Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1470: Baseball’s Busy Meetings

Episode Date: December 14, 2019

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about baseball’s busy week and the Giants and Marlins moving in their outfield fences, then discuss the Angels’ signing of Anthony Rendon, touching on Rendon’s greatness and similarity to Mike Trout, what the Angels still need to do to contend and their outlook for 2020, Shohei Ohtani’s probable workload, […]

Anthony, it could be worse Anthony, it could be worse They call you Lord Anthony, but hey It could be worse Lord Anthony, but hey It could be worse Lord Anthony, but hey, it kind of suits you anyway. Hello and welcome to episode 1470 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast brought to you by Fangraphs and our Patreon supporters.

I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? What a week. What a week. This was a winter meetings. Sure was. Baseball met and they were busy. Did you have a nice rest of your meetings and trip home? I mean, yes, I did. Must have been a blur.

It was busy. I had to abandon very nice dinners back to back nights. Oh no. We were just putting in our order the night that Cole signed when the Cole signing broke. Oh, no. So I put down my drink, and I was sitting next to Jay Jaffe, who wrote the sort of long analysis piece and was on deck to do that. And he and I coordinated, and Bren G Gulowski offered to do our instagraphs couldn't do that all from the dinner table huh I didn't want to edit on my phone so I because that's just a sure way to have bad typos so I I got a little to to go bag and then um getting up

as if I were about to go do something really much more important than edit a story about Garrett Cole, I dramatically got into a lift and headed back to the hotel. So that was Tuesday night. And then on Wednesday, we thought, oh, we'll go to dinner earlier. And surely, we won't have another big signing. Sit down. Yep. Yep.

There's Rendon. Yeah. So I edited that Instagram from the restaurant because, you know, I learned from my bad mistake and I brought my laptop with me and the waitstaff there was looking at me like, what? When do these baseball nerds get out of here? Because I don't know about these folks. They're trouble. Yeah.

Well, along the lines of my asking you about writing about transactions last week, do you think, have you seen that there is really a diminishing return when it comes to getting a post up, say, an hour or two later because you're at dinner? Like, will people just go and read the MLB trade rumor summary and say, I don't need this Van Grasse post. No, thank you. I will not click on that. Or when it happens at night like that, I mean, a lot of people weren't even awake. Certainly people were not at work, which is where we read a lot of our baseball content. So does it matter or are we just stuck in like a Twitter world where we just have to respond to everything immediately because that's what everyone else does i think the approach that we have found that is

the best is to do for these big signings we sort of had writers assigned in advance to be the point person for for rentone for cole and for strasburg those were the three that we were most concerned about um and then you probably didn't think they would happen on back-to-back-to-back days. Sure did not. Sure did not think that we would leave winter meetings with all that business concluded. Yeah. But getting a little Instagraph sub that gives folks some idea of what's what. And Dan will normally do a Zips projection in there.

It's just we find that our readers want to read about baseball and they want to talk about it in the comments and so we'd like to to provide a place where they can do that and then you know with the instagraphs up we can we can breathe a little bit and uh and then get the the longer sort of more thorough analysis done a little bit later but i don't know like i think that when it's big signings like that people want to people are pretty have a pretty voracious appetite for for analysis about it and they will definitely read stuff into the following day but i think it's just nice to give folks a place to go and read and you know squawk at each other in the comments and be happy for their favorite team if it's the yankees and be sad for their favorite team if it's the Yankees and be

sad for their favorite team if it's everyone else and and yeah so it does I don't know I think that you're probably right and that it matters maybe a little bit less than we think but also it's just it's good to give the people what they want and what the people want is uh you know analysis of Garrett Cole they want my they want my really tortured Anthony Rendon headline, which I will take responsibility for. That was not poor Ben Clemens' fault. Angel in the infield? Yeah.

You're doing. Yeah, I mean, come on. That was clear, right? Had to contribute something other than making sure the comments were in the right place. So, yeah. Yeah, well, that's about as big as baseball news gets in the offseason, at least.

So when we're not discussing the latest Astros scandal, that's what the people want to read about. So, yeah, got to give them what they want. And we have not yet given them what they want where Anthony Rendon is concerned on this podcast. So we will have to discuss him because that signing broke just a little bit after I posted our most recent episode. And then I saw that news and I was like, oh, our podcast is out of date already. But that's okay because it was a really long episode and we had no time to talk about Anthony Rendon, even if that had happened. But now we get to talk about it today. And hopefully people will still indulge us and want to hear that, even though it has been a couple of days already and they could have read multiple Fangraphs posts about it.

All the many Fangraphs posts. I do have a couple non-Rendon things to say, or just maybe one before we get to Rendon. There's just so much news, just an onslaught of news of all kinds at the winter meetings and a lot of it i think has been lost probably to the public and also to me just because the boris activity drowned out everything else and i'm sure that there are transactions that happen that i am not even aware of i will just have to scan all of the transaction posts just to see what i missed because there were like noteworthy signings that if this had been a slow winter meetings we probably would lead with that. Like we would be bantering about that.

But it just got totally pushed aside by the biggest signings of all. But one thing that I did want to mention, two teams have announced this month that they are moving their fences in. And unsurprisingly, it is the two teams that have had the hardest parks to homer in over the past few years so if you go look at fangraph's most recent park factors and sort by the home run factor you will see at the very bottom the marlins and the giants are actually the giants at the bottom and the marlins almost at the bottom and those are the two teams that have decided that they're going to be moving in the fences So just scanning the hardball talk posts about this

The Marlins are moving in their center and right center field fences So straightaway center is going from 407 feet to 400 feet And right center is going from 392 to 387 That's not huge, but it's something And then the Giants are moving in a bunch of fences is going from 392 to 387. That's not huge, but it's something. And then the Giants are moving in a bunch of fences. So less center field going from 404 to 399. Straightaway center, eight feet shorter.

And Triple's Alley is going to be a little less triply than it used to be. It's going from 421 to 415. And then the height of the center field fence is going down from eight feet to seven. And I understand why these things happen. These teams have had really extreme parks, at least by the standards of today. And the Giants especially, and I know Grant Brisby has written about this, but seems like Oracle Park has just been like the land that time forgot when it comes to the lively ball of the past few years. Because you look at the home run rates there and they just have not really increased. It's like that has been a place where just no one hits homers.

So looking at the juiced ball era here, 2015, Brandon Crawford led the Giants with 21 dingers in 2015. 2016, Brandon Belt led with 17 homers. 2017, Brandon Belt led again with 18 homers. 2018, Evan Longoria led with 16 homers. 2019, Mike Jastrzemski and Kevin Pillar tied with 21 homers. And this is in an era when everyone is hitting 21 homers that's uh that's just common now and so i get it because when you play in a park like that hitters complain and they get annoyed when they hit a ball well and it doesn't go out and maybe you think fans want to see homers

and they see homers everywhere else but your park and probably you think that it will benefit you in some way maybe it will benefit your team disproportionately to do this but even if not maybe you just don't want to have such an extreme park and i get that but when we're in such an extreme season and era in the other direction it's sort of a shame because if anything it seems like we should be moving fences back and making it a little harder to hit home runs. Yeah. Although we don't know what the ball will be and how it will behave next year. But assuming it's the same, we'll get even more homers just because a few more balls will go over the fences at these two home run suppressing parks.

I know that he is no longer a giant. Oh, this is the problem with names like that, with people names as mascots, you know, because it's like, I don't know, he's the same height he always was. It's like when you say he's no longer a pod. It's like, oh, God, what happened to him? I realize that Joe Panic is no longer on the Giants, but Joe Panic, he hit this past season, he hit three home runs. Mastin Bumgarner hit two.

That feels like not enough home runs for Joe Panik, which might explain why he's no longer on the Giants and is currently a free agent, I believe. But yeah, I tend to agree. I think that we want there to be, we have allowed ourselves this lovely bit of variability in baseball that is so strange compared to other professional sports where there are really strict parameters about the size of a field and i think that variability

is is fun and i also think that it isn't important as as you're as you're saying like in an era where everyone is hitting home runs there being some more reasonable level somewhere even if it is an extreme in the other direction provides some kind of balance that is probably important and necessary. So I don't know about this. They're not going to bring the sculpture back in Miami, right? No, that would make up for everything if they did. But yeah, if it were like we have to move the fences and to make room for a new and improved sculpture, even bigger than before, I'd be all for it but that doesn't seem to be the rationale yeah no it does not so i i think that the game because uh you know we would we would hardly ever expect what am i trying to say if we were to redesign the way that parks are constructed now having had them always be the same and uniform introducing variability would strike us as just

kind of cuckoo but we we had the door open to that already we got to enjoy that variability the sport allows for it so to constrict it further so that you can try to produce more hitters who look the same you know seems like kind of a bummer to me because uh i i like i like that it's hard to hit home runs somewhere. It seems like it should be hard somewhere. Yeah, right. Yeah, I like that variability. And there's a great article from the Hardball Times a couple years ago by John LaRue that I have linked to before and will link to again that talks about the homogenization of ballparks and shows with visuals that ballparks have gotten more standardized over time. And the fence heights and the fence distances have converged by quite a bit.

And it makes sense, I think, because ballparks used to just sort of be squeezed into the city as the landscape allowed. And now that doesn't really tend to happen. Usually you clear some space for a ballpark. And so you don't really have to cram it in and have weird dimensions. And I think that's good in a sense. There have certainly been some ballparks where it was just so extreme that you would get incredibly shallow fences,

and it would sort of make a mockery of the game in a way. But I do really like that about baseball. That's one of my favorite things about baseball relative to sports that do have standardized dimensions is that it's different wherever you go. And it has to be some degree of different to actually be noticeable. So I don't want to completely lose that, but I get why if you're a Giants hitter you're probably pretty happy about this yeah I appreciate that but I think the other thing it does if we you know take out some of the goofier dimensions is it takes away a really great a great bit of comfort that we can give ourselves

if we're opposing fans and something doesn't go our way like you know if you're you're a fan of a team that's playing the Yankees in yankee stadium and your pitcher gives up a couple dingers you're like well yeah what do you you know they play in a little league ballpark they're in a little league field you know this isn't real baseball and you can you can walk away feeling wounded but like you know like you were done in injustice and we don't like anything as much as we like feeling indignant about stuff so um you know that's another that's another thing. What are we going to say?

We're going to have to acknowledge the accomplishments of our enemies? What fun is that? Yeah, we should be able to make excuses and say it was cheap. So, yeah. All right. So let's talk Rendon. So Rendon signed basically the Strasbourg deal, seven years, 245, except without the deferral. So I guess effectively it's a little more money than Strasburg got. And

Strasburg and Cole, I think, outperformed their contract expectations and Rendon got more or less what he was expected to get. He's a great player. He deserves it. And I think it's a very nice consolation prize for the Angels. It may even be underselling it to say it's a great player he deserves it And I think it's A very nice consolation prize For the Angels it may even be Underselling it to say it's a consolation prize For not getting Garrett Cole because it's Entirely possible that Rendon Will prove to be the better investment

Over the course of that contract And the better player he is About as good a player now And I've seen people Pointing out that rendon will be mike trout's best teammate and that is sort of unsurprising to me it's kind of an underwhelming observation i think just because a the angels haven't been very good and b rendon is like a top five player in baseball over the past few to several years. And so it would be kind of unusual if Trout had had a teammate this good.

You wouldn't really expect one team, particularly one mediocre team, to have two of the five or so best players in baseball. But I guess the point is that Mike Trout's teammates have consistently let him down and not performed, well, clearly not up to a Trout troutian level but not even up to an adequate level that a team with mike trout could consistently make the playoffs and so in that sense it's nice that mike trout now has a very accomplished sidekick and i'm sure there was one of those years in there maybe where andrelton simmons outwared anthony Rendon Because of his great defense But point is Rendon is great And now we get to see

Him and Trout and Otani And Simmons on the same team Which I know I will be watching a lot of Angels baseball as I always do Or at least a lot adjusted For how much Angels baseball I should be watching given how good the team Has been and how closely

It has contended. And so now I get to see another one of the best and most compelling players in baseball when I tune into those games. So that's nice. We will get into some of the more specific things about Rendon and then also the 2020 Angels as a whole. First, I have a very important Scott Boris-related question, which is, do you think that this does anything to the number of games that he watches behind home plate at the ballpark, looming just over the umpire's shoulder, casting his watchful eye upon several clients? Do you think it...

Because he's there a lot already, so I don't know how much more room he has, but you have to figure that at least early in the season we're gonna see a lot of boris hanging out behind home probably yeah i i notice him back there fairly frequently but i haven't kept track of how often so i i couldn't say how much room he has to expand there but yeah one of his highest profile clients is now there so seems like that would be extra incentive to be behind home plate lurking and getting that great camera time he uh he's very present it's just he's just very present yeah and it is it is a thing i notice

every single time i can't i can't. Yeah, well, it's an unusual configuration to have that little, like, subterranean enclosed area behind home plate. And then your eye is drawn to Scott Boris because he's Scott Boris. And instead of just noticing a generic fan, which you would do anyway because you pay close attention to every fan back there. But it's not just any fan. It is one of the most famous faces in baseball and a face that hasn't really seemed to change very much. Scott Forrest just kind of looks the same as he used to, at least in my mind's eye. Yeah, he sure does. So Rendon, I think we can now firmly and decisively dismiss the underrated narrative.

When it comes to Anthony Rendon, we have found he's been weighed and found to be properly rated at a very high level. Yes. So we can dismiss that. When I was editing Ben's piece, I thought that Rendon had only just made his first all-star game this past season and i thought well that seems very wrong so i went to baseball reference to double check because i was like oh i shouldn't let ben get a goof through there because someone will say something in the comments and he was right this was his very first one so it is very wrong it's just very inaccurate that's a that's a good way of putting it. So I think that you're right that we will have a lot of very exciting reasons to watch Angels baseball. I imagine we'll get more of them as prospects like Joe Adele join the team. I would imagine that as they creep closer to contention, that might maybe move up his timeline a little bit so that they can get the full benefit of him but i don't want to give short shrift to the rendon analysis but i do wonder if you're the angels and you're looking at your lineup as currently constituted and you're looking at your rotation

as it's currently constituted i mean there's a reason they went after garrett cole first i would suppose yeah there's a bit of a mismatch there. And I don't know that I think this is a great offensive team. I think it could be. I think there are still some questions there. Obviously, if you're starting with Trout and Rendon, that's about as good of a 1-2 as you can have. And then Otani, of course, is very good. But you have Upton coming off a down year

and not clear exactly what you're going to get out of him. Simmons is coming off a down year too. LaStella was good before he got hurt, but that was kind of an out-of-character performance for him, so can he replicate that? I don't know. Right now they kind of don't have a catcher, or at least they don't have a catcher who can hit. I guess they have Stassi who can catch.

But there's that. And then they have David Fletcher, who I like a lot, but he's not a star-level hitter. And then you have Albert Pujols kind of dragging you down. So there's some uncertainty there. And yes, hopefully and maybe Adele comes up at some point. But he sort of had some growing pains at AAA. Yeah, he won't be rushed.

Right. Yeah. And I don't know if you can expect him to be like an above average contributor this season. Wouldn't shock anyone given how talented he is and how players seem to be aging these days, but can't really count on it. Anyway, not saying that it's a bad offensive team. I think it could be a good offensive team, but not like an overpowering one. But yes, it's a way better offensive team than it is a pitching team right now. And even after you trade for Dylan Bundy and you get Otani back which that would be like one of the big acquisitions of the offseason if you could expect Otani to pitch a

lot of innings and of course we want him to pitch a lot of innings but he hasn't done that in years and years so his innings totals over the past few years, zero in 2019, 51 and two-thirds in 2018, 25 and a third in 2017. So it's not since 2016 that he was pitching regularly, and he's never thrown more than about 160 innings because he was so young and the NPV season is shorter. So he's never been anything close to a workhorse. And even though his arm should be fully recovered, they will still want to be careful with him. So I don't know what you hope to get out of him this year.

Like, do you just say, oh, let's hope we get 100 innings? Because even under normal circumstances, at least in his rookie year, he was pitching once a week because of the whole two-way thing and DHing in between. So there are no normal circumstances for Shohei Otani. So I don't know how many innings you get out of him. And then there's Bundy and then there's a bunch of pitchers who could be better than they were, should be better. But no one there who gives you a ton of confidence. And this is a team that got many more innings from its bullpen than its

rotation last year. So yeah, I think there are clearly more moves to be made here and probably more moves that will be made. Yeah, I was thinking about this as I was waiting to edit Ben on Wednesday. And I should say our hotel, I think I mentioned this when we did the Borsing, was very close to Petco. And I could look out over Petco and they were doing some sort of winter meetings gala, which I'm sure our invitations to that got lost in the mail. So we won't be upset. But I wouldn't have been able to attend anyhow because I had to work, but it was fun to look out on other people having fun while I was editing. But I was sitting there sort of thinking about the state that the angels find themselves in, and my first thought was, well, you know, there are, as you said, there are guys coming back on the rotation side, some of whom might do well. We might expect something good from them or at least see where they have sort of the upside

to perform above where they're sort of projected to next year. But it is very strange to look at a team like this that has Mike Trout and has just signed Anthony Rendon and is getting Shoya Otani back. And you're so excited. Then you realize they still have a lot to do. But then I also realized that it was december 11th and they have plenty of time yeah although at the rate this market is moving oh my goodness there aren't many players left i guess that's true yeah that's true but it is it is a funny thing to

you know be in a position where you have so much potential and so much talent concentrated, which is a good thing. You have room on the roster for other stuff. You don't need to construct an outfield with bits and bobs to get at the number of wins that Mike Trout's going to contribute. You just have Mike Trout. You just have him, and he's going to be good at baseball. So that part's really great, but they do still have some work to do. I'm going to baseball so that part's really great but they do still have some work to do i'm going to be so i've this is a very effectively wild thing to turn our segment on anthony rendon into us just

wanting to talk about shoya otani i'm gonna be so fascinated to see what his usage is like next year yeah me too did you i i listened to some of the episode that you and sam did most recently and then i and then my phone died and I had to turn it off. Did you talk about the comment that Madden made that he might consider giving up the DH on days that O'Ton is pitching? Yes, we did. Yes. Okay, then I won't make you talk about it again. I'll just go back and listen.

I'll learn along with our listeners. We're on the same wavelength, obviously. We're very excited. Yeah, so that was exciting. And, yeah, so they seem to be talking to all of the available pitchers on the trade market david price and the cleveland pitchers carasco kluber i don't know if they would be able to land one of those guys with the prospects that they have who aren't adele and i'm sure they wouldn't want to give up adele no for one of those guys so not sure about

that but then there's still bum garner and there's still ryu and and there's still some And I'm sure they wouldn't want to give up Adele for one of those guys. So not sure about that. But then there's still Bumgarner and there's still Ryu and there's still some solid starting pitchers left. So, yeah, I mean, they need probably two guys for me to feel confident about this being a playoff team. So hopefully they go all the way so that they don't enter yet another season. go all the way so that they don't enter yet another season because as sam was saying on the last episode it would be even sadder if they had signed garrett cole and then somehow they missed the playoffs with cole and drought and dotani and simmons and so swap in rendon for cole and equally dismaying but there's probably enough room for them to maneuver that they could avoid that fade. And obviously they won't have to face Garrett Cole anymore. So that is at least one upside. They didn't miss out on him, but he dominated them the three times that he faced them this past year as he dominated everyone.

Yeah, they weren't alone in that. I didn't prepare you for this. Can we do a little angels exercise? Okay. We're going to do this based on just, we're just going to go by the win totals from American League teams last year and see if you think the angels are better as currently constituted than the team by name.

And we'll just go through these just to get a sense of where they're at. So we can skip the first ones, the first couple here. I assume you do not believe them to be better than the Astros i do not nor the yankees no how about the twins uh the minnesota twins no probably not today but by the end of the off season i could imagine myself saying so but not today not today so uh division rival Oakland Athletics. No. No. The Jeff Sullivan Rays.

No. The Cleveland Indians. No. The Boston Red Sox. Nope. Oh, no. The Texas Rangers. Yes.

Okay. They're better than the Rangers. Okay. So now we're getting into some territory that's promising. I will say the Angels are the next American League team down, so it's good that they've cleared at least one. Yeah. This is like where the Angels often are entering a season where it's like, well, yeah, I could sort of see them as wildcard contenders, and then they haven't even been that lately.

But I do believe that they will be at least that in 2020 when all is said and done. It's just that this is still an unfinished roster right now. It is still an unfinished roster. I think that the question marks on the pitching side of things are serious and ones that will probably need to be addressed. But I think that there is some sneaky potential in that rotation to just, if for no other reason than hopefully the injury luck is better than last year, to be better than we expect. It would be, man, wouldn't it be just the funniest thing

if a Dylan Bundy-led rotation was what got Trout back into the postseason? I would. Oh, oh, what a dream. What a Griffin Canning getting Mike where he belongs. Let's go. Man, I wonder how many times I'm going to mistakenly, even though his first name is very different and he has a pitcher think that Pablo Sandoval is pitching for the Angels now.

It's going to happen at least once. It should be a very exciting infield because now you've got Rendon and you've got Simmons and you've got Fletcher, and that part is really good. They should vacuum up some grounders, and some of the pitchers that they could still add to this team are ground ball pitchers who might fit pretty well there. And it seems to me that Rendon is a very trout type player or trout type hitter at least in that he like trout

combines elite plate discipline with great power and improving power he keeps getting better in that respect as Ben Clemens pointed out in his post and they are two of the best at that. And they are also, I think, two of the truly great players who perhaps jump off the screen a little less readily than others do. Other equivalent talents, not that there are any equivalent talents to Trout, but you can watch those guys for a game or two and not necessarily see what it is that makes them so amazing but they're good at everything and not bad at anything and plate discipline is sort of a skill that can be a little hard to see at first and obviously Rendon also is not a very demonstrative attention getting type of player which is what led to his being underrated for some time. And he will have some entertaining quotes and be sort of sneaky funny sometimes, but he is not really going to draw the eye or have any really controversial quotes or anything like that. He's not going to make headlines for much except being good at baseball, which is enough.

But those two, I kind of think of them as similar sort of players. They and Fletcher are two of the players who, even in this era of tons of strikeouts, will walk roughly as much as they strike out, if not more, which is always a pleasing thing. that they are united here. And obviously the teams that missed out on Rendon are sad about that. And it seems like there's about to be a run on Josh Donaldson as the remaining sort of star level position player and third base position player as well. So it seems like he might go next. And whether it's the Nationals or the Rangers or the Dodgers, various teams that missed out on Rendon seem very much in on Donaldson.

And in the short term, he might make the same sort of impact that Rendon will make. So I think probably if you were to pick a loser of the winter meetings, I guess many people might pick the Dodgers because they were in on all the big free agents and they didn't end up with any of them. And what was the biggest move they made? Blake Trinan, I guess, was their big signing. So that's sort of disappointing if you're a Dodgers fan, but I also understand it because a year ago at this time, we were talking about the Dodgers not making the big move and people were critical of them for not signing bryce harper and settling for a.g pollock

and obviously they would have been a bit better with bryce harper but you can't be much better than that team was so that's the thing they're just so good and they have such a great talent base that there just is a little less urgency i I think, for them to make a move. Like, I understand why the Angels would outbid the Dodgers, let's say, for Anthony Rendon. They need Anthony Rendon more than the Dodgers do. The Dodgers would have had to move Justin Turner and then move Bellinger. And you would have had to do some positional shifting and it would have limited their versatility a little bit and it would have worked and it would have made them better but

I think their need is just a little less acute and you'd sort of like to see them just flex their financial muscles the way the Yankees did and go out and sign that big free agent because they haven't really done that in the Friedman era I think Pollock is the biggest free agent because they haven't really done that in the Friedman era. I think Pollock is the biggest free agent deal they've signed with a player who was not already on the Dodgers and re-signing. And so maybe that's a little bit of his small market background and just an ex-Rays person finding it hard to hand out the big contract. But maybe it's just that they keep doing such a good job of developing players and picking players up off the scrap heap that they just never really need to break the bank the way that other teams do and i think that it's tricky when i think that you're absolutely right especially when it comes to rendon that the

every team is better with an anthony rendon so i don't mean to downplay and i don't think that you're doing that but i don't mean to downplay like what could have happened in this lineup if it featured anthony rundown also that would be pretty rad justin scherner will age and eventually be free agent and so like there there will be some need there although you know if you listen to the scuttlebutt maybe uh maybe kyle sear i'll go to la we'll get an all Seager in the field. Anyway, so every team would be better with an Anthony Rendon. So I don't think that there is a downside to signing really good players,

especially if all it costs you is a lot of money because then you don't have to give up prospect capital. But I think that you're right that the urgency was probably not sufficiently present. And if we think about the stuff that the areas of that roster that we were at times concerned about last year, they tended to be the bullpen. And I appreciate the reticence to sort of back up a Brinks truck for relievers because

they can be kind of shifty. So if you think about it through that lens, the Dodgers were like, hey, we could use some bullpen help and maybe we can fix Blake Treinen. So that makes some good sense. But it does, I think, give the impression that relative to some of their peers who are quite serious about things, particularly the Yankees, that they're sort of just standing pat. It's probably too early in the offseason for us to have a really strong opinion about that sort of thing. But yeah, they didn't overwhelm anyone this week. Yeah, and as I was saying to Sam last time, it would have been nice if Cole had gone to

a less successful 2019 team just to see things even out a little bit between the super teams and the terrible teams. But Rendon at least props up one of those teams that did not make the playoffs and we are seeing a bunch of teams that didn't go after it and try to compete in 2020 and that is reassuring and refreshing and maybe that partly explains why the market has been so busy and so active and I guess that's the question just what do we make of this week of all of baseball's biggest business happening during the winter meetings, which is something that we used to anticipate and think was possible. But in the last couple of winters, it just didn't seem like it was. And so now we're back to big business being done in November and December.

And it's been fun so far. It also means that we will probably have less to talk about next month and the month after that but we haven't seen a lot of trade activity which I guess could be because you can only manage so many moves at once and free agent market is moving so fast that there's no time to talk trades. So maybe we will get into that later in the offseason. And if we actually do see some of these Bryants and Bettses and Lindors and Arenados, et cetera, moved, or Correas, all these players you wouldn't think would possibly move

and may not still, but have at least been floated as trade candidates. Maybe some of them do or one of them does, and that gives you some big headlines. But otherwise, maybe much of the major off-season businesses concluded, and I don't know what to conclude from that because I'm really suffering some whiplash here going from previous free agency to last couple of winters to where we are now. I think that the conversation you and Sam had about and Sam's point about the perception we had of late free agent signings last year being a function not only of how late it was, but also it's sort of reinforcing a broader narrative we had an understanding we had of the market as being

quite antagonistic toward labor is right. I think that I would like I'd prefer to sequence it this way for a couple of reasons. I mean, I think that for players, you know, the longer a player is unsigned, the less leverage he has until right up at the very last minute where the need is suddenly quite great, right? In case there's an injury or what have you, and teams are desperate to fill out their rosters but i think that i'd rather you know i think it's nice to not have that dynamic be quite as present in this moment especially after an offseason last year where it just seemed like every other week we were like oh god we're gonna have a strike yeah so it's nice to not be mired in that in quite the same way uh you know we still have to talk

about the the broader market and what's coming up but i think it is nice to have a bit of a breather from that i think it's i think it's way better for fans to be able to be excited about their teams this way it's easier this way because you know now i mean and let us let us be glad that Yankees fans are finally getting relief. I'm such a jerk. But, you know, like if you're a White Sox fan, you know how to feel about the direction of your team now. You know what they're up to.

You can sit there and say, like, yeah, they think that they're in it now. They think they're in it to win. And they're making moves to demonstrate that. And I can get excited. And, you know, when January comes and it's been snowing in Chicago and I'm cold and I want to think wistfully about something I can think about baseball because the White Sox care about this and if you're a Cubs fan I don't know you still won that World Series so I am sorry your team's being a bummer but at least you have that going for you but I just think it provides to to have that roadmap so early allows you to get excited and yeah you're gonna sit there

during February and I'm gonna make you talk about college baseball and you're gonna hate it Ben you're gonna hate it but you know what then when you're then you can think wistfully about Garrett Cole and you'll just be able to picture him in pinstripes and you'll know what that is. And you'll be like, someday soon Meg will shut up and it'll be great. You won't think it quite that way because you're too nice a guy. But you will be sick of me talking about, you know, like Torkelson. But yeah, see, see, we all win. We all win.

But I think that I that this approach is better. I think that when we're on the other side of it, many of the same – the fundamental structure of baseball's labor market has not changed. labor relates to ownership and what the next CBA negotiation is going to look like. And I imagine that will still manage to be a contentious, a contentious time. And it's not as if, you know, everything is going great. We still have this conflict between major league and minor league baseball looming that we're going to have to sort out. But, but I think it is a, it's nice. It was nice to have it be busy and to have it be busy with stuff that you really thought could move where a team was on the wind curve right like for all for all the fodder that jerry

depoto has given us over the years it was nice to have real transactions yeah you know uh no disrespect to like domingo santana or whatever, you know, what did they do during the Rule 5 last year? Well, Jerry was literally hospitalized. That was the Edwin Encarnacion, Carlos Santana, three team player, whatever nonsense. Like that stuff's fine. Those players are big leaguers, right? They're legitimate players who belong on a roster. But, you know know there's like

jerry doing his thing and then there's the yankees signing garrett cole right and it was nice to have a couple of transactions like that to remind you that there are teams out there that are like no we're just gonna try to win some baseball games turns out yeah right and rob manfred said something to the effect of well everything's fine now free agency is robust and we don't need any fundamental changes. And I don't think we should think that. And I don't think that the Players Association should think that. And you would hope that they wouldn't take their feet off the pedal when it comes to pushing for changes, or at least that they would start putting their feet on the pedal. I don't know if it's been on the pedal, but I think— You only put one foot on the pedal at a time. Is that how driving works? You only put one at a time, and you're not supposed to use both your feet at the same time.

Just one at a time, one at a time. Okay, I'll bear that in mind if I should ever get behind the wheel. So I think it's not as if all the problems are fixed, but obviously this is encouraging. So my question is, how should we now talk about transactions and signings now that we're back to players actually making money again to the point that sometimes you see a contract and you think, gee, that looks like a lot. And there was a time where we all kind of played GM and we would say, oh, that's an overpay and that's a bad contract. And then when all the contracts went away, we started being very

conscious of that language and taking more of a pro player stance and not that I would want an owner to keep the money instead of the player but I think if you take it so far that you just say well any contract is good you should spend all the money and if that's the reaction to every move just hey all right they signed someone more money just make it more and more. I don't know if that's useful as an analyst or to your listeners or to your readers. And so I guess the question is, how do you balance those things? Because you want to strike that right tone and be conscious of those underlying pressures. And you also maybe want to be conscious of the fact that there is less opportunity cost than there used to be. I don't know. We used to operate under

that assumption that like, well, if you sign player X for this many millions, then that means you can't do this and you can't do that. And certainly owners still want people to think that. It's not quite as clear that it is as true as it used to be because teams have these additional revenue sources. And yet there are only so many roster spots on a team, and so there's still an opportunity cost there where if you sign this guy instead of that guy, then maybe this guy isn't as good as that guy.

And so I don't know how to frame that. if there's a contract that I think maybe that money could have been better allocated to some other player who is a little bit better or would have been a better value and yet also not wanting to prioritize efficiency and spending above all else? I think it's a really good question because there can still be contracts that I think the way to think about that without conceding sort of ground toward a salary cap mentality that we don't have to fret over because it's not our budget is to think about I think it's to think about roster fit and I do think that it's you know like it's credible for someone to look at I mean there haven't even really been a whole bunch of contracts where I thought oh that's so terrible like even you know I I was surprised that Drew Pomerantz got four years given how how few innings we saw the version of him that he was in milwaukee over but even his deal it's like none of this is hamstringing that organization it's not like he signed you know 100 million dollar contract right so i think that the the way to pitch that

analysis or at least the way that i've been trying to think about it, is to really make it about the baseball that that player is contributing rather than the size of the contract. We do need to acknowledge the reality of budgets, even if we think that ownership is being stingy with their budgets and wish that they would be willing to spend more. be willing to spend more. And I think that budgets are a reality and we need to be cognizant of them, even if we are hoping that ownership will not view the luxury tax threshold as a hard salary cap. But there are still deals that bring players in that are bad organizational fits or perhaps are shoring up an area of the roster where we think there's already existing depth and it would be easier for a team to win more games if they were to prioritize other positions. I think we can still do that analysis, but I actually think it's been a good exercise for public facing analysts over the last couple

of years to try to break themselves of the habit of purely doing value analysis because we don't have to be so concerned with a team's budget even as we acknowledge the reality of it and i think that by shifting it to the player we focus on the part that actually is the most exciting to fans which is the baseball yeah true right like you know like anthony rendon is like a bad example of this because he's just so good at all the things that he can be a bit, he can be a bit boring in his goodness. So like Garrett Cole, don't you just want to talk about Garrett Cole? I mean, you just want to talk about the way that Garrett Cole like throws his fastball. I just want to talk about that. Like that is such a fun thing to talk about. And so I think that you, it's not that you don't acknowledge the financial reality

and it's not that you should be indifferent to how major league front offices think about their roster construction because I do think that as analysts trying to help our readers understand the game that we need to talk about that stuff critically but but with sort of a clear eye to how teams actually do this stuff but I think it think it's about how you proportion it in an article, right? Like you can talk about the contract part, but just talk a lot about the baseball. Yeah, I think that makes sense. Yeah.

And now anytime someone thinks that the ratio is wrong at Fangrass, I'm sure they're going to remind me of this conversation. Yep. But yeah, I think part of the guys at the top of the free agent class going so early is that we haven't really had one yet where i was like oh that's that's really far off base like that's that's too rich you know i just haven't i just haven't even that's not the way that i tend to think about this stuff anyhow, but it just hasn't even been the way I've done it. It's like, whatever.

Who cares if Drew Pomerantz has another year? It's fine. Yeah. I guess probably the most eyebrow-raising for me was probably the Moustakas contract, which maybe that's partly just a response to the fact that he couldn't get a multi-year deal or at least one that he liked in each of the previous two off seasons. And so that made it even more surprising. million a year and he's certainly been a two-win player so that seems fine but that's kind of a case where well is that the best move you can make to commit to Mike Moustakas for four years at his age and to have him play second base on that team it's just it's sort of a strange fit I mean it might work out fine Mike Moustakakis has been pretty good and pretty dependable. But that was the one I think that most made me think, huh, that's not what I expected.

So I don't know. I wouldn't say, oh, terrible move, huge mistake. But that kind of made me do a double take. So that was one of the ones where I'm thinking, well, I'm not writing about this. But if I were to write about it, how would I frame that? Well, and I think that with Moustakis, the way that I would think about that is there is risk attendant with that deal, and it is the risk you've highlighted, and that stuff is real despite our satisfaction that he's finally getting paid. But then I think you put those deals within the context of the actual potential negative impact that they have on a roster and that's where like even the

moustakas deal it's fine because the reds estimated payroll in 2020 right now per roster resource is 118 million dollars yeah like it's okay it's's okay because they are so far away from, you know, even sniffing the first luxury tax threshold. And they're a team that wants to win. So I think that if we're going to talk about the contract stuff, it's really important to put it within the context of both where that team and organization is on the win curve, where they are in terms of their overall payroll commitments and i don't know like even there it's like this is fine you know and i'm not saying you're you're not saying that but you know i think it's like this is this is fine it's always important also to remember that they eat very weird spaghetti in that city and also that it's not our money so they yeah you know they got all kinds of

stuff to sort out before they worry about how much they're paying mike moustakis in 2024 i gotta figure out spaghetti they don't know is it spaghetti is it chili i don't know and i don't want anyone to tell me okay okay i won't then i don't want to know i'm just saying it's offensive to both spaghetti and chili okay that's all Shall we end with a couple emails I have a couple queued up here so Jacob Patreon supporter in the Wake of Scott Boris's Giant week says

Why would a professional baseball player Not hire Scott Boris As his agent it seems clear That Boris is at least as good as Any other agent at maximizing players Salaries and maybe a lot better. I couldn't find any players truly addressing why they don't use Boris. Robinson Cano's statement about switching from Boris to Roc Nation Sports in 2010 provides little insight.

Of course, Boris can't represent every baseball player, but it seems like more of them should switch to Boris. Some owners and executives don't like him, but he still gets great outcomes for his players. He also has a reputation for helping players improve. It doesn't seem that he costs more than other agents. According to a 2001 LA Times profile, he then charged 5%, which is the industry standard commission. other agents are successful at cultivating relationships with players are many players too attached to their agents to make the obvious business decision of hiring Boris as Nick Castellanos described it in April goodness well I think that the reason that we have heard cited and I'm failing now to think of a specific player and and rather than anonymous ones is is that because of the caliber of player that he typically represents,

I think that for mid-tier and lower-tier free agents, I would imagine there is some frustration about how much attention you're getting because you are likely personally repped by someone who works for Scott Boris, not by Scott Boris proper. I doubt that, I don't know, theth free best free agent in baseball has boris in the room when that contract's getting negotiated so i think that part of it's probably that other agents do have success you know yeah last year mike trout signed a mega extension and manny machado got a 300 million dollar deal Neither of those guys are repped by Boris. So there are other agencies that do good work and secure good outcomes for their clients.

And I think that that combination of just who you resonate with and how much personal attention you think you're getting from that person probably has a lot to do with it, would be my guess. Yeah, I think that's a big part of it probably. And Machado used to be re by by boris i think and then he switched so that's another example that does happen there were players who switched last offseason because as sam and i were discussing on our last episode some players were upset with how boris about that market. And I think there's maybe a perception, and I don't know if it's accurate or not, but that he's maybe a little bit riskier,

like he's going to push harder and he's going to try to get the biggest possible number, but that maybe occasionally that won't work out for a player and they'll be left kind of empty handed because he pushed too hard he set his sights too high and maybe they just aren't willing to do the brinksmanship that Scott Boris does sometimes and they just want to get a deal done and not spend their whole offseason worrying about it which I mean there's real value to that peace of mind of just knowing all right my deal's done and here's where I'm going to play as opposed to not signing until March like Bryce Harper. I mean, that has to be somewhat stressful even if you know that you're going to end up somewhere and you're going to be wealthy wherever you go. And I don't know, I think maybe there's as you were saying like if you want just to be one of an agent's

most prized clients and kind of be able to call up that agent at any hour of the day and just talk and get personal attention then maybe you would go with a boutique agency that doesn't have that many clients and can afford to devote a lot of time and attention to that client so that could be part of it too and sometimes they're personal relationships where like an agent will believe in a player and scout a player and really you know sign that player to his agency even before the player is all that promising and say, I think you're going to be good, so I want to represent you. And then sometimes those players will pan out and they'll turn out to be great. And sometimes they will ditch that original agent and say, well, sorry,

no hard feelings. It's just business. I'm going to go with the person who has the best track record. But sometimes there is a loyalty there and you think this person believed in me before anyone else had ever heard of me and i'm not going to abandon that agent now so i think that's part of it and yeah i at this point like boris must pretty much have his pick of players like you would think if anything that maybe maybe Boris is turning away players now. Because, I mean, I don't know, like Boris Corp is big and they have a lot of agents there. So I'm sure they have plenty of bandwidth. But still, like they probably can afford to be pretty picky because if they're making these massive commissions on the $800 million plus of contracts that were signed

this week alone by Boris clients, then maybe they don't have to represent the non-prospect who could potentially pan out, but nine times out of 10 isn't really going to make the agent any money or much money. So I would think that's part of it. Like maybe you have to be worthy of Boris at this point. So it's that more than the other way around. I do know that, you know, like, and this is not unique to agents for Boris, like they're always on the look for very young guys who show some promise, who don't yet have sort of deeply uh long-held representation so i think they do take flyers on guys but i think you're right that especially for established minor and big leaguers where we kind of know what they are that they can probably be a bit choosy also so it's not as if

you they are not obligated to represent anyone so you know it's not like they if a you know quad a guy rolls into boris corbin's like okay where's my deal they're like who are you right yeah exactly yeah and yeah because boris is always in the headlines and taking hard line stances and stuff i could imagine that some players might think that that they just don't have the appetite to work with him, that he might be abrasive or something, that he might be domineering. Like he's always going to want to set the record and push for the highest number that he can. And obviously a lot of players want that, but a lot of players don't really want that. They want a good amount of money, but they don't necessarily care if they make more than that other guy or more than anyone has ever made before. And so they might think,

well, I don't want to go with Boris because he's going to be pushing me to do this or that, and that's not really my priority. I don't know if that's a fair perception at all, because I think ultimately Boris will do what his clients tell him to do right so I don't think he's going to force them to to go against their wishes or their interests but there might be a perception that his strategy doesn't align with what certain players want well and I know that there was some concern going into this offseason with him representing Cole Strasburg and Rendon that yeah right you know are these guys going to get the deals that they want or they're like you said is there going

to be some sort of brinkmanship some some gaming and sequencing that goes on that maybe won't be to their liking and I think they probably all feel fine about it now so that's I think that they're those three guys are probably sitting around me like hey we did okay yeah i would think so yeah but that always comes up yeah like can boris manipulate the market or is there a conflict of interest right because he's representing you know the two top players at the same position or something right that has to be kind of tricky but he seems to navigate it okay and everyone makes their money so yeah but you could see how that could potentially be a thing where if you're choosing between agents and you're not quite sure what criteria to select on other than them having secured lucrative contracts for their clients in the past and your own personal dynamic with them that something like that might be a thing that helps you decide if for no other reason than you need something to use and pick off of. But yeah, I think, I don't know, there are a lot of agencies that do good work.

And he's certainly the most well-known agent in probably in sports, right? Yeah, I guess there's what Drew Rosenhaus is the football guy. Yeah, okay, so I don't really know what I'm talking about. I think it's probably our... Well, you know better than I do, but... But he is a name brand unto himself, irrespective of his client roster at any given time. But there are other agents and agencies that do good work and get done what needs to be done on behalf of their clients. So...

Yeah. Yeah. I would think that if anything, the importance of an agent, at least when it comes to contracts, should be lesser than it used to be. I don't know that you can prove that or demonstrate that. We look at the contracts that Boris got his clients this week and we say, great job by Boris. It's hard to imagine that anyone could have done significantly better with those guys than Boris did but I don't know if you give them a replacement level qualified agent or an average agent or a above average agent do they make less do they make significantly less I have no idea because it seems like at this time when every team has its models and its valuations and it's not really like just sitting down at the table and trying to talk them into signing your guy and producing a binder that makes the case that he's the best player ever or something. Like usually teams kind of at least front offices know what they think a player is. And Scott Boris isn't going to persuade them otherwise, I wouldn't think.

He has had his move of going over the front office's head and going directly to ownership. strategy as it has been before, because I think you're getting more owners who are probably looking at things in a similar way to the front office or deferring to the front office or being more cautious because it's not like a Ted Turner or a Mike Gillich or a George Steinbrenner or something, or there's, you know, it's some kind of corporate entity as opposed to one owner who might be persuaded to do something and be able to do that unilaterally. So I would think that the importance of negotiating a contract has been reduced, but I don't know that that's the case. And if it were the case, then maybe you just want someone you get along with who can give you good advice in other aspects of life, long with, who can give you good advice in other aspects of life, you know, setting up your investments and handling all the endorsements and all the pressures that come with being a

celebrity and all the attention that gets paid to baseball players. Or if there's an agent who maybe could make you a better player, which is, I think, an area that some agencies are investing more heavily in, actually trying to improve players and taking that upon themselves and giving them analytical resources to get better that teams typically do. So maybe some of those things are more important in a relative sense than they used to be. I don't know. It's just like Boris has been around for so long, and he's gotten so many huge deals and he's had so many high profile clients that you just assume that he must be the best and he must be way better than everyone else. But it's hard to

empirically demonstrate that, I think. Yeah, it is. I think the place where they continue to really just demonstrate their worth, and we can maybe show this by thinking of two recent examples where we wish that agents had done a bit better is to help their clients understand the overall state of the market and their own worth within that market, and then to implore them to be patient where they might be hesitant to do that. So I think about the extensions that say Acuna and Albie signed last offseason, and we all looked around and were like, what advice were they getting from their agent?

Because it read like a moment of even though you can understand the economic pressures that those two players might have because they're so keen to secure that first million dollars, given the economically disadvantaged backgrounds that they came from, you would think that good representation would tell them, no, you're like tell Ronald Acuna, no, you're one of like the best players in baseball. You're in the commercial with the new era hats for a reason, friends.

Like you have value on this market that far exceeds the value of this contract. And so I think that even as players have gotten savvier and the deals that teams give out that make us all kind of scratch our heads because they're going to players who are, you know, in their decline phase or what have you, even though there's been some standardization across contracts, I still think having, you know, an advocate who can look at the market and really help a player, especially young players, understand sort of where they fit in the hierarchy of baseball players is really useful. Though I think you're right that more, you know, agencies do more and more for their clients in terms of helping them manage, you know, figure out how to manage their wealth

and invest it so that it can, you know, perpetuate past their career. So there, there are a lot of different things that, that agents will do that I think could be appealing depending on what matters to the, to the player. But I do think that they serve as a really, well, hopefully if they're doing their jobs well, they serve as a really useful reality check one way or the other to say like, no, that's a bad deal. Just because like, you're excited that you're about to be 22 and have you know five million dollars you should hold out for more because you're such a good baseball player right so i think that's the place where really you're like oh no ozzy ozzy especially should have picked a different guy right or gal or whomever i don't know I don't know who it was, but we're not pleased.

Yeah, maybe it reminds me of that Phil Birnbaum line, you gain more by not being stupid than you do by being smart. Maybe it's analogous to major league managers, for instance, where it's like, yeah, there's probably some benefit to having a really good one versus just very good or good one. But what you really don't want to do is just have a disastrous one. And so with an agent, probably most agents are going to get you a deal that's in roughly the same range. But if you have like an incompetent agent or maybe an agent

who doesn't have a lot of clients and just really needs to get a deal done so that they can make some money. And so they are not necessarily going to have your best interests at heart because they have to make payroll at their agency or whatever. So that, yeah, I think probably avoiding undervaluing yourself dramatically is probably more valuable than going from, you know, dramatically is probably more valuable than going from you know 250 million to 275 million or something if it's even that big a difference yeah yeah it's you look at you're like you know i'm sure any not anyone but i'm sure any reasonably talented agent could have gotten garrett cole a bunch of money i think so probably yes but i don't know that every agent could have gotten Garrett Cole a bunch of money. I think so. Probably. Yes. But I don't know that every

agent could have gotten Eric Hosmer his deal. Yeah. No. Maybe not. Sorry, Dave. All right. Let's end with a stat blast. I have a quick stat blast. Bye. ways here's to day still past Alright, this comes from

Dennis. He says, I was wondering whether we know who the two most similar players in MLB history are according to Bill James' similarity score. Baseball Reference does list the most statistically unique players of all time. Pete Rose leads all hitters and Cy Young leads all pitchers, and by age, but does not list

the opposite. Is there any pair of players with over a thousand innings pitch or 3,000 plate appearances who have perfect similarity scores of 1,000? If so, how many such pairs are there? If not, how many more seasons of baseball do we have to play before this comes true? And I got this data from Dan Hirsch, the wonderful Dan Hirsch of Baseball Reference, and

I will paste this into a Google Sheet so you can all sort it and check it out to your heart's content, but Dan sent me the top 10 000 most similar pairs with uh dennis's specifications here a thousand innings and six thousand plate appearances and this is not that interesting to talk about because the players who are the most similar are not really all that notable yeah it'd be nice if they were, but that doesn't tend to be the case.

So Dan does mention that in Bill James's book, Whatever Happened to the Hall of Fame, that was when he introduced similarity scores. And James mentioned in that book that Andre Thornton and John Mayberry Sr. were the most similar batters. And Dan says 24 years later, they are still the most similar batters if we set the minimum at 6,000 plate appearances. And they have a 964.8 similarity score out of 1,000.

And you can do a career comparison at Baseball Reference and match up two players. And it's pretty striking with those two, Mayberry and Thornton. They were contemporaries and similarity scores as Bill James does them. They're based on sort of like basic stats that you have for all of baseball history. And it does take into account position, but it's also like playing time and your basic box score stats. And so if you look at Mayberry and Thornton, like they played, Mayberry was at 1,620 games. Thornton had 253 homers. Their OPS was 12 points apart. Their OPS plus was identical, 123. Their war totals, and war is not part of similarity score,

but if you're very similar at everything else, you will tend to have pretty similar wars. And their wars are 0.7 wins apart. So those guys are almost identical players. And if you use Dennis's criteria of a thousand innings pitched or 3000 plate appearances, again, not names that really jump off the page. The most similar batters are Ed herman and george mitterwald they have a similarity score of 979.9 so that's as close as you get to the perfect 1000 and if you go with the innings a thousand innings then it's ivy andrews and randy gumpert, which probably not household names, but pitchers, yeah, they are at 988.3, so that's very close.

It looks like the most similar pitchers are more similar, slightly more similar than the most similar hitters. And as Dan notes, there are some contemporary players here who are pretty close to the top, There are some contemporary players here who are pretty close to the top. The third most similar tandem right now is Patrick Corbin and Jaime Garcia, which you would not necessarily think. But, of course, this will change because Patrick Corbin is still active. And so he will change his career totals and Jaime Garcia will not. Well, you never know. I don't want to rule him out but seems unlikely but you

also have uh Mike Minor and Jaime Garcia are also pretty close to the top I don't know what it is about Jaime Garcia I'm just scanning for names that I know or recognize now like Sonny Gray and Matt Latos are very similar again Sonny Gray is still active so anyway just so funny similarity score to body comp and mismatch yeah that's true yeah so naming the top pairs is uh not that entertaining because you'd wish that they were all like hall of famers who you'd say oh they're actually the same but that's not really the case but i will put all of this online for people who are interested and uh they can peruse the list and see if it accords with their suspicions so fun data thanks to dennis for the question and dan for the data are dansby swanson

and charlie culberson on there because they're the same person that's uh i remain convinced they certainly i don't think this takes into account physical appearance, unfortunately. It should. I know they would not be statistical comps, but it's the same guy. I am convinced it is one person moving back and forth very, very quickly in the Braves dugout, and now the Culberson has been DFA'd. I think he just ceased to exist. I think he is no more. Sorry.

Yeah, I don't have Culberson, at least on this spreadsheet. He doesn't have the minimum playing time that he needs. It's because he's been busy being Dansby Swanson, Ben. That's why. Looking at his most similar players on his B-Ref page, I do not see Dansby Swanson on Charlie Culberson's page. So clearly a bug in the system yeah it's a glitch in the matrix is what it is yep all right well i think we're done

were there uh were there any transactions that you wanted to even like shout out just to say hey that was cool that we're just lost amid the i will say, as we were talking, or I guess before we talked, the Rays reportedly have signed Yoshitomo Tsutsugo from Japan, which is pretty cool. Tsutsugo is a 28-year-old outfielder, mostly, and he has been a slugger over there. I don't know how well the power will translate, but he has also been a very good on-base guy and not a great defender. He has pretty subpar defensive ratings, according to Sports Info Solutions, and also defensive reputation. But he's played left, he's played third, he's played first. Maybe the Rays can move him around. And evidently they worked him out in person and liked what they saw.

But I always like that when we get a fresh face, an established player with an impressive track record from overseas. So he has a 10-year career in the MPB with Yokohama and quite an accomplished one. So I was interested and curious to see how that translates. But he's got 205 career dingers in those 10 seasons. That's pretty good. Yeah. When he came in at 42 on our top 50 free agent posts and when Eric was doing some sourcing so we could get a better sense of him, folks indicated to Eric that he was averaging 92 miles an hour off the bat in NPB which would put him in sort of the top 30 among big

leaguers by average exit velo so yeah we'll have to see how the power translates but the raw is really really impressive so it's going to be fun to see that all these all these lefties on them raise lefties

no I didn't really have any other ones. I'm still trying to put in long-term memory the guys who moved around while I was on vacation. So, yeah. Yeah. Brett Gardner, back with the Yankees. Back with the Yankees. Tanner Roark. As expected, but that's nice.

I like Brett Gardner. I do, too. I mean, I don't know that I would want to share a dugout with him necessarily. Certainly not a bat. No, would not want to sit above where he is sitting in the dugout. But he is a really good player. Over a very long time, he's going to be someone who, when he retires, people will look back and say, hey, that Brett Gardner guy, he was really good.

And often overshadowed by much higher profile players. But he is sort of he's the steadfast stalwart Yankee over these past 10 plus years now. And he's generally been very good and reliable and durable. Yeah, he's definitely going to be one of those ones where when his when the book is closed and his career war comes up, you're going to be like, wow, really? All right. I looked just now. I was like, 37, a career war by our war. All right.

Look at that. Yep. Pretty good. Pretty good. I believe he's at 40 at baseball reference already. 41.6. Oh, boy. All right.

We've had a busy week. I think we can release ourselves from our obligation. I agree. Enjoy your Star Wars. Thank you. Talk to you next week. Talk to you next week. All right.

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