's what kicked off this entire saga. Just so strange. At that point, I mean, it's not even him holding court at the winter meetings, like where he's doing it for laughs and the crowd, right? This is a private text. There's no audience here, except I guess ultimately there is because now it's in a story meetings like where he's doing it for for laughs and the crowd right right this is a private text there's no audience here except i guess ultimately there is because now it's in a story at death i'm sure i'm sure that scott knows how this stuff works right like he's he knows that when this all gets settled that the tiktok of it is gonna find its out, he may well have sent these texts to them. We don't know that, to be clear.

So I think that Scott Boris, like many, writes emails and texts of this nature that have a strong business component with the immediate recipient in mind, but also understanding that he is ultimately writing for a broader audience, you know? Yes, probably so. And another Boris-related tidbit from one of these stories. So this is after the whole saga of the Giants deal falling apart and then getting the Mets deal done.

Boris, who had plowed through three bags of throat lozenges while spending most of the previous two evenings on the phone. That's all. Three bags of throat lozenges. Are we under lozenging? I haven't lozenged once this year. I'm a podcaster. We talk a lot. We do.

I mean, probably not as much as Scott Boris trying to get a Carlos Correa deal done, maybe. I don't know. We do a lot of podcasting. We do a lot of podcasting a lot of podcast but maybe I mean I was clearing my throat repeatedly before we started recording so maybe I should have three bags of throat lozenges handy and I should go through three of them every week on Effectively Wild that I it feels like a lot like that feels to me like like he I mean I'm sure that there is some throat discomfort i experience that when i'm like you know when we've had sometimes we will pod for the main feed and

then we look up and we're like it's the 30th and or the 31st of the month and we have to do the patreon pod today and then we end up potting twice and then by the end of that i don't want to say any words to anyone so there might you know i think there's probably some legitimacy to this but also what might have happened ben is that he got lozenges and he's like these taste good all right yeah right i want to you know it's really an act of restraint on my part like sometimes i take a little melatonin gummy to stay down at night and they made them taste too good ben and you don't want to take too much melatonin because then you feel like you have a hangover the next day but i'm always tempted to take one more than the recommended number because they taste like

they taste like blackberries in a really nice not overly sweet way so maybe he's just like man this these these ricola they're they're great you know he's He's having lozenges, but he's really eating candy, you know? Yeah. So as a friend of the show, Grant Brisby, put it in his piece for The Athletic. Poor Grant. I know, poor Grant. He wrote, this is about an organization that is not gifted with the spirit of screw it. So basically just casting caution to the winds,

not completely, not being irrational, but just saying, hey, we're a major league baseball team and we have lots of money and we have not committed a lot of that money and we need to spend some of it. And this is a superstar and he hurt his leg eight years ago and it hasn't bothered him since. And maybe there's something kind of concerning in

there, but who knows? R.A. Dickey won a Cy Young Award without a UCL. These are different kind of athletes. It hasn't hampered him. It's going to make a huge difference to our present and our future, whether we get this guy or not. So let's just go for it. And they don't seem to go for it. The Mets now go for it. And there had been some speculation, as you said, that maybe this was just a pretense and that there had been perhaps like the front office and ownership had been on a different page or something and that this was just, hey, can we find a way to throw a wrench into this? From all accounts, it wasn't really that or it wasn't that ownership said, actually, we don't want to do this. It was legitimate concern.

But again, like, do you have to recalibrate your risk tolerance here? Right. Because you're the Giants and people expect you to make a major move and you're in a position to have to make a major move. And this is a great player. And actually, a former Giant, Kevin Gossman, whom the Giants elected not to sign to a long term deal, he sent an interesting tweet this week, which I believe Logan Webb retweeted. a former giant, Kevin Gossman, whom the Giants elected not to sign to a long-term deal. He sent an interesting tweet this week, which I believe Logan Webb retweeted.

There's a fine line between dipping an Oreo for the perfect amount of time or having it break off into the milk. Sometimes in life, you got to take risks and be able to live with the consequences. A Boris-esque metaphor maybe for the Giants here. Either that or he just had some deep thoughts about dipping Oreos. So they do not get Carlos Correa. They have made some subsequent signings with the Carlos Correa cash savings, I suppose. And they have put some of them toward Michael Conforto on a two-year, $36 million deal. Conforto is represented by Scott Boris. So of course, they're opening themselves up to all kinds of jokes here, right? Because by signing Mitch Hanegar and Michael Conforto, they are making investments in players who have missed a ton of time with many injuries and who, in Conforto's case, just didn't play this past season because of the shoulder injury,

and yet they are comfortable committing to him. Now, obviously, two years and 36 million. Different then. Much different from 13 years and 350 million. So we should stipulate that. But they are not making it easy for themselves by signing those two players so that people can go, you had concerns about Carlos Correa, but you're fine with Michael Conforto and Mitch Haneker. and go, you had concerns about Carlos Correa, but you're fine with Michael Conforto and Mitch Haneker. Anyway, that was one signing.

And then they also signed Taylor Rodgers to a three-year $33 million deal, which, of course, is wonderful because now he joins his twin brother. It's perfect. It really is. I'm very sorry for Giants fans who are understandably frustrated and also like miffed at the team for not explaining itself. And I know that they're limited to some extent in what they can say, but really just the shortest of statements and saying we wish Carlos the best. Like, it's not what people want to hear. to hear. And apparently there was maybe an internal Zoom that Farhan Zaidi did with players and staff and et cetera, and sort of explained himself to some extent, but maybe not fully. And I guess

felt maybe limited in what he could say before the Mets officially signed Correa. We'll see if more comes out or if the team says something. But I guess they're saying something by signing these guys. Anyway, what I'm saying is Giants fans, very disappointed, very upset, just the most cruel kind of sequence of having these superstars ripped away from them. And yet it is tremendous content. this whole drama of Correa going to the Mets instead in the middle of the night. But now we get the Rodgers twins on the same roster and a Taylor and a Tyler in terms of effectively wild content. I mean, it's going to be constant. We might have to retire the bit because it'll just be like, obviously, maybe you're hyper conscious of it because it's the twins, and so you don't want to make that mistake, right? Like if you screw up a Walsh and a Ward on the Angels or a Wade and a Ward, you know, they're different guys. But, like, you don't want to get the twins wrong because they've probably been confused their whole lives.

Oh, yeah. Not that they look anything like each other when they pitch exactly. But, you know, uh in terms of like oh you want to like get that right like i i went to high school with a pair of twins and i was i was always a pair of twins yes is a funny turn of phrase were there two sets of twins i know as i was saying it i was like this is imprecise it's not clear what that means no just just two two brothers two brothers. Two brothers who were twins.

And they were identical twins? They were identical. Okay. Yeah. And I was always nervous, you know, because I didn't want to, like, one of them was Bobby and one of them was Johnny. And I didn't want to call Bobby Johnny and Johnny Bobby. And, you know, they weren't totally identical.

But also, like, I hadn't been in classes with them. Right. And I wasn't that close to them. And so if I had been, then I'm sure it would have been much easier for me to tell them apart. But as it was, it was like, you know, we were kind of acquaintances more than anything. And so I was always like, hi. Right. You.

Hi, you. Hey. Hey, you. Yeah. So if you're a broadcaster for the Giants or an opposing broadcast, you probably take pains not to make that mistake with Taylor and Tyler Rogers. And yet, I'm sure that it will happen and we will be on it when it does. So we got a lot to discuss out of the way that this all went down, assuming that it's done and that there's not another act to this whole thing when Kars Kray's physical with the Mets goes awry. Yeah, it would be funny. Not ha-ha funny, but kind of ha-ha funny maybe if he ended up a giant anyway, which doesn't seem likely, but it would be hilarious. And some of you might be wondering, well, Meg, haven't you in the past lamented the

existence of, say, Dan Spieswanson you in the past lamented the existence of say dance b swanson and charlie colberson on the same roster hasn't that been what you've described as a national nightmare isn't this worse to have brothers who are literally identical like what what do we do now and to that i say no it's perfect because they're not sort of the same guy they're identically the same guy in terms of their visage one question i have and they may have been asked this at some point but is it possible that they were worried that their parents had trouble distinguishing them and that's why their pitching motions ended up being so different from one another right yeah is the distinction between overhand versus you know being a submariner guy like is that them

saying this is me i am myself i am distinct from my brother you know is it really a means of declaring one's purpose and identity like it makes it sound quite lyrical so and they're gonna sit i bet they're gonna sit together in the bullpen you know they're gonna sit next to each other and we're gonna get a look at them and and they'll be facing forward you know and they won't be warming up presumably i want them to warm up at the same time though like i want there to be a warm-up at the same time shot but then when you're looking at them you know facing them you're not gonna see their number and so you're gonna be like which one is which who's to say and it's, do they sit consistently on one side?

You know, like I sleep on one side of my bed pretty consistently. Is it like that on the bench? You know? And will they try to do a switcheroo like on a joke day? Will they be like, it's April Fool's. And so we're going to swap motions. Huh? Ben, it's just endless.

It's going to be perfect. Potential for hijinks is high. Yeah. High hijinks potential. And, you know, when you are recovering from a supreme disappointment like Giants fans have experienced in the last couple of days, and I worry that we have not been tender enough with Giants fans about all of this because it is just a really profound bummer. And my heart goes out because you feel like you're stepping into a new era.

You're really gonna go for it. You have adopted to your point, Ben, like a, eh, screw it, let's go kind of mentality. And then that proves to be faulty. And so I wanna reach out to all of you and express my remorse and empathy for your plight. And also remind you, invite you to consider that hijinks cures a lot.

Like it makes you feel light. It makes you feel like you're kind of bouncing. And so it doesn't mean that you have to deny the disappointment or move on from it before you're ready but just like let it let the hijinks in you know when you're ready they're sitting there for you and it's gonna be that part's gonna be really fun there i feel bad for their parents though because they're gonna get so many they're gonna get panned to so many times in the crowd at oracle this year it's going to be like and here they are and then they're going to look at the bullpen they're going

to look back at them so i hope i hope their parents don't pick their noses because if they do we're going to find out yes anyway we also wish carlos the best but uh we wish giants fans the best and again there's no coming back from this in terms of, well, we didn't get Carlos, but we have Carlos Cray at home. You know, like this is not Carlos Cray at home. Michael Conforto and Taylor Rodgers. I mean, I quite like Taylor Rodgers as a pitcher. Yeah. And I think he's quite good.

And Michael Conforto was good before he got hurt and could be good again. was good before he got hurt and could be good again. But there's nothing you can do really after you think, oh, maybe we're getting judged. Oh, we got Correa. And the fact that they were selling tickets based on having some Correa, right? They had Instagram posts or whatever out there with Carlos Correa's image on it being like, hey, go get tickets for the 2023 giants and presumably some people did so you're out there trying to drum up hype for your team based on the signing and then you back out of the signing based on something that from afar seems semi

flimsy well people are going to be pissed about that and even if you sign taylor rogers and michael conforto and whoever else they might add between now and opening day, just it's not going to be enough, obviously. And really, there's no way to come back from that other than signing some other equivalent superstar, which you can't do at this point. Or, you know, like, well, we'll get Otani next year instead. OK, that might make up for it, but that can't happen yet. Or you just win lots of games despite not getting the superstar you wanted, which I guess could happen in theory. So that's what it's going to take. Or the team comes out and explains itself in some way that actually mollifies people. But I don't know that that

can happen, but we'll see. Yeah. I don't know that there's an explanation that people will find particularly you know they won't be sated by it because at the end of that explanation carlos is still a met you know and barring him like some injury befalling him next season and him not being able to play or him just falling off a cliff performance-wise, there's the explanation that they could potentially give now. And then every day next season, you're going to be reminded. And it's not like the Mets aren't going to play the Giants. They're going to do that. No, they do it in April, I think. Yeah. And so it's just right away, you going to be hit with this, you know, wave of remembering.

And then you got to lean into the hijinks, you know? Mm-hmm. Yeah, the Giants lineup, you're going to have Wilmer Flores, J.D. Davis, Michael Conforto. It's like Mets West over there now. Yeah. Really, like, unless Carlos Correa, like, hurts his lower right leg, I mean, that would obviously make the Giants look like their decision was justified. Not that anyone is rooting for that. Probably not even the Giants, right?

They wished Carlos the best. And despite how that kind of came off in print, I'm sure they don't wish injury upon him. Although it would take a lot of heat off them at this point if he were to hurt that specific part of himself. Yeah. This does, however, close the book, I believe, on the free agent contracts over under draft finally. Oh. Assuming Carlos Correa's terms actually stay what they are. Yeah.

Then our final totals, because I had Taylor Rodgers, I took the over on him at a predicted $30 million. So that was a small win for me. So the final totals, I think, I'm not the official statistician, but doing my calculations here, I think I ended up with $167.35 million, and you ended up with $78.83 million. Okay. So we both did pretty well. Yeah, that's respectable. I feel like I did better in this run than last year.

Yes, that is true. Yeah. And, you know, pat on the back to both of us that we did so well is impressive considering how wildly most of these deals diverged from expectation going into the offseason. So I think we're very smart, Ben. I think we're wildly clever. Yeah. We didn't even take all overs. We took quite a few unders actually, and you'd think that we would have been wrong on all of those, but we were not. So I guess consult us MLB trade rumors, except don't because then we would not get this

great content of the free agent contracts over under his draft every winter. So thanks to them for putting this out every year for the past 18 years or so. All right. So the one player I guessed wrong on was Brandon Drury. And I took the over on him at a predicted 18 million and he ended up with 17 million. It was close. But I teased on our previous podcast that we were going to maybe briefly talk about the Angels because they signed Brandon Drury. And we found ourselves kind of having some warm, fuzzy feelings about the Angels' offseason thus far. And we've been fooled before.

We've been down this road so many times that it's definitely a charlie brown lucy football situation and we know that going into it and yet you kind of look at some of the moves that they've made and you know mostly not like superstars but the angels have had superstars at least two right that has not been their issue. Yeah, they've rarely been the problem. Yeah, the rest of their roster has been the problem, and it is always the problem. And they always end up with seemingly like half a replacement level lineup at some point in the season.

And so it's just like, go get some competent players. Just go get some average guys. Like if you could just avoid playing replacement level people so much, then Otani and Trout, they could get you there. And that does seem to be the approach that they have adopted. And I really didn't know what they would do, if anything, this offseason, because the team is in the process of being sold. And there was some speculation that they might consider trading Otani and they're clearly going for it, I think you could say.

They're making one last run at this thing while Otani is still under contract with that team. And they've filled in some holes, and now they have even some redundancy at some positions. But there was interest in Brendan Drury seemingly from several teams and the Angels ended up with them. So now if we look at their offseason as a whole, and I will pull up the additions that they've made on Roster Resource here so we can refresh people's memories. But how are you feeling about your Los Angeles Angels of 2023? My Los Angeles Angels. I think they're your Los Angeles Angels, Ben. If they're either of us.

Yeah, they're probably more mine. They're your Los Angeles Angels, Ben. If they're either of us, yeah, they're probably more mine. They're collective Los Angeles Angels. Yeah, as long as Trapp and Otani are on that team. They're ours. Yeah, they're for all of us. Yeah, they're for all of us and specifically for Effectively Wild. But as I'm looking at this roster, look, there's still nits one could pick, right? Yeah, not saying we have no notes.

We still have notes. Yeah. We still have notes. Yeah, we still have notes. If one wanted to pick any nits, one could say, for instance, that despite him hitting some big home runs at opportune times, Luis Rangifo sharting Shorshap. That was a struggle. People aren't going to know all of the things that have gone wrong in the course of us trying to record this episode i want dylan you should leave this part in but know that they were legion so thanks dylan for fixing them but they were mostly mostly connection related issues yeah but that one was more directly on me the rest we can blame on cox communications but um on Cox Communications. But anyhow, starting shortstop Luis Rangifo,

probably not what you want, you know. But this is like a, this is a respectable lineup. I might, you know, we might quibble further if we wanted to and say, when was the last time Anthony Rendon was fully healthy? You know, we might worry about Jared Walsh who I believe had thoracic outlet syndrome surgery which you know on the pitching side I think we have a really clear understanding of uh what that means which is generally not

anything particularly good but that that's a much murkier outcome for position players because we just haven't seen as many of those guys have to deal with that so hopefully he is healthy but you know their their corner infield spots are shaky and have some injury concerns we're going to spend half of next season failing to distinguish between mike trout and hunter renfro in the outfield but renfro is a nice uh pickup for them um but like you know otani is Otani. I like Tyler Anderson. We're going to see how that goes away from the Dodgers. But, you know, he's not very far away. So maybe he can get a little tune up if he needs one.

And then I'm really excited for another year of Patrick Sandoval. Like this is a respectable baseball team. Now, do I think that it is going to challenge the Astros? No. going to uh challenge the astros no but i think that the angels and the rangers are in a similar spot in this respect dan zimborski wrote up the the rangers zips projections for fangraphs today as we're talking on friday and he noted that they are you know they're not likely they're likely to be a bother more to the mariners than they are to the Astros. But I think both they're all kind of mooshed together. And, you know, one can argue that if the upside moves that the Angels have made and that the Rangers have made,

and yes, I am looking at Jacob deGrom as an upside move, which is wild to say. Like, I think that the competition is going to be pretty thick amongst those three because, yeah, all LA needs, and this has been such a tall order for them for so long in a couple of different directions, but all they really need is for their stars to be reasonably healthy and for everyone else to be a competent big leaguer. Like, if they can do that, they're in the mix.

Are they a favorite for a wildcard spot? No, but like, not a lot has to happen if they can satisfy the health and competence threshold for them to be competitive all season. So I think that particularly when you sort of adjust their moves in light of the fact that their front office probably had, I would imagine, pretty profound limitations in what they were allowed to do given the sale. I think they did pretty well for themselves this offseason. Like a resurgent Mariner fan in me is like, uh-oh, uh-oh. You know, I'm looking at Texas, I'm looking at LA, and I'm going, uh-oh.

So, you know, that's pretty good. Yeah, no, it is. And right, to get Gio Urshela, to get Renfro, and really when you see what Andrew Benintendi got as a free agent, for instance, like is he better than Hunter Renfro? Not clearly, I don't think, right? And the Angels got Renfro for not a huge amount. I mean, they traded a few guys to the Brewers for Renfro, but it seemed to be more that the Brewers didn't really need him.

Like, he's a competent player. Right. And yeah, like, can you count on Rendon at third? I don't know. player. And yeah, can you count on Rendon at third? I don't know. But the Angels aren't really completely counting on him, right? Because they've got Urshela and they've got Drury and they got Jake Lamb too. I mean, if Rendon is healthy and good, great, then that would give the Angels a third star. But if not, well, maybe he plays first if Walsh can't or I don't know. You just give him time off. I mean, you can't really DH him because the Angels have a pretty good DH. But other than that, you're just you're not depending on him as much as they have been. play some shortstop if the the renifo thing doesn't work out and even he like he's projected to be pretty decent like an average-ish player i think every member of the angel starting lineup

now is projected to be an average or better hitter so it's i don't know like you know oh man and getting uh and tyler anderson too who's like exactly the sort of pitcher that they've needed, just like, you know, hopefully just kind of dependable and maybe not like a top of the rotation guy. But I like that rotation. I mean, I'm going to like any rotation with Shohei Otani in it, but like they project to be a top 10 rotation and we'll see what the workload can be for Otani. I know that they raised the possibility that maybe they could just go with a five pitcher rotation and not have to do the six man thing. So we'll see. But I mean, to have Otani at the top, who I'm really excited to see what Otani does as a pitcher this coming year, because, man, I mean, we talked about this before, but you could make a legitimate case that he was deserving Cy Young winner already. And he added pitches and got better as the season went on. So if he's healthy and built up quite a while, and then he started to put things together. Jose Suarez had a good, like, you know, that's good. I mean, not saying there's a huge amount of depth, but you got to like that five.

That is a very credible contending rotation on paper in theory. So, yeah, like, could they make a run at a wild card as currently constituted i don't see why not but we've been burned before so yeah i mean yeah but you know we we have spent much of this week lightly terrorizing giants yeah and so i will in turn lightly terrorize mariners fans which is wouldn't it be the most mariners thing ever been? The most Mariners thing. You just finally made it back to the postseason. You made it out of the wild card round. You played a home playoff game.

No one can say that your postseason drought isn't broken, that it is over, the rains have come. And wouldn't it be just the most Mariners thing of all time for them to finish fourth in the division the year they host the all-star game that would be something that would be some yeah that's dark yeah you know and so we don't have to let that possibility in yet but I want it's it is a downside scenario that I think probably shows up in like more than one of our postseason runs right

like we haven't done that yet we haven't posted our playoff odds because it's not time. It's not time. It'll happen, but it's not yet time. But I bet that scenario's in there a couple few times, Ben. Mm-hmm. Yeah. And the only other transaction-related thing I wanted to mention, so the Reds signed Will Myers Myers and they released Mike Moustakis

and they signed Kirk Casale. Not very exciting transactions, but they're the Reds. And I debated not bringing them up because they're the Reds. But no, I'm going to talk about the Reds for just a minute because C. Trent Rosecrans, friend of the show, he tweeted, when asked if there was more room in the budget for further acquisitions, Reds GM Nick Kral said they'd have to, quote, get creative, which is a way of saying not unless someone takes more money off of their books. So even with Moustakas gone, obviously they're still paying Moustakas. Rough week for former mid-2010s royals with Eric Hosmer. No takers for him, not yet at least. And Jeter Downs, he's a national now, just falling up on Red Sox DFAs. Anyway, so the Reds, they don't have a high

payroll. They have basically embarked on a rebuild, arguably before they had to. And I think this is what we mean when we talk about how everyone is moaning about Steve Cohen and is he breaking baseball and is this unfair? And meanwhile, you have a team like the Reds, and I guess they're not the most egregious offender because the A's are still out there and the Pirates, et cetera. But the Reds, look, they're at 81 million projected payroll, I guess, 98 luxury tax projection. So they're under 100. So they're one of the teams that will be spending less on player payroll than Steve Cohen will be spending just on the taxes on the player payroll. So they're fifth lowest. And if they can't add, if they're saying they can't add,

And if they can't add, if they're saying they can't add, I know that Bob Castellini, the Reds owner, is one of the least wealthy MLB owners, if not the least wealthy. So there is a vast gulf in net worth between Bob Castellini with Steve Cohen. If there's any organization that maybe can't afford to play in those waters or can least easily afford it, I guess it would be the Reds. And yet, two things, I guess. First, we do know just how much they're getting from national revenue from broadcast deals and sponsorships and the Disney money, et cetera. It seems to add up to more than they are spending on players. So I don't know what their debt situation is or anything, but you would think that even the Reds and, you know, the popper Bob Castellini basically out on the street, you know, just going door to door. I mean, you'd think that even he could afford to spend more on payroll. And then the other thing is, I guess,

if you find that this game is too rich for you and you can't keep up- Sell the team. Sell the team, right? Because the team has appreciated, I think he paid, what did he pay? He paid like 250 million or something. I forget the exact number, but even the Reds are worth a billion or more at this point. Make a nice tidy profit and go enjoy your new billion. I mean, I get that it's probably fun to own a baseball team or you'd hope that it would be. Is it right now for him though? Well, right. I mean, if you're in the situation where either you have to or you've decided that you have to or you want to because you also want to continue to make money while you own the team,

then I wonder because, yeah, he's not like beloved in the city right now. People are not necessarily singing his praises. He's not getting bows and curtsies wherever he walks around the town. And I just – I wouldn't think – My lord. Right, exactly. around the town and I just I wouldn't think my lord right exactly that's uh yeah that that might be what happened if if Steve Cohen were to walk around Queens right now I don't know but I'm saying don't do that like you have self-respect you can just be excited you don't have to bow and or curtsy no you do that but I don't think he's getting that kind of uh adoration and adulation if that's what he wants and yeah he's lucky that he's not getting stuff thrown at him i'm not saying

people should throw stuff at him but he's been you know he's been cheap and tone deaf and that's a pretty bad combination of things yeah right and so you would think if you're at that point where this is the best you can do that maybe you would just decide to get out, that you're obligated to get out for the fans' sake, bring in someone who will make more of a run at this thing. Like I don't know that there needs to be a you must be this rich to ride, you know, kind of like sign – because MLB, like other owners, I mean they get to approve who gets to buy baseball teams. And I think that historically speaking, they've probably had a bigger issue with a Steve Cohen than a Bob Castellini because what they're really concerned about is someone who's going to blow them out of the water spending wise and maybe encourage other teams to more so than someone who's not going to keep up with spending. So I think it's more important or it certainly should be a priority to make sure

that people who have these teams, they can actually contend that they can make the investments that are needed. So if the Reds can't do that or don't want to do that, then yeah, give the team to someone who will. Not give, but sell it for an enormous amount and walk away with a very lucrative payout. Right. I don't want to disparage the Royals by saying this, but like the Kansas City Royals sold for a billion dollars. Like the Royals sold for a billion dollars. So I'd need to think more about what the appropriate, and by that I mean most likely to actually be effective and not get dodged around approach would be to this.

You know, do you do you say you have to have you know, you have to commit to a baseline payroll? They're not going to do that absent a salary floor. Right. And so that seems unlikely. I know that they they look very hard at how much debt a team has to take on, an ownership group rather has to take on in order to purchase a team and that that seems to be a place where they pay attention. I don't know if maybe the most direct approach to it would be to say, if your payroll is below a certain threshold, you don't get to be a participant in you know whatever distribution to the teams is the result of someone like cone going over the luxury tax to the extent that he has right not all of that money goes back to the team some of it goes to the players that there's distribution

but you know maybe that's the mechanism but yeah this to me feels like a much greater threat to competitive balance, growing the game, the enjoyment of the game than someone like Cohen. Because yes, if you are willing to invest a lot of money into your big league roster and that facilitates you rostering really good players, you're going to be a force within the league. really good players, you're going to be, you know, a force within the league. But part of why we are seeing the number of hundred win teams that we are, you know, some of that is them being really good, but some of that is them facing off against teams that are really, really bad, you know? And so if what we're interested in is raising the competitive level of baseball generally, you know,

one way to do it is to further entrench the gains that ownership has enjoyed over the last couple of decades in terms of their distribution of revenue. But I think a more effective way, and certainly one that is to the more direct benefit of fans and players rather than owners, is to really look hard at these underperforming clubs and try to figure out some combination of carrots and sticks that forces them to put a competitive product on the field. And I worry that we just keep moving further away from that, whether it's the way that the playoffs are structured now,

the continued fixation on teams that are able to spend. It was somewhat telling to me in the piece that Evan Drellick put out this week on owners reacting to Cohen that, you know, a lot of them seem to be flirting with collusion to keep salaries low. And one of the guys who seems to be at least on record kind of like, yeah, fine, whatever is Steinbrenner, right? Who isn't spending to Cohen's level, but seems to want to leave the door open in case he changes his mind and does in a later offseason, perhaps to try to sign Ohtani, for instance. So I think that by addressing the teams on the lower end of the payroll spectrum, we do end up curbing the potential runaway success of big

spending teams by having them have to face off against a more competitive opponent. And it has the benefit of fans of those teams getting to watch more compelling baseball. So that seems like a bigger win to me. But yeah, it's like if you really truly can't afford to own a team and put a respectable product on the field then sell it like you'll get a billion dollars you're gonna get a billion dollars you know and i know that some of that's gonna get taxed but not all of it buddy yeah it's uh man you just made me think like if anything could rekindle my long dormant Yankees fandom. Oh my God, you would be insufferable. And I don't know if I can take it, Ben,

because I think Mets fans are going to be kind of insufferable. And that's fine. You know, they've earned it by having to weather the Wilpon era. But if they are going to Mets and then you're going to Yankees, I don't know, man, that's going to be a rough time for me. Yeah, my fandom has been dorm to be a rough time for me. Yeah. My fandom has been dormant for more than a decade now, and I can't imagine anything that could bring it back except Otani in pinstripes. We should specify Yankees pinstripes because, as you pointed out, there are other teams with pinstripes.

But if he were playing in my backyard, I got to go see him and cover him and look, I mean, my love for Otani is so deep that I have watched a lot of Angels baseball over the past few years. That's the sacrifice that I make for him. And so if he were actually on a good team that played where I live and that I used to root for, boy, I don't know. I don't know. used to root for. Oh, boy. I don't know. I don't know. I'm not sure that there is still like an ember glowing somewhere deep down inside me that could be blown on and rekindled. But if anything could do it, it would be Shohei Otani. Anyway, that's something to think about. So, all right. We talked about the Reds. Are you happy, Reds fans? I don't know. You're probably not. Because careful what you wish for. We talked about the Reds, but not in a way that was like very exciting.

And maybe it was cathartic for you to hear us express these thoughts that perhaps Reds fans are also feeling. We speak for the people. Yeah, we're people of the public and we know what people are saying out there. All right. It is interesting that, you know, you were just saying like Mets fans being insufferable. I've seen some Mets fans and maybe not even just Mets fans, but saying like basically that the Mets are, you know, it's bad for baseball and they're buying a championship and everything. But I think also it leads to like a crisis of identity almost of like,

who are we? Like we're not the Wilpon Mets anymore. Okay, that's good. We don't want to be Lowell Mets, but we've been Lowell Mets for so long. And now we're the team that outspends everyone. We're the Yankees, basically. Are we the baddies? Like, I think it causes a kind of reckoning, which we've seen with some other teams, I guess. Like when the Red Sox go from the long-suffering Red Sox who are cursed to winning World Series left and right. How do you define yourself then? Obviously, you're happy to win World Series.

But then it's like this is – my identity is different. Or when the Cubs go from lovable losers to winning a World Series. It's like, well, we're completely different from what we've been for decades and decades now. Or I guess maybe if the Mariners go and become a perennial playoff team after having the longest playoff drought. They haven't accomplished that quite yet. But that would be quite a change too. So I've heard on Twitter, you know, there have been some compilations of like sports radio calls like on KNBR in San Francisco and then also on WFAN in New York. And people who are like, oh, this is shady.

Like Steve Cohen can't be doing this. Like middle of the night deals is some kind of conspiracy. It's I don't know. I think it takes some time to just like reform your image of yourself just because people obviously associate with their teams very closely. Like that's what fandom is. You know, I mean, when your team wins, you feel better about yourself. And when your team loses, you feel worse about yourself, which is weird and maybe not always healthy, but you identify very closely. And when your team is doing well, you say we, and when your team's doing bad, then you say they sometimes. But when your

team goes from like, oh, we're the ones that we're always behind the Yankees and we spend less than the Yankees and we don't operate like a big market team. And obviously, it differs. I mean, in the mid-80s, the Mets were kind of the kings of New York. And then these things fluctuate and go back and forth. But it's been a while since that. And so I think it takes some time to adjust to, hey, this is what my team is now. What does that say about me?

Who am I? Who am I? Who am I? Do I adopt the posture of defensively reacting to things? Do I just point at the payroll and go scoreboard? You all have to find your way through this now because it is a new day. It is. through this now because it is a new it's a new day and you know i've seen seen some mets fans who have i think understandably reacted to you know people joking about like can't wait to see how they met this you know yeah and they're kind of defensive about that and i get it like they're

trying to yuck your yum but i just invite you to consider that you're now, you're in this rarefied position as a sports fan where you get to wield graciousness as a cudgel against others. And so few sports fans get to sit in that space where it's like, oh, it's okay. You know, like I get it, but we have the best team in baseball probably. So we'll just see how it goes. You know, you have the option to dig in to a well of calm and then bludgeon somebody. And that doesn't get, you know, people don't get to do that very often, you know, like, and they're going to be they're going to be flaws, right? There are nits to pick. And, you know, I think that if you look at a fan base, like, say, the Astros, you can see how the the behavior of the team in some seasons around scandal means that you're you're not able to sort of occupy that

space in the same way so you should enjoy it while you can because it it can prove fleeting for any number of ways i don't mean to say that the mets are about to go do some baseball crimes but you know like stuff happens right so yeah if that is appealing to you, you can sit in that space, like putting on a warm blanket, you know, having a cup of coffee. Yeah. I just received an unsolicited message from John Chenier, official scorekeeper of Effectively Wild. He says he has seen enough. I have officially won the offseason signings draft. Congratulations.

Thank you. It wasn't official until he said so. Right. I didn't want to make it seem like, you know, I'm claiming victory before it's official. It's official, though, even though Cosquare's contract is not yet. Yeah. All right. I think that that's right.

So we're going to end with a stat blast and pass blast. But there is some other news that we should acknowledge here. And it is Trevor Bauer related news. And it is Trevor Bauer related news. So on Thursday, Trevor Bauer had his suspension reduced and was reinstated effective immediately. This was a result of a neutral arbitrator making this decision. And we should, well, first of all, explain what exactly the suspension was and what the terms were. So originally, the suspension that MLB imposed was 324 games. And now that has been reduced from 324 to 194 games. And so the fact

that he has been reinstated immediately suggests that they are counting some time served while he was waiting to be suspended, while he was on administrative leave, that period where every whatever two weeks or month or whatever it was, they would kind of kick the can down the road. He's getting credit for that time. So originally, he was going to be suspended for the remainder of the 2022 season and then all of next season and the beginning of the following season. As it is, he is now eligible to play baseball again. He still will be docked some of his 2023 salary. Right. The first 50 games of the season. Right. Yes. So to be clear about what this means, because when there was the earlier hearing about the restraining order and the judge elected not to impose a restraining order, some people said, oh, you know, this vindicates Bauer.

This means that he didn't do that Bauer posed an ongoing continuing risk to the woman, but was not saying anything really officially about what happened or didn't happen. And in this case, if people are inclined to look at this as any kind of vindication or anything, or, oh, he's innocent, no, it's definitely not that either. The arbitrator, in fact, is upholding the suspension and upholding the longest suspension ever levied, right, under the domestic violence sexual assault measures, right, and is just saying, well, it's 194 instead of 324, which would have been way, way, way more than anyone has ever gotten. Instead, in this case, way, way, way more than anyone has ever gotten. Instead, in this case, it's still more than anyone has ever gotten, but by less so. So the arbitrator is not saying that he's innocent or anything,

or he's been falsely accused, or he didn't do this, or it wasn't this or that. They decided for whatever reason, and there was apparently a seven-month process. I mean, basically like a full trial as the Washington Post describes it with just all kinds of evidence and badgering and witnesses. And it sounds extremely unpleasant for all involved. And so that went on and we don't really know what the basis for this decision was, but evidently decided that the $324 was not justified, but that $194 was and further salary loss. So again, that would lead you to believe that what he did, that what the arbitrator decided that he did was quite bad and merited some serious punishment. And MLP really, really went for it with the $324 games and didn't get the full thing. And I wonder whether part of

that was just, you know, kind of like anchoring things at 324 so that you get something in the middle, maybe like, you know, if they had made the initial suspension 194 or whatever, and then Bauer appeals, then does that get knocked down? And so maybe if you reach further than you think you can actually get, maybe then you still get a really long term. I don't know what the strategy was. It's a long term regardless. So the upshot is that he now can play baseball again in MLB. Whether he will is a far different matter. And we are still waiting to hear, maybe somewhat surprisingly still waiting to hear what the Dodgers will do. is meted out in these circumstances that is icky and one of them is because it is reliant on precedent um you like you need more incidents to increase the precedent potential like upper bound of the precedent for suspension yeah i suspect that you are correct that their strategy was to go for something very very long perhaps something that they didn't really have much confidence would be upheld at its

current level but that would allow a lot of room underneath it to still impose something very very long and to your point like the the press release specifically says that he was found to have violated the policy right clearly both in terms of the suspension and then they take pains to say it in the press release so i don't think anyone needs to have a lot of patience for the argument that this is a vindication of him in some way that is not what happened here yeah i just i find myself quite disappointed in the dodgers because i know that there were a number of ways that this could have gone right the art the arbitrator could have said that his initial suspension was appropriate in length, and then the Dodgers were just going to be done in an uncomplicated way. But surely they had to consider the possibility that the suspension would be reduced.

If you and I are able to look at this and say that was probably a strategic overshoot on the part of the league, it seems likely that the Dodgers, famously smart, could have anticipated that too. So it just is flummoxing to me that they weren't prepared to say he has the potential to play baseball again this year, but it's not going to be with us. Because that seems like the only possible outcome we're going to get here, right? If he suits up for the Dodgers this season, I mean, if he suits up for anyone this season, but if he suits up for the Dodgers this season, it will be a black mark on the organization in a pretty profound way. And so unless they are going to reinstate him, what are we waiting for? Just cut the guy.

Be done, right? Like say, look, we made a mistake here. We didn't anticipate that the repercussions of his personality would be this violent. But like this guy is clearly bad news. We understand the damage that it has done to our fan base. We appreciate the pain that it causes. We're done. We are keen to move on base. We appreciate the pain that it causes. We're done. We are keen to move on and reform our practices when it comes to signing players who have red

flags off the field so that we don't put our fans or organization in a position like this again. How was it just not ready to go? Yeah. I wonder that too. Yeah. Because they put out the very briefest of statements, right? That was just like, oh, we just heard about this too, right? You know, basically. And it sounds like they maybe did not anticipate that the decision would come down this year, that they thought it would be early next year instead. But again, like, yeah, this has been dragging on for several months at this point and there are only so many possible outcomes, right? So there had been some reporting elsewhere that maybe Bauer and his uncertain status for 2023 was playing into the Dodgers' relative lack of activity this offseason because they

weren't sure whether they would have to pay him or not. Again, it seems like they could probably afford to do things whether they're paying him or not, but that that may have played into their decision making as pertains to spending. But yeah, like I don't understand really I guess how you don't have kind of, all right, here's one statement if this is the decision and here's another statement if that's the decision and we'll just choose when we hear what it is. Because look, I don't know if there's some kind of procedural complication here. Like, I don't know. I mean, as far as I know, there's not.

I think initially, like when there was frustration about his lack of immediate suspension and everything, you know, like there are certain things that have to happen behind the scenes and certain protections that players have and collectively bargained procedures and everything so that sometimes that stuff takes time. But this has taken time. And, yeah, it's hard to imagine him pitching for the Dodgers. I never want to underestimate teams in their willingness to employ people who have huge strikes against them just based on the fact that they're good at a sport or they're already under contract or whatever it is. But I just, I can't imagine

that with everything that has come out about Bauer that they would still, you know, even like, even the state of their pitching staff and the uncertainties there that we've discussed, like, just, I can't, I really, it's, I don't want to say inconceivable because I can conceive of it, but it's hard to imagine that they would do that. And so if you're not going to do that, then yeah, why waste time? What is there even to discuss or think about or talk about? So I guess they have until January 6th, right, to make that decision. Correct. But yeah, I don't know why you would necessarily need all that time. You know, I mean, maybe people are on vacation. It's right before Christmas. Who knows?

Sure. But it seems like you should have some kind of contingency in place for when this decision comes down. Here's what we will do and here's what we will say. So once he is released by the Dodgers, if and when he is, then of course the question will be, well, is there one of the other 29 teams that will say we will employ Trevor Bauer for league minimum or whatever? Look, we've seen plenty of players who had domestic violence stuff, sexual assault stuff, whatever it was, some suspension who have come back and been employed. But even if it's like it's hard to say this is worse than that, you know, giving Aroldis Chapman another chance or whoever else, you know, all these players who have gotten additional chances after they've come back from these things, Jose Reyes, whatever it is, like this would, I think, be beyond even that. So I imagine that if he really wants to pitch, he will be able to pitch

somewhere in the world, you know, because players who have basically been drummed out of MLB have Right. getting a good player and Bauer presumably better at baseball than Roberto Orsuna or Addison Russell. And some team will. This isn't the point that Addison Russell has looked like garbage and lead on this year. Yeah. I mean, it makes it easier, obviously, for a team to say, oh, no, we're going to cut this guy when he's been bad. Right. So Bauer has not been bad. And so some team probably somewhere will bite and will say yeah we'll do it you know he served his time or whatever

and also he's a good pitcher or at least he was before this long layoff but I don't know I just the condemnation would be so loud and so sweeping and so enduring if an MLB team were to do that that even purely from a like, is this

worth it to us putting aside any moral ethical considerations just in terms of the PR blowback and everything? I just, I can't see that making sense. I also just think like compounding that, why would you, like, let's say you decided you didn't care about any of that, right? I'm not even going to like tag a team with it because it feels ungenerous, right? But let's imagine you're a team and you're like,

I don't care about that part. I don't know why you would have any confidence that the guy you just signed isn't going to continue to be a problem for you. And I don't even mean that in terms of like trying to place some sort of icky bet on whether or not he re-offends i mean like this guy can't shut up yeah even when he should for his own benefit right so why would you possibly think that like that the once the initial

shock of it kind of blows over, that you're done. Because he's going to say something else, right? He's going to be a prick about something else because that's who he is. So you're not going to be done, right? You're not going to be done with him and him causing headaches for your organization. He causes headaches.

He can't seem to resist that temptation. So I think the easiest way to avoid that and the easiest way to not, I think, profoundly offend your fan base is to just not sign him, right? And every day that passes between now and January 6th, the Dodgers are doing a version of that. So just cut him. passes between now and January 6th, the Dodgers are doing a version of that. So just cut him. Yeah, it has been really, I mean, striking just how little anyone has been kind of forced to think and talk about Trevor Bauer while he was away, while he was suspended, like suspensions and deplatforming, you know, like really does make a difference. I mean, obviously, like there has to be some basis for it. And in

his case, there was. But when some, like, truly toxic person gets, like, banned from Twitter, like, in the past when that used to happen, you know, and they didn't all get reinstated, like, it really, like, it makes a difference just in terms of, like, just being out of the public sphere, being out of the public eye, just like the frequency with which people have to think about those people and hear about those people, which for some people can be a painful thing to have to think about those things. Like just, you know, like not banning them from the world or anything, but just saying, hey, you don't get to be on this particular platform or you don't get to be a Major League Baseball player or whatever it is, like, really does make a difference in terms of visibility and sort of salience.

So it was like when this news came down, it was like, oh, this is this guy again. Yeah. Because the thing you really want to think about right before in the midst of the holiday season is Trevor Bauer. Yeah. All right. So that's that. And maybe we can do the pass blast before the stat blast today because we actually have a guest stat blaster.

So start with the pass blast. And this is from 1946 and from Jacob Pomeranke, Sabre's director of editorial content and chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. And he writes, 1946, the spectrum of defense. The concept of a defensive spectrum was popularized by Bill James in the 1980s. But the idea that some fielding positions are easier or harder for a player to play has been debated for as long as baseball has been around. for as long as baseball has been around. In 1946, sports writer Grantland Rice conducted a straw poll of active players to see which position they felt was the least challenging for a defender.

Their answers, which appeared in the Sporting News on May 2, 1946, may seem a little unusual. Quote, The argument broke into a rash concerning the easiest position to play on a baseball team. After Snuffy Sternweiss of the Yankees had played third base for three or four days, I asked him how he liked the job. Great, he said, but do I still get paid on the 1st and 15th for playing third? We soon lined up the viewpoints of all the earnest athletes we could corral.

In the consensus that followed, the catching assignment was rated the toughest by an extensive margin. Catching 100 ballgames a year is harder work than playing any other position for 300 games. All right, not surprising. It's still true today as it was in 1946 and was probably even more true before that. We talked with the Cardinals, Yankees, Red Sox, Tigers, Indians, as they were called back then, and several others about the easiest position to play. From the start, the players began voting for third and first base. The consensus finally settled on third base.

As one veteran expressed it, on a general average, when they slap one at you, it is either a hit or an out, but nearly always a hit if you don't handle it. Yes, there are bunts to cover, but as a percentage proposition, third basemen get few errors thrown into their records. It always happens in a hurry at third base. At short and second, they have room and time enough to move around, but the third baseman doesn't. And Jacob writes, Rice went on to rue the relative lack of great third basemen in baseball's first hundred years. Noting that Jimmy Collins and Pi Trainer were at the top of a short list, Rice wrote,

The list of good ones is fairly long, the list of great ones very scant. By the 1940s, the defensive spectrum was shifting to accommodate a new era of power-hitting third basemen. Cleveland's Ken Keltner and Al Rosen, the Browns' Harlan Clift, and the Braves' Bob Elliott, who became the first third baseman to win an MVP award in 1947, were part of a new class of third basemen who helped solidify the idea that it was a position for big bats, not flashy gloves. It's interesting, right? I wouldn't have thought that people would think this even in 1946. I guess it makes sense that third base would be underrated because historically historically third basemen have been sort of excluded from Cooperstown. Yeah.

There are just fewer third basemen than it seems like. They're an underrepresented demo. Yeah. Right. And so I wonder whether this is still stemming from the idea that there's not much of a defensive burden at third base. You'd think back then like there were probably more bunts. Right. And so that would increase the burden.

Probably more bunts, right? And so that would increase the burden. So this idea that like, well, everything happens so fast that either you make the play or you don't, that makes it sound hard to me. Yeah. Physically challenging, at least. I get at other positions like you have more time to think and run around. And sure, maybe range matters more than reaction speed and reflexes and everything. But that's, I mean, that's part of why it's hard, isn't it? Anyway, that's sort of surprising that anyone would pick first base over third specifically. Yeah. Weird. Weird. It is weird.

Yeah. Sometimes I'm really surprised and impressed by just how much like people in baseball and players always intuitively knew and that we come along decades or centuries later. And when we finally have the numbers to quantify it, we say, oh, wow, look at this. And, you know, players were saying it all along and sometimes not so much. Sometimes it seems like maybe they were overlooking something. I mean, just defensive positioning for one thing. Like it took so long for I know there were isolated examples of the shift and everything, but for the most part, you know, people just either didn't realize or just were so bound

by convention that they didn't just start standing where the balls got hit. And I know that maybe balls were hit different places at different times and these things change and the defensive spectrum changes somewhat over time too. But it's hard for me to imagine it changing so much since 1946 that third base was actually like easier than first. It's just, that's weird. Yeah, that's weird. It's weird. Yeah. All right. So for the stat blast here, I have a couple quick ones from Ryan Nelson, frequent stat blast consultant, and then we will be joined by a guest voice. They'll take a data set sorted by something like ERA- or OBS+.

And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. So the first one here, this is simple. This is from Sean who writes, this seems like a question that would have been asked before, but I can't recall it coming up, nor did I find it anywhere on the wiki. Thanks for looking. I always appreciate when people check the Effectively Wild wiki before sending in a question. What is the most distinct batters a single team has had come to the plate in their half of an inning? For example, if a team bats around, here we go, that would be nine. I don't want to get into it i just i'm just reading what i'm

reading what sean said that's all bomb you detonated i should have skipped that sentence if the leadoff hitter from that inning is pinch hit for this would become 10 i'd imagine this has happened before but has it gone to 11 or 12 so he's saying like distinct batters not even just like different people i guess coming tos, not even just like different people, I guess, coming to the plate, not even just the number of lineup spots that came up, but different people. So Ryan looked this up. I thought we might've talked about this. I don't know, but he looked it up. He found the answer is 12, which has happened five times. So Cleveland in 2018, September 28th, top of the seventh. They had 14 plate appearances, three pinch runners, all 12 batted.

Detroit, August 8th, 2001, top of the ninth, 17 plate appearances. The second batter was pinch run for, and the 11th and 12th batters were pinch hitters. San Francisco, July 15th, 1997, top of the seventh, 19 plate appearances. Three of the last seven were pinch hitters. Minnesota, May 20th, 1994, bottom of the fifth, 16 plate appearances. Three of the last seven were pinch hitters. Minnesota, May 20th, 1994, bottom of the fifth, 16 plate appearances. Three of the last six were pinch hitters. San Francisco, May 5th, 1958, bottom of the ninth, 15 plate appearances. There were actually six pinch hitters and a pinch runner, but three of the pinch hitters came in before the person they

were replacing had a plate appearance in the innings and the pinch runner never hit. This was a wild inning. The Giants started the bottom of the ninth down 11 to 1 and lost 11 to 10. So there we go. Thanks, Ryan. And another answer from Ryan. This was a question that was submitted some time ago by Christopher. And Christopher wrote in to say,

as a Mets fan, I often muse about something like the McNeil cycle, named after Jeff McNeil, a bloop hit, a bunt hit, a walk, and a reached on an error. Not sure if that's even the right foursome because McNeil will take a base however he can get it, but it makes me wonder what's the most ways anyone has ever gotten on base in the same game. Could also reach on a fielder's choice, a drop third strike, an intentional walk, etc.

Not sure if this is easily searchable. So Ryan said some of the premise of this question is not easily searchable. For example, we can't search for a bloop hit specifically, and even a bunt hit is not as easy to identify as one might think. So he says, I think there are two answers. The regular answer is to the question, how many different unique RetroSheet event codes did a player have in a single game,

which is six and has happened seven times. So most recently, Ben Zobrist, on July 20th, 2012, he was credited with a single, a bunt groundout, a double, a walk, a strikeout, a hit by pitch, and a triple, which was a walk off. And then August 7th, 1999, Manny Ramirez, he had a homer, a single, a walk, a double, a hit by pitch, and an intentional walk. in 1989, intentional walk, double, E6, hit by pitch, ground out, single, ground out, line out, walk, line out, Stan Musial, 1957, double, hit by pitch, homer, walk, intentional walk, E3. I'll put this all in a document for anyone who wants to see the full list. But Ryan writes that the maybe better answer is if we group all hit types into just hit, in which case it emphasizes other ways of getting on base. So by this metric, the record is five, which has happened 14 times, most recently by Chris Bryant on August 29th, 2016.

No one has gotten to five without a hit, although a theoretical maximum would be six if you had an error, a walk, an intentional walk, a hit by pitch, interference, and fielder's choice. But there are retro sheet event codes that correspond to on-base events are foul error, walk, intentional walk, hit by pitch, interference, error, fielder's choice, single, double, triple, and homer. So those are your choices. All right.

All right. With that, we have one final stat blast, and Homer. So those are your choices. All right. All right. So with that, we have one final stat blast and we have someone to help us with it. Okay. So recently I mentioned on the show and also wrote something about the mid-2000 Yankees payrolls in relation to the Mets' current payrolls. And I was saying that if you inflation adjusted, that maybe Steve Cohen's spending wasn't actually that far out of line. But I was just using national inflation adjustments just for the dollar in general. And after I wrote or said that, Zach Cram, my colleague at The Ringer, messaged me and said, when you cite inflation adjusted payroll figures, why do you use national inflation rates instead of baseball-specific ones? And the answer was basically because it was easy, because there are lots of websites that I can just go and plug in inflation calculations and it'll spit out a number for me.

So that was basically why I did that. But as JFK said, we choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard. So this is the other thing. This is one of the other things, is adjusting team payrolls to see whether Steve Cohen's spending is actually historically unprecedented. And so Zach did the research, took it upon himself. And so we've invited him on for a guest stat blast, a Zach blast. He is a master blaster himself. So welcome to the show, Zach. I'm thrilled to be here, mainly because when I read about your article about the Correa

switcheroo, you said that the 2023 Mets are spending more than any previous Yankees teams, even after accounting for inflation. And I didn't think that was necessarily true. I sought to prove you wrong with math. And then you let me come on your podcast to tell you about it, which is very gracious. Yeah. We don't silence dissenters here. We welcome them onto the show to correct us. So that is what is happening here. And you were inspired in part by a Craig Edwards post, is that correct, from Fangraphs from a few years ago before he departed to join the Players Association? Craig Edwards' piece was about how, if you look at Alex Rodriguez's giant Rangers contract from 2001, at least if you plug it into a national inflation calculator now, as I did this morning, it was worth 10 years and about $420 million in 2022 dollars.

But by baseball-specific inflation standards, it's more like $590 billion in 2022 dollars. So still far and away the largest contract ever, and I think shows you what the discrepancy is and why using baseball-specific inflation might be more accurate. And can you explain at all why these methods are so different? That is why baseball inflation is different from national inflation? I mean, I didn't invite you on because you were a baseball economics expert, although I do appreciate your expertise in general. But obviously, it makes quite a difference using different inflation rates, which I guess suggests that the baseball economic environment is not quite like the rest of the countries.

Yeah, I would guess that it's just baseball revenues and costs have been rising in tandem at a higher rate than national inflation. And national inflation, right, I'm not an economist, but it's kind of an average over a large number of products, but some have much more rapid inflation, like education costs. So maybe baseball is the higher education of sports. higher education of sports. And how did you do it exactly? Just methodologically? Is that how you say that word? Methodologically? Methodologically. I said it much slower than you should, but I think other than that, it was correct. Still better read than Decade. Yeah. So I specifically looked at 26-man opening day payrolls plus CBT payments and used the COTS contracts data, which goes back to the start of the 21st century. And I know that isn't a perfect representation of how much a team is actually paying on player salaries, but it's surprisingly difficult to find comparable team-by-team 40-man data beyond the last decade.

You can find CBT 40-man data on COTS contracts back to, I think, 2011. But before that, it's just year-end 40-man payments. And then other sites don't go a comparable amount back either. So I figured 26-man was going to be close enough and get us close enough to the right answer. And that was the best way I could find for a longer time period. So see, this is why I did it the easy way. It did involve probably more spreadsheet wrangling than you had to do, just plugging into the National Inflation website. I am comfortable with spreadsheet wrangling, but I was on a deadline.

All right. So what did you discover about team payrolls? Yeah. So I ran these calculations in two different ways, and I'm not totally sure which is best, so I'll offer both. The first is that I compared every team's payroll to the average payroll from the season in question, creating a sort of payroll plus metric. So like ERA plus or WRC plus, it's centered on the number 100. And by that method, the 2023 Mets rank second among all teams since 2000. So they have a payroll plus of 306, meaning they're spending three times as much as

the average team. I will note that this is contingent on Carlos Correa passing his physical and getting the salary that has been reported. However, that would rank the Mets second among all teams this century. The only team higher, the 2005 Yankees, who had a payroll plus of 325. I'm sure it would not surprise anyone listening to learn that before the 2023 Mets, the six highest payroll plus marks this century belonged to the 2004 Yankees, the 2005 Yankees, the 2006 Yankees, the 2007 Yankees, 2004 Yankees, the 2005 Yankees, the 2006 Yankees, the 2007 Yankees, the 2008 Yankees, and the 2009 Yankees. Actually, the top 19 before now were all Yankees or Dodgers teams, and the 20th was the 2022 Mets. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was a fan of those teams, as were you. I guess I worked for a couple of those teams, though I was not part of that payroll. It would have made a very negligible

difference if I had been. But that was not shocking to me. That's the team that I had singled out when I talked about it, the 2005 Yankees, because they were just so far above everyone else at the time. The actual number is a lot lower than the current Mets number. What was it? In 2005 dollars, it was like just over 200 or something like that. 208 million for the 26-man opening day apparel plus a $34 million CBT amount. Right. Yeah. So I guess the CBT, I mean, it was different than different tiers, different penalties,

et cetera. So I guess they were probably not as far over it as Cohen is going to be. And maybe also the penalties weren't as steep. But yeah, if you do do that adjustment, even if you just do the lazy way that I did, they're kind of close to where the Mets are currently. But if you do it the more involved way, then they stand out. And so that was one method, right? What's the other method? The other thing I'll just say about the 2005 Yankees is they're one of my favorites because they are by far the worst defensive team on record. That's the team that had like a negative 120 defensive runs saved,

probably because all of their players were old and expensive. Yeah, exactly. Right. No, I noticed that too, because yes, they were the lowest team defense by defensive run saved ever. And weirdly, just as weirdly, maybe more weirdly, this year's Yankees were, I think, the highest, right? They had the highest defensive run saved total ever, which is weird because I would not have thought of them that way. But yeah, the 2022 Yankees plus 129 DRS and the 2005 Yankees negative 120. So that's your spectrum there. And they both won almost the same number of games. Yep. Multiple ways to win. All right. So the other method that you used?

Yeah. So the other method was calculating every team's Z score compared to the season in question. I figured maybe that's a better way to see how far ahead they are of every other team as opposed to just the average. Because even this year, the yankees are not super far away from the mets percentage-wise speaking so if you run this calculation the mets estimated opening day peril plus cbt gives them a z score of 3.74 meaning they're 3.74 standard deviations ahead of the average and that ranks fourth all time. So you have the 2005 Yankees again, number one with a Z-score of 4.28. And then the 2006 Yankees, the 2004 Yankees, those mid-2000s Yankees teams were really on a whole nother level,

even by Yankees standards. And then you have the Mets in fourth place. And you also looked at the lower spending side of things, right? Yeah. So on the other end of the leaderboard, all the way at the bottom, at least for this year, you find the Oakland Athletics. Last year, Oakland had a payroll plus of 32. So 32 was the eighth lowest mark of the 21st century. Incidentally, the Orioles were one spot below them with the seventh lowest mark of the 21st century but Baltimore has spent a smidge this winter and Oakland has not so now the 2023 A's currently have a payroll plus mark of 31 which means their spending is a not so nice 69 percent below average

the worst of the century belongs to the 2006 Marlins. They had a grand total of $15 million spent on their entire opening day roster. Gosh. That led to a payroll plus of 19 and was the year, if I remember correctly, that they actually contended into September, which won Joe Girardi the manager of the year award, but still led to his firing, which is one of my favorite little transactions in recent baseball history. It's like they were close to like charging people to play for them like if they could have figured out a way to do it they would have done that yeah those marlins actually have the lowest just lowest payroll period even if you don't adjust for inflation of the entire century so even if you

go earlier in the 2000s, the 2006 Marlins still had a lower gross outlay than any other team. But I think maybe the most interesting takeaway here is that while the current Mets are in the top five, if you look at how far away they are Z score wise, they still have a ways to go to reach those 2005 Yankees. So to get a Z score of 4.28 this year, the Mets would need to spend just north of $600 million on their whole roster. So I don't know if Steve Cohen can actually figure out a way

to get $100 million more on this roster. I guess it would be more like $60 million and the rest would be made up by the remaining CBT that would add. But if there are $60 million to spend here, I believe Steve can do it and match the 2005 Yankees even adjusting for baseball inflation. I believe in Steve too. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Well, thank you for doing this. And I think it is illustrative or illustrative or however you say that. I'm questioning all of my pronunciations today. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to give you a complex, Ben.

But the fact that in some sense, things have stagnated since 20 or so years ago. The fact that A-Rod's contract is still such an outlier, which I did mention on the pod the other day, that if you adjust for these things, just no one compares to A-Rod, even if you do the lazy national inflation adjustment. So the fact that those kind of contracts were handed out then and that the Yankees were spending then, it's partly a product of the fact that that was still the senior Steinbrenner days. But I think it's probably also a reflection of the fact that MLB, that Bud Selig, that Rob Manfred, that the owners in general, they, I think, have made a concerted effort not to have outliers like this, right? I mean, this is not an accident that we haven't

seen someone stand out like this. I think they decided we don't want this. And we're either going to be reluctant to admit owners to the ranks who will be outliers in spending like this, or we're going to implement various measures and taxes and penalties to try to keep people down. I mean, it's like the evangelical article this week about Steve Cohen and other team officials and owners grumbling about how much he's spending and saying, well, there's no collusion, but we all kind of thought we had an understanding here. An informal agreement amongst partners about the state of payroll. You know, like who could pick a synonym for that?

It's hard to even pick one. Nothing actionable, no paper trail, but I thought we were all kind of on the same page here. And then Steve Kool-Aid man's in through the wall and he's spending a ton. And so other owners are upset about this. And I guess this is maybe why, or one reason why they were reluctant to admit him to the ranks in the first place.

They want people who will just toe the line and keep things where they were. So now we will see, I guess, whether Cohen continues to have these outlier numbers or whether others catch up or whether he starts having to spend less maybe because the Mets have some cheaper productive players in one of these years. So we'll see whether we look back, I guess, on this years later and the 2023 Mets look like a 2005 Yankees level outlier or whether other teams have kind of caught up because, yeah, you could say that it's not really that he's breaking the scale here. He's just kind of resetting it to where it was almost 20 years ago. Yeah, I think he's not just an outlier for this year, but for recent seasons. If you look at the top 10 of the list I made, other than the 2023 Mets, the most recent

team is the 2015 Dodgers. So neither the Dodgers nor Yankees have been spending as much in recent seasons relative to the rest of the league and maybe that gets something I think you talked about on a previous podcast that the Yankees and Dodgers spent a ton of money when they were building out their player dev systems but now while they still spend a lot they don't need to be quite so reliant on the big free agent deals anymore. You see, maybe the Yankees would have chased Carlos Correa, but they have the shortstops coming up, so they decided not to. So maybe the Mets will spend like this forever because Steve Cohen can, but while they're in the early stages of building out that dev infrastructure, maybe by 2026, they don't

need to chase all these free agents anymore. Right. All right. Well, this has been a higher education. The eagle has landed. Thank you. We did it. Thank you very much, Zach, for taking me to task and then completing the task yourself. Thank you so much. All right. That will do it. By the way, I wish we had the data. It might exist somewhere in some form, perhaps, or maybe not. But I wonder if we could do Zach's payroll plus metric for earlier eras of baseball, where you had even more variability in results and some teams that were just terrible for decades and some teams that were dominant for decades. Maybe the disparity wouldn't be as large because of course that was pre-free agency. But if you included the cost that it took to sign

players and amateur talent, I'd be very curious to know, you know, the Yankees versus the Browns in the first half of the 20th century. What was the gap there? The Yankees and Connie Mack's Philadelphia A's when they were fire selling. Some teams that could barely make payroll would probably be a pretty extreme differential then too, though maybe limited just by the fact that players didn't make nearly as much money back then. Also, I wanted to correct myself. I mentioned on an earlier episode that I didn't know if Carlos Correa had played third base professionally because I was looking at his baseball reference page and it didn't have him with any third base innings in the majors or the minors.

But as a couple people pointed out, he did, of course, play third base in the WBC alongside shortstop Francisco Lindor. So yes, he has. And in fact, with the same shortstop. I also meant to mention when we were talking about Otani earlier that Michael Bauman sent me a Christmas card and he addressed it to the Otani family and it was delivered to me. Of course, it had my address, but it's nice that the Postal Service considers me extended Otani family. Lastly, after we finished recording, there was a pretty fun trade.

It seems that we cannot post an episode before some interesting transaction happens, but the Blue Jays traded for Dalton Varshow from the Diamondbacks, and the Diamondbacks got Gabriel Moreno and Lourdes Gurriel Jr. This is a really fun trade. You have Moreno, who is one of the maybe five best prospects in baseball, and you have Varshow, who is one of the most fun and interesting players in baseball, a combination catcher slash outfielder who is not just passable at both positions, but is one of the best defensive outfielders in baseball, which is incredible that he could play both of those positions and that he could play outfield so well. And this is just one of those satisfying trades where each team is trading from a strength to address a weakness or less of a strength.

team is trading from a strength to address a weakness or less of a strength. So the Pujays had too many catchers and the Diamondbacks had too many outfielders. And it was pretty apparent that each team was going to trade from that strength at some point. And people had even speculated that maybe they matched up. And what do you know? Sometimes it just really makes sense. So the Pujays have just overhauled their outfield defense. It's going to be really quite a defensive unit out there because George Springer can move over to a corner and then you have Kevin Kiermaier in center, presumably, if his hip thing is okay, if he's back to full strength. And if he is still as good as he was, then he's one of the best outfielders in baseball. And Varshow literally led all outfielders,

I believe, in outs above average and was right there in other metrics too. And if you put him in a corner, my goodness. So the Jays have really juiced their run prevention this offseason. I hope this doesn't mean the end of Dalton Varshow catching. It probably does. I mean, he might pick up an inning or two here or there. But the Blue Jays have Alejandro Kirk and they also have Danny Jansen. So Dalton Varshow becomes an incredible emergency catcher.

I guess he's your third string guy. So if someone else gets hurt or if someone else needs a break, he may still strap on the gear. I hope he does just so he can continue to be a curiosity in that way. But he's a great outfielder and a pretty good hitter too. I was reminded by Dylan Higgins that the podcast also has some history with Dalton Varshow because when we did our Eclipse game back in 2017, we went and saw a minor league game, viewed the Eclipse. This was the Hillsborough Hops versus the Salem Kaiser Volcanoes, and Dalton Varshow homered twice in that game, which I had forgotten. I was maybe distracted by the sun disappearing. And then Moreno is a great

prospect who can be the Diamondbacks catcher of the future and to some extent the present. So that's just a really fun one. Maybe we will discuss it more after the holiday. Oh, and I did want to note, I saw Sarah Lang's tweet that there have been two games in MLB history where two twin brothers pitched. One was this past April when Tyler and Taylor Rogers pitched for different teams in the same game. And the other was July 31st, 1956, when Effectively Wild legend Johnny O'Brien and his brother Eddie pitched for the same team, the Pirates. So Taylor and Tyler not only up effectively Wild's alley because of their names, but also because they are following in the footsteps of the O'Brien brothers, and they can become the second set of twins to pitch for the same team in the same game.

And I guess the first to pitch in the same game multiple times. We will be recording on a regular schedule next week. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night can keep us from our appointed podcasting rounds. We're going to do the minor league free agent draft next week. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night can keep us from our appointed podcasting rounds. We're going to do the minor league free agent draft next week. And what I would like to do, which we have also done before, is at the end of the year, we will sometimes devote an episode or two to talking about things that we did not discuss during the past year. We try to find at least one story about each team that was unsung, at least by us, maybe was undercovered by the national media.

It could be a fun fact. It could be an interesting individual season. It could be some great off-the-field story. Whatever it is, something that you thought was interesting about a team or the team you follow that we didn't discuss or didn't discuss at length. I know not everyone listens to or remembers every second of every episode. But please, if you have suggestions, I am soliciting them now. Please email us, podcast at fangraphs.com. Let us know

what we missed about your team in 2022, and we will rectify the oversight next week. 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. James Molderig, Anthony Campisi, David Egbobo, Michael Zadra, and Dylan Heinzen. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group exclusively for patrons, as well as access to monthly bonus episodes. You know, we have 14 of those in the can. You sign up right now at that tier, you get 14 more episodes of Ben and Meg, because I know they're not enough already. You can also get deals on ad-free fancrafts memberships and discounts on merch and access to playoff live streams and more. If you're looking to spend some

Christmas money or give someone a last minute gift, consider a Patreon membership to Effectively Wild. As I noted, you can contact me and Meg via email at podcastatfangraphs.com. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectivelyively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We probably will not record again until Tuesday, but if you miss me in the meantime, I should be on a new episode of Rob Nyer's Sabercast on Monday, so you can catch me there. If you're celebrating Hanukkah

or Christmas or Kareemus for that matter, we hope you have happy ones. If you're just enjoying some time off, hopefully, then we hope you do enjoy ones. If you're just enjoying some time off, hopefully, then we hope you do enjoy it one way or another. Have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you next week. Baseball stops for Christmas Like no other game will do But if I had one Christmas wish I'd wish baseball would start soon.

And if I had one Christmas gift, I'd give baseball to all of you. Merry Christmas.