Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1383: Net Results

Episode Date: June 1, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Mariners’ recent run of ineptitude, why some teams talk to the media and whether there’s a moral obligation for teams to share information about preventing player injuries, a question from a fantasy player who’s aiming to compete in 2027, a Clayton Kershaw vs. Jacob deGrom matchup as […]

Every bomb is detonated, every switch is thrown, and everybody tells me don't be scared, act as if you never cared. So I wear a blank expression to conceal my real impression, turn off all the information, radios just pick up their station. Just can't get, just can't get no protection. Just can't get, just can't get no protection. Just can't get, just can't get no protection. Just can't get, just can't get no, can't get no protection. Protection. Protection. Hello and welcome to episode 1383 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Hello, Ben. Hello. I'm getting better at that. Yeah, that was flawless. Take joy in small triumphs. How are you, Ben? I'm feeling like every contestant on The Bachelor or Bachelorette who always says that they're nervous and excited. I am a combination of those two things because I'm a few days away

from my book coming out. I'm excited for you. I'm not nervous at all because I'm confident it will do well and also I didn't write it. So if I'm wrong, I will be sad for you as my friend and I will be concerned for you and Travis, although I'm confident that i will be sad for you as my friend and i will be concerned for uh you and travis although i am confident that that will not be the outcome uh but if it is uh i'll be able to move on very quickly i think it'll sting longer for you yeah i'm sure that's true it'll be fine though i'm glad you'll get over it but yeah can i do one last pre-order plug because i guess this is the last episode probably in which you will be able to pre-order because next time this podcast comes out, maybe it will be too late because the book will be out. So the book is called The MVP Machine. I wrote it and Travis Sawchuk wrote it and you can go order it now. And if you do, you get a bunch of bonus goodies, which will be emailed to you.

emailed to you so just send your receipt or confirmation to the mvp machine at gmail.com and you'll get a bonus chapter and a conversation between me and travis and lots of other cool stuff i think you'll learn a lot because we learned a lot when we wrote it and it's the story of player development and the current player development revolution and if you're in new york city or somewhere close on tuesday travis and i will both be doing a book signing slash book launch event at Foley's the baseball bar on 33rd street so we hope that you all come out and see us I will not be there although I did appreciate being invited yeah it's nice to be included oh boy can we talk for a moment about something that is far less fun than that sure we need to talk about these Seattle Mariners we don't have to talk about it for very long

because the headline is probably pretty obvious to people. But as I was watching the Seattle Mariners last night, because they were, you know, as they often are, by the end of it, they were the last game on. And they were not winning. They weren't winning. That's not surprising. See, this is something I can move on from much

more quickly than you. Although it's less, thankfully it's less devastating to me than it used to be. I was wondering, I was kind of, I was kind of wondering where their recent run of, you know, ineptitudes kind of ranked for them because we remember they started like 13 and two and we're like, Hey, should we talk about these mariners and we both said yeah but like we shouldn't get excited and we were right it's nice to be right the mariners played 27 games in the month of may excluding you know today where they have not yet played and um i was curious what the stretch of games that they have played is sort of how it stacks up versus what they have done historically as a franchise because ben they have won six of those 27 games they have won six of those 27 games they have scored 110 runs and allowed 182 goodness in the month of may just

to like put that in perspective for people um you know the marlins are also a bad baseball team and we expected them to be bad and their overall record is still worse on the season but they went 11 and 14 in May and they scored 87 runs because their offense is very poor but they only allowed 109 so I I went to the I went to the play index and I was like, how does this stack up? And you can kind of look at stretches of time for a team. And so I looked at the Mariners for their whole franchise and wondered, hey, by like, say, losses in a month, how does it kind of stack up? And there were some 2011 teams that over a 27- stretch had lost say 22 games and there were some

1980 teams that were that lost 22 games and some also uh some 1979 teams that lost 22 and then a bunch of teams in the 80s the 1980 season that that lost uh a bunch of stretches i should say that were like home to 23 uh losses but then right there, right there are the 2019 Mariners. Because, you know, this looks at a range of 27 days. So obviously you get kind of bunched up. Month results in the same season because you keep losing and then it just rolls to the next set of 27 days. But from, say, April 26th to May 26th, when they went 6-21 and had a negative 89 run differential. That's in the top half of your results as a franchise.

So this is a very bad Mariners team. When you first sent me that leaderboard, if you can call it a leaderboard, lacquered board, I initially thought that that was just for all franchises and that they all just happened to be Mariners teams in the worst stretches, which didn't actually surprise me that much either way. But yeah, it's been really ugly. And I was going to say that at least they've been hitting and they've on the season have been hitting. But over the last month have been a below average offensive team, although not a terrible team. But clearly, as evidenced by the runs allowed total that you cited there, that's the big problem. So I did an episode, I forget

whether it was a Jeff episode or a Sam episode or too many co-hosts to keep track of, but it wasn't that long ago that we talked about what the most entertaining type of losing team is. Like, would you rather lose with a team that just doesn't score that much, but also doesn't allow a lot of runs? Or would you like a team like this, which scores a fair number of runs for a while with scoring a ton of runs, but then also allows like the most runs? And I don't know. I mean, if you're watching Mariners baseball, you're seeing a lot of action.

So that's something. Is this an entertaining way to lose like all else being equal i think the answer is that of the short-term ways to lose this is probably the most entertaining because it does allow you to think well like hey they you know like uh they have uh daniel vogelback who uh they could hit enough to come back right they could come back i meanelbeck. Yeah, they could hit enough to come back. Right, they could come back. I mean, they're terrible at pitching, but they could hit enough to come back, and it'll be so exciting if they do that, and you'll get to jump around and sing. But you do realize, I think the real answer is that over the course of an entire season, no way to lose ends up

being sustainably fun because, you know, you can, you can trick yourself into saying, well, this team will rally and come back because they score a bunch of runs and they're going to hit homers. But after a while you become acquainted with the realities of a pitching staff that gives up, I mean, just, it's just so many runs a game as a team. They're giving up six runs a game. Because when you're doing that calculus in your head and you're thinking, okay, we can come back, you're thinking, we can score as many runs as we are currently trailing by. we can come back, you're thinking we can score as many runs as we are currently trailing by. But you're kind of holding the other team scoreless during that period when you're doing that calculation. And the Mariners do not hold other teams scoreless. So that's the problem. You can make up that ground. But meanwhile, you're seeding lots of ground.

Right. And after a couple of weeks of that, that reality, even if you don't want to hold it close, has wormed its way into the inside part of your heart. And you just know. You just kind of know. You feel defeated before. Even if the rally starts, you just are like, this isn't going to work. Because they get to hit again. They just get to hit again.

Mike Trout gets to hit again against his Mariners team. They're letting him do that again today. That's not like a human rights violation. It's strange. That's the nice thing because you get a lot of games against the Angels, and at least you get to see Otani and Simmons and Trout just tee off on Mariners pitching. So that's kind of fun. Yes, that part is fun.

Although yesterday, I think the real villain of the whole piece actually was Brad Ausmus because he decided to sit Otani. the real villain of the whole piece actually was Brad Ausmus because he decided to sit Otani. And so I did not enjoy that. I was like, just let me watch, please. I mean, Mike tried it at home run. He had a good game, so that was something. But anyway, the Mariners were very bad.

Film at 11. So that happened. And I felt that we had to talk about it because I knowing that the answer was no we don't have to actually be optimistic about this team but I did ask that question I asked you the question of how long could they sustain their success

before we had to be like huh maybe the Mariners will be a wild card contender and we knew that the answer would not be very long but I think it's important to circle back on these things and kind of close the loop so here we are doing that yeah we have closed that loop on the mariners being good and one thing we talked about at that time was like okay they're probably not good but could they be good long enough that it could convince them that they're good or that it could kind of change their plan which was the what the step back was that yes that's what it was so so they went into the

season not intending to do things to try to win this year but if they had some strange fluky start like they did last year then could that change the timeline or could that convince them to acquire someone or to not trade someone that they might have traded for or traded away but i think that that ship has sailed so yeah I don't think we have to worry about that. Nope. I feel bad because I wrote this article today that's up at the ringer that's about development in college and some of the advanced development technology and techniques that Travis and I wrote about in the book. This article actually started with some stuff that I did thinking it would be for the book, but then didn't end up in the book. So I wrote an article around it and I focused on

this app called Pitch Grader that this guy named Wayne Boyle developed. And he was just a total outsider, an engineer who used this app to make his son better at baseball basically. And then lots of colleges started using it and now some pro teams are using it and the mariners are using it and i was grateful to the mariners for talking to me about this app that they're using to help improve their pitchers and i was weighing whether i had to acknowledge in the article that their pitchers could really use some help right now so i just said something pretty innocuous about right now the major league staff is 29th in everything. Thanks Orioles for being the worst. But yeah, I found the Mariners to be very open. They talk about things that they do much more so than most teams. So when we were trying to talk

to teams for the book and some teams would just totally clamp the lid and say no and no one will talk to you and then other teams will talk to you and they probably won't tell you everything that you want to know and they may skirt around the issues but i appreciate some teams that will at least answer your question even if it's in a guarded way because i understand why teams protect their intellectual property and their competitive advantages but there's usually a way to answer a question without giving away anything, but without just saying no comment. And I appreciate that the Mariners are open about those things, but I guess maybe they have some incentive to be because they're trying to change the reputation around the team and it's player development past and all of that. And so I don't know how some teams decide, yeah, we'll talk to the press about these things and we'll say something and others just say, nope, we're not saying anything to anyone. I'm sure there are advantages to both approaches. Yeah, I think that

I'm sure that there are advantages to both. I think the idea exchange thing is nice. And I always wonder, I mean, on the one hand, the marginal value over the very short time when something is truly a trade secret in baseball is really high, right? Because you can maximize wins. But the length of that time seems very short. We're able to truly press that advantage and so i guess it's not super surprising that the mariners saying like hey we're like we're a couple years out i don't know that um apart from stuff that might help them to target particular

prospects from a drafting perspective or from a trade perspective i don't know that much in the way i don't know i don't i just don't i just don't know if it really matters all that much given the timeframe over which they plan to really be competitive, which seems to be stretched out quite wide. noticeable preference in terms of, you know, wanting to develop like an Astros like model where all of their pitching prospects pitch exactly the same way. They don't all pitch exactly the same way, but they pitch like pretty close. Kind of. So then I suppose you would want to be a little cagier about that. But barring that, I just, everybody's, I feel like the gaps are so small, but there's a certain amount of just being able to chat it through that's probably going to be fine and useful for folks. I don't know. And a lot of it comes down to the implementation of the concepts and the ideas.

So you can say, yeah, this is worth thinking about or it's interesting. people and put them in place and empower them to do this and that and put this whole structure in place that can actually use these ideas to make your team better, make your players better. That's easier said than done. So it's not quite like, I don't know that there are that many places where it's like, yeah, framing is actually worth a lot and no one else thinks it's worth anything. There just aren't that many areas like that. I think in today's game, a lot of it is you can kind of understand the concepts, but then it's really hard to actually put all of this stuff into practice. So I think that's where a ahead of the game when it comes to other MLB teams or just like amateur teams or that sort of thing. But he kind of feels bad about having any edge in that area because it's like, if you know something about injuries that you can prevent a pitcher from getting hurt, aren't you obligated in a way to share that information? I mean, you're not legally

obligated, but are you ethically obligated to, if you have hundreds, thousands of kids out there who are going to have to have Tommy John surgery that maybe they might not have to have. And it could end careers for all you know. That's got to be uncomfortable to sit on that sort of knowledge. Yeah. I don't know how I would feel about that. I wonder how the doctors involved feel about that. Well, you may have been speaking to one of the doctors for all I know.

Not a doctor. I was going to say you were so good and coy about who it was that you were talking to i had no idea i would imagine the doctors in particular feel very kind of maybe yicky about the the concept of holding back some important medical advancement that could lengthen careers or prevent injuries or uh you know that one simple trick to keep your picture from d-d-dommy john uh i don't. I think that it's, I mean, I could see an argument where just the overall health of the sport works better than this. But I could see teams saying, actually, this is a place where we don't care to press our advantage and would prefer that, you know, every pitching prospect be a healthy pitching prospect because then the pool of players who we can trade for without worrying about their medicals is significantly larger. And, you know, the way that kids will come into our organizations from the amateur side will be in sort of a general healthier state. So I could see a team saying, we'd like to share this knowledge so that, you know, young guys can be in a better spot to have long and healthy careers. But I could also see a team saying, we will share that information

after we have gone and won a couple of world series while no one else knows right because what could be more valuable than that knowing just how much value is lost how much money is lost every year to players who are hurt so it's very powerful that would that would be a very meaningful advantage we were talking about how most advantages aren't actually probably that significant, but injury prevention, that could be huge. So I understand the conflict because if your job depends on keeping secrets and on your team winning, everyone likes to be employed if they like their job and like having a roof over their heads. So it's a tough decision to make. And fortunately, people do rotate around teams and they go from one team to another. They leave baseball from time to time. And then that knowledge travels no matter what you do to try to protect it. So there is sort of a shelf life on how long you can keep a secret, even if you're trying to.

These things tend to work themselves out, but I think that you're right that there might be a special moral urgency to the question of injury prevention in a way that there isn't if it's just like, well, this shift alignment, let me tell you what, we never give up a ball in play. It's a very different kind of thing when you're talking about actual human health. So I don't know. He could be a baseball whistleblower. He shouldn't necessarily do that. I'm also making a gender assumption, which is totally unwarranted. I have no idea i shouldn't do that playing the percentages there but yes yeah but the person involved could uh could be a health whistleblower or inspire one of their doctors yeah or if the if it's a technique thing if it's not like avoiding injury prone players but tweaking players in some way to

make them less injury prone then the players know what that knowledge is and right then they go elsewhere and they have maybe less incentive to keep that knowledge to themselves so that's always a helpful thing that was a helpful thing for me and travis when we were reporting our book you can talk to the players and often players will say things that their employers probably will wish they had not said, but they don't always have the same incentive to keep those things secret and they want to talk about what made them better and that's fortunate for us. So yeah, that could help too. They have every incentive to share that news because they want to. I would imagine if you're a player and you're seeing a meaningful change that's the result of i don't know something you know really substantial that you can point to and say well i

used to be injury prone and now i'm not or my mechanics used to look like this and now my arm slot is here you want to be able to point to that stuff so that you know teams will look at you and say this isn't fluky like he's a changed man right um so what a nice thing to have people who just are really keen to talk about themselves exactly yeah great so uh we were just talking about the mariners step back to 2021 did you see craig goldstein's tweet in which he tweeted a screenshot from a bp fantasy chat that jp breen was conducting so this was A Q&A and The chatter Elton In the Pacific Northwest

He asked JP I'll just read His email here in the fourth year Of my longest running dynasty league Where my peak achievement has been third in points Three weeks into the season I'm about To tank again so I want to ask About my second dynasty league This week I traded Blake Snell for Nolan

Gorman and Luis Robert My goal is to compete by 2027 Do you think This trade was good 2027 He's doing the 8 year Rebuild right now That's I mean you and I

When I used to chat and when you currently Chat we would always just have the disclaimer. We don't know fantasy experts about fantasy. Don't ask us because you'll get a better answer from someone else on the staff. But even though I haven't played fantasy in years, I can't conceive of playing in a way that would make me set my sights on a day eight years in the future. Like you play fantasy to have fun and experience joy and success and try to win a championship and in a fictional fantasy way. And if even your fantasy dreams are deferred by eight years, that seems like a sad state of affairs to me. I don't. So Elton lives in the Pacific Northwest.

Yes. I want to go find him because I don't understand this at all. Now, you've put an important caveat in front of this, which is that we are not big time fantasy players. For instance, I did see this tweet. And when I did, I went, oh, I have a fantasy team. And I have not. No, I haven't checked in on that one. We bought a Zanino is doing about as well as my Zanino is.

Let's put it that way. Zanino just got activated. So maybe your fortunes are looking up. Yes, I'm sure that him being back in the majors is exactly what he needs. No, I'm sorry, Michael. Be well. So we are operating already from a deficit of interest in this entire endeavor because we are not big fantasy players. And I understand that brings a great many people a lot of joy and they have pride. They feel like they

are doing great and I'm happy for them. But I have a couple of questions, the first of which is, even in a very deep Dynasty League, and I'm going to betray my ignorance of all sorts of stuff right now, does it really take that long? Does it take that long? Is he needing to plan on this kind of a time horizon? I can't imagine. There are going to be babies born.

People are going to purchase babies born people are gonna purchase pets lose those pets not like some might misplace them some of them will will die we will be in uh uh uh hopefully an entirely new presidential administration like we will we will uh be witnessing new technology hopefully twitter will be gone just just gone, entirely gone, by the time this guy is going to be like, yeah, I'm ready to roll. Now, I like Gorman. I think he is an incredible prospect. I'm very excited.

But, like, what – I don't understand this. I don't understand – I don't have life plans that extend that far. I have assumptions. Like, I assume I will be a living person and hopefully still working for Fangraphs and that there will be baseball and that the sun will not have been blotted out from the sky. I am very excited. Think about the kids who won the spelling bee. What are they going to be doing in seven years? They could be either building the robots that kill us all or saving us from those robots like there are just a lot of i don't understand this no i have a lot more feeling a lot more emotion about it than i expected to when you asked this question because i'm just like what else does elton what else happens in your life what else you got going on buddy i hope there's a bunch of other stuff that's the thing if it i mean look maybe his life is so fulfilling that he is fine with deferring his fantasy team success because he is having so much success personally.

I hope that's the case. But for a lot of people, fantasy is like the fun thing you do on the side. And maybe your job is not all you wanted it to be. And maybe your life is not going exactly as planned. But your fantasy team is a place that you can excel. And if even in that arena, you're saying, I don't expect to excel for the better part of a decade. I don't know. Maybe I've never played a dynasty league.

So even when I played fantasy and I really enjoyed fantasy, I only stopped because baseball became a bigger part of my life. And it just felt like too much baseball at that point. Sure. And I devoted a lot of time and attention to my fantasy team when I had one, and so now I know that if I were to play fantasy, I would probably do the same, and I want to save myself from that, so I hopefully politely turned down all invitations. But if you did play a Dynasty League, I'm always impressed by the knowledge of people who do, because they're asking me about 17-year-old players who I've never heard about.

And this is kind of my job to some extent, but I don't know these people and they know these people. So I'm impressed by that. But our powers of prognostication are not nearly good enough, I don't think, to have eight-year plans. I mean, wasn't like Dayton Moore mocked for having like a seven-year process plan? And maybe it ultimately took longer than that. But 2027, I just, I mean, if you have Blake Snell, who is currently one of the best pitchers in baseball, and you're trading him, I know nothing about Elton's team, so maybe it makes sense to trade Blake Snell, but maybe like a three-year rebuild or something instead of an eight-year rebuild. I don't know.

Maybe Elton, if he's a Mariners fan in the Pacific Northwest, maybe he's just used to extremely long timelines of non-contention. And for him, 2027, that seems like a snap of the finger. It's like nothing. Yeah. I mean, but still, by 2027, even the Mariners may have made the playoffs by then. I mean, maybe. Maybe. Maybe, Elton.

Elton, we should say, if you're a listener, that we are not, we sound like we're judging your life choices very harshly in a way that makes it sound like we don't think you're like a good person or something. And that is not at all true. We're just very curious about the choices you are making because they are very foreign to us and very distant from the choices that say we are making. So we should just say that because we don't want Elton to feel bad. Maybe Elton is a geologist, and so he is used to much longer.

He's just used to geological time. So, you know, yeah. Maybe it's just that he's like seven years like you said he's like i'm a mariners fan and also i'm worried about this mountain maybe elton is jeff and he's just thinking about could be true it's not true jeff doesn't care about fantasy either no or maybe look maybe he's just setting expectations low so that when he exceeds them he will feel good about himself. Because if you're not expecting to contend until 2027, then even if it takes you five years to get good, you're way ahead of schedule.

So maybe we should all be like Elton and just project ourselves to have some success eight years down the road. Because if we beat that timeline, then hey, look at us. We're way ahead of the game maybe actually now that i look dayton moore said in may 2010 i'm talking about winning the world series when i say eight to ten years so that was an eight to ten year plan and the royals were in the world series in four years and won the world series in five years so he doubled how long it actually took although i mean by then the royals had been bad for a lot longer than that but i would suggest i mean again we don't know the details of his team and candidly even if we didn't we wouldn't really be able to give him great advice as as as you said i say in my chats i'm always just like i care about you all personally so you should ask someone who knows

what they're talking about um but i would say that maybe what you should strive for is a Brewer style retooling where you, you know, you probably have some cool players on your roster already, right? You have your version of, you know, I don't know. You've got Blake Snell. You've got Blake Snell, right? There you go. You got Blake Snell. So like you have those couple of pieces that are really going to jumpstart it. And so you don't have to do the big long thing because you could just do a little tricky retooling. And then in a couple of years, you're like, hey, look at me. I'm on the verge of the playoffs. And then later you're like, hey, look at me.

I'm in the playoffs. Eliminating whatever the Cubs equivalent in your league is. It could happen. Yeah. Just how bad could it be that eight years would be the most realistic time frame? Maybe it's a competitive deep league, but eight years, no.

Elton, I believe in you. You can beat your timeline. You can do better than this. And in JP's answer, he said we're going to have to make it the BP Fantasy Team's mission to get you competing before 2027. So I hope that happens.

And Elton, if you are a listener, if you want to solicit advice from our Facebook group or anything, if you want to tell us about your team, please do. I don't know that we can help, but maybe we can crowdsource this thing. I want to get you back to contention before 2027. I think that's a modest goal that you can achieve. Yeah. And we have, wow. Also, how many people do you know named Elton? I don't know any Eltons. Not a lot. I don't know a single one. No.

I don't know. Not a single Elton. Well, we know, now we know one, kind of. We sort of know him. Although we have a lot of questions. Yeah. Well, Rocketman just came out. Maybe that will cause a wave of new baby elton's i don't

know but i think that that would be more promising than all the denaris's that are floating around row row yeah oops anyway all right well elton maybe has internalized the the tanking and rebuilding culture of major league baseball a little too much i don't know i can't speak to the specifics but i i wish you the best, Elton. And you don't even have, you know, like when you're watching a bad Mariners team, for instance, you know, a really inept Mariners team like they can sometimes be, you at least like you have a visual component, right? There is other stimulus within your experience of baseball that can sustain interest over time because you can look around at this stuff. And that's not true for fantasy. I mean, it is by proxy, right? If you are then maybe prioritizing your viewing of, say, Major League Baseball or in this incredibly deep Dynasty League, you're making a point to go see minor leaguers and seek them out.

So perhaps I am underestimating the visual stimulus that is at play here, but I would imagine that you would just like not. I don't know how you would. I don't know. We might have to have Elton on the show and I will try to ask actual questions rather than just, you know, trailing off into. But that's kind of where my brain that's where my brain's at. Yeah. Elton, if you're out there, get in touch. Yeah.

Let us know. And let us know you're okay. Just, we're not worried for any particular reason, just like all of the reasons that we outlined. So I have one more thing to bring up before we get to, I our topic that we will talk about at a little longer length but I just wanted to mark the occasion so this past week there was a Mets-Dodgers series and Clayton Kershaw and Jacob deGrom faced off against each other

this would have been such a scintillating matchup as recently as well last year, two years ago, three years ago this would have been the marquee matchup you would have tuned in to see Kershaw to Grauman. Maybe you still did. But I'm almost shocked by how quickly I've just accepted the idea

that these guys are good now, but not necessarily the type of pitchers that I'm going to make an appointment to view. And this start was sort of emblematic of that. It was a 9-5 Dodgers victory, and both guys pitched okay. DeGrom went five. He gave up two runs. He only struck out two guys. Kershaw was better.

He went six. He struck out five. He gave up three runs. They were fine, but neither was really that impressive. And that kind of describes their seasons so far. Like, fine, pretty good, I guess. Like, you know, good starters, but not nearly the performances that we have seen out of these guys. And with Kershaw, it's almost a relief that he is pitching at all and at this level because, of course, he was hurt to start the season.

He's been hurt a lot lately. And there was some concern that he just might kind of fade away entirely and that he just might never really be healthy enough to string together a bunch of starts. And he has eight starts into his postponed start season and he's doing fine he's he's pitching fairly well for anyone other than Clayton Kershaw yeah this would be perfectly fine he's getting lots of grounders he's striking out close to a better printing he's walking almost no one like he's a good major league starter and Jacob deG de grom is also pretty good jacob de grom he's like about as good as he was before last year basically right and last year he was so amazing he had kind of like the jake arietta season and then jake arietta kind of not turned into a pumpkin but just like

went back to being a pretty good pitcher instead of one who was just otherworldly every time out and that seems to have happened to Jacob deGrom too and and deGrom had like a little elbow scare I don't know whether that plays a part here Kershaw has sort of adopted an old man repertoire to a certain extent he's throwing like 40 percent four seamers now and I think more sliders than four seamers at this point so he has adjusted to his diminished stuff and they're both good I don't mean to to put them down but it's funny how quickly a pitcher can go from like greatest of all time to pretty good and life just goes on I mean as someone who uh will just keep bringing up the mariners at every opportunity i

guess watch as a team where you can go from amazing to just like hmm how rusterable are you uh in the course of like two seasons i i share your relief that kershaw didn't have quite the same decline let's say felix has but yeah it's been it's it's not appointment viewing anymore in quite the same way. I imagine that if DeGrom has a stretch of starts that go much better, we will probably re-engage with the concept of DeGrom staff ace much more quickly because his success is more recent and he just won the Cy Young and he had that incredible, incredible year last year. But yeah, it's a very strange, I mean, wasn't that, was that the Dodgers-Mets game that had the crazy comeback for the Dodgers?

Was that that game? The Edwin Diaz game? I don't think that was that one. That was later in the week. This was Monday. Later in the week. But yeah, it is a very strange thing when you're sort of staking out like, when am I going to watch the Dodgers this week? Because you got to watch the Dodgers because that offense is really good.

And Cody Bellinger is doing a thing. Yeah. He's up to something. And you're like, I'm really excited for this where you start. What a weird. Yeah. It's very strange. Yeah, he's the one that you tune in to watch right now.

Right. Or like I had the opposite experience. yeah he's the one that you tune in to watch right now right or like i had the opposite experience this that game didn't end up being um particularly evenly matched or anything but you know the other day we had uh we had the the twins go down to tampa and martin perez was starting i was like i am really excited to watch martin perez pitch against the rays and then i was like what is happening 2019 is wild like what is going on here so yeah it can it can shift very very quickly and i wonder i guess we always tend to have one member of the like the well-regarded old guard on hand that sort of persists and that that person hands off a baton at times right so

kershaw's not really in that group anymore, but Scherzer's still amazing. So now you're thinking about him in a different way relative to his peers. But yeah, I don't know. I don't know what it would take to suddenly have him feel like he, like Kershaw in particular, is someone who I have to have to watch, which as you said, he's having a perfectly good season. Better than good, right?

Like he's having a good year. Like he's doing fine. There are some surprising names ahead of him on the leaderboard, even when you drop down, because he's obviously not on pace for being qualified just yet. But there are some surprising names ahead of him yeah but it's not bad but it's not that's not what it was clay russia uh if you drop your minimum innings to 50 we have him 56th so there are some people ahead of him like joe musgrove is having a

a better season although i mean like at this point these are not huge differences because it's still not super late into the year but uh martin perez the aforementioned martin perez uh light of my life chris paddock who i never want to have to have pitch in yankee stadium ever again because that was very disconcerting i did not enjoy it uh luke weaver you know lance lyn Lynn. Lance Lynn has been worth two wins. Wait a minute. This happens every podcast. I love that this is true.

And he's on the Rangers. It is like the peak Meg realizes something about a leaderboard because he's also a Ranger. Michael Badman's favorite player, probably. Lance Lynn. Have you heard the story of how the Ryan brothers were in Arizona for spring training in matching Lance Lynn jerseys and we all saw it on the fangraphs trip and I couldn't get a picture and it is a thing

that I regret to this very day no well that's the story that's the story that's the story they were there in all their glory let's say it that way anyhow so yeah so so you know it's like you don't expect to live in a world where even even just the end of May, Lance Lynn has been worth a whole win, really, almost a whole win more than Clayton Kershaw. That is truly wild. He has a very similar FIP. What is going on? Boy. So, you know, you don't expect that.

It's a strange new world that you experience. And I would imagine that aging is just that feeling of disorientation over and over and valuable because that's what I want. I don't want the Felix ending for him. I just's like, I mean, it's almost like he is just replicating an aging curve except very steep and kind of early, although he started early. But it's just a very year by year, just worse and worse and worse and worse and steadily getting to now the point where he's basically unplayable. Yeah, I mean, he's still on the injured list. Yes. He has this lat injury. But yeah, I keep wondering when I should write about Felix

because you only get to shoot that shot the one time, the devastated Felix call. You only get to do it once. And I keep putting it off because I'm like, well, this'll get better, right? This'll be fine. Or at least it'll be better than this. And I've been thinking about doing it a lot more frequently lately because it makes me sad in like a profound way. It was like Sam's reaction on the preview pod where you could just hear the weight of this decline hitting him all at once

and realizing, oh, this isn't going to get... He's had a FIP in the fives for three seasons. I mean... I know. Damn it. It's really bad it is some of it some of those years were so good they were so they filled me with such joy and now it's this yeah i just i want these guys a to last long enough for another generation to appreciate them, and also to last long enough at a high enough level that you're not feeling just a sense of loss or mortality when you watch them. have expected really but because it's been so long since his peak seasons and by the time he retires it really will have been a very long time since he was a great player even though he was a great player for a very long time so the memory of albert pujols for a generation of fans will be of

latter-day angels pujols and i guess that's better probably than just not having him around at all. At least, I don't know, you could debatable for those who saw him in his peak. Maybe you want to remember him that way, but it's nice that he's a presence. It's nice that Itro was around until he was 45. Even if he wasn't the same player,

he was just a good person to have around the game and continues to be. But yeah yeah I want Kershaw not to go the way of Koufax I want Kershaw To linger even if he has Like a Cece Sabathia Sort of aging phase where you

Think he's done and then he Then he reveals a Second act and a new way of pitching And it all comes down to health with Him because I think his stuff is still pretty good and yeah he can pitch at a fairly high level even now if he is healthy and can stay on the field so i hope that will continue to be the case yeah and i think that he's you know i i would prefer though if i could ask uh one thing of whoever is deciding what the ball is going to do at any given moment. I would prefer if Clayton Kershaw's slow maturation did not correspond to an era with such a lively ball.

Because I think that even though we intellectually know that part of this is just the ball, it's not all the ball. I mean, he's had sort of that home run per nine number creeping up for a little while now, although it did dip again last year, which was encouraging. It's almost as if the ball weren't as lively. I would prefer that we not have that like sad Kershaw face because he's very expressive when he gives up a home run. He's been giving up a lot of them. Yeah. So I would think that if someone wants to just squirrel that away as a preference, one of our aesthetic preferences for baseball would be that the ball be less lively while Clayton Kershaw is still pitching,

and then it can be lively again when he's done. And I know that that means that Cody Bellinger will be a little less fun, but not a lot less fun because he'll still hit a bunch of home runs. So that would be my preference. All right. Shall we talk about the thing we should just talk about we don't have to talk about it for very long because you and i completely agree about this probably yes i'm sure but we should probably briefly talk about the netting situation because we again had a very scary incident this week in houston where a young fan was struck by an Albert Almora foul ball. And I don't know that we have heard, there's been like sort of chatter

that things are okay generally, but I don't know that we've gotten a very specific update on her condition, which I think, you know, is quite understandable given the privacy stuff here. But Almora was visibly distressed and tried to ascertain this young woman this I mean she's a baby she was a little baby this little baby got hit by a foul ball and he went over to the security guard in the section and was trying to figure out what was going on and collapsed into tears in the security guard's arms because he was clearly just so upset that this fan was hurt in this way. And it has reignited a conversation that seems very obvious, but we keep having to have about how far the netting should go in major league parks.

The netting was extended in every park to the, at least the end of every dugout. And I guess the question is, is there a good reason for it to not just go foul pole to foul pole? I cannot come up with a good reason. Right. Well, okay. So there are some terrible reasons that people have, and maybe we can line those up and knock them down. But also, if we were to give credit to the opposition, I think that the best arguments against it, A, you have the perception that it interferes with the viewing experience. And if you haven't experienced it yourself, or maybe you experienced some form of netting in the past that was not quite as, or was perhaps more opaque than today's type of netting is, then I can understand why you would think that it would interfere with your view

of the field. It seems like it should if you haven't seen it and experienced it. And I think that having seen it and experienced it, you very quickly forget about it. And probably a lot of those people who are saying, no, I don't want a net in front of me, if you sat them down in front of a net for a while, then they would also forget about it and be fine with it. So I think that's part of it. And obviously the net now has been to the end of the dugouts. And before that was at least covering up to the dugouts or some part of the dugouts and has been, of course, behind home plate. And behind home plate seen as very desirable seating, very expensive seating.

Yes. And that is behind the net. So it does not ruin your experience of the game. And, of course, you can point to Japan and other international parks that tend to have netting foul-pull to foul-pull, and fans seem to have a great time at the old ballgame. So I think that is one argument. Now, a couple other arguments. I think that is one argument. Now, a couple other arguments. To me, I think that the enforced separation from the field is something that I wish weren't necessary. I mean, I wish you didn't have to have a net. I like fans and players interacting occasionally in a way that the net maybe makes more difficult. Like, you know, players, whatever, occasionally stealing food from a fan or handing a ball over at the end of an inning. I guess you could still

flip a ball over a net perhaps, but I think it separates fans from players in a way that we're already separated in a lot of ways in life but to actually put that physical barrier there I think is sort of sad and maybe minimizes a kind of interaction that is occasionally cool and also I guess you lose diving plays and and players diving into the stands, which, again, maybe makes things safer and protects them. I don't know that that's a bad thing, but it does produce very arresting highlights from time to time when a player will just actually topple into the stands down the sidelines. So these are things that if there were no benefit to having a net, I would be happy to continue not to have a net because I like those things. That said, those things I think are very easily outweighed by the actual benefit of having the net, which is that no one or fewer people will get injured and die,

which I think is a very desirable thing. So I will say the following, which is that the arguments that you have made, and I realize you're not making them because you think the netting should go farther to protect people and their safety that is the most persuasive set of arguments i have heard against netting which is not the one that seems to be prevalent say in my twitter mentions at the moment and i do think that you're right that people have, you know, they've had different experiences of watching baseball live. And so they may not realize just how unobtrusive the netting ends up being when you're talking about the quality of netting that you have in major league parks where you really just stop seeing typos, not in a concerning way, like you're a professional editor, but like, yeah, you just stop seeing typos because your brain fills in those spaces and it adjusts to what it's seeing and is able to see the action beyond it. Yeah. Only your own typos, unfortunately. I see everyone else's typos. Yeah. I catch most of them. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, I think that the, there are two arguments that I'm finding sort of newly persuasive that I think we hadn't really considered before.

Maybe this is only one new argument and one old one, but one that sort of merits reiterating, especially as we approach the MLB draft, which is that the people who evaluate baseball players sit in those seats and they do just fine. sit in those seats and they do just fine. Right. Like scouts are able to do their work, uh, sitting behind seats with netting and they're able to see what they need to. And, uh, and they don't even flinch when the ball comes back because they're very fancy and I'm not, but you know, they, they're able to do what they need to. But I think one thing that I had not maybe fully appreciated until, um, some of the reporting that had come out around the Elmora incident where, you know, they talked to him and they

talked to other members of the Cubs and they got quotes from other folks was just how traumatizing into tears because of what happened to this little girl. I just don't know why when you have, when we have such a ready-made solution to not prevent all of those. Because, I mean, I think last year, I'm going to get the details of this potentially wrong in a way that is important. But wasn't it last year that there was a Dodgers fan who ended up dying as a result of a foul ball? Yes, there was a woman who died. And then the year before that, there was a toddler who got seriously hurt. And I think that was the impetus for extending the netting because you always need an incident to get teams to act. Right.

because you always need an incident to get teams to act. Right, and I think that the Dodger fan who died last year may have been hit kind of in a freaky way where the ball managed to go over a place where there was existing netting. So it is not a perfect solution, but it would have prevented in all likelihood this incident in Houston. It would have prevented the injury to the toddler that inspired us to extend the netting a couple of years ago. And I think that when, you know, when, when people who are that close to the game and can sort of appreciate the gravity of those injuries and,

and have a, I think a much more accurate sense of their frequency, because we hear about the really bad ones, right? We heard about this one in part because of the age of the person who was hurt and also Al Mora's reaction, but there are a lot more folks who get hit by balls and you just ones, right? We heard about this one in part because of the age of the person who was hurt and also Al Mora's reaction, but there are a lot more folks who get hit by balls and you just, you know, they're still injured, maybe not quite so seriously, but they're still hurt by it. And so I think that players and managers, you know, Chris Woodward had some really good quotes about this in terms of just how devastating an object traveling at that speed can be when especially when there's no warning and you know nothing to sort of arrest the motion

they're just really it's really dangerous and I think that if the the downside is a couple fewer people don't get you know, like whatever. Yeah, right. Yeah, that's, I guess, another downside that I didn't even mention is that you get fewer foul balls in the face, which is very good. You also get fewer foul balls that you catch and get to take home with you, which is not good, but worth it. I think the tradeoff is okay in this case. And yes, there was a Bloomberg News report like five years ago where they found that 1,750 Major League fans are hurt by foul balls each season. That was pre-netting extension, and I forget exactly how they calculated this or how they defined hurt, but yeah, I think it's more common than we realize. And fortunately, deaths and life-endangering injuries are fairly rare.

But I think there are far more minor injuries that it would still be nice not to have when you're just trying to go to a game and enjoy yourself. And the bad arguments that I think are made most often, A, you have, well, just pay attention. It wouldn't happen if you were just keeping your eye on the ball. And the ticket says, beware of batted balls and pitch balls. And maybe there's a warning in the stadium. So it's on you if you weren't paying attention closely enough to avoid being hit by this foul ball. Now, there are many obvious rejoinders here. I mean, A, there are kids. This was a kid. Yeah.

She didn't make many choices about where she was going to be that day. Kids are famously not prone to choice there. Yeah, and not the greatest at concentrating on things. So if you're putting kids in this situation, and of course you want to put kids in the situation of going to baseball games and being close to the field. So if you're going to do that, then I mean, we can say pay attention, but we know that A, some people are not going to pay attention because that's how life is and that's how people are. And that's how baseball games are. Frankly, there's not always a reason To pay close attention

That also just assumes that The only thing you would want to pay attention to Is the batter and pitcher Which to be sure is The center of the action most of the time But maybe you're watching An interesting thing that's going on in the stands Or maybe you're watching a fielder

And seeing how he moves Or maybe you're watching a base runner There and seeing how he moves or maybe you're watching a base runner you know there are other things to watch other than the ball and so it's not only an unrealistic argument but i think it's an unfair one so i mean that's the problem and then the other argument that i i see is just like well you know some injuries are unavoidable like we can't prevent everything we can't save everyone which you know like that's true some injuries are unavoidable, like we can't prevent everything, we can't save everyone, which, you know, like that's true. Some injuries are unavoidable, but this one is like the definition of avoidable. This one is very easily avoided, at least in most cases.

And so this is not one of those situations where you have to throw up your hands and say like, well, sometimes there's some risk involved in things. And if you want to enjoy things, sometimes those things are not 100% safe. And there are activities that are dangerous and people know the danger and they go in and they decide that they're willing to accept that risk to enjoy the fun thing. And they're not endangering others

who haven't accepted that risk. But I don't think going to a baseball game is really that. Like you're not making that calculation in your head. Like, I like a game. I might die, but I'm willing to... You're not even considering the idea that you might die. You're going to the game. Right.

So I don't think it falls into that category. And it's not one of these things where it's like, well, we can't protect everyone, because in this case, you kind of can. And it's not that hard. Well, and I think that it misses. There are like two. One of these is going to be like a wishy-washy aesthetic argument because it's me and I can't help myself.

And one of these is going to be a more serious one, which is that I think that the version of baseball that this would envision, even if we were to grant the premise that you could have perfect attention and perfect attention on the on the matchup between the pitcher and the batter i think it assumes a version of baseball that is not what we want like part of the experience of going to the park is not only being able to take in like the full range of visuals in front of you but you know getting to have a conversation with the person next to you and remark on the game and, and, you know, look around and see what's what and, you know, take in all of the, you know, like the smells and the sounds and react to someone laughing at something and be able to see the guys in the dugout and what they're, you know, them joshing with each other. And it, it just, it narrows our field of vision quite literally to

something that is going to miss a lot of what makes the in-base, like in-park experience worthwhile, right? And we like that it has that leisurely pace and that you can have a little bit of time for other stuff. That's part of what makes it so enjoyable as an in-person experience. So I, I just don't understand. Um, even if I am able to take a step back and be a little more generous as you encouraged me to be at this beginning of this segment to the people making that argument, I still don't quite understand what the appeal of that version of the game is. So there's that part. And then I, I also just think that, you know, it's not just that like children are distractible and so they're not always paying attention or, you know, like sometimes new to walking. And so like hand eyes and a super obvious.

Maybe you're old or injured or disabled or something. You can't get out of the way even if you do see it coming. And so I don't think that we should make – I don't want to foreclose that particular baseball experience to like a hypervigilant, traditionally able-bodied individual. It's just such an unnecessary narrowing of the kinds of people that we can have in the stands and the kind of experience that they can have when they're there. have in the stands and the kind of experience that they can have when they're there. And so I just think that we should, you know, this is such an easy moment for us to, you know, even if you perceive it to be an inconvenience, which I think that a lot of the folks who are grousing the loudest about this would quickly realize that it doesn't actually matter and it does not obstruct your field of view and it would be just fine. But it's just a moment where we can say, even if we want to concede that there is a small inconvenience here, that small inconvenience is so little to give up relative not only to like the very serious injury

that people can incur when they're there, but to this broader experience that we all get to share together when we're in a ballpark and we want it to, you know, feel lively and crackling and have that sound of not only what's going on in the field, but the folks around us. And that, you know, it's a big part of why we like this. So we should, you know, we should put a little protective netting around that experience. It's fine. We're going to be okay. Maybe you don't need it everywhere. I mean, there comes a point where the risk is so remote that maybe it's not worth it. Some of you made me wondering, can't we use StatCast to figure this out, see where the

foul balls go, where the hard hit ones are, what the effect of putting up the netting would be. I had the same thought and I tried, I believe twice, to get data on this, but it turns out that StatCast doesn't track foul balls reliably enough to do it well. StatCast wasn't really designed to track foul balls trajectory. It's more about balls in play. Maybe that will change when Hawkeye replaces Trackman. But I mean, do you need netting in the outfield, for instance? I don't know. It can sting if you have a ball catch you out there too, but I don't know that that has caused serious injuries. Maybe it has, but that's kind of a different conversation from the screaming liner that comes down the side of the ballpark, which is what we're all talking about.

I mean, I've known people. I knew someone who got hit by a batting practice home run, and it's not fun to get hit by a baseball. No. She was fine, thankfully. She was just fine and fine in the moment, and this was at what is now T-Mobile and the Mariners upgraded them to some very nice seats. But, you know, she had a big welt on her face from where she had been hit. But, you know, part of the problem with BP is that it's a lot of balls at the same time, right? It can be a little, it can be trickier to track because they're coming in with such frequency and their batting practice players get pitches themselves sometimes when they're fielding fungos or something and they don't even see that someone's hitting a ball yeah right and

you know their batting practice pitches so they are designed to go far right right but i i think that generally i i don't know i'm sure that there have been incidents but i don't really know of many incidents of a of a fan being injured by a home run ball. It just seems like whatever that important, the amount of additional amount of time you have to react to where the ball is going. And I think the increased predictability of where it's going to fall, because part of what happens is that these foul balls get hit at funky angles and you just don't know where it's going to go. That seems to be an important amount of time to sort of recognize where it's going to be and get out of the way or what have you. So I don't know that outfield netting is super necessary, but if you're proved

to be, it just seems like such a small price to pay to make sure that a toddler doesn't get beamed in the head and that Albert Amoreora doesn't have to cry at work yeah right yeah and and you mentioned that players are often so devastated by this and so they're in favor and the players have a history of advocating for more netting yeah i guess cynically you could say that maybe they just want to keep fans away from them but i don't think that's the primary reason i think that they are actually concerned and they don't want to be in the from them but i don't think that's the primary reason i think that they are actually concerned and they don't want to be in the position that albora was in there and and they have pushed for this in previous cba negotiations and uh i think they didn't in the

last round of talks because manfred had made that concession about extending netting part of the way right but i would guess that this will come up Again in the current round of Bargaining and I get the sense that this Is probably a when not if Sort of situation it seems like The momentum is heading that way so I hope that we're heading in this direction anyway But another point I wanted to make

Is that I'm sure some people are thinking Like we've gotten this far into Baseball history we've gotten through 150 years of professional baseball history without having foul pull to foul pull netting. So why now? Why do we absolutely need this now? And I think, well, A, you could argue that maybe we always should have had it or that net technology has advanced to the point where it's okay to have it now. But I think you can also make a very good case that the risk is greater now for various reasons. I can name a few reasons. So A, you've got more foul balls. And this is something that Travis Sotrick wrote about at FiveThirtyEight this season. He found that there was like a 12% increase in the number of foul balls over the last 20 years. So there were almost 14,000 more foul balls last season than there had been in 1998, for instance. And that is for a couple of reasons.

A, there are just more pitches per plate appearance now, which is slowing down games. But some of those pitches turn into foul balls. And a greater percentage of strikes are foul balls now than they used to be. I think we're at a record percentage of foul balls, at least in the years for which we have data, which I think is just because pitchers are harder to hit now. And so hitters are occasionally making less contact or not making good contact. So you're getting more foul balls, so more opportunities to get hurt so that's one thing another thing is that there's less foul territory typically than there used to be in ballparks which is uh perhaps another reason why there are more foul balls is that there's less disincentive to hit them because you're less likely to actually have a foul ball caught right and so because fans are closer to the field the the seating is actually closer there's less reaction time than i think there generally used to be and then you also have i would guess i would wager i can't prove it that the fastest foul balls now are faster than they've

ever been yeah that just stands to reason i think because the fastest pitches are faster than they've ever been and batters are bigger and stronger than they've ever been and i just can't imagine Yeah. And you have people looking at that stuff. You have more stuff going on on the video board and the scoreboard that teams are trying to attract your attention to. MLB has an app and there are in-stadium apps and you're supposed to order your food on apps. And baseball is encouraging people to be staring at their phones, which they would be doing anyway because we all do. But between the higher risk factor and the greater number of distractions, I think there is actually an elevated risk of getting hurt by foul balls now compared to any previous point in baseball history. So I don't think the, well, we didn't need it before, so why do we need it now argument, which is generally not that great. But I think in this case, it's especially not great. i i tend to agree with with all of those points yeah the it's such a funny it's such a funny view of the world to be like well people used to be miserable and then we came up with ways to be less miserable but in deference

to the misery of prior generations allows i was miserable so you must be miserable too or that wouldn't be fair if only if only us were miserable. Yeah, it is a very strange, it's a really yucky form of sharing. Yeah, pay your dues, rookie. Exactly, right. It's the same psychology sort of at play. And I think that at the core of all of this is just maybe a fundamental misunderstanding, at least by the most extreme versions of this argument that I have seen of just how difficult it is for even someone paying perfect attention who is completely able-bodied and ready for it to actually handle a 100-mile-an-hour foul ball. I just think that people greatly overestimate their own ability

to field that cleanly in a way that doesn't result in injury. So I think that we should all just be humble and a little bit kinder and try to get this sorted because it's just such an easy thing to – it's just such an easy one. There are so many things that are hard to fix and this one is easy. So we should just take that win, I think. I think so too. Seems like a good, seems like a good strategy. I really just am still floored by Lance Lynn's pitching line. So that's what I'm going to spend the rest of my afternoon thinking about. All right. Have we covered everything we wanted to cover?

We have. I do need to, in my role as managing editor of Fangraphs, do a little bit of plugging of our draft week coverage, which is very good and exciting. It's all laid out on Fangraphs. We have a handy little nav widget. So if you have missed things and you're like, hey, where are they? Where would I ever find them? We got you covered. We got a whole little clickable thing right there. So the guys released their third mock draft earlier this week. They'll have two mock drafts on day one of the draft, which is Monday. So keep your eyes peeled for that. I'm sure that everyone will be attuned to those. We also released our pre-draft farm system rankings. All of our prospect lists

are completed now. So if you have questions about kind of where folks are stacking up in terms of their farm systems prior to the draft, you can answer that. And then the guys have a bunch of great sort of pre-draft theme and trend pieces, stuff that they're seeing and hearing from agents, from scouts, from executives, and then their own observations. And then I will not make you think about for any longer than what I'm about to say, but the college baseball regional tournament's kicked off today, Ben. Yeah.

There's college baseball happening, and I know that you love that more than anything on the whole planet. But if you are curious as college baseball fans about whether the guys you're watching on the field are sort of prospect relevant either for this year or for the 2020 and 2021 draft classes, the guys have a preview of all of the regionals with sort of the draft relevant prospects for this year and for future years. You could, for instance, watch Vanderbilts and just be shocked by how many of those guys are likely to get drafted, not necessarily this year, but in future years.

So check all that stuff out. We'll have more next week when the draft actually kicks off. And then we're all going on vacation. Yeah. I wrote about regionals happening actually in my article today because I was talking about college pitchers. Go Dallas Baptist University, one of the most progressive player development programs in baseball. They are. I have your piece open in a tab. I just haven't read it yet. Sorry. That's okay. We all have articles open for weeks in

tabs that we are totally going to get to one of these days. Hopefully Elton in the Pacific Northwest is watching the regionals to scout some of his 2027 stars. Yes, I have some observations for him. I just have it up while I'm doing other stuff because I like to edit with a little bit of sound in the background. And I would point out two things, one of which is that I like the Arkansas uniforms very much, but I do not like the way that the number one appears on their uniforms because it looks like an uppercase I or say a lowercase L. So they need to work on that, although it's very tricky to sort that stuff out. And also, it is just a very fun thing to know that they play a duty noble field.

So let's all enjoy that. And yes, you raise a good point about Dallas Baptist. like let's all enjoy that and yes you raise a good point about dallas baptist there's been a ton of great progression uh on the pitching side in college but kylie wrote today about how there is a shift in the position player population on the amateur side where a lot of prep players are maybe electing to go to the draft and enjoy player dev from a pro organization rather than toiling through college where the hitting instruction has not kept pace with the pitching instruction. So you should go read that too on fancraft.com. Yes, please. Where you can also have custom date range leaderboards now. You can look up war from

one date to another at any point in the past three years. That's pretty cool. Yeah, all the way back to 2002. And while we're just talking about stuff that's happening at Fangraphs, because why not, we also had our debut roster roundup column from Jason Martinez because roster resources coming to, in the next couple of months, it's not really quite yet, coming to Fangraphs. So that's exciting too. It's just been a very busy week. It's that thing where you come back from a long weekend and then

you have to do five days worth of work in four days except we were like what if we did like seven days worth of work in four days and we're all very tired yeah right it's always nice when sites that i already visit add other sites that I visit so that it consolidates my web browsing in a very convenient way. Yeah. We'll have more detail on that in the coming months. But we're very, very excited to have Jason and super excited to have Roster Resource also. So, yeah. What a nice thing before the weekend.

You just get all kinds of good news. Maybe we'll do some draft talk next week with someone who knows about the draft. We'll see. But yeah. All right. Well, I'll talk to you next week. Sounds good. Okay.

After Meg and I finished recording, the Mariners won. So did Dallas Baptist. And in less happy news, Kyle Freeland was optioned to AAA. Now, if you recall, it was not long ago. It was episode 1356. This was April 1st. We talked about a hypothetical scenario where a really good established big leaguer is sent down to the minors for service time manipulation reasons. And Kyle Freeland was the example of the player who would be sent down in this scenario.

Just because, you know, imagine if you sent down Kyle Freeland, who was fourth in NL Cy Young voting last year. Obviously there would be no performance-related reason to send down Kyle Freeland. That's exactly what's happened. About two months later, Kyle Freeland is a minor leaguer, not for service time-related reasons, but for 7-plus ERA-related reasons. Of course, this is the second consecutive season where a Rockies pitcher who was believed to be very good ended up spending some time in the minors because that happened to John Gray in 2018. Life comes at you fast. All right, that will do it for today and for this week. Thank you for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already

signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going. Carson Otter, Chris Nielsen, Kevin Arrow, Spencer Goldrich, and Mike Lemaire. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Your ratings and reviews are appreciated. Keep your questions and comments for me and Megan Sam coming via email at podcast at fangraph graphs.com or via the patron messaging system. If you are a supporter, thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance.

And one last reminder, go get your copy of the MVP machine, place your pre-orders. Now send your receipt or confirmation to the MVP machine at gmail.com. And we will bestow bonus content upon you on Tuesday. And you can have the book in your hands. Again, if you're in the NYC

area, please come out to Foley's on West 33rd Street at 630 Eastern. That's when the event will start, and we hope to see a bunch of you there. So have a wonderful weekend, and we will talk to you next week. I almost died away. I almost died away. I almost died away. I almost died away.