Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1643: In Theo We Trust?

Episode Date: January 16, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Blue Jays missing out on DJ LeMahieu and which remaining free agents might be bound for Toronto, follow up on their previous discussion about bagged milk and tax implications for free agency, marvel at LeMahieu’s unique invulnerability to the shift and his unlikely career trajectory, and examine […]

Soon will be the break of day, sitting here in Blue Jay Way. Please don't be long, please don't you be very long. Please don't be long, please don we are, though I may be asleep. Hello and welcome to episode 1643 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs, and I am joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Well Meg, another day, another would-be Jay, who got away. Well, Meg, another day, another would-be Jay who got away. All the rhyming was lovely there, Ben.

That was just a very nice little flourish. Yeah, I workshopped that earlier. Thank you. Yeah, Lucy pulled the football away again from another potential Toronto Blue Jay target. We talked yesterday. We started the episode by talking about the Blue Jays' string of futility this winter when it comes to acquiring their top targets. They have struck out on all of them so far, aside from Robbie Ray, if he counts. Don't mean to demean Robbie Ray, he counts.

But they have not been able to land their top targets after really raising expectations going into the winter. And DJ LeMayhew was also one of the players on their most wanted list, and he will not be a Blue Jay. He resigned with the Yankees, which is not surprising. The odds were always in favor of a reunion there. Things have worked out so well for LeMayhew in New York, and it's been a mutually beneficial relationship. But still, the clock is ticking here, and reportedly, the Blue Jays made a pretty competitive offer for LeMahieu. According to John Heyman, they offered $78 million over four years. The Yankees reportedly have signed him for $90 million over six years. total dollar deal, but more years, which lowers the luxury tax hit because it's sort of the average annual value that is assessed there. So I guess LeMahieu went for the total dollars and the long-term security and staying where he is and where he's been successful over that

Blue Jays offer. So it's not a bad offer. I mean, they offered more per year. In theory, he could have taken that, but he didn't. And so we keep getting these rumors about, oh, the Jays were the runners up. They were right there. They were front runners. They offered this much and that player turned it down. And I guess, again, as we were saying yesterday, that's kind of nice to know that your team is in it. But at a certain point point you got to get sick of we almost got him almost doesn't really count in this situation and whether that means that you just have to raise your valuation of the player or what you have to add the extra year on or whatever it takes like if the offseason is over and they say well we were second on everyone i don't think that will really reassure jayce fans and they're, well, we were second on everyone, I don't think that will really reassure Jays fans,

and they're going to get roasted after promising to deliver someone impressive. Yeah, I think that I'm going to say two things. The first of which is I think that of all the guys that they missed out on, this is the one where, despite what sounds like, as you said, a competitive offer, like a real offer, they weren't just hinting at it. They were really trying to land LeMahieu. I think that of all the guys who have gotten away, this is the one where Blue Jays fans can feel perhaps the least bad because I think that he was always going to end up back in

the Bronx. It just seemed like it was a matter of getting the deal to the point that it sounds like it did where the luxury tax hit for the yankees was acceptable given some of the other moves that they still have to do to reinforce their roster for this coming season and their stated preference to stay under the tax threshold so i think you know i get it but this one like this one you probably you saw lucy there pulling inch in the football off the ground right you could see that from a little bit of a distance I do think that you're right to say though that like at some point these guys

gotta they gotta get cracking here yeah and I'm trying to think of perhaps that we can do this exercise on the fly maybe we can do this exercise on the fly and see which of uh the fan graphs remaining top 50 free agents just in the top 10. We won't do the full list because that's tiresome and too long and we didn't prep for it. Would make good sense for the Blue Jays given some of their other roster needs. Does that sound agreeable to you, Ben? I didn't prep you for this because I'm rude. Yeah, I mean, I think it's got to be Springer at the top of the list.

They've been rumored to really have a lot of interest in him. I don't know how mutual it is, but it seems like that would make a lot of sense. And now, given the expectations they set, the pressure's on. You better sweeten that offer because you got to get someone. Because Mark Shapiro said that the improvement could come in the form of four very good players. It can come in the form of two elite players, but we're going to get better. He's not just talking about we're going to sign someone. He's putting actual numbers out there.

We're going to sign two elite players, four very good players. Like there's a lot of talent out there, but they're running out of time if they're actually going to acquire that many players. And if they don't, then everyone will be sharing that quote quote and saying but you said we were going to get four very good players and we didn't so yeah he was just starting to get out of some of the payroll flexibility adjacent comments he had from the past yeah i mean i think springer is probably the obvious one when you look at our death charts at fan graphs in center field they're sort of you know middle of the road they're not particularly impressive gosh the blue jays rate better projection wise at catcher than i anticipated them to but a lot of this seems to be the result of us thinking quite fondly and highly of danny jansen from a fielding perspective so

i don't imagine that they would mind a real muto who would mind a real muto on your roster that seems like a useful player to have even if you have depth at the position but yeah it's like you have real muto still sitting out there springer i guess that they could use reinforcements in the rotation but i don't know if they want to you know spend trevor bauer money but he would fit the criteria that has been laid out by their very own front office. So who's to say? And then, of course, the fit that you see in someone like Ozuna is probably dependent

in part on whether you see him more in the outfield or at DH and what do you do then? So I don't know. It's just a funny bit of business, but you're right that they're running out of guys. They're running out of some guys. They should get on some guys, I think, in an earnest way. We've already done our Blue Jays banter for the week, really. So I want to talk about LeMahieu in relation to the team he is actually going to continue to play for and just LeMahieu himself. But I did want to say you brought up the bagged milk yesterday when we were talking about the Blue Jays.

You asked me what was the deal with the bagged milk in Ontario? were talking about the Poochies. You asked me what was the deal with the bagged milk in Ontario? Why does the milk come in bags? And I didn't know in the moment. I sent you an article subsequently that explains that mystery. I mentioned it at the end of our last episode, but you mentioned it as something that could possibly be a factor for a free agent. And I'm sure that you were mostly kidding about a player being dissuaded from signing there or being really disturbed by the bagged milk. But someone in our Facebook group linked us to an actual instance of a player being discombobulated by the bagged milk. So Jay Happ, Illinois native in 2016, signed with the Blue Jays as a free agent.

And at some point during that season, he was interviewed by Sportsnet. And here is a portion of that interview that MLB.com excerpted. Is there anything you're still not used to in Canada? And Happ says, I think I've gotten used to most of the stuff. Grocery shopping is a little different. I still don't understand the bagged milk situation here. You guys sell milk in bags, and I don't really get why or what you then do with the bags. Other than that, it seems like Canada's doing a pretty good job.

But I don't get the milk. Put it in a gallon jug so you don't have the sloppy, messy bag. And the interviewer says, you know you put the bag in a milk jug, right? And Hap says, where's the jug? Do you have to buy the jug separately? Why are they not in the jug already? And then the interviewer responds, oh gosh, you have to ask someone at the grocery store for help. And he says, why do I have to ask? I should just grab it from the counter and it should be ready for me to drink.

And then he ends that section of the interview by saying, we need a memo sent out to all American players on how Canada dispenses its milk. Would you prefer to have a gallon of milk or a bag of milk? You can pick up a gallon and walk out of the store, or you can try to figure out how to drink your bagged milk. So I don't want to get into the bagged milk wars here. If you like your milk in bags, that's fine. And I understand there are certain advantages to it. But you were right, maybe more right than you knew. This is something that players should be warned about when they go to Toronto. And I should say Hap had a career year that season. So if he was really bothered by the bagged milk, it didn't show up in the stats. Perhaps he should have continued to drink bagged milk. Maybe he has. I don't know. But there should be a warning. It's

like we talk all the time about how teams help players get adjusted to different cultures and language barriers. And often we're talking about players coming to the US. But hey, if you're going to Canada and you're not prepared for the bagged milk, there really should be some sort of like bagged milk acculturation consultant who calls you up and says, hey, I just want you to know, I know you're going to be playing for the Blue Jays. Welcome to Toronto. We're happy to have you. By the way, we drink our milk out of bags here and here's how you do it. I wonder where you would place the bagged milk on the memo list relative to like the metric system, right? So it's like like we got we have some news for you guys

there's just there's some stuff you have to get used to here once you get used to the metric system you're going to wonder why everyone doesn't just do the metric system it's a very strange artifact of american life and they're going to get used to that and they're going to be like tell me there's nothing else and it's like well a bit of news on that score. Yeah. I realized that there is nothing about the container that is a reusable grocery bag that is in any one were committed to say the use of canvas bags in the grocery store to lessen the amount of plastic that you are taking home and then throwing away you would get especially nervous about the bagged milk because in theory the plastic bag is going to contain the spill if you like say drop it really like how thick is the plastic on the bag milk I still have a lot of bag milk questions and I don't want to take us too far down this rabbit hole

because we are a baseball podcast. And we actually have baseball news to discuss, and we should focus on that. Ostensibly a baseball podcast and not a bagged milk podcast. I still wonder, like, is it a very thick kind of plastic? Because it seems to me that if you had a quite full bag of milk and then you, say, forgot that it was in that bag and you were putting that bag of bagged milk in the back of your car i mean not you bent because you don't drive a car but if one were doing that then you drop you like put it down forcefully would it like splurge out all over the trunk of your car and that problem seems like it would be exacerbated in an in a canvas tote

that you have gotten from a public radio station in an effort to use less plastic and also you're using plastic in the plastic bag the milk presumably comes in so anyway i just i think that there's a really strong possibility that despite the blue jay seemingly being a terrific organization to work and play for based on um what i have heard from many people that uh jay ha Happ has told other baseball players, look, there is this one thing, and it's not the metric system. And so perhaps what the Blue Jays need to do to ensure a signing is to call up Jay Happ and be like, stop telling people about the bagged milkman.

Happ and LeMahieu were teammates last year. It's possible that Happ poisoned the well here, that he said, hey, look, I toronto offered you 78 million dollars probably sounds pretty appealing but did they tell you that the milk comes in backs and that was it now i'm just imagining carrie from homeland with like instead of the fallow yellow period she's like this is the bell-hugged milk yeah anyway really relevant reference except that show's still somehow being broadcast. So it's actually quite out. It's over now, finally, right?

Is it really? I think so. It lasted a lot longer than anyone knew or expected. But yes, I've read a good deal about the bagged milk over the last day, but it's all book learning. It's all theoretical. I do not have any personal experience, so I cannot tell you what it feels like in practice. But I can tell you that it's related to the metric system because that was one of the reasons why they switched to the bag milk was that it was easier to comply with the new metric measurements.

So it can just be a bullet point on the metric system point when you're giving your orientation packet. Yes, right. Yes, right. So one last follow-up to this, because one of the reasons we mentioned why it might be a little more difficult for the Bougies to sign free agents is that there is a little bit higher tax burden in Canada. We got an email from a listener who is an accountant in Canada and works in personal income tax. Of course, we have a listener who does all of those things and is perfectly qualified to weigh in on these things. a listener who does all of those things and is perfectly qualified to weigh in on these things. So he writes in to say, the tax advantage Toronto suffers is actually very small. Players earn income and thus a tax liability in each jurisdiction they play games in. Thus, the comparison is not a player's entire salary in a zero income tax state versus Ontario, but how many more games they would play in Toronto if they were part of that team. Take DJ LeMahieu. As a Yankee, pre-COVID, he would already play 10 games in a season in Toronto

and thus pay Ontario taxes. If he becomes a Blue Jay, this was sent before he became a Yankee again, his tax hit isn't his whole salary, but instead how much he earns in the additional 72 games in Toronto. For the sake of argument, let's say DJ gets a one-year $10 million deal. He obviously did quite a bit better than that. That means he earns $4.4 million through those 72 games. To keep it simple, let's charge the top rate to the whole income. Marginal rates mean the effective rate is lower. rates mean the effective rate is lower. Ontario's top rate is 53.5% and New York's is 49.7%. The result is DJ would pay $0.169 million or 1.69% more tax by playing those 72 games

in Toronto. Nothing a half-decent tax accountant couldn't address with clever use of credits and tax shields. That's good to know. James sounds good at his job. To me, the real barrier is all of the non-financial impacts, which we touched on yesterday. Players, spouses, and kids have to get visas on top of what they would need for the U.S. if they were not U.S. born. Spouses may not be able to work depending on which visa they get, impacting their career.

Kids are in a different school system. Health insurance works differently. Banking is a hassle as no U. career. Kids are in a different school system. Health insurance works differently. Banking is a hassle as no U.S. banks are in Canada. Cell phones have roaming charges. Netflix is different. If you are starting a family, you have to know the citizenship impacts if the child is born in Toronto. There is a level of administrative hassle that can dissuade players from Toronto no

matter the money. And of course, James did not even mention the milk but we have probably mentioned the milk sufficiently at this point so I thought that was interesting because that applies to more players and more teams than just the Bouchers and DJ will make you well I think that that is interesting and yes it does certainly constitute a complication we should say of course just in case our Canadian listeners are saying you guys are too harsh i have heard i've never been to toronto i have not had the pleasure but i've never heard anything but the best about toronto so i see yeah i see that there are a great many things to

recommend the choice of playing there and playing there for a substantial period of time but you know everybody's hierarchy of needs is slightly different. So it's good to acknowledge these things. And I guess if anyone's going to have a clever accountant, it's likely to be a professional baseball player. So, you know, he could have dealt with that stuff. But I think we can use this as an opportunity to segue to all the ways that, you know, the Yankees are just a really good fit for TJ LeMay. And so, like I said, I don't think that I really anticipated any other outcome. But this one, even if the particulars of the deal took a while to hash out, because he has seen something, you know, of a remarkable renaissance in the Bronx, and he has exceeded a

great many people's expectations, I think, including mine in terms of what he would be able to produce offensively away from Coors. So I owe DJ LeMay who a bit of an apology because while I didn't think it was a bad deal because depth is always good and he is a talented player, I did not anticipate that he would look the way that he did once he moved over to the Yankees. So I get why they wanted him back and I get why he wanted to return. It's just a really good fit of team and player and ballpark especially. and it's just a really good fit of team and player and ballpark especially. Yeah, no, it's been great for both of them,

and I didn't anticipate this either. It's not that I thought that he was necessarily a product of Coors because we've seen that with other Rockies players, that, yeah, they may have dramatic splits while they play for the Rockies, but it's a little different when you are playing in another home park full-time. You don't have the potential hangover effect of going to and from altitude. So it's not as if you can just look at a Rocky's player's away stats and say, oh, that's what he's going to hit now that he leaves Colorado. For one thing, you get to be home. You get home field advantage when your home city is somewhere else. But also probably there's less of a disparity there. So it's not that I thought that he would fall apart, but I didn't think that he would suddenly

become a superstar and an MVP candidate either, because he'd been a good player for the Rockies. I know he won a batting title and everything, which is kind of Coors-assisted, and obviously he was a great fielder there. But when you do the park adjustments, he was like, you know, a league average hitter or worse in most of his rocky seasons. So I didn't really see this happening. And he has totally blossomed. And now he has extreme splits where he's been better in Yankee Stadium. So maybe he's just a guy who likes his home field, whatever it happens to be

at that time. But his positional flexibility has worked out. Everyone seems to like him. He just has delivered in every way. And no, it's not a surprise that they would want to keep him or that he would want to stay. I was just thinking, though, because he's really a pretty fascinating player. And I was thinking that if you had consumed baseball solely via dj lemahew plate appearances since the start of his career you would not know that anything about baseball had changed because when you watch a dj lemahew plate appearance it looks like it did in 2011 when he started when shifting was still rare, when the strikeout rate was a lot lower, because LeMahieu strikes out less now than he did a decade ago, which is odd because the league average rate has risen considerably during that time. That has not affected him at all, seemingly.

And he does not get shifted at all. He is just impervious to being shifted. It's like when you watch a movie where there's a plague breaking out or something. And I mean, we've experienced a plague in real life, so maybe I shouldn't reach for the plague analogy, but I was just watching the latest adaptation of The Stand. And at a certain point, everyone's getting sick and they're all showing symptoms. And then your protagonist, your main character is totally unaffected. And for a while, he thinks, oh, maybe I'm just lucky. I didn't catch it. But at a certain point, you realize, no, I can't catch it. I am immune.

And DJ LeMahieu is immune to the shift. He does not get shifted at all, like zero times. He has not been shifted legitimately since, I think, the 2016 season, which is just incredible because shifts are so common now, even for right-handed hitters for better or worse. And Mike Petriello wrote about this in October, and he looked into like a couple of instances where, according to StatCast, LeMahieu had been shifted. But really when you watch them, he hadn't. It was like there was a position player pitcher who was throwing like 40 something miles an hour and so the second baseman was standing on the other side of second that doesn't count there was another one where there were intentional balls being thrown so the second

baseman was just standing wherever like they were not actual shifts so lemayhew almost alone among players does not get shifted and it's not really a mystery why that is. It's because of his batted ball tendencies. Most players pull most of their ground balls and hit most of their fly balls the other way. And LeMahieu does that second thing, but he does not do the first thing. He does not pull most of his batted balls on the ground. In fact, he pulls very few of them. Last year, 28% of DJ LeMayhue's batted balls on the ground were pulled. That's the least in the majors for anyone when you set a certain minimum. And he does hit a lot of his fly balls to the opposite field. In fact, he does that more than anyone else. he is extreme in That direction too 76.2%

Of his fly balls Last year were hit the other way It's just a total outlier And teams say okay well He's not going to poll and he's A righty and what are we going to do We're just going to play straight up in the Infield now in the outfield

He actually gets shifted quite a bit Baseball savant has this classification of outfield shifts that they call strategic shifts, which is like not a four-man outfield. And it's not three outfielders to one side of second base. It's not that extreme, but it's not straight up either. There's like some pronounced shading going on. And DJ LeMayhew had a strategic shift on him in a higher percentage of his pitches than any other player, almost 40%. So he does get shaded to hit his fly balls the other way as he should, but he does not get shifted in the infield at all. And so if you only watch DJ LeMayhew plate appearances appearances you would not know that there

have been these dramatic changes in baseball so it's really pretty interesting that he has spanned these eras and he has been more successful in this era and you just can't defend him the way that teams have decided to defend almost everyone else I had forgotten that Mike wrote that piece which I remember liking and finding really clever as like a way of talking about LeMahieu at the time. And that is why I will forgive you. As you started, I was like, Ben, this is a good article idea. Why are you wasting this on the podcast? Not that it's ever a waste.

But look, man, it's the off season. We got to find our low hanging fruit. I don't know what I'm trying to say, where we can find it. I think that Mike's piece sort of takes some of the wow out of that as its own thing. But yeah, that is a really terrific point. Like he's just he is not unique within like the history of baseball, but he is just a very particular kind of offensive presence. And we don't have a lot of him or guys like him in the league right now.

And so I think that's part of the reason that I was so delighted to be wrong about his production once he left Coors, because as we've talked about a lot on this podcast, just that sort of aesthetic diversity is really refreshing because we don't get it a lot of places. And I think that's part of why I wanted him to stay in New York, not just because he's a good fit for Yankee Stadium

and he's done well there. And all you had to do was look at the Twitter accounts of various Yankees to see that he is very well liked by his teammates. But I think that they are they are just a team that has a lot of sort of standout aesthetic exemplars in their lineup you know they have the they have the giant big guys in stanton and judge and then they have lemay hue and just having that kind of biodiversity on one team is really fun and it's a cool it presents cool strategic challenges to their opponents so i'm i'm glad that that is where he has found his uh his long-term home even if it is longer term because the yankees were very insistent on not exceeding various competitive balance tax thresholds so you know i guess in that respect it's good because we just get more of him in a place that he's a good aesthetic fit so yeah i guess the one way that you would know that baseball had changed is that he does hit a lot more home runs now so he sure does even earlier in, of course, he was pretty young then,

but when he was playing in course, he was hitting single digit home run totals every year or some years at least. In 2019, he hit 26. So you would not have known that he would be a 26 home run hitter, but everyone was in 2019, more or less. Yeah. Our friend Jeff Sullivan, to his credit, kind of called Leay who's power boost he wrote a post in november 2018 when lemay he was a free agent saying that there might be untapped power there that said jeff didn't know that the ball was going to get even more lively in 2019 he didn't know that lemay he was going to sign with the yankees and play in yankee stadium with the short right field fence where he could just pop those opposite field fly balls over. It's not like LeMahieu suddenly started pulling the ball a lot or hitting the ball in the

air more. He still hits a lot of ground balls, but what he was already doing translated into more power. He did have like some pretty extreme stats last year when he was great. Obviously, MVP candidate again, 177 WRC+. He batted 364, 421, 590. Incredible numbers. There was one strange thing about that, which was that he had a very large gap between his expected stats and his actual. So if you sort on Baseball Savant, you look for the biggest gaps between players weighted on base average and their expected weighted on base average based on how they hit the ball he had the biggest gap 67 points so you could say that he outperformed he got a little lucky it was a two-month season which is not to say that he's not good or anything like if he were to regress to what he was in 2019 he would still be an MVP

candidate basically so so that's fine, but something to be aware of. It's not necessarily that he reached an even higher level last year at age 31 or 32. Part of that maybe could be the fact that you can't defend him the way that teams can defend other players. The shift may not work as well as it's generally believed to work, and especially against right-handers, it may not work at all. We've talked about that. It may depress Babbitt still, but it may help those players in other ways, fewer strikeouts, more extra base hits, etc. sense against him because he will just hit the ball over the field. However, there's no great trend in his numbers. It's not like he beats the expected stats year after year. Generally, he's quite close to them or even a little short of them. So he hasn't really demonstrated an ability to break that system, but he has had a high batting average on balls in play year after year, despite not being a particularly fast guy. So he just has a

very Jeterian way of hitting and going to the opposite field and doesn't have Jeter's speed, but he can hit them where they ain't the same way. And I guess you could say like, well, I wish more hitters would be like DJ LeMayhew or why can't they all do that like if DJ LeMayhew can convince teams not to shift on him then why can't everyone else but I think he might just be pretty singular in this respect or it's hard to copy like I wish that were the case but I don't really think it's that he set his mind to it like it's not that he hit in a completely different way and then people started shifting and he adjusted to this and beat the shift i think this was just how he hit more or less and it just so happens that he kind of has

the key to not getting shifted and this is just his trait as a hitter and it's probably pretty hard to replicate that i don't know that you can really reliably teach people to hit like DJ LeMayhew. It's a special skill that he has. Yeah, I think the only thing that I don't particularly love about this, and it is still an area that can be addressed by the team, is that it does seem to lock labor tours in at shortstop. And that doesn't always go great, least in the field you know and so i i will be curious if they do anything to sort of supplement there but yeah they know what they're getting it fits well for them he fits well in that park and uh yeah just uh sometimes i think that we we expect news or rankings or what have you to be clever.

It has to be clever for it to be interesting. And sometimes it's just like, no, this is like a really good fit and you shouldn't do other stuff. You should do this stuff because this stuff is the good fit and it doesn't have to be clever. It can be obvious and good. So this is an obvious good thing. Right.

And part of his value is the defense and we'll see how long that holds up and how long he stays at that elite level and retains that flexibility and versatility. But there are a lot of places you can put him, and he's played plenty of first base. So down the road, if he does become more defensively limited, you can stick him there and he'll be fine. Of course, then he'd have to hit, but he's hitting like a first baseman now, just playing middle infield really well. So yeah, that'll be interesting because the Yankees have other players who might need to play first base at a certain point. And they've had various lock jams over the past couple of years, but I guess either fortunately or unfortunately, they've had so many injuries that that hasn't been a big deal, really.

They've had trouble finding people to play more so than they've had too many people to play. So we'll see how he ages and what he looks like at 37 or whatever. But it seems like a perfectly fine deal for both sides. Yeah, and a deal. A deal done on a work day. Yeah, how about that? Yeah, good job, Yankees. We've been talking about when the dam would break and when moves would be made, and there

have been a flurry of fairly minor moves, but stuff's starting to happen. Kyle Schwarber and Pedro Baez and Alex Wood and Kurt Suzuki and Jose Martinez and Archie Bradley, not just a person who poops, also a person who pitches. And we'll be doing so for the Phillies this year and a couple of big signings with LeMahieu and Hendricks who we've discussed. So things are starting to move, which makes sense because the season is not that far away or at least spring training. And I'm going to resist a things are starting to move joke with respect to Archie Bradley

because I feel like we've exhausted the topic. I'll never apologize because he was in possession of that information. It was private and he elected to let us all know. Yeah, right. It's not like you were prying. He put it out there. Would never pry in that respect. It's none of my business.

That's a thing you should keep to yourself if you're so inclined. So yeah, I think that we kind of expected that with hendrick signing that we would start to see some movement on the reliever side and that has proven to be true and so it'll be interesting to see if lemay who's signing has a similar effect on sort of infielders and let's you know the poor blue jay sign someone and um lets other guys on the infield particularly. The middle infields sort of find a new home. And my only request of front offices is that they do it on Tuesday. Right.

So arbitration deals are getting done and agreed to. So maybe once teams can write those salaries in pen instead of pencil, they will know how much payroll room they have to work with. And then more moves will be made. So we'll have more stuff to talk about. But I wanted to talk about one other major transaction this week, which is MLB signing Theo Epstein. How about that? We found out what Theo Epstein's next chapter will be, or at least one of his immediate short-term chapters. And I got to say, honestly,

I love this. I absolutely love this move. So Theo Epstein, the erstwhile president of baseball operations for the Cubs, is now a consultant to MLB on on-field matters. He is basically being brought in as a guru to help fix what ails the sport. And I think this is really exciting. I don't know that it will have a demonstrable effect and make a major difference, but I think the impulse here is sound, and really, I'm pretty excited about this happening. So according to the press release, Epstein will work with baseball analytics experts from the commissioner's office and the clubs to determine the likely effects of various contemplated rules changes. So it sounds like a little think tank, the baseball Brookings Institution.

I would hope that some stat-savvy former players might be involved in some capacity. Epstein said, It is an honor to assist the efforts by Major League Baseball and the Competition Committee to improve the on-field product, and I appreciate Commissioner Manfred asking me to be a part of these important conversations. As the game evolves, we all have an interest in ensuring the changes we see on the field make the game as entertaining and action-packed as possible for the fans, while preserving all that makes baseball so special. I look forward to working with interested parties throughout the industry

to help us collectively navigate toward the very best version of our game. We talked back when he left the Cubs about what his next act might be, and this was one of the possibilities that we considered. I think Joe Posnanski wrote about it or advocated for it at the time, but it just seems like who better to bring in? If you want to fix baseball, if you think that baseball is broken or to the extent that it has problems, who better than the guy who fixed the Red Sox, fixed the Cubs, ended those droughts? Like, maybe it's a tall order to change things about baseball, but I have about as much faith in Theo Epstein to do that as I do in anyone. And baseball has problems beyond the three true outcomes. And Epstein isn't the perfect person to address all of them. Just to name one,

he's pointed the finger at himself for the lack of diversity in the people he's hired and the role that he's played in perpetuating that problem. And even when it comes to balls in play or pace of play, I don't know how much power or authority he will have. He can't come in and just unilaterally impose things like a lot of the difficulty of doing all this is that a lot of it has to be negotiated. The Players Association has a say. They may not agree to every blue sky idea we might have on this podcast or that Theo might have, but clearly he cares about this. Clearly he is smart. He knows what he's doing. And I am quite excited to see what comes of this, if anything. I think that I am also excited. I think that my reaction to it is definitely made better by some of his comments since he's left Chicago about sort of grappling with the aesthetic ramifications of some of the trends that, you know, he did not start on his own with the Cubs by any means, but that, you know, have been sort of exemplified by modern front offices,

which is not to say that I imagine I will always agree with his assessments, but it is nice to have the person who is sitting in that role, both someone who has recently been on the team side and I think is probably perhaps a little bit better equipped to speak to what teams are doing now, what teams are likely to find sort of compelling or tolerable, depending on what the idea is, because I think you're right that getting consensus around some of this stuff can be its own challenge and perhaps the challenge to getting it done but also someone who has demonstrated that they have both the capacity and willingness to be sort of self-reflective about yeah particular trends that may have gone too far and have diminished the

viewing experience for fans and so I think if you're able to, you know, we'll have to see him do it. But if he is able to sort of marry those two perspectives to give recommendations, I think that that, you know, that's a really valuable point of view to have when you're trying to balance a lot of competing interests, because sometimes what fans want to see and sometimes what teams want to do don't line up with one another right they might be in direct conflict and so having someone who is able to sort of sort through and prioritize that stuff not by himself and certainly not always successfully i would imagine but who comes to it with that perspective i think is really valuable you know we've talked before about how i think that Manfred's instinct to tinker sometimes gets a worse rap than it necessarily deserves because, you know, you want to address problems within the sport before they become real issues. But I do

think that even though in the past my sort of tolerance level for that was perhaps higher than other people's, he does sort of have a tendency to like throw spaghetti at the wall and be like let's see what sticks and also i have made a mess with this spaghetti right okay yeah i love that i made it manfred like deeply italian in that moment um i'm allowed i'm also italian it's a mess it's a baseball um i'm great i wish rob Rob Edford spoke like that. That would make some of the things he says more fun. Yeah, but sometimes the tinkering causes a lot of unnecessary consternation. And sometimes it is clear that the tinkering is mostly, if not solely geared for just making baseball a ton shorter than it is. And so I appreciate that there are going to be, you know,

other perspectives that are perhaps a bit more, that have recently been a bit closer to the field, but also are aware of what effect what has happened on the field might have on the people in the stands. So we will be optimistic this will be a a good development and um i look forward to i hope that we get the opportunity to hear more from theo about sort of how his thinking on the aesthetic side has changed and how it continues to change and how he is prioritizing the various competing interests that are present in those conversations as he is confronted with potential real changes. and sort of deep conversation around that stuff rather than it being one line item on the commissioner's list of 40 things that he has to deal with in any given moment would be valuable to kind of how we talk about this stuff in the game.

So be the aesthetics discourse you want to see in the world, Theo. Like you, I was not so much against Manfred initially when he was hired entertaining these ideas or paying lip service to the fact that baseball doesn't have to stay the same forever. And I think some of the experiments in the minor leagues or in partner leagues have been worthwhile. But my confidence has eroded over the years, not just because of the bad PR that he has delivered in other ways, but because even when it comes to changes on the field, I'm not sure that he has the best handle of what the effects would be or what you actually have to do to change things because he always seems to bring up banning the shift as a possibility.

And I'm not saying you can't consider that or that there's no argument for that, but it just does not seem like the thing that would most directly address what people view as a problem. And so that makes me less confident that he understands the mechanics of it all and what the ramifications of that would be, or the comments that he made about the behavior of the ball and sort of denying that the ball had changed, which, frankly, that may have just been trying to avoid some sort of scandal.

I don't know whether he believed those things or whether he was just offering those excuses and justifications, but all I'm saying is I trust Theo Epstein much more than Rob Manfred to actually understand how baseball works on the field as opposed to as a business, which I'm sure Theo also understands pretty well. But yeah, the comments that Epstein has made, you referenced one when he left the Cubs. He said, there's some threats to it, it being baseball, because of the way the game is evolving. I take some responsibility for that. Executives like me, who have spent a lot of time using analytics and other measures to try to optimize individual and team performance, have unwittingly, not always unwittingly, I would say, but had a negative

impact on the aesthetic value of the game and the entertainment value of the game in some respects. And yeah, when you're running a team, that's just not going to be your primary concern. You might lament that the moves that you're making are having a certain effect, but your allegiance is to your owner who's your boss or to the fans. They want you to win, and winning is not always really compatible with providing a more fan-friendly experience, at least when it comes to balls and play and all that sort of thing. So this is like when you hire a hacker as like a white hat hacker, right? Like someone who breaks your system and can realize where your security risks are and you hire that person to work for you, to inoculate you against those risks and protect you against other hackers. That's what Theo Epstein is here. They're bringing in someone

who has helped break baseball to try to fix it. And I think that's really smart. And clearly, he is a sabermetric sort of GM who has helped popularize that way of operating in the three true outcome style. And he's been pretty consistent over the years. I was just reading some old quotes that Sahad of Sharma collected in his piece at The Athletic, like when someone asked Epstein last season if he prefers a contact-oriented offense, he said, to win games or aesthetically. So clearly he understands that those things are different at times. And he said, I personally think the best version of baseball involves more balls in play, quick action, more action, more people involved in the game, more doubles, more triples, more stolen bases, that type of thing. Fans not having to wait around four minutes for a ball in play. We all grew up in the game with more balls in play, more action. I think that's something league wide that we can get back to down the line. and play more action, I think that's something league-wide that we can get back to down the line.

And he said if we can find a way to restore the significant, almost primary role of starting pitchers in the game and they can become well-known stars again, that would be a great opportunity for growth and bringing back the art of pitching as a starter where you have to conserve and try to manage your way through a lineup at least three times, try to pitch seven or maybe even eight or heaven heaven forbid, nine. I think that would make the game better in a lot of ways, maybe not ultimately more efficient from a club perspective, but better. So now they're letting him loose, and we'll see if he can come up with ways to do that that will be palatable to the parties involved. And I know not everyone agrees that these are problems that really urgently need to be fixed. But like you hear a lot of people say that this is a problem, that there are too many strikeouts, that there are not enough balls in play.

You don't really hear anyone arguing the other side. So not everyone agrees that strikeouts are such an epidemic, but no one's really out there arguing we need more strikeouts. We need fewer balls in play so i think the weight is clearly on one side here and we can disagree about just like how existential an issue this is but it's also just becomes such a part of the narrative of the sport like yeah when you follow baseball you can hardly go a game or read an article without hearing about this and someone lamenting it and bemoaning oh baseball and strikeouts and all of that. Even if you personally don't think it's such a huge issue, it'd be nice not to have that

be the story that everyone tells about baseball. It'd be nice if people said baseball is fun and exciting, not that it used to be more fun and exciting and it's getting less fun and exciting. So even just to change the narrative, it would be nice to do something. And I think that it's easy to disagree about what would be the most effective solution, but I think it's relatively easy to say what would be an effective solution.

I think a big part of the problem is that there's so many different options, so many ways that you could address this that we get bogged down in talking about like which one to do first or which makes the most sense and you do have to figure that out but i don't think it's that hard to figure out how to reverse some of these trends like we don't have to get into this full discussion now because we've had it before and i'm sure we'll have it again but like it is not impenetrable like if you want to figure out how to get more balls in play or fewer home runs or whatever like

it's not something you have to go to the oracle and read the tea leaves like we've seen baseball look like that we know what has changed we know what could change to make these things different we know the strike zone has expanded we know spin rates are on the rise. We know pitch selection and location have probably improved. We know fresh relievers are constantly coming into the game. We know pitchers are throwing much harder and the distance to the plate is still the same or even smaller because the pitchers are taller

than they used to be and release the ball closer to home. We know batters are incentivized to swing for the fences because the ball is juiced. There are concrete complementary steps that can be taken to address these issues. So yeah, there could be unintended consequences with certain changes, but like a lot of them I think are pretty simple, you know, just like dead in the baseball or people talk about shrinking the strike zone. i guess people argue about well is that going to cause more walks and i think it's been argued pretty compellingly by tom tango that it might cause more walks in the short term but then eventually that would stabilize and pitchers

will start throwing strikes again and hitters won't miss those pitches as much because they won't have as much of a strike zone to cover. So you could limit the number of pitchers used. You could thicken the bat handles. We could go on and on. We could talk about the mound, lowering the mound, moving the mound back, which has been one of my pet issues, and people will debate whether moving the mound back will actually help hitters or will help pitchers. Well, we should study that and figure it out. I'm just saying there are a lot of options out there. I think we know that a lot of them would work and have the attended effect such as deadening the ball so i think you just have to empower a person to do that and maybe someone with the standing

of theo epstein could be the person to get those things done yeah i think if just try some stuff try some stuff that we know has worked. Say, I'm trying this stuff. This is the stuff we are trying so that no one's sitting there going like, what's going on with the ball? We can never possibly know its identity. It is going through a lifetime of trying to find itself. Just say, here are some things we're going to try.

Let's see what they do. Here's what they've done in the past. Here's what we think they'll do. We're going to give them a shot because this is the outcome we want and go do them and i get to say it's really easy because i don't have to deal with any of it except to say go do it but yeah go do it you're right like this isn't rocket science even though there is a an absurd amount of rocket science involved in baseball now like just try some stuff say what that stuff is and what you think it's gonna do and then go do it yeah like to do and then do it.

Yeah. Some of them are just easy. I mean, come on, pitch clock, things that are just out there that are simple that have been tried. You've had the Atlantic League to test certain things. I just don't think this is an impossible problem. And Craig Edwards wrote a good post about this last month at Fangraphs where he proposed just a couple easy ways and his solutions were shrinking the strike zone, deadening the ball. I just, I don't know that anyone would disagree with that. And someone's just got to do it and convince everyone to do it and convince people that it's important because we've been talking about these things for years and years. I'm sick of talking about these trends and tracking the skyrocketing strikeout rate every single year. They've had plenty of time to do something, and they've done almost nothing, despite the fact that there have been pretty dramatic changes

in the game in a way that I think the consensuses are probably not great. So at some point, you have to intervene because it just does not seem like a self-correcting issue. It's not going to fix itself. And maybe this is a concrete step toward taking some sort of step. And I am also curious about what this means for Theo's future. Because can you imagine if after breaking the Red Sox, quote unquote, curse, the Cubs, quote unquote, curse, he comes in and fixes baseball too. Like he just fixes the sport. I mean, he's already a Hall of Famer, I think, just for what he did

in Boston and Chicago. But if he now fixes the sport for everyone, not just for Red Sox fans and Cubs fans, but he just like figures out what is broken about baseball and solves those problems, you know, you could put him on a pedestal. He'll be up there with like the absolute formative figures of the game if he manages to do that. And this is just a part-time consulting role and it may not be permanent. It might be brief. He might get a great offer somewhere else. Like, you know, maybe he wants to own a team. He can pretty much do whatever he wants at this point, like inside or outside of baseball. Frankly, I think we're all lucky if he decides to stay in baseball because he might just be able to go do something else if he wanted to.

He's sort of a crossover figure to the extent that baseball executives can be. But if I were Manfred, maybe I'd be a little nervous. Like, hey, if I invite Theo Epstein in here, am I hiring my potential replacement? I think we would all kind of like to see Theo Epstein be the commissioner of baseball. I don't know whether Theo Epstein wants to do that or whether he wants to do something more lucrative or something completely different, but he had his pick of some pretty appealing jobs after he left the Cubs, and he turned those down in the short run. So it does seem like he wanted to do something different, and this is different. Even if this is just a stopgap, I'm glad that it's happening.

I want to see the self-reflective and sort of introspective tendency that he hinted at put into action right we need to see it in action i am trying to balance my faith in many of the people i have talked to who work for the league who seem to care very much about baseball as a game and want to see it thrive with my enduring skepticism of the current commissioner so i I am going to, I guess I will call myself cautiously optimistic, and I look forward to seeing this play out and see how it goes, because I think that, as you said, Theo might decide to go do other stuff. Theo might be, you know, like, Theo has indicated that some of the aesthetic

changes to the game are not to his liking he also like helped make those aesthetic changes right so we have to see him course correct in in actuality and i know you're not suggesting otherwise but we have to see him course correct in a way that's meaningful and so and i i also know that rob manfred seems to enjoy being involved let's put it that way he enjoys being involved and so we'll we'll have to see what ceo both is inclined to do and is able to do but yes this seems like a step in the right direction and if we do manage to see some of the issues that have sort of plagued baseball and made it a less fun experience for the people who watch it get sort of shifted in, I didn't even mean to do that, Ben.

That wasn't intentional at all, but moved in a positive direction, then yeah, I think that that will become a significant part of his legacy as a baseball executive type. And so I hope that that happens because it would be, in addition to being nice sort of in itself, I think that there are a lot

of very sort of hard-nosed efficiency types in front offices who are just not inclined to necessarily be persuaded by fans or, you know, like internet baseball types. And I think that he might be positioned to have a conversation that I wish they were more open to with other people, but might be inclined to be open to when it comes to him because he, I don't know that he was a hard-nosed efficiency type, but he had moments, put it that way. that he was a hard-nosed efficiency type, but he had moments, put it that way. And so I think that he might be an important – he has the potential to be an important go-between

between a couple of constituencies that are not necessarily inclined to talk with one another in a productive way. Yeah. This role as it's being described, and we'll see what it looks like in practice, but on paper, I think it sounds like what people think the commissioner is, but the commissioner is not actually. Like this benevolent figure who is looking out for the best interests of baseball and just trying to make it better for fans. That is not what the commissioner is. It's really not what the commissioner has ever been. I mean, in some cases, in some instances, it was. But certainly in the Selig

and after era, it has not really been that. And, you know, Bud Selig liked baseball, I think. But he also liked money and owners. He was one. And Rob Manfred works for the owners. And would he like baseball to be a better, more entertaining product, if only so that it becomes a more lucrative product? Yes, probably. I would think so. But I don't know that that's his primary motivation. And so what Theo is being tasked with here is sort of a best interests of baseball type figure who, at least in theory, is not there to just make people more money or get a bigger broadcast deal, although maybe Manfred is hoping that that will be one of the outgrowths of this. But I'm not saying that Theo is just like a man of the people and he is just the fan in the stands,

although he has been known to sit in the stands at times at games. But in theory, at least, he should be freed from some of those economic concerns. That should not be his problem. He should just be making recommendations that really are in the best interest of baseball. And then we'll see

whether any of those recommendations are adopted or whether they're able to be implemented. That's a bit different. But just the fact that there is someone whose job this is, is reassuring to me and that it's someone who's proved as competent and capable in other areas as Theo. Because like when the Rangers hired Chris Young as GM, we were sort of lamenting that, oh, he seemed like someone who had good ideas about baseball and was willing to maybe change things and then decided to work for a team instead of continuing to work at the commissioner's office, well, now you have Theo.

So here's hoping that this actually makes a difference and that someday we have to chisel him onto baseball Mount Rushmore because not only did he save the Red Sox and Cubs, he saved the sport. Put his face on a bag of milk already. Also, I saw in Sahadev's article that he wrote, a source close to the situation said the idea of working in pajamas appealed to him. So Theo, welcome. Welcome to Team Pajama.

I guess every team plays in pajamas, but not the GMs. No, I have become Team Juit or sweatsuit. And I know that the number of times that I have to leave my house, even when we don't have a global pandemic, is small compared to your average person. But there will come a time when culturally our expectations of what we all look like will return to something resembling normal. And then I hope we all just say no thank you i would prefer to be comfortable remember when we were all comfortable and it was the only thing that saved us from anxiety breakdowns what if we did that all the time because fancy clothes are not good a lot not i had to wear a suits for so much of my early 20s

Ben yeah a lot of the time when I had to wear a suit it was like in case in case a Client came to the trading floor and I was like I am Uncomfortable every day of my professional life in case what a ridiculous thing It was not the reason that I left finance but it was not a thing i was sad to see go no just oh that's even worse that it's a hypothetical it's like you probably don't even need to be wearing the suit it's just maybe in some circumstances i would need this suit yeah yeah and heels i mean people people should wear the stuff they like to be clear if you feel comfortable and confident in that then you know that's great you should do that but i'm just saying our societal expectations should be kinder than they are that could

encompass all manner of things yeah all right maybe we can close with one email here this is something that i think i've heard you touch on before so maybe you'll have some perspective on this this is from j Jacob, who says, under the new fan plan, it seems like fans will sit in pods like last year with those they are attending with, but where does this leave fans who go to the ballpark alone? Now they will have to sit by themselves, separated by a lot of space, and everyone watching on TV will know they don't have anyone to go with. So my question is, what would you recommend for a solo watcher to make the experience less sad aesthetically and experientially? So I think that your experience in the ballpark actually will be fine.

And I say that as someone who at times enjoys going to games alone and has done so largely at a ballpark of a not very good team where you are prone to having a lot of space around you which candidly is like part of the delight you're like oh yeah kick my feet up it's like i live here it's my living room so i think that your experience in ballpark will actually be fine and people will be forgiving of it because the whole thing is going to be strange when we first get back and you know you're gonna people are gonna be grateful to be spaced out i think in large part because even if you are a person who finds yourself i'm trying to say this with very little judgment because i actually don't want to imbue it with judgment

so i hope that i pass my own threshold when i am about to do this. I think that even if you are a person who is like, I am comfortable with the safety protocols as they are currently constituted because I'm going to be outside and I'm going to be socially distanced and I'm only going to be with people in my immediate household. And so going to the ballpark might strike me as not being that different as, say, outdoor dining in a place that is thoughtfully laid out. I think you will still be, in order to maintain that perception of your experience, you will be grateful for distance. And so solo attendees will afford just more room for you. You will be far from just one person. And so sometimes you'll be farther than is necessary from that one person

because they'll have to, I assume, still have seats around them. They're not going to be forced to buy four seats, are they? I would hope not. I would hope not. I guess that that's a possibility. But we'll assume for the moment that you can just buy a solo seat. So I think that your experience in ballpark will be fine. You'll be far away from people, ideally,

but you'll feel a collegiality in your distance. The place where you got to watch out is that I suspect that broadcasts will be inclined to find the solo attendees, and they will be much easier to spot because you won't have people around you. You know, when I go to games by myself, I just said that I go to games that are less well attended, but I typically will have like a person or two around me, sometimes a lot of people. Sometimes it might look like I'm actually attending with other people. Sometimes it might look like,

oh, the person I came to the ballpark with, they're just off getting a beer or a hot dog. But it's going to be very obvious that you are alone yeah probably i would hope they will restrain themselves from uh poking fun at people look at this loser sitting by himself at a baseball game imagine i don't know that it'll be that but i think that what will happen is you will just you'll be exposed you will will not have the benefit of other people around you diffusing the attention. And so. If you're picking your nose or something. Yeah.

It'll be more noticeable. Yeah. That's a very, that's a much briefer way to say what I was about to, which is that it's going to be really important that you not pick your nose. It's going to be really important that you not have stuff on your face, you know, like don't, or that you spill, don't spill mustard. Don't, if you spill mustard, you're really in trouble, I think. So I think that what I would say is that you are likely to just be fine in the ballpark. Don't worry about it. If anyone's giving you grief, you can just say,

I really wanted to come, but I wanted to be safe. And what are they going to do? Be mean to you because you're trying to not spread a potentially deadly disease? No, that's a nice thing. That's you looking out for your community. But you got to be careful of TV. Just remember that we have decided that public life should exist as if it is in a panopticon and that you might be observed at any given moment. Yeah, or you could try to put TV out of your mind. If you're on camera,

you won't necessarily know about it unless you're a meme and you go viral and people start texting you about it. But otherwise you might be blissfully oblivious to it and that would be fine too. So I would suggest for Jacob, I mean, he's saying everyone on TV will know they don't have anyone to go with. Well, maybe they chose not to go with someone, whether for safety reasons or just because they're comfortable being alone.

I'm pretty comfortable being alone, maybe because I'm an only child. So I wouldn't necessarily think of it as I am a lesser person because I am unaccompanied right now. We can enjoy things in solitude. Some things are best enjoyed in solitude, maybe not baseball. Going to a baseball game is a communal experience and going with friends can be a fun time. I would also say that one thing you could do, at least in the short term, is just not go because it might be safer. So if you're on the fence about this, you could just sit this one out. You don't have to go. Or maybe you will look like a responsible person because

you're going by yourself and you're sitting with plenty of empty space around you and you're adhering to social distancing guidelines, right? Like if you feel that you need to justify it and that you need an excuse, you could always say, oh yeah, I'm just being responsible. I don't want to infect anyone. I don't want to get infected. So I still want to experience baseball, but hey, there's still a pandemic. So that would be an out for you, but I would encourage you not to think of it that way. It depends which way you're wired. And if you're someone who just really likes being around people all the time and you're an extrovert, then you may feel that you're missing out on something when you're not around people. And that's okay, too. interview someone, not so much as a spectator, but I wouldn't mind doing that. I've certainly gone to movies by myself when we used to go to movies. So I would encourage people to just look

at it as a different way, but not an inferior way that you necessarily need an excuse for. Yeah. To be clear, staying home, always a really excellent option in the midst of a global pandemic. Also, I think that you're going to find a lot of people very sympathetic to the like staying home always a really excellent option in the midst of a global pandemic also i think that you're gonna find a lot of people very sympathetic to the instinct to be like i just gotta i gotta go be alone somewhere because i think a lot of people have not even people who previously didn't appreciate the sort of need for time to oneself to recharge are really keenly aware of how much time they are spending with people who they love and consider dear, but who they've just seen a lot of over the last year. So I think that everyone is

going to be like, oh yeah, I get it. You want to go take three hours to sit outside and watch a game without your, especially parents, without your children around. I mean, I'm sure your kids are great, but they have to be making you crazy. So I think people are going to be largely sympathetic to that. Just don't pick your nose and don't put mustard on your shirt and you're probably going to be golden. Yeah. Just imagine that you're Arnold Hano or you're Roger Angel and you're going there to observe. Yeah. Just spend that time in quiet contemplation of the majesty of the sport. It's been a while since you've been at a ballpark. Just drink it in. Just use all of your senses instead of speaking and listening.

You can just pay attention to what is going on around you. Take a stroll around the park. View the game from different vantage points. You can pretend to be a scout and avoid the cameras at the same time. Keep score if that's something that you do. Look at MLB game day while you're watching the game and see if you can pick up the pitches. Like whatever kind of close observation you might not do

if you're just kind of chatting with your friends while you're watching the game, which is also a perfectly fine way to watch the game. But there are ways that you can pay attention to things if you're by yourself and it's kind of quiet. So just do a close reading of the baseball game in a way that you might not be able to otherwise. Yeah, I think that that's all a great approach. And I promise that if I notice you on a broadcast and include you in a piece at Fangraphs, that whatever commentary i have on it will not include you being there by yourself yeah and maybe don't wear pajamas i guess if you don't want to be on tv but do if you want to be comfortable sure it's fine yeah and whatever that balance is we will

leave to you to decide for yourself exactly yeah all right well we hope that you all have a wonderful long weekend and we will be back, as always, early next week. That will do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. After Meg and I finished speaking, the Yankees also signed Corey Kluber to a one-year $11 million deal. So the Yankees had themselves a day. I have no idea what Kluber has left in the tank after he missed most of the past two seasons, but presumably the Yankees had themselves a day. I have no idea what Kluber has left in the tank after he missed most of the past two seasons, but presumably the Yankees do. Evidently, Kluber looked okay at a showcase earlier this week,

and the Yankees should have some special insight into the state of his shoulder because their director of player health and performance, Eric Cressy, has been helping Kluber with his rehab. So while it's not totally true that there are no bad one-year contracts, it's kind of true if you're the Yankees. Kluber, by the way, is another guy I saw a bunch of people speculating might be a good fit for the Blue Jays. So there's another name off the board. And before I bid you goodbye, just wanted to wish a happy 72nd birthday to Bobby Grich. His birthday was on Friday, and he had a lot in common with DJ LeMayhew, except he was way better. And I don't mean that as a slight

against LeMayhew. I just mean that Gritch was a Hall of Famer who was not in the Hall of Fame. There are some similarities, though. Two guys who were primarily second basemen but could play all over the infield were big by the standards of their era and their position, right-handed hitters. But my fan graphs were LeMayhew's best season so far would be tied with Gritch's sixth best season. Listener Alex in our Facebook group pointed out that if LeMayhew averaged eight Fangraphs War a year for his six-year contract, he'll still be short of Gritch's career Fangraphs War. Gritch has the highest war total or Jaws total of any second baseman who is not in the Hall of Fame, and he has not been eligible

for induction in a small committee since 1994. So he's not the only second-based snub who comes up often. Lou Whitaker, of course, is often mentioned in that category too. But Bobby Gritch, boy, what a player. Just would have helped him if he won batting titles like LeMahieu does, because Gritch never even hit.300 over a full season. He did in the strike season of 1981, but he struck out more than LeMayhew does today. And that was 30, 40 years ago, even 50 years ago was when Grich debuted. So he was a high strikeout, low average hitter for his day, but he walked a lot and he hit for some power and he was a good defender, great on base guy, higher career on base percentage than DJ LeMayhew by 14

points despite not having played in Coors Field and having gone through a decline phase, although he didn't really decline very precipitously. And he had those high OEPs even with low batting averages. So no knock on LeMayhew, whom we praised at the beginning of this episode. Just a general Bobby Gritch appreciation. I hope he gets another shot at the Hall. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast

going and get themselves some perks. Michael Rower, Ian Leidner, Jake Silverman, Parashar Bisset, and Joe Mielenhausen. Thanks to all of you. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments

coming for me and Meg via email at podcastfangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance, and we will talk to you soon.