Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1466: Slapdick Podcast

Episode Date: December 7, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about covering transactions past and present, the latest eye-catching comments by Scott Boras, the Tommy Pham trade and Blake Snell’s candid real-time reaction to it, and what the busy signing season so far augurs for the future of free agency and labor relations, then answer listener emails about players […]

And some horses quickly fade, turning into lemonade. Probably feel better when I'm dead. Cherry blossom cleaning. Is there any truth in what they say? Cherry blossom cleaning. Lock me in and throw the key away. Hello and welcome to episode 1466 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing all right. How are you? I'm good. I'm a little bit tired.

I enjoyed a friend's wedding yesterday as the Reyes and Padres were doing trades. Yeah. And I am exhausted by both things, candidly, just worn out. Spent so much activity. Yeah, it's been a busy week. It's been a busy six weeks or so, which Sam and I talked about a bit last time and I have since written about and maybe we can discuss again. But I'm sure that Dylan Higgins has also been busy directing traffic in your absence because you really stick to the commitment to cover almost every move. Is there any transaction transaction that fan graphs will not deign to cover or is it pretty much move gets made let's get someone on this well i'll tell you i'll tell you what but before i tell you what i will say that i i must uh in in addition to our usual thanks

um say thanks to dylan for his editing assistance while i've been on vacation for a couple of days which i've i've which I have mostly not worked, but for editing a Red Sox list. But for a list of prospect guys, I did a good job. But we didn't cover the most recent Rocky Gale transaction. So he only gets one, one a year at Fangraphs. That's it. And then the rest of the time, Rocky's on his own. Yeah. I guess there probably wasn't that much new to say about Rocky Kelly. You probably covered it in that first post. Yeah. 300 words or what have you. So, you know, we like to give our readers an opportunity to engage with every transaction so that fans of different teams can

see their guys. And baseball has obliged us with a bunch of moves. Yeah. I don't know if this is too inside baseball or proprietary, but do you do much data analysis of fan graphs, posts? That's something that I get asked about my own work because I guess people think, well, he's a stat savvy person. He writes about stat stuff, so he must use stats to analyze his own work or something. And I always have to explain that, no, I know nothing.

I know no traffic figures. I don't know if anyone's reading my stuff. I just trust to my editors to tell me if no one is reading it. And thus far, they have not, which I'm taking as a good sign. They keep paying me. So I assume that means it's doing all right. And if there were a problem, they would tell me. But otherwise, I don't know that there's that much I could do with that information as an individual writer, because

I don't necessarily want it to be in the back of my mind or even the front of my mind as I'm writing, because usually, I mean, I'm writing about something that I hope other people will enjoy also, but I'm writing about something because I care about it and I'm interested in it and I wouldn't want to chase traffic, which I've been lucky to be at sites where I haven't really faced any pressure to do that, which is sort of an exception perhaps in this environment. And I'm very grateful for, but I just don't know if there's any information I could apply. Like, I don't know. I co-wrote the MVP machine. I should probably be applying data to my own performance to make myself a better writer

or something, but it seems like it would be almost soulless if I were trying to cater to the crowd. I guess if I were trying to do that, I'd probably have much more hot takey kind of stuff than I do. So clearly I am not doing that. Maybe I should a little bit more, but if you're running a site and an editor, then I could see how that would be beneficial. Well, first, I mean, you have those hot Baby Yoda takes, Ben. So I would imagine that as long as- Baby Yoda is good. No one agrees with me. spend. So I would imagine that as long as baby Yoda and Star Wars are involved, you're probably immune to a traffic dip. I mean, we of course have to pay some attention to it. It is not

unimportant, right? Like we have to keep the site running and doing that means people coming and reading our stuff. And so it is not unimportant, but no, we tend to share the opinion that it is not the most important thing. I think the best work comes from writers when they're excited about something. And I think that our writers, you know, we're fortunate that their interests and questions that are relevant to baseball and to our readers tend to align pretty closely. And sometimes they don't, and that's okay because then our readers tend to align pretty closely. And sometimes they don't, and that's okay because then our readers get to experience something new. So I tend to tell our writers the same thing that it sounds like your editors tell you, which is if there's a problem, we'll let you know, but otherwise just do good work and sound analysis and write well.

And I think that it tends to take care of itself. And this time of year, you know, people want the news. They want the news. They want to know the gas, the scoop. And so, you know, I think that we're fortunate in that much like during the postseason, the offseason, you know, you tend to know when you have stuff that you really have to write about. But outside of that, I think that writers do the best when they're excited about their topic. And that sometimes means that they're really amped about a big trade. And sometimes that means that they want to, you know, explore a topic that is small and niche. And some of the best stuff that I think Fangrass has published over the years, and this is true, I think, across all the

baseball sites that we read and love, is not stuff that if you pitched it, an editor purely concerned with clicks would say, oh yeah, that one, that's a winner. But sometimes editors are silly and lack the foresight to know that speculating on where a pit would go on the field if there were one is like one of the best baseball articles that I've read since I've been reading the baseball internet. Yeah. I doubt when Sam pitched that one at BP that anyone knew what legacy it would have. So I don't know. We pay attention, but we don't fixate.

And as long as something is good, if it doesn't generate a ton of clicks in the moment, we can live with that. Yeah, that's the other thing. I don't think I could predict which of my pieces would do well because there are certain times when I think, oh, people will like this, I think, and then there's no response. And then other times when I write something that doesn't seem out of the ordinary to me and there is a bigger response than I expected. So, yeah, if it's someone like Sam, I don't know that he even pitched or had to pitch at that point because it was like, it's Sam, it'll be good. So just let Sam do what he wants to do. But yeah, you can't always predict it. And I find that it will drive you mad if you try. But it's something that I wonder about just because I was briefly on

the transactions beat at Baseball Perspectives because Christina Carl left for about just because I was briefly on the transactions beat at Baseball Prospectus because Christina Carl left for ESPN while I was still there. And of course, she had very capably handled the transaction analysis column at BP for years and years. And at that time, it was a different internet. So it wasn't like a move happens and we all swing into action immediately to get the reaction blog post up. It wouldn't even necessarily be the next day. Christina would sometimes publish things weeks after the fact and would just collect a whole bunch of moves in one giant transaction analysis edition. But once she left and my pal and editor at the time, Steve Goldman, assigned me to fill in for her along with RJ Anderson.

And I didn't love that beat. I think it was smart for the site and probably made me a better writer because I would have to find something to say about Rocky Gale or maybe not necessarily Rocky Gale, but some other backup catcher. And just having to go through that exercise of, okay, I got to say something about this person. So have to find an angle, have to find some kind of interesting thing that you might not pick up immediately. I think that was probably good for me. But then after that point, I lived in fear of any breaking news and hoped that no teams would ever make transactions again, which happened for a couple off seasons there after I had left BP when it no longer benefited me. But obviously at the ringer, it's not a baseball specialty site.

And so the bar is higher for a transaction. And so I don't feel quite that same pressure, although when a certain caliber of move is made, then one of us will have to take it. But one of the nice things about fan graphs is that you can find information on almost anything there. And of course, anyone can read fan graphs and should read fan graphs. But fan graphs does draw a certain type of reader, I think, who wants to know things that the average baseball fan may not even know that they should want to know. And so it's nice when they can come to Fangraphs and find something on that thing. Yeah, we want to make sure that, like you said, our bar is lower just because the people who are reading the site are inherently more interested than your average bear in baseball.

And so we want to make sure that we're able to, you know, provide a place where they can scratch all those itches, bear scratch itches. That works. There's a good through line there. But yeah, it can, the transaction stuff is funny also, because in some ways, big moves are somewhat author proof, which I don't mean to say to the writers of mine who are listening that it doesn't matter what you say in there. But you know, it was like last, last offseason when Bryce Harper signed, a number of people wrote about that, that signing, unsurprisingly, and Craig wrote the primary sort of write up and did a very, very nice job. And even if he had done a less good job, it still probably would have generated a lot of interest because everyone wanted to read about Bryce Harper. So yeah, plus Plus you don't know if it's going to be good until you click on it. Exactly. Got to click. We have you.

We have you. So we appreciate that our readership allows us to be as interested in baseball as we are and that they reward us with their time when they do it. I think it's a cool little bit of symbiosis between Reader Insight. So we're fond of it, even if I would prefer that teams not do big trades in the middle of Friends of Mine's Wedding, because it just makes things a little more complicated, even when you're on vacation. Yeah. Well, I wanted to bring up a couple little things before we get into any transaction talk or emails or whatever we spend the rest of this episode on. But first, a brief Boris corner. We have some Scott Boris quotes to dissect.

So Scott Boris responded to a quote from Mark Lerner of the Nationals. And Mark Lerner, who is the son of Ted Lerner, who bought the Nationals in 2006. Lerner said essentially that the Nationals can't afford to sign Steven Strasburg and Anthony Rendon. I think they've made some sort of offer to both of them, but owners everywhere are constantly talking about how they can't afford this or that, and so this is nothing new. But Scott Boris, who represents both of those players, felt compelled to respond, and he did so via texts to Ken Rosenthal, who relayed them to us. And here is what Boris wrote to Ken Rosenthal.

Quote, the Nationals are experiencing a revenue festival in 2020. World Series momentum has blossomed. Millions in DC. Then he continues, the franchise value has increased by nearly 2 billion since their purchase. The Nationals made an extra 30 million winning the World Series. Attendance will increase by more than 400,000 to 500,000. TV ratings and advertising rates all skyrocketed.

And as usual, I don't know exactly where Scott Boras gets his numbers. He is perhaps directionally right about all of those things, but I don't know if he's precisely right about them. But then his big finisher, everyone in D.C. knows special cherry trees create revenue bloom. He started off with the Nationals are experiencing a revenue festival in 2020, and he ended with everyone in D.C. knows special cherry trees create revenue bloom. Well, he is not wrong in that D.C. is famous for having cherry blossoms, and I imagine that they drive tourism. People come from far and wide to see them. Yeah, he really tailors this to the local market. He knows his audience here.

Yeah, he cares about the good people of Washington, DC, wants them to watch good baseball. He knows that everyone in DC is more likely to like you if you compliment the blooms. And so I think that of all the ones that he's done lately, I actually like that one quite a bit. What is a revenue festival, though? That's the thing, revenue festival. The blooms are fine, but the festival... A festival can generate revenue.

Sure. But is the festival the revenue itself? Is the revenue itself a festival? I mean, we know what he's saying here, basically. It's a bonanza. Revenue. Yeah, right. An extravaganza.

But revenue festival is an unusual collection of words. That is an unusual collection of words. wonder if, you know, he's just cycling through synonyms, hoping, you know, to find a particular, you know, particular sound. He's just, he's searching for a certain special bit of something. And he maybe was like, well, bonanza, extravaganza. No, that's not quite right. I want something that sounds festive, like maybe not. I don't know. Maybe this is how he communicates via strange analogies in texts to Ken Rosenthal. I don't know. But you would think that it would be helpful for him to have some staff. I don't know if he needs a writer's room, and if he has one, he might want to get a new one. I don't know. But it would not surprise me if someone is feeding him these lines. Maybe they're in his voice, someone who knows what

he would say, and then sends him many candidates for which analogy he's going to use. Hey, Scott, here's the latest analogy list. Just send it over to you, pick whatever you want. And then he scans the list and he says, yep, I like this revenue festival, cherry trees creating revenue bloom, Strasburg and Rendon, they're cherry trees in this analogy. Great. I will use that one here, send text. I'm realizing two things. One is that we should track the relative. We need a new metric. We need a metric that gauges how much rhetorical flourish there is to Boris's metaphors, because if he has a list, right, if he has a writer's room and that room is generating a list of candidates, one would imagine that he would start with the most dynamic ones first, and then he would winnow them down to something like festival, which is, you know, it's got a little bit of pizzazz, but is relative to some of the other words that he might have used relatively tame. And so I think that we need a metric that gauges that because I think it'll help us to answer this question. I'm also realizing

that while cherry blossoms are regionally specific in a way that is appropriate, if what one wants is a long-term contract for free agents, they are perhaps actually a very, very poor metaphor because they bloom and then they die and then they're done. They do not bloom throughout the course of the year. The blossoms do their thing and then they fall and they make a peddly mess. And then the trees look like normal trees after that. Although that does correspond to the baseball schedule, right? Oh, I suppose that is true. The cherry blossoms bloom.

And they come back. Yeah, right. The cherry blossoms bloom right around opening day. I think like right then I just Googled it. And last week of March, first week of April sounds familiar. I went to college in D.C. So that's right when the baseball season starts. And then when the baseball season is winding down, that's when they start shedding.

And then they do come back. Eventually they die. All things do. But yeah, maybe it sort of makes sense. It's sort of the seasonal schedule aspect of it. I kind of like that. We need an arborist on the – I always thought it would be nice to be an arborist.

I thought that would be a cool job. I mean, I think you spend a lot of time cutting down trees, so that part's probably a bummer. I always thought being a tree surgeon would be kind of a rewarding profession. You come in and you fix up the trees. And then after that, they're done. They're like, thank you. You know how trees talk?

Yeah. I've been on vacation. It's a little rusty. I'm not going to lie. Sitting in an Airbnb. It's very nice here. It's quite warm relative to Seattle. So that's good.

Any trees talking to you? No. They're quite green, which, you know, for Arizona, kind of having a little moment. I have no idea what time it is. I sent you several wrong times for this podcast recording. And now I think the trees are talking to me. So San Diego might be very interesting next week. He really is.

He's cycling into different subject areas though because he started with the nautical metaphors and then he started this off season with some zoological metaphors and now he's into the arboreal ones and so i'm very curious to see where he goes next and i think we should try to enact that plan that we tentatively discussed for the winter meetings if we can yes put that into practice because you'll be there and I won't. And if you do get some advance warning that Scott Boris is about to speak and you can communicate that to me,

I will unplug until you tell me it's safe. I won't look at Twitter. I'll avoid the quotes. And then maybe if you're not too busy, you can come up with some fake Boris quotes to pair with the real ones and then you can test me and we fake Boris quotes to pair with the real ones, and then you can test me, and we can record that before I get spoiled. I think that we can manage that. And so

this is our plea to our listeners to not at Ben on Twitter about Boris quotes, because this works the best and is the most fun if he is truly ignorant to what Boris has said. And so we ask that people humor us in this. But yes, I think that could be great fun. What if I write really convincing ones? Does that mean I have to go work for Scott Boris? Yeah, he might hire you to join the writer's room, the secret writer's room. I think I like my job pretty okay. I think my favorite part of this, though, is that he sent these via text.

Because now I'm picturing him typing out revenue festival and revenue bloom and cherry trees and somehow it's much more funny when I picture him typing it in with his fingers and then seeing it on the screen because it's a little different if he's just speaking extemporaneously. And I don't know whether he ever is, if these are preset lines that he goes into press conference with, maybe not, maybe he has reviewed them. But if not, you can imagine him just kind of coming up with it on the spur of the moment. And you can forgive that as podcasters, we know it can be difficult to speak off the cuff and you sometimes say silly things that you regret. And so I could kind of forgive Scott Boris if he were actually generating these things just on the fly. And that would make it more forgivable when they're especially egregious because it's like, well, at least he wasn't workshopping this thing. But here he is typing out texts, and that means that he had a chance to process it and review it and see what it looked like and how it read, and he still sent it off.

Do we think that Boris is a guy who says, crushed it? Do we think that he has that? Yeah, so he's sitting there and he's typing stuff out to Ken, and he looks at the text and he goes, crushed it, send. And then he felt really good about it i wonder how ken responds to that text does he say thanks uh he should just do k with a period and then make scott worry oh no ken's mad at me yeah we're in a fight just to just to be sure you meant to say world series momentum has blossomed millions in DC? Because that doesn't seem to be a sentence, Scott. I don't want metaphors, but rather different local bits of business, things that certain cities are famous for. and the people who live there and baseball is so local that I think that that would actually be a really compelling way to formulate these things and frame them to folks like, yeah, we want Anthony Rendon here.

He does blossom like a cherry blossom. They are very beautiful, the cherry blossoms. Yeah, maybe it's like a green initiative for Boris Corp. They're going green. Oh, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. I like it. I like it that there have been signings, even though the particular span of days coinciding with vacation means that there are going to be at least three dudes who I just never remember

their team for, for the rest of, maybe the rest of their careers. Although some of these deals have been so, for so many years that I will have time to adjust my thinking eventually, I suppose. But yeah, vacation. Another thing I noticed is that Boris Corp has one of the worst websites. It's literally a logo and an email address. It's boriscorp.com. It just says Boris Corporation and then info at boriscorp.com. And that's it, which is sort of ironic because you'd think someone as verbose as Scott Boris would maybe have some information about his company on here. Maybe like my best analogies that you could click on to see his best wordplay from the past. But no, none of that. It's just a blank page, which I guess is kind of a power move. It's like, hey, we're Boris Corp. We don't even have to tell you who we are and what we do because you know already. Maybe that's the idea or maybe they just haven't hired a web designer. I don't know which it is, but usually you go to agencies' websites and it's a long list

of their clients and their agents and their credentials. And BorisCorp.com, no. It's just if you want to know that stuff, email info at BorisCorp.com, I guess. I find several things interesting about this. So I Googled it and I thought, what could Ben mean? And then I saw that site and I thought, that can't be the real one. And then I went to Boris's Twitter, the Boris Corporation Twitter, verified Twitter. First of all, the B that they use is very similar to the baseball prospectus B. So that's a thing.

They have a logo that looks like several, like, you know how sometimes political campaigns will put out like, they're brighter tomorrow, candidate 2020. And their logos always end up kind of looking like toothpaste logos. I think the Boris Corporation logo looks a bit like that like this is off-brand crest or something here's the interesting thing they tweet fairly regularly well i guess not so fairly their last tweet was from march 25th so they're not big on the tweet scene but they had when the blossoms were blooming in dc see this is the thing they have 14 tweets they they have 14 um their first one was on december 12th 2010 this is scott boris and the boris corporation's official account all other accounts are fake at this time scott is not active

on twitter so that was their first tweet oh no it'd be so good man here's their second tweet from scott boris marvin miller forges wings of for modern day baseball the right of baseball soaring flight thank you i don't know what that's about it's from 2012 from 2013 from scott boris dr yokum was a caring genius who had a profound impact on the game and its players. His plaque in the hall awaits. So these are like some very specific. There's like one a year, one or two a year. When someone dies, basically, they tweet. Yeah.

Is that it? Yeah. They basically tweet about that. And then they follow one person. Boris Corporation follows Ryan Lubner, the vice president general counsel for Boris Corporation. I'm surprised that more people don't follow this even just for funsies. Although I guess since they- After looking at the tweets, I'm not that surprised.

Yeah, maybe it's a little tame. But they also have a quite active Instagram presence. And it is interesting to me that they have decided that this is the place that they're going gonna maybe be a little more uh uh amped up they mostly do videos mostly for i assume clients winning stuff it seems like they started recently though because 14 instagram posts which is the same number of tweets that they have but whereas the tweets extend back years yeah into the past the most the oldest Instagram post is from July. So they just, they really got onto Instagram lately. Yeah. They're, they're, they're figuring stuff out. I mean, baseball is a visual medium, so it makes sense that they would embrace a social media

presence that is about the aesthetic. Oh man, this is really very interesting to me. This logo, that's what they went with, huh? They went with that logo. All right. So the other meaningless story that I was going to bring up, and maybe you saw this or maybe you missed it because you had better things to do, but did you catch Blake Snell's immediate reaction to the Tommy Fam trade? Ah, okay. So Blake Snell-

Tell me about baseball, Ben. What happened? Tell me about baseball Ben What happened? Blake Snell was streaming on Twitch When he got the news That the Rays had traded Tommy Pham to the Padres For Hunter Renfro and prospect

Xavier Edwards And there's another prospect who's in the deal Who's kind of cool, maybe we'll talk about But he had a very kind of In the moment, natural reaction which was preserved for all time. And his reaction was, quote, we gave fam up for Renfro and a damn slapdick prospect. That was it. We gave fam up for Renfro and a damn slapdick prospect i'm so sad i am simultaneously devastated

that i missed that but also relieved because none of my jokes would have been becoming of the managing editor of fangrass but i would have wanted to make them anyway yeah i'm sure many people have made them for you. There have been a bunch. But yes, slapdick is the term that he used. He later retracted this and regretted that he applied the label slapdick to prospect Xavier Edwards. And he said that he was not trying to belittle a minor leaguer. It's just super rude toward that guy.

That kid didn't deserve me calling him a slapdick, let's be honest. I love that he repeated it in the apology, just in case he missed what he called him the first time. Then he said, Tommy's the man, bro. It's just hella stupid, which I assumed

that he meant that the trade was stupid. Anyway, he was responding in real time, which is kind of what you get on Twitch. There was a story like this in 2018 when Will Myers was caught on a Twitch stream, and it was not actually his own Twitch stream, but it was his sometime teammate, Carlos Asuaje,

I think, who was streaming on his stream. And then Myers was caught complaining about Andy Green, who was the manager at the time. And he said, the Padres are doing cutoff and relays tomorrow at three o'clock in September, dude. Oh my God, bro. It's so miserable, man. It's insane. Andy cannot be any worse than he is right now. And then Asuahe said, dude, I'm streaming this. Which is just a moment of high comedy. And Myers, of course, apologized and said we should not have been saying that even in private.

And Andy Green was very understanding about it, at least publicly, and said, well, we all complain about our bosses. I've complained about my boss. And that's just frustration that comes out late in the season after a sweep, et cetera. But Twitch is like the one place maybe now where you get athletes actually being frank now,

at least if they don't realize that they're on Twitch especially, but even in Snell's case, I guess, because maybe it's not the typical interview setting. It's not usually where you get asked to comment on a trade in real time, let's say. And maybe you're focused on Fortnite and you're not thinking about the fact that there are actually people. Like you can't see the people. You're not necessarily in the room with reporters holding up their recording devices. So you might forget for a moment that you actually have an audience

and that people can record this and repeat it. And so these things slip out and we actually get the real thoughts of baseball players that we rarely get in other contexts. You know, I don't know anyone who is on gchat who has or text for that matter who has not had the experience of accidentally sending the wrong text to the wrong person of course and and you worry about saying something snarky and and someone realizing it or you know i think we all live in fear of the great gchat hack which will surely come at some point and then we will all be revealed to be monsters who have to workshop every joke we point and then we will all be revealed to be monsters

who have to workshop every joke we make although we maybe will just be revealed to be really anxious sorts so i think we can this is very relatable i just slapped dick i love that he said it i love that he said it multiple times i love that he said it in the in the apology i love that he said it in the apology. I love that. I just. It's a great term. It's not in the Dixon baseball dictionary. I checked. It's not a baseball specific term.

I think maybe it has been more common in football, in sports context, although it's not solely in sports context i don't know what the etymology of it exactly is it's like it's basically someone who's bad at stuff someone who's incompetent yeah capable i think that is the implication we can all probably picture how the term came to be and what image it's supposed to conjure in the mind. But I don't know if I support it in all contexts, but I support it in this particular context. And I'm glad that Blake Snell spoke his mind because it's also kind of like, aside from the humor of the term, it's kind of a window into how players respond to trades. You can talk about this trade on the merits, and I've seen people think that either side got the best of it. But when you are trading the best player in the deal currently and the most accomplished player in TommyFam and a well-liked player in TommyFam, that's not going to be popular in the clubhouse. And this is the kind of move that the Rays habitually make. They trade guys who are

getting older and in arbitration and are in line for raises for younger, less expensive players. And they recycle over and over, and it allows them to field a pretty competitive team within the constraints that they have imposed on their own payroll. This is kind of a typical Rays move, but there is a clubhouse cost to it. I don't know if it costs you on the field, but certainly when you trade a popular player who has a name and a resume for Hunter Renfro, who is not Tommy Pham in terms of his prior accomplishments, and a prospect to Xavier Edwards is a pretty promising prospect, but I don't expect Blake Snell to be on the board, although he should be. He should know where Xavier Edwards ranks,

but fairly high, he's a pretty good prospect, but wouldn't expect Blake Snell to know that off the top of his head, and clearly he did not, so he assumed he was a pretty good prospect but wouldn't expect blake snell to know that off the top of his head and clearly he did not so he assumed he was a slapdick prospect man you go on vacation for just a couple of days and you miss such good stuff yep you just miss good stuff i think that uh it is a very understandable reaction, as you said, not only because Tommy Pham is well liked, but because he is good. And I think that if you are a player on a team that has a lot of roster churn, you probably are irritated with that churn in sort of general terms, not just in specific terms. So I would imagine that this frustration is expressing

frustration not only with this particular move, but with many moves like it that the Rays have made on Snell's part. I am fascinated to know more about the etymology of slapdick because Blake Snell is from the state of Washington. And if we get to claim credit for that, that would be just fantastic. I also love that he followed it up with Hella because he just can't be more West Coast than he is. And so, man. I did a newspaper archive search to see if I could find the first mention of Slatik. And it turns out there just aren't really any mentions of Slatik in the newspapers. I guess the gatekeepers have decided that that's not fit for print publication.

Yeah, perhaps too crude. Only 10 instances of slapdick that I could find in newspapers.com. Eight of them were slapstick, just misread. One of them, the earliest, was a reference to a fellow named Edward Slapdick, who was walking this earth in the year of our Lord, 1912, with a somewhat unfortunate name. And there was one very recent reference by a columnist who was complaining about something or other, but that's about it. It's more of an internet slang term than the sort of thing that appears in newspapers. In 1920, according to baseball reference, there was a player called John Slappy.

I don't know if that is being pronounced quite right. S-L-A-P-P-E-Y. There was also a Scott Slappy, who appears to have been a guy who never made it out of college ball. So there you go. He's 27 now. He went to Miami University in Ohio. Scott Slappy.

Yeah, there was a legendary scout and executive and former player named Cy Slapnica. Yep. Which is, I guess if you say it very fast, kind of close. Kind of close. But ironically, Xavier Edwards is sort of a slap hitter, which I'm sure was not what Blake Snell was going for No, probably not He hit one home run in 2019 in 123 games and 561 plate appearances Which even without the juiced ball at that level

He's clearly a slap prospect A slap hitting prospect Slap hit prospect It's a crucial difference From what Blake Snell said It is a crucial difference Man, missing that typo Would keep me awake at night It probably will be a thing I stress about

At 3am some evening So thanks for that, Blake There was also another prospect A lower level prospect Who went from the Rays to the Padres in this trade. And it's the most Rays type player I could imagine. I can't believe they gave him up. They probably have many more like him. But if you look at his baseball reference page, his positions, his name is Jake Cronenworth.

And he was a seventh round pick in 2015. And he was at AAA this past year. But his positions on Baseball Reference are listed as shortstop, second baseman, and relief pitcher, which is guess everyone did in AAA this year. But in addition to his hitting and his middle infield playing, he also pitched seven and a third innings. And in those innings, he struck out nine guys, although he also walked eight, which is not great. But he allowed zero runs. So that's Jake Cronenworth for you. And he's not like a real pitching prospect from what I understand. He's got low-grade stuff, but he would probably be a very fine position player pitcher. And he may occupy that role at times as kind of a utility player who can play multiple positions and also pitch pretty capably.

But he'll be on the Padres, presumably, not the Rays, which is what you would expect. Man, I'm going to end up just still watching a lot of Padres next year, Ben. I'm just going to end up really watching so many of these Padres games, all the various Padres. The Padres team is going to be real fun. Yeah. The Rays will be fun too. I don't mean to say it to the exclusion of the Rays, but I feel like the Padres will be fun in an easier way to appreciate when you're not trying to challenge yourself with strategy, when you just want to watch fun baseball. I feel like the Padres are going to fulfill that. And I'm not just saying that because I want everyone in San Diego to be nice to me next week.

nice to me next week yeah yeah so hopefully the jake cronenworth two-way experiment goes better than the the christian bethancourt conversion which did not go so well but there's some precedent for this in san diego so we shall see remember remember when bethancourt was like a thing we had to be excited about about the padres yeah remember when that was like a thing where like, yeah, we're excited about that because Padres, man, things can turn around so fast when you spend money and have good prospects. It's a funny thing about that. I think Bauman and I had him on the Ringer MLB show because we

were so excited about him pitching. That sounds right. And that was, I mean, those were the days before Otani, before Michael Lorenzen really being a pitcher. We had to take what we could get. Now we are awash with at least more capable two-way players than that. And Otani will be returning to us soon, which is something to savor.

Every now and then I remember Otani's going to be back in 2020 and he's going to pitch. And that cheers me up whenever I think of it unfailingly. Yeah. Whenever I see tweets about his progress, I think of you. I'm first excited that we get to see him. And then I'm like, oh, that Ben's really happy right now. And that makes me happy as your friend. Yeah, it makes me happy too.

So transactions, there have been a bunch of them. And again, Sam and I kind of covered this, but since I did dig into the numbers since we spoke and kind of confirmed some of what we spoke about, I think our impression that free agency is resurgent so far is accurate. It's true the spending the dollar amounts are almost back up to the normal prior to 2017 so the number of signings and the dollars committed to free agents still a little bit lower than where they sort of sat from say 2012 to 2016 but the dollars are roughly where they were in a couple of those years. And if this offseason were, say, 2017, or if this were coming after normal offseasons, we would not nothing happened for the first couple months of the offseason, it seems like a lot. It's not a ton compared to what we were accustomed to, but because it's coming after this drought, it seems like a flood. And so the question is, well, do we buy this? Do we think, okay, trouble over, problem solved. That was a weird two-year blip that we had, but everything's normal now, so no one needs to fret. better than what we've had but we did still have those couple years and there are still underlying causes of what we saw there and those don't seem to have gone away so what do we make of this does that mean that the rest of this offseason will be similar to what we've seen so far will the next

offseason be like that too will that diffuse some of the tensions heading into CBA negotiations? Or is this just kind of a dead cat bounce kind of thing? And it's just some regression to the mean, and then things will go back to the new normal, which is not so active and not so fun. I'm open to the idea that we may have seen just because of where, you know, despite their protestations and their stated desire to engage in and retain payroll flexibility for its own sake, that we do have a couple of teams that are sort of coming around in their competitive cycles at the same time. I know you and Sam talked about that some, which tends to inspire some spending. So I think that there might be something to it that is encouraging. But I think it's also useful to remember that the state of affairs between labor

and ownership isn't just determined by the free agent market. That's been one of the most sort of dire indicators for potential labor peace. But some of the damage that has been done outside of free agency and has been related to free agency, but outside of free agency and is going to be a bit more permanent, right? I think that reacting to the markets of the last couple of years played at least some role in a bunch of young players being keen to take team friendly extensions that mean they will not be useful comps in arbitration. So that damage is going to be lasting for a little bit. And so, you know, I think that this is encouraging. And also, I hope that however permanent it ends up being that as the Players Association is sitting down to negotiate the next CBA, that they do not overreact to a seeming course correction for veterans in the same way that they prioritized some of the creature comfort concerns of veterans in the last CBA. because I think both things, one that has already happened and one that could, are at the expense of younger players who have not yet had the opportunity to pick their employer. So I think that it is encouraging and it is nice to see teams like the Reds who are keen to win

and seemingly committed to doing that, even though it costs them some money. It's nice to see the Braves looking at their division and saying, hey, we could maybe make another run at this. That sounds great. But I do think it's useful to remember that part of why Atlanta, for example, might be comfortable with some of the deals that they've made in addition to a desire to win and increase revenue from being a playoff team and being in that new ballpark is that they know exactly how much Ozzie Albies and Ronald Acuna Jr. are going to cost for the next couple of years. So they have what was going to be a very significant unknown suddenly known for a while. And I think that allows them to operate in a way that is encouraging right now, but it's useful to remember where some of that is stemming from, of some of the past couple of winters that we aren't seeing just yet, but we can anticipate will come. It's like how judicial appointments are really important, because those guys are just on the court forever.

Yeah, right. It's just like that. It's exactly the same as that. It makes sense that there would be a different collection of teams every offseason that would be motivated to spend that would find themselves in that position where they think they're in the sweet spot and they could spend, it could really make a difference, and maybe they're coming out of a rebuilding cycle.

So if you happen to have a greater than normal number of teams that are in that down cycle in that short-term non-contention point and then all of a sudden if things go well they get to the point where they are willing to take the leap so sort of like the Phillies did last offseason with not quite the results they were hoping for, at least in terms of wins and losses. But clearly with Wheeler, they are continuing to push forward. And now the White Sox are kind of that team. They made that token offer for Machado last offseason, but now they're really bidding at the top of the market. at the top of the market.

And so they're a team that they've kind of been building up to this and then enough of their core came together that they could envision themselves making some sort of run within the next year or two. And so this is their time to start spending. So it's possible that in the past couple off seasons, we saw a bunch of teams that were not trying to win all that much in the short term, coupled with maybe some of the big spending teams, the perennial spenders, who were trying to reset their penalties, let's say.

And so having done that, maybe they are willing to spend a little bit more until the penalties ramp up again. So there could be that sort of thing where maybe it was a confluence of circumstances that really suppressed spending in an extreme way. And some of the root causes of that are still present, but perhaps they won't be in effect to quite the same extent that they were then. Yeah, I think that that's right. I also think that, you know, so the push and pull of wanting to win is always going to fluctuate for teams, and it is not going to necessarily be the same for everyone. So that is going to be a, you know, a motivator behind the market in any given winter. But I also think, and I'm not suggesting that you're saying the opposite, but I also think that it's important to remember that one of the forces that is also always operating in the market is that, you know, given the choice

between spending money on players and keeping money, ownership will generally decide to keep money if they can. So, you know So that is going to continue to be a force that operates within the market as well. But it is encouraging to see a couple of teams be like, hey, winning baseball games is cool. That's a good thing. And it's nice to see teams that have been active very recently continue to be active as you noted. i mean doesn't sound like philly's done so that's good it's just uh you want you want to see teams that are trying to give their fans something to cheer about and there are a number of teams that are sort of rising to the occasion there and there's also the orioles so you, we're still running the gamut. We still, you know, the Mariners are still out there

doing stuff that isn't mostly about winning right now. So I don't know. I think it is nice and this feels like a selfish thing to enjoy so much because we need to confront the parts of the sport that are not working the way that we think that they should for everyone to enjoy it as much as we want them to. And so I don't mean to say that we want to duck those. But after a couple of weeks at Bomber News, it was pretty cool to be like, hey, look at Drew Pomeranz.

Look at that. Yeah. What's that about? Yeah. Look at them doing that for four years. Four years? Was it four years? I've been doing that for four years.

Four years? Was it four years? While we're on the subject of the White Sox, sort of, I have a couple emails here that maybe we could answer. And this one, which I already answered via email, led me in a White Sox direction. So this was from Leo, who said, Recently, my uncle told me that in 1927, Indians infielder Joe Sewell stole three bases and was caught 16 times. Knowing Sewell's legendary ability to avoid strikeouts, I had a hunch that he had struck out less than 16 times, and I was correct. Sewell had only struck out seven times. How often does this occur, and will we ever see it again? So he wanted to know about players who get caught stealing more than they struck out.

And as one would imagine, this has not happened in a very long time. The last time it happened for a qualified player was actually a White Sox player, Nellie Fox, in 1951, who struck out 11 times and got caught stealing 12 times. It really hasn't even happened in small samples more recently, like the last time it happened in even a minimum of 200 plate appearances was 1978 when Larry Milbourne did it. And I was going to answer Leo and say, no, there's no chance. This could never happen again, barring some drastic, completely unforeseeable circumstance

because everything is conspiring against this. The strikeout rate rises every year. Teams are stealing fewer bases and stealing pretty efficiently, so players are not really running up huge caught stealing totals for the most part. So inconceivable, except then just on a hunch, I looked at Nick Madrigal's page. And Nick Madrigal is one of the top White Sox prospects and one of the weirdest and most wonderful prospects in all baseball.

He's like Williams-Estadillo in some ways, except a pretty promising prospect, which Williams-Estadillo never really was. And Nick Madrigal almost did this. This year, he had 532 plate appearances in the minors, and he struck out 16 times, and he got caught stealing 13 times. He almost did it. And Nick Madrigal probably will be in the majors at some point soon. So it's conceivable that he could make a run at this. I still think it's unlikely because probably he will strike out more in the majors than he did in the minors and probably he'll run less often or run more efficiently. that you can almost imagine it happening. And this just seemed like an opportunity to talk for a moment about Nick Madrigal,

who I feel like we probably have neglected on this podcast because he's the type of player that we probably should be talking about a lot. Yeah, he's deeply weird. Let's see. I don't know off the top of my head when the White Sox list will go. But, you know, I eric and kylie had a future 55 future value i tried to say future 550 value that's not right at all every part of that was wrong and jumbled you should leave it in though because it's weird and hard to say but

yeah he is quite odd i think that there was you know one point, hope that perhaps when the wrist got better, because if people don't remember, he fractured his wrist in his draft year. And then when he returned, he was hitting, but he just was not hitting for power. And I think there had been a hope that perhaps as the injury continued to improve that some of that would come back but i don't i don't really think that it has just yet so he will continue maybe to be kind of a a weird a weird one it might be a weird one we like weird ones he spent most of the season at triple a and overall he hit 311 377 414 so no great power, particularly with the lively ball in AAA. But he got on base and he can hit for average and clearly makes contact at an extraordinary rate, which is that's the fun thing. I even allowed myself to dream that Williams Estadio might be good at baseball. I just wanted to see him play because he was so out of line with every trend and every league average.

I just wanted to see someone who never walked and never struck out. And Madrigal does walk sometimes, which is good. That bodes well for his future. But it's the strikeout thing that is just amazing. future but it's the strikeout thing that is oh yeah amazing and he's a he's a you know first round pick fourth overall pick the white socks top pick in 2018 for people who have not been following him he is 22 years old he is a second baseman right-handed hitter he is listed at 5-7 so i don't know what he actually is but this just seems like someone that we are destined to love if he's any good at all because he's small and because he never strikes out. And exceptions to

the rule and deviations from the norm are something we all appreciate, particularly if they are paired with productive players. So I am really looking forward to the magical experience yeah he he was of the guys who we have on the board which is where you can find the milb leaderboards he had the lowest k rate of any of any of them any of them that are on the board by far i would imagine uh yeah there are always some some weird players that can blow a minor. But he certainly did it in a larger swath of plate appearances. So he, I think you noted, struck out 3% of the time. The next closest in terms of plate appearances, so he, as you said, 532.

appearances. So he, uh, magical, as you said, 532, Wander Franco had 495 PAs in 2019 and struck out 7.1% of the time just to give a bit of perspective. Obviously Wander Franco, um, significantly a better prospect than Nick magical, but yeah, weird. He's weird. So we might have weird Nick magical, and then we might have in all likelihood, unless he has just a real stinker of a spring because of the contract extension, weird Evan White from the Mariners, backwards first baseman. Which, you know, we need to come up with better terminology to describe that because it makes it sound like he's stubborn and resistant to change. And all we really mean is that he bats right and throws left. So we might have a, it might be a golden year for weird ass prospects yeah that's true the hyphen in weird ass very important because i can't speak to the other thing at all so yeah i'm i'm into i'm into team weird let's do it it's weird ass prospects similar to slapdick prospects we

probably shouldn't get it i i would prefer to not speculate on air we can we can confine that to to gchat and then when the great hack comes people can get our real takes yeah yeah the white socks are gonna be fun like there's a a certain element of whenever a team gets good after not having been good for quite some time, that just adds to the fun because it's like, hey, I'm tuning in to watch the White Sox now. I haven't done that in a while. But they have a lot of very watchable players. And, of course, for connoisseurs of framing,

appreciators of framing, they now have maybe the best in baseball at that in Yasmini Grandal. So that's something to watch. And then you've got the potential for Kopech to come back at some point and throw very hard. And you've got Eloy Jimenez maybe consolidating in his sophomore season, and he hit better in the second half of the season.

And he has very impressive power and was a great prospect himself. And so there's that. There's players who've already put things together, of course, like Giolito and like Moncada, guys who took big steps forward this season. And then there are other prospects on the way. There's the potential for more signings. I mean, I don't know that it will be a good team in 2020 necessarily. There's some potential for it to be.

But regardless, it'll be a watchable one. It's very much like, I think, maybe the 2019 Padres in terms of, well, we're not sure this team is quite there yet. But it looks like they're probably going to get there at some point soon. at some point soon. And in the meantime, we can just enjoy this crop of young and exciting players on this team that we haven't had a whole lot of reasons to watch in a while.

Can we just take a moment to pour one out for the fans of the Brewers who might be framing appreciators? Oh, yes. That's a big blow. Oh, guys, gals, folks, friends, I got some bad news. I got some bad news about the direction things are going with Omar Narvaez as your primary catcher there.

That is quite the drop from literally the best to the worst. Yeah. It doesn't get more drastic than that. No. If you were not a believer that framing could be worth a lot then this will get back to me after you go experience right unless of course they they managed to make Narvaez better which has happened could happen but if not that would be kind of a night and day difference yeah yeah it is uh it is striking and you sit there and you think, how noticeable can it really be?

And then you watch it and you're like, oh, okay. Got it. Yeah. Right. He does hit those, so that part's fun. I didn't even mention Tim Anderson. Tim Anderson. One of the more charismatic players in baseball.

Yeah. Going to take the under, the significant under on the batting title. Probably. The 335 and the 399 BABIP and all of that. But even so, he will also put the ball in play and the 335 and the 399 babbitt and all that but uh but even so he will also put the ball in play and uh he'll be kind of fun i mean he strikes out but but he's fun so i think there's a there's a lot to like there and get excited about there's dylan cease again i don't know that they're a 2020 contender but perhaps but you can dream. And I know they've been dreaming for a while. If

you're a Padres fan or a White Sox fan, you've been envisioning what it could and would look like for years now, but you're almost there. You're almost to the point where the dream maybe starts to become a reality. And that's all, that's all any fan can really ask for is that when you walk into the ballpark on opening day, you look around and you're like, we might win this one and we might win a couple more. And that's, if you can go into the season feeling like you could win and compete, even if you don't end up doing it, but like it is a realistic possibility and that the time that you will spend watching will be worth it because you can experience some good wins.

That's a really great thing to be able to say. And I'm excited that there are fan bases that, as you said, haven't had that experience lately that are either about to have it in seemingly a very real way or are nearing the point where they can, you know, they can get excited and trust that feeling and not have it feel ridiculous. That's very cool. It's a good, it's a good thing that more fan bases in baseball should get to enjoy. Mm-hmm. All right. One last thing. This is from listener Dan. He says a good off-season question. I agree. Would a team's network ever show a quote unquote classic game where they lost?

I'm in Masson country and now they're showing Nationals and Orioles classics, typically a game with a dramatic walk-off home run. For example, the Nationals September 2019 11-10 walk-off featuring a comeback from down 10-4 in the bottom of the ninth. This was posed to me, and I thought for a while and kind of doubted it. All I can think of was perhaps a game with an unassisted triple play, a game where a player hits four home runs and loses. Has that ever happened? Or a no-hitter loss, which would be quite the rarity. Any thoughts? Can you imagine this happening? what you are talking about, they'd be much more likely to cut it together with a bunch of highlights for that player or of that highlight type and do something like that than they would be to rebroadcast a loss. But maybe I should have greater faith in network's ability to confront the truth that they sometimes don't have positive

outcomes for baseball games. Right. After the fact, it's like, who cares who won or lost the game that is many years ago, except that I suppose if it's not someone on your team excelling, but like, what if it is? That must happen sometimes, right? Does that ever happen? I don't know. I'm trying to cast my mind back to when I would watch replays of Yankees classics, which there's no Grant Brisby wrote about some time ago at SB Nation. Like, that's weird. And years after the fact, who cares? It's not like you're still stinging from losing that game. And unless it's like a World Series loss or something where the pain never completely subsides, no one really cares about some regular season game your team lost 20 years ago. But yeah, like the Andy Hawkins no-hitter,

that might be a candidate. Or Sam suggested maybe a superstar's debut in the majors. So first game by a legendary player for your franchise and the team lost that day. But who cares? You're tuning in to see the first game played by that player, which I never really see. Like you always see the highlight of some superstar hitting his first major league home run or something. And that's always fun because he looks so young and usually looks really skinny. And there he is but you can kind of see what he's going to become and he still has the same swing and everything he's just a

smaller more raw version of his future self but rarely i think do i see just like the full debut game maybe if it were a very memorable debut but i would want to watch the whole thing start to finish even if the game itself was not so great. Or maybe you would do, perhaps you would have a player on an opposing team who really just roughed up your franchise, but now is signing with your franchise. And so you can look back and go,

well, he did get us, but now he's one of us. Maybe that would be a candidate. You're like, oh. If you can't beat him, sign him or trade him. Yeah, one of us maybe that maybe that would be a candidate you're like right if you can't beat him sign him or trade yeah exactly so maybe that but yeah i think i think debuts i will retract my statement i think debuts are the most likely for a game in its entirety it seems like that would be particularly compelling for like maybe a star pitching prospect who has a very good game and they just happen to lose because then he is a you know a frequent character every half inning as opposed to you know if you watch ken

griffey jr's debut it's like well he's how many events he can get just a couple of events um so so perhaps yeah but i also think that you know the winter is long and they got to fill their air with something so um if they can show their audience something cool that they haven't seen in a long watch, say, a fine pitching performance in which the Mariners went hitless, let's say, if such a thing had ever happened, which I'm sure it hasn't. But if a visiting pitcher were to pitch in your park and totally dominate, but it was a fun-to-watch pitching performance, would you ever want to watch that? Or would you say, I'm still loyal to my team and I don't want to watch them flail for nine innings, especially if I know that's how it's going to end? Well, I watched Felix pitch through the mid 2010. So I feel like I'm pretty familiar with the good pitching hapless hitting Mariners experience, although they are one of the fun franchises where both things can happen on the same team.

And so I don't know that I would need to specifically revisit it. No, I think that I'm pretty well set on mid-2010s Mariners. They've already taken so much. Right. Yeah, I mean, I guess if you suffered through it the first time. But if you didn't, there are always new fans being made. And so they would not have seen that performance. And maybe it wouldn't be as personal to them if they were not following or rooting for the team at that time. It's not my Mariners who did this. It was an earlier generation's Mariners who failed to get a hit here. You know that one generation of Mariners teams that was bad?

Just that one. It was a win. Right. Haven't been any others, just one. And meanwhile, you get to see some historic pitching performance. I guess the victorious team and the team that was employing that player

at that time sort of owns that performance. It would be kind of weird to like appropriate that milestone that landmark performance as the losing team and say yeah we participated in this event we made it possible through our futility but yeah i don't know i mean i'll say this i don't know if this is true in the other markets in which they broadcast. But during baseball season in Seattle, you know, they do the normal Mariners broadcast on route. And then after all the postgame show stuff has ended, they almost immediately rebroadcast that game in case people missed it. And they do that regardless of whether or not the Mariners win or lose. And so maybe the appetite for it is greater

than I anticipate, even just in moments where the loss is much more recent and the sting probably much worse. So I don't know. They're like, hey, remember how the Mariners lost? Well, you're going to remind you. baseball specifically is a good low stakes way to be sad right and so we should embrace those opportunities and in general i i feel like it would be nice if there were just kind of like a a baseball cultural exchange program where like fans of every team just uh someday on the off season their network that normally airs their team's games just aired some good game from another team's games. And it's like, hey, here are our uniforms and here are our broadcasters and here's our ballpark. And we'll watch yours and you'll watch ours. And we'll see how we do baseball differently and how we each appreciate this thing. And that'd be kind of nice.

It's like expand your horizons there's every city every team has its own traditions and its way of talking about baseball and playing baseball and presenting it as an entertainment product so i think that'd be sort of nice it kind of runs contrary to how fans tend to follow baseball these days where it's this highly regional thing but in a way that might make it a more valuable exercise because it's like maybe you didn't even see these players at all unless you maybe watched the All-Star game or you happened to play them in the playoffs or maybe you saw them in interleague play or something,

but you probably didn't appreciate them. Just in general, it'd probably be an enlightening exercise to just randomly select an MLB TV game from some other team and tune in and not even know how it ended, but just see how baseball is played and presented differently in that city. It's probably different in ways you wouldn't even anticipate from your own broadcast experience. Yeah, I think that that's right. And, you know, I think that it would do if you're willing to go back in time, it provides some nice level setting for younger fans who probably hear about certain games throughout the course of their fandom, but have never seen them. an opinion and marvel at how grainy broadcasts used to be and feel like they are exposing themselves to an important bit of history that allows them to converse with older fans and have a shared experience, even if it wasn't developed in real time.

So yeah, I think it's a fine idea. In that respect, I guess I will watch some old 2010. Well, yeah, maybe you can start with some other team's 2010 team. I don't know. Yeah. I don't want you to suffer. Oh, right, because I already did it. I already subjected myself to that, so I could do a different thing.

Oh, well, then I think this is great because that means I get to watch other teams that were better at baseball. Let's do it. I think this is great because that means I get to watch other teams that were better at baseball. Let's do it. That is, now that you mention it, I kind of like that you can always sort of tell when an old baseball game is from just because of the broadcast quality and the resolution of the picture and maybe the graphics that are on the screen. And obviously, if it's black and white in color or the camera angles you get, you can just kind of tell. color or the camera angles you get like you can just kind of tell even if you don't immediately recognize the players you might not be able to say this is this season precisely but you can approximate just based on this is what a baseball broadcast looked like at that time or or at least you can if you've been following baseball long enough or you're old enough that you have some

frame of reference for these things and i wonder whether we will lose that at some point, because once you get into the HD era, maybe at a certain point, it just kind of looks the same. Like, does a game from 2010 or whatever look that different from a game in 2019? I don't know, compared to, say, a game from the standard definition era, where you can just immediately tell, oh, this is kind of old. So I don't know whether we've reached that point where things are just frozen or whether the picturepark or you can free roam around the field as it's going on or whatever sci-fi things are in our future.

But I do kind of wonder about that because probably like the broadcast we're watching right now at some point will seem archaic sure maybe maybe not to us because we were watching them at the time but to the next generation that sees them it will look old in the way that i don't know a 70s broadcast looks to us now but maybe not to the same degree because i don't know if the extent of the change is quite so significant. Yeah, it seems like the improvements in definition will be fairly marginal going forward compared to the leap that we've experienced in the course of our lifetimes. My main thought whenever I watch those old games is that Sam and I just couldn't do faces the same way if we had been writing in a different era. Sam and I just couldn't do faces the same way if we had been writing in a different era. I have a career in some respects because of high def because it's a lot harder to pick out those faces.

Yeah, they just all be a big blur. Yeah, they just look blurry. You zoom in, you try to take a little screenshot, and it looks like you're at an impressionist exhibit. So I am very grateful for high def because I don't know, guys, I might not be kicking around if it weren't for that. That's a humbling thought. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Well, I guess we can close on that profound observation. You made me think about old Mariners baseball and it got existential and had a fair amount of dread and ennui. And those things seem very closely related to me. Yeah. All right. Well, I wish you well at the winter meetings, and if we can pull off this

Boris experiment, we will. But one way or another, I will talk to you next week. Sounds good. All right. That will do it for today and for this week. Thank you, as always, for listening. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already pledged their support to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Dan O'Loughlin, Jacob, Xander Berg, Jeremy Reynolds, and Mariana Sanders. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild.

You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Sam and Meg coming via email at podcast.fancrafts.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will talk to you early next week. And before we go, a brief word from Sam, who's going to give you an update on something we discussed on our previous episode. Hey folks, it's Sam. A quick update about Jen Ramos.

More than 1,200 people have now donated to the GoFundMe fundraiser set up by their parents. Jen remains hospitalized with serious injuries from the accident that took their husband. This is going to be a long recovery, and the fundraising page remains open, and so we will again post a link to it on the Facebook page for this episode. If you don't have access to the Facebook page, you can email us, and we'd be happy to point you to it. That's podcast at fangraphs.com. I also want to note a careless mistake I made last episode. Jen's pronouns are they and them.

I did not get those pronouns correct. We re-uploaded the episode to correct my mistake, but many of you heard the episode before that. I owe this apology to Jen and to everybody else I hurt. I feel terrible, and I'm sorry.