Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1922: Fall Classic, Fall Ball

Episode Date: October 28, 2022

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen banter about Ben’s latest ex-player Facebook friend recommendations and an MLB bourbon sponsorship, discuss (9:27) David Stearns stepping down from the Brewers’ top job, Adam Wainwright returning to the Cardinals, and Aaron Boone remaining the manager of the Yankees, and then (26:53) preview a […]

Hello and welcome to episode 1922 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lundberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. And both of us are joined by lead prospect analyst of Fangraphs, Eric Longenhagen. Hello, Eric. Hey, guys. How's it going? of Fangraphs, Eric Longenhagen. Hello, Eric. Hey, guys. How's it going? Good. Before we get to anything else, can I tell you both about my new former major leaguer Facebook friend recommendations of the day?

I don't think this will be a daily segment on the podcast. Eric, to catch you up, last time I told Meg that when I go on Facebook, which I don't do all that often, I do basically just to go to the Effectively Wild Facebook group. But the only other perk of being there is that I guess because I'm friends with a bunch of baseball people, Facebook randomly recommends former major leaguers that I should friend. So just guys, just guys I haven't thought of. I get to remember some guys. I get to see them in candid photos with their families in some cases and in uniform in other cases. And it seems like they sort of circulate the recommendations. And so last time I read the list of that day's former major leaguers.

Today, I've got a whole new list. So here are the guys that Facebook recommends that I friend currently. Ned Yost. That's a pretty good one. Yeah. I'd like to be Ned Yost's friend. I didn't friend him, but in real life. Great smile, Ned Yost. Paul LaDuca, Scott Hairston, Cody Decker, and Damian Jackson. Awesome. Also also Dan Halem, Deputy Commissioner of Major League Baseball. Sure. Just in the mix. Damian Jackson is a core utility guy on my MVP 05 franchise, like reverse splits guy, runs well, definitely part of my MVP 05 team. Scott Harrison, lefty mashing dude from that year's game as well.

Of course, with the many fight and baseball Harrisons. Yep. Still around. I knew you'd have a personal connection to someone there. You have a parasocial relationship of sorts with Damian Jackson, at least. If you just hop on Facebook, you could

be his Facebook friend if you wanted to be. That's maybe a bridge too far for your boy. Yeah. Hop on Facebook. I know you're not a big social media man, but since I mentioned this, I guess I brought this on myself, but many people have friended me on Facebook after I mentioned that I'll pretty much take anyone. Yeah.

I'm indiscriminate when it comes to my Facebook friending. So I have a whole bunch of new Facebook friends, and maybe that means that I'll get new Facebook recommendations. Maybe. I'll have a whole new batch of former big leaguers to think about next week. So that's today's update. After establishing that I am extremely discriminant in my Facebook friending, I have gotten no new requests. Well, you're smart, I guess. Well, I'm something at least.

Also, one other little bit of nonsense here. We got an email from listener Adam who forwarded us a sponsorship, little sponsored kind of competition here that's happening now. So I just read this week that all of the such and such a company is the official such and such of Major League Baseball or of a Major League Baseball team that sometimes we make fun of and we talk about how they really try to cram as many companies as possible into the same category. So you have the official beer and the official cerveza or things that you would never expect to be sponsored by Major League Baseball but are for some reason. I just read this week, first of all, that the amount of revenue that MLB derives from all of those sponsorships combined is $1.19 billion, which is a record up 5.6% this year. And one of these offers, which we were forwarded by listener Adam,

is for Evan Williams Bourbon. I don't know if either of you is a bourbon person. Not really. Not really either. Used to be. Not anymore. Well, this one is for Evan Williams Bourbon, which is apparently a proud partner of Major League Baseball. I guess it's not an official anything as far as I can tell, but a proud partner. And so they're running this offer. Step up to the plate.

You can still score cash this postseason with Evan Williams bourbon. They're giving away $1,783. I guess they were established in 1783 to one winner each time. And this is what it says. The copy says, each time a triple hit occurs, a triple hit. And if a team turns a historic triple play, one lucky fan will bring home $1 million. Adam writes to us, I'm sure someone more pedantic than I am has already alerted y'all to this. Nope.

You are the most pedantic. You are the only person who alerted us to this. According to this Evan Williams MLB promo, Evan Williams will be handing out a cash prize each time a triple hit occurs. What on God's green earth is a triple hit? The name seems to imply

that a triple ought to count for three hits or perhaps that a batter could knock three hits in a single appearance somehow. Sometimes you'll see like a double hit, like a batter will hit the ball twice, but a triple, I don't know. In any case, Adam says it's only worded this way for marketing purposes. They seem to have a signature cocktail on their website called the triple hit.

Did not know that. But to have MLB insignia around it, Adam says, shameful. So triple hit. Oh. Did not know that. But to have MLB insignia around it, Adam says, shameful. So triple hit. Are we sure that hit is not a verb in this sentence? Anytime there's a triple hit, you get a. No, but then there are multiple verbs because it says they'll pay $1,780 each time a triple hit occurs. Oh, then yeah. Because I thought that maybe that this was a copy editing error, right?

That it was supposed to be triple hit and then other words got left in or something. But if they have a specific cocktail they're trying to plug also that has the same name, that makes me think that they're up to no good here. Or maybe it's a loophole, a triple hit is not actually a thing so they don't have to pay you if someone hits a triple a triple hit by the mlb yeah right exactly is this is evan williams the the brand that has the commercial where like the rugged dude is doing the narration and he's like i came into the big city not thinking that people were going to be friendly to me but it turns out commercial has this yeah there's like a rugged dude who's like i didn't think these city folk and then they like cut to like a picture of like a diverse crowd of people yeah cheersing him and

he's like i didn't expect this sort of hospitality from these folks coming here but when i'm drinking evan williams i think it turns out they like me or whatever it is it's just a weird thing you watch that one and you're like i think the racial politics of this commercial are pretty bad but i don't think that's evan williams i think it's um oh good grief jack daniels it might be jack daniels it's a weird commercial i. Jack Daniels? It might be Jack Daniels. It's a weird commercial. I'm like, you're saying stuff. I don't know if I think it's good, the stuff you're saying with this.

It was just a strange dynamic in that commercial. Yeah. Well, I'll find out. I'll link to it on the show page. $1,783. Anyway, I don't know if they could get out of paying people with a triple that is not a triple hit occurs or whether someone else could pass off something else as a triple hit, whether you could argue that something else technically is a triple hit.

Go ahead. But this kind of thing, very lucrative for MLB and so we will continue to be bombarded and inundated with all manner of proud partners and official sponsors so you get a chance right with a weird cutout in Philly there's a chance that someone's someone's hit hit hits that

out that cutout and then caroms into the green space yeah where the outfielders running and running after it. Yeah. I guess you're not all that likely to get a triple play from the Phillies, at least. But it could happen.

It's Jim Beam. It's Jim Beam. The welcoming spirit. Get Eric Burlett out there. Okay. All right. Well, we are here to talk about a few things. It's the Eve of the World series.

So we'll talk a little bit about that. And we'll also talk a little bit about foul ball and baseball that continues after the World Series. I guess foul ball does for a little bit, but also the Winter Leagues, winter baseball. Eric is the person who knows a lot about those things. And baseball does not end when the World Series ends for for him and it doesn't have to for you either just a couple of little news items i guess we could touch on there was some some executive news so david stearns stepping down president of baseball operations of the brewers one of the more respected coveted baseball executives out there. And his contract situation had been a subject of some discussion.

People were wondering how long is he under contract and is there some sort of opt-out if the Brewers go to this round or that round. And people have speculated that the Mets would want him and other teams would want him. And when I saw the news that he was stepping down, I assumed that he was going somewhere. But at least from the initial comments, it sounds like that's not the case, at least not anytime soon. He says he is staying put. He is remaining in some advisory capacity for now. And Matt Arnold, who's been his right-hand man there, is taking over the top job. And it sounds like Stearns is talking about engaging in other interests and spending more time with his family and all of that. I'm sure that there will be teams lining up to want to hire him.

So I don't know how long he would be able to resist those entreaties or what else is going on in his life. It is fairly rare, I guess, for someone his age who is as successful and as in demand as he is to just sort of stop doing that job. So that kind of makes you wonder what's going on or where he will land eventually. But it sounds like it's not imminent, at least. I don't know what your read of that situation is, Eric. It's the type of thing that literally like 24 hours from now, I might have some actual dope around.

This was not necessarily something that I had heard rumblings of before it occurred this morning. So I agree with you that a person like this would seem to be in position to take a leap to a larger market team in the event that he wanted to. Things in Milwaukee have gone pretty well and seem to be going well in a sustainable fashion from my point of view. Obviously, the Christian Yelich contract isn't great. Christian Yelich doesn't seem to care. As he's playing baseball, he just isn't a high effort player in my estimation. And so maybe they mis-evaluated his personhood in

some way. But some of the stuff that's going on in Milwaukee during the Stearns tenure, they've sort of shifted the way they do scouting stuff and things are more data-driven. But it's a consistently competitive group. So yeah, I don't know how things are going to shake out here. Obviously, Matt Arnold is another guy who's been mentioned as long-term executive head of baseball ops and GM type of guy and is now running the show there from top to bottom, it would seem. So yeah, it'll be interesting to see how long he remains in this sort of advisory capacity. of advisory capacity, I can see someone who's an executive at this level, like getting burnt out and I guess needing to take an actual step back and like, maybe that's, that is all that's going on. Yeah. People probably should do that more often, but maybe people on this call, maybe multiple people on this call. What are you talking about, Ben? It's a perfectly adequate amount of balance.

Yeah. Yeah. It's 2022, right? Yeah. But it'll be interesting to see how this shakes out. I don't think that we – I think it's a long-term thing. I think over the course of the offseason, we might hear more about what's happening here. I don't think that there's anything weird happening under the hood,

but it wouldn't surprise me if there are other teams who are making godfatherfather offers to this guy to to leave now that he has kind of stepped down yeah he is under contract i think through 2023 and i don't know if this is just like it would be easier to get permission to interview with other teams if he's just like a consultant i i think he has an arrangement so that maybe if if other teams were to come to him just as an advisor, then any other team coming to him with some top-level job would be a step up, whereas otherwise it might have been a lateral move. So I don't know whether there's some sort of strategy that's going on here, but he is presenting it as not that.

So I guess we'll see. And if his contract does run through 23, then we've seen other orgs do stuff sort of like this preemptively so that there's not a more stark transition later. Like the fact that people who are going to be moved up and promoted into positions, especially if Milwaukee has people who they want to retain, you can start that process now

as opposed to waiting until Stern's contract is up. Yeah. And you have Stern still on to help slowly onboard duties, transfer them from him to other people. And the people who are now doing those things, their old duties get to disseminate throughout the rest of the organization. So yeah, we've seen like when Theo Epstein left the Cubs, it was sort of like, all right, I'm going to leave before this rebuild. Whoever's in charge of the team next should be the ones who get to execute aspects of this rebuild, right?

So obviously Milwaukee's not necessarily in that spot where they're rebuilding, but some of the considerations might be similar. Yeah. And in other news that was not all that unexpected. Adam Wainwright returning to the Cardinals, which we kind of knew. I mean, it was not certain, I guess. And he was kind of getting trotted out there with Pujols and Yadif as all the farewell stuff was happening, even though he had not said that he was leaving and in fact had suggested

that he might be back. And had suggested that he might be back. And it sounds like he will be back for one more season. And he was a productive pitcher. So that's not that big a surprise. I know he had a rough September, but he is still pretty good. It's not like the Cardinals are overflowing with great starting pitching. So why would you not want him back if he wants to be back? great starting pitching so why would you not want him back if he wants to be back and i guess also in that category although maybe more surprising is that aaron boone got the big vote of confidence

from hal steinbrenner yeah a lot of yankees fan acquaintances of mine not pleased i guess they should not be shocked at this point i guess, that they would want to retain him. They did sign him to an extension last winter. And that's basically like what Hal said, you know. And I guess you could read it as we don't want to pay him and also pay someone else. Or just we thought he was good enough to extend a year ago and we won 99 games. And so we're going to bring him back. But no hard news about Cashman. There have been some reports that he will likely be back as well.

I guess Boone's status would not be as assured if they were going to change GMs. But it sounds like they're keeping the brain trust together, most likely, to the anger of some Yankees fans. But that combo has been pretty successful, not in winning a World Series, but in winning lots of games before the World Series. So that's something. I have three small thoughts. The first is we should note on the subject of Wainwright that, well, obviously this last season was not his last season. He has said that this next season will be his last season. So we will be.

We can do a Card's farewell tour all over again we'll be treated to another farewell tour and it'll be nice because they'll be celebrating him instead of just calling him old which is what was happening so often this season two i'd like personally to thank the yankees for waiting to make the boone decision until after jay had been able to write about what was going to go on there because otherwise it just would have been a bunch of wasted words. So there's that. And three, Ben, I wonder, and I will ask this to both of you, but my sense given the timing is that in addition to them

just probably not wanting to move on, part of what probably is dictating these decisions, particularly as it relates to Cashman, less so with Boone, is that they're pretty late in the game and pretty close to free agency to be making changes if they're going to be active in this period and so I wonder if your friends impressions will change if you offer to them that this might make them more likely to retain Aaron Judge which doesn't mean they will but it seems like you know if you have disarray in the front office, you're on your back foot.

And free agency, even with guys who are your guys, potentially. So it seems like it's good for the Yankees if they have stuff to do either in service of retaining Judge or in finding a potential replacement for him should he decide to be a literal giant and a figurative giant you know can you be a doubly literal giant can you be literally a giant twice because he will be a if he signs with san francisco a literal giant in his physical ways and then an actual one in terms of his team yeah maybe three ways i mean he is basically a figurative giant in the season that

he had as well as in stature. And he could be a San Francisco giant as well. Language is complicated. Sorry, Eric, I cut you off like four different times there. No, I'm just thinking like, I don't know what Aaron Judge's relationship with Aaron Boone and like Brian Cashman is like, or if that would have a big impact on his decision to sign somewhere or not. I do think stability is an underrated aspect of sports culture building and locker room situations.

And I think Brian Cashman especially has done a really good job for a really long time and I wouldn't be doing anything different than having him run my baseball team. I know Josh Donaldson, Josh Donaldson didn't exactly have like a great year or whatever, but it doesn't seem to be like the straw that breaks the camel's back in this situation, you know, just because Josh Donaldson was kind of meh and has terrible hair. But you know, the reasons for the Yankees only doing what they did has more to do with like the bullpen getting hurt. Right. And Aroldis Chapman being like kind of a weird guy. And that's basically it.

You know, like Houston is just Houston's pretty close to a juggernaut. And your bullpen was just not operating at full strength during the most important time of year. And so it's not like these things weren't addressed. You know, Ron Marinaccio is good and was hurt. Yeah. And Scott Efros, who they traded for, is good and was hurt. And Michael King got hurt. And so other than like not protecting Garrett Whitlock.

Yeah. Right. Like there haven't been a lot of missteps. Yeah. So I don't know. Garrett Cole can't use sticky stuff anymore. You know what I mean? It's all sorts of random stuff that has nothing to do with Aaron Boone or Brian Cashman. And in fact, when you look at some of the pieces in place that have like, you have Ozzy Cabrera and Ozzy Peraza and all these other homegrown pieces

that might allow you if Aaron Judge leaves to make a run at Shohei Otani with prospects. And if there's a relationship between members of the Yankees brass and someone like Shohei Otani, and that is of particular importance. The inverse of what Meg mentioned with Aaron Judge, let's say Judge leaves for San Francisco, which is if you twisted my arm and said, hey, pick where he's going to end up, that's what I would say. Okay. People who I talked to two off seasons ago were all telling me, just wait for the Giants to start spending money. The Giants are really going to start spending money. They really believe in this front office and what they're doing with grown players at home. Just look for them to spend money on Seager or Simeon or someone like that. And then they kind of didn't. And it made me wonder what it is they were waiting to pull the trigger on. And I think it might be something to do with

Aaron Judge. But yeah, like, you know, bringing free agents here might also involve, you have a relationship with someone, you know, trading for someone like Otani or whatever. Especially remember the Otani recruiting process and just interpersonal relationships in Japan when it comes to doing business are of greater importance than they tend to be over here. So perhaps something like that is brewing as well. But I wouldn't sweat it. If I'm a Yankee fan, like, relax, Jesus.

That'll work. Yeah, that'll do it. It's a really great organization. Really, really great. I should relax. Feel free to relax. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, we have such crude, blunt ways to evaluate managers from afar that all you can really say, like, you can point to individual decisions. You can point to questionable comments, like results wise, the Yankees have the most wins in the American League during Aaron Boone's tenure. They've made the playoffs every year of his tenure. They have won at least a playoff series every year of his tenure, except when they lost in the wildcard game last year. So I think if you're a Yankees fan, yeah, you expect more, obviously. And it's like telling Yankees fans that, well, the Astros are just a juggernaut. Like it's no shame to lose to them.

That's not going to assuage them. That's not going to make them feel better because they don't like the Astros. They don't want to keep losing to them. They want to be the juggernaut. And I think they have a point in some respects, like with the Yankees not spending the way that they used to. But you can't hold Aaron Boone accountable for that. Some of the bigger free agents that Steinbrenner and or Cashman just sort of sat out, it sure seems

like Hal just doesn't want to go above a certain threshold. They still spend a lot, but they're not blowing other teams out of the water the way that they once did, which maybe is good for baseball. I don't know. Maybe it's bad for baseball because other teams don't have to then spend more to keep up with them. Anyway, whatever the upshot of that is, I think Boone clearly hasn't been a disaster. I don't know if he's a brilliant manager. I don't know if he's making them better, but he's not in that category of like well i can't win with this guy i wouldn't say so again like the most i've ever questioned him was with the telling everyone that he was sending around 2004 alcs motivational videos that's what i was finally like this is the last straw so the actual baseball stuff not not as

much so i mean almost every manager is going to make some weird decision or at least what seems like some weird decision from the outside during the playoffs. And very often it doesn't really come down to that or at least we'll never know whether it did come down to that. It comes down to like not hitting at all or just having a bunch of guys injured or whatever. or just having a bunch of guys injured or whatever. Though I did enjoy that Derek Jeter was asked on Wednesday about the 2004 ALCS highlights scandal. Scandal, Ben. Debacle, yeah, yeah. You're part of the problem.

I mean, this is like the one time that Michael Kay and all the Sports Talk Radio guys who are slamming this, I'm like, yeah, I'm right there with you. I mean, I'm not going to compare it to Michael Kay likening it to the Lincoln assassination or whatever analogy he used. Wait, seriously? I am going to echo Eric's sentiment. Everyone needs to relax. No, this is Michael Kay who, as Michael Kay Was like doing the Phillies Cardinals playoff series.

You could like hear him reading like just this guy clearly going in cold knows nothing about either the teams that he's covering. Just like reading off of some shot sheet. Like this guy was drafted in 2017 out of Louisiana State University by the Phillies and developed by the Phillies. It's like, why is this? What is it that ESPN sees? And who are these guys playing golf with at ESPN? Broadcast, yeah. That they end up with like,

oh yeah, we need alternate broadcasts with these two guys who I, the executive, like. Like, what's going on there? But yeah, Michael Kay is not someone whose baseball opinions anyone should be, you know, should care about. He was very nice to me once when I was a kid and I was on a plane and Michael Kay was on the plane as well. And I struck up a conversation with him heading to baggage claim and very nice. That was the only personal interaction that we have had. Very nice. That was the only personal interaction that we have had.

But I enjoy that he's kind of like this, you know, almost like shock jockey, like blowhard sports talk radio host and also the lead Yankees announcer for Yes Network. So he has these two different guises sort of where, you know, he's like more outspoken in one than the other usually. Anyway, Derek Jeter was was asked about this. And, you know, he's Derek Jeter, like he's never going to say anything all that interesting. But this was about as outspoken as Derek Jeter. He prefaced it with, I don't know the context and you'd have to ask them and everything, but he's like, I can't even talk about that series. It makes me sick to think about it, which I think a lot of yankees fans probably feel the same way sure and so i think he was you know he was cast in a little shade maybe on that decision in his vegetarian way so just a reminder that there was a period where

all michael k ate was chicken parmesan oh yeah well that's defensible chicken parmesan diet is that could be the topic of an entire podcast but I don't have the most red flags, folks. about the series, which has not started yet. But Eric, do you have any thoughts other than obvious ones or like X factors, things that you're going to be watching in this series or any, I don't know, counterintuitive opinions that you have? I don't think so. Certainly the Phillies cannot give Houston extra outs the way they have tended to give teams extra outs throughout the course of the playoffs. I think that we saw a meaningful shift in Rob Thompson's bullpen deployment toward the end of the NLCS. Even early in the NLCS, if a starter had been bounced relatively early, Nola's start, even in the DS against the Braves, Ranger Suarez's start. He did not tend to play matchups correctly, in my opinion, in the middle of the game. He was still deploying relievers based on what inning it

was rather than like which opposing hitters were in the box. You just need, it doesn't matter if it's the fifth inning, if the heart of Houston's order is due up and your starter is out of the game early, you just want one of your best two or three relievers to face the heart of Houston's order is due up and your starter is out of the game early, you just want one of your best two or three relievers to face the heart of Houston's order, even though it's early in the game. So at some points this playoffs, Thompson was, you know, Andrew Bellotti would come in to face Acuna and Matt Olson and like, you know, Austin Riley and those guys. And you should just have Sir Anthony Dominguez or Alvarado or even David Robertson. Like one of the three guys you trust the most should just be going up against that group, even if it's the middle of the game.

And we saw him start to shift towards something closer to that, I thought, towards the end of the NLCS, which I think was very encouraging. So there's some of that stuff that I think, you know, it's certainly not like in favor of the Phillies to have David Robertson, who I think is more about like experience and calm in those moments than he is about like having premium stuff to deal with those guys. But I think that, you know, things were shifting in a positive direction for the Phillies towards the end of the CS. So that's one thing. How the Phillies are going to go about dealing with Jordan Alvarez specifically will be interesting. I think Brad Hand and the way I would anticipate you see Brad Hand. And so the Astros need to do the same and structure their

lineup around Jordan in a way that punishes the Phillies for having Brad Hand out there likely to face him and whoever is surrounding him. And then you have, you know, what is Philly going to do in game four? How long, you know, at least does Bailey Falter get? Are they going to have some three amigos set up with Sundergaard and Gibson and Falter? Can you plan to structure left, right, left, you know, Falter, Sundergaard, and Gibson in some way that forces, it's not like, you know, Houston really plays platoon matchups in the middle of games all that often, but can you force them to like make a move in the middle of the game and then force them to have unfavorable matchups be in control of who's facing the bottom of their order where they might be more likely to

go left right left with you know somebody it's just have as we anticipated you know an all right handed bench here so you know it's again like it's not obvious how philly should be structuring what they're doing pitching wise in a theoretical bullpen game for. So those are the things I'm interested to see how they play out. But obviously, Houston should be a heavy favorite in this series. I have certain personal proclivities that have been kind of laying dormant in my soul for the last 15 years as I've been like working in baseball and the Phillies fandom that existed in me at age 16 is, you know, at best heavily diluted at this stage. I don't have like hate in my heart for any Astros except for maybe Bregman, you know, just, just not my kind of guy, all the preening to the camera and the dugouts after those home runs that he hit when he knew it was coming, like just washed over me in a certain way or just like, I really don't like that guy. Otherwise,

all the Astros like, you've had to pay for this in a way that I can't imagine what it's been like, all the negative attention, what people must say to you and no doubt are going to say to you in the city you're about to travel to for a little less than half of the series. You don't think that Philly fans are going to be restrained and quiet in the face of the Astros coming to town? You don't think that's what's coming? No, it's going to be absolutely brutal. It's going to be brutal.

And this is a place that like, obviously it's not like Dodger fans and it's not like Yankee fans, even though Yankees fans, you know, you never know. I've seen some cameras back there on either side of home plate that aren't necessarily broadcast cameras that existed during the period in question. And obviously there's all sorts of, you know, other stuff, some of the verbiage people with some of the organizations who Houston beats around that time, obviously Boston was doing stuff. Like anyway, I'm pretty sure Houston wasn't the only organization doing stuff, but maybe the only one with a trash can. But anyway, like Philly hasn't had a chance to get it off their chest. It's not like Houston is coming to Philly for, you know,

they're not rivals, right? So people maybe have been sitting on emotions or, you know, verbal insults for the last couple of years. It just hasn't had a means of diffusion necessarily in Philadelphia. So it's sort of like a fun... I really wanted the Yankees to win the ALCS because it just felt like the Phillies were on a revenge tour where they beat the Cardinals and ended an era of Cardinals baseball with, you know, Waino and Yachty and Pujols in the same way that the Cardinals ended an era of Phillies baseball as Ryan Howard was collapsed in a heap. And like the Phillies were not good again until now at the hands of the Cardinals. And so I felt like, you know, it would be fun for the Phillies to exercise some 2009 demons against

the Yankees. I was still at that point ostensibly a Phillies fan. I was going to school in Philly. I was working for the AAA affiliate and had been for two seasons at that point. And watching that 09 World Series was very frustrating for me. Watching Johnny Damon be so locked in, impossible to make swing and miss, just knowing how dangerous he was

every time he came to the plate. And Hideki Matsui, same thing. And like watching A-Rod succeed, you know, was just like so frustrating. And watching Chase Utley's efforts in that series be squandered. He was sort of going through the yips, throwing the first base,

but also like super duper locked into the plate. Like he was very frustrating. I kind of wanted to exercise some of that. Now, like, you know, all Houston has ever done to Philly is like when Houston was really bad, you know, many moons ago, we're talking about like a decade and a half plus ago, they would often spoil the Phillies seasons. There were times when the Astros were so bad and then Philly would go in there August or September and like drop two of three or get swept in a weird way. Like they just took bad Astros teams too lightly and then they would not make the playoffs. And you look at that Houston series, like, wow, this is where they coughed it up is like

losing to these bad Astros teams. But like that doesn't seem like, you know vengeance in a in a world series but yeah like my heart is is still like you know with corinne landry right and the phillies much more than the edutronic cameras that i see the astros folks peddling around no folks like you know no offense to the folks who some of which i know and who work for the astros running around doing scouting stuff yeah like i want cor Corrine to win a ring and be like the first former Fangraphs writer to like have some hardware. So that's what I'm rooting for.

Yeah, the depth of the Astros, we've talked about the depth and the pitching depth specifically and the fact that like they have bullpen weapons they've barely even deployed. Like Ryan Stanek with his like low ones ERA has pitched two winnings for them thus far like they just haven't even needed him really like they haven't used Jose Urquidy they like haven't used I don't know their lefties at all like haven't even rostered their lefties yeah I

mean it's Luis Garcia would start game three for Philly and is just a long in the bullpen. Yeah. For Houston. Or he would start game four for Philly and hasn't been used. Yeah. It's really ridiculous. It's like their bullpen has has pitched 33 innings, allowed three runs, and they haven't even had to empty it out at all. So that's pretty amazing.

D it out at all. So that's pretty amazing. And I was actually surprised because I was writing about the series and I looked something that Jeff Sullivan used to do just kind of looking at how much negative war teams got because he would make the point that just avoiding like black holes on your roster can really help a lot. And I think that's kind of an unsung aspect of this Philly season, because we think of it as sort of a mismatched, misshapen kind of roster that just sort of brute-forced its way to being just good enough. But they actually, if you add up all of the players who had negative war on their team and add up all of that negative war and then do that for every team. The least negative war is the Yankees. The second least is the Dodgers.

Third least is the Phillies actually tied with the Dodgers, which really surprised me. And then it goes Blue Jays and Astros and Brewers and Cardinals after that. So I did not actually expect that to be the case. Obviously, like the Astros have better good players and more good players than the Phillies do. But the Phillies were as adept as anyone is just avoiding like complete holes, it seems like on their team, which is impressive and underrated, I think, and could explain why they just won one game enough or two games enough or whatever it was to actually get that third wild card. But yeah, the depth of the Astros pitching is really impressive. Although the Astros, they had, I think, the third lowest percentage of having the platoon advantage in their plate appearances as a lineup. And it's not like their lineup can't hit righties.

It's heavily right-handed. lineup and it's it's not like their lineup can't hit righties like it's it's heavily right-handed and and that figure included like almost half a season of michael brantley too who hasn't really been replaced so now it's even more heavily right-handed and and so it wouldn't be shocking if like the phillies come out there with nolan and wheeler and just mow down a bunch of righties and and steal a game or two from the astros in houston like that could certainly happen but then there is a much steeper drop off obviously after you get past those righties at the top of the rotation and then you're in suarez territory and falter territory or cinder guard or or whoever and that's where you'd think that the astros could could feast although really like they are a pitching and defense team i mean they hit too like they had a better offense

than the phillies during the regular season at least but they do have some holes in that lineup i know martin maldonado is a silver slugger finalist wait are you serious? Yeah. No. Yeah. That's even worse than Juan Soto as a gold glove finalist. Yeah. It really must be like the best offense is a good defense kind of. I don't know how a guy with a.248. Guy had a.86. Wait. I don't know.

I can't explain that one. He did yank out 15 bombs into the, you know, I can guess where a bunch of those landed. Yeah, he had a 70 WRC+. Yep. So I don't know how to explain that. It's like such a weird, freaky Friday between the Gold Gloves and the Silver Sluggers. Yep. How do the nominees for these get picked silver slugger at least is uh

manager and coach votes i believe okay so all right well remember that next time anyone you know criticizes the media for not knowing what they're talking about not that the awards voting that they you know participated in sometimes any better than that but like just remember next time someone's like what do you guys know about no care what you guys think about awards voting it's like oh yeah managers voting manager coach voting all very good in their own ways too yeah wow i'm gonna have to sit with that for a minute so i think it is i wonder who wasn't nominated like Kirk

Alejandro Kirk had to be on there right yes it was Kirk, Sean Murphy Big Dumper and Adley Rutschman and then also Salvador Perez who at least has been a good hitter at times and then Martin Maldonado for some reason

so yeah Jonah Heim had a pretty good year, maybe could have been on there. Yeah. Janney Jansen. Pretty much anyone could have probably been a better pick, I would think, offensively. Wow. Martin Maldonado, good defensive catcher, like such a bad hitter that the Astros even semi-replaced him with Vasquez or at least supplemented him. So yeah, anyway, that was weird. But I think the Astros are just like an elite run prevention team.

And they're good enough at hitting. They have like half a great lineup at least. And that's been enough. So it's interesting because like the Phillies, they've been on a heater, obviously. And I do think that they're better than they were as a regular season team, just in the sense that they have a healthy Harper who's bashing the ball, which they haven't had for some time. And then also like there's some consolidation of the back end of the roster that they don't have to use. that they don't have to use. And because they don't have the depth that the Astros do, maybe that helps a team like the Phillies a little more than it helps a team like Houston,

which can't even use all the good players. The Astros had two pitchers on their regular season roster all season long who had an ERA above the MLB average. And those two pitchers combined for eight and two-thirds innings pitched. So they just don't have any bad pitchers anywhere really. But I was just going to say like the Phillies, I don't think they fit any kind of like bill of this is how you win in the

postseason, like be built like the Phillies necessarily. Again, like as we've covered, there isn't really a way to be built to win in the postseason necessarily. But even if there were like all the things that you hear, like, oh, you've got to have good defense and you've got to have a shutdown closer and you have to finish strong. The Phillies had a losing record in September or you have to make a ton of contact and not be reliant on home runs. Some of those things are wrong and some of those things just really don't seem to have an impact either way. But regardless, I don't know that you could even come up with a narrative where like oh the phillies they're just

built for the postseason like this is their time to shine it just so has happened that they have played really well and they've outplayed teams that won more games than they did during the regular season and they've deserved to move on but they have an even bigger challenge ahead of them here yeah they i mean the starter components the the nola wheeler yeah that component does feel post-season like round up on this group because they have these two guys and then how dangerous the depth of the lineup is like where so many guys can change the outlook of a game with one swing in this lineup and then like things did click for alvarado and sir anthony at the yeah at the right time yeah yep well and it's like you have harper you know we don't want to overreact to a guy being on a tear but like when he is recovering from injury

and starts to show a capacity to do this which is consistent with stuff he has done in the past, you feel like it's more meaningful than like, remember when Eddie Rosario just changed the World Series last year? We were like, cool, you're having the best month of your life. That's great. And so it does register a little differently. I don't mean to pick on Eddie Rosario. He's a perfectly good player and he had a great World Series.

But when it's a guy who was clearly compromised because of injury and then she was non-tendered the year before oh yeah rosario was that's true but when you have a guy like harper where he was clearly compromised by injury and now is hitting like his old self uh that's that has to be pretty exciting for philly fans kyle schwarber are also non-tendered at a point. That's right. The Cubs non-tendered him. Yeah, I guess it'll be interesting. I assume that the Astros will roster a left-handed pitcher for this series.

We haven't seen the rosters announced yet. I don't know if they'll put Smith on there or what, but if not, or even if so, the matchups with the big lefty philly bats schwerber harper like those will be interesting you know because like stanek and nara splitters are maybe neutralizers there right yeah the astros like heavily right-handed pen but lots of guys who can get lefties out obviously which you know you you could say about robert suarez as well and harper took him out.

Harper's just really good. But I guess it'll be interesting to see whether they do put a lefty on the roster and whether they actually use those guys. Even though they're not maybe as good as some of the righties just to get the platoon advantage. Or whether they just ride with righties, which has served them well thus far. Yeah. I mean, I guess. I don't know. I kind of like, I want I kind of want them to just leave all the lefties off and just ride with the

righties they've had and like, let's see how it goes. I kind of want them to do that because it's just a cool thing. Yep. All right. Well, lots of interesting storylines surrounding the series as we have discussed and I just, I hope it's good and competitive and not another sweep and not a short series. I just just I hope it's good and competitive and not another sweep and not a short series I just

I hope we get at least one long one that just goes six or seven here because we have not had that thus far okay so let's transition to some prospect stuff and some international ball I did want to ask you one question that we got yesterday from someone who might as well have known that you were going to be on this episode because this is the type of question I like asking you. So this is from Marcus who said, Do you think Aaron Judge and Jarr Carl Stanton's success in the majors has had an effect on the way scouts and GMs view taller position players? scouts and GMs view taller position players. With the rise of O'Neill Cruz and prospects like James Wood and Spencer Jones, it seems like there are more young position players who are 6'6 and taller.

Our front office is starting to value size more when it comes to drafting and scouting. Ultimately, do you think the average height of position players in MLB will start growing over the next 10 years? I guess I should stipulate the average size is basically always growing, right? It has always grown over the long term. I think maybe the growth has slowed a little lately. I think last time I looked, at least for position players, but people get taller, athletes get taller. But for the extreme tall guys, do you think the success of Judge or Cruz, who I guess

success is spotty still sometimes, but is there more open-mindedness for tall guys? It's an interesting question. I would be curious to know if the rate of growth is changing relative to our general population. I would guess probably not. There's going to be a selection bias, right? The problem with taller, longer levered hitters is that their lever length tends to become a problem against growing big league velocity. It is just harder for guys like that to be on time. Sometimes, and I think with O'Neal Cruz, this will likely be true with Ellie De La Cruz and Ronnie Mauricio, who we'll talk about again at some point on this pod, it will be true,

where even when there's above average swing and miss, if there's enough else going on, if there's enough power or there's sufficient power for the position these guys are able to play, you can get away with that. I actually think that the unknown variable here is how does no more shifting have an impact on the type of athletes that play infield? Will we see a return to a certain type of athlete? One more akin to what we had before, you know, like immediately before the current era of like heavy shifting, which has been going on for about 10 years. You know, more Ray Ordonez types,

will they be around? Is Reigns just enough of a factor on the infield? Again, that like Xander Bogarts doesn't play shortstop anymore. And do we see smaller athletes playing those positions again? But I think, again, there's a selection bias. Aaron Judge at his size has a very special ability to tuck his hands in, stay short to the ball, and still barrel stuff on the inner third of the plate. And for every one Aaron Judge, who obviously is a size sort of on his own, he is like statistical noise because of how big he is. Giancarlo Stanton is not necessarily. Fran Mil Reyes is not necessarily. So, you know, Louis Brinson is six foot four.

The question surrounding him as a prospect was, is this guy going to hit enough with levers this long? And throughout the minors, the answer to that question was yes, yes, yes. And then he got to the big leagues and it was a resounding no. Monte Harrison, same thing. So like there are still plenty of hitters who have above average or better size who don't succeed, who we are just not hearing about, who aren't at the forefront of your consciousness because they're not succeeding.

Carlos de la Cruz in the Philly system is like six foot eight. He's here in Fall League right now. I don't know what's going to happen with that guy. Like his size is freaky. The fact that he succeeded to the degree he has already is notable, but he is not like the elite sort of athlete. When you just watch these guys move their bodies and like what their swings look like.

If I showed you slow motion of Jordan Walker's swing and how deep into his legs he's getting, what it looks like as his body is changing positions at the end of his swing, as he's tilting to start to run to first base, like it's not normal for a six foot seven guy to do that. And like Carlos de la Cruz, it's more kind of stock, you know, it's not like an exceptional athlete's movement. So I actually think with the proliferation of some seemingly

like schools of thought and philosophies around hitters, that the opposite will be true. That teams that are tending to succeed at developing homegrown hitters, that the opposite will be true. That teams that are tending to succeed at developing homegrown hitters are ones who tend to target short, compact, switch hitting, up the middle guys like Milwaukee, like Cleveland, like Arizona, like Tampa Bay. Those teams clearly have certain tastes and tendencies when it comes to signing and drafting amateur players. The entire Diamondbacks outfield, Jake McCarthy is like the biggest guy. Dalton Varshow, Alec Thomas, and Corbin Carroll are all like 5'11 or shorter, left-handed hitting, compact. Wander Franco, Jose Ramirez,

all of the young Cleveland, you know, goes out of their way to get Andres Jimenez, Brian Rocchio. These are all very compact switch hitting guys. So I think that at some point at 6'4 or taller, those guys have the ability to be something extremely special. Fernando Tatis is able to do the things he's able to do on a baseball field for the same reason that like Calvin Johnson was able to do the things that he was able to do on a football field. Rare size,

speed, power, capacity for movement, athleticism, things that aren't necessarily, some of which are objectively measured and are just measurements, and some of which are subjective visual evaluations of this guy's athleticism, which, you know, we live in a time now where some teams are evaluating that stuff. Capacity for movement, flexibility, rotational, you know, capability, spine and shoulder mobility, hip and shoulder separation isn't just a thing now that, you know, you are looking for visually.

It is a thing if you have the right camera array trained on a guy. That you can measure. Yes, you can measure. So, but like Fernando Tatis Jr. has certain ability that even if there's swing and miss risk associated with this guy as a young prospect, you know if that stuff comes that he has the ability to be a certain type of player that Tyler Black, who raked at Wright State, doesn't have the ability to be. And so there's just some teams who are willing to assume that risk as they acquire players. And it was true of Aaron Judge, right? Like Aaron Judge, everyone knew when Aaron Judge was Aaron Judge at Fresno State,

that he had certain ability that was like, wow, you can't teach a guy to have this much power and power projection at his size. But he's also striking out a heck of a lot in a mid-tier conference. And the track record of those guys succeeding in the big leagues is not very good and yet like here we are go back go read the comments on the top 100 on fangraph from when aaron judge was on there he was somewhere in the middle of the list and there were people who had just seen him play a month of big league ball who were like why is this guy even on here right you know and it's like well because he

has the potential to be a certain thing that other people don't have the potential to be and that's true of o'neill cruz it's true of ellie de la cruz and even though we uh acknowledge as prospect analysts you know we're not like shaking an eight ball and like oh he's gonna do this it's like no like we acknowledge a certain error bar variance with guys like this. But the fact that they have the ability to attain the high end of that range of outcomes is like very rare. I meant to ask, by the way, before we fully move away from the World Series teams, just to talk for a second about how they were built. they were built because the Astros, the MLB.com pipeline guys, they did a breakdown of just like where everyone's war came from, all the postseason teams. And the Astros let everyone just in homegrown players, like players acquired via the draft and international, and also in like war

from those players, you know, and the Phillies obviously are not quite that way. They're not the least homegrown. That would be the Rays and the Padres who traded for basically everyone on those teams and the Mariners to a great extent too and the Yankees via trade or other methods. But the Astros still are really a player development machine. And one of the masterminds of that pipeline, right, Pete Petilla, was just hired by the Giants as their GM. So I don't know whether you think that will affect the Astros' ability to continue to churn out pitchers

and other players, or whether that is just so set in stone now that they can keep rolling, or, I mean, I guess all things have to come to an end at some point because it looked like the Astros' window was potentially closing a couple years ago, that they were getting older, that they were letting guys leave, and then Correa leaves and Springer leaves, and that hurts them a little bit. But then they just plug in Pena and they plug in all these new pitchers and they have Jordan and they have Tucker and they just can't be stopped. So can they ever be stopped, I guess, or what do they still

do better than other organizations in this respect? They were, like at some point, some of what they were doing better than most other teams, they've come back to the pack just through sheer demand for the types of players that they were targeting. Right. And as people started to, you know, there was like a diffusion of their thought that occurred throughout the rest of baseball. So they were early on at the forefront of vertical movement matters. Let's not shy away. Instead, let's target guys whose fastballs play at the top of the zone.

Instead, let's target guys whose fastballs play at the top of the zone. In the draft, we're going to target pitchers who have a big vertical split between their fastball and their curveball, and we can teach them a slider. If they have proclivity for spin, we can probably coax a good slider out of them too if they already have a good curveball. Who cares about changeups if we have shape demarcation between the slider and the curveball? Especially if the curveball is extremely vertically oriented, it will tend to be more platoon neutral and can kind of act as a change-up. These were things that the Astros were early to the party on, understanding and then targeting in the draft and the way they developed players. And then other teams got hip to that, either through Astros people getting

promoted and hired in other places like David Stearns, or just players leaving and bringing that knowledge with them to other organizations, or just curious orgs backing into what the Astros were doing through pattern recognition on the amateur side, which is basically how I, you know, learned initially, like became sensitive to, oh, the Astros and like some other teams are clearly doing this. And now other teams target guys like that in the draft. And the players who the Astros were getting late on day three of the draft are going in the middle of day two. And the timing of Putilla leaving was like weird. Why is this guy who's a high ranking executive with a team that's still in the playoffs, like leaving for another team right now? And you know, why is it we have

questions about like James Click and Dusty Baker and stuff like, so I don't know what all was going on with that. The timing of his departure was, was strange. And maybe some of it has to do with like, let's get our infrastructure in San Francisco, which by the way, from my perspective is like already very advanced. Right. You know, now you have a group of people who came over from the Dodgers and someone now who's coming from the Astros coming together and bringing their knowledge into the same place.

And I've been told that, you know, Farhan Zaidi is someone who like wants to bring a lot of different perspectives in. There's a lot of cronyism in baseball. You tend to hire people who you know, people who you like, people who you know you have a good working relationship with. So you don't have to deal with the initial friction. And, you know, like I'm getting to know you, getting to know all about the pitchers you like. You don't have to deal with that anymore.

It's a nice onboarding process. But, you know, so there are certain things about the Astros that from their success, they have to pay a price for, and that's like other teams copying what they're doing. And then it is really hard to like find another monolith to touch and accelerate your understanding into a different stratosphere, like really gain a sizable competitive advantage through your understanding of technology and implementing it and stuff like that. That's not a given that you're able to do that. So yeah, like obviously Jeremy Pena is awesome. The fact that he was considered a glove only college shortstop from Maine who they've,

you know, turned into a pull power hitting guy as well. The warts that he has, he has related to slider chase and all that stuff. Whatever, he's still a really good player. But some of it I think is sustainable and the pitching development part of it certainly is. And for sure there are other teams who are just stubborn not have not even caught up to like that era of of understanding still right and so like for sure there's a subset of teams who the astros will just have a player development advantage over you know going forward and some aspects of technology i had someone i had a scout tell me this is a scout who used to work in cleveland and doesn't anymore is now with a different team tell me that like cleveland had like kinna tracks or something like that which is like motion capturing you know you can basically measure the movements of the players on the field

in their big league stadium for like almost the last decade yeah and they are like a half decade even even the teams who like decide tomorrow that they want to put it in their big league stadium and their minor league stadiums, just by virtue of what Cleveland has learned about the usefulness of that technology over the last, you know, better part of a decade, has them like a half decade ahead of anyone who wants to implement this technology tomorrow.

Because you still have to, you can install the technology and then you start to collect the data. And there's a lag between when you implement it and when you can actually like have a firm understanding of what the data means. And then there's an even greater lag between you understanding what the data means and then implementing that in your player acquisition and development. And so like, there's just some teams who are, you know, in the stone age still when it comes to doing anything like this and they're fighting an uphill battle often because like in Oakland, ownership doesn't want to pay for that.

Right. The marginal dollars and like the time between when you are going to see a return on investment of this stuff like is so long that like getting an ownership group like Oakland to buy in is like extremely hard. Right. And it's not like the other teams are going up against or standing still either, right? So the gap just continues to widen. Yes. So yeah, I think that we will see haves and have nots. I think that the spirit is willing in some of these places and not in others. I can't tell you what it's like really nots. I think that the spirit is willing in some of these places and not in others. You know, I can't tell you what it's like really in Colorado. I can't tell you what it's like

really, I imagine in Oakland that they have a hunger for certain things that they just do not have the financial might to implement. And so, yeah, like I think that to some degree, Houston will be locked in. But, you know, I don't know what jordan alvarez's knees are gonna do right you know yeah there are parts of it that are still not you know necessarily going to break in houston's direction on on right and like at some point justin verlander might turn into tom brady where like i think tom brady's problems problems are the offensive line is mostly hurt, right? But also at some point, Father Time is just undefeated. Right. And the Reaper is going to come for Justin Verlander.

And so who knows? All that stuff is still at play as well. But in terms of what's going on deep in the minor league system, it's not like Forrest Whitley became the guy who we thought he was going to be. And like, I would have guessed that Brandon Belak would have broken through by now. So I think like the depth portion of this, where you need like 20 arms to get you through a whole season, 20 viable major league arms so that you're not like running out really terrible guys

to deal with the attrition that occurs over the course of 162 game season that's always going to be there for these guys because they know how to draft and develop pitchers who are good enough to play that role whereas there are clearly other orgs who do not but like having elite guys who consistently get you to the american league championship series that's just going to be tougher to do. I think there's just more variation involved in finding players like that. One of the places that you might see the players who become one of those 20 guys is in the Fall League.

What? So let's talk about Fall Ball. It was a great transition. I had to highlight it rather than just let it sit there on its own, I guess. And I actually want to start with the pitching piece because pitching in the fall league is often less good, let us charitably say, than the hitters that we see there. And I'm curious what your general sense of this year's pitching group is relative to, say, last year's, which was, I think the general impression was sort of down even relative to fall league standards. How does this group look and have there been any standouts to your mind in fall league action so far? Yeah. So there's maybe a way to like

actually go and measure this. We don't have fall league statistics on our site. And so obviously there's all sorts of experimental stuff going on in the fall league that on our site. And so obviously there's all sorts of experimental stuff going on in the fall league that would make doing statistical analysis year over year in the fall league, or even within the same year, difficult to do in a way that you feel good about because we experiment with pitch clock stuff and we experiment with robo strike zones. And this year we've experimented with the challenge system and it's not uniform throughout the whole league that that stuff is going on there are often only individual parks where some of that stuff where the technology is like installed already that

they want to go about doing that so it is like purely subjective for me to sit here and say that like pitching in the fall league this year is fine. It might even be a little bit better than the usual year. And pitching in the Fall League is super variable because the reasons pitchers come to Fall League is often just due to who got hurt, who needs innings because they got hurt during the regular season, who didn't pick up sufficient innings in instructional league because pitching is so controlled. You can basically do the work you want to do in any developmental setting as a pitcher. So even if that's an instructional league ball on your team's complex in the weeks leading up to the fall league schedule, If it's against hitters who are not as developed as your stuff,

as a college pitcher or whatever it is, you can still get your work in at instruction. It's not a big deal. And so guys fall off and don't make it to fall league. There are a whole bunch of other variables that impact who we see pitching-wise at fall league. But this year's group is pretty good. I think folks listening to this

who want to know about guys who might be in the big leagues next year, Abner Uribe with Milwaukee. There are nights when Abner Uribe just looks like he would be pitching in the seventh inning or later for most of these playoff teams. He's like 98 to 102

with a power vertical action slider in the 88 to 92 mile per hour range. He is a weird guy. He is in that James Karinczak manic, weird, on mound, mannerism area, Jonathan Papelbon type of huffing and puffing guy. And then there are some nights where he does not have feel for location at all. He was hurt for most of the year. I saw him at Instructs. I've probably seen him four times here this fall. He was in the Fall League last year. He was terrible. You could see the arm strength component was there, but he's just so young, like basically a college age prospect with two plus plus pitches. He's got to be put on the 40 man this off season or be subject to the rule five draft. So I would just expect him

to be 40 and we will see him in the big leagues at points next year. And whether or not he is just a concrete part of Milwaukee's roster will be dictated by how consistent the strikes are. If they are consistent, he is just a slam dunk high leverage reliever. And for sure, we don't always see that happen for guys. But when we do, it looks like Camillo Doval. It looks like what Brian Abreu looks like right now for Houston, where there's just like an 80 breaking ball after years of this guy like walking a batter and a half per inning. So Abner Uribe is a big name for people to know. Then you have like, I'm just looking at, there's a page on the board, by the way, if folks want to go check that out, that just has like the grades for all these guys. Other pitchers for next year right away.

You know, like the biggest prospect coming into fall league was Quinn Priester with the pirates. He's been a name prospect since high school. His velocity was down in the, uh, the outing. I saw at times like at the futures game and other showcasey events. I've seen this guy sitting like 94 to 98 with a hammer curve ball plus plus or better curveball. He's added a cutter and has a change up. And it's just like the fastball shape is bad. This is like a downhill angle, sinking, tailing fastball guy who even when the velocity has been good, the fastball has been pretty hittable. And the type of fastball he has doesn't necessarily interact well with his curveball because it's such a gigantic rainbow power curveball doesn't really play super great with a sinker but i do think it plays well with like his fastball plane because when this guy's

really burying his curveball it doesn't pop out of his hand. It just has like that same downhill trajectory initially out of hand before it really starts to dive below the zone. But in the zone, it is an identifiable pitch because to land it in there, it's got to like pop out of his hand and just looks different out of hand than anything else so that I can finish in the zone. With the velocity that we've seen so far, and as we're recording here, he is a probable for tonight's games. So I assume that he will be a big get for

folks tonight. To see how his velo is trending over the course of the fall league will be interesting. There was a person who told our own David Lorela who wanted to talk to him on the field for an interview that he was kind of hurt from his last outing and maybe didn't want to speak to the media. That's what Lorela told me. But he's listed as a probable tonight. So we'll see how that's trending. He's another guy where he's more like a 2024 ETA, but it's coming. And then you have a bunch of other interesting guys. JT Ginn, big name coming out of high school. The Dodgers drafted him in the back of the first round. He didn't sign. He went to Mississippi State. He was like part of the COVID class coming out of college where like there were, everyone was given an extra year of eligibility

and suddenly there were not enough scholarships to go around for players who maybe wanted to stick around for an extra year. JT Ginn kind of got caught up in that at Mississippi State. Yeah. He ends up being drafted by the Mets, and he's part of the Bassett trade return. He's another one where, like, it's a sinking fastball. Whether it was the Mets or the A's or both, like, this guy's velocity hasn't really progressed at all since college. He's still sitting in the low 90s.

There's enough sink to keep it off of barrels anyway. And his slider is quite good. Still has like rotation projection. Probably not a huge impact guy. And that is like the general story of most of the Fall League pitching. There are a lot of interesting guys out here. Joey Wentz, who was, what trade was he? He was drafted by the Braves and then traded to the Tigers.

Was he just like Robbie Grossman or something like that? It might be true. Maybe he was before that. But yeah, like it's back of the rotation, you know, like type stuff. The Shane Green trade. Yeah, Shane Green. Shane Green. You know, Colin Palouse with the A's.

And there are a bunch of guys like that who, from an impact standpoint, it's probably medium, but they are out here. And that group is the cream of the crop here. The bigger names who folks might be curious about, who also kind of fit into this area, Kumar Rocker. Okay. So people know who Kumar Rocker is. I don't have to give you the Reader's Digest background. His delivery is totally different than when it was at Vanderbilt. It's a little bit different than when he was pitching an indie ball before the draft. He's throwing hard, 94 to 96, touch a seven, touch an eight. The fastball shape is just fine in barrels, folks. It's just fine in barrels. So even though there's plus VLO, it's not a plus fastball.

And I had him ranked, I don't know, like in the 40s or something on my pre-draft list. And that's where he belonged. The slider is still really good. I feel bad for him. I feel like, you know, he's famous. There is hype. Media and like the Fall League itself are trying to find things to cling to,

to write about, to, you know, promote promote to get people coming to the ballpark and this guy is one of them people need to adjust their expectations for this guy if they have like you know if you think that this guy's gonna look like he did against duke where he's striking out 20 guys and like throwing, you know, no-nos in the College World Series and stuff like that ain't happening. All right. He's probably a seventh or eighth inning reliever just on like the look he has now. I will say that this new delivery has, you know, looks more comfortable and fluid for him, but it has a negative impact on his fastball playability and utility. And so like, I don't want that for him, but he's been famous since he was 14 or 15 years old because he's thrown really hard and just been like the son of a former NFL athlete and looks like he does

physically. And that's part of why he throws so hard, but like, you know, start to adjust your expectations for this guy now he might be in the big leagues very quickly but i seriously doubt that he is like a top of the rotation starter or anything like that yeah and i feel bad that like people are gonna he is gonna be made to feel a certain way because of people's expectations for him when like it's not his fault that they have them it's other people's fault yeah so start to do that now mason miller with the a's i saw him touch 102 like several times the other night he'll probably be in the big leagues next year don't know if his long-term

prognosis is starter or reliever because they're the a's like they have every incentive to try to continue to start him mike vassal with theets looks way better now than he did at the University of Virginia, which is like where pitching prospects go to get worse. He was a first round type of guy coming out of high school in Massachusetts and went to college and was kind of blah. And now again, it's like throwing hard. Fastball shape isn't great but you know the velo component helps augment that to some extent and he's got four other pitches you know he can sink it he kind of can cut it he's got like a hard cutter slider type thing curveball has you know first pitch utility second or third time through the order has changed up pretty good like you know pretty good starting pitching prospect but

oh and evan reifert who came over from Milwaukee to Tampa Bay in the Willie Adamas trade, two plus breaking balls. The whiff rate on his breaking ball must be super duper high, really hides the ball well and long, has that really short kind of Lucas Giolito style arm action. Definitely going to be a guy who throws breaking balls like 60 plus percent of the time and then just wants to finish you with that fastball above the zone no feel for fastball command at all just the fastball is purely a way to get guys to swing and miss at pitches out of the zone he wants to throw strikes one and two with his breaking balls and then finish you with with fastballs

or breaking balls out of the zone and so he might be be a part of, I would guess that he's probably part of the Rays' bullpen next year. And there are just a bunch of guys like that who are in the league, and folks can go to the Fall League section of the board on the site. I will start to update just because these guys are going to be prospects on the list over the winter. I will just start writing blurbs and updating tool grades for these guys here shortly as we get into the final three weeks, the back half of the fall league season. I did want to ask about a hitter, Zach Veen, who we mentioned at some point this season just to confirm that Zach Veen had gotten the vaccine, but also he has stolen 55 bases during the regular season he got promoted to double a he

didn't hit there at all but he has hit very well in the afl and he's stolen 13 more bases and a highlight made the rounds this week because he got to second on a walk in a wild pitch which was fairly impressive so he's obviously speedy. He's 20 years old. Can he hit at all like he's hitting right now? So yeah, I mean, Zach Fien has been, again, like huge prospect since he was a high school underclassman. He has all the components that I was talking about earlier regarding Fernando Tatis. He's six foot four. He was like a buck 70 as a high school kid. You could see how much room he had for strength on his body, which is like, you know, perfect.

There are Greek sculptures that don't look as good as Zach Veen does in his baseball uniform, which is like big, wide, square shoulders, impeccable posture, tapering down to, you know, narrow weight, like built like an NFL wide receiver, right? Be careful fantasy baseball players with these Rockies prospects and their stolen base totals. Okay. The ballparks that the Rockies minor league affiliates are all in are extremely offense friendly. And the philosophical nature of the rockies is all of you should run run all the time and now in the minor leagues in some in some leagues we have

rules in place experimental rules that help aid in stolen base totals and that includes the pitch clock by the way which you can time as a base runner the same way a blitzer in the nfl could time the play clock, where you know a snap's got to come here soon. And so you are timing your rush with the play clock and there's not an offsides penalty in baseball. So that is having an impact on stolen base totals in the minors right now. Okay. And it probably will in the big leagues, but like, go look at Brendan Rodgers stolen base totals in the minor leagues. Go look at Brendan Rodgers' stolen base totals in the minor leagues. Go look at Wes Rodgers' stolen base totals in the minor leagues.

I guess maybe Brendan Rodgers didn't have such good stolen base totals. My point is the Rockies steal a lot of bases in the minors. It doesn't necessarily translate to the big leagues. Zach Fien is quite fast, and he's probably going to scoop up a bunch of those. It wouldn't surprise me if he sold 25 or 30 bases but he's not you know ricky henderson or the guys from you know from the 80s prime time stealing bases what's interesting about veen is like how is this guy going to get to power some of the stuff he's doing offensively is gorgeous and and impressive his ability to like bend at the waist and barrel stuff middle away even stuff that is off the plate and like drive it with power to the opposite field it's sexy and also

i'm not sure he can turn on inner third velocity with lift just yet in fact i think like his swing struggles to produce lift at all and And I bet if you go look at his ground ball rates that it will jive with that. And so I've seen him go through different swing augmentations. There have been times I've seen him on the backfields doing like T work. I've had scouts send me video that seems geared toward increasing how much lift is in his swing what i mentioned earlier with some of these longer levered guys like aaron judge being exceptional at how he's able to tuck his hands in and barrel pitches on the inner third that's not really going on here there's a length here and so i still think

you know zach fien is where he he is on my overall prospect list which is like 30 in that like 30 to 40 range i want to say and last year he was like in that 60 to 75 range where i like to stick these huge variance guys who have risk i wasn't super duper all in on on zach Veen in the way that like the other publications, if I recall correctly, seemed to be. And I stand by that and still think that that's the case, that there is risk here, that there's not like game power and that there's still like hole in the swing that might better be exploited by upper level pitching. But that the tools for this guy to totally explode are absolutely there. It's just that some of the underlying visual stuff, it makes me a little bit apprehensive.

And that's still where I'm at with this guy after having watched him for three weeks here. It's still, yeah, really good prospect. I want to ask if there are other, and I kind of know the answer, but if there are other hitters who have stood out to you, I kind of know the answer, but if there are other hitters who have stood out to you, is there anyone in this group who has meaningfully altered your perception of them as a hitter to the upside? I would say when we had probably had a week and a half or so of Fall League stuff here when I threw like an end of year top 100 update up on the site.

Right. And I specifically avoided Fall League guys in that update because I'm just going to watch them over the next six weeks. Why update it now? I'll just do it. They're like, I'm not going to touch that group. I'm not even going to bother thinking about them. That's all I'm going to be thinking about for the next six weeks. Jackson Merrill with the Padres is an exception where after watching him for about a week, I thought, you know, this is clearly one of the two best guys here, along with Jordan Walker of the Cardinals. Jackson Merrill does everything. Kylie McDaniel and I worked together to like source a load of minor league data when the season ended in you

know earlier this month to try to put together like a complete picture of minor league data that we wanted we thought would be useful to our offseason processes and Jackson Merrill and some of those metrics is like as well-rounded as any hitter in the minor leagues and he also plays shortstop we're talking about like a guy with like a 90% end zone contact rate, whose hard hit rate is already over 40% as like, you know, a teenage shortstop who is pretty likely to stay at shortstop. So Jackson Merrill's one, Jordan Walker, I mentioned, just gigantic power, super short to the baseball for his size without compromising power all fields thump obviously from a prospect standpoint like this guy was playing shortstop in high school he was always going to be too huge to do that long term move to third base you have nolan arenado you have

nolan gorman you have brendan donovan There are other things happening in St. Louis that, you know, have seemingly pushed him to the outfield. He's played center field in the minors this year. He played a bunch of right field. He's got a six arm. So right field, like great. It's a wonderful fit for him. He's totally fine out there, even though he's not, you know, a straight line burner. He doesn't have great range out there, but he's got an absolute hose. You know know it's a prototypical right field fit so so jordan walker and jackson merrill both jordan walker was already absolutely stuffed yeah on the top 100 and so like no change there i don't think but jackson merrill is the other one where you know i just stuffed him

he's like in the top 25 already and might you might deserve to be higher than that when there's an off-season revision here for the Padres list in the top 100 running in the off-season. So those guys look great. Jason Dominguez of the Yankees looks very good. Some of the other guys who are in the top 100 look kind of mad, to be honest with you. Noel V. Marte, who came over from Seattle

in the Luis Castillo trade to the Reds. He just looks okay. I'm having a hard time evaluating his swing path. I've got a bunch of high speed of him. I want to continue to see that. The power is so easy, but I just don't know how effectual his swing path is. And for a 21-year-old, the way his body has developed,

he's got impressive physicality, but I don't think it's a shortstop anymore. The range is just not there. So I'm not sure how that's going to track. Colt Keith with the Tigers can hit. Can't really play defense, but there's enough bat there. Jordan Lawler with the Diamondbacks

who broke his scap and is done now. He was one of my absolute key evaluations. He is, he's unvaccinated. And so when time came for him to go to Vancouver in high a the Diamondbacks were just like I just sent him to double a for a couple weeks while you know the team is in high a and he hit well enough there during that first week they were just like I just leave him in double a and then he was very good there for the rest of the year so he was a key evaluation for me like is this a star level shortstop potentially?

And I had a truncated evaluation window, but during that period, I could tell you, yes, that where he is in the top 100 right now, 42nd overall is probably south of where he'll be when I do the Diamondbacks list and the top 100 and stuff. And then the other guys folks should look for, who are my 2023 ETAs here? It's a lot of pitchers. There's Uribe. Oh, Edouard Julien with the Twins. A big part of macro shift this offseason is,

okay, no more shifting in the big leagues next year. How does that impact the way we're thinking about some of these guys who we were projecting in positions only because they were able to benefit from a shift. And Edouard Julien, who's not a good defensive player, he's long been one of those guys. He played second base at Auburn and just really couldn't play infield defense at all. Can he be a shift-aided second baseman in the big leagues? The answer is probably not, but I really believe that he's going to hit enough to be something.

He's looked quite good out here. Matt Mervis from the Cubs, his numbers are ridiculous. I am still not sure what to think about him. His swing path, I feel like will make him vulnerable to a certain type of fastball. The same way I thought like J.J. Blede with the Marlins was like, you know, not really, not very good. And that's turned out to be true so far, even though he was a top five pick. I still kind of think that Matt Mervis has those not very good, and that's turned out to be true so far, even though he was a top five pick. I still kind of think that Matt Mervis has those swing elements that make me question running fastballs away from him. It's very specific. You'll see on the Cubs list.

I've got to do a video deep dive on where his swings and misses are to confirm that type of stuff. And for sure there are people who I'm missing because the league is as always so deep and wonderful. But that's like the crux of the high profile guys. I just wanted to ask, I should have mentioned this earlier when we were talking about the Yankees, but they're shortstop guys who are not in the AFL, but Volpe, Peraza, who got

to the big leagues. I know a lot of Yankees fans are still eager for them to sign a big shortstop free agent which they didn't do last year seemingly because they had these guys on the way and now that a year has gone by and they're a year closer doesn't seem like they'd be any more inclined to block those players unless they decide to trade them or something but what's the outlook for them in terms of like could you slot them in at some point next season? Or is that too soon? Or what kind of production would you get out of them if you did just turn the position over to one or the other? I have Peraza as an everyday shortstop, not a star. He is the best defender

of the guys who you mentioned. Volpe at second base, more likely to have star level offensive production through how readily he is able to get to his power. His swing is so uphill that even some of the stuff that he swings through at the top of the zone, at other times he can impact and hit out. So I think we're looking at like a 25, 30 homer second baseman from Volpe. They've had him on a throwing program to try to get his arm strength into a spot that's a better fit at shortstop. But, you know, the fact that it's on the fringe while you have a guy in Peraza who is not on the fringe of those things, and also like the way Volpe's body has developed where his lower half has like thickened, it's part of how he's developed all this power, but it has compromised

his range a little bit. And so I just have him at second base now. And then Ozzy Cabrera, you know, we saw them try it again. He's played all over the diamond as a prospect and they tried it again late in the year, including in a playoff game. He does not have the hands to be an infielder. I love Ozzy Cabrera. Honestly, like I had a 45 on him as like a core platoon player definitely a valuable role player for a big league team once Kylie and I sourced some of these power metrics from the minors that guy should have just been updated on the top 100 at some point in the middle of the season you know I just think Ozzie Cabrera is a 50 corner outfielder the fact that he's a switch

hitter with as much power as he has he's just going to play every day in an outfield corner for the Yankees and then did you mention one other guy? Just Peraza and Volpe. So if that's the case, then it doesn't sound like any of those guys is such a clear blue chip shortstop lock that they should necessarily be sitting on their hands when it comes to Correa or whoever is available. I guess. I don't know.

Like, I like that group. I think it would be much more interesting to have that money earmarked for, you know, like, really, I just think that they should make a run at Otani and extend him and make him the guy where they consolidate some of this. You might be able to get the Angels to bite on Gleyber Torres because of how young he is and then just have homegrown middle infielders with, you know, Otani and right field and you have a package that has, you know, Dominguez and Gleyber Torres and a bunch of pitching and which, you know, the Yankees can develop pretty readily. I'd be much more interested in that, but you could also argue you could package some of this young middle infield group

in a deal like that for someone or pitching or whatever it is. There are many different permutations that the Yankees should consider. But I know there are like 26 other orgs who would kill to have an above average homegrown middle infield that they just have sitting there basically ready right now. So we've gone long as it is. I guess we could always talk at greater length about international ball winter leagues later, but do you want to just tease what's coming or what's happening or how people can watch or what you'll be paying attention to? So yeah, the KBO and NPB World Series are both occurring right now. So folks can try to watch those if you can. The Kiwoom Heroes, if you're going to watch the KBO stuff, the Kiwoom Heroes have some good players. Jung-Hoo Lee is the big one for people to focus

on. He's a young outfielder for them. He's in the MVP mix over there. He's been on the international section of the board for a couple of years now as someone who, if he were a domestic prospect, he would have been on the top 100 basically since his age 21 season. He's incredible left-handed hitting outfielder, very well-rounded. So folks should check that out. In NPB, if you have a way of watching that, Munataka Murakami plays for the Oryx Buffaloes. He's a 22-year-old who's going to win the MVP over there. I just think I would take that guy over Gunnar Henderson. I just think the global number one prospect right now is Munataka Murakami with Oryx. He's cut his strikeout rate the last four years, debuted over there in the big league at age 18, you know, clubbing 50 homers, like not a normal cat.

Definitely worth cutting that on if you guys have the means. And we could maybe have another episode soon where I come on and talk about, you know, some of the guys who are going to kick back from Korea and Japan, like Wes Benjamin and, you know, Kou Daisenga and those guys. That stuff's still going on. I think actually one of the other big-name Japanese prospects, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, he left his last start early with cramping, but I'm pretty sure he's on schedule to start Saturday's Nippon Series game. So if folks have a way of watching that, like he's another one where he's really good.

He would just be mid to top of the rotation guy over here right now. And then the Latin American Winter Leagues, there are several. There's Mexican League, there's a Venezuelan League. The one that folks have the easiest access to watching is the Dominican Winter League, which you can watch just through MLB TV.

I think if you download that app on whatever, you got a Fire Stick, you got Apple TV, whatever it is, you download MLB TV, I'm pretty sure you can just watch those games for free. There are only six teams. You're going to recognize a lot of the names on those teams, a bunch of former big leaguers, guys who washed out or who are like fringe big leaguers looking for a job, minor league free agents who are looking to wind up somewhere. The one team folks really want to make sure

that they watch is Lise. Tigres de Lise, they've got a bunch of domestic prospects. Tristan Casas is on that roster, although he had an MRI about a week ago and hasn't played. Eli De La Cruz with the Reds. He'll be on the Reds 40-man here starting this offseason,

so we'll see him in the big leagues soon. Ronnie Mauricio with the Mets. Those two guys are just often Lise's middle infield so far here in the early going. And they are two top 30 prospects on the same middle infield. Like Pavin Smith is on that team. And Emilio and Jorge Bonifacio are both on that team. Nate Pearson is pitching in relief for that team. It looks incredible.

Coming off of mono, his body looks unbelievable. He's clearly worked so hard in a short period of time. As a guy who had mono in college, I couldn't do anything to take care of myself really physically for two months. And so the fact that he's coming off of that and looks the way he does is pretty incredible. And there are other prospects. Estrelles Orientalis is the other one that's prospect heavy. Endy Rodriguez with the Pirates, switch hitting, catching prospect. George Valera and Jose Tena with Cleveland, both 40 man guys for them. They are on Estrella Orientalis. So those are, those are the big two ones. And then the Venezuelan winter league team

that folks should watch is Aguilas, Zulia de Zulia. They tend to have a YouTube stream and Jackson Churrio with, with the Brewers is, is playing on that team this winter. So you can just watch Jackson Churrio hit leadoff for them. And folks can access lineups and box scores through the Fall League box scores. Basically, if you go to the Fall League website and pull up the game day for any one of the Fall League games, in that section of the screen at the top where all the scores would be,

they just have all the Fall League scores and all the Winter Ball scores up there. So you can scroll through those and see who's in those leagues and get real-time box score updates and stuff. For all the issues that Major League Baseball and Minor League Baseball have with getting us stats and having leaderboards and an app on your phone that is usable and stuff, there's some stuff that they don't do well. This off-season Winter scoreboard is is unbelievable.

And thank you to the people who helped put that together and put Dominican games on MLB TV. Right. Well, there's a lot of baseball to look forward to even after Major League Baseball ends. And people can read about that on the site. I'm sure you'll be ramping up the prospect lists pretty soon too. I wish you both the best of luck with that process. And I'm sure we'll have you back to talk about that and also some of the

other prospect stuff we didn't get to today. So thanks as always. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me on and enjoy the World Series guys. Meg, I'm sure I'll see you. Meg's been at some folly games, so you're done with all of your postseason stuff, which I know it's a grind for you.

Look forward to seeing you out there. All right, a few follow-ups for you here. One, I mentioned earlier that Statt about only eight and two-thirds innings pitched on the Astros staff this year from pitchers who had an ERA above the Major League average. Well, frequent StatBlast consultant Ryan Nelson was able to confirm that only one team post-World War II has had fewer innings pitched from pitchers with ERAs worse than the MLB average.

That's the 1979 Orioles, who had zero, zero innings pitched from worse-than-average ERA pitchers. Of course, the 1979 Orioles only had 12 pitchers, period. The 2022 Astros had 22. So I suppose, in a sense, even more impressive that they could find that many more pitchers who were still pretty good. The 79 Orioles, by the way, won 102 games, but lost in a seven-game World Series to the Pirates. Make of that what you will. It really does feel like maybe the key to the series for the phillies is just minimizing the exposure of the bottom half of that pitching staff the astros they can go deep with their pitchers there's not that huge a drop off but the phillies after you get past the top

two or even to some extent top three starters and then your top two or three relievers things do head downhill especially for the lefties so So you may want to have Rob Thompson take a page from the Dave Martinez 2019 playbook and just ride your best pitchers for as high a share of your innings as you can. Joe Sheehan noted that six pitchers accounted for 74% of the Nationals' innings in their seven-game victory over the Astros in 2019. Perhaps the Phillies can pull off something similar and have Wheeler and Nola start as often as possible. And on the subject of the Astros, we were talking about how Pete Petilla was poached by the Giants. Well, there was another exodus, Aza Campo leaving the Marlins to

become the Marlins assistant GM. It's not the first time that he left that organization, but he was their international cross checker now. He signed a lot of their top international pitchers. So when you sign and develop as many good players as the Astros have, people want your people. And then it gets harder to maintain your edge, but they have held it thus far. Also, we were talking about the MLB endorsement deals. I got an email from a company promoting a new report about sponsorships in MLB, Sponsor United, promoting a new report about sponsorships in MLB, Sponsor United, which says that Sponsor United analyzed thousands of brand partnerships across teams and individual players over the last 12 months.

They found that Shohei Otani is the most marketable MLB player in recent history with 15 brand deals in 2022, a new record. Previous record was Aaron Judge with 13 in 2021. Judge not even in the top five this year. Interestingly, the Cincinnati Reds were the most sponsored MLB team with 200 brand deals to the Yankees' 172. Who knew? Maybe Reds fans. MLB player endorsements increased 12% year-over-year,

325 different brands for player endorsements, and MLB teams averaged 108 sponsorships this season, more than any NFL, NBA, NHL, and MLS team. 108 sponsorships. That's a lot, so it doesn't seem to just be our imagination or our biased exposure to baseball. Baseball really is more money-grubbing when it comes to this sort of thing, for better or worse. Also, wanted to correct myself from last time when we were talking about Dave Dombrowski's career. I credited, or I guess debited, Jeffrey Loria with the Marlins fire sale after 97. Of course, that was Wayne Huizenga who was responsible for that one. I was thinking to myself as I was saying it, make sure you say the right bad Marlins owner, and I said

the wrong one anyway and then forgot to go correct myself. Loria had his own teardown of the team several years later. Also, I've got to close with the past blast, but I want to read this email from listener Nicholas who says, amid all the debate about whether baseball is better with or without expanded playoffs, I'd just like to throw this take out there. The expanded playoffs are better because in the long run, the best franchises actually do win, just not always when we expect it. Consider the following an alternate

universe where, beginning in 1995 and excluding 2022 still in progress, each year the teams with the best records in the AL and NL respectively faced each other in the World Series and the team with the better record won. And he went through every year the matchups and the winner. I'll link to it if you're interested in looking at the year-by-year results. But he notes that in this universe, only two World Series, 2013 and 2020, play out exactly the same as in real life. And yet, it all looks eerily familiar. The names are right, but the places are wrong. The Cardinals, Braves, and Giants all win multiple championships, but the dates on the banners are not what we've been used to seeing. The 2008 World Series between the Phillies and Rays happens just two years behind schedule. Even the Angels and Nationals win titles. Only this time,

Harper and Trout both get championship rings earlier in their careers. The overall feeling is like a story where the hero goes back in time to kill Hitler, only to return to the present day and find that someone else took control of the Nazi party in World War II more or less happened anyway, just on slightly different dates and battlefields. And in this case, just with World Series champions. So he notes, when all is tallied, very few teams see more than one title or one pennant difference from what happened in real life. Although, of course, a title can make a big difference.

It's not all perfect. Surely Cleveland fans would prefer the alternate universe to our own. Cleveland gets two titles in this scenario. However, over the 27 years of expanded postseason, only two teams, Cleveland and Seattle, haven't won World Series that they quote-unquote should have, but their loss is the Marlins' gain. Really, the two teams that suffered the most from expanded playoffs are the Yankees and Braves, who had to settle for 7-4 pennants respectively instead of the 9-7 they were supposed to, and I doubt many tears are being shed over this tragedy. I'm not sure there's a question here other than to make the observation

that the baseball universe seems intent on bending toward a predetermined outcome, and if your team invests in good talent and wins lots of games, the payoff will eventually come. The thrill of the postseason comes from not knowing how exactly it will all play out. So chin up, Dodgers fans, 2022 may have been heartbreaking, but two years from now, when your 92-win team takes home a trophy, you'll take solace in knowing it was meant to be. But watch out for the Angels. They may also be due. P.S. Go Phillies. The universe says you're owed one for 2011. Good point. So it looks like the only teams that have an actual World Series that would not have during the spin under this system. The White Sox, the Royals, the

Marlins twice, and the Diamondbacks. And then as noted, Cleveland and Seattle, the only teams that do not have one that would have one in this hypothetical scenario. So yeah, it does more or less match up in the long run. Though as I noted in response, that doesn't mean they will continue to now that the playoffs are even more expanded. And if Rob Medford gets his way expanded further still in the future, maybe we will get a bigger disconnect than there was over this period and more teams robbed or gifted championships, so to speak. But interesting results. Thanks for the research. And that brings us to the Pass Blast. This is episode 1922. This Pass Blast comes from 1922 and from Jacob Pomeranke, Sabre's director of editorial content and chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. He writes, 1922, no gods, no owners.

In 1922, following the U.S. Supreme Court's decision to grant organized baseball an antitrust exemption, a serious attempt was made to form a players union in the offseason. Milwaukee attorney Ray Cannon led the charge and formed the National Baseball Players Association. He quickly made verbal agreements with almost every player in the National League and was starting to work on the AL players too. The owners immediately began attacking the 28-year-old Cannon publicly in an effort to discredit the union and apply pressure on the players not to organize. Here's a typical report from November 1922. Quote, Uncle Charlie Ebbets, owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers, tossed his hoary mane and snapped right back at Ray Cannon, head of the new ballplayers union, who chewed Charlie's leg in a statement yesterday. As leader of the embattled magnets in their fight against

the players union, Ebbets called Cannon's organization a holdup crowd trying to advance salaries. From his tone, it was easy to infer that an attempt to advance salaries corresponds to burglary. Charlie would not say what profit the Dodgers made last season or indicate the percentage of increase in profit lately, even though Cannon had declared that the profits have more than kept pace with the advancing salaries. All I will say is that a club owner is entitled to a profit of from 15 to 20 percent on his investment every year, was all Charlie had to offer in the way of accountancy. That's a pretty good return. The more things change.

Cannon's organization fizzled out less than a year later, but his son, Robert Cannon, later helped revive the Players Union a generation later, serving as the MLB Players Association's legal advisor before Marvin Miller was hired in 1966. Of course, the NLRB was not founded until 1935, so I'm sure that didn't help the efforts back in 22, but appropriate that this would be the pass blast today as the negotiations for the minor league CBA get underway, featuring my recommended Facebook friend Dan

Halem of MLB. And also as there was some news about a lawsuit about the antitrust exemption being dismissed, although apparently that was part of the plan so that they could appeal. Meant to mention, by the way, the fact that I get these very remembersome guys' Facebook friend recommendations leads me to believe, I would imagine regardless, that probably the more noteworthy players, the players with the big names, the players who might be getting bombarded by Facebook requests from strangers, they probably hide their profiles, right? They probably have private profiles so that they don't get recommended to people like me. Maybe that's why I'm not seeing so many Hall of Famers in my recommended friend lists. And perhaps they are the wise ones.

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It replied, not at all. After the fall is over, you'll be on your own. After the fall is over.