Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2306: Extension Tension

Episode Date: April 9, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about umpires’ surprising preference for full ABS, Rob Manfred’s take on torpedo bats, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s $500 million extension, players’ frugal behaviors, precedents for Dennis Santana’s short pants, the Giants’ new City Connect jerseys, and (1:14:31) the Dodgers’ White House trip. Audio intro: Benny and a Million Shetland Ponies, “Effectively […]

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 Not effectively, why though, can you not be pedantic? Yes, when it comes to baseball, how can you not be pedantic? Hello and welcome to episode 23.06 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ring, or Ben, how are you? Doing okay. And I learned that you have a new enemy or an old enemy that's been newly revealed in your campaign to promote the challenge system over full ABS. Turns out that the umpires are against you. They want full ABS. I bet they do. This came to light in a Q&A that Commissioner Rob Manfred did with the New York Times.

And here's the question, how do umpires feel? What did they tell you? Because there was an earlier question about robot umps being tried during spring training and Manfred said, oh, it went great and we'll do it in 2026 or we probably will. He said they might go to the MLBPA and the MLBPA might say, because it's a bargaining year, let's deal with this in bargaining, let's wait. So maybe they'll kick the can down the road for another season, we'll see.

But he was happy with how it went. And then the follow-up was how did the umpires feel? Manfred says, we obviously had to make an agreement with them to use it and we made the agreement. I will say this, I think that they were more receptive to using it on every pitch, because nobody knows what he would have called. The problem with the challenge system

is it points out when you're wrong. And I think nobody likes to be shown in front of 48,000 people, they just miss the pitch. Then Michael Schmitt asked the follow-up, so what you're saying is that the umpires were more in favor of having it on every pitch, and they would no longer be calling balls and strikes and a robot would be doing it. Manfred said, I think we have the right to do that on every pitch.

And then the follow-up was, so you're saying the umpires would go along with it. Why wouldn't you do that? And Manfred goes on to say that the players prefer the challenge system, at least for now, because it's a smaller change and they generally prefer smaller changes and also framing and not wanting to lose that and change everything about the catching position, et cetera. But interesting, isn't it? If you had asked me last week whether I thought umpires were more in favor of full ABS or challenge system, I'm not actually sure what I would have said now, but I'm not sure that I would have known

that they would be pro full APS. I want to be careful on how I say what I'm about to say, Ben, because it's gonna, you know, you throw the word lazy around, it has judgment behind it, right? You know, it's got a certain something to it. I think that Manfred has correctly identified the psychological force that is at play here, which is it doesn't necessarily feel good to have one's mistakes revealed

to be forced to reckon with those mistakes in front of a lot of people. We're defensive creatures a lot of the time. If one wanted to be cynical, callous, a little dismissive of the fine art of umpiring, one might level the accusation that this reveals sort of laziness on the part of home plate umpires, which I don't think is actually really a factor here. It is surprising to me that the fear or reticence to be found wrong in front of people is stronger than umpire's will to power, shall we say, right? Because to be the home plate umpire in a big league game is to occupy a position of tremendous authority, right? And we, I think, tend to be fairly greedy in our

guarding of what power we have in our lives. And certainly in our professional lives where we so often feel like we are cast about, subject to arbitrary whims. The umpires have a union, so they have a little protection from the arbitrary. But I was surprised that the sort of sentiment that won out was I would prefer to not be identified as bad at my job. I'd prefer to simply be identified as less powerful than I was a week ago. Yeah, because obviously umpires are used to people telling them that they're bad at their jobs. That's not new. That's as old as umpiring. And that goes for people on the field or in the dugouts,

telling them that, or people in the stands telling them that with no basis, but still supremely confident in their judgment. So it wouldn't be anything new really for umpires to be criticized, but what's new I guess is that people might know with certainty that they screwed up in the ballpark. Now you already have a bunch of monitors and screens around and people have their phones and apps. So you can access that information quite quickly now as it is. Right. So, but it's just a little less of a public performance. Like we're making a spectacle of a performance review for you, basically. Just putting it on the big screen.

Let's see if this umpire screwed up. It's like a little game show in the middle of the game. And, you know, as we have established the truth of a call being bad, you know, only loosely connected to the willingness of fans to jeer and boo an umpire, right? Like fans will boo umps who are making perfectly good ball strike calls, but there is something about it being up on the screen that I think maybe changes the dynamic in a way that I failed to appreciate. And it's been interesting, like as we have gotten into the early going of the season here, I have seen people on

social media be like, challenge system now. A lot of them have been Phillies fans. I get the sense that the home plate umpiring and some of the recent Philly's series has been found wanting, not just by Philly's fans, but often by Philly's fans. And so people are like, challenge system. So it is being invoked as a way to supersede the authority of the home plate umpire. And there's some real gusto behind that invocation on the part of the fans who I see doing it, I still think that once the system is implemented and you, one, have the release valve of the challenge system so you know that while the moment might be high stakes, you have a remedy.

I think that some of the animus toward umpires might fade a little bit. I also, I do really think that a lot of ump vampires do a very good job and the quality of officiating that they are bringing will be underscored by the challenge system. Although there will be exceptions, you know, in individual cases, I think we're going to be like, well, we know who the, we know who the bad umps are in like a fresh way. It feels like it lacks strategy on the umpire's part, to my mind, but feelings are very powerful, you know, so there's that part of it too. In a sense, it speaks well of them that they are willing not to be the main characters because that's always been the allegation. Oh, they think the game is about them. It's

the ump show. And so the idea that they're willing to just surrender their primary role and just sort of step back and delegate to a computer, I guess that suggests that they aren't too precious about their place in things. But also, yeah, not even just wanting to preserve their importance. Well, I guess it goes hand in hand, but just from a self-preservation standpoint, one would think that you don't want to be rendered obsolete or give people additional ammunition to make the case that you are obsolete. Now, I don't think umpires actually are because that's not their sole role behind the plate. They have other things to do. There are still going to be calls to make and everything. But

if you take ball strike calling out of their hands, and then if you automate check swing calls, which I think should be done, and they've tested that and I'm in favor of that just because it's always been so subjective and squishy. But yeah, that's not ready yet to be like for folks who are like clamoring for that, that, that, that needs more time. It's not ready for prime time just yet. Yeah, it seems like it should be doable, given all the technology that they have now.

But yeah, further testing required, yeah. But if you remove those responsibilities from them, now I know you still have to have someone back there for plays at the plate and various other tasks. But administrative responsibility. Yeah, but a lot fewer. And so you could imagine some scenario where it weakens your bargaining position,

let's say in the future. It's like, hey, you're doing a lot less work back there. The hardest part of your job is no longer part of your job. Exactly. And so it must be tempting. I mean, who wouldn't want to not do the hardest part of their job is no longer part of your job. Exactly. And so it must be tempting. I mean, who wouldn't want to not do the hardest part of their job? Just take away this really difficult responsibility and just the hundreds of decisions that I have to make when I'm back there, the decision fatigue that goes along with that,

all of the criticism that is tossed my way, all the barbs that I must weather. And so, yeah, it sounds like it would be really freeing not to have to make those calls. But then, yeah, I do wonder at a certain point whether they just say, do we actually need all these UMPs or do we have to pay them as much as we've been paying them? Or it's just, yeah, it seems like people generally want to cling to any, I mean, as we all worry about automation

endangering all of our occupations, I think we're all somewhat wary of that. And I guess they're kind of reading the tea leaves here and they know which way things are going. And if they make a big stink about it, I don't know if they dug their heels in and said, we can't do any challenge system whatsoever. I don't know that that would work because I think it's a pretty high priority for MLB these days. But yeah, to just concede the entirety of that role. Yeah, I think if it were me, I don't know, I think I'd be okay with the continued difficulty and embarrassment just to maintain a foothold, like just to continue to be able to

make the case that, yeah, I do a pretty important job back here. Yeah, I think that that's right. I wonder if they have made sort of a strategic error because it is incredibly difficult what they're doing. And as I just said, I think that in general, they do a pretty good job. I am an advocate of the challenge system as we know, because you do need that release valve. You need to be able to correct in the moment or grade just error, but they do a good job. And so it does seem like a weird concession to Grant. It's an odd one.

I don't know that that would have been my advice to them if I were counseling them on what to ask for, especially because the league seems very open to the challenge system. They seem like they're happy with how things went in the spring. So you don't have to see to the machine in this way, at least not at this juncture. So why volunteer it, you know? Yeah. I don't know if this is a unified position among umpires and this is just Rob Minford's side of the story to be clear. Right, exactly. It's being represented by Rob Minford who will at some point be across

the negotiate. I mean, not him specifically, but like, so there is that part of it for sure. Yeah. He also pointed out something that I thought was sort of a stute where he was asked about torpedo bats and whether they're good or bad for baseball. And he said they're absolutely good for baseball. And then he said, I believe that issues like the torpedo bat and the debate around it demonstrate the fact that baseball still occupies a unique place in our culture, because people get into a complete frenzy over something that's really nothing at the end of the day.

The bats comply with the rules, players have actually been moving the sweet spot around in bats for years, but it just demonstrates that something about the game is more important than is captured by television ratings or revenue or any of those things when you have the discussions and debates about it. And I think there's something to that

in the sense that baseball does break contain every now and then. And it's usually for bad reasons. It's usually because something went wrong, someone cheated, the pants are transparent, whatever it is. And I guess it's, hey, Shohei Otani is amazing. But beyond that, it's usually some sort of scandal. But this wasn't even a scandal. There was nothing nefarious going on here. The actual impact of these bat changes is probably pretty negligible on the whole. And yet it really did become a big story in baseball circles, but also just casuals, mainstream.

There were people asking both of us, I'm sure, about just what's going on with these bats? What's up with bats? What's the deal? Maybe it's partly the way that it was portrayed or people just seeing a snippet of the story and getting the sense that there was something illegal going on here and all the conspiracies as you were saying

when we talked about this for the first time. But baseball does have this potential just for the smallest things. And I guess the pitch clock was one too, like those rules changes. That was, I think, of general interest to non-hardcore baseball fans. Maybe that's just part of it is just the fact that it is so entrenched that it has these deep roots that there's still the whiff of national pastime about it, that whenever they change anything, then that really does rise to the level of national story. Not to say that that doesn't happen in other sports too.

I guess it still regularly does. I mean, football just is national news constantly, whatever happens in football. Yeah, so it's more, I guess, maybe it's a reflection of the fact that this doesn't happen in baseball more often anymore. That would be the glass half empty interpretation of this, that like, it's actually notable

when baseball becomes big news outside of baseball circles, but it does still have that potential and sometimes it's for the silliest, smallest things. Yeah. I think that, you know, because there is such a long history, it just lends itself to reaction when something changes. I'm sure that the torpedo bat thing was also aided by the fact that the team hitting the barrage of home runs was literally the Yankees, you know. I wonder if it's the Brewers, does it break contain in quite the same way? I don't know, probably

not until those bats are noticed on the Yankees. So it was sort of the perfect combination of interesting thing that people hadn't previously noticed and team that one is likely to react to. But I think that there's something to it. It's our game. I was happier when it was the Pitch Clock because I think that was largely a positive story. I feel like I feel like the fervor around the torpedo bats has kind of died down a little bit. It's already subsiding. It's like, oh, yeah, this doesn't actually matter that much. The Yankees aren't hitting nine home runs every game with these things. So maybe it's not that big a deal. Yeah, maybe, maybe a certain outlets jumped the gun adding a torpedo bat option to their fantasy platform.

Did you see this? We will tell you who was using the torpedo bat. Okay. Am I supposed to, what am I supposed to do with that information? I mean, nothing out of the fantasy, but. I saw that the sports books also were adding torpedo bat specific parlays or whatever where you can, I'm sure another way to just extract money from people. Police people. Yesleece people. Yes. What is even the bet there? I think it was about the performance of those players and then I guess they were probably just

banking on people being irrationally exuberant about how good those guys were going to be about the torpedo bet maybe. But yeah, it has already died down a bit. It's almost like a moral panic kind of that happened and then very quickly goes away when it's clear that there's no, no, they're there, not much they're there. They're just small edges. I'm sure it will help some players and if it helps hitters on the whole, then great, they could use it. But yeah, it's, it's hardly some sort of a game breaking bug. It's not some hack that is going to just disrupt the pitcher batter balance.

So yeah, then everyone moves on. We rubber neck for a few days and then everyone else moves on. We don't move on because we just do a baseball podcast every week regardless of whether there's anything to talk about. For one week it was, hey, everyone wants to talk about the thing that we're talking about on Effectively Wild.

That's exciting. Yeah, I mean, I always get a little nervous when that happens because I'm like, oh boy, are we exhausting the discourse, but no, the answer is no. No, it does seem, by the way, based on Manfred's comments here, that they really are pro challenge

system that it's not an incremental move. Because we've talked before, I maintain that once it's actually in practice, if it does go smoothly, that eventually it will be a slippery slope and it'll be hard to maintain that balance of we want some of the calls right, but we don't want all of the calls right. Just these high leverage ones, just when the player challenges and has a challenge and does it at the right time and everything. I think eventually if that system goes well, which I think it will, I think counterintuitively that might spell its demise eventually because everyone will be like, hey, let's not just dip our toe in,

the water's warm, let's just go whole hog here, bring on the robots. It does seem like that's not really what Manfred is up to here, though it could be. If that's his ultimate goal, then he wouldn't want to advertise that. But he's not really pitching it as we'll get there eventually. This is just kind of a stop along the way, which I mean, I guess that's how he would put it

if he didn't want to scare everyone away and just wanted to say, oh no, it's just challenge system. It's just, you know, they'll still call most of the pitches and then once everyone gets used to that, then he'll say, oh, but we could get all the calls correct. Ooh, do I have your interest now? So that might be the mustache twirling play here,

but I do kind of buy, I mean, he does sell it as this is the actual ideal system. That's the way that he's describing it, which I guess might make it a little harder later for him to back up and say, no, actually, this is what we wanted all along all those times when I said challenge system is better and everyone prefers challenge system

and here's the data that shows the challenge system is way better. Then he'd have to walk that back a bit, which I guess he could do, cause he'd just be like, everyone prefers challenge system and here's the data that shows the challenge system is way better. Yeah. Then he'd have to walk that back a bit, which I guess he could do because he'd just be like, well, we introduced this and now everyone's fine with this and now the goalposts have moved and the Overton window for pitch calling has shifted and we're okay going full ABS. But yeah, it does seem like they really prefer this. They prefer it because it's better, you know?

That's the thing about them. They never make bad calls as a league. Always perfect calls, you know? Sort of like you could potentially get with a good challenge system and continue good umpiring. Just perfect, unobjectionable, good decisions all around. Well, we have another topic that might get people talking beyond baseball because it involves big dollar figures,

and everyone likes to talk about those. We talked about some extensions last week, but we got a bigger one. The mother of all extensions has been signed as teased at the end of our last episode last week when some rumors were circulating about the fact that the Bujays and Vladimir Kuro Jr. might get a deal done that has in fact come to pass. They have agreed on a deal.

It's a $500 million extension, 14 years pending physical. That's almost 36 million a year. It's straightforward, no deferrals. There's a full no trade clause, which I guess he would have had in a few years anyway with five and 10, 10 and five rights. And there's a signing bonus, but basically it's really long-term $500 million deal,

Vlad to be a forever Blue Jay. So this comes on the heels of his setting a deadline early in spring training to say, if we don't get a deal done by this date, then that's that. I'm tabling this till the end of the season. Right. But no, and the Blue Jays have decided that they want to be in business with someone who goes back on his word like that,

who is not, my word is my bond, who sets a deadline and then says, eh, who cares about the deadline? I'll sign this extension anyway. Would you really want to be in a long-term arrangement with someone like that, who would just change their mind just on a whim like that, when they're offered $500 million? I don't know. I think he was offered 500 million reasons to change his mind. I think that this is appropriate flexibility in the face of new information. Yes, new information.

You want to pay me how much? Oh, in that case. Yeah, deal, let's go. Yeah, no, I think most players would have said, absolutely, anytime you want to offer me that much money for that many years, I will sign. Where do I sign? And he did, and I don't blame him.

So Blue Jays and Vlad in business, uh, hopefully for a very long time, hopefully for the rest of Vlad's career, it is a big number. It is a much bigger number than the numbers that were bandied about during spring training when there were various reports about what the Bujays had offered and it not being close enough to what Vlad wanted. And then there were some comments by Vlad and some reporting about what he was looking for. And he said he wasn't looking for a Juan Soto deal.

He was looking for less than Soto, but still a lot. And that's what he got. He got less than Soto, but still a lot. And I guess in terms of present day dollars, it's the biggest contract other than Soto's ever, right? Because it's even richer than Otani's was. And I guess it's also the biggest contract signed by a non-free agent. So this is a milestone historic contract on a number of levels. I don't know what to make of it.

I don't say that like Guerrero is not a very good player. How good of a very good player and how consistently I guess is going to be the $500 million question from Toronto's perspective. It's such an interesting fix that they kind of found themselves in because I think that there are parts of this deal getting done that actually in the grand scheme have very little to do with Guerrero specifically, right? There's the part of it that is the Blue Jays really needing to be able to say, we have locked in a guy, he wants to be here. say, we have locked in a guy, he wants to be here. So I think that there's like that piece of it. I think there's the reality of, as Bauman sort of laid out in his piece detailing the

extension, there's sort of the reality of the hitter free agent market, not only this coming off season, but over the next couple where, you know, a lot of these guys are getting locked into deals and good or very good hitters might be kind of thin on the ground, at least that have the kind of impact from a, from a hitting perspective that Vlad does. Obviously like, you know, he's a fine for space defender. Fine. You know, could he stand fine for space defender. Fine. You know, could he stand in at third in a pinch?

Yeah, you don't want him to, but he could do it. But the bat is the carrying sort of profile carrying aspect here. And what other bats are you going to be able to have access to in at least just in free agency available only for money over the next couple of years? It's actually fewer of them than you might expect. I bet Kyle Tucker is thrilled because like... Oh man. Yeah. The dollar signs must be dancing in his eyes. Yes. I know he's a little bit older, but it's like he can actually play a defensive position

and he's going to be like the only guy. So... Yes. I'm sure Tom Ricketts is thrilled by this contract. So that piece of it is interesting, right? Because there's, there's this stuff that is sort of beyond Guerrero. And so you can kind of lose sight of him as a player and as a player, what is he? Well, he's a guy who hits really well, not all the time, but enough that you know, he can do it. I think having like demonstrated proof of concept has value there.

It is interesting to have this done now, obviously, like if he had just hit free agency, then they'd have to negotiate against the 29 other teams. That's so optimistic of me that all 29 would be like, we are trying to be in the Vladimir Guerrero Jr. business. But you know, they'd have to negotiate against the market. But it's really interesting to look at his Zip's projections because Dan has run these a couple of times this spring. And there's a meaningful difference in sort of what the system expects of him if he repeats

last year, this year, or doesn't. And it's like, you know, a couple hundred million dollars of projected value. So it's an interesting thing. But I also think that if you're Toronto, you do have to sort of grapple with the reality of your franchise and like you kind of needed to do this. And we had said, you know, one way to point to their off season and all its frustrations and kind of redeem it is to say, well, look, we couldn't get Soto. We tried really hard.

We couldn't get him. We had these other sort of contract frustrations, but that money is now just available for us to commit to a guy who grew up a J and will be one for the rest of his life. And we're really excited about that. So I think it's fine. I think it's a little rich, you know, just given what we might expect hit the downside of it to be, or the back end rather, Hopefully, Vlad has a good year and is able to sort of satisfy the front office and his fans that like, you know, you're gonna get more of the 165 WRC plus Vlad

than the, you know, 118. Of course, right now he has a 108 WRC plus. So I'm sure that he would prefer to have the 118 over that. But, you know, I think he has also demonstrated as much as we worry, and there's been fretting about sort of like, how will the body trend and the athleticism trend over time? He's not Julio, but I think that Vlad has done a pretty good job over the last couple of years of showing like, no, I can keep my conditioning in a good place. I, you know, it's not going sideways on him, at least not right now.

And he'd probably end up being a, he's gonna be a DH by the end of the deal anyway. So like, at a certain level, it doesn't matter as much, but yeah, this is a lot of money. Wowsers, it is the timing of it with like, all of the broader economic stuff is kind of darkly funny. You know, there is that piece of it where it's like, wow, you really want to commit to spending $500 million when the, but, um, but good for him.

You know, that's what I have to say about that. Good for him. Why not? Yeah. Even the pooches have to pay players in us dollars, I believe. But, uh, yeah, it is a long time. I guess you might be worried. Well, yes, he has kept himself in shape

and has seemed motivated. Will that change when he signed for 14 years and gets 500 million? Obviously the Blue Jays have a better sense of that than any of us do, and they must feel confident that his motivation is more intrinsic, that it's not that he was just trying to keep himself in shape so he could cash in for the contract, but that he wants

to be good at baseball and wants to be good at baseball for a long time. So if they're confident in that, then great. And I think, yes, a lot of this was shaped by the circumstances surrounding this franchise. And if they hadn't struck out with some of the other guys that they tried to get, then maybe they don't do this deal. Maybe that's obvious because they would have had some other massive contract on the books if they had successfully signed Otani or signed Soto or even signed Sasaki, which would not have been big money, but would have been a big name at least. And because they couldn't get that type of top tier free agent, though they

then got a bunch of sort of second and third tier guys, maybe they figured, well, we have money to spend because we can't get these other guys to take our money. And if we're going to keep striking out in free agency, then let's go for the guy who has been in our organization for a decade, a full decade at this point. Homegrown guy, born in Canada, likes the city, likes the franchise. He is bought in. And so if we buy in, then we don't have to worry about persuading him to sign here.

He likes being here. He knows the place. So likes the lay of the land and we like the land with him in it. So yeah, and we'll pay a premium to keep him around. And it is a premium, that's for sure. So it does sort of seem like the Soto signing to sort of reset the market in a sense. Like, I don't know if the Otani contract did

because Otani is just singular and he was kind of in its own category. But when Soto got that amount of money too, like he's an incredible player, obviously, but he's not unique in the way that Otani is. And so once he signed that deal, if Vlad's looking at that and Tucker's looking at that and everyone's suddenly thinking, oh, now the ceiling is Soto. And he has such a high ceiling as a player and was still so young when he signed that deal. It's not like that kind of money is going to be out there for everyone. And Vlad just turned 26

last month. So he is also young. He's, he would have been, I guess, a little older than Soto if he had made it to free agency, but he's, you know, basically Soto's age as a free agent, like now. And so that's a long runway. And part of it also is just, you know, tack on a few years at the end, because what difference does it make really? Like, maybe he won't be good when he's 39, but this way we can have a lower AAV, and it's not like ridiculously manipulated so that the commissioner's office is going to come after you for trying to get around competitive balance tax measures or anything. But why not tack on another year or two there?

If that's the big number that he's looking for, then you might as well just extend that over as many years as you possibly can without raising any red flags. Right. And I, I think that like there just is value in having the homegrown guy be a guy who stays. There's value in terms of like the psychological impact to your fan base. There's value in your ability to recruit future free agents. You know, you're running through several of the examples of guys who they weren't able to bring in. And I wonder, not that I imagine Vlad would have taken like a meaningful discount, but like I do wonder what's the alternate timeline where they managed to sign Otani, right?

And then Vlad's like, well, maybe I want to stay here because I think we're going to win on playoff games because of this guy, right? Like, and he, he's that kind of, he's not Otani, but he is a caliber of player who both in terms of the financial commitment that they're making and his quality and what he brings to the roster, I do think he helps them make a compelling case to other potential free agents. Like, hey, we committed to our guy, we want to build something here, we don't view the window as closed. I mean, the nice thing about a contract that long is like,

there are going to be multiple windows, you know? You don't have to, you're going to find a couple in there, probably, hopefully, you know? And it's like, you get a lot of bites of the apple when somebody's going to be around until he's 40, but. Yeah. I'm trying not to think about how old I will be when that happens, but.

Yeah, it does kind of change even the short-term plans for the franchise, maybe. I don't know if they made any assurances to him or how important it was to him that they remain competitive through the life of this contract, but they are at this moment where you could imagine things having gone either way. Like if they had fallen out of contention this year and they hadn't signed Vlad to an extension, do they consider trading him at the deadline? If he doesn't resign with them,

then do they just decide to tank or just do a full rebuild? They could have gone in a number of different directions and competitively speaking, they still could this season, but having Vlad locked in sort of says to me, okay, they probably aren't planning to just strip this down to the studs at least. They're probably not planning to say, okay, well, Vlad's a free agent, Bichette's a free agent, we just couldn't really make it happen with this roster the way that we wanted to, so we'll just start fresh.

Like if you're signing Vlad to this kind of contract and this kind of money, then probably you're trying to put a roster around him that can compete, I would think. And maybe you had to tell him that that's what you're planning to do to get him to sign. So that would, I guess, encourage me maybe as a Blue Jays fan, regardless of what I think

about how Vlad will age or how that contract's going to look down the road. That does suggest to me that maybe they will be going for it more continuously than I thought they might prior to signing this extension. Yeah, I think that that's right. And I guess I'm not surprised that they got it done because once Shapiro came out and said,

Yeah. We're going to sign him. I mean, you don't usually see front office people going out on a limb and kind of guaranteeing deals, let alone the Blue Jays doing it after they've come up empty or been the runners up a few times. So when he was willing to put his neck on the line or stick his neck out to say, yeah, we're going to get him

because then that'll haunt you if you end up not getting him and he walks and then everyone will just hang that quote around your neck forever. So I assumed that he was quite confident when he said that. So I'm not surprised that it did get done, even though when Vlad did impose that somewhat arbitrary deadline, I kind of believed it just

because I couldn't really come up with other examples of prominent players who have set such a deadline and then have said, actually, you know what, I like this new offer, so I'm just going to sign mid-season. Again, totally reasonable for Vlad to do so, given the terms here. I just, I can't really think of that many precedents for that happening. But I think it makes sense in light of all that, it also makes sense in the sense that Rogers is like a powerhouse. Right. And we don't maybe talk about them in that way as often as we do say the Dodgers or the Mets and maybe it's just that like with Steve Cohen, there's just like a very visible multi-billionaire who's just, you know, Mr. Moneybags just throwing the

money around. And so we kind of identify the Mets with him personally and think about his personally deep pockets. Right. Whereas Rogers Communications, it's just this big corporate entity, this big conglomerate, but they have almost a monopoly in Canada. I mean, they have so many holdings, they have so many resources, they're splashing all sorts of money around because they just signed a 12-year extension with the NHL for broadcast rights in

Canada that was like 11 billion Canadian dollars, but nonetheless. And then they spent like 5 billion to purchase a big stake in Maple Leaf Sports and Entertainment, which is the big company with the Maple Leafs and the Raptors and the Argonauts and all the other sports teams. So like they've kind of got it all north of the border. And so for them, it's almost just like, yeah, let's make Vlad part of our portfolio.

You know, like they've got to be making money hand over fist just with the Blue Jays kind of being Canada's team by default. I know that not every Canadian is a Blue Jays fan or loves having the Blue Jays forced down their throats 24 seven, but they're the only immobile team in that country. And so they're on everywhere. And even though the population of Canada is not large relative to its landmass, like that's still a big captive audience that you are just completely dominating there. So, you know, as kind of being almost like a vertically integrated, like sports empire, essentially. Yeah. It's a big amount of money, but it's over 14 years.

So we think, oh, 500 million, but it's 500 million over a long period. And it's a drop in the bucket for Rogers. So any hand-wringing you might do about, oh, can they afford this? I think Rogers will probably be fine. Right. Yeah. It's not that there isn't performance related downside risk when it comes to Guerrero, but the potential impact of that on their broader family of

investments, which is like a gross way to think about him as a human being, but like their broader portfolio is probably sufficiently balanced as to guard them against it really coming back to bite them. Now, having said that, that doesn't mean that like there will be limitless appetite for spending on the part of the Blue Jays. And I do think that you are, you know, we often see teams more sort of inclined to continue to add if the initial spend that they have made is, is resulting in them having productive players on the roster.

So he's going to have to shoulder expectations in a very profound way going forward. I think he'll be game for that, you know,, I don't have any doubts about Guerrero's like desire to win. And you know, if the, if the umpires are willing to give away their most important job, because they don't want to get yelled at the notion that someone is going to sign a $500 million deal and then, you know, goof off strikes me as very low. You don't want that stuff to be an albatross around your neck. The guy works hard. He clearly, I think the way that he has committed to keeping his conditioning in a good place

and he seems like he wants to win and he wants to win for the Blue Jays and he's going to get a lot of bites at the Apple to do it. I think that's exciting. Even if you look at it and you're like, maybe it's a little bit of an overpay, like retaining hometown guys, sometimes that comes at a premium and being the guy who's like really good and deserving of a big contract

after your franchise has had very little success in getting guys to come and sign, you know, like that can be to your benefit as that guy, you know, who's in line. So I'm fine. I think it'll be, I mean, it could, to be clear, it could end up being a disaster, who knows? Like, but I don't think it'll be like that, at least not in the beginning, you know?

No, it has kind of tested the stance of much of the baseball media these days, which tends to default to, oh, good player got paid good. Which I think largely reflects our takes on these contracts much of the time. And I think it's the right take much of the time, but it is also a little bit boring just in the sense that, you know, back when I guess there was a feeling that there was a real opportunity cost and that, oh, if they signed this, was this the best fit or would this guy have been better for them? Or why are they paying this guy this much when they could have paid this guy that much? And now you don't get as much of that anymore, I think for multiple reasons, partly because baseball media tends to be more pro labor than it used to be.

And so there's a little less of the reflexive, oh, these guys, they get paid so much money to play a kid's game kind of thing. I think there's more of a recognition that they generate a lot of revenue unless they're entitled to their share of it. And if they don't get it, then people who are even richer than they are, are going to get it. But then I think there's a better understanding of the economics of baseball and, oh, they're not really passing these costs along to fans.

That's not the way that these things work. They will price the tickets however high they can price them. They're not trying to recoup the cost of the payroll necessarily. And also just like these teams, they really have a lot of money and these owners have a lot of money. And so no one signing is actually prohibitive Like these teams, they really have a lot of money and these owners have a lot of money. And so no one signing is actually prohibitive in the way that they have been telling us that it is for years and years and what with revenue sharing and what with all the ancillary

streams of revenue. And that's been a big difference from earlier in baseball history where it really was more dependent on can you draw? What's your local revenue? Can you put people in the seats? Maybe we're getting back toward that a bit now, but for a while there, it was just funny money and it was the cable bubble and everyone's just raking in cash before they even play a game, whether they compete or not.

And then there's, you know, MLB advanced media payments and all these other things. And then all the real estate stuff that's not even counted as baseball revenue, but obviously is pretty dependent on having a baseball team at the centerpiece of those neighborhoods, revitalization and developments and everything. And so I think people have just fallen a little bit less for the party line of, oh, we can't possibly afford these things. And I think that's a good correction on the whole, even if it makes the analysis a little less interesting, because so often we just kind of default to saying,

well, that guy's good and that team has a lot of money and they gave some of it to that guy, that seems fine. But this one is testing that a little bit. Joshian wrote about that also just acknowledging that while that's all typically true, this is a big contract. And also it's for a player who does come with some question marks, more so than Shohei Otani did, more so than even Juan Soto did, because Guerrero has some of the same concerns about Soto from a one-sidedness perspective. Can he help you outside the batter's box?

But Soto doesn't come with any questions about how much he can help you in the batter's box, which is a lot. He is maybe the best hitter in baseball or the best non-judge hitter in baseball and, you know, a lot younger than Judge or even Otani. Guerrero, though, at his best, has been somewhat Soto-esque, but also has

been considerably below that in some seasons. And so you can't necessarily pencil him in for a 160 something WRC plus every year, even though he has managed that a couple of times, including last year, that's not his floor in the way that Soto's floor is viewed. So that's the difference. I think you could look at flat and say, he's a big bat, but how big is the bat even? Could the bat be smaller than the Bujez are hoping? Yeah, will the bat be hitting a bunch of balls

into the ground as he has been prone to do at various times. So that's why I think, you know, this will be above what the projections will spit out and say, oh, this is the right deal. This will be more than people were thinking of. Cause when Trout got his deal or Soto or Tawny, it's like, okay, those players, you can't even really find fault with them

at the time that much. You know, maybe they're limited at certain aspects of the game, but they're so incredibly, unsurpassingly good at this one thing that fine. But Vlad, it's just tough to peg exactly how good he is, which we might get a better sense of this season, but now the Buccees are committed regardless of how this season goes. So it's entirely possible that by the end of this year, I mean, 50 plate appearances into the season, he's Homerless. Uh-oh. Obviously that didn't cause them to scrap this contract and he's been

hitting in some, well, some bad luck it looks like, but also he has a high, bad up, I don't know, but the point is like, if he has another great year, then they'll probably be feeling pretty good about this. If he doesn't, if he has a 2023 type year, then they might be thinking, Oh, what did we just get ourselves into? Yeah. I mean, like by the end of the year, it could feel, who knows, it could feel very bad. It could, could feel very bad, but I think it'll be okay. It could be okay. It'll probably be okay. I mean, like, look, I talked about the different factors that play into sort of factors beyond the Vlad of it all that play into this stuff, but like he is capable of being a tremendous hitter. So, you know, the odds that

you're going to get some good seasons, some very good seasons, perhaps some MVP caliber seasons out of him over the course of a deal this long, they're high. There might be some stinkers in there. And yeah, it'll go a long way to I think calming people down if this year goes well, because then put it this way, you're more likely to get a lot of good seasons out of this long of a deal if you front load them because Because, you know, he's younger and healthier and presumably at the peak of his powers, right? So if you have a first year, and I know the contract doesn't kick in until next season, right? It doesn't. But like, if his last year before the contract kicks in is like really good, then you're like, oh, okay, we're rounding into form. We're finding a peak. If it's a stinker, you're like, oh.

I forgot, they also did that $400 million renovation of Roger Center. So if you want to spruce up the place, then you want to put a good team on the field so that people who were coming to your renovated ballpark are also seeing a renovated roster. So yeah, there are lots of reasons why this made sense for the Bui Blue Jays specifically,

I think, and credit to Vlad for taking advantage of those things. I think this worked out quite well for him. Yeah. Yeah, I do too. I think it's going to, I think he's probably going to be pretty happy about it when it's all said and done, you know? All right. Well, he probably will not have to scrimp and save, but we did tease at the

end of the last episode that you wanted to bring up MLB players being cheap, which is something that Brittany Uggiroli wrote about for the athletics. She canvassed the league, talked to a lot of players about the ways in which they are kind of cheap, are kind of miserly. They look to cut costs and economize, even though many of them have extremely large in which they are kind of cheap, are kind of miserly. They look to cut costs and economize, even though many of them have extremely large contracts. And some of it is quite charming and endearing and relatable. And some of it is like, are you okay, sir?

Do you realize, do you have a financial advisor who can tell you that it's okay for you to spend some dollars, some amount of money, I think. It would be all right. But good that they're being responsible with their money, but also, boy. Yeah, like I suppose. I mean, I think that some of this is, you know, this isn't going to be true of everyone in this interview. There are players in here who were like not super high draft picks and so probably didn't have much in the way of signing bonus. And we know how, you know, puny the salaries even now are in the minor leagues, certainly better than they've been

historically, but still not, you know, exactly lucrative work down there. So I imagine that some of this is a holdover from a time in these guys' lives where their frugality might've been a necessity, not something that they were simply exhibiting as either a personality trait or a quirk, depending on it. There are some where I just want to yell at them like, so your body is your job though You know like the thing about you is that your body is your job There are a couple of examples of this so like they have a section on travel and like the willingness they have to To spend on upgrades flying which as an aside if I ever win the lottery The first clue to everyone is gonna be that I immediately fly first class on any flight That's at least two hours.

Because look, it's nice, man. It's just better. And I will feel weird about it the whole time. So just don't worry. I will feel strange because I was not raised a first class girly. But man, it's a better time. We've managed to take this thing that is an incredible miracle and make it suck. That is humans being able to fly. It is better when it sucks less and first class is one way around that

problem. But not everyone's doing that. Jameson Tyon says, I have a hard time paying for extra leg room. I can afford to fly first class or in an exit row, but I feel like I'm getting punished for being tall. So I refuse to upgrade my seat. And it's like, look. It's the principle of the thing. It's the principle of the thing. But James said, your body is your job and you are tall and you're going to be scratched up in those tiny seats. No, be free of that. Go sit in

a big comfy seat and have them give you free champagne. It's not good champagne, but it's free. You know, I mean, you're paying for it by paying extra for the ticket in a roundabout sort of way, but just like sit up there, have your little mimosa stretch out. My, my guy, the other one in here that we're going to go through a bunch of these, but the other one in here that sort of fit this category for me. And it was a, it's a less obvious problem, but like Steven Kwan is talking about how he, he said, I had a pillow for 10 years that my now wife was totally disgusted by. She's like, you can get a new one. And I was like, why? I don't need

a new one. One day she took the cover off and said, you need to look at this. It's disgusting. And it was, I did it up throwing it away my first year up here. It made it to the big leagues though. So like, look, first of all, PSA for everyone. You should probably be replacing your pillows more often than you realize. They get, at the very least they need to be cleaned.

Like they get gross, you know, pillows get gross. Like you're sleeping on them, you know, they do. They do get gross. Also they lose, you Also, they lose fluff. They lose fluff-ability. And then you got a crick in your neck. You sleep weird one time in your 30s and you have to do PT for the rest of your life. So I'm just saying, your body is your job, Steven. And sleep is important not only because you want to have a good pillow that supports you so you don't end up with a neck ache or a backache or whatever,

but sleep is so important when you're an athlete. Sleep is just so important. I know that this is news to you, Ben Lindbergh. But sleep matters a lot. I will say though, here's one where I completely relate to Quan. I'm not a, and you'll probably relate to Quan profoundly also. I'm not a car person. I drive a car, I have a car. I've had the same car for a long time. I leased it, then I bought it off the lease, which worked out well for me. I'm sure again, if I won the lottery tomorrow, like I might upgrade my car because it would be nice to like have a hybrid, but it's not the place where I would spend. It's not like a thing where I would feel like I wanted to splurge on it. You know, there would be other things, but cars not

among them. And Quan points out that like he does, he has like an advertising deal with a car company, probably a dealership. He has a car on lease and the advertising sort of just pays for it. And I was like, that seems, yeah, that's good. Were there any in here that jumped out at you? I'm like, I'm cycling through them and I'm going to, I have, I have one that made me think of you. And I wonder if you also alerted to it, which is what, what do you think about Jake Cronenworth's refusal to buy music? Did you read this part? I do love that his teammates were like, you are a psychopath.

You are a literal psychopath, not because of the refusal to buy music, but Cronenworth says, I don't buy any music. It's a pretty useless purchase. I like to drive in silence. Total silence." What? CB Yeah. That is the most like, are you a human or some sort of alien in a skin suit kind of thing? I mean, not everyone enjoys music. I understand it's not a universal human like, but it's about as close as things come. And yeah, to drive in total silence,

I mean, I guess if that's sort of a meditative thing for you, if you need to feel centered and calm and it's your little oasis from the world, then I guess that's fine. I would never do it. It's just total silence. I'd like to listen to something, whether it's music

or podcasts or audiobook or whatever, but it's a pretty useless purchase. I mean, I guess it is for Jake Cronenworth from his perspective, because I guess he doesn't like music. So for him, it would be a useless purchase, but if you enjoy music, then it's not useless. And there are plenty of people who their cheap thing is that they don't pay for Spotify or they use someone else's Spotify account or they're not on the ad-free plan or Zach Neto is on his student Apple Music account. Hopefully no one will nark him out to Apple Music. I did like how many people were like, here's the thing I'm doing that is obviously a violation of the terms of service. Hope no one reads the athletic. I know, right.

It is, it's funny because Hannah Kaiser, she wrote about Paul Skeen's for us at the ringer. And then she mentioned on her sub stack, the bandwagon later that a quote that didn't make the piece was Skeen's saying that music just gets pretty repetitive. Like he's not that into music because it gets repetitive. To be clear, I did not cut that from the piece. I would never have. And if Hannah had told me about that quote, I would have insisted that it be in the piece because that kind of captures Skeens, I think. But yeah, it gets repetitive, but in a good way, we like repeating it.

It's like the, the one form of media that most people don't mind repeating. I don't typically rewatch or reread or replay that many things or not, unless a lot of time has elapsed, but I re-listen to songs over and over and over again. It's the one thing that I never get tired of, or, you know, maybe if there's some song that was super overplayed when I was growing up on the radio or something, it did, it lost a little of its charm. But most people don't think of, oh yeah, music, it's repetitive. That's, that's a selling point for music.

I want to repeat it. So yeah, there's some of this stuff that's like, you could probably afford not to be on your wife's cousin's Netflix account or whatever it is, but some of that stuff is probably just, it's a hassle. Like, you know, you'd have to get your own account and sign up and everything. And if it's working and you just have to press one button, then you probably just go along with it unless they cut you off at a certain point. But yeah, some of the like not wanting to pay for luxury goods. I mean, the initial example, the framing for this

piece that Britt used at the top was when Zach Granke said that he refused to get guacamole at Chipotle because they raised it from 150 to 180. And he said, I'll never again get guacamole, which is just a funny way to phrase it, like he's making some solemn vow. And he said, it's not about the guacamole itself. I just don't want to let them win. So probably a lot of this is just stubbornness. It's yeah, I could obviously afford this, but I resent being asked to

pay this expense and thus I will not. And there are some in here that are funny because they're accidentally like backing into like, so Austin Riley doesn't like to pay for shipping. And he was like, there was something, it was a hunting gadget. It was like $6 and the shipping was eight. And I was like, I'll just go buy it somewhere. And I was like, Austin Riley accidentally supporting local businesses. And then, and then T.J. McFarland is talking about how he also does not like to pay delivery fees.

He says, when you use DoorDash and it's an extra couple bucks to have someone deliver the food to you, I tell my wife, no way we're picking it up. And then he goes on to say, sure, it's 15 to 20 minutes to pick it up. And you probably, you're probably spending that money on gasp of delivery is something I am not okay wasting money on. And it's funny because there's like a lot of, if you order online from restaurants and don't have it delivered, like they tend to keep more of the money, although probably not if you order through door dashes platform, even if you pick up yourself. But so it's like, But it's generally better for restaurants

if you're going and picking up the food and ordering from them directly. Or Jesse Winker is like, I feel like Uber's prices have gotten out of control, so if I can't walk somewhere, I'll rent a scooter for a fraction of the price. And it's like, Jesse Winker, accidental environmental king.

Just like, no, I won't take a car. He's a man after your own heart. He's like, I'm gonna scoot, scoot. I'm not gonna drive. I guess you have to, Uber, because won't take a car. He's, he's a man after your own heart. He's like, I'm going to scoot, scoot. I'm not going to drive. I guess you have to Uber because you can't drive yourself. Yeah. But pay for a first-class or like Tristan McKenzie. Again, like Tristan McKenzie is on the big league roster, but you know, he's been up and down. His career has been wild. He's been injured. He hasn't been able to like be the kind of mainstay that he was hoping to be. And he's like, I look at first-class seats, but I don't ever buy them.

And it's like, I get that for those reasons, but Tristan, you are so tall, like get leg room, you know? Yeah, it almost seems to defeat the point of being massively wealthy just to sweat the small stuff the way that normies do, just to care about the little charges and everything. It's like, you know, I'm not saying you need to just be making exorbitant purchases,

but it would be nice not to have to worry about the little ones that most people might have to worry about, but you realistically don't really. Or some of the things that are like paying for content. I mean, I guess it's kind of tongue in cheek maybe because Logan Ohapi is talking to an athletic writer, but he's like, I refuse to pay for the athletic. I'm not paying a dollar. It's the principle. I'll read the first paragraph before the paywall. I guess I'm too cheap to read this article. So there are a lot of people who have

that attitude, which is not great for media in general. It's just, I mean, hey, we give this podcast away for free and some people are very generously funding that for all the others, but a very small percentage and that's how it always is and many people cannot afford those things. But it is a little depressing to know that even multimillionaires who absolutely can afford that will not and are just like, paywall? How dare you? Everything should be free. Which it's not a surprise. I wrote a whole article last December about people circumventing paywalls and the lengths they'll go to and can you actually have a paywall implemented that people

won't try to get around? And it seems like it's just human nature. The answer is just kind of no. And everyone's just conditioned from the start, oh, stuff on the internet is free and wait, now I have to pay for these things? Hmm, I don't like that. Even though it would be normal if this were some sort of physical, tangible good.

I'm not a shoplifter or something. And yet it feels very normal for me to read stuff for free or listen to stuff for free or watch stuff for free or whatever it is. But yeah, that goes for baseball players too. It's just, uh, it's tough to get people to pay for stuff if there is any alternative. But as I said, it is fairly relatable because it's like major leaguers, they're just like us and they worry about their bills the way that we do, even if they don't have to. But as you said, I guess it is just sort of hardwired. It's more of like a nature nurture. It's more of a nurture thing. And if you're raised in a certain way,

in a place where money is scarce, then it's really hard to shed that later in life. And in some ways, I guess it's good because there are two reactions you could have to suddenly becoming extremely rich, as many major leaguers are. You could just spend like a drunken sailor and just fritter it all away, which many athletes have. And there are all sorts of stories about, you know, guys who have huge contracts, but

they're broke or they're even deep in debt and they're like destitute after their playing career when the contracts aren't coming in anymore because they didn't invest and they just didn't think long-term at all. That's one reason why some players and some agents have said that they're in favor of deferred deals because it essentially forces you to save for the future in a sense. Like even if you, you don't put some money away, you're going to keep getting checks for long after your career, which should keep you financially solvent, even if you

are not responsible as a spender. So that's one way it could be like, I went from having no money to I won all this money, I won the lotto, whatever it is, and suddenly like, you know, I have people coming to me with their handout and they're expecting to kind of get a cut of my success and good fortune, or maybe they helped me along the way

and they feel entitled and maybe they are, or just I have no concept of what it's like to have money. And so this is all just fake funny money to me that I can just spend and, you know, it means nothing. So that's one reaction you could have and that's not good. And then another reaction you could have is just changing absolutely nothing whatsoever. Like your circumstances have changed, but your mindset hasn't.

Maybe you're still like putting your, your huge checks, like under your mattress or something like, you know, you, you just, you putting your, your huge checks, like under your mattress or something. Like, you know, you, you just, you don't think of yourself as being able to afford anything. And I guess that's not bad. That's not ruinous, but it does seem like, well, you, you are kind of able to enjoy some luxuries now, some of the finer things. And so you're depriving yourself of that. That's not great. There's probably a happy

medium and maybe most players are there where it's like, yeah, let's be responsible and let's save for the future and let's not make just senseless purchases and just go buy a boat that I'm never going to use or something. But, you know, I can treat myself every now and then because I'm a major leaguer and even if I'm making Major League minimum, that's pretty good money. I'm not remembering now who said it, but there is someone in the piece who's like, you know, these guys will drop $15,000 on a watch. There are sort of day to day purchases,

the being a person in the world of it all, that is makes sense to a certain point, even if you, as you said, don't have sort of a lingering scarcity mindset, either because of your experience in the minor leagues or because of your broader background. And like, I can't speak to that for all of these guys, but nobody wants to be ripped off. Like it's, it's useful to go through your monthly recurring charges and be like, yeah,

I don't use that subscription. So I'm going to cancel it because I never use it. And like, you know, it's only five bucks, but why pay for a thing I'm not using? Right. So like that part of it makes sense. And then some of it is, as I said, like, what are the things that you as a person would feel like freed up to splurge on if you suddenly had, you know, gobs of money and like, I wouldn't, I wouldn't buy a super fancy car because super fancy cars don't really excite me.

You know, it doesn't jazz me. I would probably spend an amount of money on furniture that would make everybody uncomfortable because like I like to have a well appointed home. I want my conversation pit. Damn it. You know, but like those are things that matter to me. And so my splurgy purchases would sort of be along those lines rather than, you know, buying the nicest car possible or whatever, you know, I'd want to buy a really nice home, but I wouldn't necessarily need to like have diamond jewelry because I don't that it just

doesn't, it's not a thing that grabs me. And I'm not trying to to put a value judgment on it necessarily, but I did think that that was a nice acknowledgement where it's like there are things that seem, even though they might be quite expensive, obviously not recurring purchases like buying music or groceries or your Hulu subscription or whatever. But if you're a professional athlete and you've gotten your first big check, you might be like, well, now it's time for me to get my watch. I want my, you know, because that's a, that's the thing that they want to do.

You know, Machado has this answer about like, he likes nice wine, but he doesn't appreciate the restaurant markup for wine. And so he would rather still, I'm sure he's not, he's not buying two buck Chuck, but he doesn't want to spend a hundred dollars on a bottle of wine at a restaurant that might only be 30 or 40 bucks. So it's just interesting. It's a, it's an interesting little window. It's fun because some of the answers are unhinged. Um, but many of them I think are just revealing in, in kind of interesting ways. And so I, I wanted people to check that one out. Cause I had Ben Clemens messaged me in Slack and was like,

have you seen the best baseball article of the year? And I was like, wow, big, big billing here. I don't know if I'd go quite that far, but I really enjoyed reading it. And I think people will too, so. Yep, I'll link to it. And one more thing I meant to say about Vlad that I hadn't really realized until Bauman pointed it out in his piece is that Vlad is already the Blue Jays leader in a lot of things.

I mean, he's the active Blue Jays leader in a lot of categories, but by the time this contract is all said and done, he may hold the franchise record in a lot of things. And that's actually something that the Blue Jays just like haven't had their franchise icons who have been one team guys that much. He mentioned that Dave Steeb has the most seasons with the Blue Jays, 15, but only 12 players have appeared in 10 or more seasons for the Blue Jays. And obviously the Blue Jays are less than 50 years old.

They're a 1977 expansion team. But even so, yeah. Obviously the Blue Jays are less than 50 years old, they're a 1977 expansion team, but even so. Yeah. And so, yeah, to have a guy who could be that for you and not just a transient player with a Blue Jays phase, but just from the time he's 15 or 16 years old to the time he's 40, being a Blue J, not that he's guaranteed to finish this period with the Blue Jays, but there's a good chance at least that he could be a lifetime Jay.

And that's a nice thing if you haven't had a whole lot of that in the history of your franchise. I've become distracted by something. What's that? This is a potentially very large topic. How do you feel about City Connects and where we are with City Connects? While you think about the answer to that question, I'm going to send you something. You're going to look at this.

The Giants new City Connects dropped and we are getting our first look at them. Look at that. Huh. It looks... Ben, I kind of love these. Yeah. It looks very 90s. It looks kind of graffiti. Look at the patch on Logan Webb.

I think that these are meant to be harkening back to like a hate Ashbury kind of. Oh yeah, that looks sort of psychedelic, that one. Yeah, I think this is supposed to be like a psychedelic thing. I'm not getting that from the front so much, from the giant script. Apart from the colors, yeah.

Yeah, but the patch, yes, absolutely. The patch. Here's what I'll say. I think that these are, we can be done now. I think we can be done with City Connects. I think we've evolved past the need for City Connects. They've gotten rid of all that extra blue fabric they had laying around. I know we're going to keep getting them forever.

I'm not naive to how business works, Ben. I understand. But I can be done now. I don't need more. I like these better than the creamsicle ones because there were a couple years there where the giants were just like looking like a popsicle when they took the field in their city connects. So I like, and you know, if we are actually harkening to some like psychedelic thing, that's like a, that's a pretty, that's kind of transgressive for baseball. But which is nice, you know, we could use more of that. Yeah. I'm with you.

We, we talked about this, I think last season at some point, maybe because it seemed like some teams were winding down at least they were just just doing away with the CityConnects and not replacing them. Or I guess there were teams that were doing their second go around and were announcing new CityConnects and retiring their old CityConnects. And I think that was basically our stance. Like, okay, this thing has kind of run its course. And that is generally how I feel. Although, as you know, I'm not a uniform guy to begin with, so I've never

particularly cared one way or the other, but if you are gonna do it, then I like having them reflect your actual city in some obvious, clearly discernible way and just reflect the local character. That seems like it's the whole point of this exercise, so you might as well. And yeah, this seems like it's maybe leaning into that

or just make it distinctive, make it maybe a little bold, a little creative, transgressive. I like that, you know, it'll catch my eye and then I'll go back to not caring about it all that much. I do think that on the whole, the enthusiasm for it has subsided somewhat just because it's been years now and we've seen so many different incarnations that how excited are you going to get but as you said we're in a cycle of just alternate uniforms

forever just because any opportunity to sell people stuff and yeah give people a new new variant to wear they will seize that opportunity. The new uniforms feature black tops with white sound waves and orange and purple gradients on their jersey sleeves, chest script, and the bill of their caps. The purple is meant to evoke the Fillmore stage lights and hate Ashbury's posters, though it also pays tribute to the franchise's New York origins as the Giants briefly wore violet from 1913 to 17 as a nod to New York University. The City Connect jerseys also include a glove patch on the sleeve, which is inspired by warped 1960s gig posters and quote, embody

San Francisco's movement, creativity, and rebellious spirit, which is a great way to talk about drug use without using the word drugs. The Giants chess script is similarly influenced by psychedelic posters and is meant to flow like the rhythm and energy of the city. You know what? Fine. You know what? Fine. Yeah. Yeah. The press releases always dress it up where they make it sound a little bolder than it is, or they highlight all these little things that no one would ever know otherwise, which I guess is the purpose of a press release, I guess. But even so, it's like, oh, okay, that's a subtle touch. It's nice to know that's what you were going for. I wouldn't necessarily have picked up on that, but yeah, definitely this looks like a Bill Graham kind of promoting Jefferson Airplane at the Fillmore

or something, which is, you know, Our iconic outfield glove remixed with summer of love energy. I'm just saying like, look, you can't wear an alternate jersey that has summer of love energy and then go to the White House if you win the World Series. Keep it in mind, giants. On the sartorial subject, I did mean to say we got so many follow-ups about the Dennis Santana shorts. Everyone shorts, shorts, shorts.

Yeah, the hot pants, I guess that's not what they are, but they're shorts. They're, yeah, I don't know what to call them because I assume the pants are still, they are just hiding, I don't know. But many people pointed out that Dennis Santana didn't do this, he's not the first. And in fact, he's not the first Santana. As you had said, you felt like you had seen this before.

And many people pointed out that he is not even the first Santana to do it. Right. That this is something that Carlos Santana has been doing as well. So I don't know, we might just, maybe we should call them the Santana pants or something, but it's not exclusive to Santana's either, cause people also sent in examples of like Randall Grichick wearing them or the 2019 Rangers were wearing them, evidently. So it's been around. It's kind of like, it's like torpedo bats, you know, they were there, no one noticed or some people noticed,

but it didn't become big news. And then for whatever reason I saw a lot of people pointing out Dennis Santana's pants the other day, even though he's not the first, I think it's maybe just he's like lanky and it for a pitcher, it just looked more anomalous for a pitcher to be wearing these to my eye, at least. I don't know. I guess it has it has been largely concentrated in the position player population, which is interesting. As we said last time, seems like a riskier move for a position player who might need to be sliding at some point. But yeah, I don't know. They stood out. When the Rangers were brought up, it also made me think I was like, I feel like Ruined Ador did this

at various points in his career. Yeah. There had just been, you know, some guys like a short pant. They like a bicycle short length pant, which is just bicycle shorts, really. All right. Well, maybe we could, and I guess you invoked it a second ago. I was thinking about invoking it. We saved it for the end, but I am just, I am kind of struck by the fact with the White House visits that we've seen a change, clearly, in how sports teams are handling this relative to Trump's first term, which is something that I talked about on Hang Up and Listen and we sort of speculated when Trump was elected and we were talking about how this will impact the sports world.

I was curious to see whether we would see the same outspokenness, whether we would see the same outspokenness, whether we would see some signs of resistance from athletes that we saw the first time around. And, you know, Trump, he's a very sports forward president, I would say. And he does have a genuine, I think, interest in sports and has a longstanding business relationship with various sports entities. Someone just let him the stupid fricking bills. Maybe we wouldn't be in this mess. Right. So this dates back a long way and I think his interest in sports, his connection in sports is about as authentic as anything about him is, which is not a high bar, but by presidential standards I think he has actually interested in sports. And he, now we've seen a change, you know, obviously he's waded into these waters

with live and the PGA tour and trying to broker some kind of deal there. And obviously he's golfing constantly and he's showing up at the Daytona 500 and he's calling the U S hockey team before the four nations tournament. So, you know, he injects himself into lots of sports stories, but one perennial, just multi annual story is the White House visit. And that became contentious in his first term when some teams or at least some athletes sat out and said, no, thanks. And during his first term, he got in all sorts of wars

with various sports leagues and actually had conflict with the NFL and Roger Goodell and various players about kneeling during the anthem. And that became a big political issue. And these days it's kind of hard to imagine any corporate entity having a spine. So I don't know that that will happen. As we've already seen MLB kind

of caving when it comes to the DEI stuff on its website, right? And, and not saying anything about the Jackie Robinson situation. Anyway, we live in reality. We know the political leanings of many Major League Baseball players. So I'm not expecting some sort of mass protest or something, but it is interesting at least that thus far that trend has not continued. Maybe it's not surprising, but there were some initial reporting or just rumor mongering that maybe the Eagles weren't going to go. And then they are, they accepted the invitation. They will be attending the White House. And the Dodgers just attended on Monday and had the usual photo ops and awkward quotes and everything

else. And this is a bit of a change because there were at least comments like Dave Roberts had said, I wouldn't go right the last time around. And Mookie Betts didn't go after he won with the Red Sox in 2018. And I think Alex Cora didn't go at that point either. And now it was universal. Everyone's going. No one is staying home. No one is even really... At least everyone in the traveling party, right?

There were... Yeah, right. Yeah. Folks who are on the IL who did not attend. Although, you know, like there were guys on who are currently on the IL who did. So... No one making a point of not going or, or it even becoming notable that someone didn't go. And, and those who had spoken about this previously, of course, were asked about whether they would

go and what they thought about going. And they sort of walked back their previous comments or just were very, you know, they didn't, they didn't want to get into a whole big mess, which I get it. Why would you want to be at the center of some sort of culture war? But they were very careful about how they portrayed their decisions not to go. And both Roberts and Mookie Betts, it wasn't like they were suddenly saying, we love Donald Trump now, but they basically tried to keep it away from being a political story, which it inherently is, but nonetheless they tried and just sort of wanted to make it about not being a distraction,

just being a member of the team. I don't want to make it about me. This is an event to celebrate our accomplishment as a team. We won a world series. Now we get to take a victory lap, et cetera. But you know, it does speak to some sort of change in the culture, in sports specifically, that we have at least thus far seen sports franchises and athletes handle this differently presented with essentially

the same situation. So I find it frustrating. I do think that like, you know, there was some wish casting on at least on blue sky, like my favorite team would never go. Yes, they would. They would all go. People were like the Blue Jays wouldn't go. And I was like, so I'm not confident the Blue Jays would be invited to the White House if

they won the World Series, just given the Donald Trump of it all. But I imagine that some number of American born players on the Blue Jays would probably go visit the president if given an invitation to do so. This is a pretty conservative player population. You know, the fact that there have been guys who have sat these out is sort of surprising in and of itself, just given the general leanings of the player population more broadly. But given the Jackie of it all, it's like, what are you guys doing? You know, I think we know what they're doing. There's just like going to be equivocation. I think that they think it's better business

that way. I do wonder, and I don't say this because I like, I'm trying to let anybody off the hook or anything, but I am curious like what the internal communication around this visit was like. Because it is a little surprising to me that no one bailed. Who was in the traveling party? You know, Freddie Freeman wasn't there. He's still in LA. I know Bruce Dargraderall was posting about his house on social media. Everyone's like, Bruce Dargraderall's our favorite. And I was like, I don't know what Bruce Dargraderall's political leanings are one way or the other. I don't know if his lack of presence there indicates on it anything other than he's on the aisle. Maybe

he does. I don't know. He didn't say it. So like maybe we could stop putting words in people's mouths, but this is a franchise with a very particular legacy within the game. And they are in a way that I think is often sincere, but also remunerative, very happy to lean into that legacy. And it's one that's just fundamentally at odds with what this administration is doing. So that sucks, you know, that part of it sucks. Mookie said, it's not a political stance that I'm taking. I know no matter what I say, what I do, people are going to take it as political,

but that's definitely not what it is. This is about an accomplishment that the Dodgers were able to accomplish last year. And I know what he means by that. I mean, he probably is meaning to say that he is not a pro-Trump now. He's not endorsing Trump necessarily. He's just doing it because he's a baseball player

and his baseball team goes and he wants to be part of the team. Obviously, it can't help but be political to go to the White House and get a photo op with the president and let him get a photo op with you. It's interesting that he says now that he actually regrets the way that he handled the victory when the White Sox won

and he decided not to go, or when the Red Sox won. Yeah, when, that didn't happen. That's, no. But when the Red Sox won, he decided to sit out. He now says, I made it about me. This is not about me. This is about the Dodgers. Me not being there for them at that time,

it was very selfish. So he's almost kind of castigating himself for not going before. And to me, like I do understand that on some level, but also it's not like you're playing a game at the White House. It's just, you know, it's just a social event. It's just, it's a photo op.

How many of these things do you do as the Dodgers? And okay, this is a longstanding tradition and has often been viewed as a cool one and honor. Hey, we get to go to the White House and meet the president, you know, before this president that would have been something that across party lines you probably would have been mostly happy to do. I'm sure there were kind of conscientious objectors before, but because Trump has just

violated the norms in so many ways, it's a little bit different from, oh, I didn't vote for this guy to, you know, like in the past, you might've been still honored to go and meet a president that you didn't vote for just, you know, because you had political differences with him, but this is different, obviously. And so yeah, to have that stance of like, I have to be there for the team, like, I don't know, do you, I have a hard time imagining that it would be that big an issue or that like, you know, would, would people on the team look at Mookie Betts and say, oh, he's being a diva or like he's, he's making it all about him. He's ruining our special day here because he didn't feel comfortable going.

I mean, given the political leanings of people in baseball clubhouses, maybe, maybe some people would be kind of having that conversation behind his back, but it doesn't seem like it's something that's going to tear a clubhouse apart. You know, I don't know about the clubhouse dynamics as well as someone like Mookie does. I mean, Blake Trinen didn't go when the Dodgers won last time. He didn't want to go during Joe Biden's presidency. Right. He went yesterday. when the Dodgers won last time, he didn't want to go during Joe Biden's presidency. And he's still there.

He has enough enthusiasm about the current administration for 10 mookies, it's fine. Yeah, and he remained, he's still with the Dodgers. They signed him to an extension. He won another world series there. You know, it's not like you're going to be ostracized either way, I think, when you sit out. Because I think even though most baseball players, they might have their political sympathies or leanings,

I don't think most of them are extremely online, high-information voters if they're voters at all. I think a lot of them are just very focused on baseball. It's kind of an all-consuming job, or they have a background, there are many international players who probably don't care all that much about US politics except as it affects them and it's a cross-section of America and the world and a lot of people just aren't paying that close attention to politics and they aren't thinking about it

that much and if someone decided not to go, they'd probably shrug mostly, I would think. But yeah, I have some sympathy just because of what he said about how like the focus is on him specifically going, just partly that's because he didn't go last time, but he also said it comes with the territory, being black in America in a situation like this, it's a tough spot to be in. No matter what I choose, somebody's going to be pissed.

Somebody's going to have an opinion. I told them I needed to think about it. Nobody else in this clubhouse has to go through a decision like this except me. And yeah, I mean, for the spotlight to be placed on him, for him to be singled out, I think is, is tough. And, and, and's too, same reason. And I guess maybe it speaks to the lack of black players or African-American players in MLB clubhouses these days, that it's

hard to have solidarity in a situation like this because there just aren't enough players, right? And so it becomes, oh, what did Robert say? What did Mookie say? As opposed to like a larger contingent of the team. So, you know, I'm not shocked by any of it, but yes, like when Jackie Robinson Day happens and the Dodgers are making a big deal of that

as an organization, as they should, but coming in the wake of a president's policies who are opposed to a lot of things that Jackie stood for or even to a website about him until everyone made a big stink about it, then yeah, it's a little hollow in the wake of that. I guess the thing that I wish I could impress upon all of these guys and not just Mookie,

but just like, because this line of reasoning gets trotted out by a lot of pro athletes. Well, it's not political. I'm not making a political decision. And it's like, you need to understand that you are. That is the framework you're operating in, because it's literally a decision to go and meet the president of the United States.

It's inherently a political decision. So if you understand it within that framework, does it change your answer? Right? Is your decision a different one if you understand what you're doing to be a statement regardless? He's right. It's a statement regardless. So what statement do you want to make? What statement is important to you? What statement is important to your understanding of your own values. And I don't mean to downplay the piece of it that is there being a very bright light on any player who's doing it, which is part of why I wish the organization had taken,

again, I don't wanna say that like, I know what the internal communications around this were, I don't, but it does have the feel of there having been like a directive given that everybody's going to go. And maybe the reason that they said that is so that, you know, if it's, if everyone has to go, maybe you think it provides a certain amount of cover to any individual player who either is very happy to do it. I couldn't believe they put Trinen in the back. I couldn't, I mean, put the man close to his best friend. I wish that there had been,

that perhaps the organization had taken a different tact in this because I'm sure that while the number of like even centrist in big league clubhouses is likely small, it's not zero and it's not zero on that team, right? Like we have seen Chris Taylor be vocal on a couple of issues. You know, we've seen Kike Hernandez be vocal on a couple of issues that suggest a, at least not a far right leaning on their part. And many of them have been like out and out sort

of progressive messages. If you give flexibility on this question, then you can have an easier time maybe at Solidarity. It's not just Smooky. It's whatever percentage of the players are like, eh, we're going to go do something else. Bauman reminded me yesterday of what Carlos Correa's approach to this was. He was very critical of the Trump administration's response to hurricane relief in Puerto Rico. So the day that the Astros went, he went and did hurricane relief work. That's a great way to, you know, if you, if you feel like you have to be sort of PR conscious, right? If you are trying to, you know, take the political out of the political, well, that's one way to do it. Go do some

advocacy or something. It's just, again, I don't want to downplay how it must feel to have that bright of a spotlight on you. And I can't speak to how it feels for him as a black person to have that bright, bright light. I don't want to sort of downplay that piece of it. But I also think you got to stand for something in your life. And I think that I just wonder if these guys were really forced to reframe this stuff and understand that you are taking a stand regardless of the decision, if it would alter the behavior that we see, would they decide, I don't want to be smiling

behind this guy while he refuses to acknowledge the Senate delegation from California because he doesn't like them. You know, like, what are you, what are you doing? Right. I think part of it is that they, they have decided that the value that they want to prioritize is being a good teammate as they see it. And that's something that- No, I'm sorry. That's what they're saying. But the value they're prioritizing is people leaving them alone. That's the value they're prioritizing is people leaving them alone. That's the value they're prioritizing. They're prioritizing their own convenience and they're dressing it up as teamwork and

you know, it's probably in the soup, but like ultimately the value that is being served here is leave me alone. Well, yeah, that's definitely true. And you know that if Mookie had been the lone holdout, he just would have been a punching bag for the worst right-wing people for days and weeks and who knows, like, harassment and threats and it would have been terrible. Exactly. Yes, it would have been terrible. And that's why I don't want to say that that piece of it doesn't matter because it only takes one crazy for this kind of stuff to get very dark, very

fast, you know, for it to feel very legitimately threatening. And so I, I don't want to say like that, that piece of it doesn't matter, but if you're gonna, if that's part of your calculus, first of all, I wish some of these guys would say that. I mean, I guess he kind of did, but also like, then let's be real, let's be honest. That's what it's about. It's not about teamwork. Yeah, and then it's intimidation. It's, you know, cowing people into not wanting to speak up

because you know, if you lift your head up, if you speak up, then you're gonna get a lot of grief and maybe worse than that. I do think part of it is just kind of the conformist nature of organized sports and professional sports. And just, I am part of the team and that's something that people are celebrated for in a lot of contexts, just like, you know, don't put yourself ahead of the team and just being part of the team. And so I do think there's some sincere desire there to just say like, I might feel this way about this guy, but everyone else is going.

And I just wanna be there for my teammates and it's a group activity and everything. I think there's part of it. And also again, because some people just might not have that strongly held political beliefs. And so even if they're like, I don't like this guy, it might not be kind of an existential thing in their mind or like, I really have to draw the line here. Ultimately, you know, it's probably not going to make that much of a difference in the grand

scheme of things, whether a baseball player goes or not. But I think, you know, they could even tell themselves, it doesn't matter that much, or I don't care that much about this. And so therefore, I will prioritize being a good teammate and I think there are a lot of ways in which it's good to have a team first attitude, it's prized, it's valued, it's celebrated in sports culture, but I also think it's sort of silly to conflate this with being a good teammate to the extent that that is a sincerely held belief and not just a rationalization or just an excuse that you're giving. I think it's silly to suggest that there is something selfish about not going. Granted, I guess if you're the one guy who doesn't go and you're a star, everyone's going to talk to you

about that and there will be headlines and it, you know, I guess we'll- All your teammates are going to be asked. Right. Your teammates will be asked and maybe like, you know, it'll make them look bad. Like, oh, that guy had the guts not to go. Why, why didn't you not go? And, you know, it would be, I guess, to some extent, a distraction of the happy feel good story of getting to go to the Trump White House. So there's something to that. But, but no, really, I think it's silly to suggest that this has anything to do with your teammate-ness and it's a personal belief. And I think your convictions on this have nothing to do with whether you're a good teammate, do you show up for games?

Do you practice hard? Do you play hard? Do you support players in a baseball context? I know that professional sports can be kind of all consuming and they can take over your life and you're well paid for that privilege and everything and that responsibility and sometimes that burden. But to suggest that like you can't just have yourating this as, as any kind of reflection on your attitude toward the team or towards your approach to the sports. So I think it might be a sincerely held belief in some cases, but I think it's, it's silly.

I think those things should be decoupled. Whether you show up for your team when the game starts, that's important. Whether you show up at an event at the White House, that's not important. And I know that they're there in their capacity as professional athletes, but it's also just such a like pinched understanding of team, quote unquote. Like you are a member of, you're a member of a professional organization, but you're also a member of a community, you know, and that community takes a lot of comfort and pride in what you as an athlete are able to do when you're a

pro athlete and you win a championship. But they also have other cares and concerns. And again, like, I don't know Dave Roberts, I don't know Mookie Betts, I don't know Chris Taylor, I, you know, I don't know Kiki Hernandez, I don't know Dave Roberts, I don't know Mookie Betts, I don't know Chris Taylor, I you know, I don't know Kiki Hernandez, I don't know them. I don't know where they're at on any of this stuff as individuals. I think you're right that in many cases, professional athletes just don't think about this stuff very much. People don't think about this stuff very much.

It's getting harder for that reality to sort of persist, especially as you know, we start to experience real material consequences from the decisions of this administration. But like the reality is that like you got a lot of low information voters floating around. I don't know that that is really an accurate description of any of those guys that I just named. I think that there seems to have been at least previously real thought put into that decision and conclusion was reached and now an opposite one is being reached. I don't know if that signals anything other than what we've talked

about, if there's been like a shift in terms of their thinking about this guy as like as a president. I don't know. I don't know them. I understand that you have to like go and see these other guys in the clubhouse every day. And I think that the reality of that workplace tends to lead to decision-making that the rest of us find very strange, but that does have sort of an internally consistent logic when you understand how much time you're spending with these guys, like what the sort of insularity of all of that is. I understand that as an environment that feels like it is all encompassing the real, not the boundary of your community, but the part of it you're spending the most time with. But there's a whole world outside of that.

And I think you're right. There's risk to this. If you're an athlete and you don't go, like you're going to experience harassment. And I think that again, it would be naive to assume that there, that that wouldn't escalate in a way that might be more profound for, you know, a person of color than it would if like Max Muncie was like, you don't touch me. It's also just like so much weird in that entire exchange. It's like such a weird guy.

But anyway, so, you know, I, I think all of that is at play, but like, you know, things are bad and they're going to get worse. And this guy's talking about like seeking a third term, which is like blatantly unconstitutional. So at a certain point, I do think you want to think to yourself, like, what do I want to be on record as having done? And I wonder if this will be a thing that they look back on and regret having been present for. Yeah, I just, I wish that the idea of being a good teammate did not require conformity

in all aspects of things. Yes, you are literally wearing a uniform. This is a job that kind of forces you to look and act as many others do in a lot of respects. But also there's an aspect of that where you gotta let people be themselves and express their own beliefs and being a member of a team does not mean that you have to be in lockstep about absolutely everything.

And that's why we have had traditionally in baseball, this kind of conformist culture where individuality is frowned upon and players expressions of their emotions or their personal style didn't fly. And this is why you get jazz chism being hazed. And maybe this is why you have no out gay players in MLB. I mean, it's all kind of part and parcel of just like, I can't speak up in this environment. Like I can't be myself. And I think a lot of that has improved, but clearly there's still a lot of that thinking

that just like being a member of the team means that we all behave the same way and act the same way at least outwardly. And ultimately that's not gonna be good for your team. You want people with a whole lot of different viewpoints and backgrounds and everything. And so just clamping down on any personal expression like that I think would probably be counterproductive. So I think that a lot of this difference, I sort of started this by asking,

well, what's different now? What changed? I think a lot of it just has to do with kind of the political climate and the fact that, I mean, it's not that Trump has gotten any less Trump since his first term. He has gotten much more Trump, if anything. And so if you had some objection to him last time around,

I mean, there are certainly people who came around and decided actually I will vote for him this time. So who knows? But I think there are even more reasons to be concerned and to not want to go at this point. And so I think it just has to do with kind of the larger mood of the country and that's changing too. You look at the approval ratings and they're higher

than they were for much of his first term and you're still sort of in the first hundred days, honeymoon phase, a newly elected president who didn't get as strong a mandate from the electorate as he would claim, but still one convincingly, that kind of gives permission to be like, okay, I'm just gonna go or not to want to stand out from the pack that is going.

However, those approval ratings are falling fast. And so I wonder how long that will last and whether it's just that, well, the Dodgers are kind of the first into the breach. That's just the way the timing worked out. And so maybe they were gung ho about it and 100% participation. Maybe the Eagles will go later this month. But will this last or will at some point during Trump's term,

even if it's just that he's economically disruptive, if he's costing these people money in their investment portfolios, will that be the breaking point for them? Who knows? But it's a long four years. And so I wouldn't bet on this holding. I think it might just be that we're in a moment of time here where he's newly elected and they were the first ones to really have to make this decision and show up. And they made this decision. But given how quickly everything is changing and evolving, I wouldn't be shocked if that changes by the next time it's, you know, another team's turn to show up. Or maybe it'll be the Dodgers turn again, because the Dodgers are still really good.

And then we'll see if they handle it the same way next year. Yeah, I just like, I wish, and this is going to sound perhaps naive, but I just wish that those decisions were being made on the, in the realm of principle rather than popularity. Because if you go now and they win another World Series and a year from now the administration's approval ratings are in the tank and it looks like the midterms are going to be a blood bath and you're like, well, I'm not going to go. Well, why? What's different now other than it's easier for you to stand up for something?

In the grand scheme of things, just don't go. And you don't have to... Just don't go. If you don't feel right about it, just don't have to, you know, just don't go. Just don't go. If you don't feel right about it, just don't do it, you know? And I don't know, you just have to live with yourself your whole life is the thing. We all have to just live with ourselves our whole lives. And that can be hard enough to do even when we're standing on principle.

So I don't know, let's just try to make decisions where you're like, this isn't the thing that's going to keep me up at 3am. And again, I don't know, let's just try to make decisions where you're like, this isn't the thing that's going to keep me up at 3am. And again, I don't know them. So it might not be that deep for them. I don't know. Or they might be tortured by it. I don't know. Or they face pressure from, you know, higher ups in the organization.

We're all going. You don't have a choice. You have to go. Maybe that happened. I don't know. But I, I just, again, you you gotta live with yourself your whole life. All right. One more note about the pants. The universal concern is still the pant. More info here from Patreon supporter Harry Barker-Faust, who says,

Meg is right that this look has been around for a while. I believe Hunter Pence was the first player to sport it, though I'm a Giants fan, so my recollection could be biased. Based on Google Images, an interview, and a video, I believe Pence started wearing his pants above the knees in 2014, trendsetter. Then, in his resurgent 2019 season in Texas, things really took off. He got at least three teammates to try out the style, including Rugnedo Dour, who displayed the most extreme precursor to Dennis Santana's version. The look has continued to proliferate since 2019. I have seen Elliott Ramos and Luis Matos both rock it this year, among others. Good ol' Hunter Pence. March to the beat of his own drum. Certainly swung to the beat of his own bat. And dressed to the beat of his own wardrobe. I

don't know. He had an unusual way of doing things, is what I'm attempting to convey here. Also thought this was a good point from Zig, who writes in to say there has been some talk about strange records to start the season, and I figured I'd send an email about it in case it hasn't been brought up yet which is just pointing out that these records would not be possible before schedule rebalancing. Traditionally seasons have started with teams facing other teams within their division which means you would often leave the first two series with the division standings having a gradient of records. Since almost no one played within their division in the first two

series the outlier of the NL West start and the weirdness of the entire AL Central being 2-4 has been made possible. That doesn't make it uninteresting to talk about, but it does mean this is the first time since X that a season has started this way in terms of divisional records holds less weight. Also, in case you were wondering, we will be discussing The Clubhouse, A Year with the Red Sox, the new eight-part Netflix series. We've been watching it, so if you wanna prepare for that pod, you can check it out. Not that you'll need to have watched it in order to listen to us. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon

by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Jiawei, Tyler Nunez, Mitchell Delaney, Adam Lyon, and Father Corey French, thanks to all of you.

Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, prioritized email answers, playoff livestreams, personalized messages, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangrass 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 fangrafts.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

the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. And you can check the show notes of 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. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. Effectively wild. Effectively wild It's war with a smile Effectively wild It's the good stuff

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