Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1496: The Mookie Betts Breakdown

Episode Date: February 5, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley break down the three-team Mookie Betts blockbuster, analyzing the historic strangeness of a player as good and young as Mookie being moved, what it means for the Red Sox and Dodgers competitively and financially, how Red Sox fans must feel about Betts (and David Price) being traded, why the Red […]

Now he's gone Now he's gone He's gone Like a steel locomotive Rollin' down the track. He's gone, he's gone, and nothing's gonna bring him back. He's gone. Hello and welcome to episode 1496 of Effectively Wild,

a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ed Lindberg of The Ringer and also apparently Spotify. It's been an interesting last 24 hours. And I am joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, Midweek Meg. Midweek Meg, just of Fangraphs. Yes, as far as we know. As far as we know. Yes, as far as we know. As far as we know.

So we are here to talk about a move that we have been wondering about and anticipating for months now. Mookie Betts was actually traded. It finally happened. It finally happened. Yeah, and even though we have had months to get used to the idea, I never really did. And right up until this week when the rumors seemed to solidify, I hadn't completely believed that it was going to happen. I thought the odds were probably still against it because of the caliber of player that Mookie is. But let's lay out the terms. Not that any of you have not heard this by this point. Lay out the terms, not that any of you have not heard this by this point But Mookie Betts is going from the Red Sox to the Dodgers

Along with David Price and significant cash considerations As we record, we do not know how significant For Alex Verdugo, the young Dodgers outfielder And also the even younger right-handed Twins pitcher, Bruce Dargradarol This is a three-team trade, and Kenta Maeda went from the Dodgers to the Twins to complete this trade. There was also a parallel move where the Dodgers traded Jock Peterson with former Effectively Wild guest Ross Stripling to the Angels with a prospect. And the Dodgers got back Luis Renjifo and possibly another prospect or prospects apologies to Jack Peterson but we will probably not be talking as much about him today

bigger news Mookie Betts sort of stole your thunder Jack Peterson so I don't think we need to debate whether this is a blockbuster I think this qualifies. Yep. We got Mookie Betts. Yep. So we have Mookie Betts. We have David Price. Yep. We have three teams involved. Yes.

So yeah, blockbuster. Feel very comfortable with that. Checks off all the blockbuster boxes. Yeah, all the blockbuster boxes. We got former award winners. We got multiple teams. We have money for reasons yep yeah so there's a lot to discuss here what this means for these teams competitively what it means for them financially

and also for the sport as a whole financially why the the Red Sox would make this trade, which really is unprecedented. And that was the gist of what I wrote about Mookie. We had Bauman on the Red Sox and Cram on the Dodgers. And so I sort of focused on just the sheer improbability of a player like Mookie Betts getting traded. And essentially, no player with the combination of youth and performance that Mookie Betts has, has ever been traded in the history of baseball. And yes, some of you are thinking Babe Ruth, and many Red Sox fans are probably thinking Babe Ruth. Yes, of course, he was technically sold or purchased. That was just a straight cash deal. So this is better than that. But

there are a couple other purchases like that, like Eddie Collins after the 1914 athletics fire sale. But in terms of trades, there just has never been a player who amassed as much war in the two full seasons preceding the trade and was as young as Mookie at the time of the trade. That's just never happened. And there are some guys who are close. If you want to look at my article, I will link to it on the show page. And I have top 20s for under 28 players and also all players, no age restrictions. But really, there's no one who fits the precise description of Mookie Betts who a team has ever traded. And there's almost no one when you remove the age restriction. It's like Roger Clemens is the only player who's been traded fitting that description in the past 80 years or so when he was coming off back-to-back Cy Young years

and the Blue Jays traded him to the Yankees. But that was a 36-year-old Roger Clemens And that was a Blue Jays team That was not going to make the playoffs For another 17 years So there are other factors here That make this even more improbable Because not only is Mookie great

I mean the second best player in baseball I would say And also right in the prime of his career But everything else in this specific case would lead you to believe that Mookie Betts would be completely off limits, right? A, he's Mookie. He's a model citizen, as far as we know. He is a fan favorite.

He was drafted and developed by the Red Sox. The Red Sox are the third most valuable MLB franchise. Fenway Sports Group, which owns the Red Sox, is the world's third most valuable sports conglomerate. This is not the team that you would think would be trading a great player, especially because Red Sox have a competitive roster other than Mookie and could have contended. And then there's also the fact that he recently won a World Series in Boston. Can you imagine? We're, what, 15 months removed from the Red Sox capping one of the most successful seasons ever with a World Series title.

And in those 15 months, they have moved on from Dave Dabrowski. They have moved on from Alex Cora. They have moved on from playoff hero David Price. And they have moved on from 2018 AL MVP winner Mookie Betts. That is just almost inconceivable. It's just been a really wild 24 hours. Yeah. I am not in the habit of, I'm going to say a thing and it's going to feel, it's not going to feel kind. And then I'm going to say a thing and it's not going to feel kind

and then I'm going to try to undo my lack of kindness and we'll see how successful I am. I tend to not be in the habit of feeling bad for Red Sox fans because they've had it pretty good and you can only feel so many feelings. And so I choose to spend my sympathy on folks in greater need. Put it that way. It's not that I dislike like them it's just that they're you know like uh the mariners exist so right but this is a really rough this is a really rough one to describe this is the kind of trade that when you talk about it to a non-baseball

fan person they know the names right it's that level of recognition and that's unusual for a baseball player full stop but to be traded to trade a recent mvp a delightful hero a great personality yep and to not even offload all of David Price's contract to do it. Yeah. So Mookie is, at least by baseball reference, which is what I was using for my article because Dan Hirsch helped me out with the stats, is the best non-trout player in baseball over the past two seasons, the past three seasons, the past four seasons, the past five seasons, and the past six seasons. And six seasons ago, that was his rookie year when he came up in late June. So he's just been the best and he's young and everyone loves him. And it's got to be tough for a Red Sox fan to stomach that news. I mean, whenever a team trades a homegrown franchise player who is really great and almost no one is as great as Mookie, that's tough to stomach because Mookie was already a top 10 position player in Red Sox franchise history. And he was climbing that list quickly. I mean, he's just getting started. It's six seasons, not even six full seasons. So he was very much on track to be one of the absolute best players in franchise history. He's almost certainly a future Hall of Famer, barring some kind of catastrophic injury. a big market, deep-pocketed, high-payroll team traditionally.

This is the kind of move that, if it's made at all, would typically be made by maybe a small market team that can't afford to keep the player or says it can't afford to keep the player, which I guess is essentially what the Red Sox are sort of saying here, but we can talk about that. Or it would be maybe a bad team that knows it absolutely can't win with this player in the near future and figures, well, we'll get what we can. And this is just not that. So I think there are justifications for this move and we will go through them and try to explain what the Red Sox were thinking here. what the Red Sox were thinking here,

but I think it's just an extremely tough sell to your fan base because your fan base doesn't really know Alex Verdugo and Brustar Gradoil for the most part. And those are good players and former highly touted prospects and promising guys, and you should know them and will know them and they should be good.

But when you're trading Mookie bets for really anyone, it's just a very tough thing to tell your fans. Yeah, I think anytime you have to stitch together, there's sort of the baseball reality of it, which is that you're right, Verdugo is a good player. We'll get into some of the complications there, I imagine, in a moment. Hugo is a good player. We'll get into some of the complications there, I imagine, in a moment.

Cradwell is a very promising pitcher, probably bound for a relief role eventually, but quite good. But when you are having to stitch together that quality to reach an equivalence, I think it's just automatically a hard sell to a fan base. Craig Edwards and Ben Clemens both took turns writing about how difficult it really is to sufficiently accumulate value to justify a move like this because mookie is just so special a player and you know our war agrees with b refs war like he is second only to trout in terms of his production since he entered the major so i think it's very difficult to say to a fan base, the thing that is holding us back from, you know, retaining this franchise icon and making him a lifelong member of this organization is money. And that is a reality that baseball teams grapple

with. And we can, you know, we can debate and we probably will how much they should care about that, particularly given the resources at the Red Sox disposal. But when all it is is money and then you raise ticket prices, that's a hard sell to your fan base. This is, you know, an organization that every organization in baseball wants to develop a Mookie Betts. Every single one. That's the goal. That's the entire goal of having prospects and a farm system and player development. That's what you're trying to do is to develop a Mookie Betts. And it's so hard to do that. And it's so rare that an organization achieve it. And then

to trade that player away and have a not small part of the motivation for the trade to be salary relief in the immediate term and just an unwillingness to consider that you might be able to compete for his services in free agency, that's really rough. That's just hard for a fan base. And they don't, you know, Red Sox fans don't have to feel good about that. We'll talk about the players who they got and the promise that they bring and some of the stuff that they can be excited about, but this is just going to be one of those trades where they're never going to feel good about it, probably.

Right. Well, when you trade a player like Mookie, you are almost certainly not going to get a player like Mookie back. I mean, that's just inevitable almost because there are almost no players like Mookie. Which doesn't that, shouldn't that gum up the trade calculus? Yes.

Shouldn't that be, you're sitting around in Fenway. I don't know if the Red Sox front offices are still at Fenway, but you're sitting around in Fenway and you're like, what do we want back for Mookie Betts? And the list isn't sufficiently long

to be like, yeah, we should pull the trigger on that, you know? Yeah, I'm not saying you need to get a perfect Mookie equivalent back in order to do the deal because you could get two players who are really good. There are ways it could

work out and there are ways even that this could work out. They traded one year of Mookie Not Mookie in perpetuity But it definitely does give you pause Because when you trade a franchise player In many cases, you're not going to get a franchise player back And I'm sort of surprised that we didn't have to pretend to be prospect people And prospect experts for this trade

In that sense, it's sort of neat and clean and easy to analyze because these are all major leaguers and players that we've seen play and kind of know what they are even though verdugo and graterol are still in their early 20s and still fairly early in their major league careers but yeah i mean bets is obviously the type of player who when you get him you try to around him, especially if you are a team that can't afford to build around him from all appearances. And yeah, the Red Sox, I think they already had the second highest average ticket price, and they are planning to hike that by what I think comes out to about 2% on average across the board, which I guess is just keeping pace with inflation, you could say. But they are also suddenly becoming a less compelling product and less entertaining team. So there's that too. And I guess it's a small park and they probably

have to have prices higher to compensate for that or something. But anyway, it's just from a messaging perspective, we're raising prices and we're trading our best player. It's not the best combination. Yeah. I know that the background imaginations of how we cover a trade like this are not necessarily interesting to people, but we knew that this was coming in some form we didn't quite know when and there were two possibilities presented for this trade there was this package or one that looked a lot like this for the dodgers and then the other was something involving the padres right and so you know jay you're gonna write the the full

breakdown great and dan's gonna instagram it so people have a place to talk in the comments while they're waiting for the full thing. And I was like, and Eric, you're going to cover the prospects here. And then the deal started to take shape and we started piecing together the pieces to try to, you know, get a sense of what we were going to be talking about. And I was like, or you can just send Dan some notes on the prospect in this Jack Peterson deal. I guess you can go finish the Orioles list.

Didn't need it. Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, while we are sort of scratching our heads at the Red Sox, we should say, hey, Dodgers. Oh, my gosh. Good deal for you guys. You got a player who just should really not have been available based on all of baseball history.

So the Dodgers during Andrew Friedman's tenure, they've made some major moves. But for the most part, they've kind of kept their powder dry. They've hung on to their prospects they have avoided many of the big splashy signings and trades that people wanted them to make and for the most part other than not winning world series that has worked out okay but this time boy they got about the best player in baseball you could get and also they didn't really give up a whole lot they also they also got david price who yeah even though he is uh somewhat diminished and there's an injury risk and all that like he's no slouch he's not it's you know sort of a salary dump that the red socks wanted to package him with mookie but that's not to say that Price has no value. He does. So I guess,

you know, he sort of replaces Maeda to some extent, but there's still something to be said for David Price to 2018 World Series MVP. Perhaps not quite the pitcher he was then, but still, still an appealing player. But yes, to get Mookie and add Mookie to the incredible roster that they already had you can't just add Mookie's projected war total to the win total that you would have expected for the Dodgers because of course they did give up Verdugo and Peterson and those guys would have been average to above average outfielders too. So it's not like Mookie is replacing a literal replacement player, but still it's a significant several win upgrade to a team that was already the best in the league. assuming Dodger Stadium is his home park. He is projected for 6.7 war. Yeah, which if that happened, that'd be like his... We don't get a lot of zips like that.

There are not a lot of zips that come out with that number. Right, exactly. And that would be like his worst war total in a few years probably. So, yeah. Oh, good gravy. Yeah, I will say we can... There are some people we can be happy for. Isn't that nice? We can be happy for the Dodgers.

You know, Mookie's going to look great in Dodger blue, like going to look great. That team is going to – that lineup. Here is – I mean, like this might – you know, they'll move stuff around and whatnot, but the Dodgers lineup post-trade can now consist of Mookie Betts, Max Muncy, Justin Turner, Cody Bellinger, AJ Pollock, Corey Seeker, Will Smith, Gavin Lux. It can include Gavin Lux because they didn't have to give up Gavin Lux to get Mookie Betts.

Or Dustin May or various other players who could have been included. Ruiz, yeah. So we can be happy for them. We can be happy for David Price because it seems like the situation in Boston was just getting increasingly toxic for him. It's a rough place to have the sort of injuries that he's had on a deal like that. So good for David Price. We can be happy for Dodger fans because they spent an offseason being mad

at the Red Sox and the Astros, and now they just get to be happy about this. We can be happy for Kenta Maeda, who's going to get to start a bunch. Yeah, I guess so. I believe he also had a million dollar kicker in his contract in the event that he got traded. So that's a nice perk. I don't know how he feels about not pitching on the West Coast but that part is less good but you know he had that screwy contract that had all these incentives to be used in relief and the twins need starting pitching and so he will get to and he gets to go to a contender yeah so that's pretty that's pretty nifty he's got to be psyched about that. And the only people who we feel bad for, Red Sox fans, because they didn't do any of this,

the Red Sox organization made active choices. So they get to live with those now. Yeah. So let's talk about those choices and why they made them. So this is almost a Rays raise style trade that was completed by new president of baseball ops or whatever his title is heim bloom but i don't think we can say that the genesis of this move was with bloom because the rumors began before bloom was hired and clearly the impetus was not bloom coming in on his first day and saying, you know what is my number one priority? Get rid of that Betts.

Yeah, that Betts character. I don't know about him. Got to get him out of here. At the same time, this is sort of a Ray style move because it's kind of like add up the wars, calculate the dollars per war type of move. So essentially, Mookie is one year away from free agency. He just got a record deal for a player in his final year of eligibility. So he's making $27 million in 2020, and that will increase next year. And the Red Sox had had some extension talks with him from what has been reported. The offers they made him were quite modest and he was quite reasonable in rejecting them. that there's a good chance that he will become a free agent next year. And so for the Red Sox, there was some possibility that if he went elsewhere next winter,

all they would have to show for Mookie Betts' departure is a draft pick. Then there's the money that they're saving this year, which—and in future years because of price, potentially, depending on how much money is being sent to LA And that part of it Is just not something That fans really have any incentive To care about I mean I was Just looking at a Ken Rosenthal tweet

Which I will read right here and he Says two AL execs Tell me criticism of Red Sox is Misplaced Sox get Bullet point two talented youngsters with greater value than draft pick if Betts had left as free agent. Bullet point, ability to get under competitive balance tax threshold and reset penalty rate to minimum. And final bullet point, $40 to $50 million in payroll flexibility in coming seasons. So, hey, stop criticizing the Red Sox.

They just got $40 to $50 million in payroll flexibility in coming seasons. Catch the fever pitch. $40 to $50 million in payroll flexibility. What could be more exciting than that? I don't even think that fits on a jersey. No, I don't think you can fit it on one. I don't think you can fit it on one. Yeah.

It would have to get very small with your typeface would undermine the joke. It's all of those things. Yes, the Red Sox have run high payrolls. They had the highest payroll in baseball when they won the World Series. They have triggered the most severe penalties in the CBA for spending. So overage taxes on the amounts over certain thresholds and draft picks moving back and this resets their tax as we've seen some other teams do and so in theory at least they could be intending to spend in future seasons more because they are resetting the competitive

balance tax threshold now and they're getting two good young players So if you add up the War that the Dodgers are projected To get from Betts while he Is under team control and you compare That to the war that the Red Sox Are now projected to get from Grutterall and Verdugo while they are under

Team control then Things look like they favor the Red Sox Because if you look at Dan's aforementioned post at FanGraphs, he has the five-year projections for Verdugo and Gratterall. And both of those guys, it doesn't forecast stardom for either of them. It sort of sees them conservatively as fairly average-ish players. But even so, if you add up 10 years of average players compared to one year for one of the best players in baseball, in terms of war, it's still going to swing toward the team that's getting the young guys who are under team control for several seasons apiece. So that's the way that

theoretically it could work out or you could justify it. You could say, well, this is one year of bets. Maybe the Red Sox knew or thought that he was going to leave, that they weren't going to have much to show for it. And as it is, they got two pretty good young players who could be around a long time. And I guess you could add that it's a tough division and the Red Sox with Mookie did not make the playoffs last year the Yankees probably got better this offseason the Rays are still really good so even if they had kept Mookie there is some chance that they would not have made the playoffs with him and so they figure well why fight for a wild card, I guess, if we're going to not make it or potentially lose in one playoff game and then Mookie leaves and then we have a draft pick to show for it.

So that's I'm trying to present the Red Sox rationale here. Sure. And I am not indifferent to that rationale, but I don't find it compelling. I should say more than that. That's what we're here to do. I don't find it especially compelling because when you look at this organization, the financial resources that back it are just such that of all the teams in baseball, they should be on that list that doesn't have to make a move like this. And Betts has agency in his free agency, right? And so there isn't a guarantee that he was going to come back to the Red Sox, but a competitive deal to him probably secures that. And I find it very strange that these, you know, especially if they are continuing to pay part of Price's salary, and granted, we don't know the exact composition

of that portion of the deal yet. But I just, if there was a mandate to spend less money, if there was a mandate to shed salary, which presumably there was when Bloom came in, and part of why you hire a guy like Haim Bloom is because he has shown an acumen for this kind of this form of roster management in the past, right? He was good at this in Tampa. But if you're willing to eat part of Price's salary, isn't there another way that you can offload him, right? If you're willing to retain some of that money, isn't there a way that you can just say, you know, for a Mookie Betts,

we're going to blow through the competitive balance tax threshold? Because even at the higher threshold, you're buying like a reliever's worth of relief. So when you put it in those terms, when we think about this in terms of the players and not the dollars, it feels pretty silly to let go of, you know, a pitcher who was expensive and was injury prone but was still productive, a franchise player, all to get, like, some reliever's worth of salary relief from the competitive balance tax. And I know that it's not my money, but it also isn't the fans. So we can just spend it because why not?

Right. And so I appreciate how within the architecture of a trade like this, this is a return that is understandable, right? Some of the things that they're getting are useful. Some of the pieces that they are getting are useful. Some of the pieces that they are getting are useful. But when you talk about it in terms of the players who are involved, what they have essentially done is trade a franchise player away for a guy who is likely to end up in relief, albeit as a very talented reliever. talented reliever, an outfielder who is very good, but who has some not small makeup concerns associated with him to the point that other teams looking at Dodgers prospects in trade preferred other prospects in the past to Verdugo because they didn't want to deal with the makeup

stuff, all to get a couple relievers worth of salary relief from the competitive balance tax penalties. And when you put it like that, it feels not very good. Yeah. It feels kind of great. Although, again, Ken Tamayeda, he gets to start. So that part's nice. Right. Yeah.

So the thing about Betts is that, yes, he's going to be pricey, but also it's virtually impossible to overpay a player like that. baseball's salary structure works like no one makes 60 million dollars a year there's sort of an essential cap more or less at around 35 million or so right now where even if you are the best player in baseball you can get that rate for a lot of years but you're still not really gonna blow through that ceiling apparently and and trout granted it didn't seem like maximizing his earning potential has ever been his top priority and it's possible that mookie may be a harder line negotiator but still it's just really almost difficult to imagine a scenario where mookie ends up not being worth whatever he will be paid because he's just so good. And when you have a six win to seven win player, then that's kind of the conservative projection that he has bested on multiple occasions.

I mean, think of what that translates to in what we typically say is the going rate for a win for a free agent, like 8 million or so conservatively. So if we're talking about someone who's close to a seven-win player, well, that's a $56 million market rate salary, and no one makes within like 20 million of that. And so if you're Betts and you're getting what roughly the other very good players in baseball are getting then you're providing a ton of surplus value in the early years of that deal so yes there's a downside for everyone we will all age and eventually become decrepit but if you're mookie and you're racking up up, and I'm putting this in just very plain

financial terms like the Red Sox saving $40 to $50 million in salary flexibility, if you're racking up, say, $20 million of surplus value per year for the first few years of that deal, then even if for the last few years of that Deal you're not performing at that level anymore And you're still being paid at that level It's still going to work out just fine And the team that invested in you Is probably going to come out ahead And not really regret its

Investment especially if it Wins more titles and makes more Playoff appearances during that time so If you want to save money And it's Questionable why the Red Sox would be so motivated to save money given just the financial resources behind that team, but if you are determined to save money, I see why you would say, oh, well, Mookie is the natural person to do that with or Mookie and Price because they are some of the top earners, but they're not the ones Right. his current contract, or any contract that he could sign in free agency next year.

And, you know, Betts is going to play out 2020 in LA, and then he's going to hit the market, and the Red Sox are going to look around and be like, okay, so it's the 2021 season, and we're getting ready, and who's the best free agent available? Oh, Dratt, right? Like he's going to be the best free agent on the market. Well, hey, they could go bring him back.

As an aside, they will not do that, but that would be hilarious. And so I think it is important to point out, as you have, that he will not make what he is worth on the open market. No player in baseball does. Mike Trout is underpaid relative to the production that he has accrued and will accrue for the Angels. The same will be true for Betts, barring some kind of catastrophic injury. And I think that we, as analysts and as fans who don't have to worry about writing a check every month, is it a check? Do they get like a direct deposit every month? I would hope

so. Yeah. I mean, like, I'm sure they don't get a paper check in the mail that's for like $10 million. Just bring it to the teller and say, please deposit this for me. Yeah. Like, do they get, are they like, I assume that it's just like payroll, right? They get like a check every month or every two weeks for their share. It's just a really, really giant deposit. What a weird job. Anyway, that's not the point that I'm trying to make. I think that we should always ask the follow-up question to a team saying, we need to get below the CBT threshold in order to have financial flexibility, to say financial flexibility in service of what? Because if it's just savings for savings sake, they should be rightly pilloried for that because that doesn't produce good

baseball and that's what we're here for and that's what we should care about. There are financial realities of the game that we need to understand so that we can put a trade like this in its proper context and evaluate it on both the terms that we care about and the terms that teams care about. So I don't mean to say that that stuff isn't important, but you get below, you create payroll space to sign a player like Mookie Betts. That's what you should be creating payroll space to do. And so to use him to then get below that threshold

and be without one seems like you're using the flexibility just to keep money with ownership. And that is a goal of ownership. So it's not surprising that they would be the drivers of a decision like this. But I don't think it's one that we have to be overly impressed with. Yeah, right. Exactly. So if you're the Red Sox and you're trying to tell your fans how great this is going to be, you can't actually say $40 to $50 million in payroll flexibility in future seasons. So you have to, I guess, make Verdugo and Gratterall sound good, which they are. That's not that hard to do. Gratterall throws 100 or higher, and he was going to be in the bullpen for Minnesota I guess we'll see whether Boston considers him a reliever Wants to try him as a starter He's sort of a high effort, not smooth mechanics type Who has had some shoulder problems, arm problems in the past

I believe he had a Tommy John that is behind him And he's had successful outings since then. Yes. That was in the past. I think it was a 2014 or 2015 TJ. And he was much slighter as a player at that time and now has sort of thickened out in a good way. He's filled out. He's not heavy.

of thickened out like in a good way he's filled out he's not heavy and you know he touches 102 and he sits in the high 90s and he is a very compelling player and i would imagine that they will at least i mean now they have this hole in their rotation yeah so presumably they will at least try him in a starting role at some point. But I think that there is some concern about, you know, they want to manage him in a careful way so that they maintain him physically. And so it could be the sort of thing where, you know, he pitches in relief this year because, yeah, you're right. He did have a shoulder impingement last season. So there have been some durability concerns that have been raised by him, but he is very compelling and should be an interesting piece for them.

He throws really hard, but also sort of straight, I think, is the rep on him. It's not the most movement that you would hope for, but still, he's 21. He throws 102. He has a plus slider, so he's you know he's he is compelling but i think that the combination of the the exact repertoire with the injury history might um signify that he eventually ends up in relief albeit in like a really potentially in a high leverage role right right? But still a reliever.

Yes. And you have to think that the fact that the twins had expressed their intention to put him in the bullpen, and then they also just traded him for Quintanilla, essentially, that speaks to perhaps a certain lack of confidence in his long-term prognosis. So that's something to take into account too. And then Verdugo is a 23-year-old outfielder. You mentioned the makeup concerns on the field. He's coming off a year where he was worth two to three wins depending on your war. In 106 games, he had not the clearest path to playing time with the Dodgers because of their incredible roster. So he was someone who kind of hung around the team for two years, really not able to break in and just doing

well at AAA and being mentioned in trade rumors and then got his first chance for somewhat extended playing time at the major league level in 2019. And he did a good job with it he had a 114 wrc plus seems like a pretty good all-around player and you know i don't know if he's uh expected to be a superstar but he seems sort of like i don't know a ben intendee type is that too pessimistic given ben intendee's recent performance i don't know but i think it's on the range of outcomes for him he is a I mean he is a good player I think that the makeup stuff you know is is concerning I think it'll be it'll be interesting to see sort of how that plays out presumably it's stuff that you know the Red Sox were well aware of but yeah he was impressive albeit in a somewhat

limited role because he did have some I think some late season back stuff right yes I think so so yeah like the the bats impressive you're right that he didn't have a clear path to playing time but I think that when trades like well we we have just spent a lot of time saying that trades like this don't happen but when when blockbuster trades do occur and you have players who play the same position swapped, I always feel bad for a guy who is not a recent MVP because the expectation is that he is going to slot in and perform to the same level as the player that just got traded because he occupies the same position. And so the comps are quite natural,

and they just, however well Alex Verdugo plays, will not be to Alex Verdugo's benefit. And that is not to say that he is not a talented player, but it is simply to say that he is not Mookie Betts. And so as a result of that, it is going to, I imagine, be a comp that he comes to perhaps resent quite a bit. Maybe he should switch to the infield. It might make that transition a bit smoother. Who knows? Yeah. Speaking of playing the same position, I am kind of curious to see what position Mookie plays in LA because the Dodgers now have two defending gold glove right fielders, which is a nice situation to be in. But Mookie was always sort of a center fielder who was playing right because the Red Sox had Jackie Bradley Jr. in center and because right field in Fenway is sort of like center field in other parks.

It's a big area of the outfield that's tough to play. So that's not the case in Dodger Stadium. And I wonder what happens there because Bellinger has more recent experience playing center and maybe his skills lend themselves to center field more naturally so i don't know which way that goes if mookie is a center fielder maybe his wars will be even higher because i imagine he'd be able to handle center field just fine yeah i i would expect so and bets will probably will probably get like i don't know some random weird innings of Mookie Betts at shortstop or something. And I'll delight in it in a way that'll be weird. But yeah, I would expect that they will just try a bunch of different configurations and see which one ends up playing best. And, you know, Bellinger is serviceable in center. It's fine.

Yeah, it'd be okay either way. Having those guys next to each other is not so bad. Man, can we just take a moment again to think about this? Can we just think about it for a second? Yeah. Because this is the fun part of this trade, right? The Red Sox stuff is a bummer. That feels yucky.

It feels like a not good thing. And I will say that, you know, if we wanted to find, we should do this in service of fairness and also to not make the Red Sox fans feel so bad. You know, it's not as if the Dodgers were indifferent to the money either, right? Right, true. I can't imagine that they make the move that they do with Peterson, who is also going to hit free agency at the same time that Betts does. I can't imagine that they make that move if it doesn't help them to get under, if not both of the competitive balanced tax thresholds, at least the second one, right? So they were not indifferent to the money here either, but far less indifferent. They took on a $27 million player and also Davidid price so i

think that they were not quite so squirrely about it but that's muncie turter valinger pollock seeker will smith gavin looks that's like that's like the roster that a fantasy player would have in a 10 team league or something like that's a lineup that you would have that's an all-star team yeah basically like almost top to bottom almost top to bottom that is an all-star team if you get to if you get to bat you know will smith and gavin looks at the bottom of your lineup you have cory seager yeah who just gets like forgotten but Corey Seeger. Yeah. Who just gets like forgotten, but Corey Seeger.

Yeah. Yeah. Remember how Corey Seeger is a Dodger and is really good at baseball and was just, you know, dealing with injury and what have you, but will probably be amazing last year and was still a three-win player. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, my stars. It's really something. Yeah. Yeah.

Oh, my stars. It's really something. I mean, I guess there are still some question marks about the pitching, but not relative to most other teams, just in the sense that their lineup is unassailable and you can't really find any fault with it. But, yes, they're not impregnable pitching-wise. But there's just, I mean, there's not much more they could do. Yes, they could have gone out and signed Garrett Cole, I guess. But this is a pretty good thing to do if you're not going to do that. And really what we've seen with the Dodgers is that you can't literally buy a world championship.

You can buy or at least ensure a much higher chance of continued competitiveness and being a perennial playoff team. But after that, all bets are off. Can I say that? Sorry. We went a really long time. And I will say the restraint that I have generally seen around bets and price puns in headlines, it's been. It's like a perfect storm. It's been admirable. I feel like everyone looked around and decided collectively, no, no, we shall be above this today. And I'm proud of us. I think we did good.

Yeah, that's good. Creativity and headline writing. So, yes, you can't guarantee anything, although the Dodgers have come close to guaranteeing themselves an NL West title for, what is it, the seventh consecutive year? Is that what we're up to now, or is it more than that? It's hard to keep track. I think it's seven. Yeah, so you can't say that they didn't try to improve the team.

They could still very well get to October and things go wrong a few games in a row. And that's that. It's not like Mookie guarantees you anything, but they've certainly put themselves in good position to make another really serious run at ending their drought. And yeah, another thing is that when we talked about the new Krasnicks, the Jesse Rogers survey that he did for ESPN in late November, where one of the questions he asked the 15 baseball executives and insiders was which of the three superstars who are rumored to be on the block, Bryant, Lindor, and Betts, will be traded. Zero of the 15 said Betts. It was, you know, 7 of 1, 8 of the other, bets it was you know seven a one eight of the other and zero of bets so i i think even most people in baseball didn't think that this would happen at that point just

because bets is so great and because again it's the red sox and you would expect them to spend to keep their guy and unless like mookie said there is no circumstance under which I'm signing an extension which we have no indication that he did right the Red Sox could and should spend for a guy like that like yeah you're you're not going to get him to sign you know an Evan Longoria deal or something who signed at the start of his career, but you're going to get more than your money's worth even if you pay him at the absolute top of the market. So if they say they can't do that, that's very tough to swallow. Did you see in the midst of, you know, this was three teams and multiple players and for a, people thought it was maybe four teams

because we didn't realize that the Peterson deal was like a separate transaction. And there's all this, you know, and Ken and Jeff and everyone's going back and forth. And in the midst of all of that last night, we got a Roto World tweet, Braves and Cubs not talking, Chris Bright trade. And it made me laugh out loud.

I actually lulled because I was like, buddies, no one care about that right now. Nobody cares about that right now. Yeah, really. Yeah, sorry to Wilmer Flores for not getting the reaction he was hoping for from his deal with the Giants. Yonder Alonzo's like, now no one's going to talk about the contract i signed with the players big news in baseball big news in the country not the best news also big news in

my uh professional life it's it's been kind of a wild week skyley's first day at espn yeah right that too yeah it's uh it's something. And it strikes me that this deal was consummated between two executives who used to work together, two former Rays executives. And this is a week when we saw another Rays executive get hired

to be a GM. James Click is the new general manager of the Houston Astros, another former baseball prospectus guy, much like Chaim Blum. So this has been a big offseason for former BP guys, former internet writers getting hired to run baseball operations departments, which that was one of the last barriers for internet nerds in that we're well past the point where teams hire outside analysts and internet analysts. But until this offseason, we had not seen someone get the top job with a team. It was like people would be analysts and scouting people and even maybe in charge of a scouting department or a quantitative analysis department.

But to actually be the public face from a front office perspective of a franchise, that is a barrier that had not been broken by an internet person. And now we've seen two people topple it. So that's sort of nice as people who do what we do. And Click, of course, is very respected as well as Bloom and as Friedman was. And there is kind of an adjustment that one would think has to be made when you go from the Tampa Bay Rays, who are often very good and competitive and smart, but are also working under these ownership-imposed constraints where they spend a lot less than the other

contending teams tend to do. And that encourages them to make the type of moves that the Dodgers and the Red Sox don't have the same urgent incentive to do. And so when we've seen some of these guys, you know, Friedman was not coming in and totally breaking the bank on signings. He was holding on to his prospects. It was almost like he was still operating kind of as he would have with the Rays, not completely. They kept Justin Turner, and they kept Kenley Jansen, and they kept Clayton Kershaw, whereas maybe the Rays would have moved on from all of their good players at a certain point. But he wasn't really signing the top free agent. He wasn't going and getting Bryce Harper.

He wasn't keeping Manny Machado. He made the Darvish trade, but generally was trying to hoard prospects, and that has worked out in many cases. And in the few cases where they didn't, where you trade Jordan Alvarez, who was not seen as really that type of prospect at the time, but has obviously blossomed in Houston. Anyway, it's a different market, different competitive imperatives. And clearly these smart and rich teams are trying to pluck people from the smart and not so high spending team, which it would be nice if they were hiring those people because they were smart and saying here go wild you know blank check or you know not quite like don't make really ill-advised moves because you can afford to now but also don't feel like you necessarily have to trade the second best player in baseball to get under the competitive balance tax threshold so it's sort of like raise type behavior with a non-raise type team i guess i just don't like look i'm not a billionaire if i had a if i were a billionaire and owned a baseball team i'd probably

make a lot of really bad financial decisions in the other direction, it would be like, let's get some elitch going up in here. But I guess the part of it that I continue to just not understand is like, what are we doing? What is the point of this exercise for you? And the point appears to just be making money, and that's like an easy answer, but it's kind of a bummer because like the run of success the red sox have had it should be what teams are striving for like they've won four titles in 15 years like we're sustainably successful and i know that there have been peaks and valleys in there and they've been a team that has more than a lot of other teams seem to do high highs and low lows and there's been this oscillation and that's all fine but like this is what are we doing why are we here right yeah because you can look long term but it's pretty inarguable that the red sox have hurt their chances to contend correct 2020 and those were not

inconsiderable chances like if you looked at the the Fangraph's projections before this trade was made, like they were right in the same neighborhood as the Yankees and the Rays. And I know that coming off the season where they lost a lot of wins and they underperformed and didn't make the playoffs, things, you know, you might be down on them and there's managerial uncertainty. They don't have a manager right now. That's not ideal in february but still there was a really good competitive core here and there are a lot of players on that team who are really you know at the peak of their powers right now and you are essentially squandering that year it's not as if they couldn't possibly contend with the players that they have in Verdugo and Gratterall, but it's certainly less likely than it was with Mookie Betts and David Price. So that's, you know, if you're the Red Sox, I mean, it's like the Dodgers,

they really have seemed to make it a goal to contend every year. And, you know, they want to be the division favorite every year. They have been the division favorite every year under Friedman. And granted, they have had less competition than the Red Sox. They're not in the same division as the Yankees and the Rays. But still, like, if you swapped these two franchises, if you put them in the others division, I know, as we were just saying, it's not like the Dodgers were insensitive to financial matters here, but it's kind of hard

to imagine the Dodgers trading Mookie Betts if they had him to get under that competitive balance tax threshold. Yeah, I think that they are not indifferent to the CBbt and so i don't mean to give them more credit than they are due but they are seemingly less sensitive than than certainly boston has proven themselves to be in this case so you know we should say the list of people who are having a bad day does involve and include fans and interested parties in the san Diego Padres and the Arizona Diamondbacks, who have to just be sitting there being like, Boston, what are we doing here? What are you? And it's probably revealing in terms of the sort of the quality and level of prospect that San Diego was offering in their proposed deal. I imagine that they were probably

much less interested in taking on price in addition to bets and so would have had to sort of make up that difference in prospect value and seemingly did not do that. But now they have to be sitting there going, but we were just... And the Diamondbacks are like, but we were just. Yeah. And the Diamondbacks are like, but we were just. Right. Yeah. It's not that I think that the Diamondbacks had a great chance of winning this division before this trade. And certainly the Padres didn't. But it was more imaginable than it is now.

But also the Padres probably came pretty close to getting bets themselves. Also, the Padres probably came pretty close to getting Betts themselves. And in terms of just what would make baseball more entertaining to an impartial fan, I guess you could argue either way. Because I think it's nice that Betts is going to another market where he will be in the spotlight and he'll be on a team that's playing in the playoffs. And we just talked about how fun that lineup is. on a team that's playing in the playoffs. And we just talked about how fun that lineup is. So it's pretty fun to have Mookie on the Dodgers, or frankly, any team for that matter.

Mookie's just fun wherever he goes. He's not a product of the team. His fun is inherent. But it would have been pretty interesting if Betts had gone to the Padres too, because if you put Betts on the Padres, and I understand why they didn't, I don't know exactly what the Red Sox were asking for, but because it's the Padres, you know, Will Myers maybe would have been involved, but there would have been other

compelling prospects too. And the Padres are not quite in the position that the Dodgers are, where they are the pennant favorite before this trade was made. So they're in the division with the Dodgers. Even if the Padres had traded for bets, the Dodgers would still be favored in the NL West. So I get it. I get why they didn't have the same motivation to do this, but would have been pretty fun if you had added Mookie Betts to what is already a pretty fun team and leveled the playing field a little bit in that division. Again, still Dodgers would have been the favorite, but you could have started to really dream on the Padres in addition to the Diamondbacks and, you know, would have put a little pressure on the Dodgers, which the Dodgers have not made the big move in recent years, even the way that the Red Sox have. The Red Sox, the sale trade and the price signing and the moves that Dave Dabrowski made that the Red Sox have decided that they probably don't want to make anymore. Those moves were really go-for-it,

win-now type trades that the Dodgers have held off from until now for the most part. But that's because no one was pushing the Dodgers the way that the Red Sox division rivals were pushing them. And that's just the fact of the matter. The Dodgers, without making that huge splash, have won the division for several years in a row. And, you know, except for what one time didn't really come close to not doing that so it's just a different reality there that they haven't really had the same

competitive pressure right yeah well yes we've covered it uh sorry we've neglected the the twins angle and the angels angle here. Sure. Good job, twins. Yeah, I guess. You know, that's fine. It's a win now kind of move from the twins. So I guess, you know, when you're assessing the win now-edness of a trade, a two out of three ain't bad. That's not satisfying because the one that's not trying

to win is really bumming us out but uh yeah like uh now that that rotation is fortified somewhat and we'll get reinforcements later on in the season when Pineda comes back from his suspension and when Rich Hill is fully back from his elbow surgery. And so that's good. But now the rotation there will be Burrius and Odorizzi and Maeda and Bailey and probably Randy Dobnak, I guess. So that's nice. It's good to have, you know, it's good to have a Kenta Maeda in there. Yeah.

And good job to all the Dodgers prospects. You just get to continue to live in Los Angeles. Yeah. Shocking, truly, that you're all still Dodgers prospects. You just get to continue to live in Los Angeles. Shocking, truly, that you're all still there. And yeah, you know, Mookie would have looked good in a Padres uniform too. I think the thing about it is that Mookie just has good, he just has a good baseball player way about him. So he's going to look compelling in baseball uniforms because he's fun to watch. He would look good in Dodger blue, though. Man.

Speaking of lineups that are pretty good top to bottom, the Angels lineup is a pretty good unit. Let me just read the – I don't know if this is exactly how the batting order will be, but on the Fangraphs Roster Resource Depth Chart, it goes Jock Peterson, Mike Trout, Anthony Rendon Shohei Otani Justin Upton, Albert Pujols Tommy LaStella, Andrelton Simmons Jason Castro

That's pretty good That's not bad at all And I think there is something of a Logjam in the Angels outfield potentially At some point this season but I don't think that this move You know like blocks Joe Adele in a serious way because Adele's knocking on the door, but he's not knocking that loudly.

Like he's 20 years old and he just got to AAA toward the end of last season and didn't hit well there and then played in the fall league and did okay. But it's not like he is demanding to be on this roster on opening day. Jack Peterson's a good player, and this gives them the opportunity not to rush Adele. And Upton's coming off a down year too, and Peterson's just there for one year. So I think he fits in fine.

It's just that the pitching, that rotation is still headlined by Julio Tejeron. So that's not ideal. I guess it's headlined by Otani, but Otani may not be able to pitch that many innings. Yeah, they'll have to be careful with him. Yeah, I like that move for the other LA, for Anaheim. They get mad about that. Because, yeah, it doesn't, you know, Peterson will be a free agent after the end of the season. And Anaheim. They get mad about that. Cause yeah, it doesn't, you know,

Peterson will be a free agent after the end of the season. And so you're right. He doesn't block Adele. He doesn't get in the way of Brandon Marsh. Whenever Marsh is ready, he's his timeline is presumably a little bit longer, but he's looked really good. So,

uh, yeah, I think that's a, that's a good move. When, when I heard that that when we heard that it might be a four-team trade and that los angeles might be involved it's like oh maybe la will the other la will get david price somehow and that'd be so nifty and i didn't that's not what happened

right at first the stripling part of the trade was not reported it just seemed to be peterson for renifo and it was like well you'd think right in a deal where pitching is changing teams and the angels are sort of involved like yeah you'd hope that they maybe would have found a way to get one of those pitchers but they did get ross stripling who's a pretty good pitcher in fact i said that the angels rotation was headlined by julio tehran. I think Stripling is probably better than Tehran. So I don't know. Ross Stripling, Angels ace. It's funny.

He was sort of a swingman with the Dodgers who couldn't always keep a rotation spot. With the Angels, I think that will be considerably easier if that's what he wants to do. So they got better. Runs are runs. Runs are runs. That's true. They can try to score more runs than the other team, even if they're giving up a lot are runs. That's true. They've got La Stella and they've got Fletcher and Simmons, obviously. So that's a pretty crowded infield too.

Yeah, he had a hand or a wrist injury, I think, last year that was not unserious. I think he did time on the 60-day injured list. I say all of this because he has the great honor of having once been a Mariners prospect and also a very late Sim League draft guy of mine in the one thing that I am on Sim League I'm doing. I won't talk about it ever again because no one cares. But I don't think that they'll figure it out because he might just need more time to be fully healthy anyhow. All right.

Well, I guess we've covered it. We could keep talking, but people are probably hungry to get this in their ears and hear us talk about Mookie Betts. So we will not delay longer than we have to. Just scanning to see if there's any new news since we started talking. Oh, yeah. Is there anything new? Pete Rose asks MLB for reinstatement. Oh, good gravy. Nope. Oh, thank you. Let's not.

We're going to just hard pass our way through that one. Okay. I have one final thing and then I'll go. Would it have made any difference in terms of the PR response to this? And I think my answer is no, but I'm curious for yours. Would it have made any difference if they had just dropped this in the middle of the super bowl oh would they have gotten some cover for a day or two boston it would not have made a difference for us no but uh i mean i would have been very annoyed to be clear yeah yeah that was a nightmare scenario that was discussed internally at the ringer but uh they spared us that at least

yeah i i mean i i guess so like i i guess the fact that that is typically the biggest sports story of the year and the game had a big ending and come from behind and all that that uh could only crowd out any other sports related news but it's not like boston fans would have felt any differently or complained any less so i think it's good i think it's good that you just have to you just have to endure being you know pilloried by baseball types regardless when you trade a recent mvp except for those two executives in the American League who are super excited for financial flexibility. I wonder if they're Red Sox executives.

I assume Ken would not quote Red Sox executives. Probably not. Good gravy. Oh, okay. He clarified in a subsequent tweet that it's rival executives, not Red Sox executives. Let me ask you another question about the PR perception. What if this had just happened without the months of buildup, without them kind of trying to condition us to expect us? What if we had, you know,

woken up to news that, hey, Mookie Betts traded to the Totters now? What would that have done to the reaction? I don't think that it would have changed things all that much because I think it's just too obvious. The motivations are too transparent. And I think those motivations rightly bother us. And so I think that it's just one of those trades that it's pretty hard to PR your way out of. And I think that's probably a good thing because it would be concerning if you could, I guess. Yeah. But no, I don't think building up to it changes it dramatically because the motivation to get below the competitive balance tax was an obvious one. I mean, like their choice of general manager or whatever Bloom's title is, it's not that.

It's an eye-rolly title inflation. It's like chief baseball officer or something. Yeah, yeah, you're right. Baseball is very funny. I'm not making fun of him. I'm making fun of title inflation, to be clear. He didn't pick that i would imagine i think that when that's your choice your path through the winter is those sort of general contours of it are pretty obvious so

no i don't think that that would have changed things too dramatically you know yeah yeah it's someone asked you in your chat yesterday about like at this point was that situation unsalvageable anyway like after months and months of rumors and the red sox making it clear that bets was on the block could they even have kept him at that point or would the feelings be so frayed that it just wouldn't work and i think you rightly responded that no you could keep them no you can just you can just always keep a Mookie Betts the thing about it is once you have a Mookie Betts you can just always hold on to him and hug him tight you know as long as he's a hugging person I don't know but like uh you can just always do that and it'll always be okay yeah just say the right offer wasn't out there because he is

the second best player in baseball essentially and And I think everyone would have accepted that. I mean, he might still have had his feelings hurt by being shopped around, but I think it would have been okay. Yeah. So, yeah, if this had broken out of nowhere with no warning, it would have been more shocking in a concentrated way. Like our shock was sort of distributed over a longer time period. But if this was one of those situations where you make something public, I don't know if they made their feelings so public. I think they probably regretted John Henry saying that he just wanted to save money because he he later tried to walk that back, but he had already sort of said it. Can't unring the bell, man. Yeah. So that was not the best messaging. But if this was one of those cases where it's like, well, we'll flute this publicly to see what the reaction is.

Well, the reaction was pretty negative. Yeah. So they knew what they were going to get when they made this deal, and they still made it. Yep. Yep. They knew. They knew. And if they didn't, then that's pretty goofy. But I think they knew and then they went and did it anyway.

And so for the first time in a long time, I feel genuine sympathy for Red Sox fans who've just had it real good and now have it worse in a way that was preventable. And that's a bummer. Yeah. But again, we're happy for Kenta. Yeah, sure. I hope he's happy. Yeah.

And yeah, for Bloom, like, I assume he knew that this would be one of his duties when he took the job. that this would be one of his duties when he took the job. So it's not like he went into this not knowing that, and I don't know what his feelings about the trade are, but that's not the easiest assignment either. Hey, you're hired. Now trade. Go trade.

Beloved. One of the best players in baseball. World Series winning. Mookie Betts. Have fun. Because, you know, I would think Red Sox fans are aware enough to know that this probably would have happened with or without Heimblum, but still to be the guy who made that trade that potentially sticks with you. Yeah, I imagine that that'll go just fine for him because fans are famously rational and tempered, especially in Boston. Right. All right.

Well, glad I got the opportunity for midweek, Meg. That's always fun. Always fun. And we'll be back to the regularly scheduled season preview podcast next time out. But this warranted a little break. Oh, yeah. In the schedule. Yes.

All right. We did it. Mookie Betts, the Red Sox did it and we discussed it there we go all right that will do it for today thank you for listening especially if you're a Red Sox fan because this probably wasn't the easiest listen in fact we've already received multiple emails from Red Sox fans asking us for advice on picking a new team so that tells you how this is going over with at least a few fans any Yankees fans who were celebrating the departure of Mookie Betts from the AL East got some bad news after Meg and I spoke. It was announced that James Paxton will be out three to four months after back surgery, so that would probably take

him to May or June, even if he has no setbacks. A lot easier to live with when you have Garrett Cole, but still not great news. And while we're talking about AL East teams, I wonder how many more high-level Rays executives would have to be hired by other teams for Jeff to be GM of the Rays. Still a few people ahead of him, but he must be moving up the org chart. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up to pledge some small monthly amount and help keep the podcast going. Wes Payne, Jordan Schusterman, Garrett Pack, Andrew Jones, and Michael West. Thanks to all of you.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. As you might imagine, there's a lot of Mookie Betts discussion going on in there. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg and

Sam coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the patreon messaging system if you are a supporter thanks to dylan higgins for getting up early and his editing assistance and we will be back with another team preview podcast next time tentatively padres and white socks which should be a fun one and would have been a very different one if the padres had traded for mookie that will be the last show this week and we bring it to you soon. Talk to you then. Here it comes.

Here it comes. Thank you. We'll remember Him. Oh God, we'll remember Him.