Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1826: Last Call for Free Agency

Episode Date: March 22, 2022

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a Reddit description of the podcast, the pleasures of watching spring training games, and the possibly excessive coffee consumption of White Sox DH Gavin Sheets, before discussing the last burst of big free-agent signings, including Carlos Correa’s shocking contract with the Twins, Trevor Story to the Red Sox, […]

🎵 That I miss you, that I miss you so Not easy to pretend it My heart will let you go So I'll see you in the winter snow I'll see you in the winter snow Hello and welcome to episode 1826 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I'm Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg.

Hello. I was browsing baseball Reddit the other day, as one does, and I saw one of many threads about the best baseball podcast. It seems like someone starts a new one of those threads every few days instead of searching and finding the dozen others that have been started recently. But always gratified to see Effectively Wild somewhere high on the list of suggestions. And I wanted to bring to your attention the top comment on this thread from user PMMeBurgerPix, who says, Who says, effectively wild, if you, parentheses, like myself, love unapologetic nerdiness and ridiculously specific analysis of both exciting and dull baseball minutia.

Wow. I think that does it, capturing the ethos of the show. Unapologetic nerdiness and ridiculously specific analysis of both exciting and dull baseball minutia. Yeah, I feel like we got pegged pretty well there. Yep, that's us. So let's do some of that. Okay, deal. We have a lot of transactions to talk about. Did you watch any baseball over the weekend?

Because I watched a little bit. I have actually started my MLB TV subscription now that there is MLB on TV. And I won't pretend to be a big spring training watcher. I was just like, I watch for a day or two, just, hey, cool, baseball's back. And then I'm reminded that it's spring training. And I hardly know who half these people are. And all the good players leave early. And there are no stakes. And I basically tune out until opening day. But I do enjoy that first day or two. So I did watch some

baseball and naturally I've started with the Angels and got to see Shohei Otani and Mike Trout back to back in the lineup in action. So it was nice. It was healing, I think, even more so than in a typical spring, given all we went through to get to that point. I've had a fair amount of spring ball on. I don't know that any of it was amazingly notable to me. I enjoyed watching Vlad hit a big home run, and I enjoyed watching O'Neal Cruz hit a big home run on a ball that was two inches off the ground. That was fun.

I've seen a fair amount of Mariners and dodgers and padres i continue to find myself at times stymied by what is available on mlb tv because of course they're not all on there but i i had some stuff on and and it got to assume its rightful place in my life ben which is that on saturday you know i had free time for the first time in a little while. And of course, I didn't know what to do with myself. So I was like, you know, putzing around the house as one does. And I had baseball on in the background. And I couldn't tell you anything that happened in that game, really. But it was on and it felt nice. It was the right sounds were back in my life. So it's been good. Exactly. Yeah. And you're in Arizona, so you will actually get to see some baseball in person at some

point. But I'm just watching from afar. But still, it was nice to have that little soundtrack back just for a little while. And one other little thing I wanted to bring to your attention before we talk about Carlos Correa and Trevor's story at all. We talk about Carlos Greya and Trevor's story at all. So there is a story at MLB.com about Gavin Sheets, who debuted for the White Sox last year and may be in line for a bigger role this year. And it was about how he handled DH. The idea of the DH penalty and how you may need to actually acclimate to that role and figure out how to be good if you're sitting on the bench or maybe taking some swings between plate appearances. So Gavin Sheets described how he adjusted to the role.

He says, I had to get used to it in the beginning. I was getting too involved in breaking down my swing after every at-bat. I was getting too involved in breaking down my swing after every at-bat. But then once I realized that coffee was doing the trick for me during the game, it was back and forth between the coffee room and the cage, getting ready to go. That was the formula that really worked for me. Some people thought I was crazy, but four cups of coffee a night, I was definitely staying engaged and bouncing around. In the beginning, I was really thinking about it too much because I never had DH that much. I was using iPads, breaking down at bats, going into the cage, trying to change things.

So it says he went with staying loose and trying to keep his body loose, but was also just draining cups of coffee, which I don't know if that's really compatible with staying loose, at least mentally speaking. Yeah, I was going to say it's compatible with certain parts of your body staying loose. Yeah, right. The kind that you have blogged about in the past, potentially.

So keep an eye on Gavin Sheets. Clean sheets, perhaps not in his future. But he continued. He said, if I was swinging it well and feeling good, I would get about two, three, four cups every other inning. What? I was rolling through it guys now make jokes i have to get my coffee in the morning it was a way to move around walk around just stay loose

stay involved in the game but at the same time just not thinking too much about it that's not getting too ingrained i was having fun with it so yeah in one part of the quote he says four cups of coffee a night which is already a lot that's's a lot. But baseball players stay up late and he's young, so fine. But then he says two, three, four cups every other inning. Now, we know how many innings there are in a baseball game.

Suddenly, every other inning, I mean, we're multiplying by four or five here. So are we talking two times four, three times four, four times four? Are we getting up to like 15 cups of coffee here? I hope not. I hope that this was actually talking about the cumulative consumption as opposed to like a rate basis.

Either way, kind of concerning. Yeah, that feels like I'm going to just argue that that might be too much. Yeah. So I would say you should drink less coffee than that. And I'm drinking a cup of coffee as we are recording this podcast. This is not an anti-coffee take, but I simply would submit to you, Ben, that that is, you know, it's like bad for your tongue. It's bad for your tummy. you, Ben, that that is, you know, it's like bad for your tongue. It's bad for your tummy. It's certainly bad for being able to sleep. Although I know that people, you know, have different

tolerances for stimulants. So perhaps that's less of an issue for him. But I also, yeah, I just feel like you'd be in the bathroom the whole night. Like you'd just be, you'd be loose. Yeah, that would be a problem. I mean, if you have to come to the plate and you are paying a visit to the bathroom at that time, that could be an be an issue but yeah this is something that we have heard before about other players like there was the notorious anecdote i think reported by lindsey adler about tommy canely who said that he was drinking up to five red bulls a day yeah for five or six years plus two coffees which i I think led to Emma Batchelory's confession that her habit in college was to brew coffee with Red Bull instead of water.

So maybe we should have her on to talk about Gavin Sheets. But this is something that baseball players do because, well, they're not allowed to take harder drugs. They're not supposed to. It's weird how we decide what is a performance enhancer. Sure is, isn't it? I mean, maybe this crosses over to the point where it's no longer enhancing your performance. But is there actually a difference in alertness between, like, greenies and having four cups of coffee every other inning? I don't know. I don't know.

The adverse health effects actually are all that different, but this is what athletes do, right? To hype themselves up and be hyper competitive. You'd think that like being a major league baseball player would kind of get you up for the game as it is, but no, not necessarily. You might have to ratchet up the adrenaline even higher. First of all, I just want to take a moment and I'm allowed to say this because Emma is one of my dear friends. But I don't think that the confession that she brewed coffee with Red Bull and College is an unforced error on the scale of, say, Archie Bradley admitting to pooping himself in a Major League game. Those are,

you know, they're certainly more toward one side of the spectrum than the other, but they are still quite far apart from one another. But yeah, Emma, we're just never going to forget. It's like that time someone misspelled something in a group text. It's just going to be true forever. The other thing that I would say is that yes, it is very odd what we decide is and is not sort of an acceptable stimulant. And again, like, I guess that the idea behind this is that one does not need to consume greenies in excess to have a stimulating effect that might outstrip coffee consumption. But I feel like a team doctor should talk to him about this and just, you know, it's just going to be a murder on your gut and on your teeth. Very depending on the coffee might be very acidic. So also I struggle to believe that you would remain sufficiently hydrated,

you know, like you're, it's got a dehydrating effect and famously, you know, we all have to be as hydrated as possible. We're supposed to tip the scales and be more than 70% water. So, I mean, I don't think we're actually supposed to, but you wouldn't know that from the way that fitness discourse has progressed as time has gone on. So I think, you know, sub in some water, perhaps, you know, if you don't want to drink water, have some like fruit you know that tends to have some hydrating

characteristics yeah although if he's hydrating to offset the dehydrating effects of the coffee then that means even more bathroom he's gonna be in the bathroom even more yeah i would like i don't think i'd be able to see i i think i would just be i would just yeah wow wow yeah and did anyone say hey you sure do seem to be drinking a lot of coffee I think the problem is maybe it's not a problem from the team's perspective it could be from his perspective is that it seemed to work or at least he hit really well when he was DHing I did not look to see whether he improved as the season went on, but he hit 310, 395, 690 when he was a DH. In about, I guess, half of his plate appearances or so, he hit way better as a DH than he had in other positions. He had a 158 TOPS plus as a DH to bring back that beloved stat. So as long as it seems to be working for him, I wonder whether the team will actually say, hey, Gavin, in the interest of your long term health, perhaps dial back a bit on the coffee. So there's a little moral hazard there. long-term are probably survivable certainly and you know but human bodies are different and they

respond to things differently and i don't want to assume that my experience with that kind of coffee that coffee in that quantity i guess i should say is um is necessarily going to be the same as his but like as someone who has worked in finance and also gone to grad school and produced a couple of top 100s at this point, I can tell you that you do get to a point where it's you not only have diminishing returns, but are perhaps doing greater harm to yourself than you are deriving benefits. So just keep an eye on it, I think, is the real solution here. Yeah, I don't drink coffee, which always shocks people because of my unusual sleep schedule. But coffee scares me. I'm like afraid to get hooked on coffee because I feel like it could be dangerous for me in kind of a Gavin Sheets way. So instead, I just drink tea all day, which I'm currently doing, but I don't actually feel any effects from it really, even if there are some little low-grade effects. Yeah, and some people, like I said, their bodies react to stimulants in a specific way, and it takes a meaningful quantity, or they show some amount of resistance,

might be the wrong word medically, but people react to this stuff differently, and perhaps it's the ritual of it. Is he just enjoying, because I assume there's a pot of coffee on in the clubhouse, or is he doing pour over? Is part of what is enjoyable to him about this ritual of preparing? Probably not once you're getting to the volumes he's describing, but he might not have a great handle on what about the activity is satisfying to him. Like maybe it's the ritual. And if it is, then he could perhaps substitute something that won't burn a hole through his stomach and or esophagus, which is like the acidity. My goodness.

Anyway, we had like a bunch of signings, but we're just spending time on coffee. So here we are. There's some ridiculously specific analysis. I don't know whether that was exciting or dull. Baseball minutiae is exciting to me and to us. I think excitement is in the eye of the beholder and the listener. So yeah, I could have used some coffee probably after midnight on Friday when news broke that the twins signed Carl's Correa.

It was well after midnight Eastern time where i was at that point and because i was on sort of an upside down sleep schedule i woke up or i stayed up rather and blogged about it so twins fans had the pleasure of waking up to a ben lindbergh blog on saturday morning and the much greater pleasure of having carlos correa on their. So this is probably the most surprising development of the offseason. We've talked about some pretty surprising ones, whether it's Chris Bryant going to the Rockies or Freddie Freeman leaving Atlanta. But I don't know if we can top Carlos Correa going to the Twins on these terms. So three-year, $105.3 million deal with opt-outs after each of the first two seasons.

So this is, of course, immensely out of character for the twins to sign the best available top-ranked free agent. would sign not for a 10-year deal, not for a Corey Seager or Francisco Lindor or Fernando Tatis Jr. type $300 million plus deal, but for a short-term high average annual value contract. This never would have been something that I had envisioned coming into this offseason. And we can talk about how that happened, but it's obviously a huge upgrade for Minnesota. I mean, Twins fans were maybe allowing themselves to hope for Trevor Story after the Josh Donaldson trade, which we talked about, seemed to clear some money

and was a prelude to something happening. But I don't know that many Twins fans even allowed themselves to raise their hopes that high oh yeah wow carlos correa minnesota twin minnesota twin a minnesota twin i think i mean we should we should go through this from a couple of different perspectives i mean the sort of most straightforward and perhaps least interesting part of this is the fit for minnesota because it's just like obviously good. Like this is obviously good for the twins.

They get to have Carlos Correa. They get to have Carlos Correa in a position of great need, one that makes some of their other moves this offseason make a bunch more sense, right? We had said that we wouldn't really grade them until we had seen the completion of their offseason. And you're right. We didn't even think to think of Carlos Correa being a twin. That seemed silly.

He won't be a twin. They don't spend money like that. And so to put him in a lineup that also features Byron Buxton and Miguel Ceno and Luis Arise and has some intriguing younger players who are still trying to find their feet. He can't pitch, and that would be the only thing that would make this a better signing for them if he was also just Shohei Otani. That's who they actually need, but it's fine.

Imagine if Shohei Otani played shortstop. Anyway, we've already done one long divert digression we don't need to entertain another but this was an area of great need they won't necessarily enjoy his services past this year indeed if he plays like we think he will like the incentives are there for him to opt out either next year when the market will feature i guess trey turner and i'm forgetting another shortstop who comes free next year. Xander Bogarts, if he opts out. If he opts out, we'll get to him in a second too.

His situation just got more complicated. So he might opt out after this year and still, I think, arguably be the best option amongst those three. And the youngest still. And the youngest still, yeah. Because he's only 27 now. Right, right. Crazy. Or he might wait another year and just be the best,

certainly the best shortstop and maybe the best position player on that free agent market. So he has some options, but this is great for Minnesota. So we can move on from that. Minnesota fans are sitting here going, everyone always says mean things about us. Everyone said that this offseason was weird. Meg, why won't you spend some more time enjoying this on our behalf? And I'll say, like, having Buxton and Correa, who were both, you know, first rounders in the same draft class, right,

as teammates in this lineup, tremendously exciting. Number one and two. Exactly. Tremendously exciting on the part of the twins and I'm jazzed for you all who get to enjoy him. So there's that. Then there's the part of

this that I find to be the most fascinating and we always want to acknowledge when we're discussing free agent signings that we don't know all the ins and outs of every free agent discussion. The TikTok can be kind of weird. What motivates the player might be a little bit different

than what we understand it to be. We don't know if other teams were given an opportunity to counter once this was put before him on Minnesota's part, but sure is weird that he's not a Yankee if this is the contract he's getting. And, and, and, sorry, going to interrupt you, that the Yankees cleared the salary. That's the thing. That's the thing. Yeah. If I were a Yankees fan, that would probably infuriate

me most. And if I were a Twins fan, I don't know that that's the best part of this, but that's got to make it extra sweet. Not that it makes up for the Yankees just completely owning the Twins in every way over the past almost 20 years. I mean, we know about the 18-game consecutive playoff losing streak for the Twins, and we know that most of those 18-13, I think, were to the Yankees. And the dominance, just going back to 2003, I think the Twins have gone 38-100 against the Yankees in the regular season and postseason combined. It's been pretty bad. That's a period during which the Twins have been better than 500 against the rest of the

league combined. So it makes no sense. And the fact that the Twins were able to leverage the Yankees' deeper pockets to clear some money that then enabled them to sign Carlos Correa and to now have the left side of the infield that yankees fans wanted right i mean they have geo rochelle and carlos correa playing in minnesota now who saw that coming so yeah i think getting yankees fans goats in that way you can't say that they like outbid the yankees or or that they beat the yankees at their own game because the yankees seemingly were not playing that game for whatever reason they just never entered the carlos correa outbid the Yankees or that they beat the Yankees at their own game because the Yankees seemingly

were not playing that game for whatever reason. They just never entered the Carlos Correa sweepstakes. And whether that's because of some lingering sign-stealing bitterness or the fact that he dissed Derek Jeter's defense or something, I don't know what it is, or the fact that they just feel like they're better or cheaper or more quote unquote sustainable or whatever below the luxury tax threshold with the solutions that they got. Because they, like the Twins, they remade their infield and they have a new third baseman and a new shortstop and a new catcher, etc. And a new first baseman, or at least they kept the first baseman they acquired last year. First baseman, or at least they kept the first baseman they acquired last year. And once the dust settled, it's like they spent almost as much on the players they did get as least, they could have kept Urshela and Luke Voigt and signed Correa for like 47 million or something. Right. Basically the same.

Now, that's assuming that Correa would have signed exactly the same deal with the Yankees, which is a big assumption, obviously. I don't know whether he would have. Obviously, I don't know whether he would have, but even so, they're spinning so many plates and it's not like they have bad players, but the obvious solutions were just right there and ultimately look at a lot of teams and say, you didn't want Carlos Correa for three years and $105.3 million? Because I think what amazes me, I mean, this is, and I hate to invoke Trevor Bauer for any reason at this point, but this is kind of a Bauer-esque contract structure, the contract that he signed with the Dodgers last year, except that it's not even front-loaded. It's just evenly distributed. So he's in line to make $35.1 million per season, which is a record for an infielder and is the highest for a position player other than Mike

Trout. But it's barely higher than many others of players who signed much longer-term deals. higher than many others of players who signed much longer term deals. I mean, that's the thing that shocks me. It's like if he had signed a three-year deal and it was like 40 or 45 million or something per year, then I could say, okay, sure. Teams paid a premium for the lack of the long-term commitment and risk. And he chose to go with the shorter term calculus and maybe that priced some teams out of the market. But he's basically, I mean, what he's making per year is almost indistinguishable from like what Lindor or Tatis or Anthony Rendon or many others are making. And they were on much longer term deals.

So that's the thing that surprises me is, I mean, yeah, he got the opt outs and everything, but he didn't really even get that much of a premium on the average annual value, given that he's a player who obviously could have commanded a 10 year contract. I mean, there were reports that the Tigers offered him a big one, like 10 years and 275 or something with various incentives and perks. So those kinds of structures were out there for him. And the fact that the twins just did not really have to sweeten the offer that much to get him to forego that really shocked me. Yeah, I find it very, very strange, you know, the fact that, and you're right to say that, like, who knows if he would have gotten, I mean, we know he didn't get the same offer from New York, but even if he had, if he would have found that sufficient, if he would have looked at an offer like this from Houston and said, like, after all we've been through, like, that's what you're offering me. So we don't know that piece of it, but there were other teams,

other teams that are, you know, both contenders and in need of shortstop help, if not forever, then at least for the next year while they you know in theory season prospects who are meant to assume that mantle that he was not an obvious and more aggressively targeted player for those squads it's just bizarre so i mean i'm happy that twins fans get to sort of reap the rewards of this and it's not as if we can look at this deal from korea's perspective and be like oh no that's terrible like like i, he's going to get to retest the market if he wants to. Maybe next year, maybe the year after he's making $35 million a year, like he's, he's gonna be fine. And his next deal, I imagine will be extremely lucrative,

regardless of which of those seasons he signs it after. But it's just it is i think the most surprising signing of the entire offseason and you know i think it does appreciably move the playoff odds for minnesota i still think that like whether or not they make it to october is going to hinge on the rotation and what they're able to do on the pitching side of things and how good that bullpen ends up being and you know there's still work to be done here but you, this does make them meaningfully better right away. And so it's great for them, but it is bizarre that there weren't other teams that were like, yeah, like that sounds, that sounds good. Like we are, you know, we are committed to Anthony Volpe as the long-term solution. We think that he's going to be the guy in New York, but he needs

another year. So why don't we just do this like in some ways this contract structure is perfect for houston and for new york and that's not where he ended up so great yeah and i've seen people kind of like gloating like oh enjoy him for one year twins fans and then he'll be gone i mean if that's how it works out like that is that is fine for the twins. I mean, that's probably the only way they could have gotten them. And I mean, you get Carlos Correa without even having to commit to the next decade. I mean, what a bargain that is. And then they get to evaluate Royce Lewis for another year, and maybe he'll be ready by then. And you mentioned the lineup. I believe every regular starter in their batting order now projects to be at least average with the bat, which is a distinction that the Dodgers and I believe the Blue Jays can also claim the twins do not have the arms that those two teams do.

So that is the big concern. But yeah, if that's the way it works out and Carlos Correa turns out to be a rental, a pillow contract type guy, that is perfectly fine because who would have ever thought that you could get Carlos Correa on those terms. So, yeah, it is odd that the Astros didn't make more of an effort to keep him. They had made an offer earlier in the offseason, and there were some reports that they had planned to make another one, but evidently they never did. And as you said, the Astros maybe could have offered him the same deal and he would have walked away from it. It's kind of like the Braves with Freeman.

Maybe he ultimately didn't end up getting more from the Dodgers, but there's just not so much baggage and history there where you expect a premium. And you probably should command a bit of a premium from a team where you have that existing relationship and maybe you can sell more tickets, etc. So he might not have gone for this kind of thing. And I do see why the Astros, like, you know, they let Garrett Cole leave. They let George Springer leave. They've been fine. They've continued to win. They won another pennant. They lost George Springer and they replaced him with basically no-name platoon centerfielders who actually outproduced George Springer last year because Springer was hurt. And they ended up with one of the more productive centerfield positions overall. And they probably feel like, hey, we have Jeremy Pena, our top prospect, who's 24 and is also supposed to be a very good defender and slugged about 600 at AAA

last year. So yeah, it seems like he could probably step into that position and there's more risk and he doesn't have the immediate upside that Correa gives you, but he probably won't be a huge hole at that position or anything. So given their competition in that division, they're still certainly the favorites even without Correa. So I get it. But you definitely crack the door a bit wider for the Mariners, for the Angels. And, you know, you make yourself more vulnerable long term. I guess it's just Altuve and Bregman and Gurriel now who are left in that lineup from the sign stealing team from the 2017 title winners.

So those players have continued to spread out around the league. And for the most part, everyone is happy when they sign with their team because they're good players and you get over those things pretty quickly. But yeah, it is really weird. And I wonder whether Correa was just a victim, quote unquote victim. It's hard to pity the man. He's making a good deal of money and will make much more in the future. But I wonder whether it's just a product of this offseason and the weird lockout interruption. And obviously, there were a lot of other good shortstops and middle infield options available. And so when you had Seager sign and Semien sign, and then Baez signed with the Tigers after Korea turned down their initial

offer. And then, of course, you had Story still out there at the time. I mean, there were many other options. So maybe that was part of it. And maybe he misread the market slightly and some other teams went with cheaper options and then the lockout hit. And then suddenly you have a few weeks left until opening day and maybe you're getting antsy. And he switched agencies in January. And we don't know exactly why that was and whether he switched because he was frustrated with how his free agency was going or what. But he switched to Scott Boris. And so then he had a new agency and a new strategy at that point.

And so then he had a new agency and a new strategy at that point. And I've seen some reporters advance the idea that somehow this helps Boris, that this is beneficial to Boris, that Boris may have even advised Correa to take the short term deal because Correa's previous agency stood to make most of or a big cut of any long-term deal he signed. And so this way, if he signs a single-year deal or opts out after the first year, then Boris could get a bigger cut of the long-term deal that he could subsequently sign, which sounds extremely far-fetched to me because Boris, I mean, say what you will about the man, but he tends to get the biggest contracts for his clients that he can. That's why they all want to be represented by him. He seems to even perhaps feel some responsibility to sort of set the market as opposed to just filling his own coffers. And it really seems impossible to me that he would advise Correa to do something that was not in Correa's best interest. Correa to do something that was not in Correa's best interest. And it also seems implausible to me that Correa would do that just because he wants to help out Boris with a bigger commission or

because he can't see the truth or something. Like Boris just pulled the wool over his eyes. I don't know. Boris like breaks people's brains, it seems like. So I just, you know, if he had a reputation for like screwing over his clients to make himself the most money, he would not be Scott Boris super agent. People would not want to work with him. So it seems unlikely to me that that's the case. But it could just be that given the number of options available and the money that was out there for him at that point, it actually was the best option for him to take the short-term deal and test the market again next year, which there is a risk because Correa has not been the most durable player. That's like the only big knock against him is that he's only had two seasons with 500 player appearances or

more. And you can't dock him for the 2020 season when he only missed two games, although he didn't play that well. But still, he's had back issues. He's had shoulder issues. He's had thumb issues. He's had all sorts of little nagging or sometimes more serious injuries. So if he has another one this year and then hits the market again, well, he probably won't hit the market because he won't opt out. But if he proves that he can be durable in back-to-back years and full seasons, then he could stand to command even more money. Yeah.

I tend to agree with you that, I mean, one of the nice things, this is such a weird way of saying this perhaps, but like one of the nice things about being as successful as Scott Boris is that you don't have incentive to like job your client like that. Yeah. Because you've already made so much money. You've made so much money this offseason. There's just no – forget anything else. There's the trade-off that you would be

making between a short-term gain and the reputational damage that something like that would do to you. It's just wildly out of sync with one another, and you don't have any kind of real financial pressure to do so, right? There's no incentive to bad acting there. So I don't find that argument really all that persuasive. But yeah, I do wonder if the confluence of events around him changing agencies and the duration of the lockout and all, and the this and the that made it so that the market was maybe not misjudged, but just different than what was anticipated. And we've talked before about how we're going to get a really good sense over the next year of what this CBA means from a revenue perspective. We're going to have a full year of pretty normal attendance.

Most likely, we might see some dip because of the lockout. But I'm kind of increasingly of the mind that that effect will be very, very minimal because they were able to salvage a full 162. And so we're going to see that. We're going to see expanded playoffs. We're going to see advertising patches. I think that when you couple that with the increases we saw to the competitive balance tax thresholds, you're just in a position as an industry to have a really good dialed in sense of what revenue is going to look like over the term of the CBA. So I think another contract will be there for him if he wants it. And who knows, maybe he really likes Minnesota. Maybe this is the start of a long tenure in a new place. We don't know. they're going to have a good sense of what their payroll and their sort

of revenue picture looks like in the future too. We just, we just don't know. But I do wonder, I think you're right that when players who are involved in controversy move on to other teams, especially if they produce well, like fans tend to get over that stuff because they're just excited to have a good product on the field. Like fans tend to get over that stuff because they're just excited to have a good product on the field. I do wonder if some of some of his thinking is and I don't you know, I don't know that we've seen reported anywhere that there's like bad blood between him and the Houston front office. I don't mean to imply that like the situation there is the same as it was in Atlanta with Freddie Freeman.

It seems like he kind of knew that they were going to move on. And then when the market moved a little bit and he didn't have the deal, they were like, well, we could be opportunistic and make you another offer. And it didn't work out, but I haven't seen it portrayed as like a, you know, a tense situation, but maybe he wants to move on. Maybe he wants a new chapter in his career on a different team that isn't associated with the sign stealing scandal so that when his career comes to a conclusion, he can look back and have sort of a period that is viewed as distinct from what went on in Houston. So that could be part of the motivation too. Yeah. Well, successful as the Astros have been, they have not spent a ton on free agents under Jim Crane. I think their record still is the Reddick contract,

the Josh Reddick deal, which was like four years and 52 million or something. Well, and I guess it depends a little bit how we count guys like Verlander, right? Where there have been now two, well, one free agent deal and then one extension. But yeah, you're right, they have tended to concentrate their big money in extending their homegrown guys. And that has been seemingly the approach rather than going out in the market, right? They didn't re-sign Garrett Cole. He clearly went to New York. So yeah, it doesn't seem as if their approach has been to be like the Dodgers and sort of be big money players. Yeah. All right. Well, Tw fans enjoy Korea for however long you have him.

He is a great player. I think it's kind of weird. Like he hasn't really improved as a player throughout his career, at least offensively, just because he was kind of like fully formed when he appeared in his age 20 season and he won rookie of the year. And his line that year was like basically the same as his line last year so there's a sense that like maybe he hasn't fully broken out or

justified his promise or something because the expectations were so high and maybe that's just about the durability i mean he still had multiple superstar mvp candidate type seasons. He was fifth in MVP voting this past year, and I think fourth in baseball reference war overall in the majors. So that's the area where maybe he has improved defensively. He's actually seemed to get better, and he just won his first gold glove and platinum glove and fielding Bible award. So he does do all those things. And as long as he and Buxton are on the field, the twins should be a pretty good defensive team, which will certainly prevent some runs. But it just feels like having extended Buxton, having gone out and gotten Correa and the other moves they made. They also signed Joe Smith over the weekend for some relief help.

But they just that one more at least starter. And they're just like aren't any of help will really be a free agency. Like who's the best free agent starter still available like johnny cueto or someone i mean it just feels like they've been linked to those a starters sean and i and frankie montas and it just feels like having come this far yeah just they need to land one of those guys which would really help a lot i don't know that that would even make them playoff favorites. I mean, right now, according to the Fangraph's playoff odds, they're at like 36%

to make the playoffs. I think BP has them higher, maybe closer to a coin flip. But even after getting Sonny Gray, there's just not a lot of depth there and not even a ton of high-end talent. So just feels like one more major move there on the pitching side would really pull things together. Yeah. At Fanagraphs, we have Brett Anderson, Chris Archer, and Johnny Cueto, and also Jay Happ all projected for about 0.7 war. Anderson comes in at 0.8. And the twins, they've already had and not enjoyed the j-hop experience although he did improve after he left minnesota but yeah so all right

we will see if they have any other last moves up their sleeve but we can talk briefly about the other big shortstop who signed trevor story yeah went to the Red Sox. Of all places. Yeah, semi-surprising too. So six years, $140 million for Story. And what does he have, an opt-out after the fourth year, something like that. But this is, yeah, also a bit surprising, I guess, just because the Red Sox already have a very fine shortstop in Sander Bogarts. And it seems as if he will not be moving and that story will be moving to second base, even though he is seemingly the superior defensive

shortstop. So this makes the Red Sox better in the short term, obviously, and also gives them insurance in case Bogarts leaves after this season. And we had taken them to task a little bit last week for not doing a whole lot in this division while the other teams, their big rivals have been busy. So they have done something and something significant. Yeah. And now we get to just beat up on the Yankees, which, you know. Yeah. Well, we can really reserve our worst condemnation for the Orioles.

They really have not done anything. The Yankees have done things. They maybe didn't do the best things but they've done that's that's fair I mean Retchman's uh elbows on the men so things are things are looking up in Baltimore yeah I mean like this is this is a bit of a funny fit given as you said the the sort of options they had on roster and how they sound like they're going to deploy him. Although like, I always find it funny when people say like, Oh, he's going to be a second baseman.

It's like plans can change, man. Like it could be fine. They have a bunch of versatility on that infield. Now they can move these guys around as they need to. I think that, you know, his,

his bat will play. Like, I don't know. It's just, he's a good player and they did have sort of infield needs. And now they've addressed some of those. I don't know. He's a good player, and they did have sort of infield needs, and now they've addressed some of those. I don't know. I don't really have a lot to say about this one other than I hope that Story is happy with how his market evolved right at the end. It seemed like he was always likely to be a beneficiary of Correa making a decision and certainly came away with a

good chunk of change. Yeah, it's six years, 140, there's the opt-out, and then Boston can negate the opt-out by picking up a seventh-year option that's worth $25 million, and then I think there was a buyout on that option. So there's a good chunk of change involved here, but I don't know. It's good. I think that it's good for Boston to try to keep pace with a division that is going to be hyper, hyper competitive. And, you know, yeah, I don't know. Like, it's good. Good for everyone.

Good job, team. I've seen people making the comp to the A-Rod Jeter situation in New York where A-Rod was the superior defensive shortstop and he moved over just because Jeter was stubborn, perhaps, and proud and just also represented a lot to that franchise. So you don't move Derek Jeter, even if on paper you should. And Justin Choi mentioned in his transaction analysis for Fangraphs that per Dan Szymborski's projections, the difference actually isn't all that big. projections the difference actually isn't that big it's like three runs or something just because story projects to be so good at second base that it kind of makes up for it maybe and so given that bogarts has meant a lot to the red socks and everything maybe you know you just say well it's not worth the clubhouse issues the interpersonal conflict that could come for this and i think maybe that potentially even for this. And I think maybe that

potentially even overstates the difference because I know that Russell Carlton has done some research that has suggested that players perform worse defensively after they change positions, even if they're moving to an easier position, even if it's a position where you think that their skill set should be more than capable of handling it. There's still an adjustment period for like a third of the season or something where he has shown that you are actually measurably worse while you're kind of acclimating to that new position. In theory, I guess that applies to both of these guys, right? Because Bogarts has not played second base professionally.

to both of these guys, right? Because Bogarts has not played second base professionally. Story has not played second base in the majors, at least either. So they are both changing positions. And in theory, they should both be capable of doing that. And Trevor Story should certainly have no issue. I mean, he played second base a bit in the minors. So there's that. He maybe has a little more history there than Bogarts does. And he has also played, I guess, well, now he's DH, but he hasn't really played any other positions in Colorado. But, you know, that maybe is another factor that you don't even consider that doesn't really enter into the projections, but could affect the real world difference but you know story is a very good defender at either of those positions he's 29 there of course as there always is with rocky's players there's been a bit of uproar about oh his away splits and his road splits and yes there has been a dramatic disparity there but as many people have shown that doesn't really tend to persist after Colorado players leave Colorado right that seems to be largely a product of the Coors Field hangover effect where you're going to and from altitude and the ball moves differently and maybe your body is conditioned

differently and it's harder for you to make that adjustment and so you tend to see bigger than average splits and not just because Coors is a good hitter's park, but also because of these other factors. But that tends to equalize. I'd be more concerned just about the fact that Story didn't hit that well, period, overall last year, especially when you make the park adjustments. You don't even have to look at home road splits like he was basically a league average hitter overall last year when you put the home and road performance together and i don't know how much to read into that or whether to really write

it off because i know he had a bit of an elbow issue right that he was maybe playing through yes yeah and then you know there were the rumors constantly circulating about whether he'd be traded and then he wasn't traded and maybe he wasn't happy about that either and he had free agency looming so given all those distractions and everything i don't know how much to make of that like he has been fairly steady i guess he's been on a slight downward trajectory offensively but he's just a good enough fielder and a good enough bat that it seems like you know as long as you don't have to commit to him for a decade or anything he will help you yeah it's it's not as if they are bought in for so long that you really have to worry about that piece of it right like it's just i think it's i think it's a good i think it's good sometimes you just think a thing is good you don't really

yeah i want to talk about the no defense outfield in Philly. Or to add Nick Castellanos to the mix on a five-year $100 million deal. So they are just embracing who the Phillies are and who the Phillies have been. We talked about how the DH addition in the National League seems to suit them well because they have been playing DHs all over the field for a while now. for a while now now the dh cannot contain the number of dhs on their roster even as it is because you can only have one of schwarber or castellanos dhing on any given day and if reese hoskins is dhing then you might have both of them in the outfield somehow which woof so i know there was a play people were making fun of on monday a spring training game because a couple Phillies outfielders go for a ball and like ran into each other. And it wasn't Schwarber. It wasn't Castellanos. I don't think it was even anyone who will be seeing significant time during the major leagues. But it was sort of symbolic of like, yeah, get used to this Phillies fans because there's going to be much more of this. I think that sometimes one interprets the word universal too literally, and your roster potentially suffers for it. Look, I know it's boring to reference one's tweets on a podcast,

but I'm going to do that because I think this is perfect. It allows the two things that needed to happen to happen simultaneously. This immediately continues to upgrade the Philadelphia Philliesies they're definitely going to score more runs and they had need of another bat and now they have one and and castellanos is good and he will hit balls very far and that will be excellent and defensive miscues are fun for everyone including i would assert phillies fans who get to keep being grumpy about stuff and look phillies fans before you get angry and i know that you love to get angry i'm a seahawks fan right so i am committed to the experience of something that is objectively normally pretty good

but still maddening and so we are simpatico we are friends and i'm here to say that i support your lifestyle uh you are a great twitter we are here for you we cannot wait to see you react to this stuff i think your team is better it's super exciting that your ownership group decided to spend money that's awesome like we're doing good stuff there this is a perfect signing no notes well castellanos is coming off a career year yeah and a career high 34 homers and only 138 games 140 wrc plus usually he has a hard time getting above like the three war mark just because the defense is so bad i mean like let i mean we should say it is very bad. It has been bad since Detroit. It has been like, you know, at moments you're like, is this a roster player?

And then the back got better and was good. And so you're like, yeah, but it's pretty bad. Like that defense is not good. It's not good. Arguably, the glove has gotten even a little bit better. I mean, like I remember at third base, he was like a negative 20 defender. It was so bad.

His first year, his first full year in right, he was still like a negative 20 defender. That was pretty bad. No, he's not. He's a negative seven defender in right last year. I mean, still bad, but not so bad that he couldn't slug his way to a four win season. So yes, he will help them.

He is 30 years old. He turned 30 this month, and he should continue to be pretty productive. It's like there does come some point maybe where it's just hard to out-hit your fielding faults. Like if the Phillies were to make the playoffs, Jason Stark did an article about this. I mean, they would be one of the worst defensive teams in all likelihood to make it that far. And it's hard when you're hemorrhaging that many runs. I mean, you have to hit so well and pitch so well to make up for that. So there does come a point, you know, like runs are runs and runs saved one way and runs gained another way.

I mean, there might be some slight differences, but it all kind of comes out in the wash. But you do have to outscore your opponents by a certain number of those runs, and it's hard to do that when you're negative 80 or something on defense. So we'll see how bad it gets. But I don't know what other option they had at this point. I mean, of course, they could assign, say, a Suzuki or someone who maybe could field as well as potentially hit. But once they got to the point where Castellanos was by far the best hitter still left on the market and maybe the best free agent, period. I mean, I guess they could have been in the market for a shortstop too, potentially. But I see why they did this, and it should be fun to watch, at least a lot of the time.

There was an effort in this Stark article to reframe this to come up with an effect where if you hit well, it'll help you defensively. Stark talks to Charlie Manuel, the former manager of the team, who is now a

special advisor to Dave Dombrowski. And Manuel said, if we hit, we'll field better. And then Stark goes to Phillies infield coach Bobby Dickerson and told him Manuel's quote. And Dickerson said, very wise man. I've dealt with that. Some of the greatest defenders I've dealt with when they're struggling the most defensively is when they're bringing their bats into the field because you know what it's so much easier to go defend when you've got three doubles and I have already referred this to Russell Carlton who will hopefully do some sort of study on this to figure out if there's any truth to it I told him I want to see the gory math and he said that the Phillies defense would certainly be gory I don't know whether the math will work out. Like it does make some sense if you think about like the psychological effect.

If you're struggling offensively, then that might potentially bother you in the field and maybe it would distract you. Like sometimes you hear about a player. Oh, he didn't let his offensive woes affect him in the field and he's still contributing there. Sometimes it does, though. Sometimes you see players out there who are practicing their swing and their stance and maybe it's in their head a bit. So, OK, I guess I buy the idea that there could be some slight effect where if you are hitting well, maybe your confidence will just be buoyed across the board and you will

feel slightly better, too. I don't know. But, you know, we're talking about Kyle Schwarber and Reese Hoskins and Nick Castellanos here. I think the ceiling defensively is quite low. So even if you factor that in, it's going to be ugly at times. But they're just bucking any recent trend toward evaluating defense and prizing defense. And they're going with the Dombrowski, like, early 2010s Tigers teams that weren't great defensively but won a lot either. And if you're Dombrowski, like, on the one hand, it seems like anyone could do what Dombrowski does at this stage of his career, which is basically just get hired and then, like, sign good free agents. That is basically what he does. Or maybe trade all the prospects for good veterans and then sign them to big deals too. There's a world where maybe he leaves the Phillies in a few years and they're just kind of where he left the Red Sox. And it's like, oh boy, we got some contracts we don't love here and things aren't looking so great.

And you could say, well, anyone could do this. Well, anyone could just hire them and say, hey, go sign Kyle Schwarber. Go sign Nick Castellanos. It's not super creative. It's not like identifying some great market inefficiency or something. It's just like going and getting good veterans. But Dombrowski's superpower, I think, is persuading ownership to let him do that. Whatever it is, like the respect that he commands

he is just able to get owners to slightly loosen the purse strings and this is the first time that the phillies have gone over the high payroll tax the whatever we're calling it the cbt threshold they're not far over but they are over and i feel like that is a testament to dombrowski just being like yeah we just signed kaufschorber turns out we need nick castellanos too and he's able to talk the owners into making those investments yeah i think we sometimes get too enamored with like cleverness right like sometimes you can just be like hey that guy will help out and we're willing to take the downside on defense so let's go get him like i, I don't know. I think that we,

like I said, sometimes we get too wrapped up in like, Oh, is this a creative, clever move? It's like, I don't know. Just go get the bat. That's good.

Like, what are we doing here? Yeah. So I don't know. I think that we can, we can just like pick the good and obvious move. Now, I think that if you,

if your analysis leads you to believe that the, the trade-off on defense is not worth it here, that's a reasonable perspective to have. What I am simply submitting is that this is going to be a lot of fun for everyone, even the Phillies fans who are going to end up complaining about aspects of it. So just let that sink in because it's true. I'm right. it so just like let that sink in because it's it's true i'm right well the phillies now have a roughly 66 chance to make the playoffs according to the fangrass playoff ads page they have at least pushed their projection above that like 80 to 82 win range that they seemingly can't escape so now it's like the 87 to 88 win range they They're close enough now to the Mets and the Braves that you can dream a little.

And maybe they have helped separate themselves slightly from the Marlins. Speaking of whom, we're talking about defensively challenged outfielders in the NL East. The Marlins got one of those guys to Jorge Soler on a three-year $36 million deal. three-year, $36 million deal. Don't know whether this was a thumb in the eye of Derek Jeter, who kind of made some noise about the Marlins not spending on his way out. I don't know if this qualifies as a big enough investment to make him look bad in retrospect. They were in line or in talks with other bigger, higher-priced outfielders like Starling Marte, who had been a Marlin, and then Castellanos also.

And they ultimately signed Jorge Soler. And I have no idea how good Jorge Soler is or will be in any given season, but I guess he helps the Marlins who have lots of pitching and not so much offense. Yeah. I mean, it's a big signing in like Marlins adjusted terms. So I think that we can enjoy it that way. I think that there are, you know, the Marlins have some, I mean, their rotation is spectacular. They have some exciting young players with upside in their lineup, but they really are lacking like a star to anchor it. I think that it's better than it was. And I think this helps it even further. And I'm not just saying that because Dan got to make a solar power joke in the headline. So there's that part of it. It'll be interesting to see

what version of him you get. I think that's always been sort of the question with Jorge Soler because he has gone from like leading the American League in home runs in a year when we know the ball was juiced to being quite bad, to being good in half a season. So I think that from a raw tools perspective, the power has never been in dispute.

It's been actualizing that, and his luck has sort of varied. But I think that if you look at the back half of the season he had with Atlanta, there are indicators there that there has been some course correction. half of the season he had with Atlanta, there are indicators there that there's been some course correction. And so I think that it is exciting just from like a, you know, actual player as human being to place fit like he, you know, he's like one of the most productive Cuban players that the league has had from a home run perspective. And now he gets to play in Miami. Like that's cool. Like that's a nice fit in terms of the city he's going to be playing in. Like, I think that this is this doesn't hamstring them in any like meaningful way from a payroll perspective, even for Miami. And so if it doesn't end up working out like what it's like three years and 36 million.

Who cares? Yeah, definitely look at the second half of his season. Not the first half. Yeah, the first half was quite, quite, quite bad. And then he really did manage to turn things around. All told, he turned out being right around replacement level. But he hit so well for Atlanta, both down the stretch and then in the playoffs as well, and became a playoff hero that it all more than equalized. But yes, when he was a Royal, I mean, he batted 192 with a sub 300 on base for them, and they basically gave him away to the Braves at that point.

Yeah, for like a reliever prospect, right? Right. So you just never know. I mean, depending on how the rest of his career goes, he's 30, and that 2019 season when he overtook Mike Trout and ended up leading the American League with 48 homers, I mean, that might look like one of the all-time outlier home run titles if he doesn't replicate that. Maybe it did have something to do with the ball. Trevor Story, also another guy who maybe given his opposite field power was affected adversely by the ball being a little less juiced lately. But to put that season together, especially in Kansas City, which has been a tough

home run park and then to go to basically being a league average hitter for the next couple seasons if you just put them all together so I just don't know like he projects to basically be league average and maybe that is sort of the safe assumption although with him it's been more like he's good or he's just not good at all so the marlins have already signed abyssal garcia and now they have solaire and so they have some more recognizable players in that lineup it is still not a good lineup i don't think but it helps a little bit and as dan noted in his piece that you referenced there may be some extra incentive for a team like the Marlins to at least make it look like they are trying and spending. Yeah, because of a little provision reported by Evan Drellick that I don't think we have discussed, but I'll just read the excerpt here.

Per the union memo, sustained profitability for clubs remains admissible in any grievance challenging revenue sharing usage. for clubs remains admissible in any grievance challenging revenue sharing usage. In the past, a team with a payroll up to or less than 125% of the amount it receives in revenue sharing had the burden of proving during the grievance process that it was using the revenue sharing dollars appropriately, as described in the CBA. That figure is now 150%. So you have to make more of an effort to actually be spending the money you're getting and the marlins have been on the wrong side of grievances before and they have made the occasional oh well let's just spend some money to get ourselves out of hot water here kind of deal before so this could kind of be in that genre too yeah it could be but if it is like they are

making their team better on the field so we hope that they will keep going and that the motivation for jeter leaving turned out to be something different but you know i don't know this does make them better and they sure do have to pay attention to that in a way that will hopefully improve the experience for marlins fans because um you know that market could use could use some assistance with that yeah and i guess just looking at the the projected payrolls on the fangraft rostered resource page there are some pretty giant disparities that have not really been curbed by the cvt the dodgers after some other moves uh you know adding tyler anderson and Duffy, etc. They have now leapfrogged the Mets and now have the highest projected payroll in the majors at $283 million.

The Pirates are bringing up the rear at $44. $44. And then you have Cleveland and Oakland and Baltimore not very far ahead of them. And that is factoring in projected arbitration salaries and everything. So that's a big gap. And as we have noted, that has not mapped all that well onto actual results in terms of market size or even payroll. It's not destiny necessarily, but it definitely does give you a buffer and some margin for error there. So when you see certain teams that are outspending certain other teams by a factor of, well,

more than six, it's not ideal. So, you know, nothing is nothing. So we have, I continue to have regrets. You know, you have, what, eight teams that are projected to have payrolls. And we should note that these are not the CBT threshold payrolls. Those can be a little bit different because they involve a little bit more than just the straight payroll projection does. But eight teams with payrolls projected to be below $100 million. To your point, like one of those teams is going to be good. The Rays are going to be a good team they are good at this but you know the rest of the teams in that category are in various states of rebuilding so

and then you know you have like the mariners with a projected payroll of 106 million and a not small part of that is robbie ray so you know there are a number of teams that are sort of floating around that number some of them will be good. Some of them won't be. But you would imagine that a good number of them would have greater margin for error if they had spent a little bit more. And here I am giving the Yankees a hard time. They have like the third highest projected payroll in baseball.

So it's not as if they don't spend at all. It's just that they, you know, had a clear need and decided not to. So at least in part. They, you know, had a clear need and decided not to. So at least in part. And the last of the major moves that has happened since we last spoke is that Kenley Jansen has signed a one year, 16 million dollar deal with the Braves. So the Dodgers got a career brave and now the Braves got a career Dodger. So this will be weird to see Freddie Freeman in a Dodters uniform and Kenley Jansen in an Atlanta uniform. But the Braves have made a bunch of more minor supplementary depth type moves that I think will add up and sort of raise their floor.

It's not just getting Olsen, but bringing back Rosario and signing Colin McHugh and Tyler Thornburg and various other little moves. And now they have Kenley Jansen to pair with that devastating back of the bullpen from the playoffs last year with Matzik and Will Smith, etc. And McHugh has been pretty nasty lately, too. And Jansen, who, you know, went through a bit of an extended rough patch and was not his normal dominant self. And he's 34 now, but he had a real bounce back year and it wasn't necessarily peak Kenley, but he regained some velocity. He still walks more players than you would want to see in a closer. So there's definitely a bit of the high wire act to him at times, but he is still really effective. And, you know, he mixed up his repertoire a bit.

He's not all cutter Kenley anymore. He'll mix in some sliders and some sinkers and it really worked for him. And I think even when he was used with a good amount of rest, he got a velocity boost from that. So he's figured out how to manage the stuff that he has at this point in his career. And maybe Dave Roberts figured out how to use him. And he had a really good year and continued to be good in the playoffs. So to get him on a one-year deal that is not like a notably higher AAV than we have seen for many closer types who've signed four-year deals or something, I mean, this seems like a pretty

nice pickup and and the dodgers still could have used them it seems like so i don't know whether it's just that after freeman they had kind of reached their limit or what but this uh yeah it's yet another notable signing and move for atlanta yeah we have we have the Dodgers and the Braves back to back in terms of our projected relief for Dodgers are at five and Atlanta's at six. There's like 0.1 wins of difference between them. So they're effectively the same. But yeah, I like this for Kenley. I think that given the depth that Atlanta has in that bullpen, you can kind of mimic, as you said, the rest schedule that he had in LA, which seemed to really be to his benefit with someone else from that group playing the role that Blake Trinan played for him in Los Angeles last year. You imagine that Trinan will get the majority of the save opportunities for LA, but yeah, it's a good fit. That bullpen is really quite good.

It is quite stacked. It's a good fit. That bullpen is really quite good. It is quite stacked. So I agree that Atlanta looks to be the best team in that division. Our playoff odds agree, even with all of the moves that the Mets have made and even with their rotation, which is quite fearsome. We don't have them head in the win column by all that much, but they are meaningfully more likely by our projections to win the division and clinch a bye.

So it looks like it'll be Atlanta and New York and Philly. And then, you know, there's then there's the Marlins. But that East, both of the East races are going to be so much fun. And some parts of the centrals will be fun. So there's that. But yeah, I don't know. It'll be so very strange to see him. Yeah.

Not a Dodgers uniform. He has to change his music. Yes, he does. Right. Yeah. California loves. He's not going to work in Atlanta, I don't think. He's not going to work there.

Yeah. I wonder whether there's any kind of mid-career changing your entrance song penalty. That would be tough to quantify. But I think even with all of these moves that are jarring at first, like Freeman going to LA or Olsen going to Atlanta, there was the hometown connection for those guys. And even with Kenley, I know he grew up rooting for Andrew Jones. And I think most of the majority of players from Curaçao who have played in the majors have played for the Braves at some point. Including Kenley's brother. Yeah, that's right.

So there is something of a sentimental attachment there. Yeah. So we will all have to get used to these changes. Yes. But exciting stuff. So, you know, there were some other smaller moves, like the Cubs continuing to supplement. They signed Drew Smiley to a one-year deal.

The Tigers signed Michael Pineda to a one-year deal. So they've had themselves a nice offseason too between bias and eduardo rodriguez and panetta and andrew chafin etc so they're trying to make that central race interesting too and we can almost close the book on the big moves of the offseason i guess except for one guy Conforto is the only top 50 free agent as ranked by Fangraphs who is still on the open market and I guess

Ben Clemens was prescient in his blurb about Michael Conforto because he said perhaps no free agent hitter faces a more uncertain market than Conforto that has certainly continued to be the case it's still uncertain in mid-March here so I guess you chalk that up to the fact that he is coming off a down year. He had a hamstring issue. He had COVID,igree, with his history, seemingly could have gotten. And I guess he also has the qualifying offer attached to him, as Crea did, as Castellanos did, as others did.

So maybe that's hurting his market a tad, too. But he's still, I mean, even coming off a down year, he wasn't terrible. off a down year, he wasn't terrible. And he has been a really good hitter in the fairly recent past and is not as bad an outfielder as some of the corner guys that we've been talking about. So Conforto could make someone happy. I don't know where the most logical landing spot is at this point, but presumably we will hear sometime soon. Yeah, it is a little strange that he hasn't signed yet. But I imagine that as the only like remaining guy sort of of his caliber from a projection perspective that it'll sort itself out in relatively short order one would expect but I spent all this time been worried. I was worried that it would be it would be too much that it would be a deluge that was unmanageable. But I think that this little free agency period ended up being quite fun. And, you know, with the exception of, I guess, Correa and maybe a skosh with Freeman, like didn't even end up being all that disruptive from a time of day perspective.

So I would like to tip my cap to all of the agents and players and teams and say uh hey thanks for not making it a nightmare because i sure thought it would be one yeah it was fun so fun that i have seen some people suggest like hey maybe we should no this is a thing no no you those people are wrong those people i do not tip my cap to i ask them to have greater respect for the the baseball writers of the world but But it would be fun. And we get something of a version of it around winter meetings. So if it became a little more codified, that'd be fine. If the trade-off was that you can't transact around the end of your holidays,

I'll make that trade any day. Because not having to tell my mom that there was a trade on Christmas Eve was priceless. Yes. I think it's really the slow pace of some recent off seasons that has made that prospect so appealing. I feel like it was fine before we had a hot stove season that was distributed over a long enough time, but not like you would get most deals done before the new year. Often in recent off seasons where it's just dragged into February and March and no one was spending or signing, that was pretty depressing. So relative to that, yeah, I guess it would be nice to say you have to sign people during certain prescribed periods or something. But A, I don't know, that might potentially work in teams' favors when it comes to cost suppression, potentially just to put some time pressure on it.

But also, let's not forget that those 99 days when nothing happened were not a ton of fun. And partly that was because of just the general drudgery of the lockout and the prospect of potentially losing some of the season. But even take that away, you know, if it had just been a run of the mill 99 days and nothing, that still would have been kind of boring and would have just completely kept baseball out of the public eye and out of the headlines. So I don't think that's great. I mean, maybe it works for other sports that have like fun drafts that everyone cares about during their off seasons or something. But for baseball, I don't mind the steady trickle of rumors and trades and signings.

So I don't know that we need to reinvent that. Although, aside from the circumstances that forced this weird winter, it was kind of fun to have those few weeks of just frantic activity. Yeah, I think that we can appreciate it as being meaningfully better than the ennui, perhaps, that we have felt in the last couple of years. I can deal with ennui, the existential dread. I'd be okay being less French in the winter i guess is the point that i'm trying to make like you know i don't need to be quite so french it could be italian i'm italian like let's be spicy fiery you know prone to throwing things i don't know i'm just dipping into stereotypes about my people at this point but you know we can we can probably achieve

something of a happy medium where we have consistent activity that isn't too much, but suggests a healthy and thriving sport. Let's aim for that as a goal. Sounds good to me. Yeah. And last thing, now that almost all of the signings have happened, we can close the book on the off-season free agent contracts over-under draft from episode 1770 back in November. I have no memory of actually doing that, by the way. Yeah, it has happened for years. And to refresh everyone's memories, we pick a handful of free agents and we use the MLB trade rumors estimates of what contracts they will command,

just the sum of money that they'll receive. And then we say over under. And if we pick in the right direction, then we get a $10 million bonus. And we also get the difference between the projection and what they actually ended up getting. And then you just sum that and we get a total. So I have good news for me, not for you which is that i won and congratulations thank you we did this with ben clemens as you will perhaps recall i do not recall but i'm i

trust that it happened yeah and i think if i have done the math right here with some assistance from the effectively wild wiki i ended up at plus 67 million. Ben ended up, the other Ben, at 41.5 million. And you, I am sorry to say, ended up at negative 19 million. Wow. Yeah. So you picked Corey Seeger and you took the under on 305 for Corey Seeger, which hurt.

That hurt you a bit. And you also, it looks like, took the under on Marcus Semyon at 138. So the Rangers really ruined your draft completely there. Well, you know, it's a weird exercise because I'm happy to be wrong, given the direction I went. Because good for those guys. That's fine. You were right on the under on Freddie Freeman and the over on Jan Goms. And then I guess you just missed on the under on Eddie Rosario as well. Other Ben took the under on Max Scherzer at 120. He missed on that. And he also missed on Kenley over at 26. But he hit on the under on Kevin Gossman at 138, Starling Marte at 80, and Mark Canna at 24.

And then my picks, I took the over on Carlos Rodon. That paid off very well for me because he was at 25 million. And then I took the under on Castellanos at 115, which did pay off for me. And I took the under on Soler at 36 million, so that

was a push. he ended up exactly there and then I also missed on the under at Rysel Iglesias and hit on the under on Alex Wood so I just basically avoided any big misses and just kind of played it safe I guess in retrospect and it worked out although I will say that like relative to the totals from past off seasons none of us did all that great like historically we often ended up doing much better sometimes much worse but you know we ended up at times with like I guess just last year's draft like Sam ended up at 115 million I ended up at 137 you know so I don't know whether that is a credit to MLB trade rumors doing a better job of predicting contracts or us doing a worse job of taking over-unders or what, but it worked out

with not particularly impressive numbers. But just wanted to circle back to that, which I would have done even if I had lost and disgraced myself, but I did want to just follow up on that for people. Well, given some of the early losses you suffered in the minor league free agent draft, I think it's only fair that you gloat about your victory. And I'm happy to have been wrong. Yeah. All right. And yeah, I guess Michael Conforto may be not as happy to perhaps have been wrong because reportedly he turned down like a nine figure extension heading into 2021.

That's just a case of like sometimes you hit the market at the right time and sometimes you don't. And it's hard to know. And players, they tend to bet on themselves sometimes. And I admire that spirit. And often it works out. Not always. Not always. Late breaking news. As we were recording, Paki Naughton has a home, famously, of Meet a Major Leaguer segment in the past. The Cardinals, who will be starting the season.

The Cardinals! Yeah. Seemingly with Jack Flaherty and Alex Reyes on the shelf. Unfortunately for them, they have claimed Paki Naughton to add some pitching depth. So there's that. Packy Naughton still employed by a major league team and also Ryan McMahon extended by the Rockies. So Rockies not done. They also signed Ryan McMahon to a six year, $70 million deal. You just never know. You just never know. I will point out once again that it is a crime that Pecky Naughton is not a Boston Red Sox and that we do not get to hear Boston Radio talking about fucking Pecky Naughton.

I mean, it's a crime. It's a crime, Ben. I mean, I'm happy that he's employed, to be clear, but it is a fucking crime. All right. Well, that will do it. And that's kind of a wrap on at least the most major moves of this wild start and stop and start again offseason. So next time, I think we will do a season preview.

We will start our division by division season preview series, potentially. Vision season preview series potentially, and we will get through those by opening day now that we know where almost everyone will be playing and what rosters will look like. That was sort of a necessary precondition for previewing the season with any degree of accuracy. So looking forward to that. We will be back soon. All right, that will do it for today. Thanks as always for listening.

I'm just realizing now that I missed an obvious three sheets to the wind pun or possibly three shits to the wind when discussing Gavin Sheets and his coffee consumption earlier. Very common for podcasters to think of a funnier line after they are finished podcasting, at least in my experience. Esprit de la Scalier, as they say. I know Meg just said we were being less French these days, but that is the mot juste. One more thing to mention, we got a response to our discussion on our last episode, episode 1825, about using more gender-inclusive language in baseball. The idea of finding some alternative to, say, 40-man roster, saying 40-person roster, or 40-player roster, or maybe just expanded roster. That's just one example. Well, we got an email from listener Tavi Kodiak,

who wrote, Glad to hear positive thinking on gender-inclusive language in and around baseball. One project I took on during the height of the pandemic was to rewrite the official rules of baseball for MLB to be completely gender-neutral and have more inclusive-sounding names in some of the rule examples.

And guess what? Still completely legible as far as readability goes. It only took about a week working off and on, or about 25 hours total. You can read about that and the updated rules. Note that these were based on the 2019 rules, as those were the most readily available at the time. MLB has known since 2006 that the gendered language was a problem, since that's when they added in an addendum on the last page that when they use he, him, and his, they also mean she, her, and hers when that person is female, in paraphrase. The reason why this is important is because MLB's rules are heavily influential when it comes to worldwide baseball. The International Olympic Committee uses MLB

rules, or at least did in 2020, and for a long time Little League and other youth leagues directly lifted a lot of its rule language from the mlb rules Little league has since rewritten their rules to be more gender inclusive Especially since there have been women on the field in the minors as coaches and umpires and in roles mentioned in the manual in the majors The language needs to change writers and commentators like you are a good first step toward a more welcoming linguistic landscape Thanks for being mindful of it and thanks to Tabby for doing this work and for letting us know about it. You can find those rewritten rules at dodgeryard.com

and on the show page or in your podcast summary where I will link to it. 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 monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going and get themselves access to some perks while helping us stay ad-free. Dev, Mark, David Riley, Samuel Giddens, and Jonathan Miller. Thanks to all of you.

Patreon perks include access to a patron-only Discord group and monthly bonus episodes hosted by Dean Meg. We'll have another one of those for March coming up sometime soonish. You can also 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. Please keep your questions and comments and suggestions for me and Meg coming via email at podcast at fangrass.com or via the Patreon messaging system. If you are a supporter, you can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EW pod.

You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins, as always, for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with a division preview next time. Talk to you a little later this week.