Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1651: Split Decision

Episode Date: February 4, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley recap the Rockies’ press conference about the Nolan Arenado trade and GM Jeff Bridich claiming the belt as the game’s most-maligned GM, then discuss Angels pitching coach Mickey Callaway’s suspension and Andrelton Simmons’ comments about his mental state in 2020, analyze the Twins re-signing Nelson Cruz and signing Alex Colomé, […]

I thought you were mine You thought we were all in this human I know we're just sharing I know we're all in this one I didn't think you'd stay I was thinking I want you all to myself Two hundred words getting the word out I didn't think you'd stay

Hello and welcome to episode 1651 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello Meg. Hello. You know, there are relationships in our human existence that do last forever, but we're human beings in a business where sometimes relationships don't last forever and commitments don't last forever. But we're here together today, and I hope that will be the case for the foreseeable future. I wonder if at any point in that answer, he thought to himself, oh no,

I have wandered off the path. I am outside the bounds of what I hoped to do, but then just thought, nah, fuck it. Yeah, I would hope that he thought that at multiple points in that response and just tried to hack his way out of that thicket and couldn't quite clear it. I am, of course, quoting Rocky's GM, Jeff Breidich, who, along with Rockies owner Dick Monfort, held a press conference on Tuesday and did not cover themselves in glory. It's a tough assignment, difficult situation to face the media, face the fans after trading a face of the franchise. after trading a face of the franchise but i would not say they did anything to disbuse anyone of the notion that the rockies are somewhat dysfunctional and don't necessarily know what they're doing uh yeah i i would tend to agree with that i think the only there there was a brief moment at the

beginning of this where i thought to myself you know it's it's like a it's a good thing that digman efforts out there like so often when trades like this happen the front office is sort of left on its own to answer the questions of the press and like we don't need to feel overly sorry for them that's part of their job right when you're a general manager you expect to get tough questions and i think you especially anticipate those questions coming your way when you've traded someone like Nolan Aronado for the right to pay another team for him to play against you. Right. Ben, I'm never going to fully recover from this deal. It will remain. Anyway, so often they're

left out there to sort of fend for themselves. And the particulars of any given transaction are absolutely shaped by what the front office can manage. But they are often done at the behest of ownership, right? Whenever you're moving big payroll or you're moving a franchise icon or you're doing both things at once, that is not a decision that a front office person makes on their own right like you know dick didn't wake up and be like we did what now so um i don't think that's what he sounds like at all but apparently that's what my mouth chose to do in this moment so it was good i thought oh he's up there he's gonna he's gonna own this with the front office But then they started to talk, Ben. Yeah. Yeah.

It quickly got out of hand, I think it's safe for us to say. Yeah. Not since Harvard grad Bennett misspelled limousine on Keisha's season of The Bachelorette has a Harvard degree looked less prestigious than it did. Someone said to me Harvard should sue him just for making that degree look less impressive because yeah, the human existence quote, that was one that really got around. But there were other quotes that maybe were less amusing, but maybe just as concerning, if not more concerning. I think the consistent pattern with the Rockies just seems to be that they're either in denial about the team's talents and outlook or just have done a poor job of assessing it because that's been a pretty consistent thing with them. And Montfort was saying, you know, he said, we have an extremely talented team.

They're built to compete. It is time for them to take the next step. He said maybe nobody on this call would believe this. So at least he has some is time for them to take the next step. He said maybe nobody on this call would believe this, so at least he has some awareness that he's going against the grain here. But I truly believe in my heart that this is a very talented team. It underperformed the last couple of years. Losing Nolan doesn't help, but I think we have the nucleus of players to get us where we want to be. And there is a nucleus there. There is talent there. But he seems to always think that the team is underperforming rather than just being bad. Like this is something that he said coming into 2020 prior to the pandemic. He predicted that the team would win 94 games. And I'm still not entirely sure if that was completely serious or somewhat tongue in cheek. completely serious or somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but there was just no real sign that the Rockies had underperformed in 2019 or that they did in 2020. It's not like they had some vastly superior

Pythagorean record or something like that, or that they had a historic number of injuries or some other factor that would lead you to believe that they were way better than they showed. I don't know that they did that. And so to come out and say, well, we suck now, no one watch us, that wouldn't be great either. But maybe just to acknowledge that there is a lot of work that needs to be done here as opposed to just, well, we've got everything we need to win now. And Breidich said that they're not in a rebuild. It's kind of depressing when an executive comes out and says, we are in a rebuild. We are tearing down. In a lot of ways, the things that we criticize the

Rockies for doing are maybe good in the greater landscape, like spending on free agents that teams no longer spend on because they tend to be bad bets. The Rockies were the rubes, but they were the ones who were actually spending on those middle tier free agents and spending more than they got back but that's the kind of thing where you know if every team is super efficient and never makes mistakes then we get a very slow and frozen free agent market so in a way like the Rockies are still out there operating as if it's a decade or two ago and maybe baseball would be better off if there were more teams like the Rockies, but they really do sort of meaningful wins that creep you closer to the postseason. But I don't think anyone's expectation is that spending on its own is

sufficient. It needs to be married with sort of a useful plan. And I think that the thing that sort of animates our plea for, say, the raise to spend more money is that they so clearly have a a vision they have good player development staff they draft well they their front office is well staffed with folks who know what they're doing and that kind of plan married with a real and meaningful payroll you're like wow the potential for this team to just be incredible is so high and so i don't think that any you know you got to do multiple things at once. But yeah, this all read is like the same problem that the Rockies have had for a long time, which is that they just really don't seem to have a great sense of where they are in

the cycle of competition and how close they are at any given moment to either being really good or really bad. And, you know, I guess in fairness to to them, maybe the internal conversations, I imagine that the internal conversations around this stuff are more specific, but to have this so consistently be the way that the team projects publicly and then to have the results that they have on the field, it's hard to give them the benefit of the doubt that they had a really good plan and somebody got hurt or they underperformed. It's like, well, maybe you just don't really know what you're up to can i tell you my favorite least

favorite quote from this sure this is from this is from ownership on the structure of the deal there were many deals that made no sense and to be quite honest there were 10 times over the last two weeks where i didn't think the St. Louis deal made any sense. Yeah. And I think that one of the best parts about the Rockies is just how committed they are to reminding you that they had a really long time to think about making a bad choice. Yeah. Which came up several times in this press conference that this has been the result of years of work and months of of potential trade activity and soul searching. And it's like, but at no point in that process where you're like, you know, it would be fun.

I'm a Nolan Arenado on our baseball team. What if we just did that? It's convenient. We've already got him here. Yeah, we talked yesterday about how they were kind of in this situation that they helped create where he was sick of being on this team. He's feuding with the front office. He had made it clear that he was going to opt out, and they could have kept him for 2021 anyway and taken the draft pick and had another year of Arnauto rather than pay him to play for another team and get back some prospects who are not believed to be extremely promising,

although prospects can surprise you. So it's a product of a long line of dubious decisions. So this is just the latest in the chain. And I don't know that there was a great option for them with this particular player at this particular time, but it's just not going to look good. There's no way to really put a positive spin on it. So was there another quote you wanted to mention, or was that your favorite and least favorite combined? That was my favorite, least favorite combined. And to add some context to this, if folks have not had the chance to read, we got some additional contract details around this, and Ben Clemens wrote those up for us at fan graphs and uh i just want to i just i'm

just going to read this paragraph i'm just going to read the whole thing as jeff jones reported arenado agreed to modify his contract as part of the trade in 2021 he was due 35 million dollars now he'll receive 15 million dollars this year paid directly by the rockies he'll also receive 20 million in deferred compensation regardless of whether or not he opts out. If he's still under this contract, that money will be sent to the Cardinals, who will then pay it to Arenado. If he opts out, the Rockies will pay him the $20 million directly.

Finally, if Arenado doesn't opt out, the Rockies will be on the hook for the $16 million he's due in 2027. That's the new year that the Cardinals agreed to as part of the trade, and while it's unclear exactly why the Rockies chose to pay that part rather than some prorated portion of earlier salaries, here we are. I just think we should underscore one more time that regardless of Arenado's opt-out decision, the Cardinals will pay him $0 for his services in 2021, which is not to suggest he will be paid $0, but simply that the Cardinals will not pay those $0.

I don't know. I imagine, Ben, that this money probably still affects the Cardinals' competitive balance tax number because otherwise this would be a really bad loophole for the league to present to teams, but still not actually paying him that money.

Yeah. Chef's kiss. I think that's why that quote really stood out to me because you just sit there and you're like, but this seems like the sort of thing that should have thrown red flags several times before it was executed. So anyway. Yeah. You know the saying about how there's one main character

on Twitter each day and the goal is not to be that character? Yes. And the Rockies were kind of that character on baseball Twitter on Tuesday. But more broadly, I feel like there's always one GM or one front office that's kind of the butt of everyone's jokes. It's just like the punchline GM. And the goal is not to be that person, probably. But that character is often fun for the rest of us. And I've worried that we would lose it. It's not fun for the fans of that team, but it's kind of handy to just have the default GM or front office that everyone knows is behind the times or is not operating in an intelligent way. And so you can just kind of

make easy jokes at their expense. Maybe it's too easy. And sometimes it's slightly unfair. And sometimes those reputations can change. But there's always been someone who's in that position or multiple someones. And there are definitely a lot fewer of them than there used to be because the most Luddite front office of 2021 is ahead of the most advanced front office of, I don't know, 15 years ago. So it's not like anyone has no R&D department or pays no attention to sabermetrics or whatever. But because so many GMs come from the same backgrounds, from the brightish background, frankly, and because they all seem to operate in similar ways

and evaluate players in similar ways, like, they're all just kind of boring these days. Like, they don't really make that many quotes that make you go, what? And everyone retweets it and makes fun of it. Like, this human existence quote, this is red meat, and maybe it's just someone misspeaking,

but we just, we haven't had a lot of this kind of character and i'm glad that the species is not extinct that even though everyone is just you know parroting the same lines about financial flexibility or whatever and taking the same approach to player evaluation like there is at least the rockies who are doing something different and not afraid to say so really just not afraid to say so at the end of this monfort was like he was asked at one point if he'd consider selling the team right and here i'm quoting from emma bachelorette wrote a really nice little write-up of this bizarre moment in uh in rocky's history you'd like that monfort quipped wouldn't you he smiled to show that he was joking but then again was he yeah at least

he has a sense of humor about it i guess but i guess yeah mark krig who wrote a blistering column about this he tweeted i struggle to find a comparison to what i just saw in this rocky's conference call and i covered the wilpon aram mets and that's sort of what i'm talking about like we don't have the wilpon era mets anymore which is not to say that the mets are free of dysfunction but they are not dysfunctional in the same way that the wilpons were like the wilpons you could joke about and as long as you weren't a mets fan and then the wilpons go away joke about as long as you weren't a Mets fan. And then the Wilpons go away and they're replaced by a hedge fund guy. And that's not so much fun to make fun of anymore.

And so at least we have the Rockies. So that's something. Yeah, it's something. But I'm sorry, Rockies fans. I know that I will bring up this deal like a lot of times. A lot of times long after it is relevant because I still struggle to understand it. And some of you are going to say in our iTunes reviews, Meg, cut it out already. And I'm here to tell you, you will not be wrong, but I think I will be unable to restrain

myself. So we have a bunch of transactions and news to talk about. I have a stat blast to share. Do you have anything to say about the Mickey Calloway situation or should we just refer former Cleveland pitching coach, former Mets manager, has reportedly behaved in similarly lewd and inappropriate and offensive ways, both in person and via text and via email with several female reporters over the course of several years with all of the teams that have employed him as a coach or manager. This was reported by The Athletic, and he has subsequently been suspended pending an investigation. I don't know. I feel like I should have more to say about each of these, because I don't want to discount the bravery of the women who came forward with their story, but I think that it just continues to underscore some of the institutional changes that the league needs to take seriously in order to ensure a safe

and respectful working environment for all the people who work in baseball, including media members. I think the part of this that is the most disturbing is how widespread an issue this appears to have been, such that it was a thing that multiple people have said they were warned about when it came to Callaway, when he would pick up and go to a new stop. I still remain kind of confused as to why it took 18 hours for the Angels to announce they were going to suspend him if that's what they were going to do. And so, yeah, I don't really have a whole lot to add. I thought Ginny Sorrell wrote a really good piece about it at Baseball Perspectives. So I'd encourage folks to check that out because she laid out the case for this as an institutional problem in a way that I think was really smart and compelling. But, you know, it continues to be just a disheartening bummer that we have these so frequently and that the response to them seems to be female media members.

And I say that because that's been the trend, although I don't mean to say that this kind of harassment is limited to women. But for female media members to sort of trot out the trauma that they've experienced at work as a way of validating that this happens. And I feel like we should probably be past that part of the conversation, but we don't seem to be. So it's disheartening. But I think that I need to figure out a better way to talk about it because I am skeptical that we are done with these sorts of revelations. And I, like I said, I don't want to sort of discount them because I think that bringing them to light does take a lot of bravery and it is done even when it's done anonymously with the potential for great personal cost so i hope that the angels conclude their investigation swiftly

because i don't know what kind of what possible exculpatory evidence they could discover in the course of that investigation i i would love to know what clause in Callaway's contract puts him sort of in a position where his denial of these is sufficient for him to not be fired. So I think that I would just hope that it's something that is taken to heart and that the way that we address it is not simply for other members of the media and other folks working in baseball to have a keener eye for this stuff and a more ready instinct to intervene, but that the league thinks really long and hard about what kind of workplace it's cultivating and how the peculiarities of that workplace might leave it vulnerable to people who know that they have sort of a better position of power and authority than

some of the people that they're in contact with and exploit that for their own nefarious purposes and at the expense of others. So I think that's what I would say. I said I didn't have anything to say and then I talked for like five minutes. So I am still myself, but I hope that we do better around these questions in the future and not simply because I never need to see another shirtless picture of Mickey Calloway ever again. Yeah, there was a contrast in the team response here in that Jared Porter was fired early

the next morning after the reports about him came out. And in this case, it took the Angels a while longer to suspend him. And then there will be this investigation. And I'm not a labor lawyer, but from what I understand, they are doing this investigation essentially so that they can fire him and not have to pay him and maybe also protect themselves from getting sued. And remember, the Angels were just recently sued by Brian Harkins, the visiting clubhouse attendant they fired pretty abruptly last March. I don't think they have to do an investigation in order to fire him. Coaches get fired all the time. You

can fire them for whatever reason you want to, I think. But in this case, if they want to get out of the rest of his contract, I think they have to fire him for cause. And because he is disputing the allegations, which I think Jared Porter didn't do to the team after some initial dissembling to ESPN, then there has to be some investigation done there. So you could say that, well, it would be a stronger statement if they just fired him right away and didn't worry about the money. You could also say, well, it would be good to deprive him of further earnings, which seems like a nice thing for him not to just get paid unemployment for a while as well. I don't know what the angel's motivations are exactly here. The response

maybe could have been swifter. Obviously, in a case like this, I would have been fine with them firing him right away. But in principle, I don't think it's a terrible thing to suspend someone and do an investigation before you fire them. As long as in a case like this, where it seems like there's a lot of evidence and a lot of people with similar experiences, if the end result is the same. Now, if the end result is different and he's not fired, that would be very different. But I don't know that you necessarily need to fire someone the same day. I think there are reasons why it might be prudent or better to do some sort of investigation, which is not to say that this investigation should take very long or that there is much

doubt in anyone's mind about the allocations here because they are extremely extensive and thorough. And that's another thing. I guess that would be one slight difference from the Porter case in that that was one extended incident in Porter's case. And it's hard to think that there was never any it or that that might not have come up in an interview process. And as we mentioned at the time, Sandy Alderson acknowledged that no women were consulted during that interview process, and that seemed to reflect a failing in that process. In this case, particularly, when there's just a pattern of behavior over years and multiple teams and this was evidently well known enough that women were getting warned about him even before they had personal interactions with him. One of the up in the vetting process of multiple teams is, I think, another sign of either willing looking the other way or just a broken interview process, I guess. like how much of this is going on that there are not text threads and email threads about that maybe make it a little bit easier for people to come forward and say,

here I have receipts, look at this clearly unacceptable behavior. Whereas if it's just a comment made in person, then it may be just as unacceptable, but then it turns into a case of conflicting accounts and there isn't necessarily a definitive document of that harassment. So, you know, I guess it's in a sense good that there's evidence in these cases, but it just makes me wonder like how many more cases are there where there isn't that kind of paper trail or digital paper trail and the behavior isn't any less egregious. Yeah. I mean, I can't imagine that all of them will involve a team email and someone's LinkedIn. Yeah. But yeah, I think that, I guess the only thing I would hope, and like, I don't even think that's

the right word here, but, you know, an understanding that this kind of behavior is pervasive hopefully would help folks not involved in these situations to be more apt to believe victims of harassment when they come forward and their harasser is not so cavalier or brazen as to leave an extensive paper trail. reason as to lead leave an extensive paper trail um so i i guess if there's one thing that's good about us having a better understanding collectively of how uh often this sort of thing happens it's that it does you know for those who would otherwise be inclined to maybe think that these are isolated incidents or the results of a couple of bad actors that knowing that it's this pervasive makes you hopefully more inclined to treat those accusations credulously and to say that you know you believe the people who come forward understanding the the risk and cost that it brings so yeah so i guess while we're on a serious note before we get to transactions and stat bless just wanted to mention there were a couple accounts this week of players who have dealt with depression and thoughts of suicide or suicide attempts.

There was a really harrowing report by Jeff Passan about Drew Robinson, who attempted suicide last year, and that was followed by some comments by Andrelton Simmons about how he dealt with depression and thoughts of suicide in 2020. And there have been a lot of athletes and baseball players specifically who have come forward with these accounts in recent years with an eye toward reducing whatever stigma still lingers around it or just getting it out there that everyone deals with these things, especially professional athletes. And just wanted to mention it in Andrelton Simmons's case, because this is something that came up in passing when we talked about the twins signing him and

briefly brought up the fact that he opted out of the last week or so of the season. And I think I said something at the time to the effect of this makes me look at the numbers he produced a little bit differently. We didn't know why he opted out at the time, but that just made me think, well, maybe there was some underlying issue here, physical health, mental health, whatever it may have been, that went beyond just the pure baseball of it all. And so I think that's something that we kind of have to keep in mind when we're looking at 2020 stats and projecting 2021 performance. Players were dealing with a lot of the same stuff that all people were dealing with in 2020, and it affected

a lot of them seriously too. Simmons talks about how he couldn't get his mind off of what was going on outside of baseball and was going on inside of baseball too. But he said the first time was driving through Oakland and seeing some of the shops and restaurants trying to stay open with all the homeless people camping outside. That's when it really hit me. He went on to say that once baseball entered its quasi-bubble in preparation for the playoffs, the contrast between that and what was going on in the world at large was just too stark for him to continue. And so he opted out of the remainder of that season. So this was clearly something that was weighing on his mind throughout the year. And it's hard to say exactly how that affected his on-field performance,

but it's hard to think that it didn't affect it at all. And so there's just no way to know exactly when we look at those stat lines and we see that some players had a down year and you might be inclined to write it off for small sample size reasons, but there were other reasons too. And not everyone opted out. Some people were there for the whole schedule, but I'm sure we're dealing with similar issues. So athletes are people too, and they are just as subject to these sorts of struggles. And that

can definitely interfere with their play in a way that a projection system can't account for, definitely interfere with their play in a way that a projection system can't account for and that we can't account for unless they do say something publicly like Simmons did. So just something to keep in mind as we move forward and as players continue to deal with these strange circumstances. Yeah, I think it's always useful to remember that we don't know all that's going on with anyone who lives a public life and who we don't know well. And, you know, we don't know all that's going on with anyone who lives a public life and who we don't know well. And we don't have to assume that that's the driving source of pain or trouble in their life, but it can be. And I just think it's useful to approach people we don't know with a sense of compassion as much as we can, because we're all having a hard time, you know, and the exact contours

of that hard time are variable, but we're all having a hard time. And so we can be kind to each other. Yeah. All right. Well, while we're talking twins, there's other twins news to discuss. Yeah. The twins have re-signed Nelson Cruz and also signed Alex Colomay. So this is great news for Minnesota,

I think. So Nelson Cruz probably not coincidentally signed, what, a day after the latest setback to the Universal DH in 2021, which I guess is still not entirely out of the question. But as of now, it doesn't look like there will be one. And perhaps he was holding out to get some clarity on that before he made a decision. So now he knows DH only in the AL, at least as of today, and he'll be going back to the AL to continue DHing. So two years after he signed a one-year $14 million deal with the Twins with an option for a second year at $12 million. He then signed a one-year $13 million deal to return to the team. And I guess you could say, well, that's semi-surprising because when he signed with them the last time, he was, you know, there were doubts as there have been doubts about Cruz for years and years now that he keeps proving wrong, but he was coming off sort of a down year

by his very lofty standards with the Mariners in 2018. And he was old then, of course. And so he got that one year, $14 million deal. Now he only got one year and 13 million and that's coming off his best two seasons or his best two seasons in a regular role by WRC+. He had a 164 last year and a 163 in 2019, and he's the best hitter in baseball, not named Mike Trout, over those two seasons. And so you might think it's weird that he didn't get a bigger deal this year or a two-year deal, but on the other hand, he is two years older than he was then, and he's going to turn 41 in July. So it is perhaps not shocking that he didn't end up with the two-year deal he was seeking. Clearly, the twins still think that he is going to rake. But given his age

and maybe some of the underlying metrics, there are some reasons for concern. But again, there have been reasons for concern before and he has put them aside time and time again yeah i think that i always expected that he would return to the twins i don't know that i had a strong opinion on whether that would be on a one or two year deal i think i assumed a year just given the age which i think was always likely to limit the ceiling both in terms of duration of contract and total value because I mean I think Cruz is an incredible bat and he absolutely makes the twins better with his presence and that lineup can be quite fearsome but also he is really unplayable in the field at this point so his versatility is limited and when

you have you know the understanding that at some point father time will catch up to him and he will have tremendous downside risk when that happens a year seems right i do wonder how much the i still think that he was likely to get a year but perhaps the total value would have been higher either in minnesota or elsewhere if the national league had the dh because he is you know he is such an obvious fit for so many teams in that case. And he instantly makes our lineup better. But this one, I don't know, this one just seemed like we were kind of waiting it out. So I mean, I'm glad for Twins fans, there was sort of this feeling that they hadn't really done a whole lot because they hadn't really

done a whole lot. And then there's been this recent sort of uptick in activity. So I have to credit them for getting some good work done in the last week or so. And they were not done today. Yeah, I think now with Cruz, with Simmons, with Colum A, I think they have just nudged ahead of the White Sox when it comes to their projected record in 2021. But that is shaping up to be quite a race. And yeah, Ben Clemens blocked about Cruz a while back and pointed out that there were some signs perhaps that he was declining at the plate, not in terms of the surface stats, which were as great as ever, but he had like his lowest exit velocity and expected WOBA, et cetera, of the stat

cast era. And we just went over the caveats with 2020. So I don't know how much to make of that, but you're always going to believe in that a little more when a player has reached that advanced stage where you're expecting them to tail off eventually. So I hope that he will continue to defy father time. And Sam and I did a whole episode, episode 1588, where we just marveled about Nelson Cruz's agelessness. And if he could keep that up, I just checked in the best WRC plus by a qualified 40-year-old

hitter. And as I mentioned, he'll turn 41 in July, but his baseball age this season will be 40. So the best any qualified for the batting title 40-year-old hitter has been is David Ortiz at 163 WRC Plus in 2016, his last season. So that's where Cruz has been the last couple of years. So if he could stay at that level, he would give Ortiz a running for the best hitter of this age ever. I think Willie Mays and his 157 in 1971 is right after that. But even if Cruz does decline a little bit, he is such a revered clubhouse presence, mentor type and leader and all of that, that he's the sort of person who would probably be brought back indefinitely on one-year deals, even if you couldn't count on him

to be one of the best hitters in baseball. And as for Colum A, I don't have as much to say about him, but it seems like the Twins are not necessarily a team that will have a set closer. So I don't know if he'll be racking up saves the way that he has in the past, but he has been sort of an unsung really reliable reliever like over the past several seasons i think since 2015 he ranks 16th in fangraphs war so you know he's been like a top 20 reliever in baseball over a period of several seasons and he's coming off a year where his strikeout rate was sort of concerningly low and maybe that is why he is somewhat unsung is that he's not really a strikeout monster and he's not someone who's throwing 100. He's throwing 95, but that's basically par for the course for a late inning reliever at this point. So maybe that's why,

but he gets a lot of grounders and he has just been really effective for quite a while now. So good addition to the team. Yeah, it wasn't a unit that I thought of as needing like a tremendous amount of reinforcement, although I guess they've had some attrition. But yeah, signing him moved the Twins into ninth place in our depth chart projections. Although I have to say like the difference between a lot of these teams taken as a whole is so thin as to be basically identical. I would not make a case that the Twins at three wins and the Blue Jays at 2.9 are substantially different from one another, just given what we know, not only about the sort of error bars around projections, but around relievers in particular, but he's definitely a very useful player to have around. And I always wonder, you know,

now that the two powers in that division appear to be the Twins and the White Sox, like, was it important to him at all to go to a place where he could, like, compete against his old team? Did he want to, you know, jostle? Or was it just this was the best deal it's probably just that this was the best deal but i always wonder what it feels like for guys to be like oh i have to

you know go up against my former friends or do you say i get to crush my foes yeah yeah what did he get one year and uh 6.25 million something something like that. There's an option for the following season. It's not like a big number. And that's for a guy who has been a late inning reliever, who has been a closer, not that teams are paying for saves anymore, but he has handled that pressure and he's been reliable for a long time

and he's coming off a year with a sub one ERA. And so you put all those things together and you kind of wonder why he couldn't get a bigger or longer deal. But I guess it's just some of the things I mentioned earlier. He doesn't really fit the profile of a late inning bat missing flamethrower. And, you know, he's been running XFIPs in the fours. So he just doesn't really have the dominant peripherals. He's sort of outpitched

his peripherals in recent years and maybe the sample sizes are small enough that teams are expecting that to regress a bit yeah i suppose that that's possible man that trade that brought him to the mariners just looks really bad for the rays in hindsight i mean that's not the point of this but and really bad it's a reliever whatever he's a reliever, but it's always good when the teams that are supposed to be the centerpiece of a division continue to improve. So that's nice. So speaking of which, there was another signing in the AL East, also shaping up to be quite competitive. Chris Archer returning to the Rays, another reunion here. This is an interesting one. So he signed a one-year, $6.5 million deal, which is not a vast sum, but by Rays standards,

it's not nothing. I think this makes him the third highest paid player on the team. And he is also a pitcher who had a lot of success with the Rays in the past, of course, but has fallen on much tougher times lately. And it's been an interesting career trajectory for him. And now I think coming off thoracic outlet syndrome surgery, which can be a career killer for a lot of players. I mean, that's no joke. That's a pretty serious issue. He missed all of 2020 with that. And 2019 was his worst year yet. So it's been quite a while since Chris Archer was healthy and effective. confidence for the Rays and I guess a semi-surprising one to me, not surprising that they would want to bring him back, but that they would see enough in him or have enough confidence in him returning and pitching at a high level that they would commit what for them by their

meager payroll standards is a sizable amount of money. So that makes me wonder if they think they can fix him or bring him back to the level he was at when he was a ray before which really would just kind of add the insult to injury for pirates fans i guess just to just to end the saga of the chris archer trade which will go down in infamy for the piratesates. And that would just make it all the more painful, I think. Not that Pirates fans wish ill upon Chris Archer, but just if they get him as the centerpiece of the trade that they end up giving up Austin Meadows and Tyler Glasnow, and then Archer pitches worse than he ever has while he's with the Pirates and gets hurt. And then if he

were to return to the race and be good again, that would just be sort of the final nail in the coffin of that trade. It would be, which is why I'm going to choose to focus on the following, which is the part of this that I like the most. And I agree with everything you said. We have to see what he can do. He is probably best positioned to do well in an organization like this. And so we'll see. We'll see what's what. Six and a half million is not an amount that most teams have to fret about. It is more substantial for the Rays. But I like there being some evidence of some amount of, I'm going to say this and then

people are going to think that I'm being weirdly dismissive of the front office. But like this, you know, there's like a nice little ring of sentimentality to this. And I think there's something really nice about bringing a guy back who, you know, whatever his performance on the field in Pittsburgh, like is generally thought to be a good dude and involved in the community and sort of well liked by fans. And, you know, it's, it's nice in an off season when some of the guys who raised fans have come to really treasure because they've been good for the team, you know, were sent away to, to bring someone back. It's a nice thing. I don't, you know, I don't imagine that that was what motivated

the signing. I'm sure the, the way that the familiarity sort of manifested was in a confidence that they could help him either to sort of right the ship from a performance perspective or that they were uniquely placed to help him recover from the surgery. But it's just a nice little thing, Ben. I mean, so often don't have nice little things when it comes to sentimentality or or memory and the rays uh and so we should applaud it the couple times we do get it because now all those people in tampa who had

archer jerseys they don't have to buy a new one they just put the one on they had before might have a different number who knows it doesn't matter it's the right name yeah just pull it out of storage you can go home again yeah this is uh archer kind of followed the blake snell trajectory really where he signed an extension with the rays and then they traded him and then they shipped him almost inevitable and uh that's how the rays make this thing work by trading those guys and getting really good players back and at least here they have brought back the player they sent away and the Rays were in on other starters they missed out on like Corey Kluber I think and Martin Perez they've talked to Fulte and Rich Hill so they're not too scared off by that I guess

maybe they think they have a way to nurse those players back to health, but it would be just fitting in a very depressing way for Pirates fans if he were to rebound. And I think that was one of the more notable cases of like, oh, the Pirates are just trying to fit every pitcher into the same box and it's just not working anymore because when Archer went to the Pirates, he had a long track record of success and then suddenly he started throwing a sinker

wouldn't you know it like every other pirates pitcher and he said that the pirates didn't like force him to do that and ray searidge said that he wasn't forcing him to throw a sinker but it was not a complete coincidence that he suddenly started pitching like a pirate when he became a pirate and it just did not work for him. And he did say he felt some pressure to conform just because the Pirates had such a clear organizational pitching philosophy. And when he abandoned that and went back to what had worked for him before, he started pitching better until he got hurt again. So maybe the underlying skills are still there, but that was just another instance of, boy, the Pirates used to be the team that would really get more out of pitchers.

And then all of a sudden things changed and now they're trying to do the same thing to everyone and it is just not working for them anymore. But different regime there now. No longer Pirates fans problem, although the owner still is. Oh, poor Pirates fans. problem although the owner still is oh poor pirates fans in other transaction news let's see i guess the nl central in an effort to keep pace with the cardinals big blockbuster i guess they didn't quite do that but they have not been entirely idle sean doodle signed with cincinnati and i'm most happy i think for trent roseans, who I hope will have many engaging Star Wars conversations with Doolittle this coming season. If they don't start a podcast about Star Wars, I will be disappointed.

Trent, if you're listening, please make that happen. And the Brewers signed Colton Wong. So they sort of poached him from another NL Central rival that no longer wanted to make an effort to keep him. an essential rival that no longer wanted to make an effort to keep him. So Colton Wong signed for two years, $18 million with an option for a third season. Not bad considering the Cardinals declined their one year, $12.5 million option on him for 2021. Yes, he did. I don't have much to say about the Doolittle signing other than that bullpen needed some reinforcements given some of the non-tender decisions and trades that they had done this year.

And I hope that he recovers his form because he's an easy person to root for and great fun when everything's working. So I hope that that goes well. In terms of Wong, I am going to be curious to see how the Brewers sort of rejigger their infield. I would imagine that this means that Hira moves to first base because just defensively, the gap there is pretty substantial and they clearly are going to want Hira's bat in the lineup, but I don't think you

want to move him onto any of the other potential positions there. I suppose that they could put him at third, but I will be curious to see sort of how that all shakes out. But that lineup, provided that Kane kind of gets back to where he was and Yelich has a better year, I don't know. That Brewers team is interesting. I still don't super love their rotation outside of their top couple of guys, but that Brewers team is interesting. They are distractingly close to the Cardinals in terms of their top couple of guys but that brewers team is is interesting they are like distractingly close to the cardinals in terms of their projections which i'm gonna need to do a

little thinking on but yeah it seems it seems good i'm much i imagine that my reaction to wong going to another team in the division would have involved more sort of side eye in st louis's way if they had not just had the week they had. Right, yeah. It's kind of hard to be like, well, I don't know. Why don't you get a good infielder, guys? You know, I think they're doing fine. So, yeah, I think that seems like a good fit.

They definitely needed some defensive upgrades on the Brewer side of things, and Wong certainly provides that. Yeah. So, yeah. Can't make a much bigger defensive upgrade in the infield than Colton Wong I mean that's about as good as it gets so yeah I mean Hura if he hits like he did in his rookie year in 2019 then he'd have no problem clearing the offensive bar at first base if he hits more like he did in 2020 than he would. So I don't know exactly.

Like, you know, if you look at his projections, they sort of split the difference and assume he's like an average hitter, which would not be great for a first baseman. But given his success in 2019 and his prospect pedigree and the upside there, like, I think he could easily clear that so it it sort of depends where he settles in offensively as to can he be a star first baseman or can he just be adequate there i have confidence in that bat recovering he has to be he's one of my favorite hitters to watch and the this sort of high contact approach is good and also i should say that i am now seeing that tom hardecourt of the milwaukee journal sentinel reports that he will serve as the brewer's primary first baseman in 2021 so there you go sorry daniel vogelbeck his journeys continue you'll have to come in as a defensive replacement i'm a pest all right so just a couple front office tidbits. I thought it was funny that on the same day that Breidich was facing the firing squad And hard to argue with that. Preller got extended, I think, through what, 2026 and got a promotion to president of baseball ops just in recognition

of building a great farm system and also a great team. So he seems to have done everything that he could have to get that. And boy, it's been a really up and down tenure with the Padres for Preller in more than one way when it comes to like rebuilds that didn't work and some hasty moves and some suspensions or disciplinary actions but he seems to have come out of it with the flying colors and has really built a powerhouse there so he got his reward for that i imagine him as like both sides of the spider-man meme but saying my how the turntables have turned in terms of his rebuild i'm matching two pop culture references together to make a super reference that applies to aj preller and the only other thing i wanted to mention was that theo epstein

got another job so we talked recently about one of his part-time jobs, which is serving as a consultant to MLB and Rob Manfred on on-field matters. And we had a long discussion about that and seemed like a positive sign. Seems like someone who is really concerned with improving baseball as an aesthetic experience and pace of play and contact and all of that. And we talked about how he might accomplish that and how he seemed like a good fit for that role. Well, that will not be occupying all of his time. And I think he said he was excited about working in sweatpants for that one or pajamas, I think it was. But he will probably not be able to wear pajamas for this other role that he has. He was hired to join a private equity firm.

He has joined, it's called Arctos Sports Partners. It's a private equity firm dedicated to buying minority shares of professional sports teams. And he is joining as an executive in residence. So this seems like- Wait a minute. I minute i'm sorry ben what does that mean an executive in residence yes yeah it's like you know a fangraphs residency it's like if you hire the webstein to be an executive for a while i guess it's like kind of a consulting role but but not exactly. I am floored. I am flabbergasted. I will read from the Wall Street Journal report here. At Arctos, the 47-year-old

Epstein will advise owners of the teams Arctos invests in, which I think includes the Red Sox and Fenway Sports Group, across multiple leagues on matters such as organizational leadership, culture building, and other business areas. And he will continue to serve in his MLB consultant role. So he's going to be doing both of these things. And this seems like a step with an eye toward an ownership role in the future, which is something that he has expressed interest in. So we talked recently about how Billy Beans' bid to become some sort of owner seems to have been thwarted for now. Epstein, I think, is trying to work his way into that world here. And, hey, he should do what he wants and explore his options here.

But it does seem as if there could be some sort of philosophical conflict here when it comes to these two different roles, at least in some ways. I'm reading a quote here from one of the leaders of this company, a guy named Ian Charles, and he says, he has a lot to offer our firm around culture, leadership, talent identification, data, and analytics. We're going to be able to learn a lot from Theo. So it seems like he may be advising ownership groups on, say, applying a data-driven, analytically-oriented way to run their teams. And the frequent buzzwords here are mentioned here. Arctos seeks to acquire passive stakes in

franchises in order to provide liquidity and growth capital to controlling owners. So it does seem like if on the one hand, like one of the reasons that we were happy that he went to work for MLB is that like I compared it to a white hat hacker

who like breaks the system and then you hire that person to safeguard the system and so it seemed like he was a great candidate for that like hey he's been a GM and he acknowledged like he's been as culpable as anyone in sort of you know chasing the efficiency and going and getting the best players even if they are not the most fan-friendly ideal spect spectator experience players. So he seemed like a good person to sort of protect MLB against that behavior, except that he is also on the side advising other franchises, not just in baseball, I guess, but probably also in baseball, about how to do those things.

So I kind of wonder, is there a wall between private equity consultant Epstein and MLB consultant Epstein? Does he have to, I guess he changes from pajamas to suits or something when he is doing one or not the other? he can advise owners on how to make the most of the current system while also advising rob manfred on how to like change that system to make it less easily exploitable but seems like that might be a bit of a conflict in his other role so yeah i don't know exactly how you navigate both of those jobs at the same time but uh i suppose i wish him well in figuring out how to balance those uh dual responsibilities it makes me very nervous ben because i think the private equitization that's not how you say that but you know what i'm trying to say of baseball has contributed to great many issues over over the last few years and so i'm i'm nervous to have that given a smarter focus from theo part of this might also be that the place he's chosen to be an executive in residence

sounds like you know sounds like a it sounds like a corporation that like lex luther would fund right and then superman will be like, it was Lex all along. A lot of superhero references in this one. I don't know. So I guess we'll see. But my first instinct is not to think it's great. Yeah. That's my first instinct. We will see.

And it's tricky because I don't know how much. This is one of those things that I think is going to be difficult for us to assess. I don't know how much, this is one of those things that I think is going to be difficult for us to assess because, and it was probably difficult for us to assess like his efficacy in the commissioner's office to begin with, but I can't imagine that he's going to be able to talk publicly all that much about what he's doing for it. What's the name of the group again? Arctos Capital. Arctos Capital.

Yeah, definitely Lex Luthor. Maybe it's Arctos Sports Partners and I just imagined the capital because it seems like it should be there. Arctos Sports Partners. It's like if, I don't know, like if you were buying a sports team with the eye of using like a mind control ray on everyone in the stadium or something like that. Anyway, I don't know that we will be able to have all that much insight into what he's doing there and how much insight we have into his role in the commissioner's office

is going to depend entirely on how willing i guess baseball is to let him talk speak candidly and on the record about the recommendations that he has made both that have been implemented and not so i i think it will be hard for us to say all that definitively, but I will admit to it making me nervous. Yeah, right. I don't know how active a role it'll be. I mean, it has to be a passive ownership stake. It can't be a controlling interest because MLB changed its rules in 2019 to allow investment funds to own minority interests in multiple teams at the same time, which I think previously would have been viewed as a conflict.

And so he can't be part of a majority interest in one team while being a minority interest in another, I don't think. If a team were to make him its face and give him a real ownership role, then I assume that he would leave this one, which is probably why it's an executive in residence. It's probably just a fleeting or not permanent thing, unless I guess they promote him at some point or take a greater interest in one particular franchise. But yeah, it seems difficult to do both of those things at the same time. So I hope he is not completely compromised in his efforts to make baseball better.

But we will see. Or maybe we won't see. And we'll just have to imagine and extrapolate. Executive in residence. Yes. Yeah. We might have to have other Ben back on to just try to workshop a better name for that. Yeah.

I don't know, Ben. It's not great. Okay. I will leave you with a stat blast today. And then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's today's stop-loss. All right. This stop-loss is inspired by a question that came to us from listener Eric, and he writes, I am working on a Sabre bio on 1970s outfielder Leroy Stanton,

or Leroy Stanton, and came across this fact. His career batting average of.244 is also his lifetime average versus righties, lefties, at home, and on the road. Seems very Chris Davis-esque. Are there other players in history with splits that are identical like this? Is this more rare or impressive than Chris Davis's four straight 247 seasons? So this sounded to me like a pretty fun fact and a pretty rare accomplishment. So I sent this to our frequent StatBlast consultant. I guess we could call him a StatBlast consultant in residence, Adam Ott. And I asked him to look for players who have the same number for batting average in all of these splits and therefore would also seemingly have the same

overall number. So I'll read what Adam said here. This is a little tricky for people whose careers took place or partly in place for years where my RetroSheet database is not complete or deduced, which is prior to 1928. However, I have run the queries and double-checked the ones that I have found and all of those that were within two points in my query using the splits at baseball reference. And so, yeah, we don't have complete lefty-righty home road splits for every year in baseball history. But based on what we do have, which is most of it, Adam has, first of all, excluded players who have a zero average across all of the splits. So, you know, just got a cup of coffee. And he has found seven players, including Stanton, who have this.

I will read the first six, and I would be surprised if they spark recognition in many of you who are listening. Ron Blazier, Gene Connell, Jerry Davey, Mike Farmer, Pete Hamm, Alex McRae. If none of those names leaped out of your headphones at you, it is probably because none of them has more than 12 career at-bats. So the only players who have ever done this in more than 12 career at-bats, well, it's not even players. It's player. It's just Stanton i'm sorry i'm not

positive how to pronounce his first name i would have said leroy but i saw one recent news clip that said leroy however you say it he stands alone there were some close calls as adam mentioned brett boone rick burleson doug camilli they all were like one point of batting average in one or two of the splits off. So there are people in the neighborhood, but no one has done this except Stanton. And for those who are not familiar with his work, Stanton was an outfielder for the Angels and the Mariners and the Mets from 1970 to 1978. And he was a pretty good hitter, pretty good player. He suffered a pretty serious beaning

when he was still in the minors that seems to have affected the rest of his career. And he said it did and that he was never quite the same hitter and suffered some lingering symptoms from that.

But even so, he was a good, pretty productive player for several years and ended up with more than 800 games and almost 3,000 played appearances in the majors. And he is probably most notable, at least until now, when this fun fact was brought to the world's attention, probably most notable, A, for getting the first hit in Mariners history. So that's something to know. for getting the first hit in Mariner's history.

So that's something to know. And also he was in the Nolan Ryan trade, the infamous Nolan Ryan trade from the Mets perspective. And people don't talk as much about Stanton being in that deal because you almost don't have to because it's overshadowed by the Nolan Ryan of it all. But Leroy Stanton alone, he, I think, outperformed what the Mets got from Jim Fregosi. So if it had been a one-for-one with Fregosi for Stanton, probably still wouldn't have been a good trade for the Mets. But also,

there was Nolan Ryan and some other players involved in that deal. So interesting things in the career of Leroy or Leroy Stanton, but I think this takes the cake. This is pretty impressive to me to have the same batting average,.244 against righties, against lefties, at home and on the road. And he was a right-handed hitter, so you would have expected him to be better against lefties. And to make this even more astonishing, not only does he have the same batting average in all four of those splits, but he has the same slugging percentage in all four of those splits. Yeah.

He batted and slugged 244 and 388, respectively, both for his career and against righties and against lefties and at home and on the road. It's kind of incredible that he managed all those things. And I only wish that we could call him and get his thoughts and potentially some sort of explanation about this. Unfortunately, he was killed in a car accident just a couple of years ago. we are not able to do that but he seems from everything i have read to be a interesting and good guy and a much-loved family man and respected figure in his community and a great athlete and lived a nice life and this was an aspect of it that i really wonder whether he was aware of or whether he would have been able to explain in some way.

Well, I look forward to reading the Saber bio because this is a very cool little tidbit. I think it might be one of the more fun fun facts that we've ever heard. Yeah, yeah. Eric sent me a draft of the Saber bio. It's a good read, so I assume that will be up there at some point, perhaps with a reference to this fun fact. And so Eric did ask whether this measures up to the Chris Davis four straight seasons of 247. Do you have any thoughts on that? This is more fun than that, for sure. Really? Huh. Wow.

I think this is more fun than that, that. I just think that because the consistency across so many different categories of stats and the fact that his slugging percentage was the same, that's a remarkable bit of sameness. That is a remarkable sameness. I think it's more fun than that. I think I disagree with you. Although I enjoy this very much, it's probably a good thing that we disagree on occasion because we don't all that often. And this is not a momentous thing to disagree about. I think I still prefer the Chris Davis just because, I don't know, when you start getting into splits, it's like another level down like the fact that Davis did this in just his overall line year after year

there are so many splits and these are two of the most commonly cited and prominent splits probably the most commonly cited splits so it's not like I just you know picked out some obscure split on his baseball reference page but there are a lot of obscure splits and you could probably find some strange coincidences there. So I guess once you start digging into like deeper layers of it, it's probably easier to find someone who has a weird coincidence like this. And maybe I am also biased just because I got to follow the Chris Davis miracle in real time. Sure. And that was a big part of it, like just becoming aware of it as it was happening, as opposed to decades after the fact with a player who is unfortunately no longer with us.

Like just watching it materialize and trying to project, like, can he still hit 247? What would it take for him to hit 247? That added a spectator aspect to it that I don't have with Stanton and that probably no one would have had with Stanton at the time. I guess that's the thing that detracts from it maybe is that I don't know that anyone would have noticed this, and it's probably not something that people were, like, you know, paying attention to on the last day of his career. Like, is he going to preserve the equal splits? So it lacks that, I think. But in terms of like the improbability of it, it's right up there. I guess we would have to have another statistician on to tell us the odds of Chris Davis doing that. And this seems similarly

improbable in the fact that no one has done it with any kind of substantial career just in batting average. The fact that he did it in slugging percentage too is just the icing on the cake, I think. And I should note, he did have slight platoon splits. So his batting averages were the same, but he did have slight splits, like obviously not in terms of getting hits or hitting for power. But he did get on base a little bit more often against left handed hitters and at home. So he wasn't entirely consistent or immune to those effects, but he was mostly immune to it seemingly. And I don't know how much of this is chance. There's certainly an aspect of it that is chance that it's not just a point off as opposed to right on the nose. Of course, that was the case with Chris Davis. I think what intrigues me about this is like, you know, with Chris Davis,

we could be pretty confident that he was a true talent 247 hitter when you do it four seasons in a row with a lot of playing time. I think we can say he found his level and it was still random and, you know, affected by chance that he actually ended up at 247 every time instead of just 248 or 246 or whatever. And so I wonder how much of this is chance and how much of it is just that he was so consistent that he was unaffected by these forces that affect just about everyone. I don't know if you played out his career

for another 10 years or something. Would this still have been the case? Was there something about him that made this possible for him like the way that he hit or his mental makeup like did that contribute to it or was it just sort of a random thing because like generally speaking a right-handed hitter hits about 20 points of batting average better against a left-handed pitcher but there is a lot of fluctuation there and it's hard to predict from season to season. And there've been some studies that suggest that like, we can't even really tell what someone's true platoon split is just because it takes so long to stabilize and

really reflect their true talent. Especially if you're talking about something like batting average that you might not know, like, okay, was he actually a 244 hitter against both? Probably not. And so if you were to, you know, project what he would hit and regress it, you would not expect him to keep that up, but you never know. And maybe there was something, you know, I would think that there might be some true differences, like lefties tend to have larger platoon splits than righties when it comes to hitters on the whole but i would think that there must be some variation just in terms of i don't know ocular dominance or your stance at the plate or your mechanics or like the types of pitches you hit well or don't hit well and you know same goes for home and road

performance like maybe it just matters more to some players that they're playing in a familiar environment than others so that's why i wish we could ask him like hey do you think there was something about you that enabled you to do this or is it just uh one of those weird things i think that all of that is very compelling as an argument and i guess the only thing i would offer as a potential counter is that while it is very gratifying to be able to talk to these guys about sort of what they think as these things are unfolding or find out if they're even aware of them, it is sort of fun to get to discover a new thing just by virtue of clicking through play indexes and sort of being left with the mystery of whether he knew. I think if there were any other sets of splits, but the ones that they are, I might find it less compelling. But because they are such staples of the genre, I find it pretty admirable.

I'm glad that this was brought to our attention. What a fun little thing. I know. Yeah. Thank you to Eric and thank you to adam for doing the research and yeah i i think this should like be the the most famous split you know i think like i i grew up hearing about the fact that like stan musial had the same number of hits at home and on the road and i think that that's something that people kind of trot out there is like, oh, he was so good. He was so consistent. It didn't matter where he was. But I don't know if that fun fact lies a little bit, I think, as all fun facts do, in that he did have a fairly sizable split when it came than on the road. It just so happens that he had the same number of hits, but he was a more effective hitter at home. And I think this is just much more fun than that. I

mean, it's not a Hall of Fame player, but it's really like to be the same, your overall numbers and both of these splits and the same slugging percentage is so improbable that I think the Stanton splits, fun fact, should now be just like a Mount Rushmore baseball oddity. I will allow for their entrance into such a distinguished body Hall of Fame. Oh, it's so complicated now. Yeah. All right. So we will end there. Well, as soon as we finished recording, I saw the news that the Orioles had signed Felix Hernandez to a minor league contract. He'll earn a million dollars if he makes the majors.

Now I'm kind of kicking myself for not taking him in the minor league free agent draft. I mentioned on that episode that I had considered drafting him, both because I figured he'd catch on somewhere and because he'd be fun to root for. He'd be fun to root for regardless of whether he's on my minor league free agent draft team. But now that he's signed with the Orioles, man, I used a high pick on Cole Stewart in last year's draft and he went to the Orioles and I was very pleased. Didn't really work out for me because he opted out, but going to the Orioles at this point in time is a good sign for a pitcher's playing time. And Felix in the newly Alex Kobliss Orioles rotation, he's got a shot to make some starts.

Would take him today if I could do it over. But the minor league free agent draft will break your heart. You can warm our hearts, make us feel better about being human beings in a business by supporting Effectively Wild on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going

and get yourself access to some perks. The following five listeners have already signed up. Tim Rawlings, Jose Luis Cubria, Jeff Twardis, James Morris, and Derek Wisner. 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. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can keep your questions and comments coming for me and Meg via email at podcast.fangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. And we will be back with one more episode before the end of this week. Talk to you then.

I can't remember what I thought of you Just a minute before I've got to take another look at who I do believe it's true I've got a split personality When I let it fly I've got a split personality