Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1633: What the Insiders Say

Episode Date: December 24, 2020

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about why MLB reportedly isn’t interested in short-term expansion and an observation about Tyler Glasnow, Martin Shkreli, and Cillian Murphy, then review the accuracy of last year’s annual ESPN MLB insiders survey, predict and assess the responses to the just-released, latest edition of the survey, answer a listener email […]

🎵 Hello and welcome to episode 1633 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast with Fangrass presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangrass. Hello Meg. Hello. Tell me if this strikes you as curious at all. I was reading the TikTok that Jason Stark wrote about Dave Dombrowski's hiring by the Phillies. And in there, he explained why Dombrowski went away from his commitment to work for the Nashville committee that was trying to put a baseball team in that city. So here is what he wrote. And he's talking about a conversation that Phillies owner John Middleton had with Dombrowski. It was like the third call where they were trying to get Dombrowski to come work for them. So Stark writes, Dombrowski and Middleton wound up speaking for more than an hour. They'd known each other for years, but they'd never had a conversation like this. Among the

topics was this game changer. Dave Middleton said, frankly, I don't think expansion is going to happen for a long time. Just the day before, in one of his periodic conversations with the commissioner's office about the situation in Nashville, Dombrowski had heard a similar take. It got him thinking. Middleton suggested he reach out to the commissioner's office again and get as much information as he could. So Dombrowski put in another call to his friends at MLB. For the third time in 24 hours, he heard the same message. Nashville was a great city, he was told, and it was high on MLB's list. But in part because of COVID-19, it would be years before the league was ready to expand.

And there was no scenario in which any club would be moving there or anywhere anytime soon. So one would think that MLB might be eager to expand. There's always a lot of conversation about this It's been a very long time Obviously it's been more than two decades since the last expansion That's the longest MLB has gone without expanding since expansion started And you might think that once the pandemic is over Which we hope will happen at some point

That MLB would be even more eager to expand in order to get the franchise fees that the new owners would have to pay in and split among the other teams. There's precedent for that. After the owners were forced to pay penalties for colluding, they were more interested in expansion. It seems like partly as a result of that. So why do you think it is, if you buy this, if it's not that there is some kind of conspiracy to get Dombrowski to work for the Phillies and Mid in the midst of a pandemic, even though, as you said, we hopefully will see it end someday. We're about to enter a very challenging sort of budget time for states and municipalities.

And expansion necessarily comes with a conversation about where an expansion team is going to play. And perhaps they are just cognizant of the fact that cities are going to need to do other stuff with their money for a little while, right? That the idea that you might spend to put a major league caliber park in Nashville or Portland is just not going to be a budgetary priority as those places try to work their way out of the economic downturn that is likely to follow the pandemic and that they will hopefully be spending municipal monies on the community and the needs of the community as it tries to recover rather than a place for baseball to be played. But I agree with you that it's curious if only because the existing owners of teams have both an incentive in the form of those franchise fees and then a compelling argument about how lucrative ownership can be. And so it is kind of surprising because you would think that they would be sort of on the hunt for a well-funded ownership group or two to join the ranks. I don't want to like galaxy brain it and say like that if they are able to

successfully expand in the midst of a pandemic with franchise fees, it would likely be quite lucrative that it perhaps undermines their argument about how bad a business it is to be in baseball. That seems a little, I mean, that does seem like the kind of thing that they would try. But also I think the possibility of sort of bringing more money into the coffers would ultimately outweigh that desire. So, yeah, it is kind of a funny thing to say. It is like a refreshing thing to hear that we might want to do other stuff with limited resources right now at the state and local level, because we should do that instead of build ballparks. Yeah. Somehow I doubt that's the motivation. I doubt it's, you know what, we will put the public before MLB right now. And we don't want anyone to fund our ballparks or give

us any sweetheart deals or anything, because there are so many more important causes that that money could go to. Yeah, I kind of doubt that that's it. So maybe there's some other angle here. Although you're right, maybe they are less likely to get a great deal from somewhere with all the other demands on the budget these days. But it is surprising because if you had asked me, I would have said that if anything, this would make expansion more likely.

And I already thought it was fairly likely in the not too distant future. Once the dust settles, once it's safe to go to games again, it seems like a way to recoup the either losses or losses of potential profits that they have experienced this year would be to expand. And it seems like there are good competitive reasons and non-economic reasons to do that as well. So we'll see if this actually turns out to be the case or if Dombrowski was hoodwinked or something here. I don't know. But yeah, undermining their own economic arguments is not something owners really hesitate to do in a lot of cases. So I kind of think that's given them a lot of credit too. So there must be some angle here. And there's also the fact that Adam Silver, the NBA commissioner, seemed to indicate that the NBA is looking at expansion more seriously now. off some of the analyses on the economic and competitive impacts of expansion, we've been putting a little bit more time into it than we were pre-pandemic. So you'd think what would

apply to the NBA would also apply to MLB. So sort of surprising, but we'll see if this actually ends up being the case. I don't have this handy. And so I would need to go back and sort of cross reference the years of expansion you know for you know the d-backs and the rays and what have you but i am curious if sort of how those historically have been timed relative to new collective bargaining agreements and perhaps the the reality of needing to both figure out how baseball is going to be played next year and then how it will be played in sort of a broader, more philosophical sense in the years to come is just one thing too many. I don't know see in conjunction with a pending CBA negotiation because you want to perhaps as a new owner have a good understanding of what the labor conditions of the sport are going to be before you agree to enter into it as an owner. I don't know.

The other thing is that it seems like current owners have some incentive for people to think that there is a realistic possibility that there might be new teams or teams moving to different markets at least, right? Because they always like to dangle that over local governments and say, oh, you better give us what we want or we're out of here. And here's this other market that wants us and is ready to welcome us with open arms. So I guess this is not really public messaging. It's not like Rob Manfred and John Milton are coming out publicly and saying there's not going to be expansion, at least that I've seen. So this was a private conversation that I guess Dombrowski maybe is mentioning to Stark, and maybe this is not really a message that MLB or owners want out there in a larger sense. So anyway, kind of surprising, kind of confounding,

but we shall see. Anything else you want to bring up before we get to our topic today then i have a i have a controversial take and i need i need your opinion of it because look sometimes i think i do a really good job being like that human person looks like this other human person and sometimes i have said this human person looks like this other human person and even though i am right i have been met with derision and skepticism yeah and so i need your your feedback on this okay so we we don't have to go into the ins and outs of the former bloomberg reporter who seems to have thrown her life away in order to be in love with martin screlli better known as the Pharma Bro. We don't have time, Ben. Everyone's read it, I think.

Yeah, we don't have time to either engage with the facts of the case or the way they were presented in that piece. That is a different conversation. But it did prompt Jeff Passan to tweet, I've been sharing this anecdote for a story, but screw it. Too good to squirrel away.

Someone suggested Ray's pitcher, Tyler Glasnow, tried to get angry before starts to do this he would look at pictures of one person he pulled out his phone and showed me it was Martin Shkreli and then Passon follows that up by saying update Tyler Glasnow has moved on to other methods of pregame motivation as athletes often do making sure to shake up their routines when they hit a funk. But he still thinks Martin Shkreli is a turd. And I think it's the official editorial policy of Effectively Wild and Fangraph, candidly, that Martin Shkreli is indeed a turd. Yep, fine with that. Yeah, it struck me as a little bit funny because I think the following.

I think that if you were to make Martin Shkreli 40 or 50% more attractive than he is, and he is noted as having just a highly punchable face, which we don't encourage face punching, but we will acknowledge that this is a punchable face, and you were to dial Tyler Glasnow down, say, 30 or 40%, and then you were to take those individuals' composite, say, in the form of an actor to try to have one person play both Martin Shkreli and Tyler Glasnow. I submit that that person is Cillian Murphy.

And so it is a funny bit of business because he is the like less and more attractive version of both of these human beings yeah i have not agreed with all of your your takes on resemblances but i can get on board with this one i definitely see that i think that it is perhaps cillian murphy specifically as the scarecrow and not as the scarecrow with the mask on but as the the psychologist who became the scarecrow uh with the glasses i'm just saying it's it's a disturbing it's a disturbing realization and you can't unsee it and both because i want to be right and because i want to not be alone in my disturbed state i i needed to share it with you and all of our listeners. So that's my only thing. Yeah. Yeah, Shkreli looks a little bit to me like Jimmy Simpson,

the actor from House of Cards and Date Night and Westworld. There's maybe more of a resemblance there, but I see how if you blended Shkreli and Glasnow, you would kind of end up with Murphy. You would end up with Murphy. Yeah, I think that's right. We should should do one of those like face blend things with the apps and see how close it actually comes out to test your theory here. But yeah, Glasnow, good looking guy, striking fellow, long flowing locks. I remember when I was watching playoff games and he was shown on the bench from time to time.

My wife was like, who is this male model on the race who is showing up on my screen here? So yeah, definitely has Hollywood-like looks. I have long maintained that, and I think that this is not going to surprise anyone based on the analysis that I just did, the very rigorous scientific analysis, that I have thought him to be more objectively attractive than Cillian Murphy, who has kind of a creepy vibe, in part because of the roles that he has played. And so I also appreciate this opportunity to say like, hey, like, be nice to Tyler Glasnow. He is better looking than this Hollywood man in this one woman's opinion. So there you go.

Yep. Yeah. I always feel sorry for actors who have to play creepy people all the time. And I guess it could be a chicken and egg thing. Do they have a creepy vibe and then they play creepy people or do they play creepy people and then people assume they have a creepy vibe maybe it's a little bit of both even if they have a creepy vibe it doesn't mean they actually are creepy but people get typecast in that kind of role and i guess it can be a lucrative

career but also people know you from the awful characters you have played yeah i mean they're both very talented in their own ways, but Tyler Glass now does not strike me as creepy. Also, I appreciate this anecdote from Jeff, because so often when we hear anecdotes about athletes, we like them less, and this makes me like him more. Yeah, right. All right.

I guess we will not have to read an Elle magazine feature on Tyler Glass now. But I'd be interested in seeing the fashion shoot that went with it if that ever does arise. So many weird things about that story, Ben. Okay. So our topic today, I don't know if we'll have time for maybe an email or a stat blast at the end, but wanted to continue an effectively wild tradition here that Sam started in writing and in podcast form. And that dates back to what Sam always called the Krasnicks, the annual survey at ESPN by Jerry Krasnick of baseball people, baseball insiders, usually at the start of the offseason. Krasnick would ask them all the most pressing questions from that offseason.

And I think Sam found it fascinating, A, because it's a window into what baseball bigwigs think, but also he found it fascinating because they're often very wrong. It doesn't seem like they're any better at actually predicting things because Krasnick would often ask concrete questions. What do you think will happen? What is more likely to happen? What kind of deal will this guy get? Where will he sign? That sort of thing. Things that in some cases, at least you can test and see how accurate it was in a fairly short timeframe. And so Sam did a few analyses at Baseball Perspectives looking back to see how successful were they? Did they actually know what they were talking about? And I think for the most part, he basically found it really wasn't much better than a coin flip, which is sort of interesting. So Jerry now works for the Players Association. So the Krasniks have been retired, but ESPN's Jesse Rogers has picked up the mantle and he is doing this now. So we did the inaugural version of the Rogers' last year, and I didn't actually think there was going to be one this year.

It's kind of late but it just happened this week Jesse posted his survey and the responses and as he pointed out it's later than usual but also like not a lot has happened so the same questions that he would have asked a month ago still apply yeah he didn't miss anything big yeah all right So the number of people surveyed and the language that is used to describe who the people are always changes. This year, it's 20 MLB team executives and baseball insiders. But in the spirit of Sam looking back on the results, I figured we could just briefly recap what the insiders said last year and how right or wrong they were. So last year it was 15 team executives and baseball insiders published in late November. So just going over the answers here, the first question was which team will make the biggest splash of the offseason? And the responses were Angels, seven people, Padres two, Rangers two, White. White Sox, two. Cubs, one. Yankees, one.

Who would you say did make the biggest splash of last offseason? I guess I'd probably go with the Yankees, right? Because they signed Garrett Cole. Yeah. The Angels were somewhat splashy. They got Rendon. Rendon. But they sort of missed out on the big pitcher that they were trying to go after.

So I would probably go with the Yankees from like a single free agent signing impact perspective. And then I guess we have to mention the Reds because of the moves that they made as like the actual, it just bumps me out where we ended up with that. But anyway, yeah, I would say the Yankees from a single point of signing perspective and then probably the Reds would be my answer.

Yeah. And the Padres, I don't know if it was a disappointing offseason like they did what they had to do. They were a great team, but I guess they didn't make the sort of splash that they made in the previous winters with Hosmer and with Machado. They signed Drew Pomeranz. They acquired Tommy Pham. They made some other moves, but they didn't blow everyone out of the water. So I guess if we were assessing whether the executives were right, I don't know. They weren't way off on this one, but it wasn't clear that the Angels made the biggest splash or that the Padres did.

So, yeah. All right. And moving on to other questions that we can actually assess, because some of these are more long-term oriented but here's one which of these three players is most likely to start next season with a new team Mookie Betts, Francisco Lindor or Chris Bryant the responses to this were Lindor eight people, Bryant seven people, Betts zero

people that's a big wish yeah man there's something so optimistic about that i mean like it's an it's a question that is absolutely pessimistic about the state of baseball um and i think that you know we'll we will end up simply being a year late on lindor but there is something about about that that is funny, given how once they decided they were going to move bets, just how publicly and loudly they were willing to communicate that.

I guess, Ben, just to backtrack one question, we would be remiss if we did not mention that that Tommy Pham deal also brought Jake Cronenworth to San Diego. Yes, of course. But it is funny that the most important aspect of that deal was the part that was sort of a throwaway that no one cared about at the time. Yeah. It is funny, though, that that bets trade was just so inconceivable

that even the MLB insiders were like, Why would you do that? And then they were like, Well, we're really excited about Alex Verdugo. Yeah. No one in the Boston front office talks like that to my knowledge, but I've been watching Christmas movies, so I sound like a claymation something probably. All right. The third question last year was Anthony Rendon is the clear top hitter on this market.

Where will he land and for how much? And the where will he land was Nationals 13 people, Rangers one, Cardinals one. he land was Nationals 13 people, Rangers one, Cardinals one. And the money, the highest response was eight years, 280 million. Lois was six years, 200. And the average was 7227. So the contract terms are close, I guess, because he was what, 7245.? 5, yeah, okay. But everyone sort of thought that the Nationals were the most likely, which, I mean, I guess you would have to say that they were the most likely, but they were, I guess, seemingly pretty convinced that he would go back there, and he did not. No one mentioned the Angels.

They got the color of the uniform right. I guess that's true, yeah. Well, and same topic, number four, who is more likely to return to the Nats, Steven Strasburg or Rendon? Survey says Rendon 12, Strasburg 3. So way off on that one also. Yeah. Whiffed there.

Whiffed. Yeah. And speaking of whiffs, number five, will Garrett Cole get a $300 million deal? Definitely no chance or it'll be close but under. The responses were close but under, nine, no chance, six, definitely zero. Obviously, it was over. So not the greatest track record here for the insiders. Yeah, I can't fault them for thinking, given the sort of past few markets that we had had that the under was probably the safe choice,

even if the, the sort of top end of free agency has been relatively resilient to the downturn in salaries, but yeah, he got, he got nine years in three 24 and an opt out. Yeah. Right. It wasn't even all that close So, huh, alright And let's see, a couple of the others Not really something we can judge right now But this one Well, I guess number nine, which of these hitters Will produce more over the length of their next

Contract? Didi Gregorius Marcel Azuna or Nicholas Castellanos And seven people Said Castellanos, six said Azuna, two said Gregorius. So Ozuna had a great year, the best year. I guess if we're talking about over the length of their next contract, like Ozuna had a one-year deal, Castellanos had a four-year deal, it still might be close because Ozuna was so good. This is a question that kind of asks people to consider how long the contract will be and how good they'll be over the term of that contract.

And we can't really judge that with Castellanos yet. But I guess the fact that more people said Castellanos than Ozuna maybe means that Ozuna was a little bit underrated if you buy into his 2020. that Ozuna was a little bit underrated if you buy into his 2020. Yeah, or that people were just not sure what to make of his trend of having really good underlying metrics and peripherals and never quite producing as well as you would expect given those. But yeah, he had a hell of a season. So, you know, good job, Marcel. Yeah, and not very good job by the Baseball Insiders last year.

Yeah. There was another of of the second tier pitchers, which of these free agent starters would you most want your team to sign this winter? Madison Bumgarner, Zach Wheeler, or Dallas Keuchel? Of course, we can't close the book on those deals, but eight people said Wheeler, four said Bumgarner, two said Keuchel. Yikes. I guess three-way tie for one person. If you were to order those in terms of their 2020s or even just how they stack up going forward now, you would probably have to say Wheeler, Keichel, Bumgarner. So they weren't way off. But on the ones that are kind of clear-cut cases, they definitely were not very prescient

last time. So we'll see if that can carry over to this year so i will give you the question and then you will tell me what you think the insiders will say and if your opinion differs from what you think they'll say you can tell me that too so first question which team will end up making the biggest splash of the offseason? Some of the same sort of questions here. So who do you think will be the survey respondents' most popular pick? The Mets.

Indeed. The Mets get 12 of the 20 votes here. The other teams on the list, got four giants got two white socks got two sure so that seems respectable yeah there haven't been big splashes so far but i guess if you were going to give the splash to someone the mets are kind of the clubhouse leader i suppose but many splashes still to be made yeah i think another name that I would offer if I had been asked this question is Toronto because they've been tied to a number of sort of the high-end free agents, I think, in a way that reflects an earnest desire on their part to improve. And I think that it must be very frustrating for front offices like the Mets and the Blue Jays and

every other one. And we saw some of this when the Mets and the Blue Jays and every other one. And we saw some of this when the Mets made the decision to sign McCann that I think because there are so few earnest and active buyers, players are incentivized to wait some in search of a better deal. And so the teams that actually want to get going and go about the business of signing guys are probably waiting around being like, but how many millions more do we have to give you to just do it now and we don't know when the season will start which will come up with a later question in this survey uh next one will trevor bauer sign for one year or take a multi-year deal? A multi-year deal. Would you care to guess the breakdown roughly?

I would say 75% multi-year, 25% single-year deal. That is almost exactly spot on. I promise I didn't look. I didn't look before. You told me not to look and so I did not look. All right. So I did not look. All right. 14 said multi-year deal and six said one-year deal. So that sounds about right. I guess we talked about this a little earlier in the offseason. Normally, you would think someone coming off a Cy Young award would obviously sign for multi-year deal.

Wouldn't even be a question with anyone else. But with Bauer, with all the noise he has made about going year to year, with the pandemic, with all of that, there's still some chance. But I would side with the crowd here, I suppose. Do you ever think about how much time we've spent talking about Trevor Bauer making noise? There will be more time spent on that to come, I am sure. All right. Next question.

Many in the game say DJ LeMayhew will return to the Yankees, and there's at least a chance JT Real Muto will end up back with the Phillies. So where will the other best hitter on the market, George Springer, end up? Toronto. Any other names you want to toss out there? The Mets. All right. Survey says Mets actually the most popular choice. Sure.

With 13 responses. Blue Jays second with five. And then Giants with two. Giants. I love the emerging view of the Giants that this survey is suggesting. Yeah. Giants were a big splash candidate here too. Big splash.

I mean, I'm not going to make a home run joke. I'm going to refrain because it's an obvious joke and we're above such things okay next one also familiar from last year's survey who will get traded this offseason francisco lindor chris bryant both or neither i would imagine that the responses are overwhelmingly lindor and I would think that, yeah, Lindor with a bullet, maybe a unanimous selection. Okay. And if you had to go for both versus neither? I guess both,

just because I think the odds of Lindor getting moved are so high, even though I find the odds that Bryant ends up somewhere else at this point kind of low, at least as an off-season deal, although I could see if he rebounds being a hot deadline property. That's a terrible way to talk about a human being. I have immediate regret. But I could see him being the guy who headlines MLB.com

as on the move, question mark. So Lindor first and then both um as the second most popular you are right yeah so lindor had 11 of the 20 and then the other nine said both so no one said neither no one just said bryant so everyone seems to consider Windor much more likely and possibility of both of those guys much more likely than neither of them yeah yeah all right next one who is the one player most likely to be overpaid this winter so this is a an open-ended question how are we well I guess it it requires us to consider what what the baseball person in this scenario considers overpaid to mean, like over how long of a time, by what margin. This is tricky.

And I will admit, Ben, to our listeners that you said, hey, think about this question in advance. And I did that. You said, hey, think about this question in advance. And I did that. And then I really struggled to come up with an answer because I kind of reject the overpaid premise. I think it's kind of yishy. I guess that my answer would be, wow, it's really funny to look at our top 50 and see how many of these guys ended up taking qualifying offers.

I'm trying really hard not to let my own answer cloud what i think baseball people would say in response to this i'm gonna say that baseball people might pick on marcus simeon why do i think that probably his age and yeah i would imagine that Simeon is in there. And then I imagine there are a couple of Bauer skeptics among the baseball set, just given how up and down his performance has been and how open he has been with his substance experimentation. And so I'm going to lead with those two, perhaps. I guess Ozuna is probably in that mix too,

just because I think there are a lot of people who are pretty skeptical of his defense and he's not going to necessarily be able to DH quite as often as he did in 2020 because the NL might not have a DH. And the performance with the bat was so exceptional relative to some of his prior seasons. So I'm going to put those three in, I guess, in the order that I named them.

Yeah, you're right. It's hard to exactly figure out what they mean or how to answer this question. Of course, whatever you get is what the market supported for you. And you could put it in team-friendly versus player-friendly terms, I suppose, or do some kind of dollar per war breakdown of this. I don't know. But we get the gist of what they're asking here. So no clear consensus, really, in the responses. So makes sense that no one really sprang to your mind immediately.

So the responses are Liam Hendricks, three. Hmm. Alex Colomay, three. Jose Quintana, two, James McCann, one, Trevor Bauer, one, Tommy LaStella, one. So there was at least one Bauer skeptic here. But really, I guess it's just, I don't know, Hendricks. I guess people are thinking relievers are volatile and teams might overpay for closers or something like that. I guess that's the deal with Columet too. The scale of those deals is just likely to be so small in comparison to either a starter or any of the big name position players that I'm surprised by that. Yeah.

Hmm. Interesting. I haven't gotten a sense that there's going to be some huge Alex Colomay windfall or something. I mean, maybe it'll surprise me, but I think I actually took him in the offseason free agent contracts draft just because MLB trade rumors projected him for one year and six million. And I thought that was a little low and I don't know what they're basing that on. But even if that is low, which I hope it is for the sake of Alex Colomay, but also for the sake of my offseason free agents draft, I don't know that he's going to get some huge amount that is going to stand out as like, oh boy, they really fell for the Alex Colomay hype or something.

So I don't know. I guess it's just relievers and maybe like the big ticket players on the market this winter like maybe people just believe in them more than usual like i don't know they're they're not super old like everyone thinks real mudo is really good like springer is good there are some reasons to be skeptical about Bauer repeating that performance but like he has been good before it's not like there's some total one-year wonder there or like someone who's in his mid-30s and people are thinking oh they're gonna give that guy an eight-year deal and he's not gonna age well or something so I don't know it's not like the the

richest crop of free agents but I guess the ones who are there are fairly appealing players. So maybe that has something to do with it. I guess I should say if I'm going to nitpick about Marcus Simeon's age, and I guess track record is probably more the thing here given the offense, I have to know that George Springer is 31. Yeah, that is true. george springer is 31 he's gonna end up in a corner so soon i think like in a really permanent way so yeah maybe people are are more sort of optimistic about this group for the reason you said maybe i i think that people are just generally more inclined to give runway to position players than pitchers, both from an injury perspective.

And I think we have confidence in their ability to age a little more gracefully. So, yeah, I don't know. It's just an odd bunch. Yeah. Maybe they don't think anyone will be overpaid because people won't be paid that much. I think that that's probably the more realistic answer, unfortunately right next one two-parter do you think spring training will start on time and will baseball play 162 regular season games so this is really two different questions so i imagine that the answer to both of these questions was no. The majority of people likely answered no. I think that spring training in March, and then a long delay, I imagine that we will have a sense fairly early of like,

whether or not they're actually going to, to start on time, and then stuff will get pushed back. But I doubt strongly we play 162, if only because ownership seems to already be sort of positioning itself to ask for a reduced schedule, you know, and there's also the reality that like the majority of people will not be vaccinated by the time those dates are ready to roll around. So I should be clear that like this is not purely the construct of ownership, right? There is a very real reason to delay that has nothing to do with, you know, grift or greed. It's just like the reality of us still being in the midst of a global pandemic. So, yeah, I would expect that people were pessimistic on both of these questions.

Yeah. And so the owners were sort of posturing about maybe delaying the start of the season and the Players Association shot that down quickly, which doesn't mean that that might not still happen. There will just have to be some sort of negotiation because like as things stand, there will be 162-game season. So if the owners want that to change, they will have to convince the players to go along with that and have some kind of negotiation like they did this year, which wasn't that fun for all of us. So that's something to look forward to. But with spring training, I could see them being more on the same page about delaying it or shortening it because just money-wise, players are not getting paid for their salaries. And for owners, there is an expense to staging spring training and playing those games. And so if you're not recouping those costs with fans in the stands, which look, in March in Florida and Arizona, whether there should be fans in the stands or not, like maybe there could be or would be. But I could see how if they don't think that those games would be well attended. And there's just kind of a pre-existing conversation about, well, do we actually need spring training that goes on this long in this day and age when players generally stay in pretty good shape year round and they go to training facilities and maybe, you know, they haven't been working an off-season job and kind of letting themselves

go and needing to play themselves back into shape the way that earlier generations of players did. So there was some talk about potentially shortening that anyway. Although, as we saw last year, you don't want to rush it too much because guys get hurt and pitchers need time to ramp up. And I'm sure that pitchers would definitely want some spring training just so that we don't see a repeat of last season where you start the year and then everyone suddenly has an elbow barking. Well, and I would imagine that in much the same way that the major league season is in some amount of jeopardy, at least in the early going, that the minor league season faces similar issues. So you also might have an incentive to, even if you end up staggering major leaguers and minor leaguers, which I think there

was some discussion of, you might have some incentive to sort of get the ball rolling so that you can get more of your minor leaguers who had a supremely strange season and many of whom were just doing at-home dev and didn't have the chance to really participate in organized activities at all to get them to the complexes so that you can start the the tune-up that those guys might need because apart from the guys who are at the alternate side and participated in fall instructional leagues or did any of the winter leagues which this is like not the point of this question, but you can watch baseball in so many places right now. And there are a lot of prospects that are playing baseball in international winter leagues

to get reps. So if you're hankering for both baseball and a look at some of the prospects who you might have seen play minor league ball, if there had been a normal year, like go, go watch lead on, go watch the Australian baseball league, which started last week. Like you got, you got some options, so go seek those out. But I think that there will also be a player dev aspect to this, which might not mean fans in the stands at all, right? But I think will also be a factor that teams consider

as they're trying to sort out like what to do when. Yeah, good point. Yeah, so I haven't actually said what the insider said. So they were pretty split on both of these questions. As for the start on time, the spring training start on time question, eight said yes, 12 said no. And as for the will we play 162 regular season games, split right down the middle, 10 yes, 10 no. So no one really knows at this point, which could be why this offseason is developing so slowly. But I guess there's hope. There's still a chance that there will be a full season, it seems like, but people are far from confident about that. Yeah, geez. And the last question on the survey, is the universal DH here for good? Speaking of questions that are still unresolved at this late date. in perpetuity starting in 2021 right and i think that it is conceivable to me that we will get like

a last minute hey yeah you have a dh congratulations wouldn't you have liked to sign nelson cruz or marcello zuna whoops yeah so i i can see that happening but i think that we will long term definitely have the dh in both leagues. So actually people were pretty overwhelmingly convinced that the universal DH is here for good. I guess they are free to interpret this question as they would, and maybe some of them interpreted it as long-term and not for 2021. But 18 said yes, and only two said no. So even though MLB put out the word that teams should prepare for next season

as if there would be no DH in the National League, it seems like most of these insiders are not actually acting as if that's the case, and maybe that is just MLB trying to take a hard line in negotiations about other things, you know, expanded playoffs or roster sizes or other rules changes. So players generally want the DH. I don't think owners are really opposed to the DH either, but if they say, well, there's no DH, then you're starting from that position of relative power in the negotiations. And then you can give the players the concession of okay we will let you have a dh so that could be why they put it that way but it doesn't seem like it is swaying any of these

insiders yeah i think that it'll be the sort of thing that we hear about like two weeks before the season starts and then you know everyone at vangrass gets to roll their eyes about how their positional power rankings are now 30 teams long and we have to redo projections and stuff so yeah i hope it doesn't drag on quite that long because even if as we said it it's not like the only or even really the primary thing that is slowing down the market it's one of those things like even just for nelson cruz and the other players in that boat who would be dedicated dhs or even just part-time dhs like it would be nice to let them know and uh let all the other players in that boat who would be dedicated DHs or even just part-time DHs, like it would be nice to let them know and let all the other teams know how they should plan to do these things.

So yeah, it's par for the course over the last year of just kind of, you know, winging it, just going by the seat of your pants, which is sort of necessary in these circumstances. But in this case, like they should probably figure out the DH thing sometime soon. Yeah, it's not an optimal way to do business. It has very real effect, even if it is not the only thing, as you said, installing those markets on a couple of very specific free agents markets. I know team people in the NL who are very frustrated by the fact that they don't have an answer on this question and would like to be able to build their rosters already.

And then at like, you know, reason 1000 in the grand scheme of things when we consider the stakes is that it's not very nice to people who have to run websites that do projections. Yeah. So, but it's still a reason, even if it is not the reason that should carry the day. It's still on the list. All right. So that is the latest edition of the Krasnicks or the Rodgerses or whatever we're calling them now. Always a fun exercise.

So maybe we can end with an email or two. I have a stat blast we could close with, but here's a question from Darren who says, This morning, John Heyman tweeted the following, Luis Castillo, as well as Sonny Gray, is being discussed in trades. Asks are appropriately high for young frontline starters. The Reds went for it last winter and were rewarded with a playoff spot, but the belt tightening this winter is clear.

And the question from Darren. Where is the present day cutoff for being referred to as young in the baseball sense? And is it different than what was considered to be young throughout baseball's past? As I thought about this more, I guess it's possible the term young could be used differently for pitchers versus hitters. I assume the average and median age of starting pitchers or all pitchers is a bit different than position players. So Luis Castillo, Sonny Gray, young. What is young? I think that Sonny Gray is definitely a person who I always assumed to be at least two or three years younger than he actually is because his first name is Sonny, which is a name that I associate with youth and vitality. So there's that. But I wouldn't classify Sonny Gray as young, although I wouldn't classify him as someone who I view as sort of in danger of immediate decline either. He sort of occupies that established veteran role for me, which does not necessarily immediately reference his age, but often means the same thing. It's strange, though, because we do have a number of bright, young stars in the game who are just genuinely very young.

They are not yet able to rent cars without penalty. Juan Soto is only 22. I know. You remember how Juan Soto is only 22? Really, at some point, it will cease to be mind-boggling when I look at Juan Soto and see how old or how young he is, but I'm still not there. Even though we're like years into the Juan Soto age fun facts and hey, did you know that Juan Soto is younger than this guy you think of as being young, still really has not worn off. Like just because he is so incredibly precocious and mature as a hitter I think that makes it even more shocking when you look and you see that oh this guy who is basically Ted Williams

and has that sort of plate approach is as young as he is and like shows up on lists where it's like just him and Ted Williams on like you know walks or on base percentage at these sorts of ages or early seasons. So it's incredibly impressive. Yeah, like Ronald Acuna, still young. He's 23. Oh, Ronald Acuna's birthday was on December 18th. Happy belated birthday, Ronald Acuna. So like Ronald Ac acuna still young i think that like 25 26 is sort of the the range that we're talking

about right and then there's this this but i guess luis castillo is 28 and i said he was young so uh maybe 28 is the upper bound because once you turn once you're 29 you're basically 30 right and 30 still has this is still sort of entrenched in our minds as the point at which we start looking for age-related decline and like think that we are likely to start seeing things that we would dismiss as temporary and the results of injury or inexperience or what have you in a young player start to be facts of a person's biography as a player that might linger with them right like oh now they're they're you know they're starting to get to that age where like they get hurt and they stay a little hurt for a long time right or you know they they've gotten to the point as a pitcher where the

velocity is just going to decline and it's going to continue to decline and we don't expect it to rebound. So I think that maybe 28 is the point at which we're young. And then after that, you're like, you're almost 30. And then you're basically retired. Yeah. Then you're like us. You're decrepit and past your prime, I guess. So I don't think there's a huge difference in pitcher and hitter average ages. Like if you look at the average batting ages and pitching ages on Baseball Reference, some years there's basically no difference some years there's a small difference like in 2020 the average pitching age was 28.3 the average batting age is 28.0 so not a big difference there i think there is maybe some

difference in the aging patterns like it seems like pitchers tend to just kind of be at their peak when they come up often, and then maybe they decline from there, or they throw a little less hard just, you know, from the beginning of their career almost, they start losing some velocity, unless they're like Jacob deGrom and they're aging backwards somehow. But like, at least historically, you have tended to expect some kind of curve where like hitters come up and they're not at their peak and then they rise to their peak and then they decline whereas with pitchers it seems a little bit more like once you come up you're closer to as good as you're going to get and then it tails off and obviously

this is just across the entire population of players it varies on an individual level but I think if average is 28 now I guess you can't say that castillo is young right like i i tend to think of 28 as i mean it's certainly not old but i i guess i'd say it's like peak or prime you know like if it's if it's average then i guess almost by definition you can't be young relative to other players if you are the age of the average player but you know relative to the average person and to the average baseball fan certainly like i wonder if as you get older you are more likely to refer like does your bar for young for baseball players move because like obviously it does you know for the general population it's like when

you hear older people will you know refer to kids who are in themselves maybe older people like when we were talking to eddie and betty robinson and betty was talking about their kids and then she kind of corrected herself to say you know they're they're grown people and I don't know how old they are, but I would assume based on Eddie and Betty's ages that their kids must be, you know, well advanced in years and most people would not call them kids. Fully realized adults. Yes, let's say that. So that changes, but does your tendency to call baseball players young change or are they just like all young to you at a certain point i don't know i think that there's also you know some some elements of this that is dependent on sort of the the era of of baseball that you found yourself in when you really started to get a sense of the

league like we've just seen a lot of very young very highly touted prospects sort of either make their debuts or be in the mix to soon make their debuts in the last couple of years and i think that that's sort of ebbed and flowed over time too and so you know if we end up with like wander franco in the big leagues in sort of a similar way that we had juan Soto that's going to color our understanding of what the the bottom end of the big league age range is and I think that that starts to you know you get enough of those guys and you're like wow like you know Wander Franco's only 20 and Juan Soto's only 21 and Fernando Tatis Jr. is only 22 and they are the future. And, you know, Ronald Acuna Jr. is 23. And so you start to, you know,

be more conscious of the biggest and brightest stars being objectively young, not just in baseball terms, but in like human being terms. And I think that that can kind of color your understanding of where that line is. But like, for instance, Mike Trout, no longer a young star

he's just a star but young does not feel like an appropriate modifier there so no it doesn't he is past the point of being young but he is still wonderful but yeah i think it does vary by era not like hugely or dramatically like you know not more than maybe a year or two. But like if you look at the average age of players, particularly batters of late, it has declined dramatically. And the average batter age in 2019 was 27.9, which is extremely low. Which is extremely low you know if we're not talking about like a century ago or a half century ago like relative to recent eras that's very well like 27.9 is a full year younger than a decade. So we are in this era where it seems like the aging patterns have changed somewhat, that players are coming up more prepared and are good right away. And then they maybe tail off a little sooner. It seems like older players on the whole, other than Nelson Cruz, seem to be struggling a little. Whereas when we were growing up and watching baseball during the pd era it was

the opposite where older players were remaining viable and and great for much longer which is you know there may have been a reason for that perhaps but just saying that's kind of what we grew up watching and knowing and so yeah i think that probably adjusts a little bit. And as you were saying, if you're in this era with, you know, Soto and Acuna, well, they set the standard for young or Wander Franco or whoever. So if there is like some 20 year old superstar, then suddenly maybe it seems a little stranger to refer to the 26 year old superstar as young, even though he's still pretty young. And there just have been some historic years recently, as I've written about, for young hitters being better than they've ever been before. And we would, of course, be remiss if we didn't mention the labor dynamic that's at play there, where teams are incentivized by the current economic structure of the game to play young cost-controlled players, and they are less incentivized to give roster spots to older, potentially more expensive guys.

And so some of the attrition that you see is also a result of that, right? That they want to play young, homegrown cores that aren't going to cost very much. And I imagine that has something to do with how the average age has sorted itself out in the last 10, 15 years too. Yep, yep.

All right. Well, I guess if we were going to put the number at somewhere, I guess I would say for me, the cutoff, I'd say 26 would be the upper bound for young, which does not mean that you go from young to old. It just means you go from young to a player I would not necessarily describe as young. And it depends on the context even. Like if we're talking about free agency, right? Like if you're a free agent, well, we just talked about George Springer being 31. Like if you reach free agency and you're 28 or something, like, well, you're pretty young for a free agent who is good and has had that long a career.

So within certain contexts, I think you could still call someone young potentially or young for some subset of players. But if I were just generically referring to people, I guess I'd say 26 because historically 27 has kind of been the prime performance age and maybe it's 26 or maybe it's 28 or maybe there's like a plateau

there basically but 27 is kind of like cited as the magic number there so if you're at that peak age then i guess you're not young or you know maybe you're at your peak because you're still young but i'm thinking of it as like you're still on the way up like there's still a good reason to think that you might get even better so for me I guess I'd say 26 and I probably wouldn't switch that up much depending on pitcher versus hitter I would say 27 if only because I want to be difficult and stand up for those of us who get sore backs when we sneeze. But yeah, I think 26, 27 is probably the upper end of it. I'm going to retract my earlier 28 and say that once you're, certainly once you're past 27, you're in that spot where we no longer consider you young,

but we don't worry that you're going to like suddenly forget how to play baseball. Yes, right. Okay. And one more follow up to our conversation last week when we did an email episode, we talked about managers getting fired after a single game. We followed up with that on our most recent episode where we talked about the example of Grady Little. There was another one where we talked about Hall of Fame caps and scenarios in which Mookie

Betts might go in as a Dodger as opposed to a Red Sox player. I can't quite bring myself to say as a Red Sox. It just sounds wrong to me. I'm sorry. I write around it, and I guess I speak around it if I can. Yeah. But we did not specifically mention Wade Boggs, which, again, this is another situation where I was thinking Wade Boggs as we were talking, but didn't actually say it.

I guess note to selves when we are talking about something that there is some precedent for this, and maybe it's such a well-known precedent that it's in our heads, and maybe we assume our listeners are thinking of it, but we should probably just acknowledge it. And a couple of people have written in to say, Wade Boggs, surprised you didn't mention Wade Boggs specifically. And yeah, we probably should have. I was thinking about it. And we were talking about, well, how does the Hall decide which team a player goes in with? And we talked about how, well, they decide based on kind of the Hall has a little committee

and they look at the body of evidence and the career and then they talk to the player. But usually it's pretty clear. So just reading from Wade Boggs' Wikipedia page, subheading Hall of Fame plaque cap logo controversy. Before his retirement, Boggs was plagued by newspaper reports that the expansion Devil Rays gave him financial compensation in return for selecting a Devil Rays cap for his plaque at the Baseball Hall of Fame. at the Baseball Hall of Fame, though he has denied that any such condition was part of his contract. In light of those reports and other rumors that teams were offering number retirement money or organizational jobs in exchange for the cap designation, the Hall decided in 2001 to change its practice of deferring to players' wishes regarding cap logo selection and reinforced the Hall's authority to determine with which cap the player would be depicted boggs is wearing a boston cap on his plaque as he should be so i think i alluded to that and

mentioned that there had been some controversies about players maybe selling the rights to their forehead on their plaque or something but uh didn't specifically mention boggs and that's what i was thinking about very dangerous precedent for our readers to say, you should talk more. Yeah, probably. Speaking of that, we should probably stop talking. So I will end with this stat flash. It should be a pretty quick one. This question is from another Ben or Benjamin who says, and this was a question sent back in mid-September, so I'm a Twins fan, and after homering again tonight, Byron Buxton is up to a 99 weighted runs created plus

despite only having an on-base percentage of 247. That's the Chris Davis batting average number. You do not want that to be an on-base percentage of 247 that's the chris davis batting average number you do not want that to be your on-base percentage what's the lowest obp anyone has carried over a full season while still being a league average hitter so this is a bit of a lighter lift than the typical stat blast one can answer this with the fangrass leaderboards alone and maybe a little spreadsheet action so i was not really aware of where byron buxton's final stats ended up this season but boy that is quite a slash line so he did it he pulled it off he actually ended up being better than this he finished with a 118 wrc plus so 18 better than the league average hitter, but the OBP was 267, which is

very low. So, yeah, league average this year was 322. 254, 267, 577 was his line. That's a weird one. He had 13 home runs in only 135 plate appearances, but he walked

1.5% of the time while striking out about 27% of the time and somehow had a.241 Babbitt despite being Byron Buxton and super speedy. So that's just a weird season, but he has had sort of a strange career. So happy that he was on the field at all, although he was on the field for only 39 games. So according to Ben's question here, I'm assuming he means over a full season. I would take that to mean qualified for the batting title. So I'm not going to count Byron Buxton here, although it is quite a strange season. So he somehow finds ways to be productive if he is on the field, like whether it's that he doesn't hit at all, but he's great at defense, or he doesn't hit for average, doesn't get on base at all, but is good at defense and also hits for a ton of power.

Just strange. I hope there is one year where he is fully healthy and awesome and does all the things that he is capable of doing. Although I guess we can't say that he's still young, or at least I can't, because he is about 27 and a half now. So he's right on that border. So I looked this up two different ways. And one was just looking up all players in the modern era, you know, 1900 to present who have qualified for a batting title over a full season and have had a league average or better 100 or higher WRC plus. And then I just sorted for the lowest on base percentages. So the answer, if we don't do any adjusting for era or anything, is Dave Robertson with

the 1917 Giants. And Dave Robertson's line that year was 259, 276, 391. year was 259 276 391 and in that era he was good for a 106 wrc plus he was a pretty good hitter and a pretty good player but that was a time when the league average line was uh extremely low obviously so that would not cut it today i can just see what the league average line was in 1917. Quickly, thanks to David Appelman's wizardry, it was 249, 305, 328. So yeah, 328 league average slugging percentage in the 1917 NL. So Dave Robertson with his 391 slugging was a big-time power hitter for that era. 12 homers in 560 plate appearances.

More recent examples, just sorting the list here, 1966, Fred Whitfield with Cleveland. He had a 102 WRC+, with a 283 OBP. And then 1975, Dave Kingman with the Mets. Dave Kingman's kind of like the classic example of the low OBP slugger. So 115 WRC plus that year, 36 dingers in only 134 games, but a 284 on base. And Joe Pepitone with the 1969 Yankees, sort of similar 100 WRC plus 284 on base. WRC plus 284 on base 2015 Evan Gaddis with the Astros had a 103 WRC plus and a 285 OBP yeah Dave Kingman again 1976 with the Mets 126 WRC plus with only a 286 on base that's uh pretty good 506 slugging which was good for that era, 37 homers in 123 games. Then you got Ernie Banks with the Cubs in 1968. Of course, 1968, year of the pitcher, so he had a 123 WRC plus with a 287 on base. Alfonso Soriano was a league average hitter with a 289 on base for the Cubs. 2015, Marlon Bird. 2011, Mark Trumbo.

And the other way I looked this up was to adjust for the era. So Fangraphs also has the handy option to look at the plus stats, which is just league and era adjusted. So if you want to see what someone was relative to the time period that he played in, you can do that. And it's on the same scale as WRC plus where above is better than league average and below is worse than league average. So this time I sorted again, I filtered for everyone who had a 100 WRC plus or higher, and then I sorted for the lowest OBP pluses. So by this metric, era-adjusted lowest on base for a competent hitter. Dave Kingman takes the cake. 1975 Kingman season with the Mets. He had, relative to the league, an 85 OBP plus with his 115 WRC plus. So that's the top. And then 1957, Gus Zirnial had 86 OBP plus with a 101 WRC plus. And then some of the others show up again, 1969, Pepitone, 1976,

Dave Kingman, 70 and 74, Lee May. And then you get to Dave Robertson in 1917 again. And then you get to Mike Jacobs in 2008 with the Marlins, 2003, Jeremy Bernitz, 2000, Tony Batista, Evan Gattis again. So some low on base sluggers from the past couple of decades showing up there too. Soriano, Pedro Feliz, 2004 2004 mark trumbo joe carter etc so thanks for the question you can get the answer to that question and many other burning questions in the free leaderboards at fan graphs which of course you should support by buying a membership oh ben thanks was that evangadis season the year that he weirdly had more than 10 triples? Oh, was it?

Let's see. What year was it? This was the 2015. Yeah. Yeah, okay. 11 triples Evan Gattis. Yep, that was a weird one. Remains one of the best.

That, Ben, that's a fun fact. Yeah, it definitely is. All right. Well, I think we have come to the end of this one so that will do it and if you don't hear us again before christmas and you are celebrating christmas we hope you have a happy one and i hope you have a happy one thanks ben yeah i hope everybody has a merry christmas if they celebrate and a restful couple days off regardless. And yeah, we'll be back next week. All right.

That will do it for today. And indeed, that will do it for me and Meg this week. Although I will be back with one more solo episode. Not exactly solo. It won't just be a monologue. I'll get guests. You know how that works. I think it'll be fun.

A brief addendum slash secondary stat blast because I just got an email about this as I was about to post this episode. On our last episode, when we talked about the Phillies promoting Sam Fold to GM, I mentioned that he has a really extensive Wikipedia page. I just casually threw it out there. Hey, if you find any players who have longer Wikipedia pages than Sam Fold, let us know. Well, we have a lot of smart and talented and resourceful listeners, and one of them is a prolific Wikipedia editor who goes by Addison, and he ran a SQL query to look up the longest Wikipedia articles on MLB players or former players. He was able to search by the number of bytes on the Wikipedia page, which is obviously

correlated with the word count, though not perfectly so. That can be influenced by things like tables, for instance. But he sent me a list of the top 100 by bite size, which I will link to on the show page here. And then he manually looked up the word count for the top 50 on that top 100 list. And so I can say that Sam Fold's Wikipedia page is indeed extraordinarily long, but it is not anywhere close to the record,

nor is it even the record for semi-obscure players in the grand scheme of things. So Fold ranks 32nd by bite size. And then when Addison looked up the word counts for the top 50, Sam Fold ranked 44th. So still pretty impressive, but there are some even odder ones above him on the list. So the top 10 by word count are at least well-known famous players, mostly Hall of Famers or perhaps future Hall of Famers. So Sam Fold's Wikipedia page has just under 6,000 words. Babe Ruth leads the list with a little more than 15,000.

Then it goes Billy Martin, Casey Stangle, Alex Rodriguez, Tony Gwynn, Mariano Rivera, Satchel Paige, Yadier Molina, Larry Walker, and Ted Williams. Okay, maybe some players you wouldn't have predicted on there, but big names. In the top 20, you have Jeff Bagwell, you have Jackie Robinson, you have Willie Mays, you have Ichiro, you have Derek Jeter. Okay, all makes sense. But here are some weird ones. Ian Kinsler, number 22, a little more than 8,000 words. Very good player, but probably not a player about whom there is more to write than all the 21 players in history. Now here's one. Number 23, Cal Ripken Jr., okay. Number 25, Trevor Hoffman, sure. Sandwich between them, number 24, Stephen Vogt. Stephen Vogt has an 8,000-word Wikipedia page with 332 citations.

Your guess is as good as mine on that one. Now here we are from number 30 on down. David Ortiz, Ty Cobb, Clayton Kershaw, Stan Musial, Manny Ramirez, Barry Zito, and then at 36, just above Mickey Mantle, Chris Young, the pitcher, whom we just talked about in that same conversation as Sam Fold. So the two new ex-player GMs have another thing in common, which is that they have enormous Wikipedia pages. Stephen Matz is just ahead of Sam Fold. And guess who ranks right behind Stephen Matz and Sam Fold? Mike Trout, naturally. Anyway, this is what you get with a crowdsourced encyclopedia. A lot of great information on a lot of great players, and also a lot of information on Steven Vogt. So thanks to Addison for the answers,

and please do go check out the full list, because it will make you do some double takes. Okay, well, I don't know when people will be listening to this, but I hope that you will have, or have had, or are having a happy holidays. And we thank those of you who continue to support Effectively Wild on Patreon. That is a great gift that you give us. Following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Brian Bardolph, Matt Johnson, John Seroff, Kendall Johnson, and Benji Englander. Thanks to all of you.

You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast.fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And you can look out for another episode in your feed sometime soon. Talk to you then. I knock my dancing shoes.

They clash with my pajamas. It's time to face the truth. No longer young at all to dance the night away To make the safest dreams

that we may chance to be