Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1767: Goodbye World Series, Hello Winter Ball

Episode Date: November 4, 2021

Meg Rowley and guest co-host Eric Longenhagen discuss the conclusion of the World Series, including how Brian Snitker and Dusty Baker managed their depleted pitching staffs, the future of postseason pitching, Jorge Soler’s pyrotechnics, when they realized Atlanta was going to win the Series, and what’s next for the Astros and the Braves. Then they […]

Slowly walking down the hall Faster than a cannonball Where were you while we were getting high? Someday you will find me Car beneath the landslide In a champagne supernova in the sky Someday you will find me Car beneath the landslide

In a champagne supernova A champagne supernova in the sky Hello and welcome to episode 1767 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of FanGraphs and I am joined this morning by Eric Langenhagen, lead prospect analyst at FanGraphs. Good morning. Good morning. 10 a.m. on a folly, what's Wednesday? Wednesday. Wednesday. day. I wonder now that the World Series has concluded and Major League Baseball is done for the year, if it will become easier or harder to remember what day of the week it is because the rush of work and just all the craziness of October and the beginning part of November here

often makes it hard to triangulate where one is in space and time. But I don't know that it'll get easier once we start lacking the daily events that might otherwise orient us. I think that the playoff schedule has a greater impact on you. Yes. Because the editorial calendar shifts.

You don't have a weekend anymore like no really throughout the the playoffs i was going to save this till the end of the pod but like you having moved down here to arizona and like me getting to see you do this stretch of your job like in person for a bunch of the month like it's pretty amazing i do not envy your job ever ever but especially not this month and so thank you for doing that for the site it's it's pretty amazing people who are listening to this and read stuff at the site like in addition to there being time sensitive content on basically a daily basis that yeah meg to edit. She dealt with her podcast co-host going on paternity leave for this month and like handle all of the admin stuff related to doing this podcast

as well as like juggling the site and like top 50 free agent stuff is on the horizon and knowing that like prospect list stuff is coming down the pipe. Yeah. So you did a good job. Thanks for doing the stuff that you do for the site you only undid like 20 of it with your you know 30 grade trevor got joke right before we started uh recording like this you know trevor got joke that you felt like 30 000 people needed to see on twitter it was really important it was

i think it was your judgment all over again it was an important barometer of where where my mental state is and how many awake brain cells i have well it's very nice of you to say that i want to take time to recognize on both of those scores the very very good work that john taylor and dylan higgins did to assist with editing the site and and keeping the pod on track and dylan you know gamely offering to stitch everything together in a way that he did not have to regularly do for Ben. So, you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention those two guys and really everyone who writes for the site, because having good content on deadline is the thing that we are capable of, but it's not a

muscle that we have to flex nearly as often as obviously like beat writers do. Um, and it is, it can take a little while to get into the swing and everyone I thought did a really excellent job this month. So, um, you know, I am tired and it was a lot of work, but I was hardly the only one to work a bunch. And I, I ended up getting a couple of Friday evenings off because John was nice enough to say, well, why don't you let me edit that game or tonight? And then I would go to bed at like 930. It was great. So it takes a team, takes a whole team to do. We are going to chat about the World Series that just concluded. As I mentioned, it is the morning is Wednesday morning. So the Atlanta

Braves are now World Series champions. And then as we start to shift into offseason content, I thought we would chat about the Fall League and how that has gone for you so far, and also Lidom. And I guess before we talk about the World Series, one thing to just note for folks who are interested in Winter Ball in the Dominican and how that is going, my understanding is that if you had a postseason package for MLB TV, you're just going to be able to watch those games on MLB TV for the rest of the season here. And if for some reason that is not a thing that you've purchased in the past, I'm pretty sure you can stream directly from lead on. So if you are hankering for baseball and, you know, are worried you're going to miss out until the spring, uh, it's a good reminder. There's, there's fun winter ball to watch and you know are worried you're gonna miss out until the spring uh it's a good

reminder there's there's fun winter ball to watch and you get the local commercials which is not all of the fun but at least five percent of the fun when it comes to lead them so there's that bit but we should talk about the world series uh which has concluded and i guess you the last time you were on effectively wild was right before fall league opening day so we were into playoff baseball but not very far in and so now i get to ask you about some of the the hot topics of the postseason that you have not yet rendered an effectively wild opinion on yet anyhow and i guess that like we can start by having me ask how you thought both of these teams ended up managing a pretty unenviable starting pitching situation as they entered the World Series. The Astros were obviously without

Lance McCullers and Atlanta lost Charlie Morton to a broken leg in game one. So they were kind of having to stitch together a starting pitching offering. And I'm curious what grades you'd give them in terms of how well they did. Yeah, like I think this is just the reality of postseason baseball generally that we're likely to see pitcher usage akin to what we saw the last couple of years pretty consistently. I think there's a chance that obviously last year was super weird given like the stop and start and what that did to everyone's pitching. And then this year coming off of a shortened season, the repercussions on the injury side that teams suffered during the course of the summer and then into the postseason. Like all that stuff maybe is at play in a special, unique way related to the couple of seasons that we've just had back to back.

But I tend to think that this is just the reality that we will see because of the quality of the offense in the postseason. You're just going to see Frambois Valdez type guys have one dandy start and then the rest of the time have like, you know, three inning outings. Like that's just part of the reality is that the offenses are so good that you're likely to have attrition in terms of your pitchers ability to deceive more quickly. And that this is just what it's going to be like. I don't know, like everyone is just sort of put in the position that they are in. You can see, I think, that teams who had depth either because they targeted it in free agency or had the prospects to handle it, like that's just how they backfilled behind Charlie Morton getting hurt and Lance McCullers getting hurt and Justin Verlander being hurt and Mike Sirocoka being hurt. It's not just a single month window that these teams are adjusting to the reality of pitchers, which is that they tend to get hurt and or perform poorly for no apparent reason seemingly. So good on the Braves in addition to dealing with Morton. Ian Anderson was hurt for a pretty sizable chunk of the season and his stuff is just not as good as it was before he was hurt.

Hwaiskari Noah went down in the playoffs too. You know, like the fact that Tucker Davidson just kind of got thrust into it, that Dylan Lee just kind of got thrust into it. None of it really worked. Those guys didn't do well and the Braves as a champion makes me think that you know in terms of the overall talent quality of the team they're on the lower end of the spectrum of like World Series teams yeah but also they just won a World Series without their best player which is pretty amazing right so uh yeah there's you know equal parts luck and skill that went into this and like it's just is funny to me that the Braves are the team who kind of tried to throw things

against the wall here at the end and none of it really worked out. And yet it all kind of worked out in spite of that. So very bizarre. And I just think that what we see in terms of the way pitchers are getting used is just how it's going to be in the playoffs. The nature of your pitching staff changes entirely much to the lament of, I don't know, they're just people who are just like, yay, actual starters. And it's like, well, Frambois Valdez is a real starter who just, you know, the opposing offense

is just really good. Like it's the World Series. So they're very good. I don't know. Is this a thing that you guys have been talking about on the pod? I know that it's been a topic of discussion generally in the baseball discourse seemingly. What is it that you think is at play here? Is it situational or do you think this is just the new normal basically? Well, I think my take on it has been that it would be bizarre if we were to see teams completely reverse course on sort of diminishing starter innings from the regular season in the postseason where the stakes are a lot higher you sort of have to get through you have to play well to advance and so your tolerance for kind of letting a guy sit out there and figure it out if he's giving up a bunch of runs is just

going to be lower because you want to win a world series so i think it would be weird if like we we suddenly saw every postseason start feature starter going seven or eight innings but i do think that the situational factors you mentioned played a big role in the like exact character of the innings distribution in this postseason and i think that having concern over relievers taking a greater and greater share of innings in the regular season is one that for aesthetic reasons, I think it's fine to sort of fret over. But I agree with you. I don't think that the postseason is necessarily the right yardstick to use when we're thinking about starting pitchers and sort of what their role is going to be going forward because the game state is just really different. And a lot of these guys, you know, especially like

you look at the Dodgers, they had dudes who were throwing not only significantly more innings than they had thrown in 2020, obviously, but like career high numbers of innings, right? So even if 2020 had been a totally normal year, they still would have theoretically seen a huge spike in how many frames they were out there for. So I just think that that stuff is useful to keep in mind. You know, that doesn't mean that the sort of push and pull between starters and relievers is completely perfect or the way that we want it to be. And I have lamented sort of the diminished role of the starter because I just enjoy,

like, you know, if a guy is out there and he's throwing seven dominant innings, like that's really exciting. And those starts tend to be memorable. But leaving someone out there for six or seven innings just to do it if he doesn't look good doesn't seem like it seems like it's misunderstanding what about the seven inning or eight inning start is really compelling to people. It's a dominant performance. It's not just the number of innings. course of their seasons, like, I think that we can wait before we sort of hit a panic button on how, on what this, you know, what does it mean for starter usage going forward? The new CBA is going to dictate some of it too, because part of what has enabled the pitcher usage to shift in the way that we've seen it shift is the way teams are using relievers who

have option years left. Basically, your pitching staff is your elite guys at the very top, the other guys who can start, then you have your high leverage relievers, and then there are a couple relievers on your roster who are just on your roster the whole time because they're good enough to be. And then the very bottom of your pitching staff is option year relievers who are on your big league roster if they're fresh and then throwing back-to-back days and getting sent back down to AAA. And because of the gains the player dev side has made with regard to pitcher development, there are just a lot of those guys around.

There are just lots of guys throwing 96 who are just sort of in AAA a lot of the time because they have option years left. And so whether the new CBA alters this aspect of roster construction will dictate what pitching is like. I know I have advocated in the past and like other folks who are like sensitive to this stuff have advocated that like expansion is a way of diluting the pitching population much more so than the hitter population because now we're talking about like 30 fresh arms at the big league level like you're you're taking the the line at which big league quality pitcher is defined and dropping it 30 net arms.

And really because of injuries, probably 50 arms across the entire player population. And that might be good for what the game's aim is in terms of more balls in play and stuff like that. is in terms of more balls in play and stuff like that but like we might talk about this more when we hit the fall league stuff that there are repercussions to doing that at the minor league level related to like all right now you have 30 more arms per expansion team at each minor league level at which that line is also being redrawn and maybe we don't have like there's so much pitching and also not enough pitching at the same time right it's easy to identify by data traits uh like what an interesting pitching prospect is or like how you grade someone's stuff is being done more automatically but also like guys can't stay healthy yeah and so like it is scarce but also abundant at the same time it's like a

weird there's a weird dynamic happening with pitching in our game right now and it's going to shift again because we're going to get robo umps right they're testing a tacky baseball in the fall league that's going to change stuff like even to my fingertips the the fall league baseball is different than yeah you know the other baseballs that I come by during the course of work life, basically. And so all of this stuff is just going to keep shifting. It's like nailing Jell-O to the wall. We're all going to be wrong about what we think about pitching because of stuff that's going to continue to shift, I think. Yeah, I think that there's a good chance. This is not the end. What's going on in the playoffs right now.

For sure. I think there's a very good chance that that is true. Well, clearly it wasn't just pitchers. The Atlanta offense went off and the Astros offense continued sort of a team-wide slump. And we can dissect each of these guys in turn, but I think one of the more interesting ones for me and you and I have talked about this in the past is what do you make of jorge soler eric yeah um it's uh he's awesome um he's a flawed player whose flaws tend to dilute his overall output over the course of a season but he is so talented that when you're basically there are certain players who I think when their talent is stress tested against other elite talent in a situation like a World Series, some of them just can't do it. Like, you know, and Jorge Soler has the type of talent where he can. So, yeah, he's got, you know, elite raw power.

Yeah. Like he's another one of those guys where he's just physically stands apart from most of the other players. Yeah. In a way that you shouldn't ignore, even though he's flawed. Yeah. So, yeah, he's he's going to he made himself some some money this October. I think he has game changing power. He's an elite, you know, producer or anything like that because of the strikeout issues. Those are pretty likely to persist, I think.

But also, this guy's going to hit for power, relevant power for a very long time. I think you have to, at least the way I tend to do it, the guys who play forever tend to be the ones who are built like Jorge Soler. Right. Who like have athletic longevity are the guys whose bodies look like Jorge Soler, who have athletic longevity, are the guys whose bodies look like Jorge Soler. So I bet he gets a nice fat long-term deal in free agency. What he did this postseason doesn't hurt his chances, and the universal DH probably won't either. Right. He's interesting. I remember I wrote the DH blurbs for the positional power rankings,

I wrote the DH blurbs for the positional power rankings. And, you know, you look at him and it's like, so in 2019, which was a juice ball year, he hit 48 home runs. And then last year in the shortened season, he hit eight. And like, you know, his slug was down and his ISO was down pretty considerably from 2019. And so he was like this weird kind of bundle of facts because the raw power was sort of

undeniable, but it wasn't manifesting in game. And so you looked at it and you were like, was 2019 just like a juiced ball mirage in terms of how this is going to translate to game power? And then the first half of the year with Kansas City, he was struggling. He had a 79 WRC plus and then he got traded to Atlanta and was fantastic. And I think importantly for his free agency case, he had 27 home runs over the course of the season. So he's just been an interesting, finding the true version of him, I think has been sort of an interesting exercise for me. But he sure hit big home runs when it mattered. Yeah. And this just happens, like, whether it's, you know, Chris Davis. The Orioles' Chris Davis. Like, sometimes guys just have, in Jorge Soler's case, the most home runs in a single season of any of his countrymen.

Right. Yeah. Of any of his countrymen. Right. Like this is a guy who now he's the second ever Cuban World Series MVP and did it against, you know, a team that has a bunch of excellent Cuban players, including one of the greatest Cuban players of all time, Yuli Gurriel. Right. Like, you know, Jordan Alvarez, Yuli Gurriel, Ledez Diaz. Like the Astros have good Cuban players.

Yep. And then here's like Jorge Soler who's sort of cemented his place in history for Cuban baseball players. Yeah. Which is not like an insignificant group of people to be part of. Right. So he's got that going for him too. But yeah, for sure because this is the way things work, Jorge Soler has Jeff Supond himself into a bigger free agent deal. But I still think, you know, like his talent is obvious. This guy's got ridiculous power. And we'll just see, you know, how consistently he can get to it in games is still, I think, a fair question to ask of him. Yeah, for sure. At what point, I mean, you're not really really a fan of any team anymore but as you were watching

game six knowing despite the the cold stretch that they have had of late and not everyone but like a lot of their key producers have not been hitting the way that they ought to have and jordan alvarez had a very quiet world series and alex bregman is just i don't say this knowing anything but like if someone came out tomorrow and was like, actually, Alex Bregman needs to get a shoulder cleanup or whatever, I'd be like, oh, that makes sense because the way that that has just disintegrated for him is kind of surprising. But they were the best offense in baseball in the regular season.

How many runs did it take Atlanta putting up before you were like, oh, the Braves are going to win the World Series? Because I wasn't convinced after the Soler home run, even though it was emphatic in a way that I think I joked about on Twitter. If I ever did anything like that, I would bring it up in every single conversation I had for the rest of my life because it was just like, sometimes you know off the bat and that was one where you're like, oh, that's leaving the ballpark. But how many runs did it take before you felt like, oh, yeah, Atlanta's got this? fourth inning and his slider is not biting that's yeah that was when it was it was evident to me that like they were in in real real trouble at least um yeah there have been those moments over the course of my life where you do just sort of know like i was at game four of the 08 world

series and joe blanton homered and my buddy labar and i looked at each other and we're just like this they're gonna win the world series like they had only taken a three-run lead in game five at that point, or game four at that point rather. There was just something about that moment that was the repercussion of the christian javier slider not being that was the the moment i guess when it felt like the air was officially let out of houston's balloon and then there were a couple times late in the game when they had a pair of runners on like there was like alvarez let off an inning with a single at one point yeah he had a very hard single. There were just a couple situations where if the Astros were going to make a dent, it had to be here or there.

Yeah. And they just didn't end up doing it. So I think that was around the time. Yeah, I don't – I grew up not hating the Braves, even though they were totally dominant over the team that I spent most of my childhood rooting for, the Phillies. There just became a point where the Braves were not really a threat anymore in that Glavin era. Because he was the one who, if it did get under my skin watching the Braves, it was because of Tom Glavin working arm side off the plate a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more. And still getting every strike call that he wanted. Yeah, it's good for the Braves.

And do you feel this is sort of end of an era for Houston with Correa probably better than 50-50 to leave, I would guess? How do you feel about that? Is this the end of the Patriots dynasty question applying to Houston here? I think that, you know, I think, woe unto you if you sort of bet against the dev there. But yeah, it does feel like the conclusion of an era. I mean, I think that it will not feel complete. This chapter of Houston baseball will not feel as if it has come to a full conclusion until all of the members of the 2017 roster are gone, right? Because it would be weird to kind of not define this not only by their achievement, but by their scandal, right?

And they're already down most of those guys. I think what there were like seven dudes from 2017 who were on the active roster this year. So I think that it'll have sort of a protracted sort of epilogue to it until all of those guys are gone. But it's hard to imagine them. It's certainly hard to imagine them being as good as they were this year without Correa, who was just so spectacular. That doesn't mean that they can't sign other guys or find replacements, but you look at that roster and you're like, they're going to be without Correa. I don't know how confident you feel going into the season with their starting pitching, which isn't to say that they don't have talented guys, but they don't have a ton of depth there. So yeah, I think that I could see them taking a meaningful step back. Now, does that mean that they're not going to be a postseason team? I don't know. I think that they can still do that. I think their biggest threat in the West is weirdly going to be Seattle. Seattle, yeah. Oakland seems primed for a rebuild.

It feels like that's part of why Bob Melvin was allowed to split is that they're going to hard rebuild. There have been backfield rumors, just word of mouth, scouts, talking about Oakland leaning hard into a rebuild this offseason that begun before the complex level ball was already done here. I was hearing that out of the mouths of scouts. And you're right. Garrett Cole gone, Justin Verlander hurt, down here i was hearing out of the mouths of of scouts and yet you're right like garrett cole

gone justin verlander hurt right and yet like here was this group right so right yeah i think that even if correa splits you know jeremy pain is a top 100 prospect he probably plugs and plays as the everyday shortstop next year and he's not carlos correa or anything but he's he's a good player yeah i think they need to figure out what is going on in center field. The three amigos of Jake Myers, Chaz McCormick, and Jose Siri probably at the very least need some kind of help. Yeah. If one of those three guys is like a platoon piece in center field,

that seems okay. But there's not really anyone in the org right now who's short-term ready, so that's a thing that they need to address uh and then yeah we'll see would it would it surprise me if one of forest whitley or hiro solis was suddenly good in a relevant big league way next year uh in some capacity no so like they're they're filling from within with with one of those guys potentially yeah Very talented guys who have been hurt and or frustrating for most of their minor league careers now

especially recently. So yeah, it'll be fascinating to see what goes on. I assume they're going to pick up the Uli Gurriel club option for $8 million. I would be shocked if they didn't. It's such a reasonable amount of money for how good a player he is. That's the flip side of this, right?

Yes, they're losing Correa, but they'll still have Altuve, who had a very nice bounce back this year after just being god-awful last year. Presumably, Bregman is able to sort of sort himself out. They better hope he is because this next year is the last year that they have of him before his contract escalates into the 30 million dollar range so the last two years of that deal are pretty expensive for them but he also you know like we don't we don't know what's going on but presumably he won't play 2022 like he played the 2021 postseason you know they'll still have Brantley I agree that they'll pick up Gurriel's

contract so it's not like they don't have pieces and then of course there's you know tucker who was just like spectacular this year and they still have alvarez are awesome right like alvarez isn't even isn't even are eligible yet neither is tucker so you know and they they do have several members of that rotation returning even if you know i feel a little shaky about some of those guys so it's not like this is a suddenly bad team. It's just less strong than it was, but it's November 3rd. So who knows what it ends up looking like when camp opens in hopefully February, knock on wood. So much of the regular season is just about having the depth of pitching to withstand your injuries. And then the postseason is about having that upper echelon of pitching to be dominant against elite hitters. And I still think Houston is like they appear on paper to have that in the mix.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's the situation with Houston. There will be plenty of time for postmortem on both of these teams. But I guess we'd be remiss if we didn't note that there is the possibility that we have watched Freddie Freeman's last game in an Atlanta uniform. But I think you and I are of the opinion that this will probably get done at some point, even if it's not before whatever lockout and stoppage we might have in a month because of the CBA. I just can't imagine him not

being in Atlanta, which doesn't mean that he won't test the waters and kind of see what deal is out there for him. But it would be pretty surprising to me if he doesn't end up back on a couple-year deal when it's all said and done. Yeah, I agree with you. I think that seems pretty likely. It's all speculation. It just is the vibe from all the good feels right now. Yeah. I don't know if we really have to sit and come up with teams who are a situational fit for a first baseman, who are motivated to pay one and also have a front office philosophy that would pay an aging first baseman like this. We'd probably only be able to come up with a couple of feasible speculative candidates

for that. Yeah. But yeah, the Braves do have a pretty sizable chunk of free agents in addition to Freeman and Soler. I think it's a mutual option with Jock Peterson. Yeah. Eddie Rosario comes off. So basically all the platoony outfielders who they acquired are rolling off.

I don't think that we'll ever see Marcelo Zuna play baseball again. Yeah. So that's just like a permanent hole that they need to consider filling. Figure out. Yeah. Acuna coming back, I guess. I don't know what the timeline is going to be for that. If it'll be immediately to start next season or if there's going to be some lag time off the top of my head.

That might already be known publicly, but I don't know exactly what it is. So like how Christian Pache and Drew Waters here progress could be particularly important for this team. Yeah. Christian Pache, the elite defensive center fielder with power and swing and miss issues that were just untenable this year. He just wasn't playable at the end of the year with the big league club. I think KG and I are really going to stay on him pretty heavy in terms of how we value him relative to the other prospects.

Like we are still talking about a freshly 23-year-old elite defender in center field who has power. Like at the very least, we think this guy turns into what Kevin Pillar has been during the course of his career. And that still plays most of the time in center field. So I still would count on Christian Pache to be a big league contributor in the short term, probably next year for a Braves team that was playing Adam Duvall in center field towards the end. And then Drew Waters, I'm less confident just because his approach is so terrible. But it's another like ultra-toolsy, switch-hitting, 23-year-old outfielder with a pretty strong minor league performance track record. Just an approach issue that we see as potentially bust-causing.

So, yeah. Like Chris Martin was like maybe the best strike-throwing reliever in baseball. Also a free agent. And then it's a bunch of complimentary pieces. Drew Smiley who ate innings. Jesse Chavez ate innings. Ari Adrianza. Tanner Roark.

Right. Ari Adrianza will be interesting too because he was helpful at the beginning of the year for them. And he also has like front office aspirations when he's done playing baseball. Right. and he also has like front office aspirations when he's done playing baseball right so whoever signs him is also maybe you know you see this a lot where a team signs a player who's like kind of fringy and then that player's career ends while he's with that team and then he immediately enters the front office yeah yeah department somehow so yeah watch ari watch Ariadne Jones in that regard. And then sort of like the context that we mentioned for Houston with the Oakland rebuild seemingly looming

and Seattle's young core improving and hopefully being healthy, Kyle Lewis. Yeah. Well, how do you think the NL East looks for this team next year? I feel like it's for our health to like not try to to guess but because every year the mets in the philly right right i mean like at some point at some point for instance like the mets will hire a president of baseball ops at some point they will hire a manager right like they will have all the complimentary pieces of a coaching staff and a front office.

Not a whole lot of synergy seemingly going on with the Mets collectively. At the very top, it seems dysfunctional. I mean, clearly it is. Right. And then the Phillies too, there seems to be a pretty significant disconnect. Too many cooks cooking from different schools of thought in Philly. It seems like that there's the potential for disaster. Like I would bet – I would almost bet that the Nationals are good again before Philly and the Mets actually compete just because there's stability there.

And that's like known full well that like that – almost that entire organization would spit if they heard the name of our website. But like it's just true. Like Mike Rizzo knows how to pick. Gene Segura produces at the level he does for the contract he does. And Mike Rizzo just finds Josh Harrison and Asdrubal Cabrera and guys who do that. Howie Kendrick. Guys who do that for a fraction, they can get to pay better players than Gene Segura, what Gene Segura makes.

Right. And it's like you look at each of those rosters and obviously there are parts of them that are incredibly compelling and will be really good, but they have big holes that they have to sort out. And Philly is in like a year or two of not really having a very good bullpen and who knows what they do there. And you're 13. Yeah. Not having a good bullpen. That's fair. And then, you know, you look at the Mets and it's like the Mets are the Mets. Like they have good players on that roster. They have a lot of pending free agents and presumably are just like not going to get real baseball business done before the CBA expires because they don't have the leadership pieces in place to do it unless they're willing to sort of delegate that stuff to Alderson in the meantime.

So I think that at some point, the fact that New York has an incredibly wealthy owner who seems to want to win baseball games, even though he really needs to stop tweeting and just figure out how to run an organization that conducts itself in a professional manner. Everyone should stop tweeting. Well, yeah. For the record. But I think that at some point, the rubber probably meets the road on just the resources that are at the disposal of that organization. But you need to have players who can execute on that and you need to have like a front office and a coaching staff that can kind of get the best out of your guys and we'll sort of believe it when we see it when it comes to New York so I think that they're that

Atlanta's in a good spot particularly if they bring Freeman back and Acuna manages to be healthy if not for opening day then then early in the season, you know, if Soroka comes back healthy and the off season is enough time for, you know, like Ian Anderson say it's totally right. Like that's a, that's a good team. I don't know that they're as good as the Mets will be on paper if New York manages to fill some of their free agent holes, but it's definitely going to be competitive in a division that is kind of squishy. That might be enough. So, yeah.

Do you have any closing postseason thoughts? Do you have a favorite moment of the postseason? I don't think so. I don't know how I feel about the one game wildcard play and still i think it's it's pretty unfair to mostly the players who have put forth seven months of uninterrupted focus and effort for it to come down to one game for the sake of excitement like i don't know if that's fair to them so i don't necessarily appreciate that i think that's it it wasn't a great postseason we didn't have a single game seven all postseason, which is kind of a bummer. And I thought like in terms of the quality of talent on the teams that a lot of it was just unfortunately compromised by untimely injuries and a little bit of COVID stuff.

And so, yeah, it was on the two to eight scale was a replacement with like a 30, 35 playoffs overall. And, you know, still congrats to the Atlanta Braves who it's not easy to win a championship at all. Yeah. So I think that they're deserving champions who deserve congratulations. I'm especially happy for Ron Washington who is just cool as shit and has been in baseball forever and didn't have a ring until now. And I think there's a special shout out to Ronit Shaw, who used to write for Fangraphs for a little bit and works for the Braves now.

And now has a big fat ring that he'll have to be sized for. So congrats to him. Congrats to Ronit. Yeah, I guess the only series – am I remembering this right? That the only series we had go series am i remembering this right that the only series we had go a full number of games was that lds between the dodgers and the giants right that went five but otherwise everything else wrapped up without having to max out i guess if we're going to pick one series to have gone the the distance that that was a good one for us to

have but yeah there are a lot of there are a lot of really great, fun young players on Atlanta's team. And like you said, it's so cool to see Wash get in the ring. And Brian Snicker's been in that organization longer than I've been alive. Wow. Which is incredible. Yeah, because of how old you are. Right. Rude. wow which is incredible yeah because of how old you are right right but yeah so you know if they can just get their their in ballpark traditions sorted out

we can soldier forth but yeah that was that was the 2021 season i can't believe it's over it's also hard to believe it has even begun. So I don't know. Time doesn't mean anything. I don't know how to help people with the time thing anymore. Yeah, I don't either. It's just falling time. So I don't know. My clock feels – my internal clock seems okay. Other people seem to be struggling with the internal clock. I think that part of it is this is, you know, this will have been my first full year in Arizona, gosh, next week, I guess. And it has been very nice to have so much sun after really struggling with winters in the Northwest the last couple of years.

But it does lead to some like seasonal disorientation, particularly when Target insists on going from Halloween to Christmas before the month of October is even over. So I think some of it is probably that for me. Yeah. What's with the big box stores not catering to procrastinators? Some of us only think to care about filling in their Halloween decoration decoration holes it's a garbage truck going by my house like closer to the day yeah so to show up at target and see christmas trees is yeah i agree with you there's something about that that i was like yeah it's 89 degrees today so yeah and i think that um you know i'm sure that there is as we continue to muddle through like global supply chain issues,

that perhaps that has something to do with it. I don't know. But anyway, today is November 3rd. I know that today is November 3rd, and we've established that it's a Wednesday. So I feel like I'm coming out ahead. As you said, it is fall league season. When last we talked to you on this pod. Fall League had not yet begun. You have now had a couple of weeks of Fall League.

Yeah. What are your impressions so far relative to prior years? Obviously, we didn't have Fall League in 2020 because of the pandemic, but you've seen a number of these now. How would you gauge the, for instance, the strength of the hitters relative to the strength of the pitchers? Right. So Fall League is always hitter centric. Some of it is the type of talent thatters relative to the strength of the pitchers. Right. So Fall League is always hitter-centric.

Some of it is the type of talent that ends up coming here. It just tends to be better hitters than pitching. So much of the pitching population here is dictated by just like who got hurt and needs innings. And the level of pitcher that is here this year is definitely lower than even the typical one on average. And so like you and I went to a game together earlier this week. Yeah.

And we watched like 27 walks or something like that. It was a lot of walks. I think one of the teams walked 15 guys or something like that. Yeah. Maybe we saw 27 runs in like 15 combined walks or something. It was basically, it was unwatchable baseball. Yeah. Some of the effort level from some individual players and then some chunks of whole rosters,

Scottsdale, is low. Like there are some players, Marco Luciano, who maybe should just be shut down or sent to like the dome where, you know, like specifically in Luciano's case, like there's just energy in the dome because like there are fans who are not only retirees and scouts. Right. And so the energy level in the Dominican Winter League is something that might like coax real effort out of some of the Dominican players who are throw strikes or get anybody out, you know, that you look up, it's the third inning and it's 12 to 2. Yeah. And you just kind of pack it in for the rest of the day.

Like I at least can sympathize with that, which is sort of the dynamic that's at play for some of the Scottsdale guys. And then some of it is that the roster construction has been flawed in ways that are more meaningful than I think people realize when some of these decisions were getting made. Like again, not to harp on Scottsdale, but I'm going to like to have an outfield where like Matt Walner's in a corner, you know, someone else who's like a DH only prospect, basically like Hunter Bishop, who has a 20 arm right now is in right field. And then Richie Palacios, who's just kind of trying center field just to see is in center field like stuff can go awry in a way that impacts people's effort level so we've seen some of that too but in general the fall league is still the fall league it's perfect weather in a library like setting yeah in which i can focus on you know really really talented players and so it has been fantastic. I do think that we are going to

start to see real repercussions to not just like the quality of the pitchers that we have here, but also some of them starting to leave. So like, as we've been sitting here, I was texted that Mackenzie Gore is done and that the game in Glendale today is only going to be seven innings due to lack of pitching. So now we're starting to see the repercussions of this are actually starting to have an impact on what's going to happen here. Asa Lacy's gone. There are lots of players who have started to leave the league as well. That'll make room for some fresh guys, which will be nice to have fresh targets again for the last couple of weeks here

beyond my regular plan, which is just going to mostly be the Sea Salt River the rest of the way here. But yeah, it's still a lot of fun. The rosters are loaded more than a typical year. It's been great to watch the hitters do their thing. But also there are some clear problems that are impacting the context that you look at the players in because the quality of pitching is bad. Yeah. I was going to ask about that. As an evaluator, how do you sort of mentally adjust for that from an environment perspective

when it's not like these hitters are not talented. They are. There's a reason they're able to take advantage of subpar pitching, but they are facing subpar pitching. So how do you think about sort of modulating your reports based on guys that they're facing who are giving up like a football score every game? Yeah, you still want to evaluate the hitters in a certain type of vacuum. Like I'm still attentive to what types of pitches, you know, pitch type and location, pitch type, quality and location are the things that are still like at play with every swing I see. There are just certain hitters whose swings play in certain parts of the zone, but have no skilled variability.

And so they will like run into mediocre stuff and then there are some guys who like hit the ball who like go who hunt the baseball in a way uh that is like more varied and skillful around the hitting zone and so that's still going on yeah it is just more of the like my note my notes have more of like this guy missed a hittable this or that because they're just more hittable this or that in the fall league this year so got it if anything like some of the hitters who can't take advantage of the fact that the pitching is bad or like you know you with the white socks is i couldn't even tell you what his batting line is out here but he still is just swinging basically at everything, even though the pitchers

here are having issues throwing strikes. And so he still has obvious raw power, but the fact that he hasn't made an adjustment, even though it's clear that in this league against these types of pitchers, you probably should, he hasn't made that adjustment. So there are individual players who that's the case where they have. Some hitters are just kind of standing there and waiting to do their thing. Cooper Hummel walked three times yesterday and Hunter Bishop walked twice. Like that's probably how it should be. If you're a discerning hitter, you're probably going to walk a ton this fall.

And then I also think that the elevation, not just the elevation that we have here in Phoenix, which Chase Field is the second highest elevation after Coors, but the way the weather shifted here after the monsoon season, where there's no humidity in the air anymore, the barometric pressure has changed. started to shift here and we started to really turn toward fall winter weather-wise, which we have even though it's going to be like 88 today. You and I like felt weird for a couple of days. Yeah. Like we both didn't – like our bodies just felt weird around the same time. And I think that that has to do with like the barometric pressure in the valley really shifting. And I think that's also been very friendly to like the way the baseball doesn't move for pitchers and then just flies for, for the hitters. Like Scottsdale stadium is 430 feet to dead center field. And I've still watched guys who it's

pretty surprising that they could do it. Like almost put balls out to dead center and in Scottsdale or like hit, you know know opposite field home runs to the gap at like salt river fields like it's not that takes a lot of juice to typically do that and guys who like don't have that kind of visible power are doing that kind of thing this this fall too and i think it's got something to do with the weather yeah we talked about some of the the pitchers who have not necessarily done the best and you know know, are concerned over Suspitous' bad persists. But has there been anyone who's been a pleasant surprise to you, either because he looks different than the last time you saw him,

or are there any guys who this is really your first, like, extended good look at them? I think that, like, the Rays' third base prospect, Curtis Meade, who they got from the Phillies in what at the time was like a small deal for a lefty reliever that was just not going to pitch for the Rays in the big leagues. He just wasn't quite good enough and the Phillies needed all of the upper level depth that they could get. They traded Curtis Mead, this teenage Australian kid, to the Rays two summers ago. And then Mead had a gigantic 2021 season. And then Meade had a gigantic 2021 season. And I thought he got, you know, a courtesy model duping promotion to AAA at the end of the year. But he has come here and he's not like, he's not a complete player yet, but it is, he is kind of freaky in some ways. He plays defense at third base as if he grew up not watching anyone

play third base. He just sort of does it in a way that is unique to him. Interesting. It's not ugly. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it's very balletic and special. Some of the plays he makes, you would not expect a guy who at other times just has issues throwing the ball accurately to first base like to make. So because we're talking about like a 20-year-old Australian kid with a weird baseball background, I'm not really sure how to project in the abstract on a player like this. He's got like a weird type of athleticism he also has like a pot belly thing going on and he's only 20 but he really can't throw make good strong throws to first base all the time and then sometimes he'll make like these gorgeous acrobatic plays like it is weird yeah and

then offensively he's a little too aggressive in terms of what he's swinging at. But again, like 20-year-old Australian kid. Right. Is there late coming adjustment in this regard? Right. From a bat speed and like swing athleticism perspective, he's plus like just way more athletic swing than most of the other guys here in the league. So I think that, you know, on the top 100,

I will, there are just, you know, checkpoints along the hundred where certain types of players tend to fall and one of them is like close to 75th overall typically will be where there are a bunch of like boomer bus type guys who are either far away from the big leagues or have like a red flag. And so like Drew Waters has been that type of guy for us in the past, you know, like guys who have like, you know, a gigantic approach flaw or whatever it may be. And so maybe this guy belongs in that group. Yeah. Because just from like a swing athleticism standpoint, what the power is going to look like again, like he's only 20.

I don't know what's going on with this kid's bod, but I think there's a chance, a pretty good chance that he gets sorted out and he just has a typical big leaguers physicality at some point. And if that's the case, then this guy's got a chance to be an impact player for the Rays, who they just stole from Philly. So he's definitely one of them. And here I will point out, and I'll link to this in the show notes, that Mead spoke with David Lourla, I think at the sort of near the tail end of the minor league season and talked about sort of the transition for him from Australia to the States and what that experience has been like. So it's a good read. I'll link to it so folks can check it out because unsurprisingly, Lourla had a good conversation with a player. Then the other guys like Lars Neupahr with the Cardinals.

Again, the context here is important. So Curtis Meade is a 20-year-old Australian kid who's mostly spent his life in the low minors. Lars Neupahr was facing pitching in the middle of a playoff race for the month and a half leading up to his assignment to the Fall League. But Lars Neupahr, also he is really hitting. His profile is pretty favorable. It's, you know, plus arm and right field, lefty stick with power. And it's not always sexy.

Like he took his best swing and that's him hitting for power. It's like ugly, ass out, fooled a little bit, but it's just like getting the barrel to the baseball anyway and driving with power based on his strength and i think that there's real utility there like he's at least going to be the larger half of a corner outfield platoon for the cardinals next year um and for the foreseeable future he he might be a low variance 50 type guy for the top 100 as well,

just because there's such high probability utility in terms of like him playing in the big leagues and soon. Joey Weimer with the Brewers is another one where it's like, this guy's kind of a freak. And I think I would probably just take him over Garrett Mitchell, who was the first round pick in the same draft as Weimer a couple years ago. Mitchell, who was the first round pick in the same draft as, as Weamer a couple of years ago. Like he's just that kind of freaky in terms of his level of power and athleticism and arm strength. And then Nelson Velasquez with the Cubs who, you know, when I've seen a lot of Nelly Velasquez because the Cubs facilities five miles from the house and for the longest time, it was just, here's a right fielder who's got a high risk, you know, body projection, uh, might end up as a DH and he's got a three

approach and he's improved his conditioning pretty significantly. He's in the best shape I've ever seen him in. His approach is still mediocre, but it's made a meaningful difference in terms of his power. And he's actually looked like, like if Adam Duvall can play center field in a pinch, then maybe Nelson Velasquez can too. If Chris Bryant can do it, maybe this guy can too. So Velasquez was towards the very, very bottom of the Cubs list last offseason.

And he's probably made a significant move from like the 35 plus tier which is hey this guy's got power it's a flyer to this guy's got likely big league utility as a power hitting something outfielder probably not like a lock everyday guy but but a real contributor so he's he's one that stood out to me too who i did not expect to see nelson velasquez look as good as he has so that's the fall league. But as we said, that is not the only- What are you trying to get out of fall league? We've got a couple of weeks left. Fangraphs people are going to come down here and we'll get to see them and do some fall league games with them. But you've got your season credential. What's your goal for the next couple

of weeks? Well, it's always useful for me. I mean, like I'm not evaluating them in the same way that you are, but it is useful for me to see guys who are going to end up scattered throughout our prospect list in the top 100 to have some kind of a context for them as players before I edit words about them. So that makes me feel like I have a better handle on things and can be more useful to you and KG and Tess and Brendan when the time comes. So there's that part of it. I think that I find the aesthetic and atmosphere of Fall League to be really pleasant and interesting to the point of wanting to potentially write about that either in an article or in longer form. So I'm hoping to do a bit of reporting there to have actual quotes rather than just my dumb observations. But I'm also just

excited to get to sit and watch baseball quietly out of my house in the next little while because this is a very homebound kind of month for me. And so now that October is concluded and the postseason is done, obviously, there's still a fan graphs in the offseason, even with an uncertain labor environment and no playoff baseball to be had. But the schedule becomes more flexible and it does allow me to get out to the park and see you guys and kind of take it all in. So that's what I'm kind of hoping to do over the next couple of weeks. And then it will be done far faster than anyone is really prepared for

and when that happens all we will have is lead them i mean that won't be all we have but we will have lead them as a good way to sort of state the the baseball desire and so you mentioned like the the atmosphere is obviously quite different in in lead them than it is in the fall league the purpose of the league is different. I don't know how much Lidl you've really had occasion to watch thus far, but are there any high priority evaluations among the Lidl rosters that you're keen on? Yeah, so it's definitely not as prospect heavy as it was a year ago, which makes sense because we didn't have a 2021 minor league season.

So teams were itching to find someone who, like a place for these guys to play basically last year in a way that is different than this year. But yeah, if folks want to keep watching baseball this offseason, I know there are only a couple fall league games that are going to be streamed. It is probably more cost effective for MLB to outsource the television production aspect of this stuff to like the TV stations in the Dominican Republic that are already broadcasting these games. And so like last year, there was a specific Dominican Republic sports app that you could like download to watch the games through for like a one time, you know, 24 hour fee or whatever. But now if you just have MLB TV, you can watch them. for like a one-time, you know, 24-hour fee or whatever.

But now if you just have MLB TV, you can watch them. And so like while there's – you probably do some of the Puerto Rican Winter League games too. Yeah. And maybe some of the Venezuelan ones. Like I know just from looking that a lot of that stuff has a tendency to pop up on YouTube somewhere. And so folks, you know, who like to watch prospects should try to continue to do it.

There are ways of doing it. The Australian Baseball League, this was canceled because of COVID stuff. Yeah. Like their country did so well with COVID stuff out of the gate that they had fans. They were like the only league with fans last year. And now like have regressed to the point where they had to cancel the whole league. So there are only six lead-on teams. They started play on October 27th.

So if you're like me and have a pathological need to like have a comprehensive understanding of things, you're not too late here. You can still hop in before things get out of control. On the rosters, like there's Lise, Tigres de Lise, Hanley Ramirez is actually on this team. Neres is actually on this team. And then there are some names, some prospecting names from years past where, you know, you've got like Dawel Lugo and Michael DeLeon and, you know, Anderson Tejeda, who's kind of rapidly falling off of that list. So you'll see like names from the prospects of yesteryear, basically, who likely didn't pan out, which is part of why they're playing a significant role in the Dominican Winter League. Then, you know, like Ronnie Mauricio, who's a top 50 prospect entering the offseason. Metz was shitting shortstop. He's playing for Lise as well, and he started the year out the gate pretty hot, so the chances are he will continue to play for them. The managers in

Lidl tend to have a pretty quick hook with players especially the young players uh if they're not producing over a pretty short window of time they'll they have a tendency to take them and bench them so uh the fact that ronnie mauricio like hit a home run opening night is pretty good for his chances of continuing to uh to play yeah vinny pasquitino with the royals he's a first baseman like you do do have gringos who get sent down to the DR to play. I forget what the roster rules are around foreign players, but there are guys who go down. So Pasquitino had a pretty good year with the Royals. He's a high priority look for me in the DR just to see how he performs against a less stuff heavy,

but a more polished group of pitchers in terms of like pitch execution. He's off to kind of a rough start. So there's a real chance, especially with like the foreign players. Sometimes they just end up kind of packing it up and literally going home. Anderson Tejeda, as I mentioned, is still with Lise. He's the one like kind of fight with Ronnie Mauricio for infield reps reps i've kind of moved on from anderson to hit at this point i just think he's not gonna hit at all but you know like if he's gonna be playing in a lead-on game i'm gonna watch him christopher morel the cubs prospect his brother's also cubs prospect rafael morel christopher morel's really athletic has big power questionable approach probably gonna play mostly third base is more in like that contributor bucket than a likely everyday guy he's on aguilas c by any s eric philia john

nagowski leo de taveras orlando calixte used to be an interesting royals prospect uh those guys are on aguilas escogedo you know like they're just folks should look at the rosters and cross reference him with the board. Albert Pujols is playing in the league. Like you do have your veterans who get down there probably towards the end of the season. You'll see more guys added to the rosters. Last year, we had Fernando Tatis and Robinson Cano come back to kind of tune up for spring training while Estrella's Orientales were in the middle of their like playoff chase for Lidom.

And then you have the Caribbean series after the Dominican Winter League and all the other Caribbean Winter Leagues are through, where the best rosters from each of the leagues like play one another in the Caribbean series, which is also worth everyone's time. So there are lots of good players down there who, you know, the culture of baseball down there is cool. And as much as I love Fall League, the contrast in energy between what's going on here

and what is evident now that fans are allowed back in the Dominican ballparks after they weren't last season is pretty evident. And I think, you know, it's a lot of fun to watch and it's just free to most of you

listening to this who are probably dorky enough that you have MLB TV. So folks should cut that on. It's 7 p.m. Eastern like most days or when you'll have your start times go and you just have access to all three games. You can check the lineups via the team's Twitter accounts and see where the relevant prospects are

and then head there. And it's, it's a good time. Yeah. It's, it's a really, I don't know, last,

last year when we had had such sort of limited baseball here in the States and no fall league, no fall league. And, you know, my ability to sort of keep the hours necessary to watch the, the KBO was, was limited. It was just very nice to have

lead home and see guys. I think it's a really fun mix of folks who are looking for baseball to watch because you have young prospects who you're going to see in the big leagues. And so if you're seeing it through the lens of being mostly a fan of major league baseball teams, there's something for you there. You're going to remember some guys because there are definitely dudes who extend their careers down there. And then there are a bunch of players who have had really long and storied lead on careers who might be new to you, but who have been important to baseball in the Dominican Republic for a long time. So it's just a really it just a really nice mix of players. And I think there's something there for everyone depending on what excites you the most about baseball. So it's really nice to have. There's just something about this layer

of baseball that is, yeah, fantastic in its own thing. Yeah. And meaningful in a way that this level of baseball from a talent perspective sort of belies. Like, it's just more meaningful than it is good. And, like, I like that. Yeah. And I think that, like, there's a tendency, I think, for fans of major league teams because they are viewing baseball through the lens of, like, how is this guy going to be relevant to the NL East race in however many years? It's also nice to just like let in the parts of it that are good and exciting and fun in their own right. Like even if they aren't, it can't be neatly juxtaposed with, with MLB. So it's good. It's

a good time. You'll enjoy it. And you'll get to see entirely new commercials on MLB TV after, see entirely new commercials on MLB TV after you know seven months of hearing narration from Fields of Dreams and being told that you need erectile dysfunction medication yeah that's good too the uh well my algo doesn't send me that stuff but I don't know maybe whatever you have going on that's but uh but like the commercials the lead-on commercials I don't know how local they are or if it is like national in the DR. Right. Yes, that's a fair point. I don't know the answer to that. actively looking like at times between innings and uh just like during some of the crowd cutaways it is clear that the camera people and whoever the director of the game production is are looking for

like the hottest dominican women in the crowd that they can possibly find like there's like gratuitous there is that at times yeah for sure so it like kind of – I mean it's funny in a way that it's happening. And yeah, like the ads are definitely also like of a time. Yeah. Technologically like that are different. I mean all advertising is heinous, but there is something kind of fun and nostalgic about the style of advertising in the Dominican Republic because it does harken back closer to like – it's not like Arby's using people like, oh, let's have a quote unquote contest. And people, if they win the contest, they can film themselves with their phone and they can submit it to be in our commercial and then we get to have a commercial while you know cultivating brand loyalty and stuff online without having to pay anyone to like write or shoot or direct commercial

we'll just let people who eat arby's and follow our twitter account and see this you know prompt make our commercial for us like none of that's really going on down there it's yeah some of it does have a local commercial feel and uh i do appreciate it does sort of break up the weird postmodern monotony of American advertising. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that we will check back in with you in the months to come on all things prospect. I know that you will not promote your Twitter, although you will sort of begrudgingly allow me to point people toward the fangrass prospect twitter what do you what's coming up what's coming down the pike down the pipe i don't know if i ever pike like we talked about this at one point did we pike because

of turnpike oh sure sure makes sense But also pipes are things that... Stuff moves through. Stuff moves through. Yeah. I would say in a spreadsheet that you will be sent... Oh, boy. I've got to write my top 50 free agent... Yes, please. Scouting reports. Yep. So I'm working on those

and then have, you know, I've got five lists basically being cooked right now. Yeah. One of them is updated international prospects. One of them is, well, I guess it's really eight lists. The next three years of draft and then the Angels, Cubs, and A's will be the first team lists released over the coming weeks.

Once, you know, you and I have to talk about like what your life is like here with Top 50 Free Agents and whatever other big time off-season stuff you have in the next like 10 days. But I would imagine at the end of that timeline is when these lists will start to roll out. Yep, it is upon us. The list time is here.

It's very exciting. We love lists. They keep us busy. They'll keep us warm through the long off season months that may feature a work stoppage so you know we're pro list at paragraphs.com the readers

seem to be pro list which is what's yeah well they want to know about the young men who will come to define their hopes and dreams as fans. So, it's weighty stuff. Eric, thanks so much for taking the time to pod with me today. See you, Meg.

That'll do it for today. 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, keep us ad-free, and get access to a few special perks. Liz Piniella, Casey Shankland, Nathan Lambser, Jeremy Bernfeld, and Matt Thompson. Thanks so much. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectivelywild, and you can rate, review, and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for us coming via email at podcast at fangraphs.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you're a supporter. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing assistance. I'll be back later this week. Until then, be well. I looked around for my possibility.

I was so hard to please. But look around, the leaves are brown. And the sky is a hazy shade of winter. In the salvation army bound. Down by the riverside, it's bound to be a better ride than what you next time.