Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2265: What We’re Anticipating in 2025

Episode Date: January 3, 2025

As the halfway point of the offseason approaches, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the relative merits of the first half of the offseason vs. the second half of the offseason, assess the weakest projected positions on contending teams and the best remaining free agents, and list MLB stories they’re looking forward to following. […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2265 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Van Graaff's presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Van Graaff's. Hello, Meg. Hello. We have almost reached the halfway point of the offseason, measured as the halfway point between the end of the World Series and opening day. Okay.

Other people, they might draw the ending line a little differently if you think spring training or the start of the spring training games is the end of the off season or something. I guess I'd allow that, but that's not how I define it. I would not allow that. I think that that is a misinterpretation of the term. Have some dignity. Well, that is how Kyle Loebner defines it. He is a listener and Patreon supporter who every winter does this tradition of a daily countdown to opening day. And he posts that in our Facebook and Discord groups. And he said today as we record, it's Thursday, today there are 84 days until opening day.

We're more than three-sevenths of the way through the off season. So we are just about at the halfway point. And that prompts me to ask whether you think the first half of the off season or the second half of the off season is worse for baseball fans. Which feels worse to you, the first half of the winter or the second half?

Wow. You know, there are arguments in favor of both, right? Yes, we shall have them. Yeah, because on the one hand, the first half, you're so far from opening day, right? Exactly. But you also are so close to recent World Series baseball. Although, you know, I think that there are a lot of people for whom they watch the World Series if they're a baseball fan, regardless of the

teams involved, but the distance that they might feel from like relevant baseball is really marked by when their team stopped playing, whether that was, you know, on the final day of the regular season or at some juncture in their playoff run. So you know, how close they feel to baseball, they might be a month out, you know, from really caring about it with any kind of fervor. At least if they didn't tune out when the team was mathematically eliminated, which in some teams cases may have been months earlier. So yeah, it might feel like a longer, this is measuring from the end of the World Series, but it is a regional sport.

And so there are people who consume the sport through the lens of a single team. So you know, those are the arguments sort of pro and con for the first half. And you know, one one variable that can sort of vacillate from year to year is the activity of the off season itself, right? So, you know, I would posit that we've had a pretty robust off season so far in terms of signings and transactions. Still, you know, notable guys left to find a final home, mind you, but you know, Juan Soto is a Met and will be for quite a while. You know, Corbin Burns has signed.

There's been some moving and shaking. That's not going to be satisfying to everyone. You might just enjoy like the hot stove season, But if you're not a Mets fan, for instance, not only might you not be thrilled that Wonsodo is a Met, you might be very upset. You might be inconsolable, particularly if you're a Yankees fan. So, you know, that can kind of cut a couple of different ways depending on how much activity there is and how concentrated it is in a couple of teams. And I think, you know, a year like this to my mind, especially because many of the transactions involve guys

signing free agent deals for more than was anticipated. I do feel like there's sort of a sense that, you know, baseball's healthy right now, right? Like there's a, to my mind, people are like, oh, things are going well in the sport, you know? Wonsodo signing this big deal. All of these pitchers are just like making big, big bucks. And so, you know, maybe that kind of cushions the weight.

So that's what I have to say about the first half of the off season. Before we transition to the second half, do you have anything to add? Well, traditionally, historically, I would say most of the moves get done in the first half of the off season. And you have the winter meetings, which is usually an off season highlight. Now we have had some anomalous off seasons in recent years. They're close together, in fact. Yeah.

And in some of those cases, some of the most major signings have extended into spring training. So it's not always the case, but yes, usually when you're talking about hot stove season, the stove is hottest earlier in the off season. And they're just a bunch of procedural things that are more interesting than it happened in the second half of the off season when you get arbitration, for instance, but you just get sort of a steady drum beat of qualifying offers, extended, accepted, rejected, non-tenders, you know, just stuff that at least gives you some sort of sign of life, you know, some proof of life for the sport basically.

And I think that coupled with the fact that, you know, maybe absence makes the heart go fonder. And so you're missing the sport more keenly in the second half of the off season, but it's also closer. And there's part of me and probably part of a lot of people that when baseball ends, it's sad, but also maybe you need a little bit of a break at that point, or you don't mind

a bit of a breather because you've just been watching and following the season continuously for six, seven months at that point. So you feel the loss more acutely, but also maybe a little change of pace. And I guess other factors could influence this, like just the time of year, the holidays, how freezing it is, what other sports are going on. So there are all sorts of things that have nothing to do with baseball that might affect your satisfaction as a baseball fan during those times. I'm just kind of concentrating solely on the baseball part of the calendar.

So those are, I guess, the pluses for the first half. So if you want toes for the first half. So if you want to segue to the second half and lay out the case, please proceed. Well, the case for the second half is that, you know, you start to get activity that more closely resembles actual baseball games being played the deeper into it you get. So, you know, we'll have, we'll have pitchers and catchers report in a little over a month and then spring training games will start and it'll start to feel like baseball even though you probably won't see like, you know, important regulars right away or you won't see

pitchers go more than in a couple of innings at a time. And you know, there, there are ways in which it obviously deviates from regular season ball, but it is being done with sort of an eye toward establishing what is your team going to look like in any given season? What is, what do the 2025, you know, New York Yankees look like? Well, they look like this. You can see them. There they are. They're right there. And you get the excitement of young guys who maybe aren't yet cemented into a lineup or rotation who are non-roster invitees. And then you see them and they're good. And you can start to dream on those guys or they're bad. And you can say, hey,

it doesn't matter. There's a non-roster invitee. They'll get it sorted, they'll figure it out. That's what minor league spring training is for. That's what extended spring training is for, right? So, you know, you start to see baseball, it starts to, as time goes on, look more and more like the baseball you'll see all spring and through the summer. True. Although it does occur to me to mention, if you're interested in some form of professional baseball being played, maybe the first half of the off season is actually superior because

you've got some international leagues still going. You've got the Arizona Fall League, you've got Lidome. And I know that this is a minority of fans of MLB specifically, probably are paying close attention to those leagues or taking solace from the Australian baseball league or whatever winter league is proceeding. But if you got to get your fix somewhere, that's out there for you. And so some of the earlier months of the second half of the off season are actually drier from a baseball perspective, even though MLB is closer to coming back. Let's just lay this fact out. In baseball, as in life, January is the worst month of the year.

It's just, it's a, I'm gonna do a swear. It's a real dog s*** month, you know? Like everybody at some point in this month, not everybody, but the vast majority of people will feel a social pull to take down holiday stuff, whatever their holiday stuff may be. And so, at a time of year where the days are still short, and depending on where you live, might be very cold, they might be wet, you might be in the midst of your damp, you know, like in the Northwest, you're just a little damp all the time. And not in a like I'm aging way, but like in a, oh my God, I'm going to get a disease that killed Victorians kind of way, right? You're in that space and we take down all the lights and look, I get it.

We have to maintain, if you celebrate any of those holidays, you want to maintain the specialness of it. There comes a point where you're like, all right, I gotta like have my living room look like it normally does. It's still a sad occasion. It's a sad occasion. And candidly, I think that like we should change, this is a, if you'll allow a cul-de-sac on holiday decorations, a minor diversion here. I think that the rule should be like, so I celebrate Christmas, so I'll speak for

Christmas. I do think it's good to take your tree down. And I think it's good to take down, like, if you have, like, cutie little things, you know, your agés, dah, that are floating around, you just take that stuff down. Because, like, you want it to stay special, and if it's up for three months, it will soon become unspecial. But I think we should be allowed to keep the outside lights up. I think we should be allowed to keep the outside lights up through February. I mean, not here, because Ben, I don't know how to tell you this, it's freaking perfect where I live right now. In the summer, I complained to you about the hot. This is the good sh** right here. This is the why of living here. It's perfect right now. It's sunny. It's going to be like 70

degrees today. There will not be any humidity. The only problem is the air quality. But anyway, I'm now doing a tangent to my diversion down a cul-de-sac. We should be allowed to keep the lights up. We've decided that that is not socially acceptable. So we take the lights up. When we leave the lights up, you should have to take down inflatables and all the other little lawn ornaments, just the lights. I feel culturally out of step with people on inflatables. People love inflatables, Ben, and I do not like inflatables. And look, I'm not going to like write to the HOA and say you can't have them, but I just, they're not for me. They're not a preferred decoration. I don't like the look of them. It's not for me. As an apartment dweller, this is not that relevant to me particularly, but yes, for a lot of people.

Yeah, look, it's nice to see pretty things. Pretty things. So I'm generally okay with the reason stretching out the period, procrastinating a little bit. I still have my Christmas tree up. And at some point, it becomes sad if you have a formerly living tree or gradually dying tree, which I become conscious of as it looks more and more like a dead thing in my living room. And then it becomes a fire hazard, et cetera. But for now, it still looks sort of nice and our daughter enjoys it. So there it remains anyway.

So anyway, January as a month, terrible for holidays, dark, damp, depending on where you live. We did draft months of the year, I believe, and days of the week on a Patreon bonus episode 23 of 38 and counting for anyone who wants to hear more on that topic. Yeah, you should definitely go check that out.

It's a terrible month, bad. And it's bad for baseball. I mean, like for people who work in the industry, it's go check that out. It's a terrible month, bad. And it's bad for baseball. I mean, like for people who work in the industry, it's like for me, it's a useful month. We do like, we'll get a bunch of prospect lists out this month, then we'll do all this stuff. Like we got stuff to do, you know, before spring training starts. But so like that's we're doing that stuff. But so anyway, terrible.

January awful month. Wish we could not do it. but we have to because that's how time works, you know, it progresses. If we called it something else, it would still be a bad month. We just call it something different. It wouldn't change anything for us, Ben. Did I have a thought that was more relevant to our conversation at one point? Sure, but now I'm stuck in this loop, much like a cul-de-sac, where I just am like thinking about how over the weekend I'm going to take the stuff down. Also, I would say the following, people have views, very strong views about when things

need to be both put up, the earliest one can put things up, and the latest one can take things down. And well, I also have views about this from my own household. You should do whatever you want. And I would invite people to consider that in years like this, where the gap between Thanksgiving and the winter holidays is so tight, because it was so short, because Thanksgiving was so late, you get an extra week, you know? If anyone gives you guff, you could say, I'm in a grace period.

I'm in a Thanksgiving induced grace period. Meg said, she gave me special dispensation. I don't get a lot of say. I don't get as much say as I think I should get for how good my ideas are, but you can say, look, Meg said, she's on a podcast. We put a lot of authority in those these days. Sure. Well, I'm going to side with first half of the off season because I just think it's Meg said, she's on a podcast. We put a lot of authority in those these days. Well, I'm going to side with first half of the off season because I just think it's busier. There's just more activity going on that's interesting. And second half, all you really have going for you is that it's getting closer. You don't have as long to wait,

but that makes it more agonizing in a sense because unless you're actually going to Cactus League and Grapefruit League games, which you can, that's an option that is open to you, but most people are probably not doing, then it always takes you by surprise just how boring that period is because there's nothing going on. You're excited when you see people report and they're stretching and they're throwing, and then maybe you watch or listen to some of the early spring training games just because you've been in withdrawal so long. But most people, I think pretty much tune it out and just say, okay, wake

me when it's opening day, because you're really just hoping that maybe there will be not too many injuries on your squad. You're just hoping to get through that injury free. Now here's another thing, and this is not relevant to us specifically anymore, but if you are a fantasy player, which many people are, then you do have fantasy draft season and there's the preparation for the season that is primarily in the second half of the off season, depending on when your draft is, or if you have a keeper league or a redraft league or whatever.

So that's something that could be a highlight of that period for you. But other than that, the actual major league baseball, it's always a slog at some point, because there's just, most of the transactions are done and you're just crossing your fingers and hoping to make it to opening day. It's just a war of attrition at that point. And so I think it actually stretches on longer. You'd think it's going to go fast because, oh, they're there, they're in uniform, there's baseball activities, quote unquote, are happening,

but it's just not that compelling. And I think the, the rosturbation that goes on during the first half of the off season is actually maybe more stimulating, so to speak, than watching those teams show up and do their thing and prep for the season and ramp up. And inevitably there are 18 people having Tommy John surgery at that point. So that's always sort of depressing. So yeah, I'm going to go first half is better, but at least second half, it's getting us closer. They're both getting us closer, but that's more tangible in the second half. I have two thoughts about this. One is very specific to being a person who lives in a place that does spring training. And on the one hand, what an easy

time we have, what a privilege, particularly, you know, for me, for like East Valley Games to just get to pop over and see, see the guys, you know, see how they see how they're doing, how they're, how they're producing, right? That's so nice. But I will say this, spring training has become a vacation for a lot of people, which like, what a great vacation. And particularly, I will again reference those in the damp. Come on down to the desert, Seattle folk, dry out,

watch the mariners like, you know, will they be good? That doesn't matter, you'll be dry. That's all that matters, right? You have to get out of the damp. But all these people come here and then traffic really sucks. And so I'm always, you know, in this weird, tense relationship with spring training as a per- individually, you know, me personally, me, Meg, because it's just, it does make things pretty inconvenient a lot of the time.

There's so many people, they don't know where they're going, they don't know how to park on the, at the complexes, just a whole thing. So there's that, although admittedly a problem that other people probably don't care too much about and find me annoying complaining about. The other thing I'll say is that I think rosturbation is a worse word than masturbation, you know? I think it sounds dirtier. And look, I'm not, everybody do what makes them happy. I'm not trying to harsh anyone's vibe, but I'm just saying as a word, I don't know. I don't care for it.

You know, it's not on my list of good words. Rasturbation sounds worse. Sounds worse. All right. So I'm going first half and which side are you coming down on ultimately? I think I'm actually going to come down on the side of second, the second half. I think you make good arguments. I feel like I made good arguments, but the promise of turning the corner with spring,

it's nice. January is terrible and December is a great month, but November is always, it feels so unsettled in the baseball calendar because you do have the potential for a lot of activity, but you don't necessarily have it. And so you're trying to figure out what to do with yourself. You know, can I go to a movie or is Juan Soto gonna sign? You know, there's a good amount of transaction activity over the break. And we did have a couple of things where we were like, oh, we need to like when Corbin Burns signed, we were like, we need to get that up today.

But a lot of the really big stuff had happened before that. And then many medium sized things happened that I was like, everybody just gets to do the holiday. I don't need to bother anybody. So good job GMs and po-bos. Thanks, Jerry. Thanks AJ. We can credit them largely for sitting out the season when they're often active.

Well, because it is roughly the halfway point of the off season though, past the halfway point when it comes to impactful transactions, I did a little snapshot, did a little assessment of where the weak points are on the various teams using the FanGraph's depth charts projections for 2025,

which are up year round, which is a nice little handy thing to refer to. And this is based on the depth charts projected playing time and only the steamer projections at this point. Correct. We have not folded zips in. Right. So with those caveats,

I will note that there remain 84.6 projected free agent war still sitting out there, which is roughly equivalent to the projections for the Dodgers and the Nationals combined. So that makes it sound like there's a lot of talent out there. And to some extent, that's true, although it's also bulk. It's just a lot of guys. It's mostly closer to the bottom of the barrel guys who are still out there. Alex Bregman is the only free agent remaining who is projected to produce Three War or more. So most of the elite guys are gone,

though some remain on the trade market. And of course there's Roki Sasaki who's probably not accounted for on here. He's not accounted for on here. He's not accounted for on there, just in case people are curious. If you just look at where the free agent team, the hypothetical imaginary team of just free agents, which would need many more than 26 roster spots, where it would rank in the various positions, free agents rank 18th in catchers. So not a lot of catching depth left.

You go out and get your catcher early, I guess. There's not a lot of elite guys left there. However, first in first base, first in second base, first in third base, and then first in left field and fourth in right field, but then 24th in center field. So yeah, if you want to get a free agent catcher or center fielder, you have, uh, yeah. Good luck. Although short stops, I was thinking, oh, maybe it's only the premium positions, but free agent short stops rank seventh currently in terms of cumulative projected were and then fourth and right field 10th and DH which sure surprised me and then first in starting pitching and first in relief pitching That's just a lot of guys so you can console yourself with the thought that if we just signed every remaining free agent

We'd be better than the Dodgers by a lot. We would just need some sort of carve out so that we could employ many more players than any other team did and also somehow find time to play them all. But there's a lot of talent left, just not nearly as much as there used to be. And so what I did was I looked at the projected contenders, and this is imprecise. I just removed the bottom eight projected teams by war. And this does not take into account schedule, but it's just team war projections. And the bottom eight currently are the Rockies, the White Sox who are not last, the Rockies are dead last, which I think the White Sox, they weren't, they weren't worst heading into

2024 either, as I recall. I think that's correct. They had a compelling case to become the worst, but they were not projected to be the worst. So it's Rockies, White Sox, Marlins, Nationals, Pirates, Reds, A's and Angels. Now, there are some teams in the eight that I just listed there that I would not say there's a meaningful difference really in their chances of contending. You know, if we're talking about the Reds or someone like that versus, I don't know, the Cardinals or the Giants. I mean, what is the gap that big there? But I had to make the cutoff somewhere or else we would have ended up with a lot of Rockies and White Sox projected weakest positions.

And then I looked at the remaining 22 teams, I identified the positions where one of those quote unquote contenders is projected to be among the 10 worst teams at that position. And the fan crafts, this page separates things into 11 different slots. So it's the eight positions in the field plus DH plus starting pitching plus relief pitching.

So of those 11 different buckets, there are 54 total entries for these 22 contending teams being in the worst 10 teams in that position. So roughly five of the worst 10 projected spots at each position are taken up by the eight worst teams that I've eliminated. And then the other five, the other half are taken up by the projected contenders whom you might look at and say, oh, you expect to contend? Well, you got to get better at this position. So if we look at all of these projected weak spots

and I put together a handy dandy spreadsheet, which I will link to on the show page, if you want to peruse it at length, I first checked to see how many times each projected contender is represented here. So how many times did they rank among the 10 worst teams at one of these positions? The leader is the giants, which maybe makes sense because they're one of the worst projected

teams, period. They show up on six of the 11 different slots as having one of the worst 10 projected totals at that position of all 30 teams. And then a tie with five, you have the Kansas City Royals and your Seattle Mariners who were close to being even higher. I think they were like one spot away from qualifying as one of the worst 10 reliever projected teams, but five, just five, some clear holes there and pretty much all of them position players, which is not surprising.

Yep. And then the Brewers and the Blue Jays at four apiece, Padres, Phillies, Rays, Cubs, and Guardians three apiece, Red Sox, Braves, Diamondbacks, and Astros two apiece, and then Tigers, Yankees, Cardinals, Mets, Orioles, Rangers with one apiece. There are two teams that I did not name there. So two teams did not show up among the worst 10 at any of these positions. One is the Dodgers, okay, that is not surprising. Dodgers, pretty good at everything.

But the second one actually did surprise me. It's the Minnesota Twins. The Minnesota Twins, yeah, they're not projected to be one of the worst 10 teams at any position, despite the fact that they failed to make the playoffs in 2024. And they essentially have not done a thing since then. They have not signed a free agent to a major league contract. They've made a very minor trade just recently for Mickey Gasper. I mean, just, you know, they basically haven't done anything.

And of course the poll ads are exploring a sale and maybe that is part of this and just the general lack of aggressiveness and spending that they've showed last winter and also at the trade deadline. And yet the talent base is apparently robust enough that they don't have any glaring holes, according to the projections. That surprised me. I was like, huh, okay, 28 teams show up here, Dodger's fine, but who's the other one?

It took me a while. I had to go through and refer to all the teams. Oh, I didn't have the twins out here anywhere. Yeah, I'm surprised by that. I do think that my sort of disappointment in how their 2024 went is probably coloring my perception of that team. And maybe this is because it's not really factoring in injury risk or depth or volatility or all of that, which kind of came back to haunt them to some extent this year.

I mean, it's sort of factored in. If you're missing tons of time in the past, you won't be projected to play as much in the future, but it's still not fully accounted for perhaps as we have discussed on the podcast previously. Yeah. So every other team, every other projected contender shows up here somewhere. And I looked at the difference between their projected rank at these positions and their rank in 2024 at the same position, just to see who also sucked there and hasn't really done anything to address it this off season or who wasn't so bad there, but has something has happened

that they are now projected to suck. And so if you look at just the biggest difference in a negative direction from their rank in 2024 and their projected rank in 2025, it is Padres left field where they were fifth in war in 2024 and their 29th in projected war in 2025. And that is purely jerks and profar was on the Padres and now he's a free agent. Yeah. jerks in profar was on the Padres and now he's a free agent. And now he's, I mean, if I had to pick one guy and one team, I think he'll just end up being a Padre again, but that's just me.

Yeah, it might make some sense. They have a need according to the projections. And even if, I don't know whether it's that he's kind of feeling himself coming off that season and like, hey, I had a heck of a season and now I'm in a new earnings bracket. And they're saying, hey, you signed for like a million bucks late in last off season. So. Literally a million dollars. Yeah. Don't get too full of yourself, too big for your britches here. So I don't know whether there's an expectations mismatch there, but maybe they'll find their way back to each other. And then the second biggest drop, Guardian second base. They were eighth last year projected to be dead last currently next year or this year. Sorry, this year.

Got to change my mind to 2025. How dare. And of course they made a trade there too. So this is not a mystery. They had Jimenez. They decided to do without him and they got a bunch of guys. I also put on the spreadsheet just all the players who were projected to be in the mix at that position and so with the Guardians, Juan Brito, Angel Martinez, Travis Buzana,

Daniel Schneeman, Tyler Freeman, Gabriel Arias, all these guys are on the depth charts. That's in descending order of projected plate appearances, but who knows how that will all shake out. And then the third biggest drop, Astro's right field. Hey, there's a pattern here. There's a little theme to this. So they were sixth in War for Right Fielders last year, despite Kyle Tucker missing half the year or so.

They're 27th projected at that position this year. And then Diamondbacks DH, they've dropped 17 spots. Orioles starting pitchers, they've dropped 17 spots. The Orioles were actually somewhat surprisingly eighth in FanGraph's starting pitcher war last year, which might be better than people would think, but currently projected 25th. And then Blue Jays left field, Padres second base, Red Sox shortstop. They actually,

they ended up being middle of the pack at shortstop in 2024 war 15th, but they are projected to be 30th this year. Brewers short shortstop, again, I can think of someone they lost at that position this off season. Yeah. And Brewer's third base for that matter too. Yankees third base, big drop there. You mentioned that last time. Rays centerfield, Cubs first base, Phillies catcher and Brewers centerfield. And those are all of the positions that are projected to drop 10 ranks, 10 spots or more in the ranking. And there are no teams that are projected to gain that much. It's mostly like if you had a good performance there and then you lost

someone or you sent someone away, then there's a big drop. Really like Royals left field, Blue Jays relievers, they're projected to climb five spots, which is about as big as you get there. So if we go by position at catcher, you have Red Sox projected to be 29th, Padre's 28th, Philly's 25th, and Ray's 21st. And I just went to 21st because that's again encompassing the 10 worst projections. And then first base, you got Brewers at 28th, Mariners at 24th, and Cubs at 23rd, Giants at 22nd. Second base, you got Guardians at 30th, Giants 28th, Padres 24th, Mariners 23rd. Shortstop, as I mentioned, Red Sox 30th, Braves 27th, Tigers 26th, Rays 25th.

Kind of inclined to give the Rays something of a pass, a bad shortstop projection. So, you know, things happened that they did not anticipate. Brewers, 24th, Diamondbacks, 22nd, Mariners. There's that team again, 21st. They do project well at catcher. So there's that. Kal Raleigh is, he's holding up his end of the bargain, but everywhere else.

Mariners actually have the top projected war at Ketcher, but the rest of the infields, not so hot for the most part. And then- It feels very targeted for no reason. I'm just sitting here. I'm just following the data wherever it leads here, Meg. Sorry. It's leading to the Pacific Northwest fairly often. And then third base, Brewers, 29th, Mariners, 24th, Yankees, 22nd, Royals, 21st, Leftfield,

which is, you know, it's kind of like a holding pen for just a bunch of guys, but Braves, Dead Last, 30th, and Padres, 29th as mentioned, Blue Jays, 27th, Phillies, 24th, Royals, 22nd, and Giants, 21st, Centerfield, Cardinals, 29th, Mets, 28th, Royals, 27th,

Astros, 26th, Rays, 25th, Brewers, 24th, Guardians, 23rd, Blue Jays, 22nd. So a lot of catchers there. I think catcher was the spot that the most projected contenders had holes at. And I guess that goes along with our previous conversations about centerfield just kind of being a dead zone. I mean,

this is all, it's all rank, so it's all relative. Sure. And still there are a lot of pretty good teams that don't have pretty good centerfielders 26th, Giants 25th, Royals 23rd, and Diamondbacks 22nd. And then the pitching, starting pitchers 27th for the Guardians, Orioles 25th, Giants 23rd, Blue Jays 22nd, and Cubs 21st. Mariners don't show up on that list. I'm happy to report. Not even close.

And then finally relievers, Cubs at 26th, Blue Jays at 25th, and Rangers at 21st. So if we were just to sort by rank, the worst ranks, it's Guardians projected to be worst at second base, Red Sox projected to be worst at shortstop, Braves projected to be worst in left field, Phillies projected to be worst in right field. So that's, I mentioned the Guardians guys, Red Sox, that's Trevor Story, Marcelo Meyer, Sidon Raffaella, Nick Sogar, David Hamilton, Braves Leffield, Jared Kelnick, former Mariner, Brian De La Cruz, Eli Weitz. Lots of former Mariners in some of these spots too. Carlos D. Rodriguez, Luke Williams, and then Phillies, Brandon Marsh, Johan Rojas, Cal

Stevenson in right. And then it's Red Sox, second to last at catcher, Connor Wong, Carlos Narváez, Sebi Zavala, Brewers, second to last at third base, Oliver Dunn, Brock Wilkin, Andrew Monasterio, Caleb Durbin, Joey Ortiz, Padres as mentioned, second to last at left field, Tiersow Ornelas, Brandon Lockridge, Oscar Gonzalez, Trenton

Brooks, Mike Brasso, E. Guy Rosario, Tyler Wade, and then Cardinals second to last in center Victor Scott the second. Hopefully things go better the second time around for Victor Scott the second, Michael Ciani and Lars Nukebar. And I could go on, but I suppose I won't. So those are the projected holes. Those are where the contenders need help and there is still some help out there. So hang the help wanted sign and go actually get guys. By the way, I knew I was pronouncing eggy Rosario's name wrong, but yeah, that's how you say that, which I would hate to miss that because that is great. And I love that that is how you say that. Well, I am still recovering from the broadside that was that entire exercise. It's a useful

exercise not only to highlight the places where contenders still have work to do, but also just, man, if you need catching help or center field help, good luck. You're either left sorting through some not particularly appealing free agent options or you're probably going to pay through the nose in the trade market because there's just not a lot on offer at either of those positions. It's rough. It was rough at the beginning of the off season and it's

only thinned out since then. So, ooh, yeesh-a-meesh. Yeah. If you are still in this situation of needing to sign someone, needing some reinforcements. So the best remaining projected catcher, according to the Fan Graph Step Charts, is Yasmani Grandal at 1.2 more. So yeah, it's pretty bleak, pretty thin at catcher, but I guess not a ton of teams need help there, but still James McCann, Christian Bethencourt, yeah. Former All-Star Elias Diaz is out there. It's pretty bleak. All-Star MVP, All-Star Game MVP. Yep. At first base you have Pete Alonso projected for a fairly meager 2.3 war, which might be why he is still on the free agent market.

But after that, it's a significant step down to Ty France, Anthony Rizzo, Rowdy Toles, Justin Turner, et cetera. Some of these are, it just depends on whether they're slotted in as a first baseman or a DH or what. Second base, Jorge Polanco leads the way, 1.5 projected were followed by recording artist, Jose Iglesias, Brendan Rogers, Whitmerefield. Wait, can I ask a really important question

about the second base? Do you, so like he can't bring, oh my God, to another team, right? Like he just has to swallow that. Cause it, you can't, it was such a, it was one of the bits, you know? It was a prominent bit. Like I think you gotta- That's his song.

I would say that you get, oh my God, if you get a Glacius. I don't know. I think that, I think that you might be right, but I also think that he's gonna get a lot of guff. Like, you know, cause it was just an important part of their, was one of their bigger bits of their many bits. I would not say the Mets own the rights to that song,

but I would say that it would lose a little luster if you tried to bring it to another team. Just repeating a home run celebration, whatever it is over multiple seasons and trying to bring it to a different team than originally pioneered it, just try something new, right? Develop your own thing. So even if it's his identity, it might not be the identity of the team that he signs with. Right. It'd be simplest, I guess, if he just resigned and then they could keep doing, oh my God. But usually the shelf life for those home run celebrations, often they do something new every year.

Sometimes it doesn't even last the full season. So each new group of guys, you want to develop your identity and have the thing that's kind of like in your mental yearbook for that particular team. So you develop your own, but he is certainly free to continue to reap royalties and play that song and perform it wherever he goes. I'm not denying the artist his work. I'm simply saying that it's potency as a team celebration, greatly diminished. Yeah.

Shortstop, Hassan Kim, Far and Away, Best Projection 2.6, despite injury uncertainty. So Kim and Profar, whom I learned are best buds on the NL Stories We Missed episode, they are both still out there and I just, I hope they stay put or it's just like a package deal. You have to sign both of us. Like when kittens go out for adoption together because they're a bonded pair. Right. We're re-homing them, but we're not separating the siblings sort of situation. That would probably depress their market, I would imagine. If free agents were like, no, wherever he goes, I go and you have to take both of us. That would probably thin out the suitors somewhat, but you know, maybe someone would take you when the price dropped low enough and how can you put a price on friendship?

So maybe it's, it's for the best. Yeah. I guess it would depend on the free agents involved. There might be some teams that are like, yeah, it'll be expensive, but okay, let's go. And then third base, as I mentioned, Bregman 4.2 projected war in very much a full season and then after him, it's a steep drop off to Johan Mankata. Wow. One more.

So yeah. And then left field, Profar, Alex Verdugo is out there. Austin Hayes, Tommy Pham, Jesse Winker, Dylan Carlson, Randall Grichak, Centerfield, Harrison Bader, Margot, Michael A. Taylor, Kike Hernandez, Rightfield, Anthony Santander, seems like there's offers floating around. There may be some movement there. Winker again, some other guys I mentioned. And then DH, yeah, it's sort of the same guys. So Alonzo, Winker, Turner, Santander, Jadie Martinez, Vogelbach, Kanna, Tlez. And then for the starters, it's Jack Flaherty, 2.6 War, Nick Pivetta, 2.5, Scherzer, Kershaw.

Wait, Kershaw? Is Kershaw still? He's still technically unsigned, but he's going to be a Dodger. Yeah, right. Yeah, so I wouldn't include him as actually available because it seems like he will most certainly be a Dodger. The Cardinals, innings eaters, Kyle Gibson,

Lance Lynn, Charlie Morton. Is Charlie Morton still a free agent? I think so, yeah. I imagine that he is doing what he often does this time of year, which is weighing whether or not he wants to retire. Yeah, hasn't he said he would keep going? I hope he keeps going.

Long may he pitch. And Andrew Heaney, Justin Verlander, Jose Quintana, there's still some talent out there on the starting pitcher market. And then relief pitcher wise, Tanner Scott, maybe the best reliever available when the off season started, certainly one of them. He's still out there.

Jeff Hoffman, my man, David Robertson, the ageless, David Robertson, Chris Martin, Joe Kelly, Kirby Yates, Kenley Jansen, et cetera. Craig Kimbrel, who's gonna take another ride on the Craig Kimbrel roller coaster. He's out there. So that is a snapshot of where things stand. That's who needs help. That is the help available.

So go get your guys if you need them. And again, I will put the full list online for anyone who wants to see where their team showed up. And then lastly, maybe we can just kind of semi-briefly do what we teased last time is just like anything we're looking forward to this year. I have a few things that I'm looking forward to even in the off season still. And I guess one of them is certainly, this is not just an off season one, but also an in season one.

It bridges both, but just generally Roki Sasaki. Just where he will sign is of interest, obviously, but even more of interest is how he will perform. He's one of the most intriguing players in baseball, just to see how he pitches, how he acclimates to MLB, how durable he is, how his team decides to handle his usage. What, if any, tweaks his future team makes, just like how nasty his stuff looks full-time against big league batters. All this stuff is tremendously compelling to me. So Roki Sasaki, definitely high on both my rest of off season and rest of year lists. Let's see.

What, what's my, like, I am curious to see sort of what, um, 2025 brings in terms of pitch or health. Does that emerge as a, a narrative again, defining the season? You know, do we see adjustment on the part of players or teams to how they're thinking about these things? Do those adjustments, assuming they happen, actually lower our incidence or severity of injury? The guys who say, opted to get internal brace rather than full TJ, do we start to get some indications of the long term ramifications of that decision?

I imagine it'll take a while before we have really reliable data on it, but you know, you might start to see if like, I'm not saying this is going to happen, but do all of them, you know, immediately get hurt again? Well, that would be bad, you know, I might tell something about internal brace. But speaking of alternate Tommy John procedures, I think that my number one thing I'm looking forward to is a Shohei Otani pitcher, you know, and getting to see him be his full, hopefully fully operational two-way self and get to the bottom of what's going on with that dog. I know that that's a project that's a little more specific to me, Meg.

But- Yes, yes. I look forward to your further digging on that subject. They're not going to let me anywhere near that dog, Ben. Your one woman crusade. They're not going to let me anywhere near that dog. No, probably not. Although, I guess as you've speculated, maybe the dog is nowhere near Shohei Otani most of the time.

I'm going to roll up to Camelback and I'm going to be like, where is decoy? And they're going to be like, who's your chapter chair again? We got to get disciplinary procedures gone. That's obviously number one for me, just because I miss that appointment viewing where the two way Otani days and I watch plenty of Dodgers and I watch a lot of the H.O.Tani too. But I honestly, I probably watched more regular season angels baseball in 2023 and earlier than I watched regular season Dodgers baseball in 2024. Just because as good as the Dodgers were, you knew they were going to make the playoffs at some point and I saw plenty of them in the postseason.

And even though I was watching all of their stars, I didn't have the hook that I had where I was absolutely tuning into every fifth or sixth or whatever it was angels game, because I was not going to miss it to a Otani start, so to be able to just, and it was like a family thing, you know, my wife would watch with me and we would just look forward. I use the, the fan graphs, probable starters grid a lot referred to that tool often just to see, okay, when he's, when's he coming up again? And what am I doing that night?

Or when is the game like, you know, just as a non-fan of any particular team anymore, I miss that structure to my viewing where just on any given day, I would just watch, you know, what's the most compelling nacho, what happens to be on at the time when I want something on in the background. But that was the one case where I would anticipate days in advance, oh, Shohei Otani. I can see him pitch and hit. So yes, very excited to see that. Hope he hits the ground running,

hope he kind of picks up where he left off from a pitching standpoint. He's been through this rehab process before. Will that help him? I don't know where there'll be rust to shake off. Will it take him some time to look like his peak pitching self again? Will his stuff fully return after the second surgery?

Lots of intrigue there. How will the Dodgers handle him? What will the schedule be? What will he look like offensively? Will he stop stealing bases? Will he say, okay, been there, stolen that, did my 50-50 thing. Now I'm pitching again. I got to take it easy.

I'm not running as much. It would almost be like more of a flex if he just like stops. He's just like, yeah, I did that. You know, that's old hat. I showed you I could steal almost 60 bases, you know, onto the next thing. So it was a one year blip just to show off that I could decide to do that and then do it immediately. But yeah, Otani's not the only pitcher who's returned. I'm looking forward to, as you're saying, I guess that's the silver lining for this season of the dark cloud, which was so many pitchers getting hurt early last year is that a lot of them are in line to return at some point, hopefully in the first half of the

season. So really looking forward to seeing Spencer Strider again, let's hope. And maybe Shane Bieber, maybe the Marlins, Eury Perez, Sandy Alcantara, who I guess will be auditioning for the trade deadline for someone to pick him up probably. But seeing those two guys and DeGrom. DeGrom who made it back and looked basically like his old pre-surgery self in a few starts

at the end of the season with the Rangers and also in the minors to see him hopefully do his thing for a full season, let's hope, fresh ligament in there, just like, you know, seemingly still retained his stuff post-surgery. If we could actually see a full, healthy Jacob deGrom season, whatever that looks like at this point in a Rangers uniform, that would be pretty exciting. And he would further his Cooperstown case if you care about that.

He's all about peak obviously, and it would help if he had a little bit more of one, but just to see the extreme dominance that we saw with him, if he could sustain that over whatever a full season looks like for a starting pitcher these days, that would be scintillating. So let's hope that happens. Things don't sort of stop there for me from a pitching perspective. Like I'm really curious to see what Skeens' sophomore campaign looks like, how he adapts to what I imagine will be a bigger workload in 2025 than he was able or allowed to really shoulder last year. So I'm looking forward to that. I'm really looking forward to year two from a lot of those young guys, the various Jacksons, I think that we had a really exciting group of rookies

or, you know, you could even stretch it to like guys who were not, maybe not technically rookies anymore, but were in their, their sophomore year. And I'm looking forward to seeing how those guys sort of continue to evolve and assert themselves in the league. So that's exciting. Yeah, I'm absolutely looking forward to full season of Skeens. What does that look like? What's his workloads? How much do they let him pitch? And I like how they handled him this past season. You know, it was kind of-

You didn't mean it as a criticism. No, not at all, but just he's built up further. He's raised the baseline. Right. Of course, they were taking it really easy with him early in the season in the minors, which at the time I was sort of just dubious. Is this the right way to go about things? Cause like at some point he's got to like actually go deeper into a game if you ever want him to do that at the big league level. But then he did sort of,

I mean, not super deep into games, but deeper than he had been early in the season and the minor. So it was more about, I guess, not wasting the bullets, quote unquote, that we talked about whether that's actually an apt phrasing, given that there isn't really just a finite amount of pitches you can throw necessarily. But at some point, it was appointment viewing just to see Skeens, and it was appointment viewing to see Jared Jones early in the year. And by the way, I hope that he rebounds and that it was more of a fatigue issue with him than anything more serious

where he just kind of tailed off. If you have skeins and Jones and then Bubba Chandler comes up at some point and Mitch Keller is still like, that's basically an almost fully homegrown rotation of, you know, mostly just like phenoms. I mean, that's pretty sexy. So they might not hit and they might not win because they don't hit, but the starting pitching, pirates appointment viewing, and that makes it all the more frustrating that they're not seizing this opportunity and saying, who knows how long these ligaments will last. And we got all these great young or youngish flamethrowers, let's go, let's make the most of this. And they are not because Bob Nutting, but it will at least be entertaining to watch

them maybe for the first five or so innings of games. So that's something. They're a really interesting club and they have, this is, this is both a compliment and a supreme insult. Like you said, they, they're in a spot where they might start to challenge the Mariners for the most frustrating, uh, pitching to offense mismatch. That's not true. They don't have Julio. So, you know, there's that, but, um, and they don't have Cal. So actually it's a terrible comp and I shouldn't have made it except that I had to take an opportunity to whack the Mariners because

apparently that's the theme of the episode. Yeah. Glad you got in on it too. So it wasn't just me. And what else? I guess, uh, you know, some stuff I'm still looking forward to over the off season. You do have those era defining pitchers who are still free agents out there. Yeah. Kershaw may be free agent and name only, but Justin Verlander, Mac Scherzer, right? Where are they going to go and what if anything do they have left? So that's pretty compelling. It'd be nice to see a last hurrah from those guys. It'd be fun to see like, I mean, they would probably not sign with a team like the Pirates

because they probably want to make the most of the time they have remaining and actually win. I was going to say, it'd be fun if you just like put Max Scherzer or Verlander on that staff and they could impart their wisdom to the youngsters. But yeah, why would they want to do that? Why would they do that? Yeah, it's not like the Pirates are going to blow anyone out of the water salary-wise. But to see them maybe be like back of the rotation type finishing off a strong core group and just putting some polish on a rotation and maybe there's a little left in those guys if they could stay healthy.

That's fun to watch. I am intrigued by Pete Alonso's free agency. I mean, I am intrigued by Pete Alonso's free agency. I mean, kind of in a like, this could go very badly away. Yeah, just because based on the rumors and the reporting out there, it sounds like he hasn't fully adjusted his expectations. It sort of sounds like he's still thinking of himself in a, I don't know, 20 years ago, what would I have made as a free agent kind of lens? And I just don't know. As we've discussed, there just seemed to be so few remaining destinations that are great fits for him. And so it'd be nice if he just went back to the Mets, but how much of a premium are they

going to give him? They should give him some premium just for being a fan favorite and being famous and maybe selling some tickets in New York and all of that. But there's a limit to that. And I just wonder what the compromise is going to be, or if this is going to be one of those things that stretches deep into the spring and whether that would even help him. It's probably easier maybe for a hitter to ramp up than for a pitcher. We saw how Montgomery and Snell started last off season, which is not how every late signing pitcher has started the season, but it can't be easy

because you just, you don't want to ramp up until you're actually signed because you don't want to hurt yourself before you sign somewhere. So that's not as big an issue with someone who's going to be playing first or D Hing or whatever. But yeah, I am pretty fascinated by how that shakes out. It's funny. Like, uh, yeah, where does he fit? You know, who needs a first baseman? Seattle Mariners. Yeah, they do. There's no, they're not going to do that, but I mean, I don't say that knowing anything, I just say that like assuming, but God, that would be so funny. How do polar bears do in the damp? They probably pretty well.

They got those coats, you know? Yeah. Keeps them warm in the damp. Would be excited under any circumstance for the first official MLB games of the season, but the Dodgers are opening in Tokyo this year. And I mean, given the personnel, that's pretty fun. It's going to be a great, it's going to be great. I cannot wait to hear that place when they play.

I think it's going to be really, really cool. And by the way, it's Dodgers Cubs. So you get, I mean, this is not a coincidence, but you get Otani, you get Yamamoto. They actually do plan these things. Yes. You get Imanaga, you get Suzuki. There's some chance, I guess, that Sasaki ends up with one of those teams. Seemingly he was inspired, his agent said, to come over in part by watching

Shota Imanaga's success, not that he wasn't considering it beforehand, but imagine the atmosphere. Now, I think the Dodgers, I think Dave Roberts has cast cold water on the idea of Shohei Otani pitching in that series, just because it's March 18th and 19th at the Tokyo Dome, so it's extra early. It's not a given that he is not going to be ready to start the season when the season starts with everyone else. But it sounds like he's not quite going to be two way Otani operational in mid March.

So that puts a little bit of a damper on it that we're not going to get to see, say Otani versus Imanaga or something, but we might see Yamamoto versus Imanaga with Otani in the lineup and Suzuki in the lineup. Like, that's going to be loud. That's going to be fun. I bet it'll be very raucous. I think it's just going to be a really great fun time and I cannot wait to fall asleep in the fifth inning.

Yeah. I have mixed feelings about that whole enterprise. I fully support all efforts to play overseas and broaden the game's global footprint and to cater to just an absolutely ravenous market in Japan. Absolutely support that. But yeah, the time difference, the weird like, is this opening day? Not really. Technically it is.

So the season has started, but it hasn't really started and you almost need like two different definitions of opening day. And then, you know, it kind of throws a crimp into those team spring training and ramp up plan sometimes. So there are some downsides of that practice, but this is as good as it gets. And we've seen enough games played in Japan now that the novelty of that has worn off maybe a bit. But yeah, this matchup quite compelling. I think you're right that like the novelty has worn off, but the atmosphere there remains so great that it doesn't, I don't know.

I don't think it's really lost any of its luster. And look, you just you just make a decision, Ben. you just make a decision, Ben, you make a decision to say that you're not doing anything about opening day except for having to finagle the playoff odds a little bit. Because if folks remember from last year, we had a preseason, because people like that as a checkpoint every year, right? You have the preseason and we just had two, we just had two. We had all teams and then we had the Seoul series and we'll had two. We just had two. We had all teams and then we had the Seoul series and we'll do the same thing this year. And then I think about the calendar in terms of stuff that has to be ready by opening day and I just, I don't acknowledge

the existence of the Japan series for those purposes. Everyone agrees that that's fine. Everyone being our readers because if you wait, then there are always moves, Ben. Sometimes you get big injuries, sometimes you get a weird last minute trade. So you get more complete and accurate information if you just wait. And so I think it's fine.

Everybody gets along. And as long as I don't get norovirus again, it'll be a great fun time. That was the worst. It wasn't the worst part of my 2024. There were a lot of low points in 2024, I'm not going to lie. But that was definitely, it ranked. It was in the top 10. Having norovirus literally right before opening day. A miracle. A miracle those staff predictions got up. Oh, God. Not great timing. Not that there is great timing for having norovirus.

No, but that was particularly bad timing for having norovirus. No, but that wasn't particularly bad. Wash your hands, everyone. And with soap, you have to wash. Apparently norovirus is spiking, Ben. It's like we're in the midst of a bad norovirus time. And hand sanitizer won't do it. You got to wash your hands because apparently the cells are different.

They don't have an envelope or something. So you got to put, they have to have soap and so that they slough off and actually go. So don't rely on hand sanitizer, wash your hands. I mean, do that anyway. Good to know. Yeah, it was good to get a hand washing PSA in the podcast. Oh, because it sucks so bad.

A lot of people contagious this time of year. And also, I guess still interested in seeing what if any trade market shapes up, especially when it comes to starting pitchers over the rest of this off season, because Crochet was already traded. And again, like Jack Flaherty, other than Sasaki, Jack Flaherty is about as good as it gets on the pre-agent market at this point. So if you're a team that's in need of some real top of the rotation arms,

your options are limited. So does Dylan Cease get dangled for a second straight off season or, I don't know, Sunny Gray or someone like that, or is there someone who we're not really thinking of as a trade target who might move? Yeah. Someone we aren't thinking of is obviously available who ends up wearing a different uniform. Yeah. Yeah.

And do the Orioles do something between now and opening day? Again, talked about this briefly with Hannah when we talked about the Burns signing and Orioles fans are probably sick of hearing this, but also maybe are saying it themselves at this point. Yeah. It's like, gotta go. We just highlighted those worse projected rotations and the Orioles had one of them. And it sounds like, yeah, I guess maybe a Flaherty reunion could be in the cards or for the birds, but it's just in the cards. I mean, he has been a card, so I felt like I had to clarify. Yeah, I was picking up what you were putting down.

Yeah. I like that. That was a nice little tweak. And like, if they don't do anything significant between now and opening day, do they sign some extensions at least? Can they do that? Could they throw their fans a bone and say, well, we didn't go get anyone new and exciting really, but we at least like kept our core intact? Are they going to do that at some point? And if they don't, if they just don't make major waves between now and opening

day or at the deadline even, and you know, we'll see how the season proceeds. Do they get a win in the postseason? But like, does Michael Iass weather that? Like, does he survive just another disappointing season without having made a major move? Cause like as great a job as he has done building up the farm system and graduating these guys, like you got to flip the switch at some point. So he shouldn't, like if you cannot make that mental transition from, okay, we're a rebuilding team to we are a contending team. We should be a favorite at this point.

Like if you just don't have that gear, some executives, maybe they have one strength and not the other. And at some point you just, you got to show that you have both of those skills in your arsenal, assuming that ownership allows it, which seems more likely now than under the Angelos. So yeah, that is an ongoing question mark in my mind. Their definition of success is fundamentally different now than it was when he took over. I have said many times that I think there's no special honor, there's no souped up victory

in winning using sort of cheaper roster building techniques than not. There's no shame in spending money. You obviously have to have an owner who's willing to do that. We're going to, I think, learn something about that in the next little bit here in the case of Baltimore, but getting to the postseason isn't sufficient for them anymore. They're, you know, to be considered a successful franchise. And I do think that extensions would be a perfectly good use of their resource, assuming they have it, particularly because I think there's a lot to be said for like investing money in position players, right? We've seen versions of this before where those guys are just more consistently available

than pitching tends to be. But if you're not going to sign pitching, you need to demonstrate that you can really develop it. They're a smart organization and they have some really talented people working for them, but you got to do one or the other. And I don't know what their internal understanding of success will be. I don't know what ownership's understanding of his obligations, him being Elias are, but the way for them to think about it is we got to win some postseason series and we kind of need to do it soon because if you believe that you should develop talent internally, that you're good enough at doing that, that you can cycle through talent and not sign guys to extensions, you need to go show that you can. And if you need to keep those guys around, well, guess what?

You only have so many more years of cost controlled Adley. He's entering arbitration. You only have so many years before you do have to start thinking about Gunnar and Colton Kauser and all of these young guys that they've brought up. And if your model is going to be, we win, they get expensive, we let them go, you got to do the winning part. And if you're not, then you got to sign them. But like if your understanding of how to build a team is, you know, squeeze every

last bit you can out of cost control talent and then you don't win, well, you've failed by your own understanding of team building, right? So, you know, there comes a point where you're too like beep boop bop boop and you're actually sacrificing expected value by not getting more out of a group that has a lot of really talented young guys who don't cost you very much. So think about that, Mike. You know, I don't know if he listens to Effectively Wild. He used to follow me on Twitter.

I don't know if he's made the blue sky migration. He seems like someone who might not. Also looking forward to the Ronald Acuna comeback, by the way, just wanted to mention that there was a report that he might not be ready for opening day, which is a bit of a bummer, but hopefully it won't be too long after that, his return from ACL surgery. And of course, the same question after he previously returned, which is what will he look like? Will he still run? And he did the last time that he came back, but after yet another absence in surgery, will he or will he be a different kind of player, a more one-dimensional, but maybe still valuable

type of player? But yeah, just looking forward to seeing him, finding out what he looks like, and hopefully he'll look good. LS. I'm looking forward to his comeback. I'm looking forward. You've already mentioned Spencer Strider's comeback. I want to see how that looks. forward. You've already mentioned Spencer Strider's comeback. I want to see how that looks. I look forward to the everyday-ness of baseball, especially, you're not a football guy, so this won't resonate with you maybe in quite the same way, but the football calendar has been so weird this year and disjointed. You know, we've had all of these, we've had all these Monday nights where we've had multiple Monday night games, which is like, why? And, you know, there's always the Thursday game and then there was football on Christmas and this weekend there's football on Saturday and

there's all this football, right? And so it feels so odd because on the one hand, it's sort of mimicking some of the everydayness and it's not every week that they're doing that and it's not, you know, every team even, the Seahawks, you know, so stupid. Postseason, it's fine that they miss the postseason, Ben, because now I get to devote myself to my life's true passion, which is talking about how stupid Sean McVeigh's hair looks. That's a little dig for friend of the show, Matt Martel.

Love you, Matt. He lives in LA and he makes like $8 million a year. Why your hair look like that? You have no excuse. You have zero excuse for it and years, it's been years. It's like he watched one Blink 182 video and he's like, that's my hair forever. I've decided that I'm a weird blend

between analytics and the Backstreet Boys. What is that? Like get it. Blink is back, baby. Blink is great. But is there no one in his life, it's more Backstreet Boys than it is Blink 182. People are like, those are very different heads. And you know what? You're right. They are. It was

a bad comp. I'm sticking with Backstreet Boys. That's a more accurate comp. But all I'm saying is why does your hair look like that? It makes me wonder if your loved ones don't actually love you that no one has been like, hey, Sean. I know he doesn't listen to the podcast. He's very busy being an NFL head coach. I'll never hear about this. Maybe they love him so much that they think he looks't listen to the podcast. He's very busy being an NFL head coach. I'll never hear about this. Maybe they love him so much that they think he looks great, whatever his hairstyle. I'm just saying that sometimes one bit of kindness that a partner can do for another partner is to be like, so, hey, I do love you, whatever you look like.

And if you like this hair, then I think you should rock it. But I want you to know that you'll look like a weird nerd backstreet boy. What's going on with that? You know? This is my question for Sean McVeigh on the ramps, you know? Like, can he overcome it? Anyway, so I'm looking forward to the real everydayness of baseball, the casual, there's appointment viewing, there are things we want to see, there are guys so compelling that Ben just watched the Angels for years, voluntarily, just like as many games as he could. And I can only kind of call him a sicko because it made sense, you know? Tani's so great and compelling. But also you get to pick and choose, you get to take a little nap, you can go run your errand. I'm held hostage on Sundays because

I want to see stuff and I'm like, I guess I have to wait to go to Target. If Sean McVeigh likes his hair, he should keep it that way. I just think it looks ridiculous and he lives in a place with a lot of very talented stylists who could help him out, I think. So that's what we're looking forward to. And there are many other things, of course, but we have a bunch of bold predictions to do when we get closer to opening day. LS I haven't thought about that yet. CB No. LS It's too soon.

CB We got plenty of time. I will just, correcting our last episode when we ran through the goals for 2024 and whether teams achieved them, I misread the Orioles goal, which I said was to win a postseason series. It was actually to win a postseason game, but that doesn't change the answer because they failed to do that too. This feels like piling on. I was just going to correct myself in the outro, but since we just talked about it and they came close, they lost a couple of one run games in the playoffs. I know. They did not do that. They got to do that this year.

That will certainly be a goal, the minimum for 2025. And then the Cubs, I also misread or I guess we miss evaluated the Cubs one, which was sign major free agent, win division, look like a team on the rise with a young core fail. They did fail. They obviously didn't win the division at the very least, but they did actually sign a major free agent after that prediction was made. And you kind of touched on that. The Cody Ballinger signing was after the preview episode for the Cubs that year.

So they did fulfill that part of the goal, but not the others. So doesn't change the overall rate of success here. And also wanted to point out that Ted O, Patreon supporter in response to our conversation about how the active home run leader right now is historically low. Ted noted that that is also true of just the active war leader. So it's not just home runs, it's also overall value. Mike Trout is the active leader at 86.2 Baseball Reference War, and that's the lowest active leader since Ted Williams in 1952, which again, that was depressed by wartime service. So, you know, other than Trout last year, he was the leader last year with a even slightly lower war. So that I think reinforces some of the stuff we said about why the home run leader is

not leading by more or doesn't have a higher total. I think it's less about the home run specifically, though obviously hitting that to homers that can translate to war. I think it's partly just the quirk of timing, Albert Pujols retired, et cetera, and partly just the general longevity in this era not being what it was maybe. So it's that as well. And I didn't put a Mike Trout rebound on my list of things to look forward to

because keeping my expectations low, but if that were to happen, it would be one of the most wonderful things to happen this year. I like the Orioles. I want, I want to be clear about that. I sound like I'm giving them. I find them fun. I very much enjoy the excellent young players that they've developed.

That is why I want them to surround those players with a strong supporting cast, so that's all we want here. It just felt worth clarifying. I'm not trying to like give them the business just for the sake of it. You know, their fans went through it during the tanking. So like, you gotta, you come out the other side of that and you've delivered on the, the drafting and the developing and the scouting part of things. But I feel like implicit in the promise of like,

yeah, we're gonna absolutely historically suck for several years is while we're not spending any money, we're gonna come out the other side and we will be willing to spread some money around. Yeah, it just hasn't happened so much yet. Right. That'll do it for today. Thanks as always for listening.

We'll get to some emails next time. You can send us your questions and comments at podcastfangraphs.com You can also contact us through the patreon messaging system If you are a patreon supporter and you can become one by going to patreon.com 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 including prioritized email. The following five listeners have already signed up, Andrew Guthrie, Jim Pergolese, David McKellis,

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iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild, and you can check the show page at Fangrass or the episode description to your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week, which means we will talk to you soon. The stats need contrast, zips and steamer for the forecast Coming in hot, big boss on the hovercraft No notes, minor league free agent draft Burn the ships, flames jumping for a nav Calfima, boning on the bad shaft

Makers on the buck feet, never say you're hot seat Games always better with the pivot table spreadsheet No ads, subscribers will support us Vroom vroom fast on your slog the rig of mortis Rest in peace Sam, rest in peace Jeff