Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1791: The Stories We Missed in 2021

Episode Date: December 31, 2021

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the retirement of Kyle Seager and the lockout implications of a recent report about player payrolls, then discuss an assortment of listener-nominated, team-centric topics that they had previously overlooked on the podcast in 2021. Audio intro: Spooky Tooth, “Kyle” Audio outro: Hockey Dad, “I Missed Out” Link to list of […]

I got so much more I have to say now Help me, Carl Help me, Carl Won't you stay with me and let me see you smile? Hello and welcome to episode 1791 of Effectively Wild, a Fanagraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of Fanagraphs and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm alright. Kyle Seeger, huh? Yeah! I'm not as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm all right. Kyle Seeger, huh? I did not Seeger that coming. I don't know that I've been a great influence on you.

No. I don't know that I do it as well as you do either. Yeah. How about that, huh? Yeah. Weird. Yeah. I guess he got to go out with his nice ovation and everything and a pretty decent season, which is what made it strange and surprising, unusual, right, that he decided to ride off into the sunset after being, what, at least an average major league player, right, all told. And setting career highs in some categories, home runs and RBI, and even if those aren't always the most telling categories, they usually matter a lot to players. And hitting 35 dingers, even in this era, is no joke.

I saw some stats going around about how I think what he's tied for the second most home runs in what will be a final MLB season with Dave Kingman behind only David Ortiz. So still a decent hitter, pretty good hitter, and at least by some metrics can still handle the glove. So surprising. He just turned 34 last month. Yeah. Craig Goldstein reminded me of the fact that he's younger than both of us. And I thought, that's not nice to say. That's not a nice thing to say. I do not have any special insight here, so I should make that clear. But I imagine that if you've made $100 million and you have young kids, like he and his wife have three kids and they're all elementary school aged, and you're at this crossroads

where you're definitely still employable. I imagine that Seager would have had his share of options once the lockout ends, but you're probably entering the phase of your career where you're looking at one to two year deals. And that involves a lot of moving around. And, you know, I would imagine that there would be teams that would sign him with the understanding that they might trade him at the deadline if he performs well and so i can i can imagine saying i have 100 million dollars i mean he probably doesn't have all of that anymore he probably has spent some of it you know but i have 100 million dollars he invested it maybe he has more right i have i have young kids who i now get to watch grow up in a more you way, a more everyday kind of way than I might otherwise,

and I'm good with that. I think it's a very underrated thing to be able to decide you're done with the game. The game tends to decide it is done with you. People don't often get to pick the moment when they write off. That was part of what made Ortiz's final season so remarkable right not only did he get the retirement tour but he had this great season like he was just a good year better I think than than Seegers was sort of across the board but like you know he had this great year and he got to pick the the note that he went out on and I think that when these guys are coming up you know they're like young bright things you know they're strong great boys

and they think they're going to live forever right because that's what you think when you're in your early 20s that you're like invincible and you're going to be strong and fluid and capable forever and you know then you roll over when you're 33 in bed and your neck hurts for like two weeks.

So we are humbled pretty quickly. And so to be able to decide I've done what I feel I need to and now I get to enjoy life with my family is I think a pretty incredible thing to be able to do. I would have enjoyed watching Seeger play more. He was definitely a favorite of mine in his era with Seattle. I tweeted this, but it's really hard to overstate how much worse it would have been to watch the Mariners for the last decade without Kyle Seeger. It would have been a lot worse. He was a star. I mean, maybe not in terms of name recognition,

but value-wise in that three- or four-year peak that he had. I mean, maybe not in terms of name recognition, but value-wise in that three- or four-year peak that he had. I mean, he was five, six-win player at least. He was legitimately really good for a while there. Yeah, even though he had the big power numbers this year, he had a 285 on base, so he's clearly

past the prime of Kyle Seeger, I think, but he still played almost every game and still could have helped someone. Maybe he wouldn't have liked the prime of Kyle Seeger, I think, but he still played almost every game and still could have helped someone. Maybe he wouldn't have liked the terms of the contract offers that he got. And it seemed like the relationship he had with Seattle and with that front office was pretty strange, right, for the past few years for various reasons. But I don't know that he could have or would have gone back there, but he would have been able to play somewhere if he had wanted to. Yeah. I'm going to enjoy retirement. I'm going to take up a few new hobbies. Like, it's strange for a baseball player. Like, we are so used to baseball players just sticking it out as long as they possibly can because it was a dream for a lot of them, not all of them.

And it's a high status and prestige job. And you make a lot of money. And you get a lot of attention. And you're sort of respected for what you do. But really, like in almost any other field. get a lot of attention and you're sort of respected for what you do, but really like in almost any other field. I mean, I personally would not retire if I were handed a hundred million dollars. I would still probably be doing a lot of what I am currently doing or something not too

different from that because I like what I do and I don't know that I would like doing nothing or not working or just kind of having constant leisure time, but a lot of people probably would. It's just, I guess, that the understanding is that if you're a baseball player, you're almost obligated to love your job. It's not just a paycheck, but it's a passion. And for most of them, it is probably because you had to be pretty passionate about it to get where you got, but not in every case. So I don't know whether Seeker is over baseball or whether he just has other things that are pulling him back. I mean, it's like Buster Posey, right? Who's coming off a really incredible season and he is calling it a

career too. And he has young kids and he had injury concerns and all those things. And at a certain point, you don't necessarily have to play until they send you off to the glue factory. Right. Like, you can just decide to go to the nice farm upstate. Yeah, I think it's so interesting, like, the metaphors that we use to describe this moment in a player's life.

And I don't mean that as a criticism of you. I think it's a thing that- He's not dead. He's not dead. He's not dead. Like he is arguably going to go live, you know, not a fuller life. I'm sure he thought his life was plenty full, but in terms of like his ability to engage with people who aren't baseball players, like a more full life, at least for long stretches of the year.

I don't know. It's just funny the way that we talk about it. Maybe he'll have a second act. Maybe he wants to be the best at something else. Maybe he'll become famous and successful in some other field. Who knows? Yeah, he could do that. He could just be keen to be the world's best dad.

He could want to hang out at what I imagine is a nice house in North Carolina. He could, I don't know. He might just- Can watch his brother be good at baseball. Right. Yeah. The Seegers as a family have done fairly well financially this off season. Yeah, they sure have. So, yeah. So, you know, I'm not super surprised that he did not find his way back to Seattle,

like you said, for, you know, the relationship seems strained and I understand them not being keen on a 34 year old at that price, even though I think he was useful and would have been useful to them. But he was a great player. It's clear from the response that he got from his teammates upon both his final game with Seattle and then the announcement of his retirement that he was a good clubhouse guy and someone who seemed to be really beloved by his teammates. I imagine that if you're a contending team with a young lineup, you surely would want Kyle Seeker in your clubhouse to help anchor the hot corner and also bring some guys along. Like you said, sometimes you get to decide when you're done. If I had $100 million, i'd still do baseball stuff i don't know that i'd be the managing editor of fangraphs like it's a lot of work you know and if i had like 100 million dollars i'd be like i'm gonna write about baseball when i feel like it

like i might yeah you know i might say that let someone else uh let someone else make sure all the prospect lists are linked right and all the blurbs are edited. But yeah, I think if you ask most 34-year-olds, hey, you have $100 million. Are you going to work anymore? They'd say, nope. I'm done now. Yeah. Well, congrats to Kyle Seeger on a successful career. Yeah.

Seeger, you were bound. All right. So there is one little bit of baseball news that came out last week that I overlooked, meant to mention last time when I was talking about how there had been no baseball news. Technically, I guess this is not news. It's just reports on something that had already happened. But there was an AP report about payrolls and about the stagnation or even decline in MLB payrolls. And I guess they ran the numbers just recently.

in MLB payrolls, and I guess they ran the numbers just recently, and so this came out on December 21st, that MLB payrolls dropped 4% in 2021 compared to the last full season, so that's 2019, and the total player payroll, $4.05 billion, was the lowest in a fully completed year since 2015. So part of this obviously is just pandemic and lower attendance and all of that and maybe decreased revenue. Although I have not seen the 2021 MLB revenue figure announced yet, probably sometime soon we'll see that. And then you'll be able to calculate a percentage

that is going to the players, at least of the revenue that is considered baseball revenue by the baseball owners. So partly it could be that revenue also declined slightly or stagnated in some way. But this began prior to the pandemic that the growth in payrolls had slowed or stopped or even reversed itself. I mean, this is the lowest since 2015. That was years before the pandemic. So

it's not just that. And I think this kind of encapsulates the lockout, right? Like if you needed one number to explain to people why there's a lockout or why there's a work stoppage or why the players and the owners are not on the same page, it would pretty much be this. Or if you were going to point to a single metric that showed why the players are more resolved to not just kind of agree to the status quo than they have been in the past, it's this. It's because the status quo is not the same and it is not constantly increasing as it was for decades. It seems to have actually taken a step back. And there are a lot of reasons for that. We've talked about them, the different spending patterns in free agency, the fact that more of

the production is concentrated earlier in players' careers when they are not making as much money, the changes in pitcher usage and how that has effect the way that pitchers are paid as a group, the fact that teams are more reluctant to hand out long contracts and big contracts to players over 30, etc. Like we've talked about all of this, but the numbers are pretty stark. And you can kind of understand, I think, why the players are holding the line more than they have been in the past, because the line has moved and not in their favor. Yeah, I mean, like, I know that we will never have a complete picture here because we don't have access to all of the team's books, although we do have some insight

into some of them based on the filings that the parent companies for the Blue Jays and the Braves have to do. But I know we're never going to have a complete picture, but you get a good sense of the general direction that this stuff is going, right? And I think that there probably isn't going to be a situation where the chase next year and the mariners get from their like brewery operation or whatever over there like i i think that that stuff is going to unless and perhaps even if the players submit to some kind of formal salary cap but you get a sense of the direction and so you say we can't touch that money but the stuff that is pure baseball we need to at least keep pace because there is so much money being generated by the sport. We are the ones that are primarily

responsible for that. And if we're going to, you know, have this feel like it is a productive exchange for both sides, this needs to get sorted sooner. And given what we know about how teams think about value and compensation i think a lot of it is just going to have to come down to getting guys paid earlier and more across the board so yeah it's a it's pretty telling i do like how we have these like moments they're often in the midst of negotiations when we are just reminded of how much money there is in the game total and it sometimes comes at like inconvenient moments for ownership, right? Remember during 2020 when they were saying

that they were going to lose all this money and then we got news of their new post-season deals and it was like billions of dollars. And it's like, right, this is a lucrative enterprise, right? It is a lucrative enterprise even when you sit on the franchise and just let it accrue value. Even if you don't sell, even if you don't sell even

if you don't take out loans against that value like this is good business for everyone there is enough money to be had here to like at least approach something that is fair so yeah it's a big business it's a much bigger business than it used to be it's also a much smaller business than a lot of other businesses and industries, probably even some that MLB owners are involved in where they made their money, where they continue to make most of their money. I mean, there are industries that might surprise you if you said, yeah, they break in more than 10 billion. Baseball is ultimately sort of small, but also big in a lot of respects too, and certainly compared to any individual player's earnings.

And so I think this is interesting because, you know, if you're someone who isn't that plugged into the labor debate and is just like, hey, I want baseball, so figure it out. I don't care how it happens. Even if you're thinking that way, I feel like there are reasons for fans to be more sympathetic to the player's perspective, not just because, hey, maybe their share of the pie has become a bit smaller, and so it seems fair to maybe make it a bit bigger again, but also I think some of the player's proposals as it pertains to competitive balance, let's say, maybe just lead to a better game, a more entertaining product for fans.

So even if all you cared about is I just want the baseball on the field to be played and to be the most entertaining product it can be, then I think you might have some sympathy for some of the players' proposals more so than the owners' proposals. But I also think that it's kind of a strange situation because you have one side that clearly has had the upper hand recently. And maybe that is a fault of the players negotiating strategy in recent CBA talks. We talked to Evan Jellick about that, but clearly the owners have gotten more of what they want lately. And so in order to preserve some semblance of labor peace and to have baseball, probably, unless the players just cave at a certain point and acquiesce and say, okay, we're not willing to

strike over this, for instance, then the owners might have to give something back, right? And I don't think they want to. And I don't think the type of people who become owners of major sports franchises are wired to give something back, even if it's back to where it was a few years ago, even if it will make no appreciable difference to their lives or their businesses, really. They want to win every deal, right? They want to get the most on every single percentage point they can. Maybe that's why they got to where they are. I mean, other than the ones who just inherited massive wealth, which is a whole lot of them. But one side that has just been kind of winning lately might have to say, okay, like we won a lot lately.

Now we will, if not let you win a little, we will at least like step off the pedal a little bit here. We'll lift our feet off your necks i mean that's a bit overblown and exaggerated but you know they might have to just tighten their grip a little bit and i don't know if they will be willing to do that like just in the interest of really the game's health as a whole and kind of everyone's because they will both lose to some extent if this actually leads to a longer work stoppage that interferes with the season. But you could argue that the players were in that position at the beginning of free agency when they basically got like, okay, everyone's a free agent.

And then they just sort of agreed to the arbitration system and the free agent system and service time and all of that so as not to have just chaos and everyone is a free agent constantly all the time, which you could argue would have served the players in some ways. And they agreed to, okay, you have service time and pre-ARP and ARP and free agency, et cetera. And now it seems like it's kind of incumbent on the owners to maybe say, okay, we've had it really good lately in order to have things continue and for everyone to profit. Like we might have to just give back a little bit here or there, maybe not everything. I don't know that the players can recoup everything that they have lost or failed to gain over

the past decade or more in a single round of bargaining, but it will require concessions. And I guess the talks will be restarting soon. Thus far, it doesn't seem as if the owners are all that willing to make concessions. But hopefully that is just taking a hard line stance in negotiations. Yeah, I try to remember that this is sort of how these sorts of negotiations proceed generally. sorts of negotiations proceed generally. And it isn't, you know, there are going to be industry specific aspects of it when it comes to baseball that aren't present in other union negotiations. But, you know, this is an adversarial system. It is designed to be that way. Each side is, you know, supposed to advocate vociferously for the interests that they are defending. So

I can appreciate that part of it and not try to read you know overly much into the tea leaves that the fact that it has gone badly so far means that it will go badly in perpetuity that we will lose the season that the players will have to accept something that doesn't work for them but i also am conscious of the fact that like you said they don't have they like don't have a lot to give right they don't't have much that they can really relinquish because they've already conceded so much. And, you know, expanded playoffs are valuable, but they're not valuable to the point that you're going to get,

you know, earlier free agency probably. Like there needs to be push and pull. And while it is adversarial, I think that there needs to be an acknowledgement on both sides. So like we want to have baseball, and that's going to require some work from both of us. So I don't know. I'm trying not to feel down about it because I can't do anything about it just yet. Yeah. All right. So what we wanted to do today is an exercise that we have done a few times in the past, not every year, but some years. But we take one of the last episodes of the year, or sometimes it's been two episodes, and we try to cover some stories we missed.

And typically we have gone team by team and tried to find some overlooked story for every single team in baseball. And we talk a lot on this podcast. We cover most of the stories, I think, just because we make a lot of podcasts. So many podcasts. Too many? Who could say? There are only so many stories out there. So I think we do a pretty decent job of getting to most of it.

But inevitably, we overlook some things that are fun or interesting or strange or whatever. So I think people who are plugged into a specific team as opposed to following the sport on a national level like we are, they're always aware of things that it's hard for people who are taking the 30,000-foot view to know. And so I put out the call to listeners on Facebook and on Discord and basically asked them, hey, what did we not talk about this year from your team? And we're not going to do every team today. I got submissions for about half the teams, so that'll have to do. Maybe we did a really good job of talking about stories this year and there just wasn't that much we missed. Or maybe people don't want to look back at 2021. I can't imagine why that would be. Or maybe people are just not reading our Facebook

group during the week between Christmas and New Year's. I don't know what it is, but I've got some good ones here that I think we missed. So I'll just go in alphabetical order in terms of team name. And I'll start with the Angels. And it seems impossible that we could have overlooked anything with the Angels. They may have been our most talked about team this year, certainly most talked about relative to their actual results and success. I will take some amount of the blame for the... Some? Some amount of the blame. I won't specify what amount, but yeah.

So there were a couple nominations for Angel Stories we missed. There was a kind of a strange one where the Angels switched TV broadcasters mid-season. They got rid of Darren Sutton, who had just joined their broadcast crew in, I think it was maybe June or July, sort of suddenly and abruptly without much of an explanation. And I think he was sort of blindsided by it. And I, as someone who was listening and watching a lot of Angels games, was surprised by it. But I don't know that that matters to all that many people. And I don't think the broadcast took a huge hit after the fact. I didn't mind his commentary, but didn't mind what happened after he left either. It was just kind of unusual. But

one thing that someone pointed out is that for the second full season in a row, the Angels had only one pitcher who threw a 100 innings or more. And I remember talking about this in 2019 when it happened. I didn't talk about it this year, although we did, I think, touch on that one pitcher a time or two this year. He came up, as I recall, but did not really mention the fact that he was the Lone pitcher on that staff to throw 100 innings it was only Otani obviously no One threw 100 innings in 2020

But to go two Full straight seasons Without more than one pitcher On your staff throwing 100 innings in 2019 it was Trevor Cahill And there have been only Three teams in history If you exclude 2020 and 19th century teams that had shorter schedules. Only three teams in history have done this, have had only one pitcher on their staff with 100 or more innings.

It's the 2019 Angels, the 2021 Angels, and the 2012 Rockies, who I think, was that the year that they had the strict innings limits and a six-man rotation or something? Generally, it's just hard for the Rockies to have the pitching and to have pitchers throw a lot of innings, at least up until very recently. So Jeff Francis did it for them that year. But three teams in history. One's in Coors, and the others are both angels in the past couple of full seasons that they've had. That's not great.

I'm kind of surprised that the Rangers didn't make that list because they have just been snakebit doesn't begin to describe some of the pitching woes that they have had from an injury perspective. So if any team was going to make that list i'm kind of surprised that texas managed to to duck it but yeah they um it's hard because pitchers just get hurt all the time like no one should do it we joke about this all the time like pitching is bad for you the fact that anyone does it is kind of wild and i have sympathy for the fact that you can be trying very earnestly to assemble a rotation that is going to buoy mike trout and otani into the postseason and just have bad luck from from underperformance or injury but it is sort of it's

really shocking like i think that maybe instead of revenue sharing we should allow the angels to have an exception to any of the salary tax thresholds. And also they should get to do an expansion draft for pitching because the sport's better if we get to see Trout and Otani in October. And so I think that in the interest of the collective, the other 29 teams need to band together to give them just some arms that don't fall off, really. The Rangers had six pitchers who managed triple-digit innings totals this year. Who knew?

But I think this kind of thing, like obviously innings totals are getting lower across the board. And you're dividing the total innings across a greater number of pitchers. So it's less strange that this happened in 2021 than in any other era of baseball history. But it's still hard to do. And it's hard to win if you are doing that, which is kind of why like the Angels and their moves this offseason, you know, you can't count on Noah Sindergaard to snap the streak next year. Like, hopefully he will, but he would not be at the top of the list of like, hey, I just want to get someone I can count on to throw 100 innings next year. It would not be Noah Sinderkart, right?

So I think that's kind of why I was thinking, hey, they should probably go get like some dependable, as dependable as any pitcher can actually be in this day and age. Just get someone you can pencil in as your second 100 plus inning pitcher. It would be nice you know who they could really have used and i don't know where they were in the waiver order relative to these things but you know who they could have really used wade miley yeah sure you know like oh he's fine it's fine he could have been a help to them i don't know where they were relative to chicago uh in the waiver order but yeah it's's like they need some high-end innings too, right? It's not just that they need innings. They need some of them to be good, but they also need some of them to just exist in a more

comfortable way, a way that doesn't involve the AAA team quite so much because that didn't go well. Cycling through those guys seemed to be not not the best and like i hope reed demers is better next year but do we know he will be we do not all right next team up is the blue jays and the nomination here is in one of my favorite genres of stories that maybe we miss on the podcast sometimes it's just like bromances between particular players on a team yeah that's the kind of thing that you're hyper aware of if you're watching that team every day, but otherwise not necessarily. So this year, Hyunjin Ryu and Alec Manoa became besties. Maybe kind of an unlikely combo. They're from different places.

They're different ages. You've got the rookie. You've got the veteran. But they kind of connected. And apparently it started like their meet cute happened on Instagram. his Instagram a video kind of close up to Niagara Falls. And Manoa left a comment and just said, hey, man, don't fall in. And that was the beginning of a beautiful friendship because Manoa apparently had kind of kept his distance from the veterans. And he didn't want to, you know, be the presumptuous rookie who rubs people the wrong way.

And he knew that he had to like earn his way in and everything. And this kind of led to a connection because Ryu responded and said, what are you doing? And Minowa sent him a picture and he was just sitting in his hotel room watching the Yankees game. And Ryu was like, are you by yourself? And Minowa said yes. and Ryu invited him over to his room and then they ordered food and they just hung out and

after that they were just kind of this odd couple right Ryu 34 Minowa 23 and Minowa is like very he's a big personality I think he's like he seems to be very energetic and confident and you can kind of always see him on the top step of the dugout. And Ryu seems to be very even-keeled and not super expressive in the way that Minowa is.

But behind the scenes, apparently, they get along great, and they are both like foodies. And so they go out and eat together and they get steak or they get korean barbecue and ryu has introduced minoa to a lot of his favorite dishes and like given him fashion advice and uh taught him about seafood pancakes which minoa really loves and they're big guys when they go out to eat together you know 6'6, 260, 6'3, 255 presumably they can both pack it away and evidently they enjoy doing that

together so there have been like MLB.com stories about this Korean language news articles about this but they're the best of friends and Manoa has kind of been taken under the wing of ryu and ryu has helped him learn about pitching but also just been a friend and a buddy to him so your nice standard veteran mentorship here which is always heartwarming i think that's so nice i

had no idea that they were pals we all need we all need work friends you know it's really important to your daily experience of your job if you have a work pal and what better way to come together than than with food one would think so that's really nice i like it when yeah i like those ones where you're like these people are best friends but then do you ever have this experience bent then i start to worry about like trades or departures. Oh, yeah, that's true. Like what will they do if their friend leaves? Who will be their friend?

And like both of those guys, I don't have any reason to think that they are, you know, struggle to make friends in any, you know, meaningful way. So I'm sure that they would make other friends. But as you age, it's harder to meet new people because you have to tell them so much about yourself. It's just exhausting. Like, oh, you don't know any of my stories. I got to tell them all again. So it's nice when you make a friend

and then you stop having to do the intros and you can just focus on seafood pancakes. Right. Well, Ryu should be around for a couple more seasons, presumably, so they can enjoy the time they have together. And yeah, I mean, Manoa outpitched Ryu this year. I guess Manoa was really good. So I don't know how much he benefited from the pitching advice, but that's what you want when you sign the veteran to lead your staff, right? I mean, you want him to pitch well and be durable, which Ryu generally

has for Toronto, but you also want him to take the rookies under his wing. And I guess he's doing that too. And I'm sure it can be tough to break down those barriers. Like often the pitchers hang out with pitchers and hitters hang out with hitters, but also you might have some rookie veteran divides and language barriers. And if they can come together over Instagram and Korean barbecue, then that's beautiful. All right. Speaking of beautiful relationships, we talked a lot about Atlanta this year.

They won the World Series. So not a whole lot of overlooked stories on that team probably. But here's one that is adjacent to that team that is even more beautiful than Ryu and Minowa. It is the relationship between Adam Duvall's son Stone and the Braves mascot Blooper. And this is true love. I am skeptical of this. I'm willing to hear more,

but that is a creepy freaking mascot. It's creepy. It's weird. All right. Well, I'll send you some videos which you can take a quick look at as I speak here. But first of all, didn't know. Stone Duval. I mean, that's pretty good. But Stone Duval, he's a toddler. He looks like he's two or so.

And I guess that is peak mascot appreciation age. And he has basically imprinted on Blooper, as far as I can tell. He is like a duckling who is just sort of following him around. So I sent you a few videos videos and I will link to these. But basically, like there are some of him just hanging out, sitting side by side with Blooper. There are videos of like the Braves celebrating after one of their playoff wins and Duvall is holding his son. And, you know, the media is on the field. The players are on the field. You'd think he'd be excited about, who knows, Freddie Freeman or something. No, like he only has eyes for Blooper. He is staring at Blooper from far away. And you can see him getting more and more excited about Blooper as Blooper comes up to him and Stone Duvall's face just like crinkles into the greatest smile you have ever seen.

He is overjoyed to be acknowledged by Blooper. And then there's another video. And this looks like it was maybe before the Braves World Series parade where they paraded very rapidly, which was another story. I don't know if we talked about that this year, but the Braves, they really made quick work of at least part of that parade. Yeah, they sure did. The part where they were actually in the city of Atlanta, right? They tried to flee from there as much as they did when they changed ballparks, but they were like tearing through the city. But as they were like on the carpet going up to the team bus, like Duval is there with Stone and Stone doesn't want to hold his dad's hand. He wants to hold Blooper's hand and they toddle to the bus together.

So this is great. I don't know what Stone Duval's language skills are like and how much he speaks or whether he and Blooper have more of like a silent communication. Or I don't know if when the relationship gets to this level, the mascot breaks the vow of silence and speaks to Stone. Maybe that would ruin the mystique and the relationship because maybe he doesn't know that there is a person inside Blooper. Spoilers, but Blooper is like a person with a suit on i don't know if stone knows that or not but he loves them either way and it's just a pure and radiant love so i have i have several questions here i mean i will acknowledge that this is adorable despite the fact that blooper is still creepy like i don't understand. They were like, what if you take the fanatic but you make it

a weird skin suit color? Try to see him as Stone Season. See him through Stone's eyes. I'm too cynical. Here's a question that I have. Is it the same person in the mascot every time he's interacting with this kid? Do the

mascot folk have to inform one another like here is Adam Duvall's son Stone he loves us it's very sweet we have to maintain this relationship because it's adorable and also if you don't it will make a tiny child yeah I hope so if they were rotating I hope no one was out of the loop because right if there were one day where the blooper of that day did not know about the pre-existing relationship, oh, and he just gave Stone the cold shoulder. I mean, I guess it's a mascot's job generally to interact with toddlers. So hopefully you would wave at him or whatever regardless of this longstanding relationship here, but still. regardless of this long-standing relationship here, but still.

Well, I would imagine that players' kids are around, to varying degrees, certainly, but their kids are around the club on a fairly regular basis. And so I would think that the mascot performers? What is the mascot? Inhabitants. Inhabitants sounds so haunted. What are you doing inhabitants makes them just like the haunted objects that they are which maybe that's that's bad too uh actors uh cast members

maybe it's like disney mascot cast members but i would imagine that if that is your gig that you come to to know the players families because yes they they interact with them regularly and your default mode as you said if you're a mascot is probably to be like i will be nice to this child i'm kind of impressed with this kid because you said that two is like prime mascot time and i think that for a percentage of the the child population that that is true but i think that for many two-year-olds they look at these giant things and they're like this is terrifying get away from yeah i mean so could be a clown situation right yeah people used to love clowns and now they don't anymore

maybe it's because they are also weirdly flashback anyway you're worried about Manoa and Ryu. I'm worried about what happens if Adam Duvall leaves Atlanta. I mean, I'm so happy that Adam Duvall was traded to the Braves now, not just because he got to win a World Series and his season turned around and he really helped them, but just because

Stone got to meet Blooper. I know that they have tendered a contract to Adam Duvall. He is under team control for 2022. And I just hope that either he stays there long term, or I guess Stone at some point will age out of his infatuation with Blooper. I hope that happens before Adam Duvall departs, not after. Maybe it will be the motivating factor for his departure. Perhaps he will try to instigate a trade because his son will say, I am in love with Lucille, the seal, the giant seal.

Also, why, it doesn't matter. Yeah, or Duval could be envious of the fact that Blooper is now more of a father figure to Stone than Adam actually is. I don't know. It seems like it's a great relationship. It seems like it's bringing joy at least to one party, hopefully both ways. Yeah. I think, yeah.

If you're stuck inside the mascot outfit, it's not the best assignment. But I think if you could bring joy to toddlers the way that Blooper has brought joy to Stone, it's got to be a perk. Yeah. I mean, you're sitting there and you're like, this one being does not view me as a terrifying haunted object, so it makes the whole day worthwhile. All right, the Cardinals.

Now, this might be something we talked about in some way, but I don't think we really noted the average age of the rebuilt Cardinals rotation in the second half of the season the rotation that helped carry them to the playoffs and to their 17 game winning streak was so old so this was gonna make me feel old by saying these words I mean most of them are even older than we are so that's how old they are mean, you had Adam Wainwright fronting this rotation, a 40-year-old Adam Wainwright, right? And then you had Jay Happ, who was added midseason. He's 38.

John Lester was added midseason, 37. Wade LeBlanc, 36. And then the youngin of this group was kwang young kim who was 32 and he was he was the young gun so you had an entirely like mid-30s i mean the average age of this rotation is what like 36 or 37 or so i mean older than me yeah exactly, exactly. So this is unusual, I think. And they weren't great, I guess. They were good enough, clearly. The Cardinals did well during this time. Now, in the second half of the season, Cardinals starters had the lowest strikeout rate of any team in the majors. They had a 6.5 strikeout per nine during that time,

but they made it work one way or another. And they had the fifth lowest ERA and like a middle of the pack war. So they were using their defense. We can put it that way, right? But not flamethrowers, not missing a ton of bats, but just a ancient rotation that was actually good for the cardinals

and really paid off for them so good for them always nice to see old by baseball standards players succeed old by baseball player i mean like those are those are people who um they're not old by normal human standards but they are they're not children either but yeah that's it's that's not so bad it's not so bad 36.6 average age all right sticking with the nl central the cubs we talked about some cubs stories and some surprising seasons that they had and i don't remember whether we mentioned this maybe we alluded to it briefly but But in August, there was a Romine-Romine brother battery. Andrew Romine pitched to Austin Romine, which does not happen a whole lot. There had not been a pair of brothers pitching and catching for each other in the same game since Norm and Larry Sherryerry in 1962 so it had been a while and this is kind of

cool now of course andrew romine is not normally a pitcher this was a position player pitcher situation yeah and we're kind of over position player pitchers it's overexposed at this point but this was a nice byproduct of that, I think. So you had the 35-year-old Andrew Romine, an infielder, normally pitching to his younger brother, who is actually a catcher. And the inning didn't go great, I don't think. I think there were a couple hits and a home run, but there was a strikeout. Jackie Bradley Jr. struck out looking. He did not have a great year offensively, and this was part of his not great year striking out with a position

player pitching. But this is kind of cool. It had been the first time that one had pitched to the other since they were in high school and they played together and they haven't had a whole lot of experience on the same team at the same time. And it was something that kind of came together surprisingly. The younger Romine, Austin, had signed with the Cubs as a backup catcher heading into the season. And then the elder Romine was a later addition. He joined on a minor league contract. And then he came up, I think, after an injury and after some trade deadline moves after the Cubs traded all of their players. So this was a nice byproduct of that, that they had space for Andrew Romine.

And this happened. So that's kind of cool. Not something that had been seen or done for decades. Brothers. Now the number of brothers in baseball is reduced. That's a bummer. Two brothers with Kyle Seeger's retirement. We've talked about this in the context, I think,

of the Seeger brothers in the past, and certainly within the context of the family relationship between, who was it, Manny Machado and Yonder Alonzo? Is that right? Am I getting those right and i still think it remains to be seen if it's if everyone is on board with the idea of being on the same team as a sibling or or close relation but i think it would be it would be nice you automatically have a work friend hopefully not all siblings get along which is fine that's a

thing that happens but you would think that you'd maybe Maybe get along maybe A lot of the time it becomes a story when a brother Opposes a brother in baseball Like a brother pitches to a brother And I'm sure that's fun too But then there's like a rivalry And there's like bragging rights are at stake

And one guy's gonna get to Make fun of the other guy forever If he hits a home run or strikes him out. Here, it's just a nice cooperative relationship. They're on the same side. One is throwing to the other just like they probably did as kids in the backyard. They're helping each other out. No one has to have some sort of sibling rivalry at stake here.

So it's nice and rare. Yeah, that is nice. Okay, the Giants. We talked about the Giants quite a bit this year. I don't think we overlooked a whole lot. I know we talked about Lamont Wade quite a bit. I did not mention, and I don't think I was aware of Lamont Wade's nickname, Late Night, which is just a fantastic nickname. Late Night Lamont Wade. I mean, i knew that he was incredibly clutch this year and his splits like in you know runners on and bases empty or late and close or whatever metric you want to use he was incredibly clutch speaking of uh kyle seager he was also he had a huge split

this season right but lamont wade was just so known for getting the big hit late that his nickname became Late Night, which just, I mean, that flows. That sounds good. Rolls off the tongue. Late Night Lamont. I love it. I do wonder whether he has to keep up the clutchness in order to retain the nickname. Like if he's not as clutch in the future, does he get to be Late Night just by virtue

of the one great successful clutch season? Like, I don't know like if he stops coming up big in the clutch and you're still calling him late night maybe that's the sort of thing where like you only get it for a while but i hope he keeps it because i love that nickname but that's not even the the main thing because i know we talked about lamont wade this year and the purpose of this is to talk about things that we did not mention on the podcast. And I don't think we talked about Kurt Casale, who is the backup catcher on the Giants and seemingly did a great job.

And all the attention, and understandably so, was going to Buster Posey. But the Giants seemed to do better when Kurt Casale was catching than when Posey is catching, which is pretty impressive. I mean, smallish sample, but the Giants were 42-13 in Casali's starts. That's like a 123-win pace or something like that. So they were worse when Buster Posey was starting, even though Buster Posey was a far far better hitter and of course also has a really

good defensive reputation but Casali as the backup just had great reviews as someone who worked with pitchers he actually made a little bit of history too in April he caught five straight shutouts which is also not something that happens often. He made five consecutive starts in which he caught a shutout, and he was the first to do that since Francisco Cervelli in 2015, but only the fifth catcher in the modern era the record at six straight. Casali was the first to do it with five different starting pitchers, which maybe says more about the Giants and their staff than it does about Kirk Casali. But maybe it says something about Kirk Casali, too. Maybe he was part of that success. He ended with a 2.72 catcher's ERA, which was the best in the big leagues. And that is a suspect stat, obviously, and it that is a suspect stat obviously and it has to do with ballpark and it has to do with the pitchers but I'm sure that he played a part in that obviously

and Kirk Casale now in a more prominent role with the retirement of Buster Posey I don't know what the playing time split between Casale and Joey Bart will be next year, but suddenly Kirk Casali thrust into the spotlight. And I don't know if he'll handle that as well as he did in his sporadic appearances last year, but of all the many overlooked giants who stopped being overlooked this year because they were all great, Kirk Casali probably didn't get enough press. Well because i i doubt he really got any yeah i'm sure he got very little press but yeah there's great value maybe not war value but i'm sure you're appreciated by your teammates if you're like a reliable backup you know it's like having a good sub you're like wow this is fantastic all right the guardians some people nominated Cal Quantrill and the success he had, especially in the second half of the season.

Quite a year. Yeah, it really was. I did want to shout him out. He seems to be the latest Cleveland pitcher development success. They have a track record of that. A lot of their recent developmental successes were hurt for at least part of the season, but Quantrill became the latest and kind of had a breakout year. And of course, he is a former first round pick, eighth overall pick, and a lot was expected of him. And he hadn't been bad with the Padres necessarily, but hadn't really put it all together.

And this year, seemingly, he did with the Guardians. So that was one thing worth mentioning. We also got some requests to just mention Jose Ramirez, which like I'm sure we talked about him or like mentioned his name at some point, but I can't remember a specific conversation that we had about him. He's like the universally acknowledged most underrated player in baseball reigning right now, right? Like it used to be Anthony Rendon and then, you know, people started talking about Anthony Rendon. And Ramirez, I mean, he's probably a few years into people saying, oh, he's so underrated. But he still really is because he is so good. He's so good. He had a six-win season again. Yeah, a six-win season this year. He had a six-win season again. Yeah, a six-win season this year.

He had a six-win season. Yeah, and that's not new for him. No. He's done that multiple times before. He has never been bad except for that really weird time in, what was it, the first half of 2019 or whatever when he just stopped hitting out of nowhere. or whatever, when he just like stopped hitting out of nowhere. And I remember having a podcast conversation about that and about like whether he would get back to being what he was. And subsequently he did,

and he ended up being an above average player that year. And then in 2020, in the shortened season, he was still like a three to four win player in a 60 game season. He was great. And this year he was great again. I mean, 137 WRC plus great defense, great base running. Like he does everything really well. He hits for power. He walks, he makes a lot of contact. He's just Cleveland, I guess, is the main thing. It's like partly just that he is, I don't even want to say like jack of all trades, master of none, because he's like kind of like he's mastered everything too.

He's not bad at anything, but he doesn't lead the league in much. Like he doesn't have a whole lot of black ink. He's just so well-rounded that he's good at everything. And so he ends up getting a little less attention. And know he he was sixth place in mvp voting i mean he was an all-star it's not like no one knows who he is but he's just he's absolutely been one of the very best players in baseball over the past you know six since 2016 or so like if i look on a war leaderboard which i will try to do right now i'm sure he is very very close to the top over that span we should just take a moment to appreciate his profoundly strange 2019 because it is profoundly strange here are his wrc plus splits

by month for 2019 march and april 49 may 94, 94. June, 63. July, 158. August, 174. September, October, 322. And it's just, was he hurt? Did we ever learn whether or not he was hurt? I feel like the story at the time was like

he had made some adjustment to avoid the shift. The shift was in his head. And then he just figured, like, I don't need to do this because i was really good as i was and then went back to doing what he had been doing and it was fine but yeah that was weird and like that's where my mind goes like that's what i think of when i think of jose ramirez is like i remember that time when he was like really terrible for a few months but like, I should think of like all the many months when he was awesome. And he still is awesome.

Right. I should say that in September, October of that year, he played in three games. He had 10 played appearances. So the 322 is impressive, but like teeny tiny from a sample perspective. But yeah, he's phenomenal. He is so great. He's so fun to watch. He's phenomenal.

He is so great. He's so fun to watch. And I don't have a good explanation apart from the Cleveland thing for why he is not more notable. I do feel like he gets his shine when they are in the playoffs, and that has been something of a struggle of late, and so perhaps that is part of the issue. But, yeah, he's fantastic. He is so good.

Also, Cal Quantrill is like a credit to himself first and then you know cleveland's oh i just can say guardians oh yeah oh man you know it's like there was a good reason to not do it and it's it's better to do that well and just let people be a little bored by the repetition but it sure is nice to have an alternative now. So anyway, I don't know that the Padres pitching dev is very good all the time. Yeah. It's good some of the time, but they seem to have trouble finishing guys and helping them adjust. But anyway, that's neither here nor there.

So Kel Quantrill, he was good. Jose Ramirez, very good. Six-win season. I think that we should just maybe set a calendar reminder once a month ben to talk about jose ramirez because i i think that the most underrated most underappreciated discourse is often kind of silly because it's like how do you measure something like that like underrated to whom but we do still even though we are painfully aware of not talking about jose ramirez enough not talk about Jose Ramirez enough.

So we should set a calendar reminder so that once a month we check in and say, what's Jose up to? And then we can go, wow. And then we won't have to do this at the end of the year again. I mean, we should still do this exercise because it's fun, but we don't have to center it around him when it comes to Cleveland. You can go back to 2016 or 2017. It's true either way. And only Mike Trout and Mookie Betts have amassed more war than Jose Ramirez, at least among position players. I mean, he's that good. Yeah. And he's only 29 and he's that good. So I guess if he gets traded, then people will

talk about Jose Ramirez probably. And long-suffering Cleveland fans probably hoping that he doesn't because they probably want to continue to enjoy him and he is signed for next year and he has a team option for 2023 but seems like he very well may be the next player moved away from the Guardians but hopefully it's to somewhere where he gets the attention that he has deserved all this time yeah all right the mariners chris flexin did we talk about chris flexin maybe but we should acknowledge him again i guess because he was probably the mariners most valuable pitcher this year and that kind of came out of nowhere right they signed him out of the kbo i think his base salary was like 1.2 or 1.4 million.

He ended up making a little bit more than that with incentives, but he was great. I mean, he was really good. It seemed like he changed some stuff maybe partly while he was in Korea, but even after that, I mean, his pitch mix is like dramatically different from what it was when he was with the Mets. So, I mean, he throws a lot fewer four-seamers now. He throws a lot of cutters. That cutter just kind of came out of nowhere. And he also throws like a 12-6 curveball that he perfected and throws a lot more than he used to. And that really worked for him.

And I guess also he got in better shape. His nickname is Big Baby, right? And I don't know that that applies as well anymore because I think he is a lot less big than he used to be. But I guess there have been a few big babies in sports. It's sort of a strange professional athlete nickname. But you have Glenn Davis and you have a couple boxers, I think, who are big babies. But Chris Flexen is or was a big baby. But anyway, they signed him, I think, just based on video and stats from the KBO.

And obviously, even they didn't expect him to pay off the way that he did. But he was great. Was the big baby thing in reference to his weight? I don't know. Is that what the big baby is? Maybe like baby face and oh he's big i i was gonna say if it was about his weight like that's not very nice shouldn't make people he's six three like that's tall yeah it's not like overwhelmingly tall though yeah i think it's a baby face thing

baby face i mean he is still kind of baby faced, I guess. I guess I was like worried that we were he is pretty baby faced. Actually, I'm looking at his roster photo and he looks quite young. I mean, he out of big baby, I guess, relative to your cohort, you could still be babyish. But at some point people probably won't think he looks like a big baby. He looks less like a big baby than he did when he was with the Mets. I mean, I say this with a great deal of affection, but the Mariners' biggest baby just retired because Conor was like a baby. But he was scruffed and bearded for a lot of the season so it made him look like less of a baby he only looks like a baby when he doesn't have a hat on is all really he's just kind of looks like a big baby so anyhow chris flexon yeah he was great and you know maybe we didn't talk about him enough because we were so

busy talking about how weird the rest of the mariners were that we were just like, I don't know. But he's, you know, he's on the team with them again next year. And I think they have a club option for 2023. So if he remains good, like that will go down as quite the quite the signing for them. I mean, I think it already counts as quite a good signing given his his 2021. But if he can sustain that success that would be a real you know then that rotation kind of shapes up in a real nice way you got some you got some guys yeah so i know we talked about the paul seawald coming out of nowhere but maybe we gave a short

shrift to chris flex and i guess his peripherals weren't super impressive he's kind of a control guy but it worked out really well this year. All right. The Mets. We had some people request that we talk about the Jeff McNeil story, which I know we talked about initially, like when the first story about Jeff McNeil and Francisco Lindor getting in a fight in the dugout tunnel and the initial cover story was that they were arguing about what mammal they had just seen which was obviously a fake story and we talked about that at the time i don't know that we ever followed up on the real explanation which subsequently came out that mcneil just didn't really pay attention to positioning and wasn't standing where he was supposed to be standing and also just didn't

seem to take it seriously so he was kind of flippant about it and like, hey, I'll stand where I want to stand, basically. So shifting, still something that leads to conflict apparently in 2021. Anyway, ultimately they moved him to the outfield and it sounds like they may very well trade him. And he probably will not be playing second base for the New York Mets anymore. So that's how that story resolved. We did kind of touch on that and maybe just didn't follow up on it, but someone nominated Aaron Loop. We did not talk about Aaron Loop that I really recall this year, but Aaron Loop had the lowest ERA on the Mets, not Jacob

DeGrom. In fact, Aaron Loop had the lowest ERA in Major League Baseball among pitchers with at least 50 innings pitched. He had a.95 ERA. And if we go back to the beginning of 2019, and he only pitched like 30 more innings over the preceding two seasons. But if we go back to the beginning of 2019, he has the lowest ERA in baseball. Minimum, I don't know, 80 innings, let's say. He has a 1.38 era over that time he subsequently has signed with the angels where he will not pitch 100 innings for them but he might

pitch some decent innings anyway 0.95 is just kind of one of those like fluky reliever seasons to a great extent like he had a 257 babbip he had a 2.7 percent home run per fly ball rate that is partly city field maybe but also like his xfip was 3.37 which is swell and very much in line with his career rates so i don't know whether aaron loop was actually that much better than he had been before this year or whether he was just fairly solid all along and everything broke right for him this year but still even in this day and age when we don't pay that much attention to era especially over 56 and two-thirds innings 0.95 not bad upstaging Jacob deGrom on his own staff wow I'm just like grappling with this player page

because I didn't have occasion to really think about him at all. No. Yeah. I mean, what a year. What a weird year. Yeah. I mean, a good year to be clear, but a weird year. I hope he's good for LA.

It just would be nice if they had, as we said, some good pitchers who could pitch again, as you said, not 100 innings. But if he throws 56 innings like the ones he threw last year for New York, I think they'll take it. All right. Nationals, we got some nominations for Ryan Zimmerman, who kind of got the Kyle Seeger treatment in his last home game of the year. He got the standing ovation. He might not be done. He has flirted with retirement in the past and has decided to come back and play. And he has not retired. I think he might still be interested in playing. But he is in the phase of his career where it's like nationals are bust and he's Mr. National.

And it's nice to be Mr. Insert name of franchise And he is maybe not as well known to people outside of that city and that fan base But he's been a good player for quite a while And it's nice that he has stayed there for so long and endeared himself to fans But the one I really wanted to talk about here Speaking of endearing yourself to fans Josh Harrison, who was on the Nationals, did not finish the season with the Nationals But while he was with the Nationals, he endeared himself to Padres fans by heckling back on a trip that the Nationals took to San Diego in July.

He was playing left field and he's a multi-position guy, doesn't play a ton of outfield, I think, but he was in left field that day and he was just given back everything he got in a good natured way and like really participating in the jeering. And so there's a Washington Post article here, which I will link to on the show page, but here's a fan who's quoted saying in the first inning on Monday, the first thing I said to him was, Josh, I didn't realize you were so short. And Harrison turns around with a big smile on his face and goes, well, now you know. I knew then this was going to be a fun four-game series. So throughout the series, the fans were just giving it to Josh Harrison, and he was giving it back. And he had a good series. I mean, he went five for 16 in that series. He started all four games in

left field. And because he was at the same position and because it was a four-game series, he kind of built a rapport with the Padres fans out there. He was just good at engaging with them. He said, it's good banter. Nothing, you know, that's too harsh. Good talk. They're cheering for their team, but I'm talking trash back. I don't really get to get out there too often. So when they talk trash, the way my family grew up, if you can dish it, you've got to be able to take it. I'm just giving them a little taste

of their own medicine. And I think I got them a little bit. And this fan says there was a guy there Wednesday who kind of looked like Harrison in the stands. They were just going at it. Harrison turned around and said, dude, you look like your breath stinks. I know people like you. You look like your breath stinks. He's like you You look like your breath stinks He's honestly been really funny I don't even know What does it mean to look like your breath stinks I don't know

He couldn't smell the breath from that far away But it's a creative jeer I guess And then there's another Nationals fan here Who's talking about it He says Everyone's had a couple drinks at this time And they start shouting Harrison you suck!

Instead of ignoring it, he turns around and cups his hand to his ear and starts mouthing, I can't hear you! He's smiling and laughing and pointing at every single person who's shouting at him. Occasionally, he'd turn around and yell,

I'll see you outside after the game. The fan figured the banter would last an inning or two, but Harrison was just getting started. After every pitch for all three games I was at, he was turning around and dancing, laughing, joking. I've never seen anything like it. At one point, Manny Machado was ahead in the count 3-0, and I was like, aren't you supposed to be focused now?

And here's the best part. This fan used Harrison's fan graphs page for material. So he says, I told him I was a big fan of his in detroit and that i put up a better war than him in 2019 because he had a negative war that season harrison responded but where were you you were on your couch and the fan says i asked him how many step stools he has around his house and if he grew out his beard so he didn't get mistaken for kevin. And then Harrison laughed a lot and he just kind of charmed everyone. And it's nice to like, there are pictures of him like,

you know, doing the like crying gesture, rubbing his hands at fans and then thumbs down, not thumbs downing in a like Mets way, thumbs downing their own fans, but opposing fans who were taunting him. So it seems like he was having a great time with it. Everyone else was having a great time with it everyone else was having a great time with it i don't want to say

that like more players should do that because probably they should like pay attention to their jobs and everything and not everyone could do that and not be distracted so i don't know if it affected his play on the field or not but he had a good series and he had a fun series that's delightful i also like the idea of one of the fans like thinking like i'm gonna get him and then getting a you know a nice witty retort back and being like oh no i made a mistake yeah right well he had a negative two defensive runs saved in his 122 innings in left field this year. So maybe he was paying too much attention to the taunters or maybe not. Maybe it's unrelated, but he made the best of the situation.

All right. For the Phillies, people asked us to talk about Ranger Suarez. And I think we talked about him at some point. But not at length. And I don't know that I have a whole lot to say about ranger suarez but he did have a notable year and he did it in multiple ways really and uh i think he what he started out the season in the bullpen right and he was great he was dominant there and then they made him a starter mid-season And so people were kind of critical about that.

And, you know, why mess with success? And is he going to hold up in the rotation? And how will the bullpen be? You know, Philly's bullpen, not the strongest unit, historically speaking. So you finally get a good reliever. Now you're moving into the rotation. I mean, they needed rotation help too. But he continued to pitch really well in the rotation

and maybe he's just a starter now. So that's exciting, I guess. He was 26, I think, and he'd had some brief play here and there with the Phillies before. He was a reliever for them more regularly in 2019 and pitched well

in that role, but he ended up with a 1.36 ERA in 106 innings so the angels could have used him he would have been a second guy but he pitched great in both roles yeah i remember consternation about him moving out of the bullpen because that unit has been so shaky for philly the last two years and he's good uh or was good there but yeah he just took that sinker and and went to work and it has worked out well for him so hopefully he sustains that it would be cool he had a Bob Gibson ERA as a reliever 1.12 and then it went all the way up to 1.51 in his 12 starts so yeah not too not too shabby. Not too shabby.

All right. Just a few more here. The Pirates, O'Neal Cruz. I know that we talked about him on our season preview pod, but I don't know that we actually talked about him when he arrived. We didn't do a meet a major leaguer about O'Neal Cruz. I kind of figured everyone has met him at some point on his minor league journey. He's obviously been a top

prospect for a while, but the fact that he finally arrived and was called up for the last couple games of the season in October, and he got some hits, and he hit a home run on a ball that was well below the strike zone, certainly well below his strike zone, and he also hit another ball 118 miles per hour. He flashed some skills, and also he was tall, as miles per hour. Like he flashed some skills. And also he was tall, as tall as advertised. He's six foot seven. He made some history. He is the tallest person ever to start a game at shortstop in the major leagues. And there's long been a question of whether he would stay there.

And he has stayed there, at least up to the point that he made the majors. So at least the left side of the Pirates infield should be pretty entertaining. I don't know about the rest of the team, but there's that at least. He's definitely someone. Does Pittsburgh play Houston in interleague play next year by any chance? I don't know.

Because he's definitely one where you want like the him and El Tuve shot together. Oh, yeah. Like you just need those two guys next to each other so you can go whoa because he is um he's he's a big guy he's a big big tall guy um so yeah i don't know that we talked about him i i guess we did talk about him in the season preview pod unfortunately because i think his legal situation was still unresolved at that time. So it does feel a little weird to talk about him. I am struck, though, that he was called up when he was. It's just interesting that Pittsburgh was like,

yeah, we'll just give him some major league run when they could have not done that. Where's Pittsburgh going? Nowhere yet. Yeah, well, it's nice that fans got to see him a little. He'd only had like a handful of games in triple a prior to that and he'd hit well there and obviously he hit well in double a before he was promoted but yeah hopefully we'll see much more o'neill cruz and hopefully he will stick at shortstop because i enjoy outliers oh yeah we love a good you're too tall and or

small to do that thing, and then you do it really well. We love that. That's one of our favorite things. All right. The twins. Someone asked that we talk about Mitch Garver and just the fact that he was good again. Sure. It's noteworthy, I guess, but more interesting to me is one that I was not aware of, and this is about former twins, but apparently Joe Maurer plays pickup hockey games at Justin Morneau's backyard ice rink. And the three MLB players in this video are Morneau, Maurer, and Corey Kosky. So three former twins whose careers were ended or shortened by concussions. So I worry about them.

I hope that this is not like full contact body checking hockey. I hope that they're taking it easy, all of those guys, because you don't want them to have additional head injuries here. But it's like a mix of like former twins whose careers were ended by concussions and NHL players who you can pick out because they are missing many teeth in the video. But it looks like a lot of fun. teeth in the video but it looks like a lot of fun and obviously like Morneau is Canadian and so you know grew up liking and enjoying hockey and Maurer is famously from Minnesota and you know they're just getting together to do something fun Koski is Canadian too so it looks like a good time and I like the idea that all of these former guys are getting together and playing. Although I'd be intimidated to compete in a pickup game with like players who played that sport at the highest level.

But I guess when you're an athlete, like you need the competitive juices to flow one way or another. Do they then play pickup baseball when it's nice out? Yeah, it'd be only fair to turn the tables and the hockey guys have to play baseball with them. Yeah, and then we could get, you know, one more data point in the is baseball the hardest sport controversy that we all like to talk about so much. I'd like to make clear that I think all the sports are hard, at least for me. Yeah, one of my great regrets is that I never played hockey, really. I played a lot of floor hockey and I was good at floor hockey and I skated and was fine at skating, but I never combined the two. And there's like a part of me that always wishes that I had or I could.

There's no part of me that like wanted to play baseball at a high level, but I'd like to be good at hockey. So maybe I can just join Justin Morneau's pickup game. Maybe that's the place where it will happen for me. Yeah. But see, Ben, you're a dad now. So you have to remain intact because you're a dad. Yeah. Well, these guys must all be dads too. So they're risking it. I don't have any concussion history. Yeah. But Ben, I say this in the gentlest way possible but they are former professional athletes and you are ben yeah and you know i i think you know probably hold your own well against civilians but against former pros who knows all bets are off at that point yes you make a good point this might be a rude introduction to my it's not an auspicious start to my i've

always wanted to play hockey. No, never mind. All right. Last one, White Sox, another AL Central team. Talked a lot about the White Sox, and I know we mentioned this, but Luis Roberts' post-injury breakout was really something special. I mean, from the day he came back from his injury in August, he was a top 10 position player by war. He had a 173 WRC plus over that span. He hit 350, 389, 622 with a 375 BABIP, but you would probably expect him to have a pretty high BABIP. And I guess the most encouraging part of this is that he really dramatically cut down on the whiffs and the k's he had a 17.1 percent strikeout rate post injury which is really impressive especially given that he was like more of a 30 or more guy prior to that and there's some reason to believe in this

i know luke cooper wrote about this forraphs at the beginning of this month. And apparently while he was rehabbing, he was not just rehabbing, but he was tweaking his stance and his approach and got a bit more open as the season went on. And so maybe it's partly that. There's still cause for concern about his approach. Like he still didn't walk and he still swung at a lot of pitches and still chased a lot of pitches like up there with the league leaders. But he made more contact. And sometimes it can be a bad thing if you're chasing and making contact because you're making contact with pitches that you can't really do much damage on. But he was doing a lot of damage. So the fact that he made these adjustments i think

speaks well of him and like clearly he survived his uh injury physically intact and i don't know i guess like tearing your hip labrum or your hip flexor or whatever it was is not necessarily a great way to improve for most players i would not recommend tearing your hip flexor because it will help you cut down on your strikeouts, but in his case, it seemed to. We advocate for staying physically intact if you were able to do that because your margin for error is significantly

better, but yeah, it was quite the tear and I think the timing of it, I don't know. What were we worried about with Chicago that we weren't talking about that quite as much? I mean, I guess they had so many injuries to the lineup at various points throughout the season that perhaps it just got lost in the shuffle but his rebound was really something yep i'm looking forward to seeing what he can do in a full healthy season hopefully and what the white socks can do as a team should be fun yeah but he already had just the great speed

and the defense and if he could have a somewhat more successful approach or refined approach, then that would be big for him. Like he could be one of the very best players in baseball. So stay tuned. All right. So that's all I got. We talked about half the teams today. So we have snubbed about half the teams in our podcast about snubbing certain stories.

So double snub, I guess. You can blame the listeners who didn't supply us with great stories we missed. No, we will take full responsibility. But feel free to write in if we miss something else. I don't know. We won't have another chance before the end of the year to talk about those things, probably. But this is always a good exercise because even though we talk a lot and read a lot

and are generally aware of a lot of things, there are also some things that escape our notice or that maybe we just don't find time to talk about that we should, like Jose Ramirez. Yeah, like Jose Ramirez. Set a calendar reminder, Ben.

All right, that will do it for today. Thanks, as always, for listening. We will have one more episode up before the end of the week and the end of the year. Next time, we will talk about the final four episodes of Stove League, among other topics. 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 or moderate or large monthly amount or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks while also helping us stay

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