Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2263: The Stories We Missed in 2024 (NL Edition)

Episode Date: December 29, 2024

Ben Lindbergh, Lindsey Adler, and Hannah Keyser talk about Lindsey and Hannah’s evolving relationships to baseball writing, near-simultaneous Substack-starting, and (ongoing) pursuits of self-discovery and creative fulfillment. Then (45:27) Ben and Hannah analyze the Teoscar Hernández and Corbin Burnes signings and (1:05:49) discuss at least one listener-nominated topic about each National League team that wasn’t […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2263 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, not joined by Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs. She's away for one more episode. She'll be back next time. But I am happy to be joined by two guests who are filling in for Meg, Lindsay Adler and Hannah Kaiser, who have been Deadspin colleagues in the past. And you may remember them more recently for their work at the Athletic and the Wall Street Journal, in Lindsay's case, and Yahoo Sports in Hannah's case.

And you've both been on the podcast before. People know you. Hello, thanks for coming on. Hello. Hello, Ben, happy holidays. Thank you, same to you. And Lindsay is joining us from Bogota, Colombia. There was some confusion on our most recent episode

between Colombia and Columbia. I didn't put the proper Columbia on it. And so Michael Baman thought I was saying Columbia and there was briefly confusion, but you are in Boca Tau. That probably clears things up where you informed me before we started recording that the altitude is high, close to 9,000 feet. So you are taking a break in podcasting.

Hopefully you will not be breathless at any point during this episode. I can't promise it, but I am doing my best to hydrate for sure. CB Excellent. And Hannah is in her childhood home. I am not in my childhood home, but in my mother's house, which is sort of similar, I guess. So we're all coming from different places. I guess Lindsay's is the most exciting and I especially appreciate someone taking time out of their day while they're in Columbia to join us on Effectively Wild. And we've got a lot of plans today with Hannah.

I will be talking about recent transactions. We will be discussing the Corbin Burns signing, the Teasca Hernandez signing, and then also finishing the exercise that we started last time, talking about one topic about every national League team that we failed to discuss this season, including I guess Corbin Burns and Teasca Hernandez signing with the Diamondbacks and Dodgers respectively, but we will get to that shortly.

But the reason that I wanted to have you both on together, I always have either or both of you on, but I noticed recently that you have both had eventful years. You've both had momentous years. What a, what a positive spin, Ben. Thank you. Yeah. Well, I didn't know exactly how to put it, but you've both been doing some soul-searching and having

big changes in your lives and figuring out what you want to do with those lives going forward and what you want them to look like. And I've enjoyed both of your work over the years very much, and I hope to continue to in whatever form that takes. But just to quote from Lindsay's sub stack, her most recent entry, which was about the decision about whether to track what you read over the course of a year, which I always wrestle with and to this point have made the same decision that you have, which is not to, which is not great

when I then forget everything that I read and have to try to remember. But one thing you wrote was, the genre I read most this year was women blowing up their lives. My therapist pointed this one out to me. I really need to keep that book log next year. So in what way have you blown up your life

in hopefully productive fashion, Lindsay? I think I am just ready for new challenges. Making changes to your career and the structure of your life can be very difficult without some intense reconfiguration. I left the Wall Street Journal. I'm not really intending to write baseball full-time anymore. I'm really looking to branch out and write about, you know, new things, explore different ways of exercising this really annoying and

insufferable and intolerable, like, creative instinct that literally won't leave me alone. So I'm trying to figure out how to do that. I think it's something that a lot of people are struggling with, you know, in a lot of creative industries because of the way that the internet and the way that, you know, internet companies have homogenized your entertainment, your reading options. And so I guess, I guess that's about that. I made a lot of changes in my personal life over the last year and that sort of led to me trying to figure out what life I actually want to live over the next 10 years after building a particular life over the previous 10 years.

While I can definitely advocate for working on personal growth and reassessing your values and things that you want in your life, it may also make you wonder if you still want the career you spent 10 years building. So there's some pitfalls there. CBL. Yeah, I guess especially if you've had some success in that career as you have, then it becomes harder and harder to give up if you decide that you are creatively unfulfilled in some fashion and you just feel like I've invested all this time in this and I could be not starting from scratch necessarily, but backtracking a little in order to move forward in some other direction.

but backtracking a little in order to move forward in some other direction. And that's a tough decision to make. It's a decision that a lot of people make at some point in their lives. It's pretty rare these days seemingly for someone to just know exactly what they want to do and then do that for their entire life. There's a lot of mid-career reevaluations, but I guess in baseball writing that is something that seems like a dream job to a lot of people and is certainly in some respects. And so maybe for some people, they would think, well, gosh, when you get in that door, why would you ever want to exit it? And it's not always voluntary, but sometimes the charm wears off or it's just that you just get the urge to do something different. And I've experienced some of that myself and we're all, I guess, roughly in the same age range-ish

and you're both in Brooklyn and you've worked in the same places and you started sub stacks, I think one day apart. It's almost like you're cool. That is not incidental. The pod is going to get slightly meta. In fact, a friend recently, I was mentioning, I think I mentioned something about how Lindsay and I were going to do this podcast together and a friend of mine said, oh, I didn't realize Lindsay had started at the Hubstack as well. And I said, of course, why would I have had the gumption to do it otherwise? I've been, not to make this too much of like a love fest or

whatever, but I feel like I have been someone who is, I was unwillingly exited from my successful baseball writing career and had other extenuating circumstances with the baby in the pregnancy and sort of have spent a year just thinking like, all I want is to kind of go backwards and get back to my life. I still feel that way to a certain extent, but Lindsay and I've had many conversations in the last couple weeks and months and the thought of taking this time to be a little bit more self-critical and self-examining about what it is I want, felt easier to do when somebody else was doing it alongside me. And it really did feel like I spent so much time thinking like, I got to get back to what I was doing, I got to get back to what I was doing, and I still would love to get back to what I was doing. But the substack really

grew out of having conversations with Lindsay about how stuck I had felt for a year and feeling like all this time I felt like I should start a sub stack, but no, I don't want to go down that route. I just want to get a job. And then like, you know, another day would come and I'd be like, maybe I should start a sub stack, but I just want to get a job. So I'm going to focus on my energy on that. And then I was really inspired by Lindsay committing early to in early in her sort of non job having era to just to just launching something and figuring it out on the fly and writing what she was feeling in the moment. So yeah, not incidental that they launched semi simultaneously. I felt like I felt like what have I been doing for this all these months, sort of waffling and waiting to figure out exactly

what it is that I want before I take any wrong steps, I should just start taking some steps. So here I am orchestrating this podcast matchmaking exercise and you two have been talking off air this entire time. I thought it was so clever. I noticed, wow, look at Hannah and Lindsay, they started these subsets at almost the same time and sort of in similar veins. And it turns out you've been in cahoots the whole time.

We are very much in some sort of cahoot together. So Lindsay's substack is called Critical Thinking and Hannah's substack is called Some Heart Feelings and you just type in those phrases I just said, dotsubstack.com and you can find them. And of course we will link to them on the show page. And Hannah's, yours has focused largely so far, just your first couple entries on, I guess your personal life and your ambitions.

And as you mentioned, you had a kid, congrats. Thank you. And it seems like that's going great, but that is also disruptive in some senses as I have experienced myself. So how has that changed your relationship to work, I guess, or at least your aspirations, if at all, or your ambitions? BT. This was the thing that I wrote most recently about was the fact that I had always experienced the idea of motherhood and parenthood through the lens of work. I didn't write this exact anecdote.

I feel like I mentioned my therapist often enough in writing. I try not to overdo it. But at some point in the course of being laid off and pregnant, my therapist said something to me about like, we should maybe stop talking about the job situation and think a little bit about, you know, what kind of mother you want to be, which is the title of the post. And I was furious because I sort of was like, well, that's completely contingent on the job. You know, I, everything I had always envisioned was from, from the logistics of what kind of childcare we need, what kind of childcare can we afford to the idea of being this working mom, this baseball mom, oh, I'll take him to the ballpark

and I'll tell him mom covered a postseason here. And so it has been very difficult to try to decouple those things. But I think what I found really interesting is like, I find parenthood, like, I mean, this is almost a dumb thing to say, anyone who's listening to this podcast, who does have a child, and then I include you in that will say, like, excuse me, no shit. But like, I had a baby and I was like, this is fascinating. This is like the most fascinating

thing that's ever happened to me. I mean, it's, and the first thing I wrote was about this idea that like, I think it's so strange that having a child, like being a parent is both insanely interesting and also totally common. Like so many people do it and yet when you do it, you think like surely they're not doing this because this is the most interesting thing anyone's ever done. And if everybody was doing that, they would be talking about it and writing about it. And there are also times when it's mind-numbingly boring for long stretches. But that's its own kind of life. It's mind-numbingly boring in a way that you can withstand. Sometimes I'll notice how long I sit in a physically uncomfortable position without moving just

because it is conducive to my son being happy or asleep or whatever or eating. And then just and yeah, so I, I, I still would like to, I think I'm more on the side of would like to resume a full time career in baseball someday job than Lindsay but I also think I felt like I'm not doing nothing that from the outside it looks like I'm doing nothing. I'm not writing about baseball as much as I was, but the parenthood thing felt like, but I am doing something. I'm doing the most interesting thing I've ever done. And it felt incongruous with the rest of my life to not be writing when my life itself actually felt very interesting to me when in the past I've written when I wasn't doing anything

except for sitting in press boxes. So I just wanted to space, I don't know that I'll, I don't know, I'm ambivalent about the idea of writing about parenthood forever, but I really, I felt like I had stuff I wanted to get out. I wanted to do something with having had all, yeah, having had all these interesting, like you said, it's been a pretty tumultuous and whatever adjective you use type year.

And I thought what a weird, what an unlike me way to go about it, which is to have such a whatever that adjective was year and not write anything. Yeah. I think I said eventful and maybe momentous. So I guess tumultuous might have worked too. Lindsay, at what point did you start to feel professional wanderlust or feel creatively unfulfilled? I don't know if your ambition was always to do what you ended up doing. It wasn't for a lot of people. Some people it is, I always wanted to write about sports or I always wanted to write about baseball and some people not so much, not even for me necessarily. I just kind of fell into that direction and then tried to broaden out a bit from there. So what was your trajectory and what, if anything, prompted your decision to sort of strike out

on a new path? I definitely wound up covering baseball sort of incidentally. You know, I've always loved writing. I love writing because I feel that it's an amazing way to connect with people. Sort of like what Hannah was saying, the things that feel incredibly like novel or profound to me also have emotional resonance with others. And baseball was just something I kind of knew. That was a track that I got on. But I also do firmly believe that, I think people think of sports writing,

sort of baseball writing as like, either like a dream job in that, like you get proximity to the game that you love or You know, it's sort of like the kids section of a newspaper but for my Areas of interest in writing basically, you know about why people do what they do and how they handle success and failure and all of these things like writing about athletes they are the best vector through which to

examine the difficulties of being a human is sort of my take. I love writing about athletes. I intend to continue writing about athletes because they have all of the success, they have all of this talent and ability, and none of like takes away their insecurities, their things that really push them. And I think I found that really compelling. I still find that really compelling. And really part of it is that through getting to know so many high level athletes and seeing what it takes to do what they do and how they manage their emotions and how they manage their lives. It actually, it didn't turn me off from it. It actually just made me want to find more areas in which people are exploring these things in different ways. I think it's,

you find it in creative people, you find it in people in different sports, you find it in a lot of different ways. And so, like my core interest in writing and writing about people and writing about the way people function has not changed in any way. I just think, you know, I got onto this track when I was 24 years old. My life has changed a lot. My priorities have changed a lot. And I've developed a lot of new interests since then. And so I want to explore those. I mean, with my sub-sac, a lot of the things that are kind of coming in there

or will be for about a year and a half, I've basically been keeping a note on my phone of cultural experiences that I would love to write something short and stupid about. I live in Brooklyn. I go do weird and strange and New York-y things all the time. Being siloed in one subject just made me feel very much like I really want to explore some of these other things. And so for me that's sort of what, listen, I'm not stepping away from the idea of having a full-time job. A full-time job thing, but like for now the Substack is I think a way to sort of like burn

off some of those things that have been percolating in my mind where I've had no outlet for them for a couple of years. And so then I guess we'll see what goes from there. Yeah, I very much identify with that. The nice thing about sports writing and baseball writing, maybe most of all, is that you can use it as a lens into human nature and you can turn it into meditations on life or any other aspect of things. It's not just all writing about hamstring strains or anything, but there's a degree to which it can become confining. And it's also not to, you know, no one's so weeping for sports writers necessarily. Again, it's kind of a cool job that a lot of people would like to have and not to get too navel-gazy. But when you hear the stick to sports refrain, that can be a bit demoralizing because, you

know, we're not people who think about sports or baseball 24-7, and we have other interests. And if you're an intellectually curious person who writes about baseball well, then you probably have the capacity to also spread your wings and write about other things well from time to time too. So that has been a big priority for me. And fortunately, I've been able to do it at the places where I worked. And I don't know that I could have done that at many other places, but a place like Grantland or like The Ringer kind of enables me to do that and to write about silly pop culture stuff or other random stuff in addition to continuing to keep a toe in the baseball writing pool. But it's tough to do that in the media world because there are only so many places that have that kind of range. When I was

writing for Baseball Prospectus, I couldn't do that. Baseball was in the name of the site, and there was only so much you could experiment. And then once you've built up a bit of a resume as a baseball writer, that's what you're known as. And that's what people hopefully want to pay you to continue to do at some point. And it's hard to convince people, no, I can also do this other stuff. Just give me a chance. I know I have no clips and no portfolio, but I can totally do this. Trust me.

So it is a little tough to break out of that box and not become typecast, even if it's a very rewarding box and a great box to be in at times. Ultimately still sometimes, yeah, you want to stretch out a bit. So I really look forward to seeing how you end up doing that even as I will miss your baseball writing. I hope you still do a little from time to time maybe, but I'm sure there are people on the Yankees beat who still miss you doing that because you were great at that. And that's got to be a grind. I don't think I could do being on the beat for very long. So I don't know whether that accelerated your journey to this decision or whether that was

part of why you went to the Wall Street Journal for a time after the athletic, but just the travel and the relentless pace of that, especially being on a beat like the Yankees beat and just the insatiable desire for news and there's always something happening and you probably always feel like you're supposed to be breaking some sort of story. That's got to be a bit exhausting. AMT – Yeah, I would say that's, you know, as I've sort of reflected on this, because it has been frustrating. I love this sport. I enjoy the people in it. I've really enjoyed, you know, so many parts of my career. But, you know, when I came off the Yankees beat, it was like

of my career, but you know, when I came off the Yankees beat, it was like slamming the brakes on my adrenaline. And you know, that's really, you know, the, the journal's baseball job was my dream job. I think it's the best national baseball writing job in America because you get to be creative and quirky. And you know, I, I really hate to use because I'm a snob I hate to use zeitgeisty words but what I experienced was like true incredible professional burnout after five years on the Yankees beat I just I I went from a job where it consumed my life it consumed my life in every way you know I didn't I didn't have a social life I didn't have a social life. My entire social life was within the industry, which is really harmful and not really how I want to live. I was ready to try exploring some of the

things that I did on the Yankees beat, maybe with a little bit less travel and with a broader scope. But by the time I got off the beat, I was just completely out of steam. It has been a very scary feeling for someone who has typically been very ambitious and driven by work and capable of sucking it up and finding the energy for that stupid end of season road trip to whatever last place team it is. It was genuinely horribly scary to experience the type of professional burnout that I did. And that's really sort of the short version of how we got here. It is just so much.

I mean, it just amazes me that people are able to stay on, especially these high intensity beats for so long. And given that I spent so much time thinking about what drives athletes, because as much as they, quote, play a game for a living, you really have to find it within yourself to do all the things that they do. And for me, as I sort of took stock of my life, you know, a little bit after I got off the Yankees beat for a variety of reasons, I just realized that a lot of it, a lot of it was driven by ego. And, you know, this was an arena in which I could easily derive self-worth. And I just

sort of wanted to start valuing myself as a person for reasons other than, you know, being able to really articulate why Gleyber Torres booted that ground ball. Once I hit that point, it just sort of tumbled from there, I would say. Yeah. I can't imagine being on the beat and just being always on or being expected to always be on. Because when I write about baseball now, occasionally maybe I'll do some responsive thing when some big news happens.

But very often it's not that. Very often it's sort of evergreen or it's some kind of quirky angle or it's not just a transaction analysis or something, which I just found after a certain time, the moos never stop coming. There's just always another trade and always another signing. And I like talking about them on Effectively Wild and we're about to do that. But also if you're kind of on call to do that especially, and you can't control when that's happening. And look, I know that there are harder things than to be asked to blog on short notice, but that does, you know, when I was briefly, I sort of succeeded Christina Carl as the

transaction analysis person at Baseball Prospectus or one of them. And I always felt like I was dreading moves because suddenly I'd be called away from some plan that I had, or I felt like I could never make plans. And also it's hard to put your personal stamp on just team X signs for agent Y. Like, yes, you can find creative ways to do it and hopefully stand out from the most just generic rote recounting of the contractual terms. But I don't know that of the many pieces I've written that anyone ever says, oh yeah, I

remember that transaction analysis you wrote of that particular sign. It's not usually the career highlights, I guess. It's the meat and potatoes. It's the thing you have to do to keep the site running. But when you can do something that's out of left fields, sometimes literally, Hannah, I stumbled across a piece that you wrote five years ago the other day. I don't know how I saw this, but it was about diving catches and about whether they hurt, which was great.

That was my first year. Great angle. While Lindsay was talking, I was just thinking about this, that my biggest regret from my time at Yahoo is that I didn't have the conviction to be weirder. I really got sucked into, even though I was not on a beat, I was listening while you guys were just talking about beat and I was thinking like oh gosh I have no excuse because I was somewhere I was not on a beat and I was not tied to any particular transactions and yet the ego of it all does sort of the ego or the lack of

Personal conviction or the feeling of like I don't know how to do this So let me look at what people around me are doing Caught up to me like when I look back on my career, Yahoo, those are my regrets. At the beginning, I sort of thought, oh, I'm going to bring this fresh, do diving catches hurt type sensibility to everything. And then you do let the, the, your social life becomes the industry. And you are constantly looking for the next transaction And you do feel like you have to have something smart to say and for me I really struggled with feeling like oh gosh not Lindsay got to say burnout

So I get to say imposter syndrome of feeling like I don't have anything to like I would always be like I don't have anything to add to this transaction. I don't know. He's a good baseball player. They need a baseball player. That's probably why they signed him. And I got very sucked into this sort of silo of like, trying to do what other people were doing better or at least as good as they were doing it. And that was never even what interested me. And like, I wish that I had just been like, I'm just going to zag my whole career. And that's what I ended up feeling very, I'm just going to zag my whole career. And, and, and that's,

I ended up feeling very, by the end of my time at Yahoo, like I was just starting to get even decent at keeping up with everyone. And I should have just not even been trying to do that from the beginning. Early on, I remember saying to somebody, like a, not early, like a year or two in, cause I also had no idea it's going to be a baseball writer. The week before I got hired at Yahoo, I was a food editor at Vice. Then I got hired to be a national baseball writer at Yahoo. I was like, oh gosh, okay.

So Bryce Harper signed and I was like, it seems good to me. I don't know. I said this early on that I thought that that baseball writing was so much more predictive nowadays. Modern baseball writing, Ben, this is a little bit your fault because you're good at this kind of stuff. I was like, I can't be smarter than the front offices at being a front office. I don't know how to be like, actually, that's a terrible fit for that team. You should have gotten this guy over here for that deal.

I was like, I don't know. They all seem like they're pretty good at their jobs. And there was so much more this sort of like, yes, you think that sports writing is going to be a lens on which to write about human universals and life struggles and everything. And then you do it for five years at a national level, even, even though they're telling you, you don't have to break news the later they replace you with people who do break news. And you're like, oh, okay. I guess I did need to like, you know, find out if there was a mystery team talking to Corbin Burns or whatever. Like it's you don't end up actually writing about the human struggle. You end up writing about like, yeah, who's a good fit for Corbin Burns. And you're like

everybody because the best picture could get hurt tomorrow. How do I make it smarter than that? Yeah, it's hard not to make that into kind of a commodity and to say something in a different way than anyone else is saying it or to say something entirely different. And you don't always have the luxury of just, what is my muse saying today? Sometimes, you know, depending on your site. And again, I've been lucky in this respect with my editors and with just the approach to traffic at the ringer and Grantland. And now I'm an editor myself, so no one can control me, but really it's,

I'm just drunk on my own power. But sometimes, yeah, you, you either yourself, you think, well, I gotta say something about the Wonsodo signing. I got to get my Wonsodo. I got to hang my shingle out there. What if no one knows what I think about the Wonsodo signing? And you realize that the market is not hurting for Wonsodo signing reactions. Now, maybe your editor is saying, yeah, but we have to have a Wonsodo signing reaction on our site. And obviously, there's some economic imperatives that come in there and people like to read those things because they want to read about the news that their team just made.

So that's understandable. And when you do it, hopefully you can make it fun and stand out in some respects. But yes, the luxury that you hope to have is that you can just ask baseball players if making diving catches hurts because it looks like it does, but whoever thinks to ask them about that. That's just an insightful piece that I will probably remember reading for a long time, as opposed to just another Juan Soto signing reaction, even if it's a really good one, because I do think that front offices generally getting more competent over time has also left us with a little less to say because yeah, usually it isn't how could they think that this guy was good or where are

they going to play this guy? Every now and then there might be an outlier or it seems like someone just got fleeced in a trade or something, but usually it's yeah, this team had a need and this guy fills that need. So there's not that much more that you can say about it. I guess that's the challenge. Yeah. It's the inherent, I'm curious how Lindsay felt at the journal, but it does start to feel like you're looking to what other people are doing to try to figure out. Maybe that's just how I felt. When I took the job, I was sort of like, how did I do this job? And I looked at what other people were doing and tried to do that better and then felt

very insecure when I couldn't do what other people were doing better than that they were doing. And for me, when I started doing TV, I felt more comfortable doing that because I felt like I was bringing something that wasn't just like trying to replicate being a national baseball writer. I was like, it felt more like I was getting asked to be myself having a reaction to things. And I felt more confident in that. But then, then right.

I wish that I had paired that with slightly with more does that diving catch her type style stories. Lindsay's like, no, I felt creative. I never felt like I needed to. I know, Lindsay, I know that she didn't felt like I needed to. I know, Lindsay, I know that she didn't feel like she was trying to replicate other people's work. She has her own point of view. I'm not sure if this is totally on topic, but I think something I really came to struggle with in trying to sort of write the day to day meat and and potatoes. This is because, yeah, you can't always write about,

like, Craig Kimbrell blows a game, here's how he deals with failure and adversity when that happens with him. That's not always what you get to write. I also wrote a lot about process and how teams made decisions. Or I tried to explain basically why the game works the way that it does now. And that's basically impossible. You know, I feel that if I were a baseball fan who didn't have access to asking the experts, you know, for their perspective on these things, I would have no idea what's going on in this game. Because the way that decisions are made now are so far beyond the level of comprehension

and the level of like public interpretation that is needed. I mean, there are so many moments in any sport, but for me, understanding in baseball, that's like, you know, why would, why would you make that move there? Why would you do that? You know, why would you make that decision? And then when you hear the decisions, sometimes it's like, you know, the manager was protecting a pitcher who, who was out of energy or, you know, this guy who is, you know is kind of a washed up schlub, like he's coming to bat in this situation because he is great at reading pitches. And so if he gets a fastball, the team wins the game.

And again, I guess we can kind of blame Ben for some of this stuff too. I'm waving my arms. We are not on video, but I'm waving my arms in enthusiastic agreement. This is something at the end of every baseball season, I would always have this reckoning and I would unload it on my husband Jake, where I would say, I feel like we're telling fake stories.

And that's what I really started to struggle with. That's what I'm getting at. I don't know swing plane better than the people at FanGraphs. So it felt like I'm here and I'm talking to people, but I don't know that what anyone is saying is any more accurate than a high level data analysis in terms of explaining what people just watched. And that felt very frustrating. It felt like the instances in which the stories I'm telling align with, again, this gets back to the feeling like sports writing has become increasingly

predictive instead of descriptive. That what fans want to know is, is this guy going to stay healthy or how's that matchup going to go or whatever? That was so much more illuminated by people who were analyzing data than by people who were talking to athletes, that that felt frustrating to me. That I felt like I was like, I'm telling fake stories about what these people think, but there's like a coach and a data ops person who aren't even available for me to talk to necessarily

who are making analyses and decisions that are getting passed through so many levels of front office bureaucracy that by the time I'm talking to the pitching coach, it's not really a super accurate or not super thorough. Does that make sense that like, is that, was that your experience, Lindsay, that you're getting it? Yeah, I felt like I was always oper- like I was grinding my ass off to try to operate with about, I don't know, 7% of the information that I needed to explain what

was happening. And, you know, this isn't a criticism of the people who I've covered, you know, their job is to find my new advantages. And there is no reason for them to just be like, well, we made this decision because of XYZ. And the other thing with that is that sometimes people are wrong about process. I mean, I found that dichotomy to be very interesting that you have to believe in what you are doing and in your process and trust the process. But everyone always has a reasonable explanation for the decisions that they make. And it doesn't always mean that it was the right decision and or a poor outcome doesn't mean that it was the wrong decision. And so it's just this very abstract, you know, word salad cloud of how did Team X win this game and why? And the information that you actually need to understand how these things happen on a broad scale,

are things that teams have every right to and need to keep very secret. It makes it hard to feel like you're really helping the viewer understand their passion. Linda, you wrote on Substack, I spend a lot of money on therapy to try to deprogram my need for individualism. So maybe you should have just written a bunch of boring cookie cutter stories. Maybe that would have helped. You just wouldn't have stood out at all. Would have been cheaper than therapy, man. I'm definitely that stubborn AAA player who's like, you come to the majors and it's like,

oh, well, we see these inefficiencies in your swings and blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, well, this is what got me here. So I actually do often or have often asked coaches like, what do you do with the player? If someone's like, this is the thing that I cling on to because this is what's gotten me the success, how do you actually get them to buy in on change? And I do think that's one of the more interesting things that modern coaching is working on. I would love to have that setting, man. I think the fact that you don't is what has made your work

so compelling over the years. So pluses and minuses. And I guess the last thing I'll say since you both touched on it is that, yeah, this can kind of come to consume your life. And in some ways that's a good thing. I think if you're so intellectually stimulated by this that you actually want to work, but if you become overstimulated

by it, then it can cross a line at a certain point and becomes detrimental. And there is a certain ego that goes along with it, I guess, having some sort of status in this world in the grand scheme of things. It's not much, but you're sort of a low-grade public figure in a way that most people with jobs that in many cases are much more remunerative are not. If you saw people's paychecks in this industry, it would probably cut them down to size pretty quickly in your mind and in your estimation. But there is something to the idea that you go to a party and you say what you do and it's kind of an instant conversation starter and people might want to ask about that. Now, you might not want to start that conversation. That might be the last thing

you want in the world. You might make up a fake job so that you don't have to have that conversation or you could just avoid parties entirely, which is my approach. But there is something to that, I think, to the idea of having a cool job in many people's minds. In many people's minds, it would also be a terrible job that they would have no interest in doing or asking about. But I think it does sort of swallow your world, and you're in this circle of people who do sort of similar things to some extent. It can become all-consuming personally and professionally, and that's why a lot of people, their friend group is people who do this. Sometimes their romantic partner is someone who does this because you're just spending a lot of time

with other people who are doing these things, and it's kind of natural. And I'm kind of grateful that I don't have that so much, partly cause I'm a semi hermit, but also because my wife doesn't do anything related to what I do. And so I would guess that the upside and Hannah, your husband works in media, sort of a different slice of media, I guess, than you were doing specifically, but similar enough that you could commiserate about your job and your deadlines and your editor. Oh, no, I can't commiserate my editor because he was an editor. In fact, what I learned was that

we writers are incredibly annoying because I am just one writer, but he had many writers. I saw how the annoyingness compounds when there are more of us. I thought my problems are so special and important and everyone should care about them. And then I have to live with someone who's like, gosh, 27 people think their problems are so special and important. And I was like, oh, okay, that is annoying. I can see how that might get on someone's nerves. Yeah. Well, I've had the pleasure of editing you a couple times at The Ringer, and you were not annoying at all, but there are times with some writers who will not be named in

the past. But yeah, it's got to be nice to have someone at home who you can just, you know, they're in the industry, they're in the biz, they kind of know, you know, they're aware of the dire prospects of the industry at large. Like, that's got to be nice, but it's also nice to just be with someone who is completely unplugged from that world. And so you don't feel like you have to talk shop when you're not working. 益 Nguyen Nguyen Yeah, I would say my social circle has really

changed over the last couple of years. And Hannah and I talk about this a lot. But there are many sports writers and baseball writers who I consider very close personal friends. Like, but also now a lot of my Brooklyn friends are either academics, public servants, people who work in harm reduction, union organizers, things like that. And they, you know, so when I'm at a party, nobody wants to talk to me about Juan Soto usually. Sometimes, sometimes. But now it's more like, oh, so what are the labor implications of XYZ and whatnot, which is actually a more enjoyable way, I think, to talk about baseball at a party. But it's very funny to me how far removed my social life has come from people who have operated in this industry and have made very

different choices about how they choose to pursue work. And I think that's part of, you know, what I'm grappling with is that in a lot of ways, the act of being a writer is the act of sort of proving to yourself that you have value in this world. You know, this is, I can do this, you know, this is an area of success, like this is something for me. And there are a lot of people out there who do, I found tedious jobs that don't totally serve their ego, are not exactly sort of like a party trick of a profession. And they also sleep pretty well at night. So, um, they don't have young babies. If they sleep, you have to, have to come on. You need to tell Ben about the text I sent you from Bogota the other day.

Which one? The photo of a book. Oh, I'm like, which I'm like, Lindsay, some syndrome del imposter. And Lindsay said to me, she said, I'm getting this for you so you can have double the imposter syndrome by not being able to read the book about imposter syndrome. Yeah, you, you blue sky posted that Lindsay. Oh no, now I'm just. You already made the private text public, but I didn't know who you were texting and I did wonder

and now my curiosity is sated. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was just slaughtering Hannah. I was like, oh, I'm going to get her with this one. Man, I didn't even see that on Blue Sky. I got to get on Blue Sky more often. Well, we should probably cut this portion of the podcast short because there's... Or the whole because there's probably too late to cut it short. Yeah, cut it medium because there's nothing writers would rather talk about than writing and also themselves. So we have indulged in that for a while and hopefully other people have indulged us by listening and now we will get back to some

baseball stuff. And also I'm afraid of how long I'm going to keep Hannah away from her family. And we probably kept Lindsay away from Bogota for long enough as it is. So thank you both for joining me. This probably doesn't quite qualify as a therapy session, but it's less expensive, I guess. So there's that.

And I just really look forward to what you both do, whether it's in baseball or outside of baseball, because I think writing, it's just an act of sharing your thoughts with the world, really, which is why it's kind of a personal exercise for many writers and why we're so precious about it, sometimes in a tiresome way. And I think your favorite writers, your favorite sports writers, baseball writers, any kind of writer, you just like the way they think. They're just interesting people. And so it's interesting to read whatever their thoughts are. So I've been enjoying your substacks, again, critical thinking and some hard feelings. And I wish you both well in your creative and personal

and professional odysseys. Thank you, Ben. Have a good new year. BG – All right. Lindsay has left us, Hannah remains, and after we just knocked the practice of transaction analysis, let's quickly do a little bit of it because there were two notable signings, NL West signings on Friday, and these probably both fall into the category of good team got good player, and thus is an even better team than it was previously. But we will try to say something relatively brief and yet also interesting about these two signings. The first of which was the Dodgers, bringing back to Oscar Hernandez, who I think will come up a little later on this podcast again. And this is your standard Dodgers deal these days. It's a

three-year $66 million deal, except there's a signing bonus and there's deferred money. And there's also a team option. The Dodgers just always have to make these things complicated for the accountants. So there's probably a little less to say about this because it's less of a surprise than Corbin Burns going to the Diamondbacks. But any thoughts on a reunion for the Dodgers and Te Oskar? Listen, I said I regretted not being weirder. So we're just going to go with my thought work, which is last year's co-guest for this podcast, Zach Kreiser, my former coworker, sent me a screen grab. And I'm sorry, I do not know who wrote this. He just sent me a screen grab of an analysis of this transaction, which I'm now going to read on a podcast that says

his smile was infectious with Hernandez becoming a beloved clubhouse figure with the nickname quote Mr. Seeds. Hernandez would greet his teammates after home runs by flinging sunflower seeds in the air to which I said, doesn't sound that fun. Sounds like he just threw them in the air. The bar for baseball players having quote unquote fun personalities is so low. They just have to throw some policies in the air. I mean, that's my analysis of that transaction is that people are always like, and this actually gets at how difficult it is to kind of, this is a pitfall of writing about people and not just stats, is that sometimes you wind

up saying things like, he was such a people-boy, loved him, he did this thing, he threw sunflower seeds in the air. And then people reading that go like, what? That's why he loved him. So I'm assuming that Tasker Hernandez has a sort of ineffable, indescribable fun quality. So good for the Dodgers getting that back. Yeah, Ken confirmed that he has a great smile. And I have a friend who has a similar smile.

And both my wife and I made that observation independently that when Teasca Hernandez smiles, this friend of mine from high school, who was one of my best men at my wedding, he looks like Teasca Hernandez. And I told my friend this and he said it was the nicest thing that anyone has said to him involving him and Teasca Hernandez being in the same sentence. So hopefully he appreciated that compliment, but he does seem to radiate joy and have a pretty

magnetic personality and also he's good at hitting baseballs. Maybe not quite as good at fielding them, but not to the point that he is a liability. So the only interesting observations maybe I have about this are A, that he had basically a perfect pillow contract. This is kind of the platonic ideal of the way you want a pillow contract to work out, which I guess was maybe the original pillow contract, Adrian Beltre worked out that way. But Teoscar, he was coming off kind of a down year pictures park in Seattle, and he signs this one year deal with the Dodgers and he goes on to have a great year and win a world series and really like it there and get to stay and get a good deal. So that's exactly what you want, I guess, in that

situation. So congrats to him and also the Dodgers for finding a good match there. and also the Dodgers for finding a good match there. And the other thing is that when Jeff Passon announced this deal, it's almost like he prepared the ground because he knew that everyone was gonna start ranting about the Dodgers buying championships again. And maybe this was somewhat diffused by the division rival of the Dodgers then going out and responding with Corbin Burns, but Passon tweeted, the Los Angeles Dodgers are a machine. Not only do they print cash,

their willingness to spend it in pursuit of winning is unmatched. They put their money where their mouth is. Others could benefit greatly from the same approach. They choose not to. And we've talked about that plenty on this podcast, but you just know whenever the Dodgers do anything at this point, spend any money, especially if some of it is deferred, then there's just going to be a heap and a pile of criticism on them. And I get it because if you're a fan of one of the teams that doesn't do that, that doesn't print money and or spend it, then it's got to be frustrating to see the Dodgers do that. And I don't want to be disingenuous and say anyone could do what the Dodgers are doing, maybe sort of, but not to the same extent and scale. They have all these advantages that other

organizations don't. So I think other teams could come closer to acting like the Dodgers, but maybe still not quite get to where they are. And so if you thought, oh, the Dodgers at least have a slight weakness or a hole here, or I don't know about that outfield. You can't even really say that anymore. They're just basically bringing back the entire lineup that they just won a World Series with and they've got this great rotation and there's Sasaki rumors and they have Michael Conforto and it's just an embarrassment of riches, but also they are investing those riches into the team. Well, in that way, it's similar to Shawn Manaya returning to the Mets in that part of what a willingness to spend and the money to spend gets you is that when you have a guy on a

pillow contract or an interesting contract and he has a great year and then he ends up in back and free agency, you can just bring him back. You don't have to sort of, you don't have to like, in both cases and maybe Manaya even more. So the Mets initially benefited from him being a little bit of like a depressed asset, but then they can also benefit from him once he has achieved his value.

I think that's like, I understand why that may rankle fans of other teams. It's such an interesting. It's interesting to see That's very much like the both smart and rich manifestation of that You can you can sign a guy who is a little bit of a reclamation project benefit from him having such a good year But then also bring him back that yeah, that's good. If you're good if you're Mets for Dodgers fan But I can see how other teams you're like, well, no, no, we want one or the other. We either, we either want to like have the development, that team that guys want to go to so that we're able to be that market inefficiency or we want to

be whatever, like 90s Yankees cashing in, just gobbling up all the talent, but to be both is a good spot to be. It is. And I guess any reprisals here, any news cycle that would have been, oh, the Dodgers just bought the division again, somewhat suppressed by the fact that the Diamondbacks then responded in much more surprising and tougher to anticipate fashion by signing Corbin Burns, which is notable not because they now have multiple Corbans on their team. And in fact, as I think it was Sarah Langs noted, there have been three Corbans in baseball history, major league history, and they have all played for the Diamondbacks, two of them currently do. But that's not the most noteworthy aspect of this. It's that the best pitcher remaining and

maybe the best pitcher on the free agent market at the beginning of the off season. Now on the Arizona Diamondbacks, which was not a team that I had really seen him connected to, and it seems like this developed quickly. Apparently Mike Hazen was in New Zealand when this deal went down and they had just been talking for a few days. So I don't know, maybe Scott Boris, he struck while Hazen was away and just went directly to ownership. Who knows how this happened. We'll probably find out more about that. But big addition and the terms, six years, 210 million, and there's an opt-out following 2026. And then there's some dispute still as we record about the exact terms. But what was your

reaction when you saw this somewhat surprising news? My reaction was that I must have adjusted my priors somewhere along in the off season without noticing because that felt low to me, but not sort of in a vacuum, just in response to how the deals have, other pitchers have made out vacuum just in response to how the deals have other pitchers have made out this off season. Although maybe the opt out, I guess I can't really, how are we sort of factoring the money of the opt out, I guess. I'm surprised that going straight to ownership benefited Boris after what was said about his client last year. Yeah, Jordan Montgomery, somewhat awkwardly, still a Diamondback for now.

Yes. Do you think that a team could get him for like a bag of baseballs right now? That seems like a, if you're interested in trading for Jordan Montgomery, now would be the right time to reach out to the Diamondbacks. Yes, operators are standing by. Operators are standing by. They're taking your call if you're interested in the Jordan Montgomery. Yeah, again, good pitcher, good team. The money did seem, I don't know, what do we think? Does it seem low relative to other pitchers this off season, but not low in the 35 million AAV cents? CB Yeah. I think given the fact that basically every pitcher has exceeded predictions so far, maybe it's a little low compared to that. There was just a

headline the other day about how he's seeking $245 million plus. And as Sam Miller has documented, players usually get some percentage of what they're seeking, but not the full 100%. So that's not shocking, I guess. But yeah, given some of the other deals that we've seen, That's not shocking, I guess, but yeah, given some of the other deals that we've seen, because I think MLB trade rumors had predicted 200 million over seven years. So I might've expected a longer term because we've seen some teams be willing to go longer and Corbin Burns, he just turned 30 in October. So he sort of settled for high AV and only medium length as these things go.

I guess there's some questions to whether it wasn't his sort of the some of the peripherals or a little bit down, even though his effectiveness was not. And so maybe he thinks he can prove that he can pitch that's great defense. So hoping to benefit from that, perhaps go back onto the market. I don't know, a free agent, it's also going to opt out what right before the CBA expires. It's true. That was the other first sort of second thought that I had was, I wonder what Scott Boris thinks of how the negotiations are going to play out because he's obviously having an excellent off season this year.

And so he must feel like conditions are good in some sense, but also maybe he thinks conditions will be even better in the next CBA, at least for Burns. Yeah. This is a disastrous for me in my free agent contracts over under draft exercise with Meg. I take another hit here because I had taken the under on the prediction of 200 million for Burns basically because I thought there was some chance that due to those declining peripherals, there might be some concerns and maybe he wouldn't get the long-term deal he was looking for and he'd have to settle for something smaller.

That didn't happen in retrospect, just should have hammered the over on every pitcher prediction contract wise. So I'm pretty much cooked when it comes to that competition. But I do think, you know, I guess the Boris redemption toward to some extent continues, although this isn't blowing everyone out of the water necessarily. It's more notable, I guess. You know, it sounds like maybe he took less than he was offered elsewhere. It was reported that he was offered more by both the giants and the Blue Jays who were just kind of the kings of missing out on free agents. If you're going to get a, and look, if they really offered him more, I'm not going to slap them with a, we tried, you

know, fake attempt to get these guys. Those two teams have made concerted attempts to sign many a free agent and have come up second or third or fourth many a time, and that's got to be demoralizing for them. But again, it may have been out of their control because Burns lives in Arizona. He just had twins. There was some reporting that maybe he just wanted to stay in the area. And there's also the lower income tax, I suppose, in Arizona. I don't know whether that swayed him, but sometimes there are factors for free agents that you can't counter just by topping the offer by some incremental amount. Phoenix is a great food city.

Having been there for the 2023 World Series, I thought, this is a good city. So congrats to him on that. I'm looking at his Instagram right now. When you said the twins thing, I thought I got to see these babies. And they appear to have been born roughly 25 weeks ago, at least according to when he Instagrammed them and they are quite cute. So I'm happy he's hanging out where they are. Yeah, that's nice.

And the Diamondbacks, they just lost Jack Pearson and Christian Walker. So they strike a big blow here and they've got a heck of a rotation for now, at least we'll see again if Montgomery goes somewhere, but to have Zach Galland and Corbin Burns at the top of your rotation and then also have considerable depth too. Yeah, that's pretty impressive. And you know, they're a dangerous team. They just barely missed out last year and they went on quite a run after a slow start and to have Burns and Fod and Nelson and just all the guys that they've got here, it's a big addition and maybe all the more exciting because it wasn't really something that was rumored. And of course the news was broken by John Heyman. I know shocker that Boris client,

that Heyman would be the one to break the news. I don't remember. I'm sure the newsbreakers remember. I'm sure Pepperidge farm remembers, but I don't remember the most recent prominent Boris client whose signing was broken by someone other than John Heyman. I'd be interested if anyone is keeping track of that. That would pique my curiosity. There are a lot of signings, so maybe Boris spreads the love around a little bit. But yes, it's exciting news and I guess it's sort of demoralizing news. If you're a fan of a team that needs pitching and there's not a whole lot of impact pitching left at this point, at least on the free agent market, there might be some guys available via trades, the diamond backs guy, the

Mariners guys or Dylan Cease or I don't know who, but unless you're signing Sasaki at this point, and I'm thinking of the Tigers, I'm thinking of the Orioles who of course are losing Corbin Burns here. And I'm sure that Michael Isis is excited about the prospect of the compensation pick that he's getting here. But at some point, we've been saying this for a while. It's kind of a tired refrain at this point, but who's left? Unless you're signing Sasaki, you're looking at a Jack Flaherty reunion or who's Jeff Hoffman, Andrew Heaney, Nick Povetta. You look at that Orioles rotation and it's just not good enough

for what should be a World Series caliber team. So he's still got a few months to work on that problem, but the options to do that and to do that in a way that involves spending significant money, they're dwindling. This harkens back to the conversation we were having with Lindsay where so often it feels like you can't be smarter than a front office. And I am more than anything, I always like jump to, I assume whatever they're doing makes sense. There's a lot of people who have more lucrative careers than either of you or I have, riding on making these decisions correctly. And Michael Iass is really challenging that assumption for me because I am like the last person sort of willing to

To like jump on the like Michael is just wants to get his compensation fix because I'm like that can't possibly be true He must he said He might I know it seems that way that must have I he certainly does love a prospect, but I'm sure that he is a competitive, smart person who has been putting it, and just, I keep waiting for the Occam's razor version of like, no, he wants to win baseball games because he's a baseball GM to come to fruition. And it's not, he's continuing to just be the caricature version of himself and not doing the thing. It's kind of like the Mariners

not getting a good hitter where I'm like, they must know, they know, right? They know that they need a hitting. And I keep being like, surely the next news will be that they have signed someone who would take their team, which has very good pitching and defense to the next more competitive level by sending a good hitter. And then they don't. And I'm like, do they not know? Am I smarter than them? Am I smarter than the entire Mariners and Orioles front office? At least less inhibited when it comes to spending ownership's money, maybe, which is easy for us to say.

And sometimes it's tough for a GM or a Pobo to pry open the purse strings, but at least in the Orioles case, you'd hope that with new ownership, that there is some money to be splashed around. And you really would think that that would be the easy part of being the baseball executive, just saying, okay, let's just go get some big hairy free agent here. Let's just spend a lot of my boss's money. Like if your boss is willing to do that, the hard part is drafting and developing and scouting. And the easy part is saying, Corman-Burns is good.

Even if he's a little less good than he was before, he's still good and he's durable as starting pitching goes these days. And so just to bring him back, if they had brought him back, it wouldn't have even cost a pick. So that would have hurt him a little less, but it's just kind of a cliche to say you don't win anything for the dollars per war title. And everyone sarcastically will say, you know, hang the for the dollars per war title and everyone sarcastically will say hang the banner or whatever for that instead of actually winning the division title, winning

a playoff game. Those things, certainly the latter would be nice for Orioles fans these days. So again, reserving judgment until all the dust settles here. But yeah, at some point you got to counter that accusation. If it's not actually true that you're unwilling to break the bank at a certain point, not even break the bank, just, just lightly crack the bank slightly. At some point it's a, you gotta do it. You have this whole young cost controlled core. Anyway, it is nice to see the diamondbacks spending because they had said that they were going

to keep their payroll in a similar range. And for now, at least it's significantly higher. And they're one of the teams that's been affected among the most really by all of the cable bubble bursting broadcast uncertainty. So the fact that one of the biggest and best free agents is going to a team in that bucket, that's pretty heartening. And it is a record free agent contract or contract just in general, probably for the diamond backs.

And I saw this reported that way. And it's the pedant in me. Maybe there's no pedant in me. I just am the pedant, but the. Grinky signing that the diamond backs made, this was kind of a comp to that because it was similar, six years, 206.5 million, and it was also sort of out of nowhere. And so this has surpassed that. It's the largest guarantee in franchise history, but also that was in 2015. So yeah, 206.5 in 2015 is more than 210 in 2024.

And yeah, there's the opt out and everything. And maybe it's just that we don't all just want to constantly be going to the inflation calculator and running that math and you can do the math in different ways. But I always want to just insert a raw dollars caveat or like inflation unadjusted or something just in the interest of accuracy, but people probably get the point and understand how money works. I don't know that they do Ben. I think you're giving me.

Because my pedantry, which I believe you've talked about on the podcast, is when people forget the denominators. I hate when people are like, they spent a billion dollars nearly, but not over a certain number of years. Everyone is spending sort of infinite dollars over infinite years. If you don't include a denominator, it's a meaningless metric. I don't even like, yeah, my lifetime salary is high too. I don't know. CB Yeah, it'd be great if we could all just think of our career cumulative earnings at all times and not have to break it down to the AAV.

All right, let's talk about some under discussed or undiscussed on this podcast, This Year's Stories. And you were with me, as you said, with Zach on this version of last year's pod, except that we did all 30 teams in one episode. And so I told you, we're only doing half of them this time. It'll be shorter. Well, maybe not so much, but this portion of the podcast will be shorter at least. So National League going in alphabetical order, most of these topics were nominated

by listeners. So thanks to them and listener Jay's submission for the Braves was, and in Jay's words, submission for the Braves was, and in Jay's words, Spencer Strider becomes the most hipster MLB player of all time with a seven inch single stadium giveaway. Oh, I did see this. Yeah. So this, yeah, as I said to Bauman yesterday, you can claim to have been aware of all of these stories. It's really on me and Meg, not having discussed them on the podcast. But Spencer Strider in absentia on the IL, he still had a vinyl record giveaway.

Wednesday, August 7th, the first 15,000 fans in attendance, Braves versus Brewers, got a seven inch vinyl record featuring one of Spencer Strider's favorite Atlanta based bands, or I guess a few of them, Trash Panda, Dinner Time, and Lunar Vacation. Probably should have kept Lindsay on for the hipster music discussion portion of this podcast. But Spencer Streider, he's a favorite of a lot of people on the internet for various reasons. A, because he seems like a smart guy, he's inquisitive, he talks about advanced stats in a way that tickles the stat heads

fancy and he's also amazing at baseball. And let's face it, he's considerably more liberal than your average baseball player. So he balances the scales a little bit from a political perspective. But this giveaway, he put a statement out to coincide with this and he's a big enthusiast, big music guy too, clearly. And he said, I discovered Trash Panda with the release of their 2023 album, Pandemonium. Panda, play on Trash Panda, get it.

The record was instantly discernible as thorough, exciting and unmistakably unique. I don't know what it means really for a record to be thorough. I'm not sure that's an adjective that I've, I've attached to an album or a piece of music that that was a thorough album that you made there. You just all the songs are they used all the instruments. I don't really know what that means exactly, but only immensely talented

and creative musicians could produce such a complex style that is received so effortlessly it's impossible not to enjoy yourself while listening to Atlanta's trash panda." He went on to say, I remember exactly when and where I first heard Lunar Vacation. That's how immediately became one of my favorite groups. When I learned they were from Atlanta, it exponentially increased the enjoyment I derived from their music. A lot of fancy SAT words in this statement. Seems like he was consulting a thesaurus possibly. Wow. You don't think he had exponentially

just ready to go at his grasp and now he's consulting a thesaurus? It's just the exponentially and the derive in the same sentence. And then, again, maybe he could have consulted a different thesaurus for the thorough, but I consider myself extremely fortunate to have followed their maturation and growth from the beginning. And lastly, yeah, I don't know if this

is some sort of chat GPT situation or if this is again, like seems like a guy who would have a hefty vocabulary. So I don't want to denigrate that, but I like to imagine the members of dinnertime dancing with smiles on their faces, jamming their distinctly original sounds in someone's garage or basement. I feel their music conveys quite easily how much fun the band has making and playing it. I like to describe their sound as a bunch of friends from Atlanta hanging out and having a good time." So that's Spencer's statement about those bands.

And I look forward to seeing Spencer Schrader back in action in the coming season. I wanted to get credit for, I wanted to prove to you that I knew that this story. So I searched my text messages to see if I had texted anyone about it. And I did. And I said, this is such an intense promotion. I thought I had maybe said something more interesting, but that was all I said. But I did see it. I did see it at the time.

Yeah, he promoted it thoroughly, I guess we could say. In fact, he also did a promo. He showed up at a giveaway at Criminal Records. So he's showing up at the indie store and everything, and with the mustache and everything. I mean, he should probably be a fellow Brooklynite with you and Lindsay, but miscast maybe where he is, but he's been fantastic. So our Brewers submission comes from listener Ryan, who has actually emailed about this for a while and did not answer his initial response. But when he reminded me,

when we were looking for an under-reported story, it was actually perfect for this, because he emailed back in October and he said, Most fan bases seem to think their team is bad at the fundamental of hitting with runners in scoring position, even when it's not accurate. And this may never have been more true than with the Brewers over the last three seasons under co-hitting coaches Connor Dawson and Ozzy Timmons. In that time, they have been markedly better with runners in scoring position than with the bases empty. And overall, all three years by such substantial margins that it's getting to the point where I'm questioning

if this could actually be signal and not simply noise. And so he sent me the WRC plus split spaces empty and runners in scoring position. And yeah, it's pretty significant. So in 2024, for instance, it was 118 with runners in scoring position and then 92 with the bases empty and a hundred overall. And in 2023, it was 111 versus 89 and 2022, it was 120 versus 99. And so when he did that cumulatively, it's 118 WRC plus with runners in scoring position 92 with the bases empty. So I'm always suspicious of when people say, Oh, is this notable with runners in scoring position splits? Cause normally it's not. Cause usually it's one season and whether it's that they were incredibly clutch or unclutch

there's just a lot of variability when it comes to this and not so much repeatability. But over three seasons that got me wondering, okay, is this actually something? And I threw the question to Ryan Nelson, frequent stat blast correspondent of Effectively Wild, and he concluded, he did this in terms of TOPS+. This Brewers team, 2022 to 2024, has the best three-year span TOPS+, with runners in scoring position of any team ever. Wow. Yeah. So it is actually notable. So all three editions of the Brewers were in the top 100 seasons of all time when it came to runners in scoring position, TOPS+. And if you put the three season span together, it is actually the best. So does this make you believe in the other Ryan's hypothesis that there

is some signal here and not noise or just, well, someone had to be the best? I don't want to levy accusations, but this makes me think one specific thing, which is they are extremely good at relaying to the hitter what the catcher is doing when they are on second base. I understand we have the pitch comms now, so you can't necessarily be stealing signs, but maybe sometimes you could be stealing some signs legally, legally stealing signs, legally from second base. But does it- You heard it here first.

Hannah Kaiser accuses Milwaukee Brewers of cheating. That's not exactly what you said. I was trying, as you were talking, I was trying to think like, what would be a sort of, I guess it's not exactly causation instead of correlation because it is in some ways correlated. You do have to have somebody on second base in order to do that. But to me, that is what, like in terms of what the, how that would affect the conditions

that the batterer himself is under. Does that not sound like at least a compelling hypothesis that perhaps it is something to do with an ability to decode catcher placement and look for something the pitcher is doing and relay it back to the hitter. Cause that, that would be, that would be helpful. That would be helpful. That would be, that would be a way in which you could act as a team because it's the team

wide thing. If you told me that a certain player had the three best seasons of batting with runners and scoring positions, I would believe that that was signal and just simply indicative of like a skill set and ability to lock in. But team wide, that seems, I guess you're going to attribute to the hitting coach, but if teaching clutch is like a step beyond believing in clutch, do you believe in clutch and then you believe you can teach clutch? I do feel like there has to be something else, not that it is nothing, but that it is reflective of something else.

That's something in the defense or something in the runners on second seeing something. Or is it like the type of hitters or the handedness of hitters? You're, you're exploiting the holes that are opened up there. Is there something to that? Or another thing that Ryan Nelson mentioned, and he sent me some data on this, which I will share, and also a graph that will be linked on the show page, but there has been an uptick lately

in the league-wide numbers with runners in scoring position. So if you graph the league TOPS plus with runners in scoring position over time, and he did a five-year moving average, it looks to me like it is basically the highest ever right now and like sharply up over the past decade. And certainly the highest in a century or so, and the splits back then are probably not that complete. And one thing that Ryan speculated about is that that might have to do with less sackbunting.

That maybe it's just the teams are sack bunting in that situation. It's not as much, you know, let's get the guy over to third kind of thing. And so maybe teams have been more productive in those spots overall and that that's raised the league wide baseline for performance with runners in the core position. Though over the past three seasons, the Brewwers are basically middle of the pack when it comes to sacrifice bunting. The diamondbacks are in first by a lot, but the brewers don't really stand out in that respect. So yeah, it's the Braves at the bottom. They had that whole year where they were going without sack bunting and then the diamondbacks on the other end of the spectrum. And then the brewers closer to the bottom than the top, but not by much. So sort of a mystery.

We will see if that continues or if the Brewers have somehow cracked the code here, but that's interesting. And yeah, for once, fans thinking that their team's performance with runners in scoring position was noteworthy actually was, so congratulations to Ryan Topp on that one. Do you think they know? Do you think the Brewers know that they are? Yeah, they must have some sense of that, right?

And I think the teams, they often think that they have some magic ability when it comes to that, and they attribute it to character chemistry or clutitude or whatever it is. And then often it's not really sustained. So, or if it's the opposite, if it's not really sustained. Or if it's the opposite, if it's like the Padres a couple of years ago, then you hear all sorts of stories about, oh, the clubhouse and there's a leadership void. Maybe some of it is just random when it's one season, but over three seasons, I don't know. I'm sure the team, the front office must be well aware of that, even if they haven't done anything to bring it

about. So you'd think that they would know that the Brewers might have some degree of self-confidence in those spots just having succeeded so many times, whether they can continue to, I don't know. BT – Yeah. So if there are employers listening, hire me because I would like to, I'm now deeply invested in this story that I just learned about five minutes ago because I would like to, I would like to, I'm now deeply invested in this story that I just learned about five minutes ago. I would like to know if the members of the Brewers lineup, coaching staff, front office, and even pitching staff, if they are aware that they are historically clutch and then go further from there. I'll start with that. Start with that. Do you guys know? Do you guys know that you're a very old question?

Well, while I'm reading the next item here, you can Google just to see if anyone has already written about this or if they've been quoted talking about this. I will, I'll let you know. Thank you. So while you do that, I will move on to a division rival of the Brewers.

That's the St. Louis Cardinals. And here we have one that I had heard about initially, and then I completely missed the actual explanation for what happened here. So do you remember this summer, this was in July, and it was shortly after, I guess, the first assassination attempt on Donald Trump. And there were a couple of stories about baseball players and or teams

seemingly demonstrating some affiliation, some, some loyalty to Trump or picking up on his gestures. So there was the one where Taylor Walls did a, like a fight, fight, fight kind of gesture, the way that Trump did. And then he claimed that the gesture was not intended as a Trump endorsement, even though he was pumping his fist in the same manner. And he said, he didn't deny that it was Trump inspired. He just said, I think it's pretty inspirational when any person in the blink of an eye,

their life could be taken from them. They don't really know what's going on in the heat of the moment. To immediately stand up and show strength to me speaks pretty loudly. Anyone in that situation or that type of event, when it happens, it's strong. It's kind of represents character to me and something that similarly, I feel like I've faced those challenges in baseball, but on a much suppressed level, I guess, relative to an assassination attempt. I would, I would hope so.

But yeah, when I think Donald Trump, I think character much like Taylor Walls, so this was not an endorsement, I guess he stopped short of endorsing, but it was as close as you could come. It was tantamount to one, but the Cardinals were branded. And maybe this has to do with people making cracks about the Cardinals and the Cardinals fan base, which aren't entirely justified, I think in some cases, but the Cardinals had a home run celebration that a lot of people interpreted as a Trump reference. And a lot of people were speculating like, is this a Trump home run celebration? Because they

were like holding one ear and then holding the other arm up, which I understand how people could leap to that conclusion initially. And unless this is an incredibly convoluted justification meant to deflect that suspicion, which I doubt the actual explanation for this home run celebration was that Alec Berlison, who had kind of a mini breakout for St. Louis this year and was second in home runs on the team behind Goldschmidt, it came to light that he had had some aspirations as a rapper in college. Oh.

And this home run gesture was an allusion to Alec Berlison's brief career as an aspiring rapper. So it was basically like, you know, holding up your headphones to one ear basically while you're mixing or something. Like this was the gesture that they were going for. And Alec Berlison, his rap nickname, he was going by his moniker was DJ Burley Biscuits.

Yeah, in college wrapped If you're worried if you're if you're trying to look for music that's gonna get out there's no music whatsoever it was just for some fun things, but no my one of my roommates in college my freshman year, he had the whole setup in his dorm and You know, I would jump on there every once in a while and make a little bit of music and, you know, DJ Burley Biscuits came out and just, it just came out when I was on one of the tracks and, you know, didn't want that to come back and bite me. But apparently

some guys found out here and they loved it. So they started calling me Biscuit. I feel like just Burley would have actually been like, oh, that's a convenient play on words with your name. Yeah, I'll play a little clip of him explaining this, which it was eventually shortened just to Biscuit, because that's how baseball players- Nope, should have gone with just Burley, okay. Yeah, maybe you should have gone. But thenleigh. Okay. Yeah, maybe should have gone.

But then again, like Burleigh, that would be the standard thing that you would nickname a guy in baseball just because his name is Burleson. So maybe Biscuit at least conveys that it's based on something other than just his name. And frankly, I find this to be a much more delightful and interesting explanation for this home run dresser than what

everyone immediately assumed it was. But apparently this was Lars Knutbar. He just decided that he was going to start doing this and it caught on. And you just never know the origin story of a baseball team home run celebration. But yeah, this was not a Taylor Walls situation. This was entirely a bit of fond mocking of Alec Berlison and DJ Burley Biscuits. You said this was in July? Yes. My son's birthday is July 10th. And every word of what you just said to me was a surprise. I knew none of this. I didn't even know Alec Browsend had a nice little breakout this year. So delighted to have learned all of it. Apologies if I'm wrong and if somebody did write about it, I couldn't find it. Please send it to me. But I can't find anything on the Brewers

runners and scoring position unique clutchness this year. Free idea, free idea from your listeners to Brewer's Beatwriters or to me. I was unaware of this explanation as well and I didn't have a kid in July. I mean, I had one but not a new one. And so you can forgive yourself for being oblivious to this. Even though I had seen the initial furor about the Cardinals home run celebration, which I guess just reinforces the old,

a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth puts on its shoes. Not a lie necessarily, but a misconception in this situation. And always the initial inaccurate, but buzzworthy thing goes viral. And then the, I guess, less interesting explanation doesn't go as viral, though in this case, I think it's actually a much more interesting explanation. So, all right. I think DJ Burley Biscuits needs to pull out Jose Iglesias and put out a song. And then we would all know this. I've been radicalized by Jose Iglesias' star turn with the Mets- Okay, I'm glad because that's going to come up when we talk about the Mets. Oh, excellent. Okay, good. So save it. Yeah. Okay. All right. Staying in the NL Central then,

we had a couple submissions here, one from Don and one from Megan. And the first one, there's a visual component to this and I will drop a link in our little recording window here for you to see it, and we'll link to it for all the listeners. But it was something that happened early in the season in April, they were doing the home opener introductions, and Nick Madrigal. Oh, it's good.

Yeah, Nick Madrigal stood next to Luke Little. I don't know if this was alphabetical order or what, but Luke Little is not little at all, which is very amusing. It's kind of like a little John sort of situation here. Luke Little stands six, eight, and Nick Madrigal stands, what does he stand? He's listed at 5'8", so there's a full foot difference, and it looks every bit of it, and they're both standing there looking like barely members of the same species, let alone elite members of the same profession. And I love that. Everyone loves the Aaron Judge juxtaposed with Jose Altuve imagery. This is roughly as extreme as that, I guess, and two teammates, no less. So this is charming.

And the clip is extremely worth watching, even though now you know sort of what the punchline reveal is going to be, because the cameraman has to adjust. And that's like, he has to both pan sideways, but then down. Sideways and then down. CB And of course, the rest of the team is cracking up and laughing at this tableau, which is wonderful. The other cub story, I wonder if you're aware of this one, but this pertains to Mike Tachman, who I'm fond of because I think he once said publicly that he was reading one of my books, The MVP Machine, but he went a little more viral for a comment that he made during the season, which is when

he credited his walk-offs to his wife's OBGYN appointments. Oh my gosh. So he said, my wife had an OBGYN appointment this morning and she told me the last walk-off was also, we had an appointment that morning. So I'm gonna start taking her to the doctor. We're gonna get a lot of appointments in. So shout out women's healthcare.

Oh wow, shout out women's healthcare. Shout out women's healthcare, which is not normally a phrase you hear a baseball player say in a post-game interview. And he continued, she made sure that was the first message I had from her. So I wanted to put that out there and she okayed me sharing it too. So a gentleman, he's not oversharing. He's not like Lindsay Adler, just a blue sky out. Yeah. No, yeah. He, he had this cleared first. So yeah, a couple of walk-offs coinciding with a couple OBGYN appointments.

This was in August. He had a big one. This was a four, three win over the Cardinals and they were trailing by two and they scored three in the ninth and walked it off and Tachman was the guy who did it. And this was, you know, said tongue in cheek. I'm sure hopefully his wife did not actually have to go through with extra appointments in the hopes of engendering further walk-offs. But you know, you always have to worry with baseball players and their suspicions, what conclusions they could draw from these things.

I just checked they had a baby. I assume this is why she was going to the O.B. They had a baby born October 17th. So it's a shame that the Cubs were not in the postseason because she would have had a lot of appointments at least at the beginning. Because there's those appointments, they get closer together towards the end of the pregnancy. So we would have had a lot of a lot of walk offs in October, at least the first half.

The second half, but it got tricky. It would have had a lot of walk-offs in October, at least the first half. The second half might have gotten tricky. There would have been, well, they could have, maybe pediatrician appointments would have worked. Yeah. Go ahead, hit, if not walk-offs. Best of luck to Mike and his wife and also their kid and shout out Women's Healthcare.

And let's get to the Diamondbacks here, whom we have already discussed in this episode, but their story, which was submitted by Menachem. This was in August, manager Tori Lovello used batting practice to set the Diamondbacks fantasy football draft order. So this is in the genre of kind of fun, quirky, silly clubhouse story, manager letting his hair down, I guess not literally in Tori Lavello's case, but playing along, being one of the boys, and this was during the time

when the Diamondbacks were winning constantly, and so the clubhouse morale was high and they were hot. And this was something that Lavello agreed to well in advance, they put him up to this, and he took batting practice. Each ball during his turn in the cage was numbered and the distance that he hit each of them determined a player's draft position. So he hit the wall on Merrill Kelly's baseball.

This was in Fenway. So his deepest drive, I guess, was he hit the wall on Merrill Kelly's labeled numbered baseball. And so Merrill Kelly got the first pick in the Diamondbacks fantasy football draft. And he popped up on poor Jack Peterson's pick. Maybe this is why Jack departed the Diamondbacks, but he had to draft last. But it sounds like it was fun for everyone.

There was some quotes, Tori Lavello saying how much he trained and practiced for this and he wanted to do right by everyone, but there has to be a draft order and there have to be winners and there have to be losers and sometimes drafting late turns out to be a blessing. So sounds like a great time was had by all in Tori Lavello's batting practice for some actual stakes. I wonder if this is, if Jack Peterson was playing, I wonder if this is still the league that Jack Peterson was swept over. Maybe not, or maybe at least the membership in that league is a little different at this

point. But yeah, manager taking BP and sounded like he was a little rusty. He was trying to go deep. Didn't quite get there. My concern with this would be if it's the same guy, like it shouldn't it be like each of their own, their own batting practice distance for, cause it feels like Tori could have put his hand on the scale and favors. He could have. Yeah.

Like how do we know he didn't? How do we know he didn't? I guess there's no way to know. Maybe he doesn't like Jack Peterson. Maybe that's why Jack Peterson departed. No, we're starting all sorts of rumors on this episode. Jack Peterson's supposedly a great clubhouse guy. I'm sure he had a fine time, but Troy Lavello was of course a big leaguer for eight years, but like less than two full seasons combined.

And he had a 69 OPS plus, which is not nice really, when we're talking about an OPS plus, and this was a 99 was his last year in the big league. So not a great hitter to begin with. And obviously it's been a quarter century since then, but you know, not shocking that he might've popped up at some point, perhaps. Dodgers. Peter and Vicky submitted some stories here. So the first one, and this falls very much into the category of like, this was everywhere, but we didn't really address it because I guess there was only so much to say about it. And also it was well covered. The baseball internet had this well in hand,

but the Kike Hernandez-Gavin Lux crotch bump, which was, you know, after the playoff win and they just, you know, they very much bumped instead of the chest bump, they just, they bumped downstairs instead. And there were t-shirts made of this with the silhouette of these two players, a tenderly dick bumping. This is like a whole new definition for, for write down the dick, I guess, was this postgame celebration. And Kike has had all sorts of noteworthy postgame celebrations. And I guess there was the one where he dropped the F-bomb, right? And he got fined for that one, I think, because that was live, which he made sure to clarify before he dropped the F-bomb.

He didn't say, going to do a swear and warn everyone the way that Meg does on the podcast. But the crotch bump was sort of a new innovation in baseball players' celebrations. So Meg is always urging players to kiss, but only if they want to. And obviously that definitely extends to this kind of contact, which would probably be some sort of HR violation if it was unwanted. And I assume that there were cups involved. And so maybe the direct crotch on crotch contact was a little less direct than it might have been in some fields if two coworkers were to share this sort of moment. I just Googled this because I remembered it. I didn't remember this one.

Yeah, it's hard to forget. But I wanted to just remind myself. And so, and to be fair, I did put the word crotch in the Google, but the first news outlet to come up and congrats to them on actually second, sorry, congrats to them on the SEO is out sports, which. Oh, okay. Yeah. SEO is Outsports, which... Oh, okay. Yeah. It titles it, the title was Crotch Bump by Dodgers is gayest home run celebration in baseball. I don't know how thorough their accounting was of the various gay home run celebrations in the history of baseball, but I bet they're correct. I bet they're accurate. Yeah. And I bet they're keeping track. So if one tops it in 2025, I bet Outsports will be all over it. Yeah. I mean, I guess the very first or one of the first major innovations in home run

celebrations was the first high five between Dusty Baker and of course, Glenn Burke, which was, I guess, in some sense also a gay home run celebration and really quite a momentous one. The headlines, just the headlines, Daily Mail, bizarre MLB crotch bump divides opinion. Hey, it's very heteronormative of the Daily Mail. I expect higher journalistic standards and inclusiveness from such a fine tabloid rag. All right. And the other Dodger story, which was, uh, that was a Vicky, I believe, submission and Peter, he submitted, this was a Teasca related. So on April or September 13th, I believe there was an Apple TV broadcast

and you are a veteran of Apple TV broadcast. This was an on-field interview of Teasker Hernandez and I will play a clip of this. How much fun are you having in a Dodger uniform and do you want to stay in a Dodger uniform in the foreseeable future? You know it's been great man. I wanted to stay. I think everybody knows it. I wanted to be part of this team for three, four, five years to come.

But you know, it's not in my hands. It's it has to do with the Dodgers in their hand. And I'm just trying to do my best and try to do the things that I have to do to help the team win. Well, I got to be honest with you.

I've been pushing it on the pregame show. I got a couple numbers out there, probably three years at 35 a piece. I think you'd be okay with that. But yeah, you look good in the uniform. As long as it's a good one, you know, I don't, I'm a guy that don't think about a lot to the money. I just want to be a part of the winning team and be in a good hands to just to play my game and be in playoff every year. And so what happened here, this was Dantrel Willis questioning Teoscar while he

was out in the outfield and I'm a complete crank about this. I'm just very much get off my lawn when it comes to interviewing players during the game when they are on the field. I am totally fine with miking them up and hearing about it later, totally fine with it during exhibition games, totally fine with talking to someone who's on the bench or in the dugout or the bullpen or wherever, but I just will never quite cotton to having someone miked up and talking to broadcasters and answering often inane questions while they are actively playing baseball, which seems maybe like a safety concern and also just seems to kind of cheapen the competition. And yeah, I know that I'm maybe old school here and maybe I've kind of lost this battle at this point, but I will continue to rail against it. And in this case, you had Don Trell and I got nothing against Don Trell. I enjoyed Don Trell,

but he's questioning Teoscar basically about his free agency and about the terms that he might sign for and where he's going to sign and does he want to stay with the Dodgers? And this is a September 13th game between the Dodgers and the Braves. And you know, there are still stakes in everything here. And like what kind of answer are you going to get out of a guy? And Teoscar said like, yeah, he likes it here and he'd be happy to stay. And obviously he did stay. And we know that that was the truth.

And he said that subsequently when asked whether he would want to stay in LA. But you're not going to get complete frankness from a guy before he's even hit free agency and then bandying about potential terms that he might sign for, which Dantrel, I think significantly overestimated the AAV for Teoscare. But you know, it's not the worst or most awkward line of questioning that I've heard during one of these

live on-field in-game interviews. There have been worse ones for sure, but I don't know. It just seems like mid-September, pennant race going on, like two teams in the hunt here. He's probably not thinking about his free agency at this point, or you hope he's not while he's like actively fielding. So I just don't know what you hope to get out of him. You know, some breaking news. Yeah, I'm definitely staying. Here's what it will take to sign me. You know,

you're just not going to get that on a baseball broadcast. Well, you're not even going to get that not on a baseball broadcast. That will be, that's, I am, I, I'm going to take this as an opportunity to give you my opinion, which is you alluded you, this is included in your opinion, but my opinion on these in game interviews is just baseball is a sport that lends itself to interviewing people who are not currently engaging in the sport because the offensive team only one guy maximum four guys is engaged in the game during it. Like the fact that they do not just do the interviews with people who are in the dugout or in the bullpen or a pitcher who's not pitching that.

Like there's so many people to choose from who are not going like involved in the action that it feels like you've overshot what the interview needs to be by so far. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But then then a further beef with this one is just that you're asking him a line of questioning that is not even related to being like you're not you're not getting the benefit of doing an in game interview. If you're like like asking that after the game and get an equally boring answer. Cause he's not going to tell you like as a person who only gets to talk to these guys after the game, I can tell you, I don't even know if I'd waste a question on that because it's not going to say anything interesting.

But if you're talking to somebody in the game, hopefully you are at least at least catching in that weird opportunity to ask them something in which their current perspective of the field of action in action is going to benefit the answer in some way. Yeah, it's not a talk show. It's not a podcast. It's look, we have all these altcasts and they're just kind of hangouts during the game. And that's fine if you want it. And it's usually optional. And you can seek that out or avoid it, but you can't really always avoid the in-game on-field interview. And if maybe this is the baseball sicko in me speaking, and I guess like the pedant in me, the sicko in me, the baseball sicko in me is just me, but I would want to hear something

that pertains to like what is going through this guy's mind at that moment? Like what are you seeing here? You know, something about that day's picture. Which way are you leaning? Like what pitch is he going to throw? I don't know. Maybe this is too in the weeds, but like, if you're talking to a guy during the game, I want kind of like a line to his thoughts and feelings as he is in this situation where

we would all maybe dream of being, or at least imagine what it would be like to be in that situation. And you're just getting zero insight into that. You're not getting Ben or I on board for the in-game interview. If you're asking them questions that you could just ask them later. Yeah, and I feel like it makes baseball look bad

because it just confirms the stereotype that baseball's boring and that everyone's just standing around all the time, which clearly there is some truth to that relative to other sports. They're not going to do this in most other sports because they just couldn't because people are constantly in motion and out of breath and everything. But I don't know that you want to play that up. You could say, okay, that's just the way baseball works and let's make the best of it.

Some people might find it boring, but hey, one way we will compensate for that is by letting you talk to someone while they're on the field. And that's a cool thing that no other sport can do, but also it just kind of makes it look like less athleticism is required because it's like, yeah, we can just talk to this guy while he's out there doing his job. It's just, I don't think it reflects that well on the sport. I don't know. Anyway, staying within the NL West, the Giants story.

Now Xander listener and Patreon supporter, I had a little trouble coming up with a Giants one and Xander said maybe the 2024 Giants deserve to be overlooked. And this is, he's a Giants fan, so he can say that. But ultimately Xander and Kyle, Kyle of fan graphs writing fame, Shirama Taro, he and Xander both, they jointly submitted

the season that Ryan Walker had, which I think nationally went a little under the radar. And Xander said, he put up pretty stellar numbers, read all over the savant page, which is a good thing on the savant page, sub two ERA, outperformed his peripherals, but still a FIP in the twos, and top 10 in MLB in relief innings.

Also 10 wins if you're into that, which is always kind of fun for a reliever. Also assumed the closer role when Camila Duvall was shaky. Surprisingly didn't lead the Giants in relief innings. That was Jelly or relief appearances. That was Tyler Rogers, but did finish seventh and tied for fifth in those

stats league wide, third in the league in RE24 value as a reliever. And Kyle noted that he had the most relief innings and the second most relief appearances behind Brian Abreu of anyone with an average leverage index of 1.5 or higher. So it was the combination of he worked a lot by modern-day reliever standards especially for a high leverage guy who was getting put into important situations. So you don't really see the the high leverage and the volume combined all that often these days. And Ryan Walker in his age 28 season, I think he's 29 now, it was his second big league season and sort of an unheralded

dominant relief ace season for the Giants. Ben, I'm sorry to the Giants who are going to get overlooked again. Can I break some news to you, Ben? Oh yeah, please. That I just saw on Instagram, which means that I have to reveal that I just opened Instagram while you were talking about Ryan Walker. I forgive you. Shohei Otani is having a baby.

What? Oh, my heart is full. This podcast is still baby-themed. It's true. A real unintentional through-line of procreation. Wow. Congrats. Congrats.

That is wonderful. I mean, we were all waiting and wondering when the news would happen. He Instagrammed, can't wait for our little rookie to join our family soon. And then a picture of Decoy, which I will allow Meg to handle his inclusion in this Instagram post when she returns. And then a picture of a little baby onesie and a picture of some baby New Balances, of course. Oh, well, of course, get the SponCon in there.

Get the SponCon in there. Wow, man, he course, get the SponCon in there. Get the SponCon in there. Wow, man, he really, what a year, what a year. He has just sort of like speed run a personal life in 2024, like in good and bad ways. I don't mean he didn't have a personal life before, but it wasn't public. Like we didn't know that he had one and there was a perception that he didn't.

And while he was getting scammed and robbed by his closest friend and confidant, he was more happily getting married and revealing that he was in a relationship at all, let alone that he had a wife. And then now having a kid, congrats to Shohei and Mamiko. This is going to be huge news for the showbaze in the showbaze community that we have dabbled in on the show at times. So that's very exciting.

And you can save your kind of uncomfortable hypotheticals about how incredible an athlete the spawn of Shohei and Mamaco will turn out to be. Though certainly the bloodlines and the genes, they're probably about as good as you could ask for, but, uh, wow. Can you imagine the heartwarming content? I mean, the, the fur baby was one thing. I mean, Meg maybe doesn't find a decoy deco pin cute cause she finds him too, too perfect and off putting and disturbing somehow.

But, uh, I think decoy is quite cute, but now the combination of the human baby and the fur baby and Shohei and just all the rest of it, can you imagine like little Otani like hanging around the ballpark, just, you know, in the little uniform? Like, I mean, we were all impressed when, when Decoy threw out the first pitch. Imagine when Otani's like six month old It really I listened to I was listening to the episode you guys did with Sam about like what we'll remember and yeah talked about sort of Otani and his ability to Constantly it was always the same greatness. He wouldn't be what we were always talking about

But there's always like new it really does feel like he's like, now I'm left with what could he possibly do to make more news? He's blown through every possible both personal and professional news cycle, but surely he will find a way to come up. He'll be like, and it's twins or something. Yeah, it's like- CB 1 It's octuplets, so let's hope not for Mamiko's sake, but yeah, he'll somehow top himself for, yeah, there'll be New Balance sponsored videos of the infant in the cradle, picking up a ball, picking up a bat, both at the same time. So I look forward to it. I welcome all of that, SponCon, frankly. I can't wait to break this news to my wife. She's going to be so excited. I'm glad we got this live reveal on the podcast. Thank you

very much for breaking in. This is like the definition of interrupt your regularly scheduled programming too. Yeah. All right. I was going to talk about the Marlins before I was so rudely interrupted by this massive breaking Shohei news, but the Marlins story, and this is courtesy of Jason Stark in a recent athletic roundup of his weird but true stories from this season. And this is a weird one. Jesus Sanchez made an out on his own intentional walk. So this was the eighth inning of an August 25th game against the Cubs and

Jesus Sanchez was due up with runners on second and third in a one-run game. So the Cubs put up four fingers They tried to intentionally walk him Sanchez walked back into the dugout directly instead of going to first base Because he had already been told that if he reached Christian Pache was going to pinch run for him. So he thought, I guess, why bother strolling down to first? They're going to pinch run for me anyway. And this isn't even a real outcome. I don't even have to stand in the box or anything. So I'll just turn around, go back. Once I came, the Cubs appealed at first base

and Pache was called out. But then the umpires said, wait, Pache can't be out. He was attempting to pinch run for someone who was never actually on base. So then after convening and reflecting and deliberating, they called Sanchez out instead. And then the next day, the Elias Sports Bureau stepped in and ruled that not only was Sanchez not patch the guy who was out, but also Sanchez is walk didn't even count because he had

refused to go to first base. So evidently this was scored and this is weird. This was scored a fly ball to the catcher. If you look at the game game log, it's too unassisted to end in at bat in which a pitch was never thrown to a hitter. The other team was actually trying to walk. And so in Jason Stark and also Sarah Lang's patented fashion, he ended this anecdote by declaring baseball with an exclamation point. He had several of those in that article, but it was justified there because that was a weird one. And I always like a quirky scoring decision where even the umpires are kind of confused about what happened. I like, I don't know if I haven't

thought through the implications of this in any way, but I like this because I do not enjoy the intentional, the automatic intentional walk. And I want to discourage, I want to discourage too many cutting of corners to sort of cut to the chase. I don't like that. I don't like anything in baseball that is sort of like, let's make it as efficient and streamlined as possible. Yeah. Like I I'm kind of like, well, why do it at all? That there's, that's, that's also how I feel about how decisions, many media and content companies are making,

is it feels like there's a lot of like trim all the fat and then eventually you get to the point of like, why do it at all then? Right. And that's how I feel about that. It feels, I hate to use this phrase, but it feels sort of slippery, slopey to kind of be like, we don't need to go to first base.

We can just have the guys show up because they're like, yeah, no, do that, like enact, go through the motions. The motions are what we're here for. We're here to see the motions. Yes. And if you draw a walk, intentional or otherwise, you actually gotta go down to first even if you were immediately replaced. Okay. We're up to the Mets and this will be your time to shine in a second. The more obscure story that we didn't discuss was about JD Martinez and his wayward cleats and how it potentially affected his season. So this was early July.

Now, JD Martinez, I learned, goes through a pair of cleats every three or four games, which is way more often than I would have guessed. I mean, he's not even playing in the field, right? three or four games, which is way more often than I would have guessed. Yeah. I mean, he's not even playing in the fields, right? He just, it's because he's like just turning on his heels, just at the plate, just wears down the spikes. He said, I go through them quick just because I hit,

I'm constantly rotating on them. The moment the spikes start getting small, I start slipping in the box. So I have to use a new pair once every three or four games. If not, I'll just slip. And if you had asked me to guesstimate how often JD Martinez changed his cleats, I definitely would have been way higher than this. I mean, more games between wardrobe changes.

So I'm curious about whether this applies to every player or is this just a JD Martinez thing that he's like standing in the box so hard that he's grinding down his cleats. One way or another though, he ran out of cleats because his bulk shipment from Adidas was delayed. And so he asked the clubhouse manager to order him a new pair off of Amazon, but those shoes had an extra rubber spike on the bottom and they weren't molded to his foot like his usual cleats. So he wore them for one game. And he actually, I believe hit a home run in that game.

And usually we were talking about baseball players in superstition, often they'd be like, oh, these are my cleats now, I guess, cause I hit a home run. So this must be made for me. But it bothered Martinez. He didn't like it. And so he then finally got a special delivery of his three fresh boxes of Adidas cleats, which the company had overnighted to him. It wasn't the 30 pair delivery that he had ordered, but it was a good stopgap. It held him over because he had had to have a clubhouse attendant use a tool to

cut the extra spike off of his temporary cleats, his shoe, but it still bothered him and he woke up feeling ankle discomfort and he was out of the lineup for a day. Because of this, it's like a princess in the pee situation. It's like JD in the cleats. Kind of just one extra little nubbin on there was enough to just throw him completely off his game at least long term. So all was well, he got the right cleats back, except that all was not well, even if he was not literally slipping in the box, his performance in the box slipped dramatically because he had a 137 WRC plus

through June. July 1st, he wore the cleats and I think hit the Homer, missed July 2nd, and then from July 3rd on with his original cleats, he had a 76 WRC plus the rest of that season. Now, is that a normal slump? Is it he's getting up there in years or was it this one time that he wore the wrong pair of cleats and it ruined his mechanics for the rest of the season? I don't know, but when you're done digging into the Brewers, runners in scoring position conundrum, you can dig into this one. Maybe it was that he realized that like it was, um, he has sort of like mental glass

was shattered by realizing the fragility of his grasp on his, like he's a guy who famously remade his swing swing did all this work he's like a hitting savant that's what everybody said and realizing that he could be so disrupted by just a single spike on a shoe was just like a like an existential crisis like a personality coming into question what is this this whole like ethos I've built around being a cerebral hitter, as it turns out, it can be undone by one additional spike. And he just, he couldn't get over the mental hurdle of like, do I really, am I, you know, do we, do any of us control our own fates when you put it like that? So you can dig into his digging in, but that was the obscure

story. It's just that the Mets had so many stories surrounding them this year. Yeah, and we talked about a lot of them. And obviously we talked about the Oh My God Home Run celebration, but we didn't even really address the origin of that because again, it was well covered and I don't know what I had to add, but at the same time, it is kind of incredible that Jose Iglesias, while being a big league baseball player, was performing under the stage name Condolita and had a song, Oh My God, OMG, that debuted at number one on the Billboard Latin digital song sales chart, which that's a genre of music that has become mega popular. And he's like a crossover

star while he's basically being a utility guy for the New York Mets. BT. He is the true two-way player. I mean, that's how I felt about, remember Eddie Alvarez, the speed skater who was not a very good, I don't even know what position Eddie Alvarez claimed to play in Major League Baseball. He was not a very good baseball player, but he was also a speed skater, an Olympian, or a two-time Olympian, because he also played, I think, baseball for the Olympics. Am I getting that right? I think so. And it sort of mentally fascinates me to think about the fact, also played for the Mets, where it's work, that an uninteresting baseball player, but also cumulative skill-wise, more impressive than everyone else

that you'd be coming in contact with in baseball. Juan Soto himself, fewer talents athletically than Eddie Alvarez in some respects. And that's kind of how I feel about the Jose Iglesias where it's like Everyone is like so silly. What a what a marginal baseball player, although I had a pretty good year To like to also be a pop star, but it's like yes, but you guys what are you guys second? I want to ask everybody else to baseball people love to ask baseball players Like what's something you're bad at because it's like funny to think about

Professional athletes being bad at something. I want to ask them all, like, what's the thing you're second best at? Because I bet it's not top the charts level good. And Jose over here, his second best thing, actually it might be his first best thing, is. Yeah, that was incredible. And also the fact that he sort of soft launched the song before it became a big hit, like he was using it as his walkup music while it was still unreleased. And then actually JD Martinez, speak of the devil, he's not a devil, he seems like an okay guy, but he was the one who egged Iglesias on to play it for the whole team. And then it became kind of this clubhouse anthem. And then it was played at city field. And then like when the single was released, I guess, late June, he, he had the post game concert where he came out, like what a flex, like you're in the game and then you come out and you do the concert and you have the hit single.

Like then there's like a remix that came out with pit bull on it. Like good for him. He performed at the home run Derby too. So I don't know like how enduring this crossover career that Jose Iglesias has here will be, but I wish him the best. And it's always nice when you kind of have your post career career lined up or like at some point, you know,

maybe the baseball won't be worth his while anymore. Like it's holding back his music career. Now I have like a real business interest in which one is more lucrative for him. Which one do you think is more, it was awesome. An over under draft, is it the pop sardom or the baseball? Where is he making most of his money? the Pomp Sartem or the baseball? Where is he making the most of his money? CB Yeah. Yeah, because music these days, not always super lucrative either, but what was his salary he was making? What was he making with the Mets? LS I'm going to Google Jose Iglesias career earnings and we'll see. CB Well, yeah, I see like, I guess almost 40 million lifetime, it looks like at baseball

reference, but it doesn't include his 2024 salary for some reason. So yeah. 2024 was just about a million. Just a million. Why? You can have a million dollars. Oh, okay. Yeah.

Yeah. Year 1.5 maybe. Yeah. That's, I mean, in that realm, I would think having a number one single. Yeah, might be the pop star. That'd be interesting. Yeah. I don't know. All right. and then the other major Met story,

there were just so many that we didn't touch on because again, like what would we have to add to this? But the Seymour Weiner saga. You guys didn't talk about that? I don't think we talked about Seymour Weiner somehow, which like everyone else in the world was talking about it, but it's totally like my kind of story because I love a nonagenarian

and love a World War II veteran and their precious few left. And Seymour Weiner, of course, who became kind of a hero when he showed up at opening day, I think it was, and he was like the veteran of the game who was highlighted on the scoreboard. And the fact that his name was Seymour Weiner obviously made him an internet icon instantly. And then there was a $1 hot dog night at the end of April in honor of Seymour Weiner. And people interviewed him and he's very much a good sport about it.

Obviously he has heard the jokes before. The man is 97 years old. Nothing that anyone said was new to him pertaining to his name. good sport about it. Obviously he has heard the jokes before the man is 97 years old. Nothing that anyone said was new to him pertaining to his name, but, uh, this was a delightful story. So again, the Mets just, they made so much news and so many different kinds of news in 2024. Well done. All right. And now East sticking there, the Nationals, there was Darren Baker's debut with Dusty in attendance.

We may have mentioned that I think we didn't do a full media major league year segment, but this was something that made some people feel old, obviously, who remembered the very young Darren Baker almost being steamrolled at the plate as a tiny little bat boy and being saved by JT Snow back when his dad was the Giants manager and now he has made the majors in his age 25 season. So congrats to him, not a super top prospect or anything and even if you want to call him a baseball nepo baby or something, you know in baseball you might get like a nepo pick, you might get drafted in a late round as a personal

favor to someone, but stuff to make the majors unless it's on your own merits. So good job, Darren Baker. The other one that was submitted by John was the Kyle Finnegan up and down season. So it was a big thing. What would the Nationals do with Kyle Finnegan, who had become their closer at the trade deadline because he had been pitching pretty well except for one blow up immediately prior to the deadline. And you know, they were in sort of sell mode for the most part. And so they were thinking about should we trade Kyle Finnegan and maybe you're sort of selling high and it's a reliever.

And there was a lot of relief, I think, when they didn't end up dealing him. They ended up keeping him. And Tom Boswell of the Washington Post, who was just honored for his career output, very distinguished career, he wrote a whole column that he titled, this national's sell-off stopped at the perfect place. And then the subhead was the trade the nationals didn't make involving closer Kyle Finnegan may have been their best call and Buzz went on about how you know he thinks it's beneficial for a young team and a young pitching staff and for morale reasons to have a solid closer back there so you're not blowing lots of leads and that could be demoralizing and maybe it's good for

development to have a capable backstop back there, not a catcher backstop, but a closer backstop. In Finnegan's case, a solid closer is vital to giving the low-scoring gnats a decent chance to be competitive and watchable until all those promises, promises come true. So that was how the story started. And the way the story ended was that Kyle Finnegan got non-tendered at the end of the season. Yeah, the story has sort of a sad ending, but he did not pitch well at all for the rest of the season. And I guess in retrospect, maybe you should have tried it. He's 33 years old and you can get something good for that kind of guy maybe at the deadline.

And then in the post all-star break, he had a near six ERA. So things went south pretty drastically. So I guess maybe there's a moral in this story, which is not like trade everyone. Sometimes it's nice to keep people around and for reasons that aren't strictly related to her performance, but also I guess in retrospect, yeah, it might've been best to ship him out given the way that things went.

Padre's story is submitted by KD, and it's basically just that Jirks and Profar and Hassan Kim are besties. They're just best buds. Not new exactly this year, but new to me. And I watched a several minute long YouTube video where they were interviewed together and they talked about their friendship and I'll play a little clip of that. Jerkson, you mentioned that Ha-Sung has been good about teaching you some different phrases and words in Korean.

Do you have any favorites? Um, my favorite? Don't say it. There's a lot of favorites. My favorite is ****. This is going to go on TV. Cut this out. Something that a lot of people don't know neither, this guy is the funniest dude in

the league. It's a blessing to be around him. I'm a fun guy and he keeps me happy all the time. Basically they lockered next to each other when Kim was a rookie and he was just coming over from South Korea and Profar speaks multiple languages and he's an international player too, and they just bonded despite the language barrier and all the rest. They really vibed and they're bros. I'm kind of worried about the fact that they are both free agents now,

because I'm, I'm kind of invested in this friendship. And I hope that they're not broken up, that this one true Padres pairing is not sort of scattered to the winds. I hope they at least manage to stay in touch wherever they end up. But you know, it's a nice thing about baseball that it brings people together from all parts of the globe. And sometimes they become besties the way that Kim and Profar did. I love a baseball friendship. And I am, I do hope they get to sign somewhere together. That would be fun. But I also enjoy the kind of like, now that like, I like when I follow like a certain number of baseball players on Instagram and I like when I see someone

post something and then someone I didn't realize that they were good friends with because I sort of don't have a Can't immediately pull to mind when they would have overlapped as teammates You see them like comment or like on their post or they're in the post with them and I'm like You guys were so close like yeah, like like like all the various guys who were once on the Pirates, I feel like you see them in each other's Instagram comments sometimes. And I'm always delighted to be reminded that they hung onto these, that you could be a marginal player on a bad team and befriend a guy who then goes on to be a star for somebody else and those friendships indoor. Yes. And sometimes it's friendships that cross performance levels. Like the superstars, kind of the friend of the fringier bench guy or, you know,

Cho Hazel had all sorts of friendships with maybe not the second best guy on the team, necessarily, but someone you wouldn't expect, but they just bonded. And yeah, I've been meaning to answer a question we got from a listener and Patreon supporter, Steve, who said, sparked by thinking about the Otani versus Trout WBC at bat, Steve said, I think I assume that two generational superstars on one team, of course, means they're buddies that hang out and are close friends,

but really they're just coworkers. So maybe they're in a parasocially devastating scenario cordial at best with one another relationship. We hear a lot about guys being generally good clubhouse guys or terrible clubhouse guys, but have we ever heard of two players who are best buds on the same team? And yeah, here's one such situation. It's common. These guys, they aren't just purely workplace proximity associates.

They're good friends. You've been in clubhouses. These guys are spending tons of time with each other. So, you know, you're in the fraternity of baseball and it's not just like you say goodbye at the end of the season, then you see each other in spring. Like, you know, these guys are like in each other's weddings and hunting and fishing all off season, right? I believe Francisco Lindor's daughters were in Shawn Manaya's wedding in some capacity and Shawn Manaya got married right after the season. And that really emotionally upped the stakes as to what would happen to Shawn Manaya.

And it really made it a more satisfying return for me personally. I was like, oh, good. Oh, gosh, good. Okay, good. We'll get the good idea. Yeah. Think of how much time these guys are spending around each other and yeah, maybe that means you might get sick of someone, but also yeah,

you're just, you're kind of forced into a proximity and in a way that, much more so than most coworkers are even, you might socialize outside of work. We were talking about that with Lindsay, but baseball players, they're on the plane, they're on the bus, sometimes they're coming up together through the system, they're staying at the same hotel, they're on the road, often without their families for a large portion of the year. Sometimes they're away from their home country. Yeah, there are real close friendships and lifelong bonds that are formed by these guys, which is nice.

Real close friendships and lifelong bonds that are formed by these guys, which is nice. All right, next up is the Phillies and this was submitted by Ted Oh. And Ted noted, late in the year, they had a couple of clutch games from South Jersey natives. Tyler Phillips had a complete game shut out against the Guardians and Buddy Kennedy had the crowd chanting his name at one point,

which was cool. So yeah, a couple local, local-ish guys. Buddy Kennedy, grandson of former Philly Don Money, is a Millville guy. I think he is maybe even a Millville high school guy and definitely not the number one name you think of when you think of position players from Millville and even in connection with the Phillies, because it is one of my dreams that one day Bryce Harper and Mike Trout will be united as Philadelphia Phillies and Mike Trout can go see the Eagles play whenever he wants. And it just, it feels right that there should be a homecoming there since he's coming home to Millville every winter as it is, but Buddy Kennedy, slightly less notable Millville grad, he got

to star for the Phillies, so that was nice. And yeah, also Tyler Phillips against the Guardians, that was also a great game and he grew up rooting for the Phillies, And so, you know, lifelong dreams fulfilled, which is another nice thing about baseball sometimes. So yeah, you know, it's cool. That was the complete game shutout was in late July, I believe. And then Buddy Kennedy was kind of up and down with the Phillies for a lot of the season. But, you know, local kids make good stories are always kind of nice. And as a South Jerseyian, I have a slight beef with Mike Trotson, he's from the Philly area because Millville is not that close.

Someone who is, I say when I cover games, when I cover Philly's games, I stay at my parents' house because let me tell you, I will map it right now. I am something like 12 minutes from Citizens Bank Park in South Jersey and if I if I were to drive there right now, it would take me 16 minutes and I am in South Jersey and people give me grief about not being actually from Philadelphia I said that I'm from Philadelphia, even though it is only 16 minutes to the ballpark But it is to Millville Millville to the ballpark, but it is to Millville, Millville to the ballpark. That is not close at all. That's like,

that's that's like an hour. That's 47 minutes. Anaheim at least. I know that these geographic boundaries, they really do matter because Bowman was on last time and he's moving to Hamilton township. And I had to break the news to him that Hamilton Township is technically situated within the New York metropolitan area, as defined by the Census Bureau. And so I welcomed him to New York, which he did not take kindly to, but he was musing about whether that's New, North Jersey or whether it's central Jersey.

And there's a whole thing there that is probably not that interesting New, North Jersey or whether it's central Jersey. And there's a whole thing there that is probably not that interesting to non New Jerseyites. So we can probably move on. We can move on. I'm sorry. I'm sorry to have, I just been waiting for someone to platform me and bring up Melville so I can make that complaint that really we should all be talking about how I'm basically from Philly and not like Trapp.. And the Pittsburgh pirates, there were a couple submissions, uh, one from Andrew, one from Guy, one was about the billboard campaign that has been launched by a fan demanding that Bob nutting sell the team thus far. Nutting has not complied, but there is a whole network of billboards that

say abandon ship, Bob, sell the team. There's a website, our team, not his.com, which is, uh, incorrect. Yeah. Yeah. But, uh, not legally speaking, at least this is a possession is 10 tenths of the law sort of situation, but, uh, you know, emotionally speaking, absolutely. But, uh, there was a fan who,

there was a whole like campaign and a website and a GoFundMe and they have this whole network of billboards, so, you know, none of those billboard campaigns as of yet has succeeded in its goal, I don't think, but if its goal is to embarrass the owner, which is probably the real goal, then I would say that it actually has succeeded to some extent in that enterprise. So yeah, and they forced Pirate's president, Travis Williams, to issue a statement after the billboards

went up saying that the organization appreciates the fan's disappointment. And in the end, we all want the same thing to win, but maybe to differing degrees, or at least levels of willingness to invest. The other thing, and this is probably not under the radar really, but the fact that the Pirates, despite debuting the best pitching phenom in baseball in Paul Skeens and also having Jared Jones to pair with him, they also have maybe the best pitching phenom in baseball in Paul Skeens and also having Jared Jones to pair with him.

They also have maybe the best pitching prospect in baseball who has not yet debuted. So Bubba Chandler, who had himself quite a season and climbed the prospect rankings to the point that he's number 15 overall per MLB pipeline, which is behind only Jackson Jobe among pitchers and Job has made his major league debut. So Bubba Chandler, I mean, it's a wealth of pitching that the Pirates have and all the more reason for them to go invest in some hitting

to pair with that pitching because you never know how long that pitching is gonna last. But the pitching pipeline has not run dry even after Jones and Skeens. Looking forward to Bubba Chandler who will probably start the season as one of the rookie of the year leading candidates because he pitched in AA and AAA and was quite good especially in AAA. Sub 2 ERA in 7 starts there. tons of strikeouts. So we will presumably see him in Pittsburgh sometime soon.

Next team is the Reds. This will probably be a brief one. This was just something I noticed and was not quite aware of, but Fernando Cruz, who was involved in a trade recently, so he is no longer a Cincinnati Red, but when he was, he was effective for them if you look at the peripherals and a little less so if you look at the surface stats. So Fernando Cruz, who, like he's got nasty

stuff, he's 34 years old, he's going to turn 35 right around opening day. And you might think, well, why would you want this almost 35 year old reliever who has had ERAs near five in each of the past two seasons and he was just traded by the Reds with Alex Jackson who was mentioned on our last episode to the Yankees in the Jose Trevino deal. And the reason why they want Fernando Cruz is that he's nasty and he strikes out tons of guys and he has had a huge ERA minus FIP gap. So over the past two seasons, minimum a hundred innings, only Aaron Bummer has a bigger ERA minus FIP gap than Fernando Cruz's 1.83 run disparity there. And Bummer's, the big disparity was in 2023, whereas Fernando Cruz, it's basically been both of these years.

So he has struck out like 37% of guys, you know, walked a few too many, but still a healthy K-minus so walk rate and just like hasn't really been stranding runners very much and a fairly high BABIP and he just, if he could get that under control, clearly the Yankees are believing in the peripherals here because yeah, it's a 4.91 ERA with a 3.45 FIP in 2023 and this year 4.86 ERA with a 3.27 FIP. Actually, it was 2.83 in 2023. I was reading the wrong column. So hopefully his luck regresses to his benefit and the Yankees next year.

Good for him. Hope it works out. Yeah. Or hope it works out even better for him. And, uh, we're up to our last team here, Colorado Rockies last and also least probably in some respects, sorry Rockies, but, uh, they do have some, some stories here that were overlooked, although no Rockies fans really nominated them.

So I kind of found them myself. But one is that I happened to see this tweet, a fortuitous, well-timed tweet from my perspective from codify baseball that just noted the other day that Ezekiel Tovar set the all-time MLB single season records in 2024 with 1,576 swings and 528 whiffs. And no, those are not typos. So I assume that those go back to 1988, I would hope when we have the pitch by pitch data, if you're saying all-time, that's on record at least. So the most swings and the most misses in a single season on record. Congrats, Ezekiel Tovar. The most swings and the most misses. So two separate leaderboards topping them both.

Yes. Related, but yes. If you're going to have the most misses, you might as well have at least, like the most swings does make that better. How's his- True. This is another, you need to know the denominator situation. Well, truly, because how does his whiff rate compare? I mean, I guess that, yeah, like I don't know the whiff rate, but the strikeout rate, he had a fairly successful offensive season and season overall, given that he's like the

freest swinger ever by this one metric. And granted, he had 695 plate appearances, right? He played in 157 games. He's playing a lot. So there's that denominator too. Still, obviously a free swinger. In fact, he led the league in at bats, at least, but he didn't have many non-at-bat plate appearances because he didn't really walk very much, as you might guess.

So 3.3% walk rate, but sub 30% strikeout rate. I mean, you know, for a guy who has some pop 26 homers and yes, it's cores, but still he was just barely a below average hitter, even despite all the swinging and missing and a gifted defender and shortstop. And so he was almost a four war player according to fan graphs. So anything is possible. Denominators are important. That's how it's like, um, Randy Arroz-Arenas is like that with stolen bases sort of feels a lot of bases. He's also frequently leading the league in caught stealing. You gotta, he's just, you know, you gotta take the, the steals with the caught stealing sometimes you gotta take the,

the swings with the misses. Yeah. So 62% swing rate and then 69%, another not so nice 69% contact rate and 44.8% chase rate. So yeah, you know, he could afford maybe to be a bit more disciplined in some of those categories, but he made it work through his ancillary skills. And then the other one that I wanted to note about the Rockies was about Michael Toglia, who I had not spent a whole lot of time thinking about this season, but I saw a blog post from SportsInfo Solutions that highlighted Michael Toglia in quite good company. So they have their own stats,

like a hard hit rate, which is probably similar to the Statcast one, but I guess not purely Statcast based. And Aaron Judge had the highest hard hit rates. Okay. Makes sense. But number two was Michael Toglia of the Rockies, who hit 45% of his batted balls hard according to SIS. And the leaderboard here, which you can find at FanCrafts too, it's Aaron Judge, and then it's Michael Toglia, and then it's Kyle Schwaber, Shohei Otani, Jean-Claude Stanton, Gunnar Henderson, Corey Seeger, Ketel Marte, Juan Soto. So it's like, you know, the usual suspects, the best hitters in baseball.

And then Michael Toglia, who was decidedly not the best hitter in baseball, he had a 98 WRC plus. So he was right around the Tovar range, right around average. And he struck out a lot more than Tovar and he walked more than Tovar and he hit 25 homers too in fewer plate appearances than Tovar. But I just was not familiar with his game to use the, the shack meme. Like I did not know that he hit the ball quite this hard and that he would be

sandwiched on a leaderboard, like among the luminaries like that. Michael Togli. I went to his Instagram cause I knew nothing about him. Just recently got engaged and her, his last name had a toga themed engagement party. So I, I'm thrilled. Iemed engagement party. So I'm thrilled. I'm a big fan. Sir, I was also not familiar with your pun game and I respect it now that I have been

made a familiar. CB Well, I think that now makes me question whether I've been pronouncing his name right. And I think the answer is no, because at least according to baseball reference, it's Tolya. Tolya, which I guess, cause I was wondering whether it was that kind of, oh, what with the Toga theme. But apparently it's, yeah, it's like a silent G sort of situation too. So that is how unfamiliar with his game I was.

And also with his name, his name and his game. He was 26, he hits the ball very hard. It was his third season and maybe better things ahead. Because if you look at his stat-cast percentiles, he's 90th percentile in expected weighted on base average. Yeah, that seems good. LS. Learn the name now. The Toga party is not helping people to learn your name, sir, if the D is supposed to be silent. CB That's true. Yeah, but at least the toe part. Yeah. But yeah, I searched for a Woba minus ex-Woba leaderboard on baseball, savant, to look for guys who underperform there. And one scary thing is that, well, I guess Juan Soto was at, he was the biggest under performance this year.

So as great as he was, yeah, maybe he was a little unlucky, but on the list of 323 qualifying hitters here, Juan Soto dead last with a negative 42 point Woba minus X Woba. JD Martinez is 315, so maybe it wasn't just the cleats. He got a little unlucky as did number 313 Manuel Margot discussed last time because of his pinch hitting futility. And then Michael Tolia is 308 so clearly a correction could be coming here and I will correct my oversight of not paying attention to Michael Tolia or knowing how to pronounce his name. I think we have finally reached the end of this exercise. I think we have talked about all the

teams and I feel bad about keeping you away from your family this long over the holidays, although I guess you kind of had some sense of what you were getting into here. So thank you very much for being willing to take this plunge again. And I will echo all the sentiments from earlier in the episode about how much I enjoy your work and how pleased I am to have been able to commission a couple of pieces and also how I hope to read many more on any topic at any outlet, whatever you decide to do that

or are given the opportunity to do that. I just hope we get to read much more Hannah Keys at work in 2025 and beyond. Oh, thank you so much for having me. I did it to myself, the length of the... At some point in both last year's pod and this year's pod, I started to think, am I the reason it's going so long? Am I talking to it? No, I think the track record of Effectively Wild suggests that it's not you, it's me. It is at least both of us. Alright, some additional details about the Corbin Burns contract that came out after

we recorded. He gets $35 million a year for each of the six years. There is a $10 million signing bonus. So he gets $70 for the first two years and then he'll have to decide whether to opt out of the remaining $140 million over the final four years. There is some amount of deferred money in the deal, he has a full no-trade clause for the first two years, and then he can block trades to 14 teams for the final four years. Bob Nightingale reported that both the Blue Jays and the Orioles were going after him

aggressively. That AN AL East team offered him $250 million over seven years with no opt out. Susan Schlesser refuted Nightingale's earlier report that the Giants had offered more money than the Diamondbacks. So make of all that what you will. Speaking of 97 year olds, we just lost a good one. The great Charlie Maxwell, who had been the oldest surviving Detroit Tiger and was on the receiving end of one of my favorite effectively wild cold calls just passed away. If you haven't heard that cold call, I hope that in his honor

you will check out episode 1845 from May of 2022 when a stat blast turned into a cold call, which was a delight. Finally, I mentioned that Earth Abides, the MGM Plus miniseries, the adaptation of the 1949 George Stewart novel, is a baseball show in more than one way. And here's a quick clip from the finale No spoilers By the way, this scene comes decades after an apocalyptic plague when you have a whole new generation that doesn't recall the pre plague civilization All right, everybody It's five four. There's two outs and get ready for three strikes coming right down the middle

Why are there so many numbers in this game? In old days we were obsessed with statistics. Everything was measured. Everything was ranked. Numbers were the way we explained the world. I detect a critical tone there, but shortly after that scene, numbers proved pretty important. Vindication. We're not all about numbers here at Effectively Wild, but we're certainly stat friendly. We're also especially friendly to people who support us on Patreon, which you can do

by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners. CDF6GC, Mikey Mod, Hannah, not Hannah Kaiser, different Hannah, Jacob Fagan, and Steve Sacks, 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,

personalized messages, discounts on merch, and ad-free fan crafts, memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro, and outro themes to podcast at fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can find our Facebook group at Facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can find the effectively wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. And you can check the show page at fan graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links

to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. I think we will record again before the end of 2024, but you may not hear us before the beginning of 2025. So we hope you have a happy new year 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 pedantic about baseball? If baseball were different, how different would it be? On the case with light ripping, all analytically, cross-check and compile,

Find a new understanding, Non-effectively, why can you not be pedantic? Yes, when it comes to baseball, how can you not be pedantic?