Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1678: The 2021 Team Fun Draft

Episode Date: April 9, 2021

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs writer RJ McDaniel banter about a controversial walk-off hit by pitch call involving the Mets’ Michael Conforto, the early success of exciting Tigers Rule 5 pick Akil Baddoo, and unexpected fauna on the field, then conduct the second annual Effectively Wild Team Fun Draft, in which they draft all […]

Tingle, tingle, when we mingle, just for fun. Let's pretend we'll never end what we've begun. For if we play it loud, we may stay in love, then you'll be glad you tried it just for fun. Hello and welcome to episode 1678 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? Doing well. And I am also joined by RJ McDaniel of Fangraphs. RJ, how are you? Also doing well. Yay. We are going to do Team Fun Draft today because this is a good annual tradition. Ben, did we do Team Fun Draft last year or did we? No, we didn't because nothing

was fun last year. Yeah, we decided that fun was kind of untoward given the circumstances. Well, I'm glad to have an opportunity to resurrect Team Fun Draft. But before we get to Team Fun Draft, we have some chicanery we have to talk about. Today, just not too long before we started recording, the Mets game against the Marlins ended in controversial fashion. Ben, did you watch this live? Not live, but I was very quickly alerted to it, as everyone else on the internet was. Quite controversial.

Quite controversial. So to set the stage, Michael Conforto won on a walk-off hit by pitch that might not have been a hit by pitch at all. I don't know how else to set this up other than that. Ben, normally you did the setup. Maybe I should practice this more. Yeah. Well, I think you pretty much nailed it there. There was a walk-off hit by pitch. There was contact. He was hit by the pitch, but he was also hit by the pitch having made little to no effort to get out of the way. In fact, maybe negative effort to get out of the way in that he tried not to get out of the way. In fact, maybe negative effort to get out of the way in that he

tried not to get out of the way. The pitch also appeared to be in the strike zone, so it was far from unavoidable. And so everyone was angry about this naturally, but it was not reviewable because of arcane rules that you have looked up because you are our go-to rule book expert. So there are two relevant considerations here. The first of which is the actual rule around hit by pitches in the MLB rulebook, which is 503B2, which establishes that a batter becomes, this is in the larger rule on when a batter becomes a runner, and he becomes a runner if he is, and I quote,

he is touched by a pitch ball, which he is not attempting to hit unless A, the ball is in the strike zone when it touches the batter or B, the batter makes no attempt to avoid being touched by the ball. If the ball is in the strike zone when it touches the batter, it shall be called a strike whether or not the batter tries to avoid the ball. If the ball is outside the strike zone when it touches the batter, it shall be called a ball if he makes no attempt to avoid being touched. So there's that. And you think to yourself, well, that seems like this should have, uh, the, the resulted in a ball. And, uh, and then, you know, we should have, or a strike in this case, because it appeared to also be in the zone. In addition

to him not getting out of the way and the Marlins should have called for a replay and then they should have played on. But, but then we get the rules on replay review, which says that hit by pitch is a reviewable play as we know. Calls involving whether a pitched ball may have hit a player, a piece of his clothing or his bat is reviewable. Whether the ball was in the strike zone when it touched the batter and whether the batter made any attempt to avoid being touched by the ball is not to be reviewable and so i guess the question that i have for both of you is if the strike zone and or the attempt to avoid the ball as it is coming in is instrumental to whether or not the batter is entitled to a free base shouldn't that be also reviewable because

it's it's part of whether or not it constitutes a hit by pitch that entitles him to first base or not am i thinking about this the wrong way i mean one would think it would be reviewable like based on your logic but i guess trying to see it i guess from the rules perspective i guess it's leaving anything to do with the strike zone kind of in the purview of the home plate umpire. And so it's like the home plate umpire's ultimate power over that play. But this seems like a blind spot because like the home plate umpire could easily just not see someone leaning into the pitch. Right. Well, and it's very strange because if you go back and watch this hit by pitch,

it appears that the home plate umpire is preparing to call it strike three, which, you know, would have been the second out of the inning. And, you know, then they would have had to get some of these guys in, you know, with an actual base hit or a walk, I suppose, or its own hit by pitch in the next batter's case.

But he stops and thinks better of it and then decides that Conforto's been hit. And so clearly he was not confident in his call. Right. Yeah, and I just saw, I think since we started recording, the umpire Ron Culpa made a comment to a pool reporter and he admitted that he did not call it correctly. He said, the guy was hit by the pitch in the strike zone.

I should have called him out. So he is already regretting that call. And Don Mattingly, the Marlins' manager, said he asked the umpires to get together and change the judgment call, and they didn't. So that was another missed opportunity there. And the Mets broadcast booth, which of course is deservedly acclaimed, was really giving it to all involved to their credit. They were not being homers about this, I think, both the umpires and Conforto for not making

an effort to get out of the way. Conforto, by the way, said, from my point of view, it was a slider. It felt like it was coming back to me. I turned. There may have been a little lift to my elbow just out of habit, out of reaction, and it barely skimmed the edge of my elbow just out of habit, out of reaction, and it barely skimmed the edge of my elbow guard. Don't know if you find that plausible or not, but he did not come out and say, yep, I leaned into that sucker. He said he was just so fooled that it was just inadvertent. It was

just habit. He was protecting himself, which I don't know. I'd probably be making all sorts of defensive movements if I were up there, but Michael Conforto probably not quite as afraid of the ball as I would be in that situation. So I think this is one of those cases where people will probably be mad at Conforto for doing that, for either trying to induce the hit by pitch or for not getting out of the way. But that's just something that players have always done, that they're just always going to do if they can. And I think it falls to MLB to prevent them from doing that by putting some mechanism in place to stop them from doing that and getting that advantage. So I think maybe there should be a tweak to this rule, perhaps. Maybe it can be the Conforto rule. It can be like the Buster Posey slide or the Chase Utley slide or whatever. We always need one of these edge cases, these worst case scenarios to happen to bring these things to the fore and then provide the collective will to actually do something about it. So maybe this will change everything.

I liked Emma Batchelory's suggestion on Twitter. Bachelary's suggestion on Twitter. She said, I'm loathe to introduce more replay review to the game, but it seems like it might be good to have a provision that any potentially game-winning or tying play in the ninth or extras can be reviewed. It seems like that would be a good

sort of safety valve to have at your disposal because I think that we're right to worry that if we open too many things up to replay review that we'll just gum up the works in a way that makes baseball impossible to watch because managers will abuse it. But it seems like in moments where we are rightly concerned that there isn't time in

the contest to sort of course correct, right? Like if a hitter endures a bad strike three call, well, that's a bummer and you want umpires to get stuff right. But if it's not the last at bat of the game, in theory, they might have, if not that individual hitter, then the team will have some ability to counter in a meaningful way later, even if the leverage isn't quite as high. But in this moment when it couldn't be higher than it is, it seems like we need the ability to be like, it's really important that we get the result of the game right. And this directly impacts that. And so maybe we need to allow ourselves to go under the hood in a place where we wouldn't

earlier in the contest. I don't know. Yeah. It seems to me that with the technology that's available now, you probably could pretty conclusively determine whether the pitch was actually in the strike zone when it hit him. We have pitch tracking, obviously. We know the position of the ball, and now the Hawkeye-powered stat cast has body tracking and even limb tracking. So I don't know if it's perfect, but I bet they could probably determine when exactly the ball touched him and where it was and where he was. So if you wanted to have some sort of appeal to the eye in the sky here, I bet that could be done. So yeah, I don't know if it's, you know, as RJ was saying, maybe there's like a precedent that you don't want to

set here or something. Are we edging ever closer to robo-umps if we say that there should be technology that is determining this. I don't know. But if it's just about not reviewing judgment calls or something, I don't know. You can have better judgment if you're watching the thing after the fact in slow motion from any angle you want. So I guess I'm coming at it from a pretty pro-replay perspective, honestly. I like replay for the most part. I like being able to tell whether the call was right and then change it. And if it wasn't, and yes, there are some weird cases where you do get bogged down and everything. And of course, in football, it can

be a nightmare and everything. But for the most part, I think it is good to be able to review these things and get them more accurate, even if it does end up taking a little more time just because we have the footage, like we're all going to watch it and see if it was right or wrong and then be angry about it if it was wrong. So we might as well change it too and get it right if we have the ability to do that. Yeah, it definitely seems bizarre that the replay review is, you know, readily and willingly able to be used for the often maligned, like, did the batter pop off the bag for a millisecond when stealing second, but not in the case of this when it actually is determining the outcome of a game. We care about judgment because we're building it into the rule structure of the game, right?

We're leaving things to the Empire's judgment. But that we view that judgment to be infallible when we have the means to review and determine, at least in some circumstances, just how fallible it is. I understand that you probably don't want to sit there and say, well, did he really mean to lean in? Even though here, he kind of seemed like he meant to lean in. But here, you could have just called him out on the strike zone thing. You didn't even have to talk about what was in his heart. You could have just said that was a strike. So tough luck, but you know. Yeah. Well, at least the Mets caught a break, right? So maybe they can lean into a few when Jacob deGrom is pitching and get him some run support one of these years. Seriously. Maybe they can lean into a few when Jacob deGrom is pitching and get him some run support one of these years.

So before we get to the team fun draft, RJ, I wanted to ask you about the Tigers star of the first week, Akil Badu, who came up on our Tigers season preview podcast briefly just because he was having a good spring training and, you know, rule five pick and seemed like an interesting story, but didn't necessarily think it was going to continue to be a big story as the season started. But you just wrote about how big a story it's been. So tell us a little bit about Badu and his heroics thus far. Yeah, I mean, it's it was really he was not really somebody that was particularly on my radar. I don't find myself thinking about the Tigers all that often. But he, it's always incredible when a player, Homer's on the very first pitch he ever sees as a major leaguer. Like I, that's when he first really crossed my mind was when I saw that footage. Because that's like very rare in the history of baseball.

Out of all the nearly 20,000 now players who have made their debut in the major leagues only 31 have done the exact same thing that Badu did and it was really cool too because his parents actually got to be in the stands watching him for that particular moment and then the very next day he hit a grand slam which is you know even more incredible, one might think. And then the next day, he didn't even start, they brought him into pinch hit, and he hit the walk off hit. And so it's just a really an incredible beginning to a person's career. Like, the kind of stuff that you don't even let yourself probably as a player think about happening has just happened for him. And the more the more I read about him, the more

it seemed like he was a great person for this to have happened to even Eric Long and Higgins write up about like his makeup that scouts loved, like he just seems like somebody who from the very beginning was really had a sound belief in himself and a really stable, mature outlook to pursuing professional baseball, even though he had years of steady improvement that was really sidetracked by having to have Tommy John in 2019, and then losing the entirety of last season, as so many others did. So it's just it's a nice thing to have go along with kind of our return to more normal, like semi normal baseball is to have this person who kind of

was one of the people who suffered in the minor leagues from the loss of last season from the pandemic, have this amazing start to his career that he got to share with his family because there were, we were vaccinated enough as a society, we've decided to have some people in the stands watching baseball. Yeah, it's one of the nice traditions of sometimes spring training, but also the beginning of the season where like all of a sudden you're paying attention to someone who you never thought about before and maybe never heard of before. It's like, you know, your mean Mercedes is everywhere these days and Akil Badu is everywhere these days. It's just, it's nice when you have a long season and people actually getting to play and who knows if they will sustain, obviously not this, but how productive they will be over the course of the season. But it's fun to get to know a bunch of new guys who are doing fun things. And it's something that we didn't have quite as much of last season. So, and always love a good rule five pick who makes good as well.

I liked the moment where they showed his parents in the stands and his mom at one point was doing that thing that families do with each other where it was like the enthusiastic whack of her husband being like, see, did you see him do it? Did you see him? And it just it's it comes loaded with all of these you know we don't know them but what you might imagine are all these other moments in their lives and their son's life and the way that they've experienced their son growing up and then becoming a professional player like you know finally being able to to to say like yeah we we saw it that was real that

happened on the field and yeah it was just really it was really very lovely because you're right like we we were denied so many of those moments last year especially for guys like this where it does kind of hit you different because they aren't heralded in the way that top prospects are and so it was just really nice and especially so early in the year to be like yeah we we saw that too and it was great yeah especially a team that probably needs a little bit of a boost in the watchability department i guess we'll see where the tigers go in the draft that we're about to do but he has propped them up in week one so so that's nice so if you can't have a cat on the field or some other kind of creature on the field then the next best thing is to have a rule five

pick who is playing well and i mentioned that because you just wrote about the course field cat as well. And I think now you've kind of become like the, the go-to wildlife on the field is RJ going to get on this. It's like, you know, when, when someone poops or something and everyone tweets it next. Your beat is so much better than mine. I mean, I got a tip this morning about a possum on the field, but I think I might leave that to simmer a bit.

We have to build the possum narrative first. Yeah. Do you have a theory about where these creatures come from? Meg brought this up, I think, on a recent episode. Like, why are there so many ballpark cats? I mean, I guess it makes sense if there are, like, bodega cats everywhere. Why would there not be ballpark cats. I mean, I guess it makes sense if they're like bodega cats everywhere, why would there not be ballpark cats? But where do they spend their time when they're not on the field during games? Are they someone's pet? Do they just wander in there? It happens so often.

I can understand like a squirrel or something or birds or geese or whatever it is that are like migratory. But when it's a cat, I always wonder, where is that cat when it's not on my TV during this baseball game? I mean, cats are pretty resourceful. I have to imagine they're just kind of following the trail of like rats to eat. Because I'd imagine hanging around kind of the, in the bowels of any ballpark, there have to be a number of rats. So the cats are just kind of there. And they're all

kinds of like weird nooks and crannies and like dark cursed looking places deep within ballparks and those are exactly the kind of places that like a feral cat would love to hide so i any ballpark i think could be housing unknown multitudes of cats and it's just kind of a glitch in the cat secrecy matrix when we get to see one. Well, it's good content for you and for Fangraphs. I guess there are no real metrics you can bring to it unless like they turn on StatCast to track the cats or something, which I would like to see. There was like a mock video. They did like a mock StatCast broadcast with graphics and everything, but I wanted to see the actual data. Instead of catch probability, they had cat probability, which obviously was 100%, but no sprint speed,

no distance traveled. I don't know if the cat registers on the system. Maybe it's too small, but I would like to see that. Streakers too. I'd also like to see some streaker FX when that happens at times, but of course they would never give that to us because then it would just encourage more streakers. Yeah, we don't want to encourage that. Yeah. All right. Well, should we get to this draft?

Yeah. Do we want to lay out the rules of the draft? They're very simple. Are there rules? The rules of the draft are that we're each going to, you know, we'll go in order and we'll pick teams that we think are the most fun to watch. Those are the rules.

That's it. Yeah, I think we only did this once. Maybe we did it in episode 1360 in April 2019. And then last year happened and we just didn't do it. And so, yeah, here it is. I guess now we can call it an annual tradition because it will have been done multiple times. But we did not really determine in order here. Should we just let our guest go first?

I think so, yeah. Yeah? Okay. RJ, you got the top pick then. I got the top pick. Well, I have to talk for a moment about my extremely scientific system that I came up with for ranking the teams, which I'm really proud of, because I am not, I am not someone who tends to think systematically, I tend to just be a very

vibes based person, I'm kind of letting things happen. But I really, I really dug deep for this one for this really serious draft we're doing. So I had, I had four factors that I was ranking teams on, I was ranking on, is there a particular player or players who I would like change the channel to watch who's on this team? Are they on like a good trajectory narrative wise in terms of winning championships? Are they on the up? Are they on the down? Like, what's going on there? I rank them on the likelihood that they will actually win most of their games, and on them having rivals within their division who will make for interesting, you know, series narratives. And ultimately, the team that came out on top is the San Diego Padres. I just think that they have the number of X Factor players, like I'm a huge Darvish fan.

So he was a big boost. I think Snell coming out of the Rays is a big boost. They've got Cronenworth. They've got Kim. They got Machado. And of course, they've got Fernando Tatis Jr. currently injured. Like hopefully, hopefully he'll be back soon. I try not to let possible injuries derail my ranking. But the Padres seem incredibly likely to win a whole ton of games. They've got an interesting rivalry with the Dodgers kind of brewing now with these two powerhouses in the same division.

in the postseason last year was one of my favorite to watch. And I just think on the whole, this is a team that does not have a history of success in the postseason in terms of winning the World Series. And that puts them to me on a very interesting narrative trajectory in terms of building the fan base, like getting up this energy and having this be a core group that they're hoping to take to a championship. So overall, number one in my fun ranking. terms of building the fan base like getting up this energy and having this be a core group that they're hoping to take to a championship so overall number one in my fun ranking sandy you padres

i didn't i did not do a system i feel very unprepared for this draft i know i i i but you know what i always prepare really intensely for the minor league free agent draft and then like i get scooped one time, and I'm suddenly drafting guys who aren't in baseball anymore. So maybe this is- You just got Sam Clay, one of your guys. Oh, yeah. I'm going to get my ass kicked in the minor league free agent draft. That's a different draft. I think the Padres are a fantastic pick. They have the beautiful uniforms. They have the beautiful uniforms. They also like that ballpark is so pretty. And so when you're watching them, it's like even when things aren't going well for them on the field,

you just have an aesthetically pleasing experience of baseball because you're like, yeah, it's like beautiful ballpark in San Diego. Very good pick. Yeah, I like the system. It's like shades of Carson Sestouli's nerd scores. Yeah. You're bringing it back. But I feel good about the fact that I have no system and did no preparation, and yet my number one pick also would have been the Padres. Yeah, mine too.

I think that's probably the consensus, I think, going into this season. If they don't have Tatis, maybe that changes things. But I think even without Tatis, there are just so many personalities and, as you said, up-and- and coming team and so many many reasons to root for them so yeah that's the best pick you could make there I think Meg you want to go? Oh boy I didn't do the

system so now I'm not prepared for my second pick I'm conflicted about this pick because there is one big drag for my personal enjoyment but I think that I'm gonna go with the dodgers for my second pick you know like i don't know that we we don't need to belabor the power of it all so i won't i will instead focus on the things that make this team very fun which is

you know when we did our uh our preview episode for the dodgers i think that we we struggled we both had a million questions and no questions at all because they are so obviously good and they are so stacked and they have been for such a long time, but I will focus on one thing, I guess, which is that I appreciate that with a, uh, an upstart, uh, Padres team that is really good and really deep and has, you know, this great farm to draw from, you know, this great farm to draw from, you know, a team like the Dodgers could could rest on its laurels, right? They could say, we have all of this pitching depth.

We have all of these terrific position players. And rather than do that, they said, we will blow through not one, not two, but the third competitive bounce tax threshold to try to to reassert ourselves in the division. And while I wish that they maybe picked a different player to do that with initially i i applaud the idea of of wanting to stay in it and to not be satisfied with how amazing you are but to to need to push forward and so i will i will pick the dodgers i will pick mookie betts who is just you know I when the tipping pitches guys did their gift draft I took Betts because

he is so talented he has a very expressive face he is good for highlights and the Dodgers are just lousy with those guys so I'm picking I'm picking the reigning champs which I feel is a little bit like playing with house money but here we are yeah good pick fun

team Dustin May's hair. He got the Dustin May hair. He got Tony Gonsolin who might want to be a cat for as much as he seems to like them. Yeah, Dustin May now with some strikeouts even potentially, at least in his first start. That was pretty impressive. Yeah, that was fun.

You got deep thoughts with Cody Bellinger. Great, great. Yeah, one of my pet theories is that the Dodgers start that was pretty impressive that was fun you got deep thoughts with Cody Bellinger right right right yeah one of my pet theories is that the Dodgers will become villains at some point this season because they will just be so dominant and because we will not be rooting for them as hard because they won last year so we don't have to feel bad for Clayton Kershaw or anyone else anymore they got that off their backs and so now suddenly they will get to October and we'll all realize, oh, the Dodgers again. This is like the ninth year in a row. There's no narrative here. They're not the underdogs any way that you could possibly present this. So I do wonder whether this is the year, especially if it's like Dodgers versus Padres and Padres the most fun team. And so you're going to root for them against the Dodgers. And so I do wonder whether this will be the year that everyone sort of tires of the Dodgers, you know, other than Dodgers fans, just like the neutral fans who I think they really haven't worn out their welcome despite being there every single year, but perhaps now they will. But that and the fact that they are

going to hopefully potentially make a run at some sort of record setting season. They certainly have the talent to do that. So that's another reason to watch as well. So for my first pick, I'm going to go way off the board here in the same way that I went way off the board when we did this the first time. And as I recall, I took some flack for that and it was deserved, but I am going to do exactly the same thing for exactly the same reason. And that is I'm going to take the angels as my most fun team. I realized that this is a little bit of an idiosyncratic pick and that I probably could have waited around or two. Although I don't know, RJ, you might have sniped me here if I had not taken the Angels, because I know that you enjoy them for the same reason as well.

But look, for me, the most fun thing about this season is Shohei Otani. And one of the most fun things about every season is Mike Trout. And they have both of them. That's basically it. Not that they don't have some other fun and entertaining players, too. But those two guys, you could put Shohei Otani and Mike Trout on the Orioles or any other team, and they would probably be my number one pick. It's like the rare case. We say that baseball is like, well, people say it's not a team sport, it's an individual sport, but it's also one where one player doesn't make

all the difference. The Angels are the best example of that in that they can't get to the playoffs, even though they have Mike Trout. But for a team fun draft or a watchability draft, when you are like me and all of your hopes are hanging on Shohei Otani, then they really kind of make or break it. I mean, they have, in my opinion, in a way, the two best baseball players in the world by two different definitions. They have the best one who does a thing that no one else in the world does. So Shohei Otani can hit and pitch as well as almost anyone. And he is the only person who does those things at that level. So in that sense, he is the best baseball player in the world. And then if you look at more

conventional players who only do one or the other, Mike Trout is the best of player in the world. And then if you look at more conventional players who only do one or the other, Mike Trout is the best of those as well. So that's basically what it comes down to. And they're easy to root for as people too. They seem like good guys to the extent that we can tell. I enjoyed Shohei Otani the other day standing on second base as a runner and waving at the ball that Mike Trout had just launched for a home run as it left. And also it might not be a

terrible team this year. Like the last time when I took them in they won 72 games like they're, you know, legitimate playoff hopes if far from a lock this year. So that's my case. How bad is my rationale? I mean, I will say that, that although the Angels were not, in the end, near the top of my list, where do I have them? I have them at number 10. So, you know, they're in the upper third. But when I was starting to make the list, they were the first team I wrote down. Not just because they start with the letter A, but because the first player I could think of when I thought fun baseball was Otani. I could think of when I thought fun baseball was Otani and like over the past week the team the team that I've been like going out of my way to watch probably the most has been the Angels

and they've had some like really bizarre kind of dramatic finishes over the last week too so it seems like they could actually build up to be a pretty fun team unless you know everything becomes a disaster which is always possible but yeah i i um i think this is a perfectly defensible pick okay i don't know that i would have gone quite this high but i think that it's fine in exercises it's about what's the most fun to you right it's very personal there's no there aren't any bad picks i mean i guess there could be bad picks but this is not one of those. I think that this is fine. Yeah. David Fletcher's fun too. They have some fun

supporting cast there, but really it's the two leads who are driving this for me. And I had to get this team. Like, yeah, I probably could have waited a couple of rounds, but if I didn't get the Angels in the team fun draft, then I would have lost it in my eyes. Yeah. And Anthony Rendon. We always forget Anthony Rendon. How's that happen? Yeah. That's the thing. I don't, like, if you were ranking good players, he would be very close to the top.

I don't know if he is as close to the top in fun. Like, he's fun in some ways, but he's also someone, like, we forget to mention when talking about good players on the Angels, like you know he's very close to the top of that list so he's just sort of understated and underrated and so i don't know if he's that fun he's he's like a good defender he does everything well he's just not particularly flashy someone has to stand up for the introverts yeah jose iglesias also fun very anyway i'm just saying yeah okay well my next pick i guess might be the equivalent uh my equivalent of ben's angels pig because i am going to go with the toronto blue jays like this might be full homerism like please feel free to flame me if if it does

come off that way but i just think that there's so much to possibly enjoy about this team. And for me, like a big part of the fun thing and why I didn't actually pick the Dodgers first is there has to be a level of uncertainty, I think, for baseball to be really fun to me. It has to be like, there has to be a level of it could either go really, really well, or it's going to go really badly. But if there's there's like a possibility with a huge difference between the ceiling and the floor, that that to me makes for fun baseball. And I think that's what could be going on with the Blue Jays now. They have all these players who are such hyped prospects who are now at a point where they should be starting

to reach toward their potential. Like we are waiting and we are hoping for the Vlad Jr. breakout. We've got Bo Bichette. We've got Kevin Biggio. We've got Teoscar Hernandez and Lourdes Gurriel Jr.

in the outfield who can hopefully repeat some of the success that they found. And they made the addition of George Springer, which is just huge. Like Astro's cheating scandal aside, Springer's been a player that I've always really liked. And I think that he could add something like really fantastic to this lineup. They went out and got Marcus Simeon as well, who is another really fun player who has had like a really interesting development in his career and kind of a trajectory he's on and the Jays even though you know they don't have a huge playoff drought anymore they still haven't won the World Series in quite a long time uh during my lifetime

I would like to see them win the World Series and they're in a division with the Yankees and the Rays. And they've got some teams that they can really kind of have interesting battles with. They've got Hyunjin Ryu on the mound, who is just like such a delightful pitcher to watch when he's on. I just really feel that they're and also there's just a there's a wholesome vibe around the team. Because a lot of these players kind of came up in the minor leagues together they were there for the entire time they've gone through this kind of ringer of development and you there's a sense of camaraderie that I think comes out in the way that they interact with each other and so I think like a team that's that's young that has tons of

potential like maybe it won't all fit together. They had just disastrous defense last year, like it was painful to watch. But the the idea of seeing something kind of slowly fall into place, like all of the pieces kind of coming together is really compelling to me. And and also they're they're like, you know, whatever Canada's team, quote unquote, also they're they're like you know whatever canada's team quote unquote uh they're the team i grew up watching the most and yeah that to me all builds together for like a very high fun rating i think that that is like that's an objectively good list of reasons to like the blue jays even if you hadn't grown up rooting for them i think that that is defensible don't let anyone tell you that's a homer pick that's a good pick yeah definitely a better uh i think for most people pick than my pick that's for sure but i think also would have

been pretty high on my list like they have a bunch of players who if you could just like give me the answer key to the season and say hey you can look up how anyone did this year like there are definitely a few players on that team that i would flip to early on just because I want to know you know how big will the Vlad breakout be you know and that sort of thing that I am looking forward to and obviously all of the like sons of 90s players etc like maybe the pitching will not be as fun as Poojay's fans would hope this year we shall But yes, I think they check a lot of boxes. I'm very conflicted. Because part of the thing with a draft is trying to predict

what you can sneak into later rounds. You've got to think about what's going to be there for you later and what you have to claim now. Clearly it's not a priority for me in my first pick. But see, being true to yourself is a good thing to do in these exercises also so i i don't think that there's any major fault with

your process i'm going to after spending a moment looking up a different team i'm going to take this team i'm going to take atlanta i'm going to to take. I'm going to take the Atlanta franchise because the lineup is so stacked. Anytime you get to watch Ronald Acuna Jr. is a good time. I appreciate very much that this Braves team that went through kind of a swoon in terms of how competitive they were a few years ago did not send Freddie Freeman away, right? He did not get dealt in return for prospects while they were going through, you know, the like little mini rebuild or setback or whatever the hell we're calling these things these days. But you know, they retained him so that when they were ready to come out of that with good young pitching and this really strong position player

core that they had Freddie Freeman still on their roster and they've been rewarded for that I think that the pitching that they have is is pitching I'm like really interested in watching both the the young guys who we've seen start to come into their own and really assert themselves and then guys like Morton where you're wondering you know how long are you going to be able to be as good as you've been and is is a Drew Smiley reclamation project really going to work? You know, was his year last year indicative of something that, you know, is really going to stick and persist for them? They, you know, I can never make picks without indulging some amount of Mariner sadness. So the fact that like Alex Jackson is going to be like a credible big league backup catcher

is wonderful for him but quietly devastating for me so um you know i gotta hold the sadness tight on some level and they have you know they have guys like pache who i can't wait to see over the course of a full season i want to know if austin riley figures it out so i think i'm taking atlanta and i am talking myself into feeling better about taking them here than i felt when I started this little speech. They're already proving themselves to be a fun team for me. Yes, seems like a good pick to me. All right, well, I will take maybe the other team you were wrestling with.

I don't know, but the White Sox. No. No, okay. Oh, now I'm going to get my hopes up. Whatever your pick is still on the board. The White Sox, I've called them kind of like the AL Padres No. Oh, now I'm going to get my hopes up. get them here because, you know, the absence of Eloy Jimenez hurts here literally and also in terms of fun. But there are still a lot of players I enjoy watching in this lineup, whether it's Tim Anderson and can he keep hitting for these high averages and being this bad-bip unicorn and Andrew Vaughn, who is new on the scene and seems like he is going to hit really well. And others like the holdovers,

Johan Mankata, Jose Abreu, like I enjoy watching all of these guys. Nick Madrigal is one of my favorite players. So I am really excited to see how he does. Luis Robert is incredible. I mean, I'm just,

I'm naming the whole lineup here. Basically. Yes. Money grand dollars, a pitch framing appreciator, always a fun guy to watch. And then you've got Lucas Di Alito and you've got the opposite of Lucas Di Alito and Dallas Keuchel and Lance Lynn. You've got the strikeout monster and then you've got the more pitch to contact workhorse types and

softer tossers. It's just sort of a nice, fun mix of styles. And of course, there is potential for some sort of La Russa clubhouse blow up, but it doesn't seem like that's happening thus far. And I know he's had some questionable bullpen moves, I suppose. You know, people are reacquainting themselves with Tony La Russa's bullpen management. But thus far, it seems like this has been like any other baseball team when it comes to manager playerplayer relations. And hopefully that continues to be the case. And, you know, if they actually did bond and play well for this guy who's been out of the game for a while,

then that might be a fun story, too, if they all learn from each other and gel and it works out well. So I like it. And I didn't even mention the bullpen, but there are a bunch of really fun guys in that bullpen too whether it's Hendrix or Crochet or Michael Kopach who's back now and looks great so there's just a lot to like here there's even like you know Billy Hamilton on the bench like even the bench players are are pretty fun so White Sox all the way for me yeah I like how Tony La Russa has the like the horse feedbag face mask like that's the model he went with which andy reed had during the nfl season where i was like you look like you look like you're a horse sir because you got a little mask that looks like it's a feedbag anyway i think

this coverage piece are we back around to me we are oh my goodness i am going to take relevant to our previous conversation uh the new york mets okay yeah that was my next pick i think oh really well i i the mets have played four games so far and i think on display within those four games. Today, in the first game, it has just been a measure of chaos and shenanigans and tomfoolery that I absolutely am fully on board with. They have the best pitcher in the world in Jacob deGrom, and they had him absolutely dominate.

And then they had everything just unravel in a really comical way. And that to me is the kind of vibe I'm looking for in baseball. I want to see people absolutely dominate and I want to see people who are capable of incredible feats of athleticism. And I also just want to see like the foolishness and the chaos that does not really happen in any other sport in the same way that it happens in

baseball. And I think that the Mets now coming through with their their new ownership, they've got Francisco Lindor on board, they've got Tyjuan Walker and Marcus Stroman, our pitchers who I really always enjoy watching. They've just got a lot going on that I think could just be really, really interesting in that way. Like they've got that potential for dominance. And they've also got the potential for just comical unraveling. And I think that they have like a very good chance of doing doing very well. And they also have a very good chance, I guess, of just doing really poorly and it having be be a catastrophe so i i think that for me that is enjoyable to watch and and we saw it on display today like they have a situation where they're

in a position to win the game with the bases loaded and the way that they do so is with a bungled call and a guy sticking his elbow out to get hit by a pitch in the strike zone yeah i think that it's also and i i want to try to express this in a kind way. And I worry that I'm not going to. But I've always felt a certain kinship with Mets fans as like a version of the sad Mariners fan, right, where they are just wildly fatalistic. And in some ways with with better reason, because the they've had this until now like you know just disaster of an ownership situation but also for less good reason because they were like recently

uh in the world series and i i kind of want to as a person who enjoys people watching i'm excited to watch mets fans watching this season oh absolutely and i hope that they are given more good days than bad to be clear i am not wishing too much chicanery on them but i do want to see how they react to both a good baseball team um and then also the potential for a disappointing baseball team because i think that it could be amusing in its own way kind of like when you go to Ikea and you get to watch other people trying to figure out what mattress they need. So I, gosh, places in public with people. So I think this is a good pick for that reason also. Yeah, I agree.

And a pretty prosaic reason is just that this lineup is really stacked. Like everyone in that lineup can hit. It's just, it's a lot of fun. that lineup can hit. It's just, it's a lot of fun. And yet also most of them can't field, which I feel like has the potential to be fun also in some ways, maybe not for Mets fans, but like you could definitely get some bloopers out of this team and then also just like people hitting bombs. So yeah, good stylistic mix of like, you know, you've got your, your bat first guys who can't field and you've got Francisco Lindor who can do everything. know you've got your your bat first guys who can't field and you've got francisco and door who can do everything and you've got like pete alonso who can just launch balls and

you've got good on base guys and maybe you have cinder guard on the comeback trail and carrasco hopefully so yeah i think this is a fun team and a team that's like trying to change the narrative about this franchise as a whole. So yeah, it should be fun to watch. Okay, I am up. I am going to take the Minnesota Twins. I am taking the Minnesota Twins who, poor Josh Donaldson. Apart from Josh Donaldson getting hurt, have themselves a very fun and deep lineup. They have Nelson Cruz who continues to just hit home lineup they have nelson cruz who continues to just hit home runs they have jorge palanco who has to play shortstop they have byron buxton who

might finally be putting together the season that we all hoped for from him the the dread i felt when he had to exit the game the other day was was matched only by my relief that he had a non-covid illness which you know speaking of uh beats that you have resulted in a lot of mentions because people just assume that means that he had to poo his pants so um and that's what they told me on twitter they're like i bet that byron buxton had to poo his pants and so he had to leave the game so uh so they have that and i i think an underrated part of this team for me is is the the top bit of their rotation because it was such a joy to watch kenta maeda just be able to be a starter last year after you know a couple of

years of being of being good but sort of used in long relief in la to watch him be able to just be a starter every day and flourish in that role and then you know i continue to love watching barrios pitch and i will always have a soft spot for Michael Pineda. And I hope that he has a full and sort of healthy year that is undisrupted by either injury or, or suspension. And, you know, I don't have to tell RJ how easy it is to root for Matt Shoemaker, even if, even if you don't really quite know what you're going to get there. And Jay Happ is also on this team, which I will just forget for the rest of time, but there he is. So,

uh, you know, and they have a, they have a twin in the bullpen. So if, if ever they are playing the giants, I can, um,

be like, Oh, maybe I get a couple hundred words out of the possibility of them swapping around. So, so yeah, I, I hope that Donaldson comes back and comes back healthy sooner than later.

But even in his absence, I think that this is a very fun team. And it's so nice to, you know, after years of like Cleveland being at the top of the AL Central sort of by default to have a real race between Minnesota and Chicago, I think is just, you know, just really changes the dynamic of that division and how inclined you are to tune into a Twins game. It's like this is a team that is competing and is trying to win now and wants to finally get the monkey of not being able to win a postseason series lately off their back. So I hope that they're able to accomplish those things this year because it would be great fun if they could yeah well you didn't list william sastadio as a reason i knew you were going to talk about it

other than that i totally agree with you and would have taken this team here too and yeah i mean luisa rise is fun right nelson cruz obviously is very fun as he showed again this week. So yeah, this is a very fun team. So good pick. So I guess I will take, I guess I'll take the Yankees. We're kind of in the place now where I'm feeling a little bit less enthusiastic about these teams. I feel like we just went down a tier after the Twins, where now it's like in a different grouping of fun or a different degree of fun. But I'll take the Yankees because they have a lot of good players. That's basically why. I'm not overthinking this. I think I like watching John Carlos Stanton and Aaron Judge

hit baseballs harder than anyone else in the universe. And right now they are both healthy and doing that at the same time, which is great. And they have other guys who hit baseballs a long way, like Gary Sanchez. And I am sort of pulling for him because of how divisive he has been, I think unfairly at times. And then there are players like DJ LeMayhew, who are just good and fun to watch. And Clint Frazier, who's finally getting his chance. And Brett Gardner, who's kind of a favorite of mine, not in a starting role, but I always enjoy seeing him. And also the rotation, like RJ, you mentioned how one element of fun is like the lack of certainty. And in this rotation, I think it has the potential to be one of the best in baseball and also has the

potential for like everyone to get hurt and for it to be some sort of disaster so i guess that is kind of fun too and garrett cole is uh pretty fun when he's on as he was this week and i think you know i'm just i'm kind of curious to see if they can fight off the the rays and the blue jays and i expect that they will but but it's not a certain thing. And of course, this is also a team that I can see play in person quite easily as are the Mets. I don't know if that should really be a criterion here, but it could be. If it is, then that works in their favor for me. So yeah, Yankees. Yeah. I mean, it's hard to argue that the Yankees have a lot of good players. Something that's interesting to me about the Yankees is that even though they do have a lot

of good players, like you, you speak their names out loud. And you're like, man, that guy's really fun. And so is that other guy, just the weight of expectation of like being the Yankees, I think kind of dings them. Yeah in the fun factor for me, especially now that we've, we've gone a full decade without a Yankees world series. And yet there's still this burden of like post-season expectation that I think kind of like trails behind them wherever they go. And,

and as long as they fail to achieve in that respect, it's just going to be like, Oh, the Yankees they haven't they haven't won the world series in a decade what's going on with these guys they're underperforming so that that to me is it's a complicating element i think like it can make it a little less fun or i guess from a different perspective it could make it more fun if they end up being like incredibly powerful and then either either just barreling

their way through the postseason or just just falling face first yeah gosh it's really been that long since they've won a world series huh yeah i'm getting old uh well rj what do you have next oh my god i was so taken away by my yankees reverie that I didn't realize it was me again. I am going to take the Philadelphia Phillies. Okay. Yeah, we're in that range of the draft. We really are. I think I just looking at the Phillies lineup, there's just so many players who I just really, really enjoy watching here.

We've got obviously Bryce Harper is always a compelling watch. Andrew McCutcheon, they've re-signed Ray Elmuto. They've got Didi Gregorius, who's just a delight. Like he's, he's really one of my favorite players to watch. As far as a fun factor goes, I think having Didi Gregorius on your team really bumps you up a notch. Gene Segura, we've got Adam Haisley coming in. Yeah, just a lot, a lot to enjoy within that lineup. Maybe having the rotation with, you know, Chase Anderson going on is a little less compelling to me. But the narrative of their absolutely disastrous bullpen last year, coming into this year year I think has the potential to be interesting

to watch so yeah I I like I like the Phillies here uh and I think they'll have an interesting rivalry going on with the Mets uh within the division now yeah I think that that's true yeah that bullpen god it can't be as bad as it was last year. Although they've had their moments in the early going where you're like, is this sufficiently fixed? Can we stay? Oh no, I feel such pressure. I feel like I'm going to make a bad choice. I don't really care about

any of the NL Central teams. This is supposed to be a day about fun, Meg. Okay, well then I'm taking the Marlins. Stay with me. I think that Jazz Chisholm is just, he might be enough on his own. He just might be enough all on his own. The thing with the Marlins the last couple of years has been

they have taken these very high high upside super toolsy kind of risky guys where they you know if they can put it all together they're going to be really spectacular everyday players they all have some obvious flaws the athleticism is there and there have been a couple that have fallen into that category and i think that when you look at jazz like the combination of skills that he has is just in addition to being really compelling on its own is the thing that we're not we don't always see like the speed guys as much anymore and we don't see the guys who are like gonna stretch a double into a triple and you know he's got the hair i don't think that blue jazzberry is a good nickname and i think that maybe i should take myself to prison but is it bad it's pretty it's bad right i shouldn't tweet about it i have no comment

it's pretty bad it's not even it's not even really the blue raspberry color so it's bad but anyway i'm just i i am intrigued by him i'm curious to see like how his plate discipline continues to evolve in the majors i think that he is a compelling guy and i think that there are a lot of things on this team that are fun and interesting even if i don't expect them to be a postseason team like they were last year because we don't have the expanded format so i i'm curious to see kind of what they do and what pieces of this club start to emerge as real contributors to the next good Marlins team, because I think that there are guys is underratedly fun, so we should keep our eyes on that. Jesus Aguilar, also underratedly fun.

Some of this pitching is compelling. I want to know if Louis Brinson can ever really live up to the prospect type he had when he was coming up. So I'm picking the Marlins. I don't know if this was a good pick or not. I'm not sure, but I think that the Marlins as like a franchise are on the upswing, even if they have made their ballpark hilariously boring when it used to be super fun.

I see I'm already regretting this pick in some ways. I'm glad we're in the region of the draft where you can't necessarily predict the next pick. That's such a nice way of describing this pick. Eyebrow-raising selections. No, it's not. I mean, I don't think it's a great team, but there are fun players to watch on it

and up-and-coming players and the seeds of the next great Marlins team and a good starting rotation that should be pretty fun to watch, especially when Sixto's there. Yeah, exactly. Once Sixto comes back, it will be even more fun. We can remain enthralled by his secondary stuff

and sort of confounded that his fastball doesn't play better than it does. But yeah, it's a good skit. Yeah, well, that's good because now there will be some variation. With those first few picks, there's a very clear consensus. It's not like I wish we were more divided on which the fun teams were. Like this is not like food or music or something where it's just so subjective. You might say, oh, this is the best band and someone else might hate that band. Like no one else is going to say, no, the Padres are not fun.

I think we all agree that the Padres are pretty fun. So I went off the board with the Angels. But other than that, I think that most of our early picks are kind of like the consensus fun team. So now we're in uncharted territory a little bit. So am I going? I'm going, right? Yeah, you're going.

Well, Meg, you just made an offhand comment about the NL Central not being fun. But I'm going to take an NL Central team. I'm going to take the Brewers. I think the Brewers actually are pretty fun. I think, A, they have the potential to be a great defensive team. And I know I said that the Mets might be fun because they might be a terrible defensive team. But either end of that spectrum can be fun, I think. And if you're a really slick fielding team and a team that picked up Colton Wong and Jackie Bradley Jr.

and already had Lorenzo Cain and other guys who've got good gloves, I think that can be a lot of fun to watch. I am curious about Christian Jelic and whether he will return to close to best player in baseball status, whether he'll bounce back from the disappointing year last year. They have a few players in that. Will he bounce back? Will he be great again? Camp? You know, what will happen to Lorenzo Cain after his long layoff?

What is Kesten Hura going to be as a first baseman and as a hitter? But also, I think the top of the rotation and the back of the bullpen are about as good as anyone's. And I do enjoy watching Woodruff and Burns. And I know a lot of people like Adrian Hauser. And then you've got Hayter and Devin Williams. So I think there are just enough standout players here. Central team this early in the draft because they are acknowledged as the blandest, weakest division. But I think there's a lot to like on the Brewers. And I also applaud them for just being competitive. They've made the playoffs a number of years in a row here, and they've done what they can to make moves to shore up their roster. And I thought, as a lot of people did, I think that the Cardinals had sort of sealed the Central when they acquired Nolan Arnauto, but then the Brewers made some late moves and in my mind, at least edged ahead here. So it could be a good race,

like not in the sense that any of the teams is going to be great, but if the closeness of the race dictates its quality to an extent, then it could be close because there are a bunch of teams that are just like not that great, but also not much better than the other teams that are in the race. Yeah, I enjoy the Brewers based on a lot based a lot on their potential to like, run a razor thin run differential into the postseason. Yeah, that is something that I it's like really fun to me just winning these close games. And that's something that is really fun to me, just winning these close games. And that's something that the Brewers have the power to do within the way they're constructed.

So yeah, I think this is a good pick. Thank you. Yeah, and they have sharp uniforms. That always helps. And yeah, I'm into that. I think the Brewers are fun. It's a nice ballpark, even though I'll never remember what it's named anymore.

So we're back around to me. Yeah. Well, hmm. Did my Marlins pick throw off your algorithm? It didn't. It made me rethink some things. Marley, that's very generous. What do the Marlins rank on your objective list?

That's very generous of you. Oh, man. Where do the Marlins rank on my list? I blacked them out. I think they were at number 20. on your objective list. That's very generous of you. Oh man, where do the Marlins rank on my list? I blacked them out. I think they were at number 20. So yeah, I think that was a worthwhile diversion. I'm putting a lot of faith in Jazz's power and play discipline,

just continuing to hum along and advance and yeah, that hair. I'm gonna go with another nl central pick that is definitely a little influenced by just recency bias but i'm gonna go with the reds oh yeah yeah i think the reds have got some very interesting stuff going on right now with the way they've moved around their infield to uh to accommodate jonathan india they've got nick cast infield to accommodate Jonathan India. They've got Nick Castellanos, he of the deep drive into left, that Ben recently did such an amazing deep dive on.

Yeah, I don't know. They've really done, they're five and one. I didn't realize that. That's a little shocking to me. They're off to a historic offensive start, which is nice because they're off to a historic offensive start which is nice because like they're making up for their offensive underperformance from last season all in one week which is great yeah no they've they've got they've got like significant power potential in

their lineup and they've got uh they've got sean doolittle who ranks highly on our i think the collective like baseball online fun players list they've got amir garrett who's also way up there they've got you know classic fun guy starter wade miley who you know we all tune in to watch every time he pitches uh yeah there's i i think the reds definitely have the potential to be a team i would consider watching going out of my way. We're in the middle of the draft list now. So it's not like I'm not, these are the teams where I'm feeling really, you know, drawn to divert my entire day to watch. But I think the Reds will be a satisfying team on the most part to tune into.

That's my take. My hot, hot take. I think that that's defensible. I hope that they keep, they don't have to keep hitting quite like this, but I hope that they keep hitting reasonably well for the reasons you outlined, Ben, which was, it was just such a rough, it was such a slog for them last year. And it had to have been frustrating for them it was certainly frustrating for their fans and like the good version of johannes suarez is so fun and maybe

akino will i don't know like but that might have just been a brief flash of light that we all got to enjoy for a minute but maybe it won't be maybe it'd be fine and jesse winker has that long neck so it's a very long neck um amir garrett yeah i'm into it my my perspective on aristudis aquino has been permanently i think damaged by the mlb flashbacks i know i'm with you i'm like i think he's amazing and I never want to watch him play baseball ever again because of these okay

now we're really doing a draft it's my turn I guess I'll stick in the central I'm going to take the Cardinals this is extreme recency bias because while we are talking I have the Brewers and the Cardinals on sort of in my peripheral vision in the office, and Nolan Arenado, who did his first home run,

is a St. Louis Cardinal. And it is going to remain deeply strange that Nolan Arenado plays for the Cardinals but is being paid by the Rockies. So that's its own bit of fun. I think that Jack Flaherty is like firmly in the in the group of starters who I enjoy watching enough where I'm like oh yeah I'll spend an extra inning or two on this game as opposed to hopping around on MLB TV when I know that he's starting so there's that part of it because he's just he's just a delight so I you know you got that you got you got these

you know these like versatile little infielder guys who are moving around like tommy edmund you got paul goldschmidt i don't know that i think that tyler o'neill is a good baseball player but he is certainly like a a big leaguer and he's got those arms so we we talk a lot about yandi diaz and his arms but we should not forget tyler o'neill's arms because they're there there's bulk there you know i'm curious to see like how jordan hicks does and genesis cabrera is interesting and they got some guys who are going to come back from being injured who are fun too like you know harrison bader is a fun fielder to watch and you know michlaus is hurt but i think uh you know know if he can find his way

back into the rotation at some point this year he's a good time so a lot of this has to do with Nolan Arenado I won't lie but I'm picking the Cardinals Austin Dean I know that part of this is because there is a breakfast sausage

that has Dean in the title but doesn't Austin Dean just sound like the like a breakfast sausage that has Dean in the title. But doesn't Austin Dean just sound like a breakfast sausage magnate? Like as a name? He's like a cartoon figure of a man who appears in the ads. Yeah, exactly. With a hat and a mustache probably. Just offering you a delicious plate of breakfast sausages. Yeah, only sausages though.

Nothing else on the plate. He's like, it's all about me, me, me, me, me, me. Because that's what America's all about. Yeah, only sausages though. Nothing else on the plate. He's like, it's all about meat. Meat, meat, meat, meat, meat. Because that's what America's all about. Yeah, meat, meat, meat, meat, meat. So, the Cardinals. Okay. I love how we're getting all of our NL Central teams just off the board. Just get them out of the way.

Buried in the middle of the draft so that no one will remember. Yeah, Dylan Carlson is pretty fun. Yeah. Looking forward to seeing him blossom yeah all right i'm doing it i'm taking the astros okay i'm gonna take the astros yeah how long it would take i'm not gonna like performatively wait till number 30 to be mad at the astros or anything i'm taking the astros because uh i guess i'm i'm good value here. Maybe it's a distressed asset. Very Astros move.

Yeah, very Jeff Luno-esque rationale for drafting the Astros here. But clearly the best baseball team in terms of wins and losses and talent, I think, that is left on our list here. And success and skill and being good at baseball is clearly correlated with fun, not perfectly correlated as some of our choices have shown, but it is more fun to watch a better team than a worse team generally. which is if you want to look at it that way, if you want to see people throw blow up trash cans on the field or have creative chance or whatever, then if you're watching the Astros game, you get to see that too. So there's a little bonus for you.

And frankly, like there aren't that many Astros like who are that important to, or even like left from the 2017 banging scheme team, at least. So there are a lot of Astros who are just not really implicated in that and we're just sort of reflexively rooting against them because they're Astros. And then I don't care, Jose Altuve, still pretty fun player, I think, whatever stain is on his record now. And it doesn't seem like he was even as involved in the banging as others were in as active a way, although he was obviously there and knew about it. But you have guys like Jordan Alvarez, who's pretty fun as a hitter, at least, and he wasn't there until 2019 or Kyle Tucker, who wasn't there until 2018. And then even like Miles Straw, I think, has the potential to be fun. Not sure if he'll be good, but could be fun.

has the potential to be fun. Not sure if he'll be good, but could be fun. And obviously you've got Granke, who if we were doing a fun players draft would be like a top 10 pick probably. So any team that has Granke just for the quotability and also the pitch ability and just watching him as he gets by and more than gets by with a little loss of velocity,

but just great creativity and command and an array of pitch types and all of that. And, you know, I enjoy the McCullers curve as much as anyone. So there's a lot of talent here. And obviously it is tainted talent in some cases. But even if you hate watch them, I think they are still watchable. So there you go. Houston Astros. And I think we kind of saw this play out a bit last year with the Astros postseason run.

But for a certain type of person, I think the Astros now being more hated than they were even just for being a juggernaut that was winning like over 100 games a season. even just for being a juggernaut that was winning like over a hundred games a season, like for a certain kind of person, I think having this position as like an embattled team, everybody hates us, can actually be cheering for them more fun. And or like even being them more fun. Like it kind of is like, we saw that with the way Carlos Correa was kind of talking to the media, like during the postseason, like they said, we couldn't do it but look at us now like for a certain type of person yeah i can see that actually being really fun especially since in terms of talent quality they are not at all embattled losers but in terms of i guess fan response and being heckled and

having trash cans thrown around. Yeah. People, people are mad at them. So if you're the kind of person who likes to, to position yourself against an army of haters, then the Astros would be a great team to root for. I was into the inflatable trash can.

I didn't like the actual trash can because it had trash in it. And then I was like, so some poor club you know like ballpark person has to go clean that up so that part i was less into but the inflatable one i was like that is you're committed to the bit like that that required planning yeah like where do you get an inflatable trash can right i didn't i didn't understand that really as a concept until i saw it yeah is it just like you go down to party city and they're like we got the giant dinosaur and we got the noodley arm guy that you put out in front of your

car wash and then we have these inflatable trash cans that everybody uses yeah for all of your trash can themed parties leftover stock from when they mass manufactured stuff that everyone at the ballpark was going to be using to mock the astros last year. And then it just was all on layaway for a year because there were no fans on the ballpark. But now everyone is finally getting to use all of that. Okay, RJ, you are up. Yes. And I am going to take the Tampa Bay Rays. The Rays.

The Rays, fun team for kind of the same reasons the rays are always a fun team the kind of players that they have going on we can see if a rose arena kind of approximates vaguely some of what was going on in the postseason last year brandon lau's great we got joey wendell and william thomas we got meg's guy mike zanino and tyler glass now has looked thrilling to watch over the past week and just uh an all-time favorite rich hill now on the tampa bay rays which just seems like such a wonderful fit uh in the current era can chris archer bounce back let's find out watch the tampa bay rays i end up with the weirdest beats man like i just really end up with the weirdest beats, man. I just really end up with some weird beats. I really do.

Yeah, plus Wander, Wander looms. Yes, Wander is just out of our field of vision, but eventually into our field of vision. Right. Yeah, you bought low on the raise before Wander came up. Yeah, when I said that the Astros were clearly the best baseball team left, I kind of forgot about the raise, but the raise is also a good baseball team. And yeah, they have the potential to do weird

strategic tactical stuff, which is fun at first, at least until maybe you realize that ultimately it will make baseball worse. But at least for a while, it's fun to watch them try stuff. I think that's a good pick. Oh, boy. Well, what am I going to do here? I guess I'm going to take the Nationals. This is a Stars pick. This is a Stars-based pick because there are some scrubs on this team but um i think that when you can look to trey turner and juan soto that you're you're doing you're doing pretty all right for yourself and then you know we have

we have scherzer and we have strasburg and then hopefully when he is able to rejoin the rotation we will have patrick corbin and whatever is left of John Lester. And they do this thing where they add these like kind of fungible fielding bats to their club and some of them end up being pretty okay. So I don't think that this is like a really very good ball club. And I think that given the division they find themselves in that they're unlikely to be much of a presence in the postseason. But you know, when you list off the guys who you're like, I want to watch a start from that guy, you know, Scherzer and Strasburg and to some extent Corbin are probably on that list.

And so there's a lot to see there. And like Juan Soto will not do quite what he did last season necessarily. Like, I don't think he has a 201 wrc plus over a full campaign in his future but he's just so much fun to watch and is just like one of those bats that we're gonna look back on and say like we started being able to watch this guy when he was 19 like we've just we're gonna spend like a lot of juan soto's adult life with him in public in a way that's very weird, but super cool. And so there's that part. And I think that we saw a step forward from Turner last year, and then he's gotten off to a nice start.

So I know that we haven't seen much of them yet because of their COVID outbreak. And so, you know, there's even less to go on in some respects with washington than there is with the other clubs on this list but i think that the amount of of sheer wattage they have from their stars is enough to make up for some of the more underwhelming spots in their lineup and rotation and then i guess also in the the bullpen but uh brad Hand they have Brad Hand and Josh Bell so you know they got some guys

they have Kyle Schwarber who they're still like you poor man you must continue to play in the outfield but it's fine he seems happy about it so yeah I'm picking the Nationals this is a really bad farm system but that is not the draft that we're doing this is just like a really very bad farm system I don't want to inspire people to write articles that are mostly mean at the site

and i know that people have talked about like if you took vanderbilt and then you took the nationals farm system like which of these is better and that just feels like a mean piece to to spend a lot of time thinking about but it is a thing I think about when I watch Vandy. That wasn't a very nice thing to bring up on this podcast. Sorry, Nationals fans. You won that World Series and we were all rooting for you, mostly. That was exciting. You had me at

Soto and Turner and Scherzer. I didn't even need the... And they have Brad Hand. And Brad Hand. I was sold already. Who could forget Brad Hand and his weird unexercised option? All right. Well, I think I'll take the Cubs here. The Cubs are one of the trifecta of teams that just feel less fun

just because they've either traded a face of the franchise or traded a really good player, just haven't really invested in the team lately, even though they were pretty good and seemed to be in a place where they should have gotten better so they're just sort of blanketed by just being a downer lately but I think looking at the actual players on the team there's still some fun here left and some talent left and it could be the last year when you get to see a lot of these guys together so you know the Rizzo and Bryant and Baez core is still pretty fun I think and Jason Hayward I enjoy and Ian Happ is pretty fun and Jack Peterson just got a waffle iron from his

teammates for some reason when he hit his first home run as a cub. And you also have this interesting experiment there trying in the rotation with a bunch of soft tossing command guys and Kyle Hendricks and Zach Davies. And can I even keep them straight in my head? And then the Craig Kimbrell experience and what is that going to be like this year? So there's a fair amount here that I am interested in watching. And at this point in the draft, the bar is fairly low. So I'm going with the Cops. I didn't even mention Wilson Contreras, who's a good and pretty entertaining player too.

Yeah. And now, is that our final NL Central team off the board? There's still one. Oh, yeah, there's still one they were just way down on my spreadsheet i uh i had to scroll down to catch them in fairness i think they sometimes forget about themselves too okay for my next pick i'm kind of torn between two teams that are in the same geographic area but despite despite how poorly they have started and how little fun they have actually been to watch over the past week i think i'm going to take the a's the a's i just hmm i think i have some kind of strange a's bias

embedded in my brain for some reason because i really really I really was like, you know, the A's, I have a good feeling about them. That good feeling has not exactly panned out so far. But there are there are fun players on the A's. You know, there's Matt Chapman. There's Matt Olson. There's there's Ramon Laureano. Elvis Andrews is on the A's. Yeah.

After all this time and elvis andrews will obviously occupy a place in my heart forever for the whole blue jays rangers situation sure so that that kind of predisposes me to be interested in watching what's going on there what have they got going on in the rotation minaya is is always a fun player for me to watch pitching let's see what else is going on here lizardo is fun when when lizardo's on like that that's a good that's a good time yeah a good lizardo time yeah i mean in theory i feel like where are we in the list now? We're almost hitting the 20s. And I feel like if the A's can kind of pull themselves out of the hole that they have created for themselves by playing to the bottom of the barrel of their capability, I think they should be a solid team to watch, especially in a division that doesn't stand to be super competitive outside of the

Astros. Like if the Angels can do what we hope they could do with Trout and Otani and Rendon, and everybody previously discussed, like they can make a run for it. But outside of that, you kind of need in a division with such a clear front runner, a team that's going to be like a kind of wild card that, you know, probably around the middle of the road, but could kind of make things interesting for one of the teams that is closer to contention. And I think the A's of that team. I think that that is, and this is a very A's thing to say, but that is very good value for your pick. I think you got excellent value for your pick.

Okay, what am I going to do here? This got a lot less fun potentially yesterday. I'm going to take the Diamondbacks, question mark. Is that your final answer? I'm taking the Diamondbacks, the Arizona Diamondbacks. Taking the diamond backs, the Arizona diamond backs. I hope Cattell Marte is okay because that'll move some stuff around in this calculus. I like watching Cattell play baseball quite a bit. He had a down year last year after an MVP caliber season.

He was in the running at least in 2019. And I think that his like real true talent probably sits between those things. But he was off to this fun start. And then he tweaked a hammy yesterday in a way where, you know, when a guy runs up the line and then he pulls up and you're like, oh, you just you just messed up your hammy good. That's what you just did. That's what he did. So hopefully he's okay. So they have him. They have, hopefully at some point in the next little bit here, they will get Zach Gallen back, who was good, good fun to watch. You know, Nick Ahmed is on the aisle. Cole Calhoun is on the aisle. This is not a good baseball team, but there are some interesting components. And then you always have the potential to start seeing some of the exciting prospects that they have because this is a very good farm system. I hope that we see Dalton Varshow at some point in the near future because the idea of a guy who can handle both catcher and center field is a thing that we should just talk about like every day. That should be all we ever talk about because that profile is funky and very neat. And, you know, Perdomo is up.

So that's exciting. We're already starting to see some of these dudes because of the injuries, which bad reason, but good result, I guess. They have a human being named Pavin on their team. There's a guy named Seth Beer. Fun fact, the year that Seth Beer was in the Fall League, so I guess this would have been 2019 when I saw him. You know, you go to the press box and they have lineups for the day and then they give you a pronunciation guide and i liked

that they gave you pronunciations for like many of the dudes even guys who um like native english speakers probably didn't struggle with which i think is nice because it's like you know you should just like make it accessible for everybody and they had seth beer on there and they said beer like the drink and that was their way of telling you what it sounded like, which I think was probably just someone having a good time in a busy time of the year for them. But I applaud their good time because, you know, some of my good times have beer involved also. So I'm taking the D-backs.

Plus, you know, as like a recent transplant, like this is my most, this is my closest team to get to watch which is exciting for me as a person who grew up watching american league baseball as the closest team to have an an nl club that is gonna have other uh teams cycle through that when i was living my fan life i got to see less often in person including the dodgers and the padres so at some point in the summer that that might be in my future. And as I've joked many times on this podcast, Chase Field is just the nicest Costco you've ever watched a baseball game in. So that will be a good fun time also.

We're in a really rough segment of this part of the draft. This is a rough segment of the draft. But here we are. D-backs, here we come. All right. Well, I will go a little faster here because these teams are less fun to watch and probably also less fun to talk about and listen to us talk about so less of a rationale here but i'll go with the red socks who as i mentioned there's still some like hey they would be even more fun with mookie lingering here but i think

they have one of the best position player cores in the game and not as much surrounding that as you'd like. But still, they've got Bogarts and they've got Devers and they've got Vasquez and they've got JD Martinez and Alex Verdugo. That's a good half or more than half of a lineup that compares to almost everyone's. And then you've got a couple of guys who can hit the ball a mile, but may also just not hit the ball at all in Frenchie Cordero and Bobby Dalbeck. So looking forward to seeing what those guys do. And the pitching is frankly a lot less fun and why they were not drafted earlier. But I think with the players I've named and if we are factoring in ballparks, which I guess we should just even if you're not going but watching them on TV.

I do quite enjoy Fenway Park. So that's enough, I guess, at this stage. The bar is getting lower. Yeah. On a similar note, a team who has kind of traded away a franchise player recently and thus sunk their fun estimation a bit i will take cleveland cleveland cleveland indeed and to even now i still when i think about cleveland's baseball team i think oh francisco lindor and then and then that spark of joy just just fades it just it just gets snuffed out like a light it's

like oh they traded him but they still have jose ramirez yes so that's that's very much something and they very much do still have shane beeper pitching so that is also something and so those are those are two somethings that add up to make something else and that is why i've taken cleveland i think that that's that's a good rationale. I am going to take the Royals. I'm going to take the Royals because they're a weird team who thinks that they're competing. I don't know that that's true, but I like that they think that they are

and that they're trying to get better for that reason. They have some of their young pitching up and they went and got Benintendi. Yeah, the Royals. I don't think they're good, but I think they're interesting, and that feels like great value at this point in the draft. So, Royals. Yeah, Royals, I think, probably the most fun of the bad teams,

or I would have said that. I guess you took the Marlins before, so maybe not. And maybe people would quibble with calling them bad. I know that they would, but I agree. There are some fun players on that team. And the team as a whole is like trying to be wholesome and likable. And we'll see if that continues. But that's another reason I guess you can feel good about picking them here.

Two things I forgot to say in my earlier picks. A, I think when I took the Astros, I forgot to mention Dusty Baker as a factor in their favor. Dusty Baker's pretty fun. And when I took the Red Sox, I didn't mention that if you don't look too closely, you could convince yourself that Mike Trout is playing outfield for them. And it's actually just Hunter Renfro. But for a a moment you might get that glimmer of fun all right i think for my next pick boy we're down to the dregs here all right i think i'll take the mariners is this premature maybe maybe premature but definitely but yeah i mean you're at least getting glimmers of the next great mariners team there were people

who picked the mariners as like an underdog dark horse team for 2021 like i don't think anyone really believed that but like of the teams that had no chance like they they had the the best no chance of anyone where you could like kind of talk yourself into everything going right but you know at some point you're going to get the service time manipulation guys up there and that'll be fun it is not fun that James

Paxton is not going to be pitching for the Mariners as we just learned maybe as we were recording this podcast yeah James Paxton having Tommy John surgery. So that is the opposite of fun. And that does bump them down the list here. But still, you are going to get Kalanick at some point.

You are going to get Julio Rodriguez at some point, presumably. And you're going to get your Justice Sheffield and Kikuchi and Marco Gonzalez and some pitchers who are pretty fun. And then, you know, like, can Kyle Lewis be good again? And can Evan White not be a disaster and others? So I'll just say others. Yeah. Who those would be. But that's that's enough for me. And like, it's a team that's coming together and like this is more about i guess like watching the team on the field but if you're like a mariners fan you have hope i mean i don't know if you're a mariners fan if you have any hope left but just like relative to past years because you do have the good farm system and like

you really sense that within the next few years like they are really almost definitely gonna break that drought it really looks like so I'm sorry to even say that Mick but still it certainly seems like that from afar as someone who has not suffered as a Mariners fan so even if this team is not great like there is that sense that better things are right around the corner. I was in high school. I thought I was going to be a lawyer.

That's what I thought about my life the last time the Mariners were in the postseason. I was like, I'm probably going to be a lawyer. Well, your life ended up being fun at least. Yeah, I mean, I'm glad that it went better for me than it did for the franchise i suppose but i will take i'll take the giants here at the san francisco giants oh did i did i steal your pig meg you did but fair enough i am not sorry you shouldn't be

uh the giants you know they're they they've got farhan zaidi at the at the helm uh they're they're building back up they've got donovan solano when i was uh in the the deep dark depths of the second base positional power rankings was probably my favorite blurb that i wrote just because what a what a career what an interesting career, what a time to become a silver slugger. And he has taken not a single walk yet this season, but he's hidden. And we've got Mikey Stremski. We've got the return of Buster Posey after not playing last year. And, you know, Johnny Cueto.

That's a, that's a fun picture to watch. Aaron Sanchez, former blue jay uh will he be able to bounce back from his many blister problems we'll see that that's a mystery that we can unpack together watching the san francisco giants yeah that would have been my that was where i was gonna go oh so now we're in meg scramble territory, and that's when bad stuff happens in these. I guess I'm going to take the Tigers. I'm taking the Tigers because they got young pitching. They got badu.

They play baseball. That's not fair. So true. Fun sport. How well? You know, it depends on the day. But they do play baseball. You know, I want good things for, like,

Robbie Grossman on his new deal, and I'm intrigued by, like, you know, what does Willie Castro do? And, yeah, anyway, I'm taking the Tigers mostly on the strength of the young pitching that we are seeing and are likely to see over the course of the year. And to mostly see if Akil Badu can keep it going and be an interesting piece that kind of forces them to think about whether he might not be part of their next good Tigers team. So the Tigers. Yep. I would have taken the Tigers too,

but I will instead take the Orioles. I think the Orioles, A, you've got Trey Mancini and it's fun that he is there on the team playing baseball at all. And then, you know, you've got some pretty decent position players

on this team. He's one of them, of course, but you also have Ryan Mountcastle. And I am looking forward to seeing some of their young pitching come up at some point this season. Perhaps we will get a glimpse of the other Michael Bauman.

And John Means is fun, rooting for him. Matt Harvey is throwing 95 again somehow seemingly. You've got like DJ Stewart who is actually pretty good seemingly. And I don't know, it doesn't take much at this stage to pick a team, but I think that's enough. And I still hold out hope

that maybe we will see Mickey Janus someday, which would bump them up if they had a knuckleballer. So yeah, Orioles, another team that seems like better things might be around the corner certainly can't be worse things. And okay, we're down to our final round. We made it.'m gonna take the texas rangers kinder falafel is a fun player i think david doll's a fun player they play in a new ballpark that was very full of people a few days ago and is also full of shadows mysteriously i'm always struck by the darkness of that ballpark like it first it first became clear in the the postseason last year i thought there was something wrong with my tv initially but it's actually just very

shadowy and so it makes for kind of a dramatic viewing experience we've got jordan lyles always high on the fun player rankings uh pitching out of the rotation and kyle gibson too and the that's the texas rangers for us the rangers uh okay well i'm taking the you couldn't quite bring yourself to do it oh god oh no oh Oh, God. Oh, no. I'm going to take... There's no good choice here. No, but I'm going to take... You know what?

I'm changing my mind. I'm going to take the pirates. Oh. And I'm basing this pick entirely on Cabrian Hayes. Who is hurt. Who is hurt now, but who we hope gets better real, real soon. Because I think that while... I think that the pirates have a plan, Who is hurt. Who is hurt now, but who we hope gets better real, real soon. Because I think that while I think that the Pirates have a plan, and that's nice because for a long time they didn't.

And Cabrian Hayes is a big part of that plan. And so while I think that one could argue that these are two teams, this and the Rockies, are two teams driven by one really good player, Cabrian Hayes in the Pirates case and Trevor Story in the Rockies are two teams driven by like one really good player, Cabrian Hayes in the Pirates case and Trevor Story in the Rockies case in terms of guys who play every day, because obviously the Rockies have Germán Marquez, but like he doesn't pitch every day. Cabrian Hayes is going to be on the Pirates for a long, long time, whereas Trevor Story will not be on the Rockies for a long, long time. So I am picking Hayes and the Pirates in the hopes that his mere presence over hopefully the course of much of this season puts them in a better spot than the Rockies who could just trade Trevor Story at the deadline. And then what do you have?

You have Oramil Tapia trying to wrap home Holm runs and failing and Charlie Blackman's beard. So I'm taking the Pirates. I don't feel good about it, but that's what I'm doing. Yeah. All right. Well. You have the Rockies. Congratulations.

I guess I do. Yeah. I forgot to say it. I might get Adley Rutschman in my Orioles pick. Forgot to justify that. Austin Hayes, semi-fun. I'm just trying to avoid officially drafting the Rockies, but I can't avoid it. I have to do it. So yeah, the Rockies. I'm not going to try to sell you all on the

Rockies being fun. We know they're not fun, but someone had to be the 30th team. It's fun to read about the Rockies front office dysfunction. So that's maybe more fun than the team itself at this point. Weird, weird organization. Daniel Bard. Bard, yeah, that's maybe more fun than the team itself at this point weird weird organization Daniel Bard yeah that's fun Colorado beautiful state beautiful ballpark future set of the all star game

we didn't even talk about that yep so that'll do it well the team fun draft it was fun it was fun I guess that's that RJ thanks for joining us

thank you for having me yes thank you RJ follow RJ at rumhamlet read RJ at fangraphs let RJ know if there are creatures on the field of any kind thank you and we'll do this again next year alright that will do it for today Let RJ know if there are creatures on the field of any kind. Thank you. And we'll do this again next year.

All right. That will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. As a number of people have pointed out, Mike Trout is alone at the top of the Fangraphs War Leaderboard as I record this, only by a tenth of a win. But still, the milestone has happened just about a week into the season. The stats are meaningful. Maybe not all of the stats, but at least Trout is in his accustomed place. I should note that we recorded this episode

prior to the news about suspicious baseballs thrown by Trevor Bauer being sent to MLB for inspection. This was reported by Ken Rosenthal, whom Bauer subsequently referred to as a gossip blogger. But according to Major League sources, Ken wrote the balls had visible markings and were sticky. Anyway, not surprising that balls thrown by Trevor Bauer would have visible markings or be sticky. And if this new league crackdown on using foreign substances was going to have any teeth, then Bauer would have to be a test case because his StatCast data has made it so obvious, strongly suspicious, that he appears to be using some sort of spin-enhancing sticky substance.

It's not really clear whether this was just reported because it was Bauer, and many pitchers have had balls sent for testing, or whether he was singled out, but it would be somewhat surprising if there were not foreign substances on those baseballs. The question really is, will anything be done about it? Can you prove that whatever's on them was applied by Bauer? Can you make a suspension stick, so to speak? There is another report that the MLBPA is prepared to protest and appeal. You almost wonder whether there might have to be some sort of team penalty assessed. I don't know how that would work, but that way you wouldn't have to

prove that it was the pitcher, and then there would be a lot of pressure on the pitcher not to use something. But it'll establish an interesting precedent, and it will also be interesting to see if Bauer persists in his use of whatever he is likely using, or whether those spin rates miraculously fall back to earth in his upcoming starts. So I'm not really sure if anything will come of this, or if we'll even hear anything more about this, but I do know that the early season strikeout rate is over 25%. Spin rates also seem to be up across the league, maybe because of the new ball. So some sort of crackdown

is warranted. There's just still some question about whether this will be an effective deterrent. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some small monthly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks. Adam DeLisandro, Ted Walker, Mike Lemaire, Richard Anderson, and Ted Miles. Thanks to all of you. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild.

Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. We will be back with another episode extremely soon. Check your feeds. It might be there already. So we will talk to you then. And nobody's gonna stop us now. We're gonna play the music really loud. South City is really cool. Everybody got a swimming pool. Swimming pool.

Hey, hey, I'm gonna get a Friday. Hey, hey, I'm gonna get a Friday. Hey, hey, I'm gonna get a Friday. Gonna get a Friday fun!