Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1771: Take the Money and Pun

Episode Date: November 12, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the latest batch of silly Scott Boras quotes, featuring Meg’s real-time reactions to hearing them for the first time, a “fake quote or real quote?” quiz, and a discussion of the motivations behind the superagent’s annual stand-up routine, then discuss Boras’s comments about competitive integrity and try to […]

🎵 Hello and welcome to episode 1771 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Meg, new Boris quotes dropped.

Just in time for you to take a Twitter break. Yep. Scott Boris unloaded at the GM meetings this week, and you were probably tagged in many tweets that you perhaps have not seen yet. Yeah. These quotes. Maybe. Don't know. Don't know.

Usually, Boris holds court at the winter meetings as well but this year there's some uncertainty about whether there will be winter meetings or at least the major league portion of the winter meetings and so he emptied his notebook now just in case there's a lockout he is not leaving anything on the table here so you have not seen most of the Boris quotes. Is that correct? That is correct. I know that they exist because I saw a couple of references to them in the Facebook group. But then I thought, aha, I am taking a little Twitter break for my own well-being. And so I will put this aside and not see any of the rest and then allow them to wash over me in real time

wow that must have required real restraint not to go looking for these boris quotes i mean when a new boris quote dropped it's you just have to look it up immediately no matter what you're doing drop everything i thought that it would be i thought it would be fun for our listeners who often enjoy hearing me react to stuff to react to things and you know this gives you the opportunity to potentially play play some tricks on me if you want to about ones that are real versus not so yeah i thought for the good of for the good of the pod for the enjoyment of our listeners i would manage to restrain myself until today yeah we can do a few fake or real boris quotes and then i'll just read you the rest of them. And he just owns baseball Twitter for a few hours every time he does this, every time he debuts his stand-up routine. And I reject the notion that yeah, it's getting his clients talked about. It's brilliant. It's like this galaxy brain interpretation of Scott Boris's standup routine is that like he's getting everyone to talk about his guys. But I just fail to see how that helps in any real way. I mean, it's not as if these clients are not known to be free agents. I think all of the teams are well aware. In some ways,

if he chose the really obscure clients on his agency's roster and he did puns about them, maybe that would really raise awareness about them. But he has some of the biggest free agents on the market, as he usually does. He is representing Max Scherzer and Chris Bryant and Corey Seeger and Marcus Semyon andris bryant and cory seager and marcus semien and the castellanos and michael conforto and carlos rodan like no one is not aware of these players and no gm or even owner is going to say hey that was a really clever pun you just made with that guy's name we should go get that guy and i really reject the idea that some brand is going to be like yeah we should make that player our spokesperson because look at all of these social media mentions i guess like if

you're just aggregating like how many times was this player's name mentioned on twitter do we want to sign him to some big endorsement deal then i guess if there's some silly boris quote he's pumping up the numbers but he started this before anyone really cared about social media mentions, I think. So I don't think that's his primary motivation here. I think he just wants to be the entertainer. He just wants to impress us all with his clever quotes. And it seems to work. We're all enabling him here by tweeting about him and talking about him.

We have encouraged this behavior. If his act just died every time he deployed it, he would not do this year after year. So we are making it happen. But I just don't believe that this is part of his job in any real way, that this is him doing his job well. Right. I think that the brand that he is most concerned with in this moment is his own, right? He is, I think, enjoys being, not only is he powerful within the industry because of the guys he represents and the deals he is able to get for them, but he also likes to claim sort of cultural capital within baseball. And this is one of the ways that he does that. And I don't say that

that might sound like i'm sort of ascribing judgment to it i don't really mean it that way i think that you know he like i said would be powerful within the industry regardless of whether or not he gave these quotes just by virtue of who he represents and how he does his job but i think that being a cultural broker of some kind is something that he finds satisfying and i doubt strongly that he thinks that this materially impacts the contracts that his clients are going to sign or the likelihood that a team is going to be like, oh yeah, Corey Seager, he's pretty good, huh? Like Max Scherzer, I don't know, he's been okay. But I think that it's not a bad thing for

the sport to have a very prominent voice on the labor side of things, for lack of a better way of putting it, that is sort of given opportunity to hold court and express his perspective on where the game is at. I think particularly in a year like this, those are instructive tea leaves, even if they don't have to be quite so colorfully delivered. So I think I'm fine with that, but I'm with you. I don't think that there's a GM out there who's like, oh, you know, we were on the fence about that guy, but your dad joke, you know, that put us over the line. Right. Yeah, you're right. I guess this does gain greater attention for his comments about competitive balance for agency in general. And he's delivering these at the GM meetings where all the executives get megaphones or

owners meetings, owners get quoted. And so this is kind of a counterpoint to that when he will rant about teams not trying and so on. We will get to that. But yes, I think it is a valuable perspective to have. But I think of the binders that he makes for his clients sometimes, you know, the big binders full of stats and graphics and GIFs and videos and who knows what else and projections of how his free agents will age and everything. And those are also sort of silly because probably a team, a front office is not going to take those into account. I guess potentially an owner might. And sometimes Boris will do end arounds with a front office is not going to take those into account. I guess potentially an owner might.

And sometimes Boris will do end arounds with the front office and go directly to the owner. And so you give the owner a big splashy binder and maybe they would be persuaded by something. But also I think he does that primarily for the clients so that they can see, oh, look at all this work that this agency is doing on my behalf. And they're really pumping me up and they're making me sound good. And maybe the players don't even know whether that's really having an impact on their free agency. But I doubt any player is looking at Twitter on Wednesday this week and thinking, oh, wow, what a pun. I'm so happy I'm represented by Scott Boras.

I would not be getting puns of this caliber from any other agency. Probably not. not although you know humor comedy is it's uh it's difficult to to parse sometimes what moves us to laugh or or chuckle or even just say yeah that was a good one like you know sometimes that that is a a complicated cocktail so i don't know i don don't know what amuses baseball players. We've talked about this on the pod before. I think it's possible that their humor is at times different than the lay person's. So I don't know.

I think you're right though that, and I don't think either of us are suggesting that he is not doing like actual work, but I think that there is something about the production of here's this binder with all of these projections that add sort of a weight to that work in a way that is, I think, tangible and easier to see it in a way that might be sort of comforting, even though the real skill is like the actual negotiation itself, right? I don't think that there's a ton of dispute about the

guys that he has, although I'm sure that like many agents, like as he is endeavoring to be a good advocate for his clients, like he might present to a team or I think you're right, an owner, like, well, here's an aspect of this player's game that's underappreciated, like you should, you know, pay for this part. But I don't imagine that the uh sort of value and quality that a player is bringing to a team is in that much a dispute in these moments but you know sometimes you're cory seeker and the case is obvious and sometimes you're eric cosmer and uh and you you you know you take a binder to an owner and all of a sudden you have this big deal that the Padres will never be able to get out of.

So it kind of depends on the guy too, I suppose. Yep. All right. Well, it would be kind to call this comedy, I think. It is comedic in some ways. And we've debated before how in on the joke is Boris and how does he come up with this stuff and how long does it take him and does he have a writer's room? And those questions remain unanswered. But this year, not even that many analogies or metaphors.

It's mostly puns. Just so many puns. Mostly pretty bad puns. Sorry, before you start, does this just – look, I don't – we're not self-important people. Or we try really hard not to be. But, like, does this mean that we are the target audience for the Boris quotes? Like if it's puns about baseball, is this just mostly for us? Anyway, a thought to ponder. with notebooks and recorders in hand to capture these pearls of punny wisdom from Scott Boris and

egg him on by asking about certain players so that they can provoke these things. All right, I'll read you a few quotes here. You can tell me whether you think these are real ones or made up ones. So I'm cribbing for part of this from a Toronto Star aggregation, which says the 12 best Scott Boris quotes from the MLB GM meetings. And again, that is very generous to call them best or to have any kind of positive interpretation of these at all. But let's start with this. Okay, for me, Bryant, he's tall in stature. He's kind of the Sean Connery of Major League Baseball. Positional versatility makes him untouchable. He has Bond-like abilities to create a great middle of the lineup. He's always red-hot in the hunt for October.

He's an extraordinary gentleman in a league of his own. Bryant has many roles, and they're all hits. Am I predicting if this is real or not? Yes. I don't think that one is real. It's real.

No, it is not. It's very real. For me, Bryant, you know, he's tall, he's statured. He's kind of the Sean Connery of Major League Baseball. Okay? So when you think of him, the image, you know, you have to be formally Hollywood about this, you know, but the image of Sean Connery, he's kind of a,

he has positional versatility that makes him untouchable. He has Bond-like abilities to create a great middle of the lineup. He's always red hot in the hunt for october he's an extraordinary gentleman and is in a league of his own brian has many roles and they're all hits uh i could not have come up with that i shot coterie not canceled i guess and also i don't know that boris has seen hunt for red october because uh he is not the one doing the hunting he's the one being hunted but yeah this is real I have to say that I really appreciate the sort of range of quality of Sean Connery films that Scott Boris is willing to indulge here.

Because The Hunt for Red October is like, that's a great movie. When you were on leave, Bauman joined me and he made the case that it was one of the better like american films of the last century and i don't know that i disagree with him like it is fantastic despite its accent inconsistency but like the league of extraordinary gentlemen is not a good movie no so like that's a thing that is curious about that i am is sean connery known for his like was he known for versatility was that our main understanding of him say so no as an actor like i don't mean to say he was one note but he was not chameleon like you know in his performances i think you really knew that's sean connery right there so oh sc that's a, and like of all the guys to compare Chris Bryant to like Chris Bryant, your mind just naturally goes to Sean Connery was like a complicated human being on that score. So like, that's odd. And anyway, that's a real weird one.

Don't know about that. All right. In Marcus's case, he brings a charge to the batter's box. He insulates the middle infield. So he's truly a modern day Simeon conductor. And we all know there's a shortage of chips worldwide. So you can imagine the people who come. I don't think that one's real.

Oh, it's real. No, it is not! I don't think the ridiculousness of the quote is a clue here for you. I don't think it's, like, there's nothing I could say that would be like, oh, Scott Boras wouldn't say that. I mean, the man is a professional. Here's why I thought that one wasn't real. It was too, like man is a professional. Here's why I thought that one wasn't real. It was too thematically consistent. I was like, no, no.

I can track why you would use that analogy, and it is a solid through line throughout. I don't know how up on like supply chain issues Scott Boris is. I mean, I guess if anyone's going to be, you know, it would be him because it is an apt in some ways, a very apt metaphor, I suppose. But I can't believe that. Does he have different writers this season? Is there a Boris writer strike that we're unaware of? Marcus Sabian just switched agencies. He is now represented by Boris. He switched like two weeks ago. Do you think he is regretting that decision? Do you think he's like, yep, I made the right choice. My new agent called me a Semien conductor. He nailed it. My old agency never would have. My financial future is in great hands here. I wonder actually if I had remembered that fact, if I would have been

more inclined to find this one real, because here's how I think it went. Marcus sent me in signs with Boris. Scott Boris is like, okay, I got another one of the marquee free agents, and I can't half-ass this quote. I got to really put some work in and that might account for why it is more sort of cohesive throughout than some of his, which can kind of fall apart under just the absolute tiniest bit of scrutiny at all. So maybe I should have remembered that about Simeon and gone, aha, he's swinging for the fences with this one. Or do you think this quote was part of the pitch to Semyon? Oh. Like he has the PowerPoint and here I get my clients this much money and you can expect

this much and this is what we're going to go for. And also, I have a quote ready. If you were to sign with me, I would liken you to a semiconductor and it would say semi-in conductor. That was like the closer. That was like the last slide on the PowerPoint presentation that sealed the deal. If so, I hope that Boris ended it the way that I do when I am trying to get people to buy into my terrible jokes and go, eh, eh? Yep. All right. Let's see what else we got on here. Okay. His bag of gifts is arriving in the nick of time.

Any ownership group that doesn't want to be caught apologizing to its fans should make a drive into deep left or right field for Castellanos. I think that one is fake. That is fake. Okay. I can't imagine Boris invoking Twitter shitposting. He's the original Twitter shitposter. I guess he does it via other people tweeting his remarks. He wouldn't cite someone else's meme. He makes his own memes. cite someone else's meme he makes his own memes right exactly exactly so that's that's where i think that this one i was like that's that's not quite right plus like what is a bag a bag of gifts how does one i was going for a saint nick sort of thing too oh i think he actually he did do one of

those actually he a real quote from him he said i've I advised all of you two years ago that old St. Nick was going to bring a lot of presents to Cincinnati. Frankly, we're just going to sit back and see what teams have been naughty and nice. So that part was real. I, you know, these little Easter eggs, although that probably would have made me think, aha, that one is real. But no, I was not fooled. A bag of gifts. Like, I don't think I still don't think we know how NFTs work as part of this conversation. All right. Here's a max sentence. Any team that wants a clean bill of health should schedule themselves for Scherzer-y.

I don't think that's real. It's fake. Yeah, I don't think that one is real. All right. You got me on that one. He had a very bad real Scherzer quote. It was just like, I think teams that are pursuing a championship, they're certainly not pursuing the minimum. They're going straight to the max.

Oh, boy. Yeah, that's lazy writing. Oh, boy. I like mine better better yeah your yours is definitely yours is definitely better than that yeah i could have punched up that one for him okay when you think about sculpting a pitching staff and you're a thinking man the target without a doubt is rodan i'm gonna say it's real it's real oh my god yep it's just such a range of references yeah famous sculptures bad movies good movies you never know what is going to come out of his mouth but

this is what he had for redone a thinking man oh boy oh boy Man. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. Okay. What else do we have on here? All right. Conforto has kind of been the king of diamonds. Little League World Series, College World Series, and as a Met, he has been an all-star. He has been a pennant winner. He was huge in the World Series. He basically has become the king of queens, and in free agency now, he's the ace of many GM's hearts. Okay. So I know this one is real because this was one of the ones i saw yes this is real so i will confess that so that i do not get credit for guessing successfully yeah you know conforto's kind of been the king of diamonds little league world series um college world series you know and as a met he's been an all-star he's been a World Series, College World Series.

And as a Met, he's been an all-star. He's been a pennant winner. He was huge in the World Series. Basically, he's become the King of Queens. And kind of in free agency now, he's kind of like the ace of many GM's hearts. is he the king of queens

he really was not this year no and wouldn't you say that like francisco lindor is the king of queens or you probably would and would you reference king of queens in 2021 regardless i don't know that i would have i don't know that i would have referenced it when it was more apt culturally, just because it's not, you know, I'm not a Kevin James gal, you know, that's not my bag. So it wouldn't have been the one that I would have gone with. But, you know, it also wouldn't have been the player I would have identified. I don't know, that one is... Yeah. Watch other shows? Maybe like Paul Blart or something, if you're going to go with Kevin James, you know, just go straight to the classics. All right. What else do we have here? Well, he always has one about the Mets. He has kind of a feud with the Mets, at least a verbal one. So he always says something critical about them. So here's, let's see.

The Mets are taking a long look in the mirror to see if they're a team that's competitive, but the glass is too dirty to know for sure. The front office needs a good dose of Windex. Will they hire someone with a good squeegee? Or are they going to be left hiring someone with just a dirty rag? I think that one is fake.

That is fake. That is a submission from Chris in the bustling Effectively Wild Discord group. However, there was a real quote about the Mets, as there always is. This year it is, well, there are 29 teams that have their big carts out there and they're filling them up. Look at maybe the old adage, what's upsetting the big apple cart? And it might be that it's rather unattended at the moment. I'm sure that will be there, and we know that in our shopping malls, we're very welcoming to the big apple cart.

What? Wait a minute. Okay. Let's take this in pieces. So the apple cart is upset. Yes. It is upset. It's upset because it's unattended.

Unattended. It is upset. It's upset because it's unattended. Unattended. But wouldn't being left alone make it stagnant and not upset? Also, I don't think there are apple carts in malls. That's what confuses me. Yeah. Some sort of display in the middle of the mall?

I don't know. I guess you could say that the apple cart has been upset by jared porter and zach scott and so on and it is still upset because no one has come around to to upright it but so it is a is it a cart barreling through the mall oh yeah unarrested because of arrested might not be the right word to bring to this conversation but like you know it is it is barreling out of control because it has no one to to corral it yeah i think that like they don't sell apples at apple carts and malls it's more of a like uh you know it's more of a farmer's market kind of deal yeah one of the worst parts of this is that sandy alderson always fires back at boris yeah he always has a like a stock line ready to go and there was actually a video of this that i saw that sny tweeted where he like got the writers to set him up he was like oh

didn't scott boris say something and they were they were all like oh yeah he said something about conforto and and then he like went to great lengths to get them to tee him up he was like oh yeah what did he say again and then they read the quote back to him. Oh, boy. And then he said, those comments I would characterize as a blowhard in a house of cards. And then he laughed at his own comment. He did have some remarks about the Conforto situation, didn't he? Yes.

As well? Yeah. And they were. He's an NLE, King of Queens, and the ace of many GM parts. Ah, yeah. Okay.

I see. Yeah. Well, those comments I would characterize as a blowhard in a house of cards. Yeah. So, go back to not hiring a GM. Yeah, Sandy hasn't had great quotes of his own. They've been, again, often less colorful, but no better for their lack of pain metaphors and analogies.

Oh, no. All right, what else do we have here? I'm down to the dregs now, Contained metaphors and analogies. Oh, no. very biggest free agents on the market so here's one the seagurs are used to being on big stages and they have a lot of hits cory is like a rock and of course his parents knew this because they named him cory as in cory quarry quarry no that's not real that can't be real oh it's real no it is not oh yeah yeah no but like that doesn't even it's a it's a strange one it's even by the standards so rocks from quarries like that's you pull them out of i don't also like look i i can say this because I ostensibly root for the Mariners. Has Kyle Sinker had a lot of big hits on the biggest stage? He has had a great Mariners career and I think is important to that franchise and should be in the Mariners' ring of honor.

But there's some differences in terms of the quality of the teams that the brothers played for and the opportunities that were afforded to them for big hits. Boris doesn't represent both brothers, I don't think. Just Corey. Yeah. All right. Oh, Scott. Here's one.

Teams today are playing Alice in Wonderland with the luxury tax, always wanting to go smaller. My players, they're the cake. Eat them up and your playoff odds improve. Okay, wait. So first of all, one does not play Alice in Wonderland. That's not how that works. And if your playoff odds improve, aren't they getting bigger? And you, okay.

But like, I guess that's what you want to do, but then you don't fit in the house. And so that's a problem. Then you end up with your arms out the windows and doors. This one was fake. So this was submitted by Myth in the Effectively Wild Patreon Discord and did say your playoff odds get bigger, which would make it a little clearer, but not necessarily better. But again, not worse than any real Boris quote. No.

All right. I think we've hit the hits here to the extent that there were hits. Oh, boy. Scott. Reaching new depths, really. There was one real semi-nautical analogy, though, that we have to hit here. Boris on the idea of a ceiling or luxury tax slash floor in the CBA. They give you the rowboat

of the minimum, but they drown you in the tidal wave of the ceiling. Oh, I mean, okay. Yeah. That's one of the better ones here. It took me a minute to get my head around the tidal wave of the ceiling, but I see what he's saying here. Yeah. You think, oh, a floor. That's good.

That guarantees a minimum amount of spending, but then you get clobbered by the ceiling. I think that's one of his better ones. Yeah. It's traditional. I'm not saying it's good. I am just saying it is one of his better ones yeah it's traditional i'm not saying it's good i am just saying it is one of the better ones yeah right yeah so he said some of his usual stuff about teams not competing and teams not trying he said this is the easter bunny delivering rotten eggs that was uh another one on the lack of teams trying to win oh he also said talent is the

steak and i don't really care what time dinner is that's about the pace of of transactions this off season oh sure i think he's he's used that line before maybe yeah that sounds like that that sounds familiar although i will say that like i care when dinner is even if it's very good you know my patience does run out. And as an aside, if you're eating something like steak, being able to eat it in a timely way after it is done being prepared doesn't detract from the food experience, certainly. So I don't know about that. Yeah. Well, he also said that teams, let's see, we have seen the championship in 60 days, the Atlanta Braves.

This is not the fault of any team that doesn't look at the current rules and say we have to do our best for our team to take advantage. It's not about the Atlanta Braves or about their general manager ownership. It's really about the rules and the rules allowed them to be a less than 500 team on August 1st and add four players, five players from teams that no longer wanted to compete and for very little cost change the entirety of their team and season so instead of celebrating the Braves for going for it he kind of took that as a sign that the rest of the market was not competitive that they were able to do that he said what we've seen happen is in many ways the integrity of a season be eroded due to a rule change that occurred in 2012 and that was capping the draft when that was done it created an incentive for the race to the bottom because now we have half the major league teams at some point during the season being non-competitive trading off their players making the game in the season very

different than what it was intended to be and that was having an incentive to win every game that you play so i think he named a number of teams that are not trying he said i think that 17 teams are trying according to his definition of trying trying yeah i don't know if we can get to the 13 that aren't trying like it it's always hard to classify trying versus not trying because uh i guess he means trying as in like making a a real effort to put together a playoff team in 2022 essentially of course you know you can be kind of trying but maybe have your sights set on the season after that or something i mean it would be tough for every single team to be competitive every single season i think but if we were to try to match his number here can we come up with 13 that we think are not trying for the short term i mean you've got your gimmies. You've got the Orioles. You've got the Pirates.

That's a couple. You've got bad teams, which might not be the same as not trying teams. Right. I think that we could put – I mean, are we – it's sort of hard to do this also because we know what some teams have done recently so like at the deadline i don't know that my my first instinct would have been to say that the reds aren't trying but that would be my instinct now yes today i think we could say that given their early offseason behavior um so like that that jumps out to me as a candidate. I agree with you on the Pirates. Sounds like the A's are probably, I mean, they're not a team that has tanked historically. They have sort of-

They appear to be preparing to take a step back. Yes. So I think that they're in that camp. I think that we can- We could probably, I mean, like part of this is that you have some teams that are just like, they're hopefully on the upside of their rebuild, but you're right. They're not adding, they're not adding to the major league roster with the intent of winning in the next year. So I think that, yeah, we can put the Marlins in that group. I think that we can probably put the D-backs there.

I think the Rockies think they're trying, but I don't think they actually are. The Royals think they're trying, I think. They thought they were trying this year. How would you classify the Nationals in this conversation? Because I don't think that you trade Trey Turner if you're really trying. Right. Yeah. that you trade Trey Turner if you're like really trying right yeah I don't think that what they did was inexplicable or horrendous or anything but I think yes in terms of are they going for it in

2022 no yeah not really probably not it's tough to go solely by payroll like you could have two teams at the same payroll level and one is competitive and one is not. I mean, you can have the Rays and the Marlins, right? And neither one spends very much, but one is good and one is bad. But you would not say that the Rays are not trying. I mean, they could be trying in other ways, but they are still fielding a competitive team. And maybe the Cubs? Yeah, I think. Yeah, they were not trying this year and it'll probably take them a little bit until they're a serious threat, I would think. Yeah, I would put the Cubs into that mix. Sounds like the Rangers are going to be trying. Yeah, it does sound like that. From all accounts.

That's weird. Where do you put Cleveland in this conversation? Oh, Cleveland. Yeah. Yeah, we could probably count Cleveland, I guess. We're trying to get to 13 here. I'm starting to run dry. I think that Cleveland was probably on the list for him, just given some of the deadline moves that they made. So I would imagine that Cleveland is in that mix. And for Boris For Boris might be permanently on that list,

just given their own spending habits, although I guess we have to knock Tampa by that same logic. I think he probably had Cleveland in mind there. It's interesting because I think that his broader point is well taken. I don't know that I agree that what Atlanta was able to do at the deadline is like the cleanest example of it. You know, we ended up being wrong. So like, we should say that up front. But like we, and I think we were recently reminded of this by a listener, like we were just sort of not underwhelmed, like we thought they should have necessarily done more. But we didn't think that the moves that Atlanta made at the deadline the deadline were going to move the needle for them meaningfully right we were like this makes the team better it does address needs but like none of the guys that they've picked up seem like game changers and that ended up not being true either for the rest of the season and then certainly once they got to the playoffs so i think that the ability of teams to improve at the deadline is not in and of itself indicative of an unhealthy competitive environment because there are going to be teams that in you know other years are going to try to win and are committing payroll to that effect but just find themselves in a stinker of a

season and so end up moving guys to try to restock for the next year right like we'd put minnesota in that group right the twins are clearly trying they just had this horror show of the season and saw an opportunity to move some guys who weren't going to be long-term sort of core pieces for them and and you know get some some exciting guys back so like that was the way that the direction that they chose to go but i think that we will when we are approaching the 2022 season look at minnesota's roster and be like this is a pretty good baseball team like they're going to try to win so i don't think that the presence of the ability to improve at the deadline necessarily means that the competitive environment is bad if everyone or half the teams or 13 of the teams are in that mode,

I think that we can safely say that some percentage of them are not in Minnesota's position but are just trying to reduce payroll and sort of restock for future seasons in a way that Boris doesn't sort of approve of. But I don't know that Atlanta is the best example of that. Right. And he said, obviously, we've got problems. We've got problems now because we've got great players being moved around in the middle of the season that hurt the teams they left with the design that they're going to be weaker. We don't ever want a system that rewards being a lesser team. I mean, I think that's the way trades have always worked. You trade good players and you get weaker, but you get prospects back. I mean, that to me is not necessarily a sign of some competitive imbalance or something. I mean,

you're always going to get teams that are in it and teams that are out of it, whether they intended to be or not. And the good players are going to go from the worst teams to the better teams in the middle of the season. And you could say that's a sign of health in some ways that teams are trying to upgrade and get better in the middle of the season if they are in the running. So that part, I don't know. And I don't know that teams are really generally tanking for like better draft position. I mean, maybe, but again, I'm sort of skeptical of that idea in baseball just because of the way the baseball draft works. I know that there's some suggestion that maybe the new CBA will have some provisions in place so that there will be a limit on how many times you can pick at the top of the draft to discourage teams from just being bad every single year to get high draft picks. But even so, it's less beneficial in baseball than it is in other sports where you can count on your top draft pick to be like one of your star players the next season or something.

The incentives are not quite the same in baseball. And I think that we have seen teams that have sort of been bad with the explicit purpose of getting high draft picks. But I don't think that every team that tanks or steps back or whatever, you know, you want to use to describe it is necessarily doing that anymore and for no other reason than the number of teams doing that right presently diminishes the value you extract from the strategy so it's not as you know if you're the only team tanking and you have other good guys in your system already which is

always the part that people seem to forget about the tanking narrative right that like That like you have to, you end up supplementing a couple of good players who are already there rather than having all of your stars emerge from the tanking process. But you know, when there are more teams that are pursuing that strategy, the value of it in any given moment, I think is, is less obvious. So I don't know. I think that we agree that there are definitely teams that have pivoted to wanting to win with cost-controlled talent and refuse to sort of supplement that with spending. But that is a slightly different phenomenon than the one that he is describing. Yeah, not good. act and I don't blame them. But the whole thing is so absurd that every now and then I step back from the part of my brain that is conditioned to think that it's normal for Scott Boris to say things like this every year. If I could come into this knowing nothing and just read these quotes, I would think, oh, so this guy is like a joke. So he's like a laughingstock or something. No one takes him seriously. He just comes up with these weird puns

and everyone says, oh, how embarrassing for him that he said that. And that is not at all what it is. He is the most successful person in his field, one of the most prominent and recognizable and successful people in the sport. And this is the way that he gets the message out, which will just never not blow my mind on some level. Yeah. I mean, like, I think that there

are, I think that there are good nuggets, like real bits of little pearls of wisdom. And he certainly has a tremendous amount of insight into the state of the market and the competitive landscape. And some of these quotes would not be totally out of place coming from my dad and he is not um the most prominent agent in baseball so it is it is interesting but you know we can only ever be ourselves so yeah it humanizes him to some extent i suppose yeah all right so we wanted to do a few emails and close with a stat blast. And I just wanted to sort of an annual right of the offseason. And Bill has a bunch of essays in there, and a couple of them are about trying to figure out who is the best hitter in baseball and the best pitcher in baseball at any given time. And he runs through these exercises with the metrics that he has come up with,

these toy stats, essentially. He uses a game score for pitchers and he's developed a better game score. And just by looking at recent performances and weighting them and so forth, you can try to determine who is the best pitcher in baseball currently, according to his systems. Juan Soto did pass Trout at one point during the season, but then he slumped a little at the very end and Trout regained the top spot. But he has an aside here in the middle of the who is the best number one pitcher at any period in baseball essay to say, to interrupt our narrative for a moment. any period in baseball essay to say, to interrupt our narrative for a moment. Can't you just see this becoming a really interesting storyline for ESPN and MLB.com to follow if we could just get it bumped up to that level? Nolan Ryan is starting tonight for the Angels. He is currently ranked as the number two starting pitcher in baseball. He's trying to get past Tom Seaver and move back into the number one spot for the fourth time in his career. Once in a while, the top two pitchers in baseball will face off against one another in a duel for the top spot.

It would happen on average about once a year, I think. Or how about this one? Tom Seaver has reclaimed the top spot in the starting pitching rankings for the 11th time in his career, tying the record set 20 years ago by Warren Spahn. Or this one. Sandy Koufax has now occupied the top space on the Major League starting pitchers list for three years.

It is the longest that anyone has ever held that position. There's potentially a lot of storylines connected to this. If we could just get a consensus around the method and get people to stop chirping about little methodological issues that don't really amount to anything, replace the names of Koufax and Seaver and Spahn with Verlander and Colin deGrom, we'll get there. the names of Koufax and Seaver and Spahn with Verlander and Colin de Grom will get there. So this made me think, how different would baseball be if the players were ranked? If there were some public ranking system agreed upon by some governing body? If MLB had- So basically, if we had one version of war. Yeah, I guess you could use war. Whatever you use, if it were some sort of projected value,

or if it were retrospective, if it were game score, it would just reflect how the player has performed and weight more recent performances more heavily. And I'm basically thinking, you know, the way that golfers are ranked, or tennis players are ranked, or chess players are ranked. And when you watch golf, or you watch tennis, if you watch golf or you watch tennis, then you see the number next to their name at all times. You know what their seed is in that tournament maybe, but you also know their worldwide rank. And in MLB, it'd be tough to do worldwide ranks, I guess. But if you just did an MLB rank, at at any given time, you know, there are 30

teams and there are 26 players on each team. So if you just had players ranked at all times, you know, from one to the last one on the list, how different would baseball be? I was thinking it would be kind of intriguing if that were an element that were added to broadcasting. I mean, the fun facts that would come from that about, as Bill was saying, like, you know, who's number one, like this is a debate that people are constantly having anyway, right? Who's the best this or that in baseball? And this would be sort of a system that you could, in theory, agree on. Now, that is probably one of the big sticking points is how would this system work and how would it take into account? I mean, A, it's a team sport unlike individual sports like tennis and golf and chess and so on. So that would be tough. It'd have

to be based on player performance, not the outcome of the team. And then you also have, I mean, you know, you have different styles of tennis player, but they're all playing tennis. Whereas in baseball, you have pitchers, you have hitters. How do you decide if this pitcher is better than that hitter? I guess you could just separate it into pitchers and hitters. But imagine if, you know, the broadcast comes on and you see the chyron and you see the stats there at the bottom and you also see the rank. And there's just a big board of who the best baseball players are at any given time. Would that add to your enjoyment of the sport in any way? No.

So here's part of, I think here's why I'm unmoved by this potential change. I have two reasons. I will list them in order. The first is that, and this is probably betraying my own worldview and sort of the sphere of baseball writers and analysts and readers that I operate within. But I feel like we already do this. Yes. Right? within but like i feel like we already do this yeah right i mean and i think there's a greater amount of variety among the stats that are used to justify those claims than than bill is perhaps

suggesting we allow for here but i think that like most baseball viewers have a sense of like who the best pitcher in the game is and that's clouded by all kinds of stuff, right? Like there's your own fandom and how that puts a lens on your interpretation of guys who don't play for your favorite team. And there's your preferred version of a stat like a war, which might color pretty dramatically your understanding of how good a player is, particularly on the pitching side. But I think that most people sort of have a mental list. And I don't think that the acrimony detracts from the sport, right? I think that people, and here's the second part of my ignorance, I suppose.

Like, I don't know how controversial the rankings are for sports like golf or tennis. Like, I don't, because I just don't follow those sports. So I'm not sure if like, are there fans who are engaged in like pitched battles against one another on twitter like no i think there are perceived imperfections in in the way players are ranked or seated you know the way that those systems are set up so i don't think everyone is satisfied or thinks they're like perfectly sabermetrically accurate. And also, I guess, in baseball, maybe in this era more than any other, I don't know, but you do get sudden changes in performance and we're able to track those changes maybe in more sensitive ways than you used to be

able to because you have the underlying process stats as opposed to just the results. I think if you were to do this, there is some virtue in doing it the way that Bill does, where you just have sort of basic stats and game scores and you can apply it to all of baseball history, which would be good for consistency sake so that you can say that, yeah, this guy's reigning at the top of the best player leaderboard. Like, it's the longest since so and so 70 years ago whereas if you were using stat cast stats or something like maybe you could come up with a metric that was more sensitive to changes in performance so it wouldn't take as long for you to climb the leaderboard if you suddenly started throwing harder or hitting the ball harder but then you

wouldn't be able to apply it more broadly to the whole sweep of history. And there's also the question of like, well, do we know that this guy will actually get better results because he is hitting the ball harder or something? So maybe you do just, yeah, maybe you want to wait and see if the results are actually there. So maybe it should be based on that anyway. Well, and I think that, you know, it's always hard to sort of remove ourselves from the context in which we currently operate. And so the idea that the introduction of a stat from some authority, like if there were a league endorsed version of war as a way to sort of do this, the idea that that would be introduced and then everyone would go, oh, great. That's the official version of this is like completely anathema to my experience of like the sabermetric community. Yeah. Or even like, you know, college sports and team strengths and ratings and how you end up with

bowls and you can tell I watch a lot of college sports, but people are never really happy with those. They sure, I mean, you've hit it though, Ben. You are correct in that we are never satisfied with that. And there are always people who are kind of grumpy with the rankings often with good reason. And so I guess I just don't quite know what problem this is really solving because I think that we have such a rich tapestry of statistics now. And I know that sometimes people do get frustrated with there being multiple versions of a value metric like war warp, depending on what you call it at the particular publication you're working for. But I think that whatever that does to sort of confuse people and maybe push them away from advanced stats, I think is outweighed by the

number of people who really enjoy the debate about who is the best guy. There's nothing we like more than talking about, well, who's the best guy? And why is he the best guy? And why is he better than this other guy? And there is an entire, we could fuel the sun on the heat of those takes, right? And sometimes that is irritating if that's not what you're in the mood for. But I do think that a lot of people's enjoyment is in the debate. And hopefully that debate is like thoughtful and well-considered and at least respectful of one another and like acknowledges that all of these guys are really good. But I think that people like that part of it. So I don't think that we suffer for the amount of disagreement that we have provided that that disagreement is done in a way that doesn't make you feel awful.

Right. So so I don't know. And I don't know that people would look at it and say, oh, well, if ESPN says this is the number one guy, like I have to I have to tune in. I do think that people make time to see particular players who aren't on their favorite team. But I don't think they struggle to do that with the information they're provided now. So I don't know. But as I said, up top, like, I will acknowledge that I, you know, my baseball world is the size that it is. And there may well be a rallying cry among fans who operate in a different part of that sphere,

who are saying, we just want a number. We want a good number. So I'm willing to admit that my view on this might be artificially constrained. Yeah. I guess it's more beneficial in other sports like head-to-head sports because you need to do seedings and you need to decide who qualifies for a tournament and who are they going to face and how are you going to make brackets and so forth and i guess you could use some other stat but it's helpful to have this special sauce that you've cooked up and i think it would be fun it might lead to some interesting stats like i don't know if you had a really good lineup like the astros lineup this year and they had like a certain number of players in the top whatever and you could say like oh this

is the first lineup that's ever had x number of players in the top whatever number of the rankings at the same time or something or you could come up with like the best lineup based on the combined ranking of all the players like it would lend itself to a lot of fun facts and stat blasts and stat head queries which i think would be nice and like just to boil it down to one number like that like a ranking would make it easier in some ways than to say like i don't know i guess you could say like oh they had this number of players in the top 10 in OPS or something at that time or whatever. Like you could come up with some more convoluted way to do it. But if you just said, oh, this team has X number of top 20 players or whatever, and

that's a record, like that'd be kind of cool. Or if you're a casual fan or a non-fan and you're just tuning into a broadcast, like that's kind of one of the nice things. Like if you're watching golf or tennis and you that's kind of one of the nice things like if you're watching golf or tennis and you don't know a ton about the sports like the fact that there's a number next to someone's name and you know oh this guy's good I guess

whereas in baseball if you're watching either there's not a single number or you need some explanation of that number what is war what is OPS what is OPP what is strikeout rate whatever whereas this would just be a single number attached to someone's name that you could just say oh this guy's good this is the x best player in baseball and i'm sure there would be complaints

and quibbles and also like would this affect how players are paid like would this be something people could talk about in arbitration and would that unfairly penalize some players so i don't know if it would be just for fun and obviously like teams would have their own rankings and projections and probably would pay no attention to these unless they were like really rigorous so i don't know it might be an interesting talking point but you're right we already do talk about this so yeah i don't know it might be an interesting talking point but you're right we already do talk about this so yeah we don't need a number yeah we we are constantly referring to war even even at points in the season where it's silly to do it even in reference to differences between guys that are so minute as to be meaningless we're we're lousy with war. Yes. All right. Here is a quick question from Robert.

Been thinking about free agent Clayton Kershaw lately. It seemed as of late that he can still be really good for about 120 innings before the injuries start popping up. Would it make sense for the Dodgers to want to have him do the late career Roger Clemens thing and pitch those innings from July through October rather than starting his season in April career Roger Clemens thing and pitch those innings from July through October rather than starting his season in April. When Clemens did this, it was because he wanted to. Assuming Kershaw doesn't prefer this abbreviated schedule, is it something that the Dodgers, famous for at times having a whole stable of reliable starters, could or should mandate? Would the union let them say, see you in July? Is there another team that you could see doing this? Would this even be a good way to manage a staff with October's success in mind?

like that just doesn't seem to be the dynamic that they have with him as a player and i say that to their credit right i think that they have a really deep appreciation for him and seem to you know understand where he fits in terms of the franchise's history etc so i don't imagine them forcing this kind of a load management strategy onto kershaw i could see them having a good enough relationship with him if he is to return to the Dodgers to say, hey, this is how we want to keep you healthy and be able to use your innings when they're going to be the greatest use to us. I think that the appeal of a strategy like this, even for a team like Los Angeles that does have, when guys are healthy, a great deal of depth is maybe a little less obvious than it would have been in prior years because I don't think LA is in a

position to coast, right? They also need to get to October. And so who knows when those innings are going to be the most useful to them. It could be in the beginning. We just don't know. I don't know that this would necessarily be the best way to optimize Kershaw's health. This is not the way that he has prepared or understood his role in prior seasons, which doesn't mean that with an offseason and maybe a different plan that you couldn't make it that way. But to keep him ready or delay his start and have him ramping up at a different time of year. Like, I don't know what that does to his performance. Like we can't just assume that his innings late in the summer would be

equivalent in quality to what they would be if they were shifted earlier on a more normal schedule. Like I just don't, they, they very well may be. And you know, we saw, we saw plenty of guys have to including

Kershaw have to adapt to a strange start to the year in 2020 so it's not as if it can't be done but I don't think that it's a given with anyone regardless of where they are in their careers and perhaps you have greater concerns about that with a veteran who has a sort of set understanding of how he is going to prepare. So I don't know. Like, I think that there are a lot of ways that you can try to keep guys healthy and load manage. But I don't know that saying, OK, you're going to essentially not pitch until, you know, like a month before your first start so that we can keep you healthy necessarily automatically attains the health goals that you want. You know what I mean?

Right. Yeah, it's not as if he breaks down every time, like once he hits a certain threshold, sometimes he gets hurt at the beginning of the season, right? Sometimes he's gotten hurt in spring training and the start of his season is delayed. So I don't know if it's predictable enough to say that, yeah, we want you to get to this number. And so we're just going to make sure you get to that number in October instead of the middle of the season.

There's just no telling really when he's going to break down, it seems like. So I don't think you can plan on it necessarily. you can plan on it necessarily obviously like you know treat him with care yeah give him time off and maybe you schedule some phantom il appearance at some point or you just don't have him go very deep into games or you monitor his symptoms very closely etc like don't push him too hard but aside from the fact that i'm sure he wouldn't want to do this because he's competitive and he always wants to be pitching and everything i just i don't know that it would be beneficial or predictable enough to mandate that he do it. they can and that they have his cooperation in doing everything they can to try to sort of detect early signs that he is wearing down and needs to rest and you know it's it's not as if and i know the question doesn't really imply this but like it is not as if they are not trying to get more

innings out of him like there is just a reality of his age and how many innings he has thrown over the course of his career that is going to make doing that perfectly impossible because it's really hard to know exactly when you know human bodies are going to break down particularly when they're doing something as unnatural as throwing overhand a bunch right no one should pitch it's bad it's really bad for you i mean like we're glad you all do but like really kind of wild that you are like this is a good idea that i should have my livelihood attached to i published an article on may 3rd 2018 called is peak clayton kershaw gone for good and i think it's fair to say that peak kershaw was and is gone for good prior to that point he'd had seven consecutive seasons where he was a top three Cy Young finisher, at least. And since then, he has not been.

However, post-peak Clayton Kershaw over that spin has a 2.97 ERA. So he's still pretty good. Pretty good. Yeah. All right. Here is a question from David to a nonpartisan viewer. What's the best type of series clinching put out on a relatively routine play? That is setting aside something like a one run game ending on a runner gun down at home from the outfield.

A strikeout with the catcher and pitcher charging each other for a hug. A force at first where often a Rizzo or Freeman franchise face figure is visibly powering up to celebrate as they stretch to receive the throw. Unremarkable fly ball with a couple of seconds of built-in anticipation. So he's saying the play in itself is not a highlight. It's not a brilliant web gem or anything. What's the best routine way to end a series and celebrate? I would rank the options that we were given there as follows i think that the i think a strikeout with the the pitcher and the catcher hugging

especially if the catcher ends up in the arms of the pitcher because often like you know they have catcher bulk in there like you see i hold it in it's a great visual. I think that that is the first one. I think that the second one is a routine fly out and you have to wait until it actually hits the glove because often you get a shot not long after that of the guys on the infield waiting. waiting you know and they're like they're primed and you can see every muscle in their bodies tensing to try to like get ready to react and and they have they're feeling the joy but they can't fully express the joy because what if something goes wrong and it's not done yet and so i i find that delightful it leads to to lovely expressions and then I think that the first baseman kind of scooping the ball in that way, that's good too.

I admire your ability to say face a franchise without stumbling over it. That was tough. But I think that's how I would rank them. I really, like the interactions, he's like really at once tender, but also like vaguely violent because you have giant athletes colliding with

one another in in a moment of joy like those are just such lovely moments it's so nice to see these guys who've worked so hard for so long over the course of their lives realize this moment of being like we did it we won a world series and so i think that that that puts the pitcher and the catcher at the top for me because you get to have that interaction between battery mates in a way that's really nice. But they're all good. I can't think of a bad, unless there's like controversy on the final play of a series.

Yeah, you don't want to replay review or something. Yeah, like the only time it's really bad is if it, I mean, as a sort of indifferent fan, right, as a neutral party, obviously it's quite bad when your team is on the wrong end of it. But as a neutral party, unless it's ending with headphones on, I think that it's going to offer its own moments that are really lovely kind of regardless. I remember in spring training, and this ends up being pretty funny in hindsight, but the Mets practiced winning the World Series in spring training. They were doing fungos and they practiced a fly out and all running in and doing stuff. And it's hard to predict what your how your feelings are going to manifest themselves in public in moments where you haven't had that experience before good or negative, right? It can hit you in a lot of weird ways. Like, this is why it's like when we should never judge how anyone reacts to grief, because who the hell knows how we're going to do it, right? Like, it's just a hard thing sometimes to predict. And I think that those moments are really, they tell us stuff about like who we are as people in a way that's, it's so strange that we get to watch someone else we don't know engaging with that. I don't know Freddie Freeman, but I know about one of the best moments of his life.

I watched it. That's so weird. itself to these little moments that are really nice a lot of the time and kind of give you an insight into a guy who you don't know and don't know well, but are able to know something very intimate about them. It's cool. So unless there are headphones on, I think they're all good. It's funny. People made fun of the Mets for practicing winning the World Series. I thought it was brilliant. Yeah. I mean, I see why people made fun of the Mets for that. People will make fun

of the Mets for anything and very often they deserve it. And, you know, people talked about it being a jinx and everything. If they had ended up winning the World Series, people probably would have

written articles about they were visualizing it from the very beginning of spring training. That was their goal from the get-go. We were going to be the last team out there

and they followed through on the promise. So it all depends whether your season completely collapses and you're a joke or you actually go all the way. And then those things will be received in very different lights. Absolutely. I would slightly disagree with you, I think, about your pick. I think the jumping into the arms is great and wonderful. think about your pick i i think the the jumping into the arms is great and wonderful however i think the viewing experience of the final play like that does enhance the celebration but i think i i would want a more drawn out last play just so i can savor that moment and the building

anticipation like the last out of the 2016 world series where it's just the slow roller to bryant and then he throws to rizzo and so you know like when you're watching just a strikeout you can't even see the players at first i mean the pitcher has his back to you the catcher has his mask on the focus is really on the batter initially and there's there's no time to like sense that the strikeout is shaping up as the pitch is on its way exactly whereas if you have a slow roller like that one then you know like when when the ball comes off the bat oh this could be it and then it still takes a few seconds and you know there was some suspense about that play but it wasn't really a bang bang play it was

still fairly routine but it still it took some time and you got to see Bryant going to get it, and you could see that he was thinking, this is the last Out of the World series. We're about to break the curse, and then you see Rizzo is excited as the throw is on its way. So I think that built up in a nice way. So I think that was about as good a way as you can end it. That is fair.

Like that was quite a moment. I do think that absent the context of the drought, though, it wouldn't have been quite maybe not quite as impactful. But that context exists. So not fair of me to deny you it. All right. Last one. Carter says, my question is, if every single aspect of a baseball team were tradable, what's the least valuable thing teams would still trade? It seems like teams would definitely trade for

draft picks, GMs, and managers if they could, but would anyone bother trading for a quality third base coach? Would the best groundskeeper in MLB be worth trading for? How about the best mascot? It seems like there are a lot of things that barely make a difference but if a team is obsessed enough with trying to get an edge they might go for it i'm curious where you think they'd draw the line and i guess we have some sense of where they'd draw the line because they could trade some of these things if they wanted to right like managers have been traded or you know they've gone from one team to the other and the first team has received some compensation for that. So could you trade a third base coach? I guess you could. I don't know. Like they're under the same kind of contract as a manager, presumably their uniformed coach. Like, I mean, I guess you could trade one. I don't know. In a sense, it seems strange, though, that that wouldn't have happened.

Or maybe it has happened. There may very well be examples of some hitting coach or pitching coach getting traded. It's not really coming to my mind immediately, but someone will write in and tell us about that. I guess, you know, even if you're a bad team, you could still use a good hitting coach or pitching coach, maybe not a good third base coach. But I think there probably could be trades of some of these things if you wanted, like, I don't know if you could trade a groundskeeper, like that's a person who is just like, that's a civilian, you know, who's like employed in a baseball job, but I don't know if you could trade a groundskeeper. Like, that's a person who is just like, that's a civilian, you know, who's like employed in a baseball job. But I don't know if you could just trade a groundskeeper and say, hey, you keep cons for this team now.

Yeah, you have to move. Congratulations. You now live in Milwaukee. Right. Like, could you trade a mascot? I guess you could. Like, what's stopping teams from trading mascots? Yeah, I don't see why you would want to because mascots, the whole point is it represents your team.

I mean, if you traded the Fanatic to another team, if the Padres and the Phillies traded the Friar and the Fanatic and you had the Philly friar and the San Diego fanatic. Now I want to see the fanatic dressed as a friar. Yeah, that would be a way for them to beat that copyright claim, right? Right, there you go. But yeah, some things I don't see the value in trading. But yeah, I don't see why you couldn't trade a mascot. But there hasn't been a mascot trade that I'm aware of. Although again, there may very well have been. I struggled with this question because you were like, I'm going to ask you this question so that I can think about it.

And then I was thinking about it. And then I struggled with it because I think that the individuals that this question sort of has in mind are often on such short deals that I don't know why I don't know that there would be urgency such that you would be willing to relinquish the kinds of personnel that you would in trade that would inspire you to say I got to give this stuff up rather than wait for his contract to end and say we're going to pay you a hundred,000 more than that team is playing. It seems as if while you might end up with trades in this realm, this is an area where a team could, for what ends up being a fairly significant amount of money to the individual, but a very minor amount of money to the franchise, keep all the stuff that they would otherwise have to put on the trading block and secure the services of the individual who who's involved in like how do you assess that you'd need like you'd need like advanced scouts for your you know for your your pitching staff or to be like yeah like we're we're hearing that this up and coming trainer in AAA is like, you know, she's the gal who's going to break

open this whole pitching injury thing. We got to go get her, you know. I think that you solve that problem by saying, yeah, we'd like you to come work for us in Cleveland. And Cleveland's a bad example because they wouldn't pay $100,000 to get new personnel. But, you know, like if you're the Yankees, you just say, we'll just pay you more money. And unless there's something that that person is doing right that minute that you just can't live without for the next year or two, which is how long these kinds of employee contracts tend to be structured for, like, I think you just wait it out and go hire that person the next time around. Now, there are some logistical things that make that more complicated, which is that the person involved might not know that like they're, they'll know when their contract is ending,

but they might not know that they have the option to get renewed, right? Like there are still things that you would have to navigate as a, as a potential member of a front office that's trying to recruit someone. But I think you, you would go the recruitment and money route rather than that. We're going to trade, you know, our 15th round draft pick for your third base coach. Like,

yeah, I also think it would be a really challenging in a way that might be fun for someone, but like from a valuation perspective, like how do you possibly value those trades? Right. Like, unless you're exchanging, you know, you send us your third base coach and we'll send you our, you know, our hitting coordinator or whatever, like maybe then you can kind of put them in some

sort of ballpark near one another. But I think it would be difficult from a value perspective in a way that is much easier when it comes to players which is part of the reason although not the the bulk of the reason that i think we see those happen much more frequently because you can kind of put them on something of a level playing field in terms of your understanding of the relative value being exchanged i think that's a lot harder when you're looking at like again like the up-and- coming trainer or like the third base coach or something, and you've got a groundskeeper who's great at growing the grass long to deaden the ball and angling the baselines in just such a way that you can keep bunts fair, and you would want him on this speedy team.

And maybe the team that the groundskeeper currently works for has a slugging three true outcomes type roster, and so you trade the groundskeeper to the team where their skills will be more beneficial. Or I could see trading broadcasters. Maybe, you know, if you have an up and coming AAA broadcaster who's your top prospect and maybe your broadcaster is expendable or something, or maybe your broadcaster just doesn't have the greatest chemistry with someone else in the booth and you want to change up the mix there or i don't know maybe the broadcaster is just tired of being there i mean broadcasters can leave if they want but again i don't think

you can trade broadcasters the way that you can trade players right i i do know i guess one very insignificant thing that i know that teams have traded is data. Teams will trade like TrackMan data or RepSoto data or whatever, like if they have a private workout maybe and one team has access to this data and another team has access to a different workout data or something. And so they'll share, they'll trade for something. I mean, they're not trading for like draft picks. You can't trade draft picks anyway. They're not trading for like huge sums of money or players or something. They're probably just trading data for data or something. Yeah, often. Yeah. But that's something that happens that's very small edge, but I guess, fits the spirit of the question here.

Yeah, I think that that's probably the best real-world example. And some of this stuff has changed because there were teams that were willing to spend money here and other teams weren't. And so the teams that weren't were like, hey, let's stop doing this. But for a while, there were teams that had track band units that they had installed at colleges and JUCOs. And so they were collecting data on draft prospects, some of which they would trade and share and some of which they wouldn't. Now, a lot of that stuff is centralized because that's how that stuff tends to go. But yeah, that was definitely something that happened. And there were definitely times when teams were like, no, we're keeping this data exclusive because we don't want you to know what we know about that picture or whatever so

yeah yeah that stuff exists all right let's close with the stat blast they'll take a data set sorted by something like a r a minus or obs plus and then they'll tease out some interesting tidbit, discuss it at length, and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's today's stat blast. All right, so I've got two stat blasts here prompted by listener questions, both answered by frequent stat blast consultant, Ryan Nelson. And these are really good ones. We get a lot of stat blast submissions and a lot of them are good. Some of them take the form of like, this guy did this thing a lot. Is that weird or is that a lot to do that

thing? And sometimes I will just know that it's not that extraordinary. Or sometimes I'll do a little research and find that it's not and that doesn't make the show. Sometimes people will send questions that are just like impossible to answer or would just take an enormous amount of effort to answer. Sometimes people send questions that just aren't very interesting, at least to me anyway, and in my judgment of what would be interesting to the audience. And sometimes there would be a lot of work required to answer these not very interesting questions where the best outcome is that we get an answer and it's still just not that interesting, or at least not to me or not to a wide swath of people but we still get a lot of really good ones i mean really every week

we get a question where some listener picks up on something that really is unusual and special and i am glad to be clued into those things because i don't always pick up on them myself so here's a question from dan, who writes, I am a Braves fan who was thrilled with the World Series victory, but had conflicting feelings. Almost the entire playoff run was done on the backs of the outfielders who were brought in during the trade deadline. It felt weird. It made me think of the ship of Theseus. And I came up with this hypothetical scenario.

What if your favorite team was to make the playoffs, but on the day of the wildcard series, every single player on the team was replaced by a completely different but equally talented player? This change would have absolutely no effect on the outcome of the team's playoff success. They are simply different people with different stories with different skill sets, but have the same war values. Would it change your enjoyment of a World Series win or loss? Would you care who was on the field as long as your team wins? P.S. This is really just an email saying that I hate that Ronald Acuna Jr. didn't get to play in the World Series, understandably. Yeah, same. So we root for laundry in general, but there are limits to the laundry axiom, right?

I mean, if it's just a bunch of complete strangers wearing your laundry then i don't think it is as satisfying if you win because uh who are the atlanta braves well it's the players who've been playing for that team all season or at least part of the season right and so if you just swapped in some other equally good players who were not until then members of that team well that would be weird it would seem like you just hired a bunch of ringers or strangers or something. So I see what Daniel is saying here, and we could answer that question. He did not actually submit this as a stat blast, but I thought that it could be one because I wondered, is Atlanta unusual in this respect? Was it actually an extraordinarily different cast of characters

playing for the postseason Atlanta Braves? So I submitted that question to Ryan and I wondered which teams had the highest percentage of their combined postseason plate appearances and batters faced provided by players who did not play for that team in the first half of its season. So that was sort of arbitrarily, you know, just using that team's schedule. Did they play for that team in the first half of that season and then went on to play in the postseason? You had Rosario and you had Solaire and you had Peterson and Duvall and Orlando Garcia and Dylan Lee even. They all debuted with the Braves after the midway point of Atlanta's season. So after team game 80, I guess, because they played 161. So Ryan looked into this and at least in one respect, Atlanta does really stand out. So here's what Ryan writes. The way I calculated this was by counting any player who did not play for a team before the midpoint of the season adjusted for different schedule lengths as a new player.

The big flaw here from the spirit of the question is that this would include those who were injured for the first half of the season as new players, even if they had played on the team in previous seasons. I couldn't think of a reasonable way to only track transactions. So this is the next best thing. It would be pretty complicated to figure out had they played for the team previously or were they in the organization? You could do it, but it probably wouldn't be worth the effort. And also, you know, even if a player was absent for most of the season and even if he was in the organization, if he didn't actually play for the team and then he just showed up at the end of the year, you know, still seems like sort of parachuting in. So Ryan says, for some context, I manually counted the Braves postseason stats and found that 224 of their 584 plate appearances, 38.4% came from players added to the roster in the second half. Only 27 of their 588

batters faced, that's 4.6% did. So the overall percentage is 21.4%, but heavily skewed toward hitters. He writes, the team with the highest percentage of plate appearances and batters faced in the postseason from players who didn't play in the first half of the regular season for that team was the 2015 Blue Jays. They had 23% of their plate appearances come from new batters, including trade deadline acquisition Ben Revere, who led the team with 51 postseason plate appearances, and fellow acquisition Troy Tulewitzki with 46. Where they really shined was the whopping 50.7% of their postseason pitching that came from new pitchers. Leading this group was trade acquisition David Price with 95 batters faced most on the team and Marcus Stroman who returned from injury to make

his first start on September 12th. Their total new player percentage was 36.71% So that is a lot That's a record. The 2015 Blue Jays Are in a virtual tie with the 1987 Giants who had an overall Rate of 36.67 15.94% For batters Kevin Mitchell led the team with

30 postseason plate appearances After being acquired in a trade And 58.33% Of their pitcher batters faced. Four of their seven starters, Dave Drevecky, Rick Rushall, and their most heavily used reliever, Joe Price, were traded for midseason. Interestingly, the third highest ever were the 2015 Rangers, who famously played the Blue Jays in the ALDS. They had a 10.6%, 55.7%, 33.4% batter-pitcher overall rate, respectively. Now, the largest rate for pitchers only ever was the 2014 A's with 61.5%, but that was a single game. That was the infamous John Lester game in which he allowed six runs in

seven and a third innings, but left with the lead Before his team blew it in the twelfth And he was of course a trade acquisition The largest in a series with multiple Games is from the 87 Giants And again that was 58.33% The largest from hitters Specifically and this is where

The premise for the question comes in Is indeed these 2021 Braves With 38.4%. The previous record was the 2016 Rangers followed closely by the 2016 Mets, 34.5% and 33.3%. The previous record for a team that made the World Series was the 1996 Yankees at just 25.4%. So for a team to have this much success with a rate that high is completely unprecedented so most of those teams were from recent years as I suppose you would expect more player movement in general maybe and a later trade deadline than there used to be but yeah the Braves stand out they are the team with the the most uh new appearances on the

postseason roster on the offensive side ever and they won anyway and yeah I'm sure that most fans of the team were absolutely thrilled and that this didn't bother them it sounds like it slightly bothered Daniel or at least it felt a little off to him. But, you know, they waited a while for that championship. I'm guessing that if the 2022 Mariners win the World Series and they make a bunch of trades at midseason and half their roster is new guys, probably Mariners fans would still be pretty pleased by the championship. So I don't know if there's like a limit for you where it would be too much, you know, too much change, too many new faces. I haven't watched these guys all season long. They're strangers to me. This is not satisfying, but I don't think the Braves were quite there. No. And I think that they're aided by the fact that like, you know,

you still had Freeman. So like that that I think helps things a lot. You still had Albies and Dansby Swanson. You did have guys who were holdovers, but it did feel it wasn't the best that they won without Acuna just because it would have been so fun to see him on a World Series run. But Eddie Rosario did a fine impression for a couple of weeks. So that'll do. Yeah. And like I said before, I mean, it's not like they did this by choice exactly. Like they lost a lot of players and they had to scramble to fill those holes. And so there was an element of like, wow, this worked out so well, better than we could have expected. And we were

desperate and we were just throwing out all these guys. and somehow we outplayed the Astros and the Brewers and the Dodgers and we went all the way anyway and nothing could keep us down and we never even faced an elimination game. So I could see how it kind of adds to how compelling that postseason run was in a sense as well. All right. So thanks to Daniel for that question and Ryan for the research. And the last Yeah. from his excellent career with the Mets, although he played for a number of organizations and played in Japan and went all over the world. But in the majors, he was with the Mets in three separate stints. And he was known for being someone you could slot into various roles. He came up as a lever and sort of a long man and a swing man. And then later in his career, more of a lefty specialist. And you could kind of plug him in and he would do a good job in any of those roles or at least the latter roles. And he just

worked all the time. He was always pitching. He was nicknamed Perpetual Pedro. And he had, you know, he led, I think, the majors three years in a row in appearances, 86, 88, and 92 from 2008 to 2010. So in total, he pitched nine years in the majors, all for the Mets, and he ended up with a 126 ERA plus. And it seems like all of the tributes have rolled in and all of his ex-teammates only had nice things to say about him. He was well-liked. And the Yankees did sign him, I remember. They signed

him away from the Mets, and then he never pitched for them in the majors because he was hurt the whole time. And Brian Cashman sort of suggested that the Mets had abused his arm and had overworked him in that span of three years. But then he came back and had a little last ride with the Mets. came back and had a, you know, a little last ride with the Mets. Anyway, he did have a rare genetic heart condition, and I don't know whether that played into his death or not. I haven't seen, but he died in his sleep again at only 45. And this prompted a question from listener Dennis, who wrote in to say, in digging around in the late Pedro Feliciano's numbers, to say, in digging around in the late Pedro Feliciano's numbers, I found that he faced Chase Utley 42 times in his career. I can't query this via StatHead, but this seems like a very high number of matchups

for a guy who pitched 1. exclusively in relief, 2. exclusively in the era of 30 teams, 3. exclusively in the era of interleague play, and 4. only 5 full seasons. Even many of the all-time leaders in games pitched like Jesse Orozco and Trevor Hoffman and Dan Plesak and Mike Timlin and Roberto Hernandez, et cetera, never faced any one hitter 40 times. Do you have any sense of

how anomalous this is or do most loogies of the era have similar numbers? So I wasn't sure at first blush whether this was weird, but I looked at, you know, like Randy Choate and Javier Lopez and some other contemporary kind of leagueys and they had never faced anyone more than, you know, 25, 26 times, something like that, not even close to the 42 times that Feliciano faced Utley. So I concluded that it did in fact seem strange. And I asked Ryan to check the highest percentages of total batters faced represented by any one batter pitcher matchup. And I set a minimum. So among pitchers with at least 1500 career batters faced because Feliciano had 1667 in his career and Ryan ran the numbers. And again, it turns out that Dennis very perceptively has noticed something strange here. And in fact,

Ryan looked at first at the 30 team era and he found that no player, no qualifying pitcher Has had a higher percentage of his batters faced Represented by a single hitter Than Pedro Feliciano and Chase Utley So that's 42 out of 1667 So that is 2.52% of all of Pedro Feliciano's batters faced Were Chase Utley And right behind him at 38 times and 2.28% Pedro Feliciano versus Ryan Howard. So of course you had two dangerous Phillies lefties who were

matching up with the Mets very often in those days and were with the Phillies like the whole time that Feliciano was with the Mets. And Feliciano, in the course of his career, actually faced more righties than lefties. So he was not a strict specialist until later in his career, but he was extremely effective against lefties. And so they would deploy him often against Utley and Howard. And it is, in fact, very unusual. And Feliciano, I think he ended Utley's 35 game hitting streak in 2006. He was the one who struck him out in the game where that was snapped. So they were sort of nemeses. And I wonder what it was like for the two of them, knowing that they would face each other this many times and having that history and being prepared for it. I'm sure Utley could probably tell stories about facing Feliciano. And Utley faced some pitchers more often. You know, he faced Tim Hudson 90 times, for instance. There were guys who just pitched

more than Pedro Feliciano did. But I think everyone who faced him more often than Feliciano did, but I think everyone who faced him more often than Feliciano was a starting pitcher. And I guess Utley did pretty well in these matchups. I mean, he hit.222, but with a.333 on base and a.472 slug. So that is an.806 OPS. And, you know, generally Utley was better than that, obviously, but not tremendously better than that. So probably Utley got the best of it or did a little bit better than you would expect just based on their raw rates. But yeah, it is a record here. And right after that, you have Ray King, another contemporary lefty pitcher who faced Sean Casey 37 times out of his 1747. So that's 2.12% of his total. And then just looking down the list, you have Ichiro facing Justin Dukeshire and Johan Moncada facing Brad Keller and then Adam Dunn against Ray King. Then Brian McCann against Pedro Feliciano. So

Feliciano was facing Atlanta often, obviously, too. And Pujols versus Graveman, Calhoun versus Graveman, Votto versus Tyone. So that is the answer. And I will include the data on there. And I also, I got curious about just like, what is the most prolific batter pitcher matchup ever? Just, you know, who has faced each other the most times in baseball history? And I speculated that it might be Warren Spahn and Stan Musial, who both played in the NL at the same time and overlapped for a lot of years and played for forever. And that is the actual answer, at least. Oh, wow.

Yeah, on record, it is. Now, this is all going back to 1916, and there's no play-by-play data before then, and the play-by-play data is not complete for some years after that. So with the data that we have on record from RetroSheet prior to 2021, it is Musial versus Spawn 353 times they faced each other. And no one is even close to that. Pete Rose versus Phil Necro is at 266. I did speculate that if we had the complete play-by-play data going back even further, that maybe like Walter Johnson versus Ty Cobb would surpass them just because they played for so long and faced each other often. And we can't know for sure because we don't have play-by-play data for their whole careers, but Ryan was actually thinking along the same lines and he was thinking Johnson and Cobb also. And he started looking into this even before I emailed about him. And he came up with a method of finding like imputed batter pitcher matchup stats. So basically he knows how many times they played in the same game 138 times. And if you compare Johnson's batters faced in a typical start and Cobb's played appearances based on his lineup slot and all that.

You can kind of back your way into it. Right. Yeah, you can estimate it. And Ryan thinks that the estimate would be very accurate. This estimate he comes up with is 377 times that Cobb faced Johnson, which would surpass Musial and Spahn at 353. And he thinks that it's exact enough that he says it's like 377 plus or minus five matchups, maybe. is true then we can fairly safely say that johnson and cob probably are the the most prolific matchup or at least they are slightly more prolific than the most prolific that we have on record so that's kind of cool i think that you would no matter what you knew about how predictive that number of plate appearances would be like you know you're chase utley you know you you would you'd feel a way you would

end up not being able to talk yourself out of or into a different performance right you're like i'm gonna crash or i'm gonna whatever like you just it would not be possible for you to resist the temptation to be like i know how this is gonna go right right yeah actually i will say because i didn't specify this earlier i think i noted that that the numbers I was quoted were from the 30-team era, so 1998 on, and Feliciano is on top. But if you go back further, when you have no interleague play and maybe only 16 teams and teams were facing each other all the time, then you do have some matchups where one batter represented a higher percentage of a pitcher's career batter's face. So if you look at the all-time leaderboard, Utley Feliciano is actually only 23rd all-time or tied for 22nd, I guess, at 2.52%. The record also involves Stan Musial, and it kent peterson kent peterson the pitcher who was a

lefty as well and uh he was sort of a swing man too and not really a notable pitcher but i guess he was like the the lefty specialist that would be brought in to face the Cardinals. And Kent Peterson, he was mostly on the Reds and also a little bit at the end of his career on the Phillies. And so you had Musial, who's a lefty hitter, and you had Kent Peterson, who's a lefty pitcher. And that is the actual all-time record, which is 58 times they faced each other out of 1,885 career batters faced for Peterson. So that's 3.08%. All-time record which is 58 times they faced each other Out of 1885

Career batters faced for Peterson so that's 3.08% so A little more than 3% Of Kent Peterson's career batters faced Came against Musial which is a pretty tough assignment And he is also Number two on the list because The Cardinals had another

Hall of Fame hitter At the time who was a switch hitter, Red Shane Deanst. And Peterson Shane Deanst is the second most frequent matchup at 2.9%. So poor Kent Peterson was facing Hall of Famers on the Cardinals in 6% of his career batter space. That's rough. Yeah, that is rough. There are some other like Hal Wiltz or Wiltzy. He faced Lou Gehrig in 2.78% of his career batter's face and Babe Ruth in 2.78% of his career batter's face.

So he is fourth and fifth on that list. So that is an unenviable assignment as well. Hey, you're the murderer's row specialist and uh he pitched for the red socks and and mostly and was only in the majors for like four years and a big percentage of his career came against babe ruth and lou gehrig i guess no wonder his stats weren't that good and he didn't last that long but tough assignment for these guys so it's just like yeah your job is to get out utley and howard or Gehrig and Ruth or Musial and Shane Deans. Tough job.

Yeah. Although I imagine you feel very satisfied if you're able to rest to the occasion on that. You're like, I'm the guy they call in when they need to get it done. Yes. And Ryan did confirm that there is an era effect here where if you go by year and look at pitchers whose careers started in that year and then they ended up with 1,500 career batters faced and you look at just like the average percentage that any given batter pitcher matchup represents in their career, the average percentage has fallen it's about half of of what it was like back in the 20s or 30s or 40s so the median has not changed very much interestingly but the average has changed so it is it's harder to accumulate a higher percentage of your play appearances against a single opponent in this day and age but that makes sense all. So that is a small part of Pedro Feliciano's legacy. So thank you to Ryan and also to Dennis for the question.

So good ones as always. And that'll do it for today and also for this week, I suppose. And I hope everyone is watching Stove League because we will get to that. I don't know which episode we will start that next week. Wednesday. Let's do Wednesday. All right. So maybe our midweek episode next week. We will be discussing the first four episodes of Stove League, which again, check the show notes.

You will find links to multiple streaming services where you can get free trials and check it out. Or if you are a non-North American listener you can find It on international Netflix which Would be nice but again some People are already watching and enjoying And looking forward to talking about it with You all so get on that and thanks To everyone who signed up for Patreon this week we announced

Last time that we were adding a bunch Of new perks for supporters And that seems to have been received Very well we added a bunch of New perks for supporters, and that seems to have been received very well. We added a bunch of new Patreon supporters. We are doing monthly Patreon-exclusive off-topic AMA episodes just for Patreon people at a certain tier. to the Effectively Wild Discord group, which is populated with hundreds of people already busily discussing baseball. And we're doing personalized audio video messages upon requests and there are other perks and live streams and discount codes available.

So please do go check that out. And thanks to everyone who's done it already. And we're also offering the option of annual memberships to Patreon now at a discounted rate. So if you prefer that to the month-by-month, that is an option for you. And I noticed that in the Effectively Wild Discord group, there are now channels for each team. So the listeners in there can indicate which team they're a fan of, and then they can get access to that team's channel. And the very first post in any of the team channels

was in the Mariners channel. And it was on a scale of one to Dustin Ackley, how disappointing is this off season going to be? So that started things off on a very Mariners note. No, it's perfect. I'm so pleased. All right. It occurs to me that Sean Connery is not alive. One would think that if you were comparing your clients, if you were saying that he's the so-and-so of Major League Baseball,

I don't know. Maybe pick someone who's still alive. I guess. I don't know. I have a theory, though. I think we can give Scott a pass on this one because Sean Connery died like a little over a year ago. He died on October 31st, 2020. And I think that we just give everyone a pass for not knowing stuff about 2020. If it doesn't stick in your brain, like that's okay. Because we all are going to look back on that time

and realize how poor our memories were because we were living through a protracted anxiety attack. I think I'm going to give Boris a pass on that one because I don't know if he knows. Yeah. Actually, on my Facebook news feed recently, I saw someone announce last week maybe that Sean Connery had died. Then all the comments were didn't he die like a year ago yeah and and the person did not know that so yeah maybe boris just uh did not know yeah he was he was busy on october 31st doing something else coming up probably with some uh some quotes for the gm meetings Yes. All right. We will end there.

All right. I think I slightly misspoke about Feliciano earlier. I said something about him coming up as a starter. It is true that he made some starts in the minor leagues, as most future relievers did at some point. That was a recent stat blast. But by the time he finally made the majors, after bouncing around a few teams in the minors for years,

he was no longer really a starter. There was some conversation about making him a starter, and then they decided, eh, let's focus on what he does well. And I think Mets pitching coach Rick Peterson suggested dropping Feliciano's arm slot, so he was sort of a side armor, and that made him even tougher on lefties. And then he ran with that and had himself quite a career. So, RIP Pedro. By the way, Stan Musial's career line off of Warren Spahn, 353 plate appearances, he hit 318, 415, 566. That's a 981 OPS, which is actually slightly higher than Musial's career OPS. Maybe he was mostly facing Spahn in his prime years when his OPSs tended to be higher, but still, adjusted for the fact that Spahn was a Hall of Famer, I would say that Musial had his number. With that many times facing a single opponent, though, I would think advantage

Musial over a certain amount of time. I've actually seen an old study about that, that batters do tend to do a bit better against certain pitchers, not just within one game as they see them more and more times, but also maybe over the course of a career. If you've basically spent half a season's worth of plate appearances facing a single pitcher, as Musial did with Spahn, and Spahn was a guy who got great deception too, which would not work on Musial after a certain amount of time, I'd imagine. So that's getting to the point where batter-pitcher matchups, which are usually not very predictive, well, maybe after 350 play appearances they are. Of course, by that time, your career's over. Lastly, because we talked earlier in this episode about the idea of ranking

players and whether that ranking stat would come into play in arbitration, I should probably mention that we were speaking before the report at The Athletic from our guest from earlier this week, Evan Drellick, about the fact that apparently MLB's latest economic proposal to the Players Association includes the idea that in lieu of arbitration, pre-free agency players would be paid based on Fangraph's war. Did not see that coming. This is not going to happen for about a billion reasons, one of which is that this is tied to the proposal that free agency not be granted until players turn 29 and a half, which seems like a non-starter. But I think this is the first iteration of the proposal where one side actually proposed paying players based on some sort of war metric and having a predetermined

pool of money that gets carved up according to the stats, which is not unlike the idea that we talked to Jonathan Judge of Baseball Perspectives about on episode 1749 in September. And when we talked to him, we got into a lot of the potential pitfalls of that sort of system. So I guess it's a nice compliment for Fangraphs, but I don't expect that we'll be announcing salaries on Effectively Wild anytime soon. 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, as well as helping us

keep the podcast ad-free. Jacob Michaels, Peter Clemens, Nick Tabor, Colton Williams, and Forrest Fortescue. Thanks to all of you. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. Keep your questions and comments for me and Meg coming via email at podcast.pangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system if you are a supporter. There is an Effectively Wild subreddit at Effectively Wild.

There is an Effectively Wild Twitter account at EWPod. You can find us in all sorts of places. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. Start watching Stove League. Have a wonderful weekend. And we will be back to talk to you early next week. I get it all, my name, my name, my name This is where I land, this is where I land This is where I land, this is where I land I get it all, my name, my name, my name

Scott Green