Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2143: The 2024 Preseason Predictions Game

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs authors Michael Baumann and Ben Clemens play “Character Who Appears in Shōgun the Novel (but Not the TV Series) or International Amateur Baseball Player” (3:13), banter about an MLBPA power struggle (8:37) and the life of late Orioles owner Peter Angelos (16:51), and then explain the second annual preseason […]

Just a couple of baseball nerds It could be Sam or Jeff or Sam or Meg and Ben Unless he goes on paternity leave again In which case Meg will find someone great to fill in But whoever it is, they'll still be just a couple of baseball nerds They'll still be speaking statistically, rambling romantically Pontificating pedantically, bantering bodily Hello and welcome to episode 2143 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer,

joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Meg, we are joined by two members of your staff, two friends, two colleagues, two favorites of Effectively Wild. Michael Bauman is here. Hello, Michael. Hello. And Other Ben, Ben Clemens, also in the house. Hello, Other Ben. Hey, how's it going, Ben? And if you know that Bauman and Other Ben are here, it must be because the time has come for our second annual bold preseason predictions game.

Or is it preseason bold predictions game? I don't know. We'll figure that out for the third annual edition. But this is already, I think, one of the most anticipated episodes of Effectively Wild. I've seen chatter, people looking forward to this thing for weeks, if not months. We have been anticipating it. I don't know whether we've been looking forward to or dreading, but we have been thinking about it.

It has been on our minds one way or another. It feels like this is a longer tradition. We've been doing so many drafts and competitions for more than a decade at this point. This is a recent addition to the canon, and yet it already feels like a staple because we had so preseason predictions and then we do the postseason recap of the predictions. So double the content. Plus there's a listener voting component to this whole exercise. So it's fun for all involved. I can't wait. How are you all feeling about our second crack at this thing? I mean I also look forward to this.

I think – I know Meg won, but I feel like I spiritually won last year. Wow. Wow. It's a bold, not prediction, but claim, retrospective claim. I know that Ben lost, but I feel like I spiritually lost last year. So I would like to, at first I thought I could just beat the crowd and come up with predictions that would trick them. But then I realized that's not really the point of this. I'm still not sure that I really understand the point of this exercise. We're still figuring out what the point is. The point is to have fun. Hey, speaking of having fun, Ben, do you feel like playing a game?

No, but I knew it was coming because you're here. Okay. Yeah, because I asked you about the parameters of this game 10 minutes ago. Let's play a game I like to call Character Who Appears in Shogun the Novel But Not in the TV Series or International Amateur Baseball Player. Oh, my goodness. I have four names.

Wait, Bauman, before you begin, just because I am still one episode behind. It's not going to ruin anything. There are no spoilers. These characters do not appear in the show. Okay. Yeah. Any chit-chat, any commentary, any this and that, I'm an episode behind. I saw bloody

canon work and then after that, I don't know what happens. Okay. Well, last time we played one of these games, it was what apollo astronaut no it was shuttle astronauts or shuttle astronauts and you wipe the floor yeah that was more in my wheelhouse than the ones you usually throw me because i like space the lincoln assassination one is the all-time that didn't go well for me i feel like you got a really good handle on on reading me during the later days of the ringer mlb show and then i came back and just sucker

punched you with that one and i've been chasing that high ever since i had watched manhunt before we did that one but in theory i should be prepared for this one because i did read shogun and and loved it but i read it so long ago that the only thing i remember is that i loved it and it was obviously a doorstop but a doorstop that you want to spend a ton of time with. And it was great. And the show is good too, but I doubt I will remember any names that are not appearing in the show. So I think I'm basically a blank slate here at this point. I had the same reaction. I remembered having read it and loving it. And so I'm in the process of rereading it, trying to stay ahead of the show.

Yeah, it's now two doorstops, by the way. They figured out how to charge you 50 bucks for a book by splitting it into two volumes, those bastards. Okay. Name number one, Jikyu Ikawa, J-I-K-K-Y-U-I-K-A-W-A. J-I-K-K. I'm trying to spell it in my mind as if that's going to make much of a difference. I will guess Shogun? Shogun, yes.

He is a Christian daimyo who opposes Yabu and Turanaga early in the book. Name number two, Henry Godbout. Henry Godbout. Henry Godbout. Well, there are not many Western characters in the story Shogun, which makes me think that you're trying to trick me. But maybe I'm out thinking myself and trying to think two steps ahead, because normally I would say international prospect, but maybe that's what you want me to think. So I guess I'm going to go with Shogun. No, he's an infielder at the University of Virginia. See, I just, I tie myself into knots here. I just, I try to- I knew you were going to do that.

Oh, so you were thinking about what I was going to think about what you were going to think. This is like, why not get into some game theory, I guess is what happens whenever this happens. Name number three, Rintaro Sasaki. That's an international prospect. Yes, that is the high school baseball player who is going to Vanderbilt. Okay. And name number four, Albin Caradoc. Well, if that's not a Shogun name, then see, okay, I'm not going to try to outthink you here. That just sounds like it has to be a Shogun name, which makes me think it's probably an international prospect, but maybe you're counting on me to think that. So I'm just going to go with what it sounds like, which is Shogun. Yes, he was John Blackthorne's mentor, an English shipbuilder, navigator. Congratulations. Three out of four.

Three out of four ain't bad. But I made you sweat. I'll take that. You did. You always make me sweat with these. You always put me on the spot. Okay. And we're really sure that that's not Tom Hardy.

Yeah, he's like twice Tom Hardy's size. He is. Is he trying to, I guess the question is, is he playing his character in the show or is he playing Tom Hardy playing that character in the show? Oh, he's definitely playing Tom Hardy. I have a lot of questions about that. I came across something interesting on the internet. There's an Australian radio station called Triple J that does a series called Like A Version where they have artists come in and do a live cover of a song. And it's really, really good.

It's on YouTube every Friday. And it's really, really good. It's on YouTube every Friday. And Cosmo Jarvis, who plays John Blackthorne and was in a previous life a singer-songwriter, is on that series in like a 10-year-old episode covering a Kylie Minogue song that I'll pass the – yeah. My takeaway from this is he's way too big to be credible as like a guy with a guitar. Okay. Well, I can't wait to hear his vocal stylings because I've been mystified by them on TV. Wait, I'm not saying it's a bad performance. I don't think it's a bad performance. It's just it feels like he's doing the most. Yeah. Yeah.

He's doing a lot of he's doing many things. Anyway, we're not here to talk about Shogun. I'm just always so excited when I'm actually close to caught up on Prestige TV that I have to remind everyone. I know. It feels so special. Now that Balin has put me through the traditional torture here, I want to take advantage of his presence to ask about two things. Because, of course, he's a union man. I mean, not currently, but at heart,

former union organizer. Meg's got to hop off this call. Yeah, well, we were members of the same union for a while. Now, neither of us is anymore for various job-related circumstances. But in spirit, we're union men. And I wanted to ask you about the mishigas that's going on with the Major League Baseball Players Association right now, which we don't have all the details. And there's infighting here that is perhaps opaque to outsiders. But the Harry Marino power grab slash coup slash inroads, whatever you want to call it, seems to have been stymied and thwarted by Tony Clark and Bruce Meyer and the executive subcommittee who have said that there are still things to work out here. But this is no longer a Harry Marino matter. There was some question about whether he would take over, whether he would replace Meyer, what exactly would happen here. So what do you make of this story based on what we know? Yeah. What I make is that I also read that the power transfer is almost certainly not going to

happen now, that they tried something and didn't have the votes. And that feels like violating rule one of doing a coup is you need to be sure that you have numerical superiority. I go back to, there's been very little on this directly. The parties involved have all released statements. There are two interviews with members of the executive subcommittee that I found interesting. One, both in the athletic, one was with Lance McCullers, with Chandler Rome, and athletic, one was with Lance McCullers with Chandler Rome. And the other one was with Jack Flaherty that just came out this weekend with Ken Rosenthal. And McCullers is in an interesting situation because all of this

seems to be about coming at Scott Boris, somebody from outside, whether it's other agents or, you know, forces, they view this free agent period as being a failure and Boris as being to blame. And I definitely think Scott Boris had a really terrible offseason and badly misjudged some of the factors involved. And we've done this to death. I've written about it. You've podcasted about it. But Boris is weaker than he's been in 30 years. And I think that I don't know if the genesis of this was other agents trying to reduce his perceived power standing and try to get somebody who they found more sympathetic into a position of power in the union. But Flaherty was named as one of the players who

was on the call where all this sort of got started, and as one of the people within leadership who might exert pressure to get Bruce Meyer out or to perhaps even threaten Tony Clark. And in that interview – To clarify for anyone who hasn't been following this beat by beat, Marino was instrumental in having the minor leaguers join the MLBPA and is a former minor leaguer himself and is 33 years old. And so he is tightly connected to the younger generation of players. Meyer is more of an old timer hardliner who has worked with other leagues. I mean, not with the leagues against the leagues, but he has experience. He is the number two. He's the lead negotiator under Tony Clark. And he's like he's the ass kicker. He's the guy who like the pro that they

brought in to sort of stop the bleeding that happened in the past several CBA negotiations. And I think, you know, I think in the last CBA negotiations, they were dealt a really tough hand with the lockout. I don't know if they could have gotten more, but I think they got as much as the committee of the whole was willing to let them fight for, which comes, I'll get to that point in a second. Flaherty seemed kind of, it was a combination of not wanting to spill the beans too much, but it almost seemed like he wasn't sure what the Marino faction was supposed to be fighting for. And there's been a lot of talk about, we need more transparency. The people at the top are not listening to the rank and file. And I think the committee that negotiated the CBA was heavy on stars, which has its

advantages and disadvantages when you're talking about a sports labor union. And now I think it's a little bit more diverse in terms of the kinds of players who were on it. I definitely think that any reminder that union leadership doesn't have a divine right to on it. I definitely think that any reminder that like union leadership doesn't have a divine right to be there. I think that union leadership needs to be on its toes and needs to constantly, you know, be communicating and showing the flag with the membership. And that's something I think the MLBPA has done pretty well, you know, under Clark and Meyer over the past few years. So as a wake-up call, I think that that's not necessarily a bad thing. But when they're talking about the way free agency has been sunk, and some of these middle-class guys have been frozen out, you know, waiting a long time.

Michael Lorenzen, you know, is an example that comes to mind who just signed. There's a limit to how much the MLBPA can do at the negotiating table under this current system. Because ownership and the executives will find ways to get around whatever rules they agree to and to undermine whatever incentives they put in place to encourage spending. And that's been the case as far back as I can remember. And there's a limit to how much headway the PA can make against that without like a multi-year work stoppage, without like really bringing the entire industry to its knees, which they can do but which they haven't been empowered to do. And the thing that I keep coming back to, and this frustrates me as somebody who's been on a negotiating committee, is there's apparently some talk back now about, you know, we should have gotten more at the table. The executive subcommittee unanimously voted to reject the CBA, and they got

outvoted by the team reps, the rank and file, who said, no, let's just get back to playing baseball. And I think that if there is dissatisfaction, that's something that Meyer and Clark and whoever's on the executive subcommittee needs to hammer home. It's like, next time around, you guys need to be willing to draw a harder line if you want more, because withholding labor is the only card that they really have to play in this situation. So I think it's interesting. I think we may never learn the whole story, but I think that this might be sort of an abortive self-interested attempt by non-Boris agents to sort of weaken his prestige. And this looks like an emergency a week ago, and now it looks like it's going to be resolved relatively quietly. Yeah, it all came to a head very quickly, seemingly surprisingly, to some members involved. And I don't really know the parties involved in this, so I wouldn't want to weigh in on their personal qualifications or lack thereof. But the way that Marino went about

it, if the reporting is accurate, and Evan Drellick has written a lot about this, Jeff Passan wrote a lot about this, in his public statements, he's sort of been like, oh, the players are coming to me. You know, he's sort of making it sound like he was not instigating this, like he's just sort of responding to the will of the players. Very Teddy Roosevelt-like. Yeah, I'm sure there's some truth to that. where he's circulating memos and reaching out. And it does sound a little like active campaigning to some extent by someone who is not actually in the union and hasn't been for a while and was only briefly

and is quite young. So I guess I'm not surprised that that didn't pan out seemingly, but it did throw everything into turmoil briefly. And as Meg said, I think when we briefly talked about it before, just got to get your house in order before it's time to talk CBA again, right? I wish that we had more low-stakes opportunities to use the word putch. Oh, yeah.

And particularly in a context where it's so rife for puns. Right. Yeah. I'm just saying. So, you know, like it's a high stakes thing a lot of the time, but it's a good word. We don't get to use it very much. It's true. The other item that is sort of related to that tangentially, Peter Angelos, former owner of the Orioles, died this week at 94. He had been ill for some years and not really running the team anymore, as we are all painfully aware.

His son, John Angelos, had taken the reins until selling the franchise recently. And the timing, I guess, David Rubenstein, who is taking over the team, there's going to be a vote on his ownership among the other owners on Wednesday. And there was a clause that said that essentially Angelos, as long as he was alive, Rubenstein would get, I think, 40 percent of control, even though he'd be the active partner and the managing controlling partner. Now he'll just get the whole kit and caboodle and it'll be Rubinstein's baseball team. But it occurs to me that Peter Angelos, kind of an interesting guy, kind of different from most owners to some extent. Kind of an interesting guy, kind of different from most owners to some extent, maybe the most pro-union MLB owner in recent history, which obviously low bar. That's not saying so much. active in this era when public sentiment has swung and media sentiment for that matter more toward the players and toward the union. I don't know if he would have been looked at as

kind of like the good owner, quote unquote, or one of the good ones or the closest thing there is to a good one. But in some respects, right, the fact that he was not born a billionaire. So he is not like his son, a fail son who just sort of inherited the wealth and then managed to bungle everything John Fisher style. He earned his money in, I guess, a semi-righteous way. That's exactly what I was going to say. He's the last sports owner to become rich enough to buy a team through means that aren't ontologically evil. Yeah. He was not like a hedge fund private equity guy. Like he made his money as a lawyer in class action suits for fairly righteous causes, right? Asbestos poisoning, tobacco. Yeah.

And when he bought that team, I think it was the most anyone had ever paid for a team at that. It was like 173 million or something, which sounds like a pittance now, but it was more than 30 years ago. And yeah, someone like that, it would be hard for them to become an owner now just because you have to be so unimaginably wealthy to buy into this fraternity. And once he was there, he did break ranks at times, right? He opposed the scabs, the replacement players plan that the owners were bandying about as leverage during the 94-95 strike. He was famously anti-international signings to the detriment of the Orioles competitively, probably, but he sort of took a moral stance, seemingly.

And it was like, this is exploitative. I don't feel good about this. We're just kind of going to ignore the international market for years at a time, which certainly hurt the organization. It's kind of like everyone's always thinking, can I ethically root for a team, right? And maybe that's a data point and well, you can, but it's going to hurt the team probably because not everyone else is going to act that way or have those same reservations. And so if one team sits out that market, everyone's going to say, great, more underpriced players for us.

But just the fact that he took stances like that would really set him apart from any owner we have now. And that's not to say that he never did anything wrong or that he was even that good an owner. I mean, he was certainly known for meddling and interfering in baseball ops business. And the Orioles were certainly not constantly successful under his watch, and the payrolls weren't always what you would want them to be. Again, he wasn't super independently wealthy. Perhaps that had something to do with it. But really, I guess the Angelos name has kind of been tarnished by the younger Angeloses. But I think we should remember that Pierre Angelos, an unusual guy by MLB owner standards. And in some ways, I think he probably would have been held up now as, see, it is possible to be an owner and not act or think like every other owner.

I don't know if it is possible anymore. I mean, I would say he's still worth, according to a quick Google search, $3 billion. It's not like he couldn't afford to buy a post-game spread. It's not worth that anymore, Ben. Well, that's fair. He was. That's three Taylor Swifts according to the same Google search. No, he's not a popper.

It is definitely true. And I'm sure he made bank with that investment in the Orioles and Camden Yards and everything else. I mean, I think he was fairly liked locally just as a Baltimore guy, as someone who did kind of care about Baltimore. Right. Whereas John Angelos is like he might leave if you don't lock him down. Right. And I guess it's kind of appropriate that as Peter Angelos exits the stage, an owner that people hope will be similar, at least in that respect, in the sense that he kind of cares about Baltimore and the stewardship of the local franchises taking over the team. So maybe that's appropriate. You just said Taylor Swift. It's like, how is it feasible for her to become a majority

owner of the Phillies once John Middleton dies? Oh, boy. But you don't want to move on from Middleton, do you? Like, he's fine. No, Middleton, he's doing all right by owner standards. Yeah, he's fine. But look, it's like she'll buy the Royals. Like, come on. Maybe so. I guess that makes sense. Well, Patrick Mahomes already owns a stake in the Royals, so she's gotten in.

Well, enough preamble. Let's get to our game, our competition here as we while the time away until Shohei Otani's pre-prepared statement later this afternoon, which we will have to discuss next time or in the outro, but this is a fun way for us to pass the time. Here's how this works. We are each making 10 predictions about the upcoming season, and generally, they're supposed to be bold. They don't have to be totally out there, impossible, but not total chalk, not my usual type of prediction, not my Mr. Chalk business. We're trying to slightly go out on a limb here and be fun and entertaining and clever and creative, and we'll see how many of those boxes we can check. And we'll see how many of those boxes we can check. And then at the end of the season, we will see how many each of us got right, and we will return to that and score ourselves. But we will not solely be scoring ourselves because you, the listener, are whatever we want to call it. This was the brainchild of Chris Hannell, listener, Patreon supporter, sometime guest. And he has also orchestrated the recording and the scoring and the grading. He has taken over from our scorekeeper emeritus, John Chenier, and now plays that role for all of our drafts and competitions. So he has set up an input form that I will link to on the show page and in the pod

description. And we urge you all to go and tell us how we did and you can play along. So Chris has written up a little bit of a primer here and I will read from it. So the four of us are going to take turns making our 10 revelatory revelatory predictions about the 2024 baseball season. They do have to be about this year so that we can actually grade them at the end of the year. And we will earn points if they come true as judged by Chris, and we will lose points if they don't. However, how many points we gain or lose depends on our audience. However, how many points we gain or lose depends on our audience. So after you listen, follow that link.

You can judge how likely each prediction is. So you have until first pitch, Thursday afternoon, the 28th, voting will be closed. Technically, the season has already started, but we're going to just forget about those two Dodgers-Patriots games. Nothing we can do about that. So you have a couple days to vote if you are listening to this after we put it up. Now, last year, we asked listeners to say simply whether they thought each prediction would come true. So true or false. This year, a little more nuance, a little more sensitivity.

We are asking you to judge each prediction's likelihood as a percentage from 0 to 100. So 100%, you think it's a lock, it's definitely going to happen. 0%, you think no chance. And there is a scale, and the average of your assessments will determine our potential scores. So for example, if a prediction gets graded as being 10% likely, then we would earn 90 points if we're right and lose 10 points if we're wrong. On the other hand, if the audience thinks that prediction is too safe and says it's 80% likely, then if it comes true, we get 20 points and we lose 80 if it doesn't. And the highest score, whether it's positive or negative, wins the game. And as for the audience, your submissions will be tracked and scored. If you enter an email address, then we will keep track of your score too

using a separate system which you can read about on the entry form in detail. But basically, you'll be incentivized to be precise with your estimates. And we're hoping to get at least 1,000 submissions. That would be great. So we urge you all to take part, and the highest scoring audience entry can get some merch, can choose something from the Fangraphs merch store on Breaking Tea. And that's that. That's how it works from your end, the audience's perspective. And this is a draft, so we're going to go one by one. We will alternate picks and we can't take the same thing. So it's like a draft. If someone drafts something, no one else can draft that exact prediction.

Exact thing. Yeah, we can. There's some leeway. There's some wiggle room. We'll just have to judge among ourselves whether it comes too close or not. But in theory, we prepared some backup predictions in case someone steals one. You want to hear some fun? I thought opening day was Wednesday until five minutes ago. Got an extra day of voting. Really?

Yeah. Should not confess that to the managing editor of FanGraphs. I was going to show up at the park on Wednesday. All right. Well, sorry you have to wait a little longer for baseball, but on the plus side, the polls will be open longer. And each prediction needs to be reasonably objective and verifiable. So it can't just be vibes.

It has to be something that we can actually assess. Is it true? Is it false at the end of the year or the season? So again, we can kind of adjudicate that ourselves. And that's pretty much it. I guess there's no restrictions on making predictions in which you could have an influence on the outcome. That's probably unlikely to happen, but the competitors can call that out. Despite Michael's best efforts.

Yes, despite Michael's best efforts to determine what the Phillies would play post-game on their stereo system. That did not happen. But if there is a situation like that, then we will have to call each other on it. And Chris has decreed that the draft order should be reverse order of final placement from last year. Actual final placement or spiritual final placement? Actual final placement. I'm sorry to say, Meg, because you won last year. I did win. I did win. I won. You will be drafting last.

And I won't rehash all the predictions here because we did a full episode on that. But I will refer you to our predictions episodes and link to both of them on the show page if you want to go back and re-experience them. So let's get to predicting. Here is my first prediction. So the draft order is going to be me, other Ben, Bauman, and Meg. My first prediction is that there will be no 200-inning pitchers this year. Ooh, spooky. No one is saying, gosh darn it.

So I did not vulture anyone's prediction there. I had a prediction that involved 200-inning prediction pitchers. We'll see if it counts. I'll see how deep we get before I... You can persuade. Yeah. And see, I never know whether to try to justify these predictions because it feels like that's good podcasting. Like I should explain why I think this could conceivably come true. It's really in our best interest not to, though. Wow. This is entertainment. Yeah, I care more about the entertainment than winning this thing. It's good, something to follow and refer to all season long. But really, we have incentive to make it sound like our own predictions are even more of a stretch so that the listeners will deem them

less likely, and then we will potentially get more points if they come true. We'll deem them less likely and then we will potentially get more points if they come true. I struggle with this because I made my little list, right? And then I was like, do I believe all of these? And the answer was a resounding no. But I don't know if I want to say which ones I actually believe. Like some of them I'm going for maybe a little bit of trolling, you know, or I don't know what people believe to be real anymore, Ben. Last year was the maybe you kind of got penalized for having more unlikely predictions because people who are voting on this thing, they want to say yes. They want to say, yeah, that could happen. And if it's just yes, no, then I think people are maybe more inclined to go with the yes than the no.

But now we have a gradient. We have a scale. And I hope that that will help and people will actually assess how likely these things are. So no 200-inch pitches. I mean, there were only five last year, right? So in a sense, I'm not taking that great a leap here, but historically speaking- Milk toast prediction. It would be a first, you know, in the current era with the number of teams and games and such that we have, so-

Sway the voters. Yeah. I mean, the trend is towards fewer and perhaps none eventually, but a lot of things would have to happen for there to be zero. And obviously one of those things has happened, which is Garrett Cole is not going to get there, but you still got your Logan Webbs and your Zach Gallons and a few people who might make a run at it. So I think the odds are that someone will do it, but I'm banking on no one will do it. Yeah, I like this one because it's probably not going to happen, but it says something, you know? Yeah. Yeah.

Planting a flag. All right. Other Ben. All right. I'm going to need some panelist participation in this one, specifically Michael Bauman. Hey, Michael, could you name four college baseball players for me? Active college baseball players? Active college baseball players. Does it matter if they're good or prominent or anything? I wanted to name four college baseball players for me. Active college baseball players? Active college baseball players.

Does it matter if they're good or prominent or anything? I wanted to name four college baseball players. Ethan Petrie. Okay, I'm writing these down. Dub Glead. Dub Glead. I'm not writing these down. I don't know how to spell these.

Merrick Houston. Okay. And Michael Massey. All right. Oh, this prediction is going to be, I think, voted pretty well then. None of those players will be the top pick in the draft. Ooh. That's the prediction.

That's the prediction. Wow. Petri's not draft eligible. All right. Michael Massey is the third best pitching prospect on his own team, and he's hurt. Wait a minute. I'm calling foul on this as a means of doing this, because you would have limited it to draft eligible guys at the very least

if you had known what other Ben is going for. Yeah, but that's the point. No, he's banked on me. Well, I don't know. It sounds like people are just going to say no, and then I won't get any points. I guess that's true. Yeah, this is a total crapshoot for you.

I don't know who these players are. I forget what year Houston is. I picked two Wake guys, and Wake has three guys who are in the conversation for 1-1. Not any of these guys, potentially? No. 1-1. Not any of these guys, potentially? No.

I was reminded of your asking Ben last year who the 17th best doubles hitter was or whatever. Yeah. And then making a prediction where you had no idea how it was going to go. And I also figured I have no time to do a college baseball prediction because you will just do it on your first pick. I have two lined up. All right. Of course. So, yeah, I guess that one was less exciting than I hoped. I was hoping there would be the Bazana guy, because I know who that is.

Trash Bazana. One of two players I know. Houston is also not draft eligible. He's a sophomore. All right. Feeling good early on. So unless you really believe in Dub Glead or Michael Massey. I believe in Dub Glead. I know nothing

about him other than his name, but I think he's going to be a helium guy. I think he's going to be a riser. Late riser. He's going to get the dub on draft day. Dub. Alright, well that was weird. Next. Bauman. Okay.

I'm getting to Otani first. Ooh. Okay. If Shohei Otani gets suspended, or actually regardless of whether or not he gets suspended, but the number of games from that suspension, even if that number is zero, plus the number of open media availability sessions he has this season will be less than the number of open media availability sessions he has this season will be less than the number of bases he steals this season fantastic very good so this is one like it's roping in the biggest story in baseball right now two it's poking otani a little bit for

never talking to the press which you know he's sort of reaping the benefits from right now. And also, Chris sent me a skeet on Blue Sky about this at like nine o'clock on Saturday night. And you giving me homework at nine o'clock on Saturday. So I'm giving him something that's going to be impossible to track. So we're going to. Well, that's what I was going to make the judges work. We do have to make sure we can score this. So the open media define that.

Are we talking taking questions from and I would say from like a non handpicked. Would you count where he like talked with Ken Rosenthal about how he likes winning last year? Yes. I think a one-on-one interview with somebody like Ken Rosenthal counts. OK. So one-on-one counts and a scrum of any kind counts? And a scrum counts, yeah. OK.

So it doesn't have to be a press conference where he takes questions. It can be just – Well, he does have to take questions. He has to take questions, right? So his statement today won't count. But he—it can just be he's standing at his locker after the game. Yes. OK. All right. Well, I suggest— You might want to rope in of Dodgers beat writers, people who are covering the team, and we can ask them. I don't want to give them work to like jot this down, although maybe they'll be keeping track anyway.

So – and he probably won't do it often enough that it will be that hard to remember. Yeah, I was going to say. So the only time he talked like his last season with the Angels was when he pitched and he's not going to do that this year. Right. Okay. All right. So we will determine maybe a panel of Dodgers beat writers or Fabian if he's willing to take on this responsibility. We can ask him on the Dodgers preview that we're doing next time and they can tell us what the number officially is by their account.

You're, you're taking a risk, I guess, going out with this prediction before we hear what he has to say, which the listeners will be aware of by the time they hear this. So if he comes out and says, I did it, I'm guilty,

throw the book at me. That's going to affect your predictions. If he does that, I'm happy to take the L. That would be the most interesting thing that's happened in baseball in 50 years. Disagree. Okay. Meg.

Okay. I'm terrified to not do a college one. So I think I'm going to do a college one because I worry about Baumann going there next. Here's my official college baseball prediction. At least one position player drafted in July

will debut in 2024, including postseason play. So postseason debuts would count toward this prediction as I am understanding it. So there you go. Okay. All right.

Position player is going to... So you're betting on a Nolan Shenuel repeat. Shenuel. All right. The position player is going to – So you're betting on a Nolan-Chanuel repeat. Chanuel. I am. I mean – Okay. And for him to specifically repeat the season he had last year.

But that's a separate question. Absolutely. Okay. Well, back to me. And unless we're doing Snake, do we want to do Snake? We usually don't, but we could. We usually don't. We can.

I mean, I'll go again if you want, but we didn't say that we were going to do snake we usually don't but we could usually don't we can i mean i'll go again if you want but we didn't we didn't say that we were gonna this doesn't feel like a snaky thing this doesn't feel like i don't feel the need you know okay pool of predictions available spiritually i'm content with picking last because i technically and actually won all right i will i will do my otrelated prediction, which actually is not really that related to Otani. And it is that the Angels will win more games this season than they did in any season with Shohei Otani. This is on my list. I don't know how it will happen.

Don't ask me to lay out the precise sequence of events that culminates in the Angels. Because he's not shaving points anymore. Wow. Wow. How could you? How dare you? People have been like, why hasn't Fairgrounds written anything about Otani yet? And it's like, well, I don't know, man.

Maybe. Because man doesn't trust me. There's a reason. Our libel lawyers aren't that good. At first, I was going to water this down and say that they would win more games than they did in any season with like healthy, fully operational

Otani or like Otani when he got MVP votes, basically 2021 on because they topped out at 77 wins with like MVP caliber Otani. But even though they won 80 in 2018 when he was hurt for part of that year,

I'm just going to go with that bolder version. And I'm going to say they have to win more than that. So they have to be at least 500. It doesn't sound like that hard a thing to do, but it's the Angels without Otani. So it's not a high bar, but by their standards, it's a bar that they have failed to clear despite having the best player in baseball

over the past few years so Angels at least 500 somehow in Otani's absence okay all right other Ben I guess I cannot predict that Otani will have the best record of his career

it seems pretty likely you could but yeah well I also there's one other one that I was afraid bauman would scoop me on and after that i'm just kind of throwing darts uh jacob de grom will record more war fangraphs war than lance lynn this one is a real long shot this this is outrageous like

i'm not gonna try to overly cook the books in my favor in any of these, but this would be nuts if it happened. Lance Lynn is supposed to pitch a whole season. It happened last year when DeGrom made six starts, right? Yeah. Bauman made that prediction and lost or won. I forget which way you picked, but yeah, DeGrom in six starts could be better than Lynn in a full season. So that could definitely happen. But Jacob DeGrom's six starts were among the best six starts we've ever seen um yeah he still barely well i guess he beat him by a comfortable amount actually because he had a

1.5 fit that's we're going fan graphs war that's good fan graphs war yeah um so this this prediction almost certainly won't happen because two things need to happen. DeGrom needs to actually pitch and pitch very well very quickly in his return from TJ, which is not likely. And Lin needs to be really bad again. So, Fangraphs... What if Lin's below replacement level? Then it counts. Okay.

For the record... He gave up a lot of home runs. He did, and he was still a half a win above replacement. But then it counts. Okay. For the record. He gave up a lot of home runs. He did, and he was still a half a win above replacement. Like, despite all that just absolutely trash luck. So the projections think this is, like, really hard. They have Lin at about average, which seems all right to me. 2.1 more over 166 innings.

And they have DeGrom making five starts. So that will be tough. It'll be very tough for this to happen. But I mean, honestly, I don't think it will. But I want it to. I think it would be amazing. Yeah, I believe in them both to hold up their ends of this bargain. Okay.

Bauman, you have any Lancelin-related predictions? I thought about doing a DeGrom injury recovery one, but ended up leaving that on the cutting room floor. Oh, boy. Where do I want to go next? Okay. The Savannah Bananas, the most popular baseball team in North America, are doing a cruise in October. They are sailing on the Norwegian Jade of Norwegian Cruise Lines, who also put on the Pitbull cruise I went on a few years ago. The Norwegian Jade has a capacity of 2,402 passengers. The Oakland A's will draw fewer fans than that

10 times during the regular season. Wow. Wow. You're picking very literary, like, ins to these predictions i i appreciate it bowman i'm a writer it's nice like i know i'm not saying it's surprising i still appreciate it though you know thank you you're welcome well it's it's cruel i guess although maybe it's not cruel to ace fans because if they don't show up it will be because they boycotted because why shouldn't they so the ace don't deserve to have yeah they got under that mark once last year they drew under 3 000 fans four times so it would be an escalation but a reasonable escalation given

though you think you're going yeah yeah i'm with you i i thought given your an animal will die on the field prediction i thought you were going to go with like someone goes to Davy Jones' locker or something like someone. We're doing a fold of corrections on the Savannah Bananas cruise. Yeah, someone falls overboard. An orca takes the cruise down. I am not going to predict bodily harm or death or dismemberment for any human being on this game. It's big of you. All right.

Meg. Okay. Teammates Aaron Judge and Juan Soto will each hit at least 50 home runs. When you said teammates, I thought you were going to say, I predict that teammates are going to kiss this year. I think they will kiss, but that's part of the trap. Not necessarily those

specific teammates, to be clear. I don't know what their baseline level of affection is for one another. I imagine it's going to be high, at least on Judge's part, because he's going to be thrilled to have someone else in that lineup actually hitting. Yeah, I would give him a smooch if I were in Judge and had no lineup protection, but they're

probably still getting acquainted. Smooch is a funny word. What a weird little word that is. Smooch. But yeah, they're going to each bop at least 50. And I believe if I have my facts straight, Mantle and Maris are the only teammates to ever do that. I think that's right.

Well, it would be appropriate if the, I don't know what we call the A and J boys. I don't know. The A and J boys? What does that even mean? The A and J boys? Because Mantle and Maris are the M and M boys. Yeah, but I'll workshop that. We'll work on that.

Yeah, I got to send that back to the room. It rhymes. It would really be the J and S boys. That sounds dirty. The SJWs, the SJWs. Oh, great. Yeah, let's definitely introduce that. All right, back to me.

Okay, where do I want to go here? All right. Well, no one's gone with a stolen base-related prediction yet, and I assume someone's going to want to do here. All right. Well, no one's gone with a stolen base related prediction yet. And I assume someone's going to want to do that. Oh, yeah. You had Otani's stolen bases in there. Yeah, but that's not really a stolen base. I mean, it is, but it isn't.

Spiritually about him not talking to the media. Yeah. I'm going to keep doing this. So opinions are divided on whether we're going to get more steals this season or fewer. There are smart people who think that the steals are going to go down, that we had this huge uptick last year and that it's going to regress a little. It'll be a plexiglass principle sort of thing. And the larger overriding trends that led to the rules changes to try to prop up stolen bases will reassert themselves. And after that one year boost, it will head downward again, obviously still higher than

it was pre-rules changes, but not higher than it was last year. One Sam Miller, for instance, has made that argument and we brought that up on the podcast And I disagree. I don't disagree with great confidence. But I think steals are going to go up. And I think that because they should, in theory, because it certainly seems like players are leaving some stolen bases on the table here or on the field. Just because the success rate was so high last year, it just did not need to be that high. And also, if you look at the patterns of runners waiting until pitchers throw over, which Russell Carlton wrote about recently, the stolen base attempt rate wasn't really that much higher until the pitcher had already made a throw over there. And really, because they're so limited

now, you should be anticipating that they are going to be less likely a throw over there. And really, because they're so limited now, you should be anticipating that they are going to be less likely to throw over to start. So I'm just saying, I think hitters will acclimate to this more than pitchers. And as Sam pointed out, there wasn't like a dramatic uptick during last season. September was runnier than previous months, but on the whole like the first couple games of the season had the same stolen base rate as the rest of the season so it didn't change perceptibly as the season went on but i think they're going to come back and they're going to be running more so my prediction is that we will have the highest average stolen base total per team will have the highest average stolen base total per team since the 1980s. And, you know, the go-go 80s, everyone thinks of Vince Coleman and Ricky Henderson and Tim Raines. Everyone's going like

wild. And Bryan Cranston is doing promos about it. I'm saying we're going to get back to that level because my initial inclination was to predict that we would just have the most steals total in the live ball era but we almost had that last year we were only like 80 or so steals behind 1987 but that's because there were 26 teams in 1987 so i'm doing a per team adjustment here so last year there was an increase of about 41% in this stat. And to set the live ball era record, we'd need another increase of 18% to surpass 1987. And that was a little too rich for my blood. So I'm saying that we are going to have the highest since the 80s, which means we need about an 8.4% uptick relative to last year.

And I think that could happen. I don't know where you all come down on that. Well, I think if you wanted to influence this one, you could get into every clubhouse that comes through New York and personally start selling cocaine to the players if you wanted to bring the 80s back. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I could. I guess I could do that, but I will not. So the other factor that is not drug-related that I think might influence this is the enforcement of the obstruction rule. I've seen there have been some notable examples this spring of viral videos of plays that were called obstruction now that probably would not have in the past. They haven't actually changed the rule or made a new rule, but they are just instructing the umps to really rigorously enforce it now, which is basically trying to increase base running and also combat the injury risk where you have a fielder at second base or third base just put their whole leg down, their knee down in front of the base so that they're blocking the base. You can't do that now when you don't have the ball. And they're even enforcing it if you put like half a foot in front of the base.

And so probably there's going to be some adjustment. of the base. And so probably there's going to be some adjustment. The fielders will figure out their footwork and maybe the umpires will get more lax as the season goes on if they have a bunch of egregious examples of this. But if anything, this should encourage people to run more. The caveat is that I don't think it counts as a stolen base if you're safe on the obstruction call because this happened the other day. I think it's just an error on the fielder. So that won't actually inflate the stolen base totals directly. But I think it might just an error on the fielder. So that won't actually inflate the stolen base totals directly. But I think it might indirectly in the sense that guys might be more willing to attempt a stolen base if they think that it's going to be harder for someone to apply the tag. I think that's a good one.

Thank you. All right. Other Ben. All right. I've got – I promise I'm not specifically targeting people, but this one just happened to work out this way. I promise I'm not specifically targeting people, but this one just happened to work out this way. Okay, so in the StatCast era,

one team stands alone in terms of having been no hit or one hit most times. And that's the Mariners. Oh, I was going to go Guardians. I was going to go Rays. The Guardians are not far behind. The Rays have only been no hit or one hit five times in the StatCast era. That's pretty low. In the StatCast era. That's pretty low.

In the StatCast era, that's still a lot. That's not that long. Yeah. It's a decade, right? This is the 10th year of it. Yeah, this will be the 10th year. Yeah. So the Mariners are at 15.

It happens fairly often to them. They're 1-14 in those games. So, you know, not 0-15. They will not be one hit or no hit this year. Well, see, that's a nice prediction. It is. It just turns out. Actually, do you want to hear the crazy thing about this research?

Can you guess the team that was one hit or no hit least times in the StatGast era? I'm assuming it won't be one we would immediately think of. It's the Marlins. Okay. They have been no hit or one hit exactly one time. It was last year. So they had an eight season streak without any. And it was by the Mariners.

Pretty amazing. Yeah. I found this research pretty interesting. I don't really know how good the prediction is. I was originally going to do that they won't be no hit, one hit or two hit. And that seems crazy. That's too far. That's too far. That's too far.

So just no-hitter one. Okay. Does that take no-hitter predictions off the board? No. Not necessarily. I don't think so. We can judge. I think if you were doing things about teams being no-hit, then it would.

It's not that. All right. I'll come back to that one later. Where do I want to go next? Okay. I'll do the first of my two college baseball predictions. Last year, Paul Skeens. Got to get those before they're off the board, before they get back to me.

I'm building up to the one prediction that's the whole reason I'm doing this game. So we're going to build some suspense. All right. Paul Skeens, a character in this game last season. Last year had a prolific strikeout during season. He struck out 15.3 batters per nine innings. This season, one or both of Arkansas's Hagan Smith or Wake Forest's Chase Burns will beat that ratio.

I can't judge that one way or another, but I hope for the best for you. Chase Burns is a good baseball pitcher name. I saw him live the other day. I went down to visit a friend in Charlottesville. He was like, you never come to see me. And I was like, well, Wake Forest is in town. So you really went to see Wake Forest, not the friend.

Can you give me a bed while I go see Chase Burns strike out 13 guys? And yeah, had a great time. All right. Meg. Okay. had a great time all right meg okay in 2024 shota imanaga will finish with a higher fan graphs war than yoshinobu yamamoto the projections would say so right the famously rosy or not not quite that high on not quite that high not quite that close but the projections do yeah they really love imanaga zips in particular is quite quite high on im the projections do. They really love Imanaga. Zips in particular is quite, quite high on Imanaga.

I think on a per inning basis, he projects better than Yamamoto does. So I find that interesting. And I find the ballpark that Imanaga plays in, his fly ball profile, to be really interesting to pay attention to. And so I'm curious if I'm right. So I thought I'd put a little bold prediction on it. Okay. It's bold. The projections are wrong all the time.

Just ask Orioles. All right. Have them contact me. Next, I will be choosing a positive prediction instead of a negative prediction. Initially, I was inclined to say that this might be the first season ever with no 40-year-old hitter, and that's going by baseball age, because there may not be one. Joey Votto is pretty much our only hope at this point, I think.

And there have been years when we've come close to this, but I'm pretty sure that every single season there has been a 40-year-old hitter who made a plate appearance. The fewest were like in the 1870s, 1880s. There were a couple of years with just four plate appearances by a 40-something. And then in 2019, there were just six plate appearances by Ichiro before he retired. And that was that. But there are usually many more than that. And obviously, like, at the peak of old guys, that was either during World War II or during the P.E.D. era, you had thousands and thousands of played appearances by 40-somethings, and some of those 40-somethings were very good. But at this point, Joey Votto is kind of like the last hope, right? I mean, this isn't a prediction

where someone's just going to come out of nowhere, probably, you know, just like get promoted for the first time at 40. So it would be someone you would be thinking of. I mean, I guess Robinson Cano could get signed by an MLB team again or something, but I don't know who else could do this. It seems like sort of a long shot if Votto doesn't,

but I don't want to root against Joey Votto. I don't want to be in a position where any part of me is against Joey Votto making plate appearances in the majors this year. And so I'm going to go with the polar opposite and take a pro Votto prediction. And here it is. I'm betting on the Votto resurgence.

The feel-good story of 2024 is that Joey Votto, this season, will out-Homer 2022 Albert Pujols. So the gold standard for the last gasp, late career, renaissance, feel-good story, guy going back to either his hometown in Votto's case or his original team in Pujols' case and proving to have a whole lot left in the tank, surprisingly. I'm saying that Votto will outdo Pujols, and that seems unlikely. That's a lot of homers.

It is. Pujols hit 24 homers that season. Now that seems potentially doable to me because like Pujols only had 351 plate appearances that year. And obviously he was like ridiculously on fire later in the season. But he started slow. Like people were wondering if he had anything left, if he could even survive the season on the roster. And so if you look at the full season home runs per plate appearance or plate appearance per homer rate, it's not dramatically more or higher than Joey Votto had last season, even. Like, Joey Votto hit 14 homers last season in 242 plate appearances. Like, that's a lot. On a rate basis, it's not that much lower than Pujols. And again, Pujols only had like 350 PA. So if Votto somehow manages to be something like a full-time player this year, I feel like that's well within his reach. I mean, he hit 36 in 2021. He says he's healthier and feeling better than ever, except for the fact that he rolled his ankles in the dugout the other day, which doesn't inspire confidence. But other than that, you know, they have every incentive to bring him up as a sort of a heartwarming story.

So this relies probably on someone getting hurt or being bad, like Justin Turner, who is another old guy. He's almost 40 himself. Right. Or potentially Daniel Vogelbeck, who made the opening day roster. Yeah. Vogelback who made the opening day roster. Yeah. So if one of those guys goes down, which is conceivable, and if Votto is banging in the minors, then he could come up. And maybe if he keeps banging, then he could get to 25 dingers. It's possible. And it would be wonderful.

It's the 25 American dingers or 25 Canadian dingers? No exchange rate here. 25 in either country or both. Other Ben. All right. So we should we do some big Blue Jays predictions? I have a run of two, which I like. So let's go with them.

The first one, I think, is pretty bold because Adley Rutchman's good. Alejandro Kirk will post the highest WRC plus among AL catchers to record at least 300 at-bats. This is not likely. Like, Adelaide Richmond's better. He's a better hitter. He's not, he's a better player too, but he's just better. And Alejandro Kirk was pretty bad last year. I'm not going to make too many bones about it, but I really like him.

I think he's a good hitter. I think he is prepped for a bounce back season. So, you know last season he was like real bad um he hit hit for a 96 wrc plus which is like okay for a catcher but not good he's gonna need to do better than that to make this work like right now uh rutschman takes the cake that jerk um like i'd be a russian a lot at a 128. uh jerk. I like Adley Rutschman a lot. At a 128. And then you got, like, Logan Ohapi. But Al Hunterkirk is third, just ahead of his own Blue Jays teammate, Danny Jansen.

Mitch Garver is quite close as well. Yiner Diaz is quite close. Cal Raleigh is right up there. The point is, it's actually pretty tough to unseat all these guys and also Adley, who, again, is just, like, much better. But I think he can do it. guys and also adly who again is just like much better but i think he can do it and i think it will help him some that he won't get as many plate appearances because the blue jays have two good catchers so it's a little bit more likely that i'll just spike a good run yeah so i don't think this is a zero percenter but i don't think it's super likely but i want him to because it's very

fun when alejandra kirk hits well. Can I ask a clarifying question? Yeah. Do the 300 plate appearances have to come at catcher? No, they just have to qualify as catcher or whatever. The majority of their plate appearances come at catcher. Man, that'll get Mitch Garver out, though, and I want... Yeah, I'm just going to ask. Majority of their plate appearances come at catcher, let's say.

I mean, you still have to contend with Cal Raleigh. Don't forget the big dumper. I named him. I know, but. I probably don't have to contend with MJ Melendez though, right? Definitely not. All right. Oh boy.

All right. Here's one of the nerdy baseball predictions. Let's get this out of the way. A relief pitcher defined as someone who has at least 50% of their appearances out of the bullpen will win as many games as one of the Cy Young winners. Would you like to know how many pitchers won more than 17 games last year? Yeah, tell me. One. Spencer Strider won 20. Nobody else won more than 17. And there was a reliever in the top 30 Yeah, tell me. role is something we're going to be seeing a lot more the way the Orioles used Big Mike, which is sort of like fourth, fifth inning starter goes out early tie game or down a run.

And he's going to throw up some ridiculous one loss record because he's in a position to win all the time and never in a position to lose. And I don't think it the two Cy Young winners last year were Cole and Snell 15 for wins for Cole, 14 for Snell. I don't think it's that big a stretch to have one of those guys. The Cy Young winner wins like 13, and then the Colin Poche roll or the big bike roll goes up a couple. So I think we're going to see the vulture middle reliever rocket up the pitcher wins leaderboard. I have a question for you. the vulture middle reliever rocket up the pitcher wins leaderboard. Yeah. Question for you. Has this happened before?

Because I can think of like the DeGrom season and the Felix season for like low wind total size. Not unless it was, I mean, I haven't looked up if it's happened before. Fernlaw won the Cy Young Elroy face. Yeah. I was thinking of Roy face too,

but yeah, he went 18 and one pitching exclusively out of the bullpen in 1959 and also saved 10 games, but he did not win the Cy Young that year. And he did not lead in wins either. But he doesn't have to win just as to match one of the Cy Young winners. Ryan Yarbrough won 16 games in 2018.

I'm pretty sure DeGrom won the Cy Young with like nine wins. Yeah, bulk guy. Yeah, but actually a lot of, I think a lot of relievers went as fast DeGrom won the Cy Young with like nine wins. Yeah. Bulk guy. Yeah. But actually a lot of I think a lot of relievers might have passed DeGrom that year. Alright. Meg. Well, I'm going to do one that might be proven very wrong like even for this

episode post. That's bold. I should get points for boldness there. Okay. Okay. Here we go. Jordan Montgomery will be unsigned to start the season. And by that, I mean, he will not have a team as of opening day, which is Mike Bowman on, on Thursday, on Thursday, but he will still finish in the top five, three. How many do we do for Cy Young? Is it three, five, Five. Well, you can vote for five.

You vote for five. Top five for Cy Young in whichever league he signs in. Whoa. Yeah. Bulbs. This has potential to be the Bauman from last year saying that the minor league CBA would not be signed. I'd be astonished if he signs before opening day. I think he's purposely waiting so he can't get qo'd that's the uh yeah that's probably what he's doing but like but bold we're going for

bold yeah he's got to get up in the i mean he's got to get up really fast is the yeah i don't think it's to be clear this is one of the ones where i'm like i have no conviction that this will actually happen but if it did it would be be bold. And I feel like I should reap the rewards in terms of the points. It would be a great achievement from a South Carolina legend. There you go. I'm going to throw this out to you all, but I'm not going to give you any decision-making power the way that Ben Clemens did. I am going to ask you who you would consider the current most famously jacked MLB players. So the players you think of when you think, oh, that guy's got muscles on muscles, who is known for that? So Tyler O'Neill comes to mind for me. Yes, Tyler O'Neill.

Bradley Zimmer was the first name that... No, all your answers are better than mine. Yondi in the same sort of O'Neill category. In Stanton. Yeah. See, I would have included Stanton, but he's slimmed down big time. Yeah, that's fair. He's still jacked.

Get out of here. I mean, I don't... Granted, I saw him next to Aaron Judge, which is tough, but I don't know that I would call him jacked. He's still jacked. Get out of here. I mean, I don't. Granted, I saw him next to Aaron Judge, which is tough. But, like, I don't know that I would call him jacked. He's still big. Like, he didn't shrink vertically. Spencer Strider's, like, legs. Yes, Spencer Strider's legs.

It's true. Gotta get off that horse. I'm going to keep thinking about it. You keep going here. O'Neal and Yandy are, like, my top two by a mile, though. O'Neal and Yandy, for my top two by a mile, though. O'Neal and Yandy, for sure. Exactly. It's so concentrated.

I would submit that on the current Mount Rushmore of notably jacked players, you have one who Michael Bauman just blogged about and made a joke about him lifting weights in that blog, which is Michael Lorenzen. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I made a joke about him lifting weights in that blog, which is Michael Lorenzen. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I made a joke about Tyler O'Neill doing yoga earlier this offseason. And then my final face on the Mount Rushmore, I'm going with Adelise Garcia, who is just jacked out of his mind. He's got the big traps. He's got a muscular back.

He's got a very, like, 90s baseball player build, which I'm not casting aspersions on. Liable lawyer's not that good. You're the one who's making comments about drug use, not me. I'm just saying, he's like a throwback, like, Glen Ellen Hill almost type of frame. That's a good shout. Yeah, so those are my

four, because, yeah, I think Stanton, look, he's mobile now, he's doing cardio. He's lost a lot of weight. And, you know, you might put like Bryce Harper in there, Randy Rosarena maybe. But, you know, Judge is pretty jacked, but he's also just known for being huge and tall more so than just Jack specifically. So I think these are the four most jacked members of baseball that people would think of. Like there may very well be people who, you know, people who cover that team are like, oh, that guy with his shirt off, like he's the most jacked. But people just don't know, right? So these guys are like notably jacked.

So my prediction is that the Jacksons will outproduce the Jacked Sons. Okay. So there are famously four Jacksons who are tippy-top prospects in baseball. No, there's five. Well, there are four in the top 30, I think, of Fangraph's top 100, right? There's Holiday, Trujillo, Merrill, and Jobe. Marlon, Michael. So I'm going to go with the

four who are the top prospects. You've never no-sold a joke harder than this. You're the one who no-sold it. I told the joke. You didn't react. No, what the joke was, you said there were four Jacksons. I said there were five Jacksons. Oh, I didn't even get that one. Wow.

Because there are other Jacksons. There's Janet. There are other baseball prospect Jacksons. There are Jacksons everywhere. So I was thinking you were doing deep cut prospects on me or college players. Who knows? But I'm going for the four Jacksons, and I'm going to say that they're going to outproduce the Jacksons, Yandy, Adolis, Tyler O'Neill, and Michael Lorenzen. The Fangraph depth charts projections say that the Jacksons

are going to double or more than double the war total of the Jacksons. Currently, Roster Resource doesn't even have Jackson Jobe on the depth charts, I think, or maybe he's there. Yeah, so he's not even counting toward that, but, you know, he might get there. It's very possible that he will. Were you able to tell by that answer who's been working on starting pitcher PPRs on the spot? Just like to pick a random sample of people? So Holiday, of course, infamously not starting the season on the Major League roster, so that hurts the case here.

But, yeah, none of these Jacksons projects as more than like a two-war guy this season, but I think they could very well and Churio and Merrill are up on opening day, so I'm going to say that the Davids beat the Goliaths here, the Jacksons beat the Jacksons. You know, we left out Mike Trout.

Yeah, Trout is, I mean... I think he's not what he used to be. It's really just his neck. I don't think Trout was ever like. Jacked in the same way. You know who he maybe did leave out, but I'm going to, like, what about Julio? Yeah. Yeah, Julio's pretty jacked.

What about Julio? He's just handsome. Yeah, I think that it's part of his. He doesn't have his full man strength yet. How many pounds of muscle do his eyes add? I feel like I have to be careful how I talk about Julio. I sound weird. Okay.

Other Ben. All right. We got one more Big J's prediction here. Pun may be intense about this one. Alec Manoa will pitch 150 innings and record an ERA below four. God, I hope so. That's even bolder than my Jordan Monk, everyone, I think. I think this one is almost certainly not going to happen.

Yeah. But I really hope it does. I love when Alec Manoa is good. Yeah. He's like a lot of things that are right about baseball, I think. Yeah. He's two years removed from handily exceeding both of those marks. Yeah, by a lot.

But he's also one year removed from, not even coming close to either. Yes, he is. Yes. So, and he also like looked really bad in spring training. And that doesn't count so much, except that it looked like he wasn't good enough to pitch in the majors, which is worrisome.

That counts, yeah. All right, so to Blue Jays fans, next up, Bowman. All right. The Atlanta Braves will win at least 49 more games than the Chicago White Sox. Ooh. Very specific number. Where'd that come from? Well, I got to about 50 and I was like, I should make it a precise looking number.

Okay. All right. So this means, so I think with all the brouhaha about the dodger signing otani and yamamoto it it's getting under the radar that the braves are in my mind like a lot better than the dodgers i think they're gonna win 100 games without breaking a sweat and i think the white socks are in absolute vibes armageddon right now. The vibes are in the toilet underneath the jail. And I think that a 50-win season is not out of the question in Chicago.

Yeah, all right. So I guess the only thing, like it's specific win totals about two different teams. I guess it's the only thing that makes this unlikely. Yeah, because what the projections would probably have them like 30 apart or something like that. I looked it up. It was about that. I think the projections

are, at least our playoff odds are way, they're like 10 to 15 games higher on the White Sox than I would be. Oh no, it's only 66. All right, Meg. Okay. I've been on a side quest to eat a half sandwich and a side salad, and I've completed my quest.

I don't think anyone knew. Hopefully. You told us. Yeah, you pulled it off. Well done, Meg. Okay. Where do I want to go? Which of these is likely to get scooped?

Well, let's stick with some Jacksons. Jackson Jobe will debut and throw a no-hitter, not necessarily in the same game. Wow. Yeah. Let's go. I really like Jackson Job. This would be good news for me and my Jacksons overcoming the Jacksons. Just don't have it happening against the Mariners and just knock my prediction out with the same one.

That would be very frustrating. All right. Good one. Back to me already. You say that, but we're each only like, what, five picks in? Yeah. All right. I'm going to go with, you know, this would be fun if it happened.

Sixto Sanchez becomes the first player ever to earn Rookie of the Year votes in non-consecutive seasons. So he is still rookie eligible, right? Oh, Bowman. That's the meanest. No, no, no, no. That's such a mean. This is awesome. I love this.

No, this is not a. This isn't a mean cackle? Yeah, this is. Well, first of all, I find the word non-consecutive really funny for some reason. But, you know, it's because there was a really good joke on Archer about the word – or about Grover Cleveland. But, sorry, I love this one. This is great. Yeah, not talking about presidents and non-consecutive terms in this election year.

I am talking about Sixto Sanchez, who last appeared in the 2020 NLDS. It has been a while, and yet he remains rookie eligible, right? Meg, you're always on top of the rookie eligibility business. I think he is. I've been told it's very complicated. I believe that that is accurate, yes. Okay.

Now, there have been players who received Rookie of the Year votes in consecutive seasons. Ian Anderson, Greg Jeffries, Ryan Mountcastle. You just have to be so... Gary Sanchez. Did he do it?

Hopefully. He had that crazy half season. He should have done it. Yeah. So you have to be good enough to just blow everyone's mind and get Rookie of the Year votes, but still be eligible. And it looks like he did not. So maybe, was he not eligible?

He wasn't. I guess he wasn't eligible. Yeah. He might have graduated on roster days. Oh, yeah, because he had 229 plate appearances. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so he was not close. But that's the idea.

You just have to be so good in a partial season that you are still eligible the following year. And everyone who has done that has been in consecutive years. And Sixto, it's been not even close to consecutive. Like, he could be in the running for comeback player of the year and rookie of the year i considered making that would be awesome yeah that would be pretty amazing if that happens but if that happens then i will still get my prediction right i guess this is uh technically this could be a case where we could influence the vote like i was gonna say meg and i have to report this to our BBWA chairs.

I am in the BBWA. I never get a vote. You're not getting a vote in New York. I know. I'm in the crowded New York chapter. I've literally never had an award vote. But if that happened, if I got a Rookie of the Year NL vote this year, I could swing this category.

I'd have to recuse myself or something. But that's unlikely. Anyway, yeah, 6-0. 6-0. Okay. Other Ben. That's a good one. Let's start with one that could happen.

Patrick Bailey is a very good defensive catcher. That's not the prediction. That's not, no. In fact, he's like a very good defensive catcher. In fact, he's projected to be the best defensive catcher in baseball. However, he's not projected to be one of the best defensive catchers ever. My prediction is this.

He'll be the first player in the 2020s to put up 30 runs of defensive value as calculated by fan graphs. That's very hard to do. No one's done it in the last four years, for example. And the people that do it tend to have outrageous framing seasons or outrageous defensive seasons with systems that don't necessarily measure defensive value very well. No offense to our systems. You know how it is. Nick Ahmed had a defensive season in there where I think people just didn't exactly understand. There's something weird with shifts going on,

and he just put up a trillion defensive runs. Buster Posey had one Francisco Cervelli but generally you need to be like a receiver the likes of which don't exist anymore and particularly since receiving like the big problem with these defensive value things is if the worst players get better even if you stay just as good your number goes down because it it's relative to average, right? So the average coming up hurts you. And that, I think, makes it very hard for Bailey to do this prediction, though he is an incredible defender. It's just really hard for anyone to do this. And basically what I'm saying is if anyone can, it'll be Patrick Bailey this year. Yeah, I buy it. Bauman. Let's get one of the more boring ones out of the way.

This would be not boring if it happened, but there will be a combined perfect game this season. Oh. Our third no-hitter prediction. Hmm. I'm so unenthused by this. It's like, is that even hard? When was the last one? I don't even.

There's never been a combined perfect game. Oh, combined perfect. Right, right, right, right, right. Okay. Of course there's going to be a combined no hitter. Yes, right. Yeah, there are probably going to be five, ten. Well, that's why I was so blasé about that.

Now I'm slightly less blasé about it. Yeah, taking back about 20% of that hemming and hawing. All right. Not bad. Meg? All right. Not bad. Meg?

Gabrielle Moreno will finish the season as the most valuable starting catcher in the National League. Bold. Yeah. How bold is it? Who's... Will Smith. Where is he on the... Yeah, you got Will Smith. It's not as bold if you've seen the Fangraph staff prediction spreadsheet.

I haven't even looked at it yet. You haven't? Okay. William Contreras was projected ahead of him. Yeah. Sean Murphy, Francisco Alvarez. Yeah, they're a number. That's everybody.

Yeah. I believe. Believe in Gabby. Bold enough? Okay. Pretty bold, sir. Excuse you. I'm not out here denigrating your picks.

Well, you should be. It's a cutthroat game. I guess that's true. My next pick will be that we will get our first ever three-team tie, which somehow has not happened. And by that, I mean like for a playoff spot, not just bad teams tying. But we will get a three-team tie that has playoff implications, maybe like a wildcard pileup, could even be within division, I guess, which this has never happened in the long history of baseball. There have been some close calls. We have hoped for it to happen even in the past few years, right?

Even like last year, it looked like maybe Mariners, Rangers, Astros could go that way, but it never does. And team entropy always has to concede defeat. And we don't get this super fun three or four team tiebreaker. And I will stipulate that even if this happens, it won't be as fun as it would have been before because we don't get tiebreaker games anymore. We just get arcane tiebreaker rules and it settles it automatically. So it's not nearly as cool as it could have been. But it does seem strange that this has not happened, that MLB has dodged this bullet, if you consider it a bullet, in the past. And they've come up with scenarios in some close calls, but they have not been tested yet. And the reason why I'm saying that it will happen this year is because if you look at the projections,

there is, as I said on an episode recently, just a great mediocre middle in the team win total predictions where you've got like Braves and Dodgers at the top, and then you've got some terrible teams at the bottom. But everyone else is kind of like right in the 500-ish range. There's just a whole bunch of teams, just a traffic jam of teams. And this is actually unusual compared to previous years. And it is actually pretty extraordinary that this year there are 16 teams, as we record this, with a projected win total on the playoff odds page between 80 and 85. That's a narrow range.

And 16 teams, more than half of the teams, fit in that range. And 10 teams are just between 83 and 85. And I'm rounding here up from 0.5 or down from 0.4 but still that's a whole lot of teams because the typical rates going back to 2016 the earliest the playoff odds are available on the site the typical is 8.4 teams in that 80 85 range and four teams in the 83 to 85 range So we have like doubled or more than doubled the typical and no other season has even come close to this many teams just jammed up in the like, am I a contender? Kind of, maybe range. So like if we go the 80-85 range, reading back, it's 9, 8, 7, 9, 7, 10, 7, 10, 16. And then the 83-85 range,

2, 2, 4, 7, 4, 5, 4, 4, 10. So it's a total outlier. And I think that's going to result in a meaningful three-team or more tie that we will lament that we don't get to see some kind of convoluted tiebreaker out of that. Yeah. I mean, I don't know if this math's right, but I feel like seven teams alone in the NL Central are supposed to win 83 games. Yeah. It would not shock me if eight teams in the National League won exactly 83. Yeah. Yeah. I like that one. Thank you. Ben should get double points if eight teams tie. I also am picking something that has happened very rarely in baseball history. I will say that this is one of the league, a bullet league would absolutely not want to dodge.

Somebody's going to hit 70 bombs. Now, let's be honest. This is like not going to happen. But that's fine because I think that readers implicitly understand this is not going to happen. So I'm going to have very low points ascribed to it. Like, come on, 70 home runs. It's like not even 1% is my guess. And I'm sure I'll pay a little bit of a penalty relative to that.

All right. You're putting your thumb on the scale enough. You're trying to depress your percentage. I'm sure I'll pay a little bit of a penalty relative to that. But if I hit this, I want to feel really good. Yeah. percentage. I'm sure I'll pay a little bit of a penalty relative to that. But if I hit this, I want to feel really good. And you know, if somebody had 70 home runs after I predicted it, when only like peak Royded out Mark McGuire and Barry Bonds ever done it before, that would be amazing. This doesn't have to be part of the prediction, but are you essentially predicting one wacky outlier season? Or do you think it's more likely that it's just

ball juiced again? Though, even when the ball was juiced, that didn't really juice the upper ranges so much as the lower ranges. I think this would be a double thing. And I think it would almost necessarily involve something going wrong in the old Manford baseball lab. To where, like, they switch out the Super Bowls and the lead. It's like, oh, my God. Like, that went all wrong. And then, you know, they're afraid to admit it. And so they leave the Super Bowls and the lead. It's like, oh my God, that went all wrong. And then they're afraid to admit it, and so they leave the Super Bowls in.

Maybe like Louisville Slugger starts releasing, I guess cork bats don't work, but maybe some people get metal bats that are cunningly painted. Wouldn't, but like not BB Corps either because those don't seem lively enough. There's no giveaway ping

that reverberates throughout the city. Well, the hits are just going to be so loud that they'll overwhelm the sound of the ping. Sure. Okay. I don't think. No, it's going to be the ping scheme. The bang ping scheme. The bang ping scheme.

That doesn't roll off the tongue in the same way as the banging scheme. That's satisfying. All right. Fun. Bauman. At least one active MLB player will issue an apology in a press release for comments made on social media about the 2024 election or issues relevant thereto. Why did you remind me that we are doing an election? Stick to sports, Bauman.

Ruben Gallegos is buying ads that are showing up in my Twitter timeline. Really? So, yeah, I'm getting your election on me. Yeah, mine too. Hey, man. Feel free to sound off in the Discord if you want to predict which player is going to have to issue this apology. Okay. Meg.

I'm going to bold with some of these, but aren't those the most fun ones? Lean into it. Go bold. The Pirates will win the NL. Central. Did you cut off? Did you mean the entire NL? All I heard was the NL.

Just the Central, not the whole All I heard was the NL. Just the central, not the whole. I'm not unhinged. Sorry, I must have cut off. Did you say central? I don't know if that will show up on the recording or not. The way we heard it was the NL. Silence.

The NL, I mean, that's not a very nice way to talk about the central, but... Pretty bold still. Yeah, the Pirates will win the Central. This is also in that category of ones that I don't really, thoroughly believe. I don't believe it's true. 99 points.

But it's bold, you guys. They're interesting. It's an interesting Pirates team. I don't think they're good yet, but they are interesting. Okay. O'Neal Cruz is jacked, too. Yeah. In a way that kind of makes him look like an outfielder and not a shortstop, but that's a separate conversation.

Okay. I'm going to say at least one of the Giants free agent additions outproduces Otani or Yamamoto. So there was great wailing and rending of garments and gnashing of teeth. And John Marossi put it that the Giants devoted their whole heart and finances to landing either Otani or Yamamoto. And I'm going to say not necessarily that they'll be like, woo, we dodged one there. Like they kind of maybe do with Carlos Correa, at least based on last season. We'll see how he does this season. But I'm going to say that one of the guys they settled for as the next tier down or maybe two or three tiers down because they couldn't get their top targets,

I'm going to say one of them outproduces one of those top targets. Now, it could be Snell. It could be Zolaire. It could be Chapman. It could be Hicks. I don't know. Does Lee count as a free agent with this? Lee counts too.

Yeah. And this may have been even bolder a week ago when no one was worried about a Shohei Otani suspension or before Yamamoto got— I'm still not worried about a Shohei Otani suspension or before Yamamoto got... I'm still not worried about a Shohei Otani suspension. No, and neither am I. And I'm also not really worried about Yamamoto based on that first start either. That was just kind of a garbage game all around. But just putting that out there because that season has started. But yeah, Fangraphs, or I guess we can say at least one Giants free agent addition,

will outproduce at least one of the Dodgers marquee additions. It's going to be great when it's like, let's go to the offseason tracker here real quick. Yeah, it won't be any of the guys I just named. It'll be... Amir Garrett. Yes. Who just has the most outrageous relief season.

I mean, it could be Tom Murphy. I guess. Dalton Jeffries, minor league free agent draft. I mean, look, Otani or Yamamoto could get heard and this could be a cinch, but this could be a cakewalk, but yeah. If it's Yamamoto, then maybe your prediction and I'm predicting,

and I'll help each other be a prediction. What? Was that about Imanaga? Yeah. Your prediction? Okay. Indirectly in that it was hard to understand. Sorry.

Okay. Indirectly in that it was hard to understand. Sorry. Okay. Other than... I'll go with a pirate's prediction because I like to make pirates' prediction. How about how they are going to win the entire round now? We're central. I originally had that O'Neill Cruz was going to hit a 500-foot home run, but I don't

like the StatCast home run measurements. I'm sure they're, like, perfectly accurate and everything's great. Yeah, they're not interesting. I prefer inaccurate but interesting ones. I don't like them. So that prediction's gone. Instead, O'Neill Cruz will receive MVP votes, but he'll finish behind fellow Cruz, Eli De La Cruz, in the MVP voting. Okay.

Well, you've stolen one from me here. It was not that exactly, but it was going to be an Ellie O'Neill prediction. Interesting. Okay. Yeah. I feel like between me and you, Ben, we've now done a bunch of tests of ors and ands. Yeah. Like yours is a mini or, mine is an and, and who knows? Yeah. What I was going to do is either Ellie or O'Neal at least doubles the 2024

Fangraphs war total of the other because to this point, they have been eerily similar, most of their stats. They're within two-tenths of a war, and their strikeout rate career is identical, and their walk rate is almost the same. And it's the same number of games played and almost the same number of plate appearances. So different shape, different number of seasons, different ages, et cetera. But two tall short snaps named Cruz in the NL Central with almost identical career stats to this point. And my prediction was going to be that basically like one of them breaks out and the other doesn't. And I wasn't

going to say which one. So you went like up, down or down, up and I went up, up. Yes. So I was going to say, right. Like one of them separates himself, like becomes the king of the cruises. But I think that's too close to what you picked, so. He takes cruise control. Yes, exactly. Thank you for being here all week. Well, I'm sorry that you stole that from me, but well done. Well drafted.

Bauman? All right. There will be at least one ejection in the super regional round of the NCAA tournament, but none in the College World Series. Okay. Does that count players and managers? Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. College jumps at the direction of the NCAA Rules Committee are fighting a culture war that was lost in Major League Baseball 15 years ago. They ejected a kid for throwing his helmet after hitting a walk-off home run, which led to an automatic suspension just last weekend. A couple years ago, Tennessee arguably lost. It's super regional because their best player got ejected for arguing balls and strikes. College umps are the worst, and they will be the worst when they can be petty tyrants,

but they will be on good behavior once everybody gets to Omaha and the eyes of the baseball world are on them. The eyes of some parts of the baseball world. Some eyes. Okay, Meg. You know, Ben, you know, I'm going to just say that, like, deciding to watch Les Paul Skeens last year, I don't know if that's a defensible choice.

I'm just throwing that out there. It's like a thing to contemplate. Okay, so what do I want to do? I think what I would like to do is to say that the Orioles will make the playoffs, but they will be swept out of the first round, whichever of the first rounds they play. So I am not making a prediction

on how they will enter the playoffs as either a wild card or a division winner, but whichever mode they will be swept out of the first round, I'm sorry. Alright, well, you're kind of middle ground there. The Orioles projections people won't be that mad

at you, but they'll be a little mad at you maybe. They're going to be really mad, but I'm not trying to... They're definitely still going to be very mad. You can't make a prediction about the Orioles where they're not like, they're the smartest team in all of history. Like, they're going to win everything. Yeah. I'm not trying to zatz them, but I also don't know that I mind if I am. So, you know, make of that what you will.

All right. My penultimate prediction. My penultimate prediction, I'm going to go with one that I was hoping to avoid just because I don't want to repeat from last year. But this wasn't one of my predictions from last year. And also, it's slightly less likely than it was last year, I think. But I'm going to say that for the second straight season, we get a first-time World Series winner. So, Meg predicted that we would get a first-time World Series winner last year. That happened.

The Rangers won the World Series, just to refresh everyone's memory. And that means that one potential first-time winner is off the board. And then there were five. So we're down to Mariners, Rays, Padres, Brewers, Rockies. The last time we had first-time winners in back-to-back years, I believe, was 2001 Diamondbacks and 2002 Angels. So it's been quite a while, and we haven't had expansion since then. So it has gotten harder to do it, and Rangers are off the board now. This is a case where we know the exact odds that this will happen, or at least we know what the Fangraph's playoff odds think the percentage likelihood that this will happen. And that, as we record, is 12.8%.

Just adding up the World Series odds of these five teams, the Rockies contributed 0.0% to that total percentage points. But the other four teams and all five collectively, 12.8% odds. So if you just trust the playoff odds, that is what you should put. But if you think that they're underrating some of the teams involved here,

overrating, you could go higher or lower. But I think that would be fun if it happened. I always like when first-time winners win. I have a particular one of that list in mind that would make me the happiest.

Yeah, I figured. Okay. Other Ben. I am going to repeat a prediction from last year as well. This one didn't come true, but I liked it, so I'm going to do it again. No player will exceed eight fan graphs for. I had this on my board. I was considering taking this, yeah. No two-way

Otani to spoil things. Yeah. I don't have to phrase it awkwardly this year to make sure that Otani doesn't break it just by virtue of being Otani. Yeah. I think it's interesting to root for or against this one because you're not really rooting for any one thing to happen except for players to be very good but not great. I think that's a thing that happens sometimes that wouldn't get remarked on otherwise. So I like picking it. Yeah.

Only Otani, Betts, and Acuna got there last year. Otani is not going to get there this year. So you got a shot. Like pitchers are almost not a threat to do this at this point. Yeah. Not if he already throws 200 innings. Yeah.

No pitcher got to six war, fan graphs war. Oh, we should specify it. six war fan graphs war oh we should specify this is fan graphs war right because baseball reference war might be bullish on some pitchers perhaps but yeah pitchers have a hard time getting to this threshold so that's like yeah knocking off most of the players right there and you're knocking off otani who's your best bet to do it when he's a two-way player so i phrased it to where he didn't count I said like either pitching or oh okay batting war last year because it this is not fun when it's a tiny like yeah because uh but yeah it's always one of those things where like it's projected to not happen because that's not how projections work but then it does happen

because like you know some of them particular person is projected to do it yeah yeah and so I just think uh it'd be interesting if it was projected not to happen and it didn't happen for once. Because it doesn't usually go that way, but it could. All right. Bowman. Spencer Strider's going to strike out 300 batters. Last year, he got to 281 in 186 and two-thirds innings. I think the interesting thing about him, and I wrote this last year, is that he makes this prediction not mutually exclusive with Ben's nobody's going to throw 200 innings. I think the interesting thing about him, and I wrote this last year, is that he makes this

prediction not mutually exclusive with Ben's nobody's going to throw 200 innings prediction. Yeah, that's true, because he strikes out so many per inning. I definitely believe he can do that. I think he could go higher just now that he has a third pitch. I'm not convinced the curveball's that good, by the way. But it doesn't necessarily need to be to still be additive. I'm going to do one for me. Meg has a little treat.

George Kirby is going to win the AL Cy Young. I know that this one has been popular in our staff predictions, I think. People are like, oh, we're going to do the sexy sassy pick and then we all pick the same guy. Okay. I like it. As long as he throws a knuckleball at some point in his season.

I know. It's such a delightful – it's so delightful. It's like, you know, what a nice little thing he did there. You should do more. Okay. Well, for my last one, I had a couple candidates that I thought of running back from last year on my board, but I'm not going to do it. I'm going to switch things up, even though I like these predictions. Not going to take Daniel Vogelbach steals a base. I want to. He didn't do it last year. I really thought he

might with the new stolen base rules and with the campaign about him stealing a base. And I'm thinking like now he'll be a post-hype stealer, right? Like no one's thinking of Daniel Vogelbach stealing a base anymore. Because maybe it would have been too on the nose for it to happen last year. He might have been embarrassed to try to steal a base because like it was in the ad and it might have seemed like marketing or like he was inspired by the ad. What if he got thrown out after that ad in a close game? Like he would never live it down. I know.

So maybe he was wary of trying it and now that they're not running that ad anymore i assume that he'll now he'll he'll pick his spot and go and then i'll be pissed because i'd do it the year after i drafted it but i'm not gonna take it nor am i gonna take there will be a minor league game fixing scandal i wanted to run that back again just like because we can't just have betting scandal that has already been taken off the board because that happened. So it's got to be like game fixing scandal. It's got to be like throwing a game. I threw that out there last year and we had betting scandals, but we didn't have game throwing scandals as far as we know. So that could happen, but I'm not going to take it.

I'm going to take, we will have the lowest weighted batter age since the 1970s. So we're going to have a youth movement. We've already had a youth movement, but I'm saying it's going to get even younger. I guess this goes against my Joey Votto having a monster season. That would hurt my chances here. But, you know, we got a bunch of 20 to 23-somethings starting opening day rosters, and it's exciting, and we got young guys, and the average age is falling. But to fall to this, this would be a low like 2019 last year the average age weighted by plate appearances was 27.99 which was quite low but we have to beat 2019 which was 27.91 usually they're not big jumps in this from one year to the next because you know most of the players are the same but i'm saying we we go down they're

all older yeah older right but i i don't i was thinking like i wanted to go like lowest of the era or something but that would have been a huge fall because like there were a couple years there like 74 or 75 ish that were like 27.3 year four or something and that's probably too big to happen in a single year. But like, other than 2019, I guess the lowest is 1978 when it was 27.67. So I'm saying it's at least going to be lower than 2019's and it's going to be the lowest since the 70s. So again, don't want to root against Votto, but either way, he helps me here, or I guess he could help me either way. I like it. I like it too.

Final pick for Otherbin. This is the first prediction I came up with. I think the main point of this is to prove that I am a sorcerer. I don't know if you've ever read Connecticut Yankee and King Arthur's Court. Yeah. But it takes the famous trope of him predicting an eclipse to escape certain death at the hands of skeptical townspeople. Yeah, because he knew. It's like the Back to the Future with the sports outcomes book.

All right. The second semifinal of the Home Run Derby will go to a tiebreaker. I thought you were going to predict an eclipse on Guardian's home opener. That would have been 100 percent i thought about that doubt the astronomers but in hopes that um in hopes that people would just not know but that seems cheap right at some point it comes in at 95 and that last five percent is like oh my god okay your actual prediction repeat it because I stepped on it.

The second semifinal of this year's Home Run Derby will go to a, I guess they call them a swing off, a tiebreaker. Okay. Bowman. All right. This was also the first prediction I came up with. And I hope Chris doesn't mind, but I've brought in some reinforcements to help track and or judge whether this happens. So thank you to my good friend Stephen from the Batting Around Baseball podcast

who has volunteered to assist. And I've looked over the wording of this carefully. So Stephen will help to judge. There will be a viral or semi-viral moment involving a screenshot of a player's nipples, gooch, and or butthole or the outline of his penis and or testicles being visible through his uniform on a broadcast. You're so cute. Okay. Oh, no. Okay

Oh no It broke me I'm done Oh my god Also I can't believe You scooped a freaking Pant one I was going to make

That my last pant So that one that was Circulating this spring Which was not From the season It wasn't even From the season Was it or

I don't know But it wasn't During a broadcast? It wasn't even from the season, was it? I don't know, but it wasn't during a broadcast and it wasn't during the, okay. Okay, so Stephen from the Batting Round podcast is going to judge the anatomy here? Well, he's gonna help me track it. Like there's some gray area here if we're talking about like imprints of possible junk.

Like, you could dispute, is that a cup? Like, is that... Here, I've got a gif of Eric Thames on my computer that I'll share in the chat. Is this safe for work? I'm so afraid this is a workout. Where is it? I'm pretty sure. I'm almost certain I've sent this on Slack before.

Don't worry about it. We will link to it on the show page. Be careful. Oh my God. We're upping it. So this is what I'm talking about, right? Yeah. You've all seen this before.

Yeah, that's fine. That's a readjustment. Adjusting. But we're talking about that level of obviousness. I throw myself at the mercy of the judging panel. Can I admit? Go ahead, Ben. Go ahead, Ben.

So even in that, okay. I mean, i guess it's you're sending us a low res gif here so i wait a minute obviously there's something there that he's adjusting i'm not doubting like it's not pantomime objection i object to all of this but i withdraw this specific objection i don't object to anything embarrassing and if you guys think it's too much then we're gonna ask shane to cut it okay i'm gonna say i've waited this long because maybe shane won't be listening this morning no he's a pro's a pro. He'll go all the way through. But so sometimes when a guy's trying to slide into second base and the camera. That's not a euphemism for anything?

No. No. God. The way you paused and hesitated, I wondered. I'm just trying to paint him. I'm going to try to paint a mental picture. Actual, literal second base. So imagine, if you will, a guy is sliding headfirst into second base, as base runners are wont to do.

Well, sometimes his legs will splay a little bit. The headfirst made it sound so much less like the actual. Shane's going to have to edit this out. Hold on. I laughed because I wanted to go leave it in and here's the horny theme

that we sometimes reserve for wait there's gonna be an E next to this on the podcast wiring everybody's gonna know whose fault it is i dropped an f-bomb earlier i'm sorry you said gooch and here i am admitting to myself that some and to our listeners and all and all of you sometimes when a guy will slide head first into second base you know his legs splay a little bit and it like creates tension through the the seat of his pants and i'll go this is uniforms taint right it's out loud in the living room oh i do every time a yankees catcher has played baseball for

the past 30 years i've thought about the diamond that's centered on the yeah on jorge pasada's perineum yeah absolutely yeah and it's weird because the the pinstripes don't extend to the fabric darts and like you can't have figured that out you know but also this is why i remain convinced that the pants are are actually different than they have been in seasons past because if i'm sitting there you know going this is taint then other people would have noticed if we could have seen through to his angle this would be an upset if

this doesn't happen I would feel silly I'm just saying like after all the spring hullabaloo if this does not turn out to be a big enough issue if we're all sitting here in september going like actually we never saw any dick or balls or anything then we will have blown this story out

of promotion i don't think i've ever heard you say dick or balls before i don't know that i've said it on the podcast i've said it i've said balls many times and I've said dick many times, but who knows? Maybe the effectively wild since we'll find a previous example. Someone's tracking this. We did say gooch, teen, and parody during that section, so I'm

happy no matter what else happens. Anatomical bingo card here. Goodness. Meg, will you bring this back to propriety? So boring in comparison to all of that. Maybe that one's too boring. Here, I'll go mildly spicier, I guess. Two Texas Rangers will finish in the top five for MVP.

Is that spicy? It's unlikely, I guess. Yeah, that's hard to do. It's like mutually exclusive. Yeah, it's hard. On the top five. Didn't it happen last year? This is what I was wondering.

Mookie and Freddy and yeah. Oh, sure. But like the Rangers, I thought, yeah, I thought Seager and Simeon finished 2-3. Oh, did they? Did they? Did Simeon? Did they finish 2-3? Because if they did, I want to revise my-

Yes, this happened literally last year. Oh, did it really? Can I pick a different day? Two Texas Rangers. It's still unlikely, but maybe it's spicy. Well, okay. No, I'm sticking... I'm going to stick with it.

I'm sticking with it. Okay. I don't know how spicy it is. It's still unlikely. It's still unlikely. It is still unlikely. If only because they have so many good guys, and there are so many good guys who are not on the Rangers, you know?

That is true. I did toy with breaking out like a Wyatt Langford slug 720. Yeah, I almost did a Winfrey pick too. I regret to inform you of this, but I almost did a Jordan Walker is going to blow someone up in the outfield. And then he just destroyed Dylan Carlson, who is leaving the game. Oh, really? Yeah. Is he hurt? Potentially, yes.

Oh man. So I didn't pick that and then I manifested into the world anyway and so now I'm very sorry. Sorry, I'm laughing at you saying manifesting. Yeah, speaking of, have you guys been seeing these MLB TV ads where they do like a horoscope for

players? No. Have you seen these? They're like Nestor Cortez ads where they do like a horoscope for um players no no have you seen these they're like nestor cortez and then they like do a horoscope and i was like did their market research be like you know who are not reaching the horoscope girlies we got to get those girlies in on baseball audience it's i well i think generally we do need to get the horoscope girlies in, but it's also a bit of a high risk. Like there are externalities. Are you afraid of horoscope curlies? Are you not? I mean, I drink water regularly and then I don't listen to the rest of it.

I do skincare. That's my version of horoscope. Yeah, I do skincare too. Okay. Well, there will be externalities if your prediction comes true, Michael, and it won't be pretty. It's not necessarily externalities. Some of them are internalities.

Right. Yes. Okay. Just to clarify. There doesn't have to be a hole in the pants. Right. Okay. I'm so happy. Well, we did it. This was fun. I can't wait to track this all season long and to do it again next year and to recap how we did and declare a winner at the end of the season. We implore all of you listening, please vote. We need the data. We need the crowdsourcing here. We need lots of ballots and wisdom of crowds. So please check the show page, check your podcast description, check the links and go vote before first pitch on opening day. and go vote before first pitch on opening day. And Chris will put some fancy graphics up, and we will share them and share the results when we have them. And by the way, he is so diligent in this scorekeeper role. He's doing projections for the minor league free agent draft,

which is unheard of. He's actually tracking. He has a process set up where every day he like scrapes the fan grass depth charts for our minor league free agent draftees to see what they're projected for. Yeah. And it's tracking like great news for other Ben. I wanted to say that while you're here because as of today, you have a projected 830 plate appearances plus batters faced. Meg is at 620 and I'm at a measly 385. So that's the preseason favorites. Ben

and then Meg, and then me. And this is volatile, though. I don't know if this can be projected really, because guys just come out of nowhere in the minor league free agent draft, but that's how it lines up right now. They feel very binary, right? Yeah. You go from 0 to 300 in a hurry and vice versa.

Yes, you can. But right now, shaping up nicely for you. Not so much for me. Great. All right. Well, as expected, after we recorded, Shohei Otani did read from a prepared statement with the assistance of his new interpreter. He denied betting on baseball or any other sport or asking anyone to do so for him. And he blamed Ipe for everything, placing the bets without Otani's knowledge, stealing money from Otani's account, not communicating to Otani that members of the media were inquiring, making misrepresentations about what Otani told him when in fact Otani hadn't told him anything at all. All of this has been a complete lie, he said. He said he wasn't aware of the gambling or the debt until after that first game in Seoul. He never agreed to pay off the debt or make payments to a bookie. He said that Ipe admitted to him that he had been using Otani's

account to send the payments. He said he's beyond shocked. He's assisting in all ongoing investigations and that he would let his lawyers handle matters from here on out. He did not take questions. We will discuss this on our next episode, which just so happens to include a Dodgers preview with a guest who was present at Otani's statement. So stay tuned for that coming very soon. Oh, and also a Rockies preview. That too. If everything Otani said is true, it is kind of incredible how poorly his PR people, including the crisis communications manager, handled this situation. I was going to say we haven't heard Ipe's side yet, but really we've heard two sides from Ipe. We just haven't heard his current position. But everything Otani said should be

verifiable if it's accurate. It would be a wild thing to lie about. Then again, there were wild lies either way, clearly. Nothing Otani said struck me as implausible, but it's all going to come down to the evidence. And I don't doubt that that will come to light and that we will know the truth of the matter, but it might take some time. And as we've previously said, and I've written, the best case outcome here for Otani, for MLB, is that Otani got totally taken in and swindled by someone he trusted and cared about and thought cared about him. Even if Otani is totally innocent, it's still a sad situation. On a less somber note, 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. Ryan Wren, Jake Elwood, Michael Wilner, Linus Marco, and James Edmiston. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only monthly bonus episodes playoff live streams prioritized email answers

discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships and so much more check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild if you are a Patreon supporter

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New intro theme today, courtesy of listener Luke Lillard. 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. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show page through sign up for Effectively Wild MLB Ballpark meetups at ballparks across the country this season. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. Remember, go vote. Make your voice heard in this predictions game.

We appreciate it. Check out the snazzy work on the voting form by designer Chris Hannell and coder Dylan Pence. And we will be back to talk to you soon. Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, how can you not be horny about baseball? Every take hot and hotter, entwining and abutting, watch them climb Dick Mountain, nothing's about nothing, every stitch wet with sweat, breaking balls back, dormy, uneffectively wild, how can you not be horny? When it comes to podcasts, how can you not be horny when it comes to podcasts how can you not be

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