Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 761: An Offseason Friday Gallimaufry

Episode Date: November 6, 2015

Ben and Sam discuss free agents, qualifying offers, the Rays-Mariners trade, Alex Anthopoulos’ departure from Toronto, and Mike Trout Twitter....

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 I'm qualified to satisfy you in any way you want me to. Qualified to satisfy by you in any way you want me to. Qualified to satisfy by you. Good morning and welcome to episode 761 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus, presented by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Ben Lindberg of ESPN, joined by Sam Miller of Baseball Perspectus. Hello. Hello. This is going to be one of those episodes where we just start talking and talk for a while until it's over, and then we end it.
Starting point is 00:00:42 I guess that describes every episode, but what I mean is we have a few different things that we want to touch on. None of them is really a full episode on itself. So we'll see where this goes. So this is a big off-season news day. Neither of us is really in off-season news mode yet, I don't think, as we discussed with Andy yesterday. This is qualifying offer day. It's the beginning of free agency deadline night. So maybe we'll get into that more next week. RJ Anderson's top 50 free agents list came out for Baseball Perspectives.
Starting point is 00:01:20 One interesting thing to mention is that this year's free agent crop seems like a lot better than next year's free agent crop. I was just talking to Craig Goldstein, and he pointed that out. And if you look at the list of this year's top free agents, there are a bunch of marquee people. RJ's top 10, I guess I'll read out, is Price, Hayward, Granke, Upton, Chris Davis, Johnny Cueto, Cespedes, Gordon, Zimmerman, and Ben Zobrist those are all pretty big names pretty great players if you look at next year's class and obviously this could be winnowed down further by extensions between now and then. There's really only, I mean, I guess there are a couple guys who would crack that top 10 if they were free agents right now. But it's Strasburg is the big guy at 28 years old when he's a free agent.
Starting point is 00:02:20 And that could be a huge deal if he has a good year. If he has an injury plagued year who knows so strasburg and then there's like a big gap between him and the next starters available who are andrew cashner and clay buckholz who are two other guys who could go either way in 2016 and then the position player crop is really thin. Wait a minute, wait a minute. Thinner than that? Yeah, I think. It's like Edwin Encarnacion, who will be 34,
Starting point is 00:02:53 and Jose Bautista, who will be 36, and then Carlos Gomez and Justin Turner. I mean, these are the... The first three you named don't seem that thin. I mean, they are older. They're old, yeah. But, I mean, Bautista is like a top five hitter in the game right yes yeah who knows what who know maybe he'll maybe he'll show age this year but he's like a top five hitter in the game and
Starting point is 00:03:15 incarnacion is like a top 12 hitter in the game and gomez is like a top 12 overall player in the game yeah well he wasn't this year i mean he had injury stuff going on this year so maybe he recovers from that and is great but but yeah all of these guys will be over 30 well over 30 which is not really i mean you know hayward is young hayward is unusually young for a top free agent but i don't know there's just not much depth, it doesn't seem like. After you get by the guys I just named, it's all kind of complimentary players, like nice players, but certainly not stars. And I don't know what kind of deal a 36-year-old Jose Bautista would get, but if he has another nice season, I'm sure he'd still get a substantial deal, but it wouldn't be a long-term mega contract because he's 36 so maybe it would be four or five years or something anyway that seems like it's the best that it gets and maybe some of those guys sign extensions and obviously like there will be you know guys who have surprisingly good seasons next year and turn out to be better free agents than we think right now
Starting point is 00:04:21 but it looks weak from what we can see now so if you are yeah really just just glancing at it almost most even the guys who could conceivably do that 10 are are fairly old like i'm not i'm not sure there's really like a chris davis here who i could could break out in a way and i don't't know, just curious, what do you think Chris Davis would have gotten if he'd been a free agent last year? I mean, he basically, he'd had two okay years for a corner guy around one superstar year that no one was really sure what to make of at the time
Starting point is 00:04:58 and looked like the outlier season. Yeah, I don't think he would have gotten much at all last year. He was like a below average hitter. More or less than, right, exactly. So like more or less than Nelson Cruz, for instance. Less. And so now. Cruz was coming off a big year.
Starting point is 00:05:16 I mean, no one believed he would repeat it the way he did, but he was coming off the career year. So I'm now looking at the Fangraphs crowd prediction for Davis, and they have him at 5-100 this year. Dave Cameron actually goes much higher than that in his own prediction, and I kind of feel like I would go over that too. I mean, he's going to be a 30-year-old first baseman who's had a 47 and a 53 home run season
Starting point is 00:05:47 in the last three years yeah and you know what they say about power these days it's in short supply by the way how about how like nobody says that anymore now because the royals right now it's all about how now it's everybody talks about the exact opposite, how now in a low-power environment you've got to get guys like the Royals get who put the ball in play and keep the line moving, and you can't go for the home run, and you have to be able to go first to third. And going for power is now like the dumb thing to do. Like it just switched because a team got good. Like that's it.
Starting point is 00:06:24 That's true all right anyway so yeah chris davis uh i mean chris davis maybe tripled what his contract will be with this year and so anyway which is i'm saying like i don't i like there are guys on this list who you could see having you know a big year at age 31 or 32, but they're still going to be 32 or 33 when they hit free agency. Like, Trumbo's not going to be young if he happens to have a massive year this year. Or so on. I guess probably the best bet for a guy who we look at radically different in a year
Starting point is 00:07:02 would be Pedro Alvarez. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, at this point, he's like a non-tender candidate. Yeah. And so I think he'll be 30 if he hits free agency. But, yeah, there's not really a lot of guys that you're – maybe Cameron Maben could still have a – although then he's got a club option, which would get picked up if he were good.
Starting point is 00:07:27 Yeah. So the takeaway maybe is that if you are a team that is two years away, then maybe you buy now with that in mind. So Craig was suggesting, for instance, that a team like the Phillies, who maybe have a new tv contract coming up and maybe they're a couple years away from being relevant again maybe you buy some free agents this year because there aren't going to be any next year so i don't know how many teams fit into that category or how many other teams could be a phies in that respect. But if we see some weird deals this offseason
Starting point is 00:08:07 where we think, why are they spending all that money now on this guy? They're probably not going to be a great team in 2016. And it probably makes sense to keep in mind the 2016 to 2017 free agent class. And that could be why. That could be why teams are buying before they are ready to contend so something to keep in mind and the qualifying offer stuff again is like probably the the least interesting kind of baseball news other than maybe arbitration arbitration is
Starting point is 00:08:42 probably less interesting when teams exchange figures and they find midpoints. And we have to talk about that in January or February. But it seems like there's going to be more qualifying offers than there ever have been. In the past three off seasons, which is how long we've had the current collective bargaining agreement, there have been 34 qualifying offers extended to free agents. None of them, as we know, has been accepted. And this year, it seems like we're going to see a record number of qualifying offers extended. The previous one-year record is 13 players, and this seems like a pretty deep free agent class. So in various previews that were done, it seems like at least 20, maybe more than 20 players will get these qualifying offers. And yet, even though more and more of them are going to be handed out, it still seems like none of them really is all that likely to accept.
Starting point is 00:09:45 accept. I mean, a guy like Marco Estrada, who has received a qualifying offer, which maybe not everyone would have predicted. Still, if you're Marco Estrada, are you going to take the $15.8 million one-year deal? It seems like qualifying offers are just never, ever going to get accepted. And I know that you think that the entire idea of free agent compensation is really stupid and ineffective and i guess the fact that these qualifying offers never get accepted just sort of drives that home yeah i mean they're the worst they're the dumbest thing right that's all but ian kennedy i'll accept yeah i guess ian kennedy might accept let's see so ian kennedy is coming wow i this seems this seems i mean well this is like michael kodair last year right where we were sure that michael
Starting point is 00:10:36 michael kodair would accept and then somebody gave him a contract afterward yeah it's just made it wise for him million is not a lot of money now it's like you know yeah but ian ian kennedy right he's he's not only is he is i mean not only is it to me it seems like kind of a stretch to call him you know a 12 million dollar average annual value guy which is maybe like what sort of multi-year contract you'd have to get to make it worth turning that down. But he's coming off, you know, maybe arguably a career worst season in a lot of ways. And he hasn't actually been good in four years. But, you know, there's there's enough there that's good in 2014. He was he was useful was useful in 2014 well he had to go farther than that he had a
Starting point is 00:11:27 363 era and petco it yeah i mean it's it's i don't know what we might just have different ideas about good uh like i'd take i would definitely take him on my team and if it were coming off of last year then i could see turning that down i would expect him to get after that year i would have expected him to get you know to be able to command maybe three and 36 or something like that but right now i mean he's a he's a disaster isn't he he was a disaster last year was a disaster year and he's had a couple of those and you know yeah i mean he's made 30 starts in six to eight years and that's something and he's only 30 years old and he struck people out this year he was like one of those weird Padres home run rate people he would think that the Padres would their pitching problem would not be giving up home runs but suddenly he was giving up a ton of home runs and James Shields was giving up a ton of home runs.
Starting point is 00:12:29 So if you think that was somewhat fluky, that he had such a high home run rate. At home, by the way. It wasn't as bad on the road. It was not nearly as bad on the road. That's strange. And he's had some high home run rates before, so it's not out of nowhere. So, I mean, he still strikes out people and has
Starting point is 00:12:48 decent control and he pretty much always makes his start so that's something i feel like people would give him a multi-year deal for that even though he's coming off probably his worst full year or second worst full year but not a multi-year deal that comes with a pick right cost them a pick true i mean maybe they would still but like ah geez did i mean doesn't ian kennedy seem like the kind of guy who's going to be available in may if he's got a pick attached to him maybe yeah so maybe i i can't remember if it's a good pick attached to him. Maybe. Yeah, so maybe he'll. I can't remember if it's a good year or not for the draft. I can never remember that.
Starting point is 00:13:30 But that matters too. Yeah. Yeah, I don't think people have a real sense of that yet. I think it's better than last year, but I don't think it's any kind of crazy good year. There's no real consensus top guy or anything. So let's see. So Mike Xisa did a qualifying offer preview in mid-October. And so he had in his definitely group Chris Davis and Dexter Fowler, Alex Gordon, Granke, Hayward, Iwakuma, Wei-In Chen, Kendrick, Lackey,
Starting point is 00:14:07 Howard, Iwakuma, Wei and Chen, Kendrick, Lackey, Samarja, Upton, Wieders, Zimmerman. And then in the likely group, he had Brett Anderson, Ian Desmond, Gallardo, Kennedy, Daniel Murphy, Colby Rasmus, Denard Spann. And then he had some unlikely guys, and at least one of those unlikely guys, Marco Estrada, has already gotten one. So I guess Kennedy will be the referendum on whether anyone will ever accept a qualifying offer, because he seems like probably the best candidate yet, certainly the best candidate this year who we know has gotten one. All right, so maybe we'll circle back and talk about those things next week when we know about who has gotten the offers and which players are free agents. So there was a trade. Maybe we could talk about that for four minutes.
Starting point is 00:14:57 The Mariners and Rays made a trade, and it sort of took everyone by surprise that a multi-year deal happened so quickly, I suppose. But none of the names in the deal is a big name. So it's a little interesting if you dig a little deeper. So the Rays got Brad Miller, the shortstop, and Logan Morrison, first baseman, and right-handed relie, Danny Farquhar. And the Mariners got Nate Carnes, the starter, and outfielder Boog Powell, the second, and C.J. Riefenhauser, left-handed reliever. So each team got a reliever,
Starting point is 00:15:39 and each team got a sort of decent hitter. beach team got a sort of decent hitter logan morrison is like a seems like a classic raise first base dh type who's just sort of average-ish maybe so the interesting players are brad miller and nate karnes and this is a case where both teams are sort of dealing from depth in that the Mariners still have Kettle Marte and Chris Taylor so they have some infield shortstop types and the Rays have lots of young starting pitching so I guess the interesting question about these guys is just there are multiple interpretations of how good each of them is and Dave Cameron did a good job of laying out what the different interpretations are so the Brad Miller question is whether he can be a shortstop because if he can be a shortstop then he's pretty decent
Starting point is 00:16:41 he's like a league average hitter if you park adjust for Safeco. So if he could play defense, that's obviously a good thing. And I guess scouts have always kind of been down on him playing shortstop full time. And he's one of those guys who the stats sort of like as a shortstop. Like maybe average or slightly below average shortstop in ultimate zone rating over 2,000 or so major league innings. So that's just sort of a stats versus scouts kind of discussion that we had with Johnny Peralta maybe when he signed.
Starting point is 00:17:18 And he's a guy who people don't think of as a good shortstop, but always grades out as an average shortstop or better. don't think of as a good shortstop, but always grades out as an average shortstop or better. So if he's a decent shortstop, then he seems like he's probably the best player in the deal, because Nate Carnes kind of falls into the Ian Kennedy category, I guess, in that he strikes people out, but he gives up lots of home runs. and he has always given up lots of home runs. So I don't know, maybe the Mariners looked at him and look at his XFIP or something and his home run per fly ball rate and think that he'll beters, he's given up 27 home runs as a Ray and a National, which are not great home run parks. And if you look at his minor league home run rates, they're also bad. Well, they're bad once you get to AA. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:18:21 They were really good before that, which is not any kind of point in his favor right yeah so he seems like maybe he fits the profile of a guy who just you know kind of like the joe blanton i was gonna say i was just then i was thinking joe blanton and uh another guy that jerry depoto got quickly after taking over a team i think yeah that's true so i don't know maybe you can say that jerry depoto's weakness is like good strikeout guys who give up home runs or something and maybe that will work better in safeco than it did in his prior stints but by the way joe blanton i know did you see what jo Blanton did? I know. Did you see what Joe Blanton did? He did this year. I know.
Starting point is 00:19:06 I was just going to do that too. What is that? I don't know, man. And the crazy thing is that he was doing this for the Kansas City bullpen in a smaller sample, but he was pitching really well in the Kansas City bullpen, and they basically just let him walk in the middle of yeah uh because they have a lot of good relievers i guess but yeah i mean joe blanton is joe blanton is every bit the story that trevor cahill is as a guy you'd completely forgotten might be a good pitcher dominating in relief yeah so joe blanton didn't pitch in the majors in I mean, he was terrible in the
Starting point is 00:19:45 big leagues in 2013, ERA over six with a good strikeout to walk ratio and tons of homers. And then 2014, he was pitching for Oakland in AAA, and he had an ERA over five. Again, good strikeout to walk ratio. And then, yeah, so this year with Kansas City and I guess with Kansas City it was sort of the same he was giving up home runs but good strikeouts and walks and then he went to Pittsburgh and pitched 21 games out of the bullpen with a 1.57 ERA one home run in 34 and a third innings and struck out over a batter per inning and good walk rate again so i don't know yeah i i also don't know i'm gonna see whether he was good as a relief occasionally he would pitch in relief no so like with the Angels, he pitched in relief eight times and had an 8.64 ERA with five homers and 16 innings.
Starting point is 00:20:48 So he was every bit as bad. So this isn't just about, I mean, maybe it's about getting used to it, but this isn't just about moving a bad starter into relief and having him be awesome, which is like all that happens in baseball. It seems like, you know, there's got to be a little more to it than that uh yeah 57 innings in relief 10 strikeouts per nine four homers in almost six innings in the 2.4 2.04 era before that in his career he had 32 and a third innings in relief And 26 runs allowed Which is horrible And struck out
Starting point is 00:21:27 6-ish per 9 And allowed 8 homers and 32 innings As a reliever So we can't Give full credit to Ray Searidge because this started in Kansas City I believe
Starting point is 00:21:44 That's the case. I believe this might be a, this might be a hap situation where it's easy to, but like, yeah, he was quietly pitching pretty well in relief for Kansas City. He, so in, he pitched, he threw 15 innings in relief for them with a 1.8 ERA, one homer, and, you know, a strikeout per in his usual control. And then they moved him into starting, and he had four starts, two of them bad, two of them eh, okay, two pretty good. And then they moved him back to relief, and he had one disaster outing, but eight innings in those four outings 10 strikeouts no walks 4.5 era and then uh and then he walked then he was purchased huh i wonder if there are any starters
Starting point is 00:22:36 who wash out of the game without trying having tried it yeah i mean at this point it seems like you would want to try it with any starter any any starter who struggles is potentially a good setup guy so well casimir never got the chance uh casimir partly it's that he collapsed so quickly and so utterly yeah that they didn't have time to even like he was he was coming in and not being able to get through you know to get one out in the first in in his rehab starts and then he was gone uh but he never did get the chance and i always wondered what he would have been like uh if he had uh probably horrible at the time yeah i think he needed to go through some things, but he almost washed out of the game without that chance.
Starting point is 00:23:27 Yeah, so I don't know. We even tried that with the Stompers. There was a starter who was struggling, and we tried him in the bullpen, and we were crossing our fingers that he would suddenly throw five miles per hour faster or something. It didn't work out in our case, but we tried it. We tried it a couple times actually yeah and yeah it's like it's sort of a weird situation because you're you sort of like you you in the back of your mind you think okay maybe it'll take him a little bit to adjust to this but it's like the first pitch you look at the gun and you're like oh no okay
Starting point is 00:24:02 yeah like you don't need 12 innings or anything like that. It's like, oh, it's not the same. All right. Yeah. And I don't know. Maybe there would be guys who just don't, that can't get into that, like just put it all out there mindset right away. And you really need to drill it into them for a while that, no,
Starting point is 00:24:22 this is different from starting. You don't need to hold anything back. But, yeah, it if it's don't throw your third pitch yeah don't throw your third pitch right yeah yeah but it seems like usually if it's gonna happen you can tell fairly quickly although not in joe blanton's case evidently all right so last thing i guess unless there's anything you want to talk about, we never talked about Alex Anthopoulos leaving Toronto because it happened in the midst of the playoffs when we had games to talk about, and now we don't.
Starting point is 00:24:54 So this was a case where Anthopoulos seems like maybe the first victim of the title inflation going on in front offices that we've talked about. Or this new arrangement where the president of baseball operations is actually the GM or what we used to think of as the GM. And the guy who's called a GM now is really a glorified assistant GM or something. And so this has happened in a bunch of teams all of a sudden, and it seems like there are multiple reasons for it. A lot of it is just being able to keep your employees or get talented employees from other teams because teams will allow you to interview for a position that is seen as higher ranking or more important than the current position. And so if a
Starting point is 00:25:47 guy is an assistant GM and you are offering a GM job, then the convention is for teams to allow that person to interview, even if the GM job for one team is really not all that different from the AGM job with another team. So we keep seeing this happen. And mostly it seems like when it happens, everyone involves, understands the power structure and knows what they're getting into and realizes that if they're going to be a GM under a president of baseball operations, then they're not going to have the final say on all the baseball moves. But this is a little different in Toronto where Anthopolis was the GM and had the old fashioned or the traditional GM job where he was the one who had the say in things. And we knew for a while that the Blue Jays were looking for a new president and they were trying to lure Dan Duquette the past offseason. That didn't end up happening. But they were able to hire Mark
Starting point is 00:26:48 Shapiro from Cleveland, who was the Indians' former GM and then their president of baseball operations, or just president, and was largely concerned with business aspects. And then he came over to Toronto and wanted to be involved in the baseball side again, except Alex Anthopoulos was already there. So the interesting thing, I guess, about this is the meeting that was reported by Bruce Arthur in The Star about the first time, a face-to-face meeting with the senior members of the Jays front office where Shapiro said that he, I'm quoting, strongly disagreed with some of the deadline choices that sent prospects out. That seems like a tough case to make, I guess, given what happened with the Blue Jays in the second half in the
Starting point is 00:27:36 playoffs. I mean, it's something that maybe you could have said at the time that the deals were made, but I don't think a single Blue Jays fan wishes that those moves hadn't been made to bring in Price and Tulewitzki and Upgrade. And so it seems like if you're coming in after the Blue Jays just put together maybe the best team in baseball and made the playoffs for the first time in decades, that would be a tough position to take. But maybe that doesn't even matter what Shapiro said, because if he wanted to be involved in the baseball side of things and Anthopolis wanted to be the final say, then probably he wouldn't have been happy anyway. And evidently they lowballed him with a two-year deal with an option at first, and then they tried to give him a five-year deal, but by then he had already decided to move on. And there doesn't really seem to be an obvious place for him to go
Starting point is 00:28:31 because all the teams have GMs, and I guess there are other places where he could go in and be a president, and then maybe it would be kind of the same thing that happened to him, where the GM on that team would not be happy about him coming in to be the president. So teams are sort of sorting out how this new front office hierarchy works. You know, what would be cool is if we lived in a world where you could start your own team and like not necessarily start your own team and have it like certainly not have it just join the majors, but you ought to be able to have like you know your disruptive your industry disrupting team like you know just build your own tesla kind of company and then you know work your way in and once you once you get good enough then they have
Starting point is 00:29:18 to let you in and there's like it'd be cool if alexanthopoulos could be like, I hate all these guys. I'm going to start my own team. And just like he could barnstorm and collect awesome players and then gradually be one of the 30 best teams in the world. And be in this – it kind of sort of sucks that you have to work in this very tiny little group of oxygen. But I forget what we were going to say. But yeah, I wonder, I mean, it's hard to say who is president qualified these days because we don't really know what the standards are for being team president. Like we don't really know what you're doing. I guess if team president is just one of the 30 people in the world most qualified to be GM, then yes, he is one of the, I think he is one of the 30 most qualified people
Starting point is 00:30:10 in the world to be GM. Maybe he takes a year off and then when Walt Jockety steps down for good next year, maybe he goes over and takes over Cincinnati's presidency. Yeah. Because that'll be a kind of an inexperienced gm over there right and uh who is a son of an owner he is the son he is he is the son of an owner which is it's uh i mean for all we know he could be great you know dick williams who is the gm of the reds like if you are if you are great then it's almost bad to be the son of the owner because we just assume that if you are the son of the owner, then obviously you only got the job because you are the son of the owner. But maybe not. It sounds – I think that in Dick Williams' case, it sounds worse than it is because he has put in his time.
Starting point is 00:31:03 Yeah. But it's also worse than it needs to be uh and yes i agree that like it's always a bad sign like you know what if you're if you're the son of an owner and you're qualified to be the gm uh get some other team's gm position yeah like like then you prove it yeah like i've always had this feeling that like, you know how sometimes you hear about like you'll read a profile of a pop star in Rolling Stone. And they always talk about like they want to establish their musical bona fides. And so they always like there's always that part where they're like, and he or she writes his or her own songs. And you're like, ooh, la la writes his or her own.
Starting point is 00:31:41 And you're like, ooh, la la, right? But then I realized that, in fact, if you want to know whether a person, a pop star, is more than just the face of some corporate vision of a pop star, you have to see if they write other people's songs. Like Taylor Swift wrote other people's songs. Bruno Mars wrote other people's songs. Those are talented songwriters because other people wanted them to write their songs for them. Yeah. Whereas a lot of the ones who quote unquote wrote their own songs. Yeah, they're credited. They have a credit with like
Starting point is 00:32:13 five other people. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So if you want to prove that your GM qualified, then yeah, convince the Blue Jays to hire you is probably a, but anyway, I, like I said, he's, he, it is not a, it's not an absurd, like given the resume, it's, it's not an absurd hiring. If you took away, if you took away the, the son of, there wouldn't be anything shocking about that press release. You're right. It, it almost looks worse if you're qualified when your dad is the boss.
Starting point is 00:32:44 Right. Okay. Can I say one thing about Mike Trout? Sure. 14 hours ago, Mike Trout tweeted, Baylor QB is legit, with an exclamation point. And this is a Mike Trout Penns tweet. This is not a retweet.
Starting point is 00:32:58 And there's no space between legit and exclamation point. And I have been anxiously awaiting his follow-up to see whether that was a typo or whether it's new and if it is new then it will be interesting to see uh whether he is uh has uh hired somebody to at least uh help like that seems like pretty safe to say that baylor qb is legit exclamation point is a classic mike trout tweet like i don't think i don't think he's he's having ghost written. But he might have somebody who is posting for him. I will also note that Mike Trout fairly recently, I don't know how recently,
Starting point is 00:33:31 it seems to me quite recently though, changed his biopic. And it might be just about the best athlete biopic out there. And it's really good. It's a picture of him standing on home plate his back to the camera holding up a bat uh like over his head with his hand on each end of the bat and you see his jersey his number 27 he's standing there with good posture and a mike trout body and there are like 40 photographers with cameras all kneeling on the
Starting point is 00:34:06 grass behind home plate pointing at him. And it's really, it's great composition. It's very meta. It's very, there's, you know, you could stare at it for a long time. And it's, I mean, I'm not going to go deep into analyzing it, but I think you could go deep into analyzing all the different levels of which this is like the great photo of a modern baseball athlete in a Twitter biopic. So just I don't know if he chose that or not. Usually a rule of thumb I've found is that if it is a published photo, they didn't choose it. If it is an unpublished photo, they did choose it. And I don't know if this is a published photo or not. It's obviously not a photo he took. It's not a selfie or anything like that. So I don't know. But it's a great picture and it shows great taste by whoever chose it. All right. So something to watch over the
Starting point is 00:35:00 weekend. And his last, so on October 29 29th he had a space before exclamation point tweet and then his next one with an exclamation point was yeah november 5th with no space so the next tweet with an exclamation point will be telling i mean it's almost like uh moses handing down the ten commandments to like a crowd of is of Israelites below him is what it kind of looks like. Like it's like he is addressing, like he is a God addressing a congregation or something addressing something. I don't know. Like I said, there's many levels that I'm not going to go into, but it's beautiful. All right. So we've talked enough. Surprisingly, maybe we won't talk about the fact that there's going to be a cricket match played in Dodger Stadium
Starting point is 00:35:47 or the fact that there's a golf course with sand traps in Petco Park, which, as someone pointed out in the Facebook group, is pretty close to a pit. But we're not going to talk about those. We're going to end the show here. You can send us emails for next week at podcast at baseball prospectus.com. Join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild and rate interview the show on iTunes and support our sponsor, the play index by going to baseball reference.com and using the coupon code
Starting point is 00:36:18 VP to get the discounted price of $30 on one year subscription. We have a fun show lined up for Monday, so we will be back then.

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