Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2039: A Miles in Someone Else’s Bruise

Episode Date: July 29, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a silly kerfuffle involving Miles Mikolas, Willson Contreras, and Ian Happ, Triston Casas’s hot streak and previous unwritten-rules run-in, Bullet Rogan vs. Shohei Ohtani, Aaron Judge’s return and the Yankees’ underlying issues, the Mets trading David Robertson to the Marlins and the White Sox sending Lance Lynn and […]

Effectively Wild is the Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Reilly of Fangraphs and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm relieved that for the most part, we haven't had to talk about very ridiculous unwritten rules controversies this season. Have we? It's not like they're completely eradicated, but there haven't been that many times where it's risen to the level of we feel like we need to discuss this on Effectively Wild, which frankly is refreshing. But today we've got to talk about one because it's a new level of silliness, I think, at least for this season.

We've got to talk about the Miles Michaelis-Ian flap, which happened on Thursday. And it's among the dumbest baseball kerfuffles that I can recall. I guess there's like a many-way tie for the dumbest because there's so many that are just so dumb. So dumb. But this is down there with the rest of them. Or up there, as the case may be. Or up there. It's a very long list. But this one, okay, just to set the scene here. Now, first of all, Miles Michaelis is involved. So that right there tells you. He is one of the foremost red asses in baseball today. This is, again, a man who is nicknamed the Lizard King because on a bet in the bullpen in an Arizona Fall League game in 2011, he ate a live lizard and then just washed it down with a beverage of

some sort. And this was posted on YouTube. And I will never really think of Miles Michaelis without remembering that he ate a live lizard on a dare. Yeah. Which makes me feel bad for the lizard, for one thing, but also makes me question Miles Michaelis. And that's not the only thing that makes me question Miles Michaelis. He's also had some other extremely silly flare-ups over the years. So a few years ago, there was a time when he yelled at Freddie Galvis for running on the mound. He had gotten Galvis out, I think. Galvis was running back to the dugout and maybe there was an out and Galvis was on base. And on his way back to the dugout, he ran over the mound, just crossed the edge of it because it was direct line from where he was to where he was going.

And this led to a Dallas Braden style stay off my mound reaction from Miles Michaelis, who said something to the effect of, hey, you walk around that shit and you run around the effing mound. And Galvis, who had his back to Michaelis, turned around and raised his arms like, what? Like, what are you talking about? What are you mad about? Yeah. What did I do? I stepped on the mound. And this led to just one of the silliest benches clearing. Like, there weren't punches thrown. It wasn't a brawl or anything. It was one of those classic, everyone walks onto the field and just mills around yelling at each other for a while.

Right. And the bullpens exited the bullpen too. The relievers exited the bullpen. They're like, do we need to? It was like a very tentative, you know, like, should we go out there? I guess we got to go out there because we don't want to be accused of not having our teammates back. So the bullpen start running out there and the umpire just like looked out there and pointed them back to the bullpen.

It was just like, no, like, go back, turn around. And they did. They looked like they were like, hmm, what do we do? Do we stop? Do we go back? And they just, they never made it all the way into the infield. So that was one Myles Michaelis incident. And then maybe it was that same season, but in the playoffs,

he had like a junk off with Juan Soto, where Soto was shuffling at him as he does. And Michaelis got Soto out and then did a junk grab at Soto, like did a little shuffle at Soto on his way off the mound. So that's the person that happened in the Cardinals-Cubs game. So Ian Happ of the Cubs hit St. Louis catcher Wilson Contreras in the head, former Cub Wilson Contreras, with a follow through on a swing. Yes. Completely unintentional, of course. They're friends. You know, they were teammates.

They're friendly. He wasn't trying to hit him in the head. It just happened. And Contreras was hurt. He got cut. It was bleeding and he came out of the game. He wanted to stay, but he had to leave and get his scalp laceration glued up. Yeah. And he said, I feel fine. he wanted to stay in the game but he also said i had a little headache after i got hit i was kind of knocked out so that sounds like yeah gotta get him out of the game go through the concussion protocol it doesn't sound like you should continue to catch but he was not mad at ian hap as best i can tell they hugged yes on as best I can tell, they hugged on Contreras' way off the field. So he recognized that it was unintentional. Hap apologized. Contreras said, we're very good friends. It's part of the game.

It happens and it's over. But it was not over. Not for Miles Michaelis, because Miles Michaelis felt that there needed to be retribution for this. And he was apologetic. Like, he clearly felt bad. He said, it sucks. It's horrible. He comes up bloody. We're good friends. I have a lot of love for him.

It was obviously a scary moment. David Ross, Cubs manager, said, it's part of the game. It stinks. It's terrible how it happened, et cetera, et cetera, right? But Miles Michaelis, no. When Ian Happ came up, first, he buzzed him. He brushed him back. He threw inside. Maybe he was trying to hit him and he missed or he just wanted to have multiple purpose pitches, message pitches here. Right. But then he hit him. He hit him in the butt.

In the butt. In fairness to Michaelis, he was not headhunting. Yeah, he didn't throw it up there, but he hit him in the butt. In the butt. In fairness to Michaelis, he was not headhunting. Yeah, he didn't throw it up there, but he hit him in the butt. Yeah, very clearly intentional, I think. And Happ didn't get mad about it. He said, just go to first base. I wore it. I kind of felt him coming in there like he knew what it was, but he wasn't mad about it.

And then Michaelis got run. He got thrown out of the game. So Lance Barksdale, who was the crew chief, said to a man, we all four, it was no doubt that was intentional. And when it's intentional, no matter where it hits him, he's ejected. Two pitches in, like I said, it's pretty easy on our part. Michaelis said, I was a little surprised. I was waiting and they had a meeting and they decided to toss me. I throw inside to a lot of guys.

The umpires can believe whatever they want to believe. They had a meeting and that was their choice. They believed intent was there and that's all the reasoning umpires need. So he's denying that it was intentional. Ali Marmal, Cardinals manager, also got thrown out when he went out to talk about it or protest. So that was the basic situation. Ben, it is a deeply stupid moment, but it reveals a lot about interpersonal relationships, right? And first of all, I'm sure Michael is like denying that he did it intentionally because

he doesn't want to get fined or suspended or whatever. like miles miles between us like come on dude we're watching it and we could tell you were doing that on purpose you were trying to send a little message to him right you're trying to send a message there's that part of it where you know the circumstance sort of for whatever reason for these guys like demands action and then it demands lying later right yes and it demands a little bit of like i don't know shock to find gambling you know kind of thing so there's that piece of it i was thinking as this unfolded about i don't know that we would call it an unwritten rules controversy but one of the etiquette controversies that we have talked about on the pod this year concerned these very same St. Louis Cardinals and concerned this catcher and his pitching staff being unhappy with his performance as a catcher,

right? And it leading to all kinds of nonsense and him having to DH. Right. And so we kind of picked that apart a little bit at the time. And so if we are trying to construct like a hierarchy of obligation that players feel one to another right and that might be a genuine sense of team collegiality of concern a deep well of empathy you made my friend bleed it wasn't just that he got hit right like he was bleeding he had to leave the. They had to put glue on his head, a place where there famously should not be glue because you got hair up there. Yeah. You shouldn't have glue on your head. It should be a glue free zone. Right. You know, those little hairs are stick together and then you'll kind of like rub one unintentionally in the shower and it's going to feel weird. You probably had a little bit of a concussion. Right. If he's like I blacked out for a minute, my head hurts like, wow, that seems not good. I'm not a doctor, but from a

distance, Dr. Meg says not the best. So, you know, some of it is, I think, coming from this like real genuine concern. And some of it, I'm going to maybe sound like I am criticizing it more than I actually mean to. I do think that some of it is like a performance where you are like, well, this is what you do in this moment. And I have to observe social protocol, whatever my specific idiosyncratic relationship with this other member of my team actually is, I have to do this thing because that's what we do, right? Like, that's what's in the manual, the red ass, potentially ate a lizard that may, you know, the cats have eaten lizards, Ben. And sometimes they look like they're tripping balls after that happens. Like, it's not good. Those little lizards have all kinds of weird stuff in them. That makes it sound like they're magical or something. But like, I would wonder what that experience was actually like for Michaelis. But anyway, that's not the point. So it made me think, I'm like, what is the relationship that is really determining his actions in this moment? Is it sort of a generalized, almost hypothetical, abstract, this is what a teammate does on source of bonding and reconciliation is probably too strong but you

know reconciliation between them and then how does he interpret he being michaelis interpret the actual known real relationship between contraris and hat because to your point like teammates for a long time clearly good friends there's like a hug which is an acknowledgement both of your concern and also in some ways like a taking of responsibility in that moment for like having too long of a follow-through and it getting the guy so like he is asserting again he being michaelis in that moment sort of a supremacy of relationship? Like this is more important than whatever other relational dynamics exist between me and Contreras or between Contreras and Happ. This is what you do. And then I got to lie about all of it later. It's just like, again, I ask you, Ben, as one of the men

I talk to most, are men okay? You guys okay? Because sometimes I worry about you all. Yeah. I don't know if Miles Michaelis is okay. I hope he's not representative of men as a whole, but... Maybe the juice from the lizard entered his brain. Right. Yeah. Maybe he's still suffering some after effects from that all these years later. Maybe he has a literal lizard brain. Could be. I'm given to understand that the lizard brain thing isn't really. Right.

It's not like a good way of actually talking about like the primal urge. But, you know, maybe it's like in Men in Black when the little tiny alien. I bet Men in Black holds up. I was thinking about this the other day. It doesn't matter why. But I bet Men in Black really holds up. You know, the first one. I don't know about the sequels, but the first one I bet is still pretty good on the rewatch.

Yeah, last time I saw it, it did. But yeah, it feels like he's just misinterpreting this as a situation where he has to come to his teammates' defense. There are such situations, but an unintentional contact on a backswing between friends where everyone apologized and hunked it out immediately does not seem like a situation where anyone was calling for, hey, you have to have my back here. Right. So it's just odd. But if I said it was his next at bat hat, by the way, it was the same at bat. It was immediately after. Yeah, it was later.

Yeah. That same at bat. Yeah. And I think another underrated part of this, I have to play a clip from the Cardinals broadcast as well, because the way that the Cardinals broadcasters talked about this was also very silly. So the Cardinals broadcast crew, which take this for what it's worth, but on a very recent awful announcing survey of their listeners and readers of MLB broadcast crews placed bottom five. This clip might be an example of why. So this is Chip Carey on the play-by-play with Brad Thompson. And we're going to pick up at the beginning, just before the hit-by-pitch, and then we

will listen a little bit after to hear how the tone changes once the ejection happens. Message might have been sent there. to hear how the tone changes once the ejection happens. buzzed the tower once got him flushed the second time and now let's see if the umpires issue warnings after half knocked contraris from the game well you you see that half knew exactly what was going on too didn't say a word took his bag caught him right in the hip if you're going to get him that's exactly where you get him did the job the right way they're going to get them, that's exactly where you get them. Did the job the right way. They're going to talk it over. They'll issue warnings. They're going to throw them out? Wow.

They just threw Michaelis out of the game. You've got to be kidding me. You have got to be kidding me. Have a little feel for baseball. Have a little feel for the game. That's awful. Okay. So you might notice a slight inconsistency there, seemingly.

What? You have immediate acknowledgement that this was an intentional retaliatory pitch. Right. And yet there is immediate upset when Michaelis is ejected. How dare they? They have to hit the guy in the butt. He didn't go after his head. Look, it's still, it's a 94 mile per hour pitch in your butt, even if you've got some meat there. I mean, that's going to smart. It's not going to damage you permanently or long term. But also, as we know, pitchers don't have pinpoint command they can't necessarily put the pitch exactly where they want it to in fact the fact that he missed hap on his first pitch and that was higher and inside if he was trying to hit him on that first pitch and he missed by a good margin

then that right there is evidence that he could be trying to hit him on the butt and could actually hit him somewhere that would be dangerous. Right. So that's part of it. And also, you're just you're not allowed to do that. Like you just you can't make it so obvious if it's so obvious that the player's own broadcast crew is immediately acknowledging that that's what was happening. that that's what was happening, then if you were at all serious about discouraging this behavior in the future, in times when it might be more dangerous than it was in this particular case, you have to eject him. So I don't understand the immediate flip-flop there from, oh, yep, that's a message pitch that was on purpose to, how dare they? How dare they? Eject him from this game. It's just, I don't get it, man.

I mean, it's nice that if he was going to hit him somewhere on purpose that he hit him there, but you still, we just should not be hitting people like that on purpose for whatever reason

and in any body part, especially not in a case like this. I understand there are some times where these beanball wars do go on. And if you feel like your teammates are unprotected and are at a disadvantage because you're taking the high road and the other team is just drilling guys, like, yeah, there may be times where, I don't know, some kind of code makes it incumbent on you to step up to protect your player,

hopefully not in a way that's actually endangering other players. But you have to have the back of the players to some extent because it's a competition and because you have to hold your head up in the clubhouse and their interpersonal relationships at stake here. I understand all of that, but this is just not that situation. If Miles Michaelis had not hit, you'd have no one would have come up to him even in the clubhouse and said, hey, why didn't you drill in there? I can't imagine anyone else was thinking he has to hit him here. This was just Michaelis going

rogue, just acting in a way that would be consistent with someone who wanted to bite the head off a live lizard. Wait, was it just the head? He didn't eat the whole thing? Maybe he ate the whole thing. I don't know that it was a one bite thing. I don't know if he just threw it in there and downed it in one swallow. I haven't watched this in quite a while because I don't want to.

So my memory is a little hazy about the bite. I've tried to put it out of my mind, but I think there was a bite as opposed to just a gulp. So I don't know if that's more humane. Maybe it's more humane that way. Either way, it's not very humane, but I'm just saying. Yeah. I'm just thinking about the lizard. Oh, God. Anyway, I think that you're right. He appears to be managing to the expectations of a part of the audience that is not really going to ever ask him about it. I don't imagine, to your point, that if he had just not thrown at half, that afterward one of the beats would have been like i can't believe that you like can you talk about your decision not to back up your teammate there

you know no one's gonna ask that question or even his teammates i don't think would have asked that question so no i mean i don't know what's going on in the cardinals clubhouse these days but who knows what anyone's saying in there but seems like a weird place at times. But I understand the instinct in the moment to say, like, my teammate is bleeding. You know, he's bleeding. He had to leave the game. Again, the glue in the hair. Like, it's just someone with long hair. I can't even.

I mean, he doesn't have long hair, but still seems bad to have glue up there. No glue. And so I get the Russia feeling to be like, I have to do something because I see this guy wounded and this is the guy who did it. He's right here and no one will arrest him. I get the instinct, but I think that you have to not hit him. And I wish that in those moments, like the hypothetical future pain of your own teammates would carry more weight than it does. Because sometimes like, you know, a guy suffers an injury and then there's a plunking and then the benches get worn and everybody simmers down.

But sometimes it does escalate and maybe not in that game, but like over the course of a series or a season. And present you feels like you're protecting someone, but future you is compromising someone potentially. And so, you know, I wish that they would think about that piece of it because like the Cubs might have said, well, he didn't mean to hit him and you definitely meant to hit Hap. So it's on, you know, they might have have it's not like we're even now it's unbalanced it's like right yeah right and so you know he could have set off a chain reaction that would destroy the world much like they were worried about well he set off a

reaction that destroyed the cardinals on that day because they lost 10 to 3. 10 to 3. It was pretty dramatic. The one bit of standing up that I do understand because it does not have that, I think, incendiary potential is the manager. Because in that moment, if you're the manager, even if your player is a lizard eating doofus, you got to get riled up on his behalf. Like that's in there, too. You know, we have such strange expectations of parents yeah this was the first inning by the way it was so early in the game it would be it would still be bad if this were like he's about to get pulled anyway like his day is about to be done but no this is the first inning so if you want to talk about being a good teammate you're putting your

team in a terrible position by getting thrown out in the first inning, which means that you have to have a bullpen game unscheduled, which is going to wear out your pen for future games and put you in a hole for this game. Right. So I have to imagine there were more people in the Cardinals clubhouse thinking this guy is an idiot than good on you, Miles, for sticking up for Wilson Contreras, who we have already given a hard enough time ourselves this season. And, you know, if what you want to do post-game is say, you know, Ian Happ really needs to be more careful with his follow through because it clearly can do damage to guys. It wasn't like Contreras was like up on him or anything like that. You know, like I think it would be fine totally within bounds

post game for the cardinals to be like i really hope he'll think about that because he's putting people in i don't know how often haps swing finishes quite that way but like he should be conscious of the fact that there's a guy back there and you know this time it was his friend you know that's totally within bounds i don't attribute intent to what Hap did, but if you want to think of it as being a little reckless, like, I think that's fine. But it doesn't mean you plunk his meat. This reminded me of another very, very silly unwritten rules controversy that I'm not sure we talked about at the time, but I wanted to talk about it or at least it came up in my mind because I wanted to talk about the recent success of Tristan Casas. Now, Tristan Casas has been one of the best hitters in baseball for a while now, right? Which has been part of why the Red Sox have been kind of on a roll over that

span. Kassus started slow. I said some complimentary things early about him in the season because I thought there was a lot to like there. Like he's clearly selective and patient. And also when he did hit the ball, sometimes he hit the ball very hard. So it seemed like he had some tools and skills that if they all kind of came together, he'd be good. And he had that impressive long plate appearance. And it seemed like he was underperforming his expected stats. So it seemed like there was more there. And it took a little while for it to all start clicking, but it has been clicking. So if we go back, I'm picking some kind of arbitrary end points here, cherry picking a little bit. But if we, yeah, if we go back to June 7th, let's say June 7th through Thursday, Tristan Casas, fifth best qualified hitter

by WRC Plus over that span after Shohei Otani, Corey Seeger, Kyle Tucker, and Freddie Freeman, all name brand baseball players right there. And Tristan Casas, 176 WRC plus over that span, tied with Freddie Freeman for fourth, really. He's hit 325, 409, 617 with nine dingers.

You could go back even further. You could go back. I went back to May 23rd. Even further, you could go back. I went back to May 23rd. So that is not a span of 137 plate appearances, which is what he's had since June 7th, by the way, just ahead of our pal Mickey Moniak over that span. But since May 23rd, that's 180 plate appearances. Still 166 WRC plus over that span. Sixth in baseball after the four guys I mentioned.

And Mookie Betts, another very well-known and very accomplished baseball player. So he's been great for a while now. And that just reminded me of how ridiculous the backlash to Tristan Casas' pregame routine was last season. I don't know if you saw this or remember this. I have no memory of this. I don't know if you saw this or remember this. No memory of this. It's so dumb, again, that if you were aware of it at any point, then you're probably better off if you just instantly forgot it somehow. But maybe I did.

Maybe I was being very healthy that day. I was like, get out of here. I would commend dispute that it was a valuable lesson. But Tristan Casas, you know, he marches to the beat of his own drummer, they say. You know, he's a little bit eccentric. Perhaps he has his own way of doing things. But can I interrupt you briefly? Is he eccentric, like really? Or is he eccentric by like baseball player standards? That's a great question, because, yeah, you could be eccentric by baseball player standards and be a completely normal person. Yeah. Normie otherwise. Yeah. So what he was doing and this was part of a routine

that he had developed in 2019 in the minors and then did all the way through the minors. And no one ever said anything to him about it. And obviously it was working for him and he got promotion. So he kept doing what he was doing. But he had a couple of routines. One is that he would sunbathe shirtless in the grass at Fenway or I guess wherever he was. You know, he'd touch grass. He'd go out there shirtless just like, you know, a couple hours before the game.

He'd lie out there, soak up some rays. Sorry, I'm going to keep interrupting you with clarifying questions. Was he like just shirtless? I don't think he was entirely naked, if that's what you're asking. No, but I mean, like that, to be clear, that would be legit eccentric. That would be any vocation adjusted eccentric. No, what I mean is, was he like grounding? Was he barefoot and like trying to, I don't understand what grounding is, and I don't want anyone to tell me. I think he was also barefoot, but he was partially closed, but he'd just lie out there and soak up some sun.

And also he would take pregame naps in the clubhouse. OK, so I'm quoting from Cotillo here. Throughout September, veteran players took issue with Casas' pregame routine, which included pregame naps in the clubhouse in addition to the sunbathing. The horror. Those veterans on numerous occasions voiced their displeasure. There were, in Casas' words, clashes about how he should act. And Casas, from what I could tell, he was going out of his way to sound conciliatory and accommodating here. He said, I would have been more concerned if they weren't saying anything to me.

I felt like that would have meant they didn't feel like I was going to be in the majors long. I think the fact that they were telling me stuff, the fact that they were getting on me for the little things meant that they wanted me to go about things the right way. They wanted me to make sure that I'm going to carry on that tradition throughout the years when I stay up here, which if he actually feels that way, I almost feel bad. It's like he's been beaten down by the conformist clubhouse nature. Right. But maybe he's just saying whatever will get these guys off his back. I don't know. But, you know, he also like I guess he had some tweets that were like kind of random or whatever. And he had like red painted fingernails. I mean, again, so but this is baseball. Right. So. So he just sounds like

where. Wait, hold on. You keep talking. I'm going to look something up. You, you keep talking. He's just, you know, he sounds like a little bit of a free spirit, which is nice. We need more of that, but he wanted to conform. He didn't want to offend anyone. He said, I want to go with the flow. I don't want to go against the grain. I don't ever want to be an outlier on the team. And that's sort of a sad sentiment. It is a sad sentiment. Oh, he's not from California. He's a Florida guy. Okay. Sometimes I don't remember, you know? Yes. So he said, off the field, I am who I am. My personality is always going to be authentically unapologetic, except he's still sort of being apologetic, I guess. And I am who I am away from the field

when it comes to the field. And I step in between the lines. I know I mean business and everybody else knows that I do too, except when he's between the lines on the field sunbathing, I guess. Maybe he was in foul territory when he was sunbathing. I don't know. But he felt like he felt more energetic after getting some sun, which I can't identify with this. If I get sun, I feel sleepy. And also I'm burned by the sun, but it works for him. So, okay. So he would sun himself and then take a 30 minute nap about 90 minutes before first pitch. Sometimes he'd lie down in front of his locker and like just snooze on the floor there. No one ever took issue with this in the minors, apparently, but there were veterans.

So out of earshot of Casas, a veteran Red Sox pitcher walked out of the dugout, saw the scene in right field and bristled. The scene, again, is just him lying there, not hurting anyone. To no one in particular, he made his feelings known. Are you expletive kidding me? The pitcher asked. OK, and this was not an isolated incident, apparently. On numerous occasions, veterans loudly expressed their displeasure with Casas's routine. That caused tension within a clubhouse that was playing

out the string of a last place season. Yeah, last place. This is like the chicken and beer Red Sox clubhouse stuff from years earlier, right? So it's not like he was provoking anyone. He was trying to be seen and not heard. He tried not to speak to veteran players unless they spoke to him first. Sometimes tensions boiled over. If I ever felt like they were trying to make an example out of me, there would be a little bit of a clash because at that point I would be considering that disrespect. Kasa said, OK, that's good. He's standing up for himself there. But if I knew they had good intentions by what they meant or what they were trying to tell me, then I would definitely oblige and just say yes and

keep moving forward because their respect means a lot to me. So he didn't like scrap the sunbathing and the napping. He said, I couldn't just scratch everything and then try to build a new routine. But he kind of compromised in certain ways, I guess. I guess the only defense you could have of the veterans here is that maybe he was getting in the way a little bit when he was napping. Like if he was napping like on the clubhouse floor. Right. Because he said at least what he's talking about when he was in the minors, I would just throw down a towel, one over my eyes, one for my head, cross my arms and have people step over me.

Coaches saw me for years, plenty of coaches, plenty of players, plenty of rehab guys. Nobody ever told me anything. So naturally, I assumed it was OK. Getting up to the highest level, realizing that it's not, that was OK with me. I understood the perspective that there's a little more turnaround in the locker room in terms of media, in terms of cameras, in terms of other things that there isn't in the minor leagues. I would find a more respectful spot of everybody's space than in the locker room. So, OK, if he's just sprawled out in the middle of where there's foot traffic, then sounds like a really like reasonable guy. He does. Right. Yeah. That just seems very like, oh, I get it. Like logistics.

Some brash young rookies like this is my clubhouse. I'll sleep where I want to. Right. Like he sounds quite accommodating. So if it was that he was physically getting in people's way when he was napping or where he was napping, fine. The napping itself doesn't seem like a problem. I don't think he's the only player who naps. I mean, there are teams with like nap rooms and like places where you can sleep because sleep matters. Right. And teams try to do what they can to make sure their players are well-rested. So obviously they want them to get some sleep. But the sunbathing part is maybe the more ridiculous.

I can't imagine he was really getting in anyone's way, just lying out there, soaking up some sun for a while. But this all just kind of came back to me because like now he's raking and he's been one of the best hitters in the league for right months now and probably now no one would give him any guff over his napping or sunbathing because he's proved himself but how many times have we heard of just like very extremely silly misguided uproars about like players policing rookies behavior when he's not harming anyone.

He's just trying to get some sleep and catch some sun. It's not surprising to me that he would not have heard one way or the other about what anyone thought of this pregame routine. I didn't even want to say behavior because that sounds like I'm prepared to pathologize it in some way. want to say behavior because that sounds like I'm prepared to pathologize it in some way but like while he was in the minors because like you know at least by our rankings like he graduated as the 29th best prospect in baseball he was third in the Red Sox system like he was you know as Red Sox fans know and as we have talked about he was like gonna be and is like one of the dudes right he's gonna be one of their dudes and i imagine that even in a developmental setting that comes with a certain amount of deference and so you know i'm not totally surprised that

they would be like yeah nap on the floor we made you all like sleep like 10 to a room yeah right last two years anyway so what are we gonna say so there's that piece of it i mean i guess like i imagine that if you're a big league veteran and you want to try to like pass something on to the next generation of player which not every veteran cares to do right but like assuming you're one of those guys who wants to like you know help bring them up that you are always trying to balance this like you want to let guys live but you want to mentor and you have an idea of how it's supposed to be done and like you might look at this kid sunbathing and interpret it as like loafing or being unserious about the task at hand and then he's also sleeping in the clubhouse right but i think that you probably would then have to say to yourself, does that matter? You know, and to your point now that he's

playing so well, I bet people are not going to say really much of anything because he's really coming into his own. Then it's like a many being many, right? Casas being casas. Like when, when you're good, then your quirks are something that people find charming in many cases, as opposed to, hey, Rook, know your place. But even still, like so much of this just seems like it's not anybody's real business. Like the only behavior that you've described that is remotely disruptive to other people is the lying in the middle of the clubhouse floor and sleeping. And just so that he doesn't get tripped over, I guess I get saying like,

hey, maybe like don't do that. But if the guy wants to have painted nails, like really, you're going to be freaking out about that? If he were a catcher, no one would say anything. Well, I wonder what the prevalence of catchers painting their nails on their non-glove hand is now. Right. In the Pitchcom era. That's a good question. Maybe some of them just, they like it. They missed how it looked.

They decided to keep painting. Yeah. You know, I think we should always be walking through the world saying like, does that affect me or someone else? If the answer to those two questions is no, then like, kiss the s**t. Oh, sorry. I did a swear. But, you know, it's like, okay. He sounds like a mellow dude.

I really did think he was from California. Florida could work too. I don't know. But his reaction to this also just seems very level-headed and suggests to me, again, I don't know the young man, but like if you're able to have that perspective on it at 23 to say like, yeah, you know, I maintain who I am and I get to express that off the field. But like, I guess I will conform to the sort of social norms of this workplace. I mean, sure, that's fine. But I don't think that this is anything that really harms anyone. Let the boy live.

You know, just put sunscreen on when you're sunbathing. Oh, yes, please do that. Yes. You know, melanoma gets many a baseball player and baseball adjacent person. So you take care of your young skin. Yeah. Baseball players get a lot of sun whether they want to or not. So take care of yourself. Alex Cora, Red Sox manager, no stranger to clubhouse discord himself. He disputed that this was that big a deal. He said we had no issues in the clubhouse. I guess he would one way or another. He also said that Casas did his sunbathing and yoga at the Coca-Cola deck in left field in Fenway Park. And he also said that Casas was taking his naps in the designated nap room. So that seems like the appropriate place to nap.

So is this all just much ado about nothing? I don't know. I mean, maybe he's minimizing how big a deal it was. But he was doing yoga in addition to the sunbathing? Yeah. I mean, that's a flexibility and like athleticism thing. Yep. I don't know.

I think everybody should mind their own business my sister sent me a it probably wasn't a tiktok because of both our age and how long ago it was vine was that the thing with the videos thing for a while yeah probably it was a vine that had a mom and her young kid and she was trying to give her kid instruction or say, hey, knock that off or do this or do that. You know, not in a like bad aggressive way, but in a mom way, like, hey, don't draw on your face or whatever. And from the back of the car, you can hear the kid being like, you do your job, you drive, that's your job. And yeah, I think about that a lot. It's like everybody just stay in your lane. And if someone wants to paint their fingernails even more.

Yeah. I have a tenuous connection to Tristan Casas as I pivot to this next topic, which is that it is the 130th birthday of Bullet Rogan today as we speak. July 28th, the legendary Negro Leagues player and Hall of Famer and two-way star. I'm so excited to watch you connect the pegs on the court board. Okay, here's how I'm going to attempt to do it. So

I've got to relate Bullet Rogan to Shohei Otani, of course. And I wanted to mention that Shohei Otani now has 7.1 fangraphs war combined batting and pitching, which gives him a full two wins above replacement lead over Ronald Acuna at number two and let's say Zach Eflin, Sonny Gray, Louisa Rice, and a couple other guys who are tied for 28th. It's almost an entire Julio Rodriguez. Yeah. Yeah. The distance between Shohei Otani and the second best player,

the MVP favorite in the National League, is as big as the difference between Acuna and like the number 28th ranked players. OK, but that's league wide. If we do the difference between Otani and the next best American League player, which is Luis Robert Jr. right now at four fan crafts war, that's a 3.1 war difference. So a literal exact Julio Rodriguez. Okay. So the distance between Otani and Robert, the number one and two AL war guys, is the difference between Robert at number two and Tristan Casas. Amazing. There we did it. I nailed it. You did it. You stuck the landing. Amazing. There we did it.

I nailed it. You did it. You stuck the landing. Casas is tied with several other guys for 144th in the American League in war. You might be wondering why is Casas not higher. He's at 0.9 war. It's largely because the defense has not created out well and the base running and everything else. And he's a first baseman, so he's getting got the positional adjustment too. And so if I hadn't just talked about Tristan Casas, I probably would have said Andrew Benintendi, who is at 0.9 also, or Anthony Rizzo, who's at 0.9, or Estuary Ruiz, or Yusei Kikuchi, or Chris Martin.

You would have, but you're a podcaster's podcaster, Ben. Yes. Yeah. Alex Kirloff, lots of not so notable 0. nine war players out there. And again, the difference between number one and number two, Shohei Otani and Lewis Robert, is the difference between number two and those guys at like 144th. It's ridiculous. But Bullet Rogan on a war basis was still better than Shohei Otani. I just always think like Shohei Otani constantly gets comped to Babe Ruth, and I understand why. But Bullet Rogan really is the better comp in many ways. Like, A, he continued to do his two-way thing after Babe Ruth stopped. So he is the most recent major leaguer to have done it really at that level and with that kind of consistency and

regularity because Babe Ruth, great as he was at both things, he was really only a two-way player for fractions of seasons, like a season and a half roughly before he went from predominantly pitcher to predominantly hitter. And he said at the time, like, it would be very difficult to continue to do these things full time. Obviously, he couldn't DH, et cetera. be very difficult to continue to do these things full time. Obviously, he couldn't DH, etc. But still, if you want the example of the major leaguer who did what Otani is doing at as high a level for a long time, you can't beat Bullet Rogan. And there are other Negro leaguers who did it a lot,

too, like Martin Diego, who we've talked about on the podcast, or Leon Day or Double Duty Radcliffe, like Martin Diego, who we've talked about on the podcast, or Leon Day or Double Duty Radcliffe, et cetera. But Bullet Rogan, kind of in a class of his own, he is the highest war player just looking at Negro League's seasons alone. So Negro Leaguers who didn't get to play in the AL or NL at any point, he is highest on that war leaderboard. And I was just looking at the fan graphs were just on a rate basis because Bullet Rogan obviously was not playing seasons that were as long. But for his peak seasons, his two way seasons for the Kansas City Monarchs, basically the entirety of the 20s from 1920, the first Negro League season to 19, through those nine seasons, he was a full-time two-way player. He was pitching 100-plus innings every year, and he was getting 100-plus plate appearances every year, and generally much more of each than that minimum. And he was doing it at just a ridiculous,

ridiculous level where he was one of the best hitters and one of the best pitchers at the same time. And if you break it down on a war basis, like per 162 games, and that's basically going to be like doubling his stats because the monarchs were averaging like 84 games or so at least for the stats we have in those seasons maybe that's complete i don't know if his stats are entirely complete but shohei otani since the start of 2021 so his peak two-way self when he has been mvp or mvp runner-up over those let's say two two and two third seasons or whatever it is now. He has averaged 9.3 war per 162 team games. Bullet Rogan from 1920 through 1928, he averaged 11.6 fan crafts war per 162 team games. So 2.3 were more per full current MLB length season

than Shohei Otani is doing. Granted, the caliber of competition was not as high. That was a segregated league, as was the NL at the time and the AL and Babe Ruth was not facing black players and Bullet Rogan in those league games was not facing white players. And Rogan in those league games was not facing white players. And we understand all the caveats here. And this was a century ago.

But in terms of production relative to one's peers in a major league, Bullet Rogan right up there with Shohei Otani, if not higher. So happy 130th to him. And I understand why he's not mentioned as often as Babe Ruth. Obviously, Babe Ruth is just a massive, massive star and was in his day because Bullet Rogan obviously was undercovered by white media and was relegated to a separate league. And Babe Ruth was this larger than life figure. And we just have so much more information and coverage of him and everything else. But the stats and the duration at which he did it,

like he is the best comp for Otani. I always, whenever I see a Ruth comp, I'm like, you gotta at least mention Bullet Roken in there. I know he's not a household name the way that Babe Ruth is, but he should be. And he will only become one if you mention him in these moments. Exactly. Bullet Rogan in there. I know he's not a household name the way that Babe Ruth is, but he should be. And he will only become one if we mention him in these moments. Exactly.

We shall be the change we wish to see. Yeah. Did a meet a major leaguer segment on Bullet Rogan way back on episode 1709, if you want to hear me talk about him at a little more length. But the stats are just ridiculous. During those seasons, I'll look up exactly what the stats were. I guess 1920 to 1928, his WRC plus over those years, 153 as a batter. So he hit 339, 410, 528. And then as a pitcher, same seasons, he had a 2.62 ERA. So it's just, yeah, that's pretty ridiculous. Yeah. I mean, incredible. Incredible. I'm still thinking about your transition though. Yeah. Really just, I hope that lived up to everyone's expectations there. You stuck the landing. You could be in a movie with Jeff Daniels. No, wait.

Who was the guy in Stick It who played the coach? What's his name? I don't know. Jeff Bridges, you mean? Yeah. Yeah. There we go. That's what I meant.

Okay. Sorry. Yeah. It was a long way to go for that flimsy connection that I did not necessarily need to make. But there it was. So we are speaking on Friday. Aaron Judge is going to be in action later today. So Aaron Judge is back. The Yankees nightmare is over, or at least, well, yeah. So that's the question. One of their nightmares is over.

Yes. Their greatest nightmare, their most acute problem is over. Aaron Judge is back. But the rest of the team still sort of stinks. So all the stats about what the Yankees have hit without Aaron Judge, like since June 4th, which was the first day that he was out with his toe injury from running through a fence. The other Yankees have hit 220, 296, 374. And even Zach Kram had these numbers in a piece for the ringer today. If you go back to the beginning of the season, non-judge Yankees have hit 227, 296, 390. And you could go back to the second half last year when Aaron Judge was an absolute monster and was totally putting that team on his back to the extent that a baseball player can.

Non-judge Yankees after the All-Star break hit 223, 292, 360. So we're going on most of two seasons here that the rest of the Yankees cannot hit. And so when Aaron Judge is not playing, they stink. And when he is playing, they stink a lot less. Neil Payne wrote about this also for the messenger. And, you know, I'm always skeptical of the team performance with and without the player. But since the start of 2020, the Yankees are 228 and 154 with Judge in the lineup. That's a 597 winning percentage. 50 and 54 without him. That's a 481 winning percentage

if you just go with this season. It's 30 and 19 with him. That's 612, 24 and 29 without him. 453. And as Neil chronicled, like the offensive stats fall off without him even more than you would

expect statistically just from subtracting Judge from the lineup. So Neil was wondering, like, is there something else? Are we not fully accounting for how productive Judge is? Or does his presence somehow reassure his teammates and bolster their confidence so that they do better or something? Probably not. Probably it's just so a smallish sample. But that team without him has not only been bad, but is just pretty unwatchable and boring and slow and old. And their veterans have mostly been bad and their young guys have mostly not been that

great. Their young guys have mostly not been that great. And they're just like in this situation where I want to overplay it because they're not out of it. They still got like a one in three chance to make the playoffs or something. And they are a winning team currently, at least for the 31st consecutive season. So they've had it pretty good in the grand scheme of things. Sure. But they're not good. And they have the it pretty good in the grand scheme of things. Sure. But they're not good. And they have the second highest payroll in baseball and they have barely outscored their opponents.

They're probably fortunate to have a record as good as their record, which puts them in last place in a stack division as it is. So they've already fired their hitting coach, which was a historic anomaly for Brian Cashman, who had never made a midseason coach change like that. And if they don't pull out of this, if Judge isn't enough, then does that cost Boone his job? Could even Cashman's job be at stake? Will Hal Steinbrenner finally understand why Yankees fans are upset about this? And they are maybe prone to be upset about things that don't require them to be so upset, but I think they can legitimately be upset about where this team is right now. I agree. Here we are. You know, we're encouraging a healthy expression of feelings and I am making fun of their tender little feelings. That's not very nice of me. I do think that perspective in one's life is valuable if only to weather the bad times.

But we can say this is a not great time, you know, like here's a way to think about this. You know, was editing a piece that ran earlier today by Leo Morgenstern about the Cubs and their weird season and, you know, how they are the only team in the NL Central with positive run differential and like what has gone into that? You know did they get here and i've watched teams like this before where when the results seem to be out of sync with the true talent of the team like that's frustrating in its own special way but like if we were to pull cubs fans and then we were to pull yankees fans and these are two fan bases that are very invested in the fortunes of their team would be, I think, a nice and neutral way to describe them. Who's having a better time? It might be Cubs fans, you know, it might be Cubs fans and they have maybe a better shot at the postseason because of the division they're in. And that's probably playing a meaningful role in it. And I don't want to discount that but when you think about kind of what those respective teams expectations were coming into the year we knew where the weak points of the yankees roster were but like we thought they were going to be really good like we thought that the

pitching would be good we assumed it to be healthier than it's been certainly and we thought that the offense would be okay and the judge would carry them and you know at least on a bad night you get to watch him and then that's not what it has been and we looked at the cubs and i think our general consensus was well they're starting to pull out of the rebuild but they're not there yet right they're not contenders they are starting to assemble a group that either will be around and help them contend when they're ready or you know if they play well will potentially help them to trade for the players who will make up the next good cubs roster right and they signed dan sweet swanson i keep forgetting that so nice of him to move for his wife's work and you look at those two fan bases and i bet the cove stands are

having more fun and we're gonna get emails now from Cubs fans being like, it's been terrible. I have had a garbage experience. And to you, I say, I hope it turns around for you soon. But I think that the disappointing news for Yankees fans is that they are likely more than just an Aaron judge away from feeling like, ah, we've righted the ship. And that stinks because like that's a big presence to get back. And I don't think it's going to end up being the difference maker. Yeah. We'll see what they do between now and the deadline't think it's going to end up being the difference maker. Yeah. We'll see what they do between now and the deadline, but it's hard for me to imagine them doing something that changes the outlook significantly. And they make a good contrast with the Cubs because the Cubs came into the season sort of not having a star, really. Like, I guess Dansby was their best projected player and he wasn't projected to be that great. Like, he's been good and Justin Steele's been good and Bellinger's been good and Stroman's

been good like they've had good players but you didn't expect them to have the favorite for an award or something whereas the Yankees may have had the favorite for the Cy Young and the favorite for the MVP they had the reigning MVP coming off this incredible season they had Garrett Cole who might still be the favorite for the Cy Young at this point. And they are just the ultimate stars and scrubs roster. They are out stars and scrubsing the Angels at this point. I think we've thought about the Angels as like they have Otani and Trout and just not much else. And that's their problem. That is the Yankees now. They have Cole and Judge and not much else. And that's their problem. And actually, Zach had that stat in his piece, like the biggest difference between the number two ranked war guy on a roster and the number three ranked guy.

So like the Angels this year, they have Otani and Trout. Trout number two, even though he's missed time and has not been that great. Their number three war guy is Reed Detmers. And that's a significant gap. But a bigger gap than that is the difference between Cole and Judge, Judge second, and then Gleyber Torres, who's third in war, and there's more than a win difference there.

It's kind of amazing that the gap between Judge and the third best guy is the biggest in baseball between the second and third best guy on the biggest in baseball between the second and third best guy on any team because Judge has played 49 games this season. So he's outstripping the next best guy by that much. That's not a good sign at all. It doesn't seem like it, no. Yeah.

And I just wonder how it's going to get better because the Yankees do not have a highly rated farm system, which to be fair is kind of often the case with the Yankees. They don't get to draft high. They will sometimes trade prospects for veterans. You know, they might be reluctant at times to promote rookies and trust them, although they certainly have trusted Anthony Volpe all season long. Right. So they usually won't have the highest rated farm system, but it's not like they have some incredible core coming. They obviously have some prospects and some promising players coming along, but they have Cole and Judge who are under contract for a long time and obviously are well into their

30s at this point. But it seems like they're basically built to have this like Cole and Judge model for years to come as those guys presumably decline. And meanwhile, they have a lot of other guys under contract who are just not performing. And, you know, you have your Luis Severino and you have your John Carlos Stanton and I guess DJ LeMayhew for years to come. Right. I mean, we're talking three, four years more for these guys who are already like shadows of their former selves. Or Carlos Rodon, who knows what you're going to get out of him. And gosh, you could go on and on. Like they'll be rid of Josh Donaldson and his 076 BABIP.

That's really bad. The lowest BABIP ever in a season of 100 or more plate appearances. So they'll be off the roster. But there's just a lot of like pretty dead weight there that's not going away or going to be off the books anytime soon. And you might say like, well, they're the Yankees. They mint money. Who cares? Which is certainly true.

They can afford to pay for these contracts without getting a ton of production. Certainly true, they can afford to pay for these contracts without getting a ton of production. But it doesn't seem like Hal has the mentality that his dad did of win at all costs. Like he's very much like if the boss were here, right? I mean, I think that's overblown because he made tons of bad decisions. But one thing he would do is blow everyone out of the water spending wise. And Hal doesn't do that. Hal has the second highest payroll in baseball, but doesn't even seem willing to go to Steve Cohen Heights, let alone peak George when he was like lapping the league payroll wise. So if he is going to care about

the luxury tax and not being too far out of step with the rest of the league when it comes to spending, then they will not be as capable of spending their way out of this sort of misshapen, inefficiently constructed roster that they have here. So I don't know how it changes. Like if they pony up for Shohei Otani and persuade him to come to the Bronx or something, well, that would go a long way toward fixing their ills, I suppose. But failing that, it's not that great a free agent class. And a lot of that roster is just sort of solidified for years to come. Yeah. Yeah. I have a really controversial take, which is that Otani would make any club better. Yes, I would agree with that take. What? Mag, be less bold. Get it together. You're supposed to be cool collected but i think that what they have revealed

and what you've just pointed to is that they are a team that is really in need of like better complementary pieces that you want stars if stars push you over and even in seasons like this where things aren't going well they at least give your fans something to watch that is more fun and engaging than like, I can say a kind of a lefa. But those complimentary pieces are important to both to weather injury and to get sneaky, important production around the production of your stars. So I think that it does strike me as a situation where they're going to have to decide, like, if we want to be competitive, are we willing to just eat money for a little while? And I mean, maybe the answer to that would be yes.

I think that if they were to land Otani, maybe you're more likely to successfully make that argument to ownership because you're like, look, we got to take advantage of the prime years of this, what I imagine will be enormously expensive contract. But you're right that like there's capacity and willingness to spend are not always the same thing. Right. And they haven't always been the same thing in this iteration of Yankees ownership. So who's to say who's to say. Yankees ownership. So who's to say? Who's to say? Not that things are going great in Queens either, where the Mets have made a move. The Mets have traded David Robertson to the Marlins,

which is wild. If you had told me when the season started that the Mets would be deadline sellers of pitching to the Miami Marlins, the division rival. Literally Ben Clemens' leading in the PC row. There's no way I would have bought that. But then that has happened. Ben's in sync. Yeah. So I don't know whether that presages more moves to come, like whether this means that

it's the start of a sell off, whether this means Justin Verlander and Max Scherzer are going to go or even other guys who are going to be free agents like Mark Hanna and Tommy Pham and players like that. Those seem like more likely moves, although I know there has been some scuttle, but about Verlander potentially making his way out of Queens. David Robertson rules, by the way. David Robertson has been so good for so long. Yeah, I have a soft spot for him because I was still a Yankees fan when he was coming up. And I guess I was working for the Yankees when he was coming up and he was one of the first players I got to interview in a journalistic capacity for Yankees magazine. It wasn't a great interview, but I enjoyed talking to him. Can't win them all. Yeah, it wasn't bad or anything.

It was just not super exciting. Was it his fault or yours? You know, it may very well have been mine. Who knows? I don't remember any of the specifics. The way you're saying that makes me think he's not a good interviewer. Yeah. I mean, it was a long time ago.

We were both young. But it heartens me that he's still around and he's still performing at a very high level. Like, what a career he's had. Like, I was interested in him as he was coming up through the minors. Like he had these at the time, pretty eye-popping peripherals. And I was interested in him analytically because he didn't throw that hard,

but he got a lot of looking strikes. He had this Houdini thing going on. There was deception. I'm always interested in that. But he's really like, you think of relievers as volatile and fickle and fungible, but he has not been. He's in his 15th season and he had a closer phase. There were several seasons

where he closed and other times he's been more of a setup man. I mean, he's been closing this season in Edwin Diaz's absence. And I imagine we'll close in Miami. Yeah, but he's been just extraordinarily consistent. It's quite a career but he's been just extraordinarily consistent. It's quite a career that he's put together. But yeah, the Mets trading off David Robertson for two prospects who are like rookie league level guys, right? These are long term plays, you know? Yeah, they're complex league guys. Ranked prospects, but guys who are going to be a while, which I guess that doesn't necessarily mean that the Mets are not expecting to contend next season. Let's say I'm sure they do harbor hopes of doing that. But they have also harbored hopes of being Dodgers East and of having a player development pipeline and having prospects coming along. So I guess this is going part of the way toward that. And Robertson is going to be a free agent at the end of the year. It's not like he's a long term contributor for them. But

it does make me wonder what they will do over the next several days, which we can discuss next week, I suppose, when we know the answer to that question. But also, it makes me wonder which of these disappointing, underperforming teams is most likely to rebound because we saw the Mets maybe make the first trade of multiple trades. And then we're hearing Nolan Arnauto to the Dodgers rumors. And the Cardinals certainly seem to be sellers for this season, but have expressed an intention to be good again next year. We'll see how that goes. And then you have the Padres where rumors are flying about Snell and Soto and Hader and are the Padres going to deal, right? So of those very disappointing teams, I guess the Yankees are not quite in that class of the Mets and the Cardinals and the Padres

who are the real disappointing trifecta. But of those teams that are really notable underperformers this year who were favorites in their division or certainly playoff favorites and now find themselves on the verge of selling off at the deadline, I wonder which of them is most likely to rebound next season. And I guess I would probably say the Padres. Yeah. Unless they really blow it up. I mean, I think the Padres are the best of those teams this year and still have the best chance and just have been unlucky in any number of ways. Right. But yeah, I still don't understand how their record has been so bad when they have so many good players and the underlying performance is not so bad either. So so that makes me think like they've got to stick out and they've got to try to make

another run next season and finally have the breakthrough. But it would not shock me if any of those three teams was good, if all of them were good next season, because again, I'm surprised that they're so not good this year. But I don't know how you would rank the likelihood of them being good again. I guess we should have probably lumped the White Sox in there because the White Sox are really doing the sell off. And we can talk about another trade that they made. We talked about the Gialito Lopez trade last time. They also just traded Lance Lane and Joe Kelly to the Dodgers. So again, these are players who were not going to be around for a long time. But I guess we could lump the White Sox in with those other three of like expected to contend, could have contended, seemingly had the talent to contend and now find themselves selling, but also trying to preserve some potential to compete next season

by not trading, let's say, Dylan Cease or someone like that. What do I think the answer is, Ben? I mean, I think I maybe agree with you amongst those clubs that it's the Padres, if only because like guys just keep getting older. And it's not like everyone on the Padres is like super young, but they're not as old as the Mets, right? Like on average, I think they are a younger team and you know, they just have so many shortstops truly truly cobble something together at some point here but i would not be optimistic about the mets the rest of the way particularly if they keep selling which it sounds like they will the white socks what do i think about the

white socks they feel more rudderless to me as an organization than the other ones. Yeah. Breaking news on the transom. The White Sox continuing their sell off. What now? Kendall Graveman to the Astros. Wasn't Kendall Graveman already an Astro? Yeah. Wasn't there a big Mariners, Astros, Kendall Graveman clubhouse issue, which turned out to be also silly and not really worth stressing about. But yeah, it's not really worth stressing about. Can I request a stat blast for our next episode, I don't know how easy this is. You can tell me, no, that's too hard and then not do it. I want to know what is the greatest. And I know this is going to be hard because the deadline has moved and the number of deadlines have moved. And so maybe it's tricky, but like,

deadline has moved and the number of deadlines have moved. And so maybe it's tricky, but like, what is the most times that a player has been dealt at the deadline? Ah, okay. Yeah. That's an interesting one. I'll see if we can get an answer to that one. But yeah, it does feel like the White Sox maybe are more in need of a management change or more likely to have one than those other teams. I mean, I know Steve Cohen is just like perpetually in the process of hiring a president of baseball operations. It seems like, but the White Sox, look, I don't know Rick Hahn and all I know is from afar looking at what everyone else is looking at, but that is a tough thing for an executive to survive. Like having a team do a rebuild, acquire a lot of talent, and then either struggle to turn it into productive big leaguers, struggle to draft in

recent years, development issues. The White Sox, they didn't completely fail. Like they came out of their rebuild as a competitive team for some time and made a couple of playoff appearances, I guess. But really, it wasn't what it was supposed to be or what it could have been. And I guess if he had the Tony La Russa decision, the manager hiring decision stripped out of his hands, then maybe it's not fair to hold him responsible for that. it's not fair to hold him responsible for that. But it's tough when you go through a whole rebuild like that and you come out of it on the other side and all you get is what the White Sox have done over the past few years. It's just it's not enough. It's not enough. And it will, I think, require a fair amount of reworking to course correct on because it's not like to your point it's not like oh your issues concern mostly the big league roster but you have a really great player development track

record or whatever like you know you look at chicago and you're like what do the white sox do well right now what are their core competencies that really make them stand out relative to other clubs and i don't think you have as many good answers there as you need to feel confident that they're going to be able to like retool on the fly and then be in a really good competitive position next year. So that's a bummer. Yeah. The White Sox franchise history. I know that the Red Sox and the Cubs and their droughts and their lovable losers or maybe even the Guardians now titled drought get a lot of attention. I feel like the 2005 White Sox getting back to the top of the heap

that almost got lost in the shuffle of like the Red Sox doing it and then the Cubs doing it. People forget it happened. I think people like really don't remember that. Yeah. And I think part of it is because the Astros aren't an NL team anymore. Yeah. I think that that's part of it because that was who they beat for that World Series, right? It was the Astros. Yeah. In a sweep. It was not a memorable series either. It was not a memorable series. And it's against a team where if you're like going, you know, you're sitting around at a bar trying to like backfill the last however many World Series with your friends. you, I think,

struggled to place that one when teams switch leagues. I think that that's part of it. My former roommate is a White Sox fan and was always deeply offended that people did not remember. Yeah, right. Yeah. You know, fair. But Berko's always like, no, we won a World Series. I know. And I feel like I did a mini stop last or something on this at some point. But like the percentage of seasons in which the White Sox have made the postseason is extremely low. It's like the lowest of any long term franchise. And I think another reason why people forget 2005 is that that was the only season that team made the playoffs, really, like they didn't make the playoffs the previous season or the next season. I guess they made the playoffs, really. Like they didn't make the playoffs the previous season or the next season.

I guess they made the playoffs in 2008. But the only time in White Sox history, which we're going back to the inaugural season of the American League. I mean, the only time that they've made the playoffs in back-to-back seasons was 2020 and 2021. And everyone made the playoffs in 2020, right? was 2020 and 2021. And everyone made the playoffs in 2020, right? So they needed the super expanded pandemic shortened season playoffs in order to actually make the postseason

in consecutive years for the first time in their franchise history, which is just wild given how long that franchise history is. Like that's just a total lack of sustained success. I know that there were no playoffs. There was just a World Series for a lot of those years. But still, just to not even do it back to back years. Yeah, that's not good. Not that we can hold Rickon responsible for the White Sox failures of the

entire 20th century. But still, it's just not great. Yeah. I mean, like that is safely not his fault. But other things since then, they might be laid at his feet in a way that is fair. Yeah. All right. And this Dodgers trade. So the Dodgers have been linked to Nolan Arnauto. We'll see if that actually goes anywhere. But they now have gotten Lance Lynn and amusingly Joe Kelly.

Once again, a Los Angeles Dodger. amusingly, Joe Kelly, once again, a Los Angeles Dodger. I asked you before we started recording how much the Dodgers take Craig Goldstein's mental health into consideration when they make trades. Yeah, clearly not a lot. Where does messing with him fall in their hierarchy? Yeah, so they had to give up a 24-year-old pitcher in AA, Jordan Leisure, and then another pitcher, Nick Nostrini, who is a 23-year-old pitcher also in AA, and also Trace Thompson. And they get Lance Lynn and Joe Kelly. Now, Lance Lynn obviously has not been his best self this season, I think we can safely say.

Has not been his best self this season, I think we can safely say. But he has continued to take the ball, right? I mean, that's what he's known for. He will give you innings. And he missed a little time, but he still made 21 starts. He's pitched about 120 innings. And the Dodgers, they need— They need innings, man. They need bulk.

And that is not a comment on the build of Lance Lynn. They need bulk innings. And Lance Lynn is a good on the build of Lance Lynn. I'm saying they need bulk innings. And Lance Lynn is a good guy to get him from. So, you know, six and a half ERA, not so great. Five plus FIP, not so great. Maybe they think they can improve him or that he will improve himself. But even if he was just like eating innings at a low efficiency rate, I mean, just getting innings, I guess, would be a victory of sorts for them. Yeah, I mean, like, I think that they are at the point where not that they don't care about the quality of the innings, you know, they're not bringing in Dallas Keuchel, right?

But they really do need to have some length brought to any individual start. And Lynn provides that. And, you know, Joe Kelly, what can you say? He's got great stuff. Yeah. If they want another reunion, Rich Hill is out there. And according to John Heyman, drawing a lot of interest these days. So we'll see where podcast legend Rich Hill goes.

The White Sox are getting Corey Lee. Interesting. It's interesting because I just think way more about the Astros catching situation than is probably merited. Interesting. You know, a vote of confidence in Martin Maldonado, I guess. I mean, like his entire tenure is a vote of confidence. Yeah, it is. All right.

And then I guess the last thing I wanted to mention is that the Royals owner, John Sherman, he put this letter out basically requesting public funding for the Royals ballpark, which they have not really specified exactly where it's going to go. It seems like they're trying to maybe play multiple potential locations against each other. But they've previously said that it would cost a couple billion. And they're saying that the Royals ownership group will commit well in excess of one billion in private investment to help create transformational growth here and across the region, whatever that means. So it sounds like they might still be asking for like a billion dollars in public funding here, which would be, I think, a record. They're asking for a lot here. And I just wanted to mention it because we've talked about whether

this is necessary before because Kauffman is a gem and it's beautiful and it's fairly recently renovated. And I know the location is not ideal, but it would sort of suck to lose it. But this letter is full of just bunk when it comes to the economic impact of this stadium. I know. Shocking. Absolutely shocking that there would be some suspect math when it comes to this. Absolutely shocking that there would be some suspect math when it comes to this. But I think even by the standards of every press release and argument from every team owner and executive about the benefits that come from ballparks and ballpark construction

projects, this one is, I think, particularly bold. This says, anchored by the new ballpark, the construction project alone is expected to generate over 20,000 jobs, $1.4 billion in labor income, and $2.8 billion in total economic output from construction and labor income during the three-plus years it will take to build it. This project will be a huge economic boost for the region. It will spur meaningful development around the ballpark and adjacent neighborhoods, both in the short and long term. We anticipate that the inaugural year of the new ballpark is expected to generate some $185 million more in regional economic output than the J.C. Bradbury's of the world are having fits over this because there's no limit really to what you can claim. It's all funny money. It's all made up money. It's all refuted by basically every study on the actual economic impacts of these things. But you commission some phony study, you pay someone to say whatever you want them to say, basically. And then you just present some ridiculous, unsupported numbers. And it gets repeated by some members of the media. Others are maybe more skeptical and it just gets publicized and fans maybe eat it up and local

legislators eat it up. There's more skepticism than there used to be, probably, but there's still not a lot. You can just kind of make up whatever number of millions or billions you want and say, yep, it's going to be just a windfall for everyone somehow. Well, when you have the commissioner setting an example like he does doubting the results of studies that have been conclusive and have been replicated over and over again and have studied specific ballpark situations and then sports stadiums more generally and talks about how you know academics live in their own world and out in the real world like why would owners take a different tact like the commissioner is setting the example here so i think you're right that like a lot of people really like sports.

And even though we know public funding for those arenas is a bad idea, like they want to keep their sports. And if you give them something that sounds like real justification to do it, some number of them are going to believe that, you know, and I'm sure it will create construction jobs. And then what happens when the ballpark is done you know and you still have to keep paying for it so yes the inconsistency surrounding the baseball itself is maybe the most baffling part of rob manfred's tenure but one of the more annoying ones lately for me has been this stuff where it's like it's a settled question there is no controversy here and yet we have to keep doing it. So that's annoying. Yep. And yet that's part of why he just got his extension because that's what the owners want him

to do. And he's done it fairly effectively, I suppose. So we'll continue to do it until it stops working. And there's no sign that that's about to happen. All right. I have two emails here. One is from Trevor, who says subject line, the no dong MVP. And then he says, sorry about the subject line. You are not sorry. I do not believe you that you are sorry. I don't believe you to be sorry any more than I believe Miles Michaelis when he said he didn't throw it in half intentionally. Yeah. I appreciate the email, but I'm saying it's a fib. You did a fib. Trevor says, I was recently playing out of the park baseball and made it through the 2030 season.

Following the season, a fictional player from the Diamondbacks named Rob Sorg. Rob Sorg managed to win a Silver Slugger Rookie of the Year and an MVP. He racked up 7.2 war and had a 322, 357, 486 slash line. What caught my eye and prompted this email is the fact that Rob Sorg didn't hit any home runs. He did hit 72 doubles, a new MLB record, 19 triples, and stole 74 bases with impressive defensive numbers to boot. Obviously, a player like this would be tremendous fun to watch if he actually existed. Here's my question. numbers to boot. Obviously, a player like this would be tremendous fun to watch if he actually existed. Here's my question. If a player actually posted a similar stat line, do you think the fact

that he didn't hit any home runs would make him more likely to win an MVP than if he hit something like four? In other words, would the novelty of an extremely valuable and fun player never hitting a home run be more of a boon to his national profile than if he hit very few. I think yes. I think even if he hit four, that would still kind of classify him as unusual for an MVP candidate for a war leader. Whether it's four or zero, I guess if it were actually zero, that would make him even more an object of fascination. Yes, if it were actually zero, that would make him even more an object of fascination. But even if he hit four while playing for the Divebacks and had 72 doubles, that would be a really odd and anomalous season in any era, maybe. But particularly this era, 19 triples, no one hits triples anymore.

So, yeah, if he were to do this, I think he would definitely get a boost from the fact that he didn't fit the typical profile. I mean, I think the weirdness of, huh, can we give an MVP to someone who doesn't hit home runs? Usually we're giving the MVP to Aaron Judge, who hits the most home runs. So that might cause a little bit of cognitive dissonance, but I think people would embrace it. I think people would be like, this is fun. It'd be fun to reward a player who provides the value in an atypical way. As long as the value is actually there, I think that it's fine to have an aesthetic preference. Like that's going to play a role to varying degrees most years for MVP voting. Sometimes there's just a clear favorite. But when you start to get down to like cases that are close to one another and you have to make a decision, like I do think that people prioritize a particular aesthetic preference when they make their decision.

And that seems fine. Like you got to base it on something. Yeah. Trevor reassures me that in this baseball universe, Shohei Otani has continued to be great, winning three more MVP awards, four Silver Sluggers, making six All-Star teams, and is playing with the expansion Montreal Expos after finishing his short but very lucrative post-Angel stint with the Phillies. All right. There actually was an MVP winner who hit four home runs, by the way. Frankie Frisch, 1931, led the league in steals, 101 OPS plus, four war, but the Cardinals won the pennant. Different time.

And the second and final question comes from Jonathan, who says, in the NFL, there are many teams that have never been sold or haven't been sold for a very long time. The teams are still owned by the original family that founded them, even if the founder has passed away. In MLB, the longest tenured ownership family is the Steinbrenner family, which has owned the Yankees only since 1973, 50 years. For comparison, there are 10 NFL teams that have been in the same family or ownership group for 50 plus years. Why is this? Why are there no legacy MLB ownership families that go back to the pre-expansion days like there are in the NFL? I'm not necessarily saying this is a bad thing, given the historic nature of so many MLB franchises. It's a bit surprising that we're at the point where the

longest tenured ownership family in the sport has been in place for only 50 years. Is it? 50 years. Is it? I mean, look, I don't follow football as closely as you do, but I think maybe this is more of a football question than a baseball question, because I think the NFL is the outlier here, is the exception here, because even if you consider the NBA and the NHL, from what I've seen, they also have very few kind of originally family-owned franchises. So I think it is not that MLB is weird here. It's strange, but that football is strange. Yes. And why that is, is maybe a better question for someone who knows more about football than I

do, including you, but I guess also someone who covers football. But obviously, MLB history is the longest. So if you're talking about like original ownership groups, well, it's just been longer. But still, as he said, even if we compare the same term, there are more NFL consistency, right? There's more continuity of the ownership group. And Jonathan posted this in the Facebook group as well. And some people had some suggestions. I mean, maybe it could just be that NFL revenue has been just a rocket ship. Right. I mean, the NFL has been so successful for the past several decades that you wouldn't have wanted to get out, really. It's been up and up. The NFL has gotten more and more popular and massive TV deals. And so I guess you might have been a little less likely to cash out potentially or to view this as an investment that was just going to perpetually increase in value. So that might be part of it. We want to like ascribe sort of a similarity to the entire

population of owners. Right. But some of them are like going to be bad. Yeah. You know, and so there might be some of it that is like, well, they would have liked to hold on to it, but they went bankrupt in their other thing. You know, I think that the economic profile of the very rich people who own teams has changed somewhat, even in our lifetime in a way that might have something to do with it. Yeah. And I think there's more revenue sharing in the NFL. Right. And I think that's right. Yeah. Giant TV deal. And it's more of a national sport.

It's like the national sport. Right. So so I think there's less incentive to get out of the business because business has been great and it hasn't been as up and down maybe. Again, like baseball, despite what MLB owners will say, it's also been pretty remunerative to own an MLB franchise over the long term as well. But still, I think between the revenue sharing and just the constant increase in popularity and profit, that's probably going to be a big part of it. Also, someone in the Facebook group mentioned that NFL rules require the lead investor to have at least a 30 percent stake, which eliminates a lot of buyers potentially. I didn't know that. Yeah. I imagine that plays a big role. That could be a part of it as well.

Yeah. So those are my guesses, my speculation. But if some expert football knowers want to weigh in with another factor here other than revenue sharing and giant TV deals and ownership rules and regulations, then let us know if we've overlooked any obvious factors here. Yeah. I'm sure that there's something. All right.

And we will wrap up with the future blast, which comes to us from 2039 and also from Rick Wilber, an award-winning writer, editor, and college professor who has been described as the dean of science fiction baseball. And he writes, in 2039, Tanisha T.T. Terry, in her 12th and final season in the big leagues, she's been mentioned in the Future Blast before, but just in case anyone doesn't know, there's some fictional characters here, but some very real characters. And Tanisha Terry is a real person. She's an American sprinter who's won medals and been part of national teams, etc. But the baseball part of her history or future is fictional for now. But in her 12th and final season in the big leagues, she stole her

usual 150 plus bases for the Nashville Rays, swiping 154 of them to help the Rays win the AL East and progress to the World Series before losing in six to the London Monarchs, whose success in building a little league culture in England had caused some anguish in cricket circles, but produced a solid minor league system in the disunited kingdom, as it was called since Scotland's independence. I meant to mention, this reminds me, the Rays here, the Nashville Rays being contenders in 2039. That's another thing that makes you perhaps pessimistic about the Yankees. It's like the Rays aren't going anywhere. The Orioles certainly aren't going anywhere, right? Like those other teams in the division not only have better records than the Yankees right now,

but arguably, aside from sort of the institutional advantage that the Yankees have or theoretically have because of their revenue and resources, those teams seem to be better positioned for the future than the Yankees in some cases, dramatically so, right? So that's another part that makes you think, you know, not that the Yankees are screwed, but it's maybe not the best outlook for Yankees fans, which I know is a great sob story for everyone else out there who just always wishes for the best for the New York Yankees fans, which I know is a great sob story for everyone else out there who just always wishes for the best for the New York Yankees. It's nothing but happiness and rainbows, really. We just want everyone to have a good time. Exactly right. Continuing here,

Terry in her career stole 1952 bases for the Rays and is certain for the Hall of Fame, both for her base stealing and her role as one of the first women to find real success as a player in Major League Baseball. In sadder, odder news, the disbelief about the death of the brilliant ballplayer and budding scientist DeMarcus Olivier only grew in 2039. Oh, no. As the closed casket funeral and wild speculation on social media led many Olivias, as they call themselves, to search for wherever their hero was hiding, perhaps behind that menu in the Peninsula Fountain Grill in Palo Alto or at Alice's restaurant on Skyline Boulevard. He'd clearly become in death the Elvis of his generation.

Let the poor man rest. Or is he resting at all? Perhaps he's out there somewhere. The Giants held a special day for him at Artificial Intel Stadium with an AI-produced version of Olivier up on the big board talking about how much he loved the game and his fans and then hitting a few out in batting practice,

fielding ground balls and all the rest. It was all an ad for the new AI baseball game from Apple, but the true fans believed it was him. I think that might be the saddest one we've had yet. Yeah, maybe so. That bummed me out on like a couple of different levels. You know, I'm going to sit with it for a little while.

Yeah, right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. After we recorded, Myles Michaelis was fined and suspended for five games. He, as always, for listening. After we recorded, Miles Michaelis was fined and suspended for five games. He is appealing the suspension. Also, just wanted to shout out and extend my congratulations to Declan Cronin, a 25-year-old right-hander who's the beneficiary of these White Sox trades because they selected his contract, calling him up, a former 36th round

selection. And I mention this because Declan Cronin went to my high school, Regis High School in New York. He is the first ever major leaguer from Regis High School, which is not a sports powerhouse. So I very much want to meet this major leaguer and hopefully have him on the show at some point. But for now, I give my best to a former Regis Raider. I also give my best to anyone who supports the podcast on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners are among these supporters. They have already gone to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signed up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get themselves access

to some perks. Michael Arnold, Michael Berger, Rebecca Chauval, Paul Yogerst, and Batswala. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, access to monthly bonus episodes, one of which Meg and I will be recording this weekend, access to playoff livestreams, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangrafts memberships and appearances on the podcast, and so much more. Patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site, but anyone and everyone can contact us via email at podcast fan crafts dot

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We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back to talk to you next week. It's fair game, even Kike's dirty pants And maybe if you're lucky We'll cope all by chance You never know precisely where it's gonna go By definition Effectively wild