Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 1953: The Weakest Links Left

Episode Date: January 10, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a Roger Angell-identified way in which baseball is different from other sports, discuss the Mariners signing AJ Pollock and the Phillies trading for Gregory Soto, and respond to the Dodgers cutting ties with Trevor Bauer, MLB reinstating former Braves GM John Coppolella, and KBO ace An Woo-jin not […]

🎵 Life, time to find. Life like a life you had in mind. Now you're mine. Hello and welcome to episode 1953 of Effectively Wild, a Fangrafts baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Reilly of Fangrafts and I'm joined as always by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm excited because we've got a new entry in the catalog of ways in which baseball is different from all or most other sports. This one comes to us courtesy of the late Roger Angel and also from listener Jimmy and Patreon Ball, where he wrote about the baseball. And Jimmy writes, a possible additional way in which baseball is unique, in the closing paragraphs of On the Ball, Roger Angel notes that baseball is the only team sport in which the scoring is not done with the ball. Yeah, in hockey, which of course doesn't quite have a ball, but we'll put

that aside. In hockey, football, soccer, basketball, or lacrosse, the ball, or its equivalent, actually scores or is responsible for the points that determine the winner. In baseball, the score is determined by the runner, while the ball is a long way off doing something quite different. something quite different. While he does employ the qualifier team sport, Jimmy notes, it's still not common among scoring sports, period. I figure any list is bettered by an addition from Roger Angel. I would agree. He knew that this was going to be catnip for us, that we were going to bite on this bait because it's Angel, but also it's a good point. So I don't't know i'm constantly having to reshuffle my mount rushmore my top five ways in which baseball is unique or at least weird compared to other sports but this is a this is a good one i don't know if this quite cracks the top but the fact that the ball passing something or going into a net or a hoop or whatever, crossing a line. That is not how the actual scoring happens. Obviously, like the ball is involved. You got to hit the ball so you can

run around the bases. But ultimately, it's the runner stepping on home plate that leads to a run directly. So that is weird. Whenever we mention one of these things, we get emails, we welcome emails from people who say, oh, it's not so different from this sport or that sport. So maybe it's not unique, but it certainly is unusual. Yeah. And like there are plenty of examples in like racing based sports where like the person crossing the finish line is what constitutes a win. But I'm trying to think if I'm going to be able to express this clearly. Like if you're a swimmer, Ben, imagine you're a swimmer. I can swim.

Yeah, but like imagine you're like a competitive swimmer. Not competitively, yeah. You know, like, although, you know, Ben, maybe swimming is a thing you should explore as a sport option. Yeah, yeah. You're in the market. It's true. Yeah, I swim recreationally.

Yeah, you could do some recreational swimming. But so anyway, you know, like imagine you're a competitive swimmer, you getting to the wall and touching the wall, like that constitutes winning, but you don't have an implement, right? And even in sports like cycling, you know, if you're, congratulations, you're now a competitive cycler also, you're using an implement to participate in the race, but it's conveying you to the finish line, right? Right. As opposed to like baseball where you are using an implement to hit a ball and then have a person score.

So there's like a degree of separation removed there. I don't know if I'm articulating what I view to be a clear distinction between those things clearly to everyone else. But so, yeah, it is a it is a weird bit of little business there, you know, because normally it's either the thing or the person. And baseball is like a weird twisty melange of those, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Update, by the way, on will Ben play a sport and what sport will it be? the way on will Ben play a sport and what sport will it be? There's been a vacant lot, sort of, not a lot. It's like a building, but there's been a vacant storefront, I guess you would say, on the corner of my block for years now, just a big space. And occasionally there will be some temporary art installation or something will move in there for a little while, but nothing ever

sticks. But my wife and I just noticed this week that it's about to be a pickleball place. Oh, boy. Yeah, right on the corner. And this was a popular recommendation that I should take up pickleball. I played a little in school, so did Jesse, and maybe we'll take this up. I mean, the big impediment to my doing something has been like having to go somewhere right so if it's just on the corner and it also seems to be connected to the gym i belong to in some way like it's branded the same way so i have to ask like is this going to be part of the membership or do i have to pay extra or what but if i only have to walk like half a block yeah if there's not intense competition for space then i might be interested in this This is a major development in my pursuit

of playing a sport sort of competitively, but not too competitively. Well, again, I want to voice the same set of pickleball-based concerns that I had, which is that I think you were right that there is more casual pickleball to be had, but I'm often struck by the intensity with which people talk about pickleball these days so you know just be just be careful ben is all i'm saying just be mindful that you don't get in over your head because it seems like people are getting in over their heads with pickleball of all yeah of all things you know you know who do i feel very unoriginal like if this is the thing that i i suddenly start doing when everyone else in the world suddenly started doing it it's it's kind of like could i have not been more

creative than that but like you know you're it's you're trying to do something that has some amount of like camaraderie and so it's hard to be it's hard to satisfy that urge and be truly original like by definition you need a bunch of other folks to have been like, yeah, pickleball, let's go. So I think it's fine. Yeah. Okay. Well, thank you.

Anyway, exciting developments. I mean, it's moving in like right next door. What can I do? Some people get hurt badly when they play pickleball. Yeah, I know. Or anything. Well, yeah, but yeah. We're going to talk to Dan Szymborski of Fangraphs a little later in the show.

And he's going to join us to talk about some of the areas that still need work on various major league rosters. Because free agency is just about petered out now. It's kind of on its last gasp. All of the major free agents have signed. And so we'll go to Dan, the proprietor of the Zips projection system to kind of go team by team and look at some contenders or hopeful aspiring contenders and some areas where they might still need

to shore up certain parts of their roster. And we'll also get into Shohei Otani and the free agent market in general and also AI and chatbots, et cetera. So we'll bring on Dan shortly. I guess there have been only a couple transactions of note since we last spoke. One involves your Mariners who signed AJ Pollock, right? So AJ Pollock, he had, I think it was a $13 million player option with the White Sox,

which he declined. And he got a $5 million buyout for that. And now he got a one year, what is it? $7 million. Yeah. So he ended up getting $12 instead of the $13 that he could have gotten with the White Sox. For all I know, he didn't really want to stay with the White Sox. I don't know. Maybe he's happy with how that worked out. Or maybe he thought he would have a better market than he ended up having. But this isn't maybe the major marquee Mariners edition that some Mariners fans were hoping for, but it is a free agent signing. Yeah. I mean, that is, listen, Ben, I'm here to say that is technically true you know i spot uh no lies detected yeah i i just find myself like pretty underwhelmed by seattle's offseason generally and i know that that statement gets

some people's raises their hackles gets their backup a bit but i think that this team is fun and exciting and i know that we will talk about them at some point in our conversation with Dan. Spoiler, we've already had a conversation with Dan, so I know what Dan has to say about it. But it felt as if the Mariners had sort of telegraphed that they had one payroll in mind and then they have not done that payroll. And I don't know if it's just because,

you know, I have some amount of sympathy for Jerry because I am also a talker by nature. and as i've mentioned on this podcast several times like once we're done potting i don't remember what i've said like i kind of do i have like a vague idea of it but i get a pretty meaningful brain wipe uh at the end of our recording session such that i worry very much that i said something like remarkably stupid And so I have sympathy for the kind of person who talks a lot, in part because it is his job to talk to the media, and then maybe doesn't always remember the stuff that he says, and so people will be like, but you said this, and you didn't do it.

And I also know that their budget is being set by ownership and not by DePoto. I know that Ryan DeVish has done some reporting on that, that they didn't seem to have much clearance to add payroll. And I know some of our listeners will be like, but hey, Meg, they extended Julio, and they traded for and then extended Luis Castillo. And to that I say, yes, that's nice, but I wanted them to take an improv yes and approach

to the offseason so that they could compete more fully with the Astros. And now I worry that they're going to spend much of the 2023 season fending off the Rangers. And that feels bad, Ben. It doesn't feel dignified. But here we are. So AJ Pollock, he's a big league outfielder.

He hit poorly last year, but has hit better in the somewhat recent past. So I don't know. We'll kind of see. I don't know. If you were to tell me you have the option to add AJ Pollock or to retain Jesse Winker, I might have thought, well, you know, like, well. It feels like a lateral move. Now, Winker and Abraham Toro did net the Mariners' Colton Wong,

and that feels like an upgrade, but they still had work to do. I worry that we will go into spring training and grade them as having an incomplete assignment. That's kind of how I feel about the Mariners, but it could be fine. Their pitching is really good. I feel really good about their pitching. I feel good about Julio. I do think that Colton Wong is an upgrade.

I am pleased and hope that a whole healthy season from Ty France will reveal him to be a lot like the hitter he was at the beginning of the season rather than the one who came back from injury. They got the big dumper, you know. Tay Oscar is a good hitter he was at the beginning of the season rather than the one who came back from injury. They got the big dumper. Tay Oscar is a good hitter. He's not much to write home about from a fielding perspective, but he's there. You're looking at this lineup and you're like,

it's better, but it's still going to feature Jared Kelnick. Hope that bullpen continues to be good. I guess that bullpen now potentially features justin topa yeah it's a fun name to say even if i find him kind of underwhelming as a pitcher so you know like here we are we're we're marinersing we don't know what that means yet we haven't we haven't gotten to know the post uh post-season mariners yet some of them are the same some of them are different i don't know. My big hope, Ben, candidly for Seattle

is that Casey Sadler ends up playing a big role and that that isn't sad. Yeah. Pollock, he hit lefties well at least last year. So there's that. There's that. They got that. They also got Trevor Gutt.

Mm-hmm. All right. It's just like have bigger, I want us to aspire to bigger things you know and the front office is gonna do what it does and they're gonna do largely what ownership allows them to do but like you know amongst the fans like mariners fans let's come together and ask for more let's strive you know we should should strive. So the other move of some note involved the other team that broke an extended playoff drought last year. The Phillies acquired Gregory Soto from the Tigers.

This was a five player deal where the Phillies got Detroit's closer and all star Tigers adjusted all. Tigers had to have an All-Star. Gregory Soto was sometimes that guy. They got Gregory Soto and Cody Clemens. And they gave up three players, Nick Maton, Carshield sponsor Matt Veerling, and catcher Donnie Sands. So I saw mixed reviews and conflicting opinions on this trade. I guess what you can say is that the Phillies project to have a good bullpen. I think they're fourth now in projected bullpen war.

We're going to talk to Dan about how reliable that is. But you have Atlanta at the top, and then you have Cleveland, and then you have the Mets, and then you have the Phillies. and then you have Cleveland and then you have the Mets and then you have the Phillies. And boy, I mean, I guess Soto you could probably say is effectively wild, right? He's certainly wild. Yeah, I don't know how, at times not so effectively. At times, overall fairly effective, maybe not as much as you would hope. But there's a lot of velocity in that bullpen. They have the two hardest throwing lefties, I guess, period now, and another really hard thrower in Serenity Dominguez. And then they added Kimbrell to that mix. So it's a very volatile group.

lights out and other days it might look like no one can find the strike zone but at least there's depth there's redundancy there so if if one of those guys is out of whack at any given time you have a few potential late inning options there so it's just it's very phillies i guess like there's gonna be a lot of chaos to this mix and i know. I mean, they gave up some young-ish, I mean, not really young, but mid-20s guys that people were thinking they might get more out of at some point. And Veerling, I know he plays multiple positions and he, I guess, underperformed his expected stats last year and everything. But it's Dave Domave dobrowski you know he he's uh perennially not the strongest bullpens historically speaking so he's trying to change that just trying to throw another hard throwing late inning reliever at the problem yep i think that um you know one

might argue that perhaps they sold a little low on beerling. One could argue that, that they did that. My biggest takeaway from this trade is that, have you noticed Donnie Sands' roster photo from last year? No. Okay, so not the one that if you, like, search Donnie Sands and then you click into his MILB page, but, like, just Google for me real quick. Google for me, Donnie Sands.

Okay. Are we talking about the first one here? Yeah. Do you see the one with him in a Philly's uniform and the face he's making? Yeah, that's quite an expression. Yes. I'm here to submit that it is a tragedy this man is no longer a Philly because that guy looks like he is about to get in a fight

in a way that feels good for Philly. It feels like if you can have onomatopoeia for a face in a place, that's not what I mean. Not onomatopoeia. Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, he has to face onomatopoeia for Philly. It's tragedy. I mean, I just think that there's a missed opportunity

that has been had here. But yeah, I think it's fine. It's interesting to take a volume approach to volatility, which feels like what Philly has done here. But I kind of like it. The bet seems to be well like a couple of these guys are probably going to be healthy and good at the same time so let's see what we got from them you know it's fine all right so i guess just a few updates with uh players being reinstated or people being reinstated or not reinstated or cut loose or welcomed back. So first of all, I guess we could follow up just briefly maybe on Trevor Bauer. I mentioned at the end of last episode because the news broke shortly before I posted that

one. Yeah, they sure did wait, didn't they? They really did. Yeah. And ultimately, the Dodgers did the thing that I think they should have done, which is designate Trevor Bauer for assignment. They took it up to right before the deadline, apparently, the day of the deadline. And there's been subsequent reporting, conflicting statements. Bauer, of course, claimed that Dodgers executives had told him they wanted him back. Dodgers executives, at least anonymously, have vehemently denied that. But it does seem that there was some sort of meeting the day prior that took place between the Dodgers and Bauer and whether this was just a formality or whether they were actually evaluating Bauer and considering, contemplating bringing him back,

depending on what he said. It's unclear, but it sounds like Ken Rosenthal reported that the Dodgers were worried about losing some competitive advantage if they did cut Bauer loose and someone else picked him up, a rival, and presumably they were perhaps trying to trade him, possibly. Whatever the truth was, it doesn't send the strongest message. If the message was we're not going to welcome someone who has had this kind of behavior and we're not going to tolerate that, I think they fell short of that by taking the maximum amount of time that they had and seemingly exploring their options or at least considering bringing him back or trying to get something from him so i don't know that they covered themselves in glory with the way they handled it but it had the outcome that i think was the one that that had to happen yeah you know i guess that i i shouldn't be totally surprised i mean i think

that the maybe more important to me at this juncture than the precise tiktok of what they consider doing but didn't ultimately do and you know i i think i agree with you that it's probably the correct thing to do to cast a skeptical eye Trevor Bauer's way about how, you know, enthusiastic they were at the idea of bringing him back because of course he's going to say that. But I think while it wouldn't be, I don't think it would be necessarily that reasonable to like look at the Dodgers and be like, how did you not anticipate this like horrifying assault?

There were character red flags associated with this person, and they were public. And this isn't going to be the last time that Los Angeles has to navigate a situation where there's a free agent who, in terms of the contributions on the field, they're enthusiastic about, but in terms of the person and what that person brings to the character of their organization, they might find him wanting. And so I think that just as important or perhaps more important than being like, well, what did you guys really consider doing is what did you learn from this? You know, what, if any effect is this experience going to have on how you think about doing sort of background and due diligence on a free agent?

And what are the lines that you think are important to maintain in terms of your fans and the people who work in your organization either being able to enjoy what your team does as an entertainment product or you know what they might expect of a person who's a co-worker so I think there are still unanswered questions there and they're important ones for Los Angeles to really contemplate. I guess realistically, I don't know how public that contemplation might end up being, but I do think that it would be good for their fans to be able to hear from that front office and have them, you know, if not, you know, spend time being contrite, spend time being self-reflective and tell us about what they learned and what they might do differently in the future. Because they haven't been kind of covered in glory when it comes to Trevor Bauer from the beginning because they chose to sign a guy who I think it was clear to everyone was a malcontent and kind of an asshole, sorry for the swear. So I think there is work to do on a going forward basis that goes far beyond Trevor Bauer. So that's what I have to say about that. Yeah. Even putting aside the decision to sign him before all the subsequent revelations,

just like the time it took to decide to cut ties with him at this point, that was the part that perplexed me just because there was a several month period of knowing that perhaps his suspension might be reduced and that he might be reinstated and that you might have to make a decision at that point. They didn't know exactly when that was coming, but they knew there was a chance that it could come. So there was ample time to talk about what they would do or could do if that happened. And then just two weeks went by after the decision came down. And there was reporting during that time that, oh, yeah, they're going to get rid of him and they're players who aren't supportive of him in the clubhouse and everything. But it still took until the very last second for them to make that decision.

Maybe part of it was just like, let's bury it, Friday news dump. But there were multiple Fridays before that. So I don't know. It's just, it's odd that they dragged it out quite as long as they did at the very end. But it's done. And it doesn't seem like there's a lot of interest from other teams. It would sort of surprise me if another team did pick him up even at the league minimum. It would sort of surprise me if another team did pick him up even at the league minimum.

But we will see once he is officially done and clears waivers and is a free agent again. So then we'll see if he ends up in Korea or Mexico or NPB or who knows where. Perhaps nowhere. Or on YouTube for us to all deal with in that capacity. Yeah, there's that. So another reinstatement is John Cappellella. So MLB has lifted the ban on former Braves general manager John Cappellella. It was a lifetime ban. It turned out to be, I guess, about a five-year ban instead of lifetime. But he has been banned. He's been on the ineligible list after the sanctions that the Braves got, that he got for violating rules regarding international free agency and the amateur draft and all of the ways

that the Braves crossed the line there and kind of cooked the books. And, of course, they had penalties, other penalties. They had players lost, et cetera. Not that it has hurt them competitively, particularly. They've been quite competitive and won a World Series, et cetera. But Capoeira was banned. And I think I don't really have a sense of, you know, I don't know exactly what went on or what the various responsibilities were. I think people were surprised that maybe other members of that front office didn't get a similar penalty, but he's back. It sounds like, you know, whatever

contriteness Trevor Bauer obviously did not exhibit. Capalella has, right? You weren't going to get that out of Bauer, but Capalella has, you know, taken responsibility and said he regrets what he did, etc. I don't know whether that's sufficient or not, but it's a step that obviously Bauer was not willing to do. And whether the Dodgers were hoping that they would get that out of him, however sort of short-sighted or short-lived that would have been. He did not give them that and Kapila did. The statement said that given the more than five years he spent on the ineligible list, the contrition he expressed and the other steps he took in response to this matter, whatever the steps were, and he put out a statement to thanking

various people for making this happen. So he's back again. I don't know that he will be back in a front office, but he can be now if someone were to want to hire him. Yeah, I do find it like kind of striking, I think both in his initial apology and then in the statement that he gave to The Athletic after his reinstatement from the ineligible list, that the players involved in this are strangely absent from both of those apologies in a way that I find really weird. He emphasizes that his primary apology is to his friends and family. And it's like, well, I mean, yeah, but so I don't know. Like, I don't know why. I don't know why we needed this.

Like, I do think I understand that when it comes to employment matters like this, and he's not an employee of the league or one of its teams, obviously. But like when it comes to that kind of stuff, like I do think that having some amount of privacy is reasonable. But also if there are particular things that he did that made the league go from saying this guy should never have a place in baseball again to he is eligible to be employed, even if he isn't currently like I do think laying that stuff out and having people understand what about it, convince them is useful if for no other reason than people might assume kind of fairly that like there isn't a good reason absent that so it's weird i don't know man like we don't need do we need copy do we need copy back yeah i don't know i mean i'm sure a lot of teams were were doing suspect things and maybe still are right so i know that there were people who looked at that and thought like, this guy's getting banned forever. And what about this team or that team? It became some kind of

what about ism that was going on there. And I guess they sort of made him and them an example, and maybe they did it most egregiously. So I don't really have a handle myself on just like how severe what they were doing was compared to what other teams were doing, perhaps still are doing in some cases. I don't have that strong an opinion on this one way or another. I mean, it's an executive. And so it's a lot less visible either way. So I'm not like finally free copy. But I'm not also like, I don't know, like, did he deserve to be banned forever? I mean, I didn't like object to that. It's hard to know because it's all sort of behind the scenes a little bit. And I don't know whether it was like some of it was like obstructing investigations or not, or whether that played some part in it. That was the scuttlebutt at the time, right?

That part of what inspired the league to come down quite so hard on him in particular was that he didn't cooperate in the way that they wanted him to with the investigation. Yeah. So if that's the case, then I don't know what changed since then. Maybe he started to cooperate after the fact. Who knows? Anyway, that happened. It was notable news.

Yeah. I think the point about like, we have this, I think, understandable tendency to try to fit these sorts of things within a broader framework of sanction and punishment. And I get that instinct. And I think it's a reasonable one because we want to try to use it to gauge the seriousness of the underlying conduct in a way that can be difficult when we don't have access to the full investigative report so i don't know relative to what else has gone on in that space which is full of like really yucky stuff affecting very young players where this stacks up relative to the other violations of other teams or other team personnel

and i'm not saying that you're saying like a free copy because you said you're not saying that but you know it is like clearly bad stuff went on yeah so like i think there being serious punishment involved is appropriate particularly given the ages of some of the players involved. But yeah, it's, I think one of the, one of the frustrating things about any league investigation is that we are always, we are very often left wanting more information so that we can sort of take a step back and assess where, where the sport sits in relation to issues like this that are so important and are so important in ways that don't really have anything to do with baseball. And all of that said, seems like this was pretty bad, so having some severe sanctions was appropriate. I don't know, man.

Yeah. There was one other news story related to someone being banned or unbanned from something, and that is maybe the best pitcher in the KBO, who's Anwu Jin of the Kiwom Heroes. He had the lowest ERA in KBO. He led all pitchers with the strikeouts. He was like one shy of the single season record. And he has been disqualified from the WBC team or not invited to be on the WBC team because of past bullying. So this has been a big thing in KBO.

I don't know if this was a storyline on Stove League, the show that we watched and recapped. Everything else was a storyline on that show. But it's interesting because on Woojin, I think he's 23 and he throws very hard, especially for that league. He averages like 95 and can go much higher than that. And he would be one of the best MLB prospects eventually when he became available.

But he has suffered all kinds of consequences for bullying that came to light. So he's been banned from some like Olympics competition in the past and now was left off the 30-man roster for the Korean WBC team. And he was even disqualified from ERA and strikeout titles and awards and that sort of thing. It's become kind of a big thing in the KBO, as I understand it, and not even just in baseball, but other Korean sports too, like this kind of hazing or even more than that, that went on. And so this was reported high school teammates of his, I think that he physically bullied. And so this has kind of followed him around this label and punishments for it. So it's interesting.

There's been pretty severe consequences for that. And there have been other KBO players who have had similar allegations or revelations come out. And it's kind of been a problem there in the past. So they have taken it seriously now. That's really hamstringing yourself in international competition that I'm sure means a lot to that country and its people and its baseball fans. The guy who would probably be the ace on that team not invited to play because of that. So obviously different in every way, but also came to mind while we were talking about these other reports about players being reinstated or shunned or people being welcomed back. It's interesting to see what consequences stick and which don't. Yeah. And, you know, like it's sometimes doing the right thing is inconvenient. So, yeah. And the last thing I want to mention just related to the Braves, Bob Nightingale wrote a column. Bob Nightingale wrote a column, I know, but he wrote a column for USA Today. And it was ostensibly about Carlos Correa and the Met saga with him and how all this stuff has come out about Correa. And then he used that as a way to point out that nothing ever comes out about the Braves, right?

The current Braves front office and the way that they operate. And he wrote that he said, in Atlanta, winners of five consecutive NL East titles and a 2021 World Series ring, there are no leaks, barely any rumors. They are the KGB of baseball. If they are close to making a trade, it's radio silence until players are informed. If they sign a player, you'll read the details when they reveal it on their official website. They're not intentionally trying to ruin the fun for reporters, but they've got a business to run Games to Win and aren't concerned one bit about their name barely being mentioned during the winter. And it runs through the history of some of their surprise moves just being announced when they were done. Most recently, Sean Murphy and that trade and then extension.

And then there's a quote from Braves GM Alex Anthopoulos. I know it can be frustrating for fans. They want to know who we're talking to, who we're trying to get. But in today's day and age, you have leaks. And when you have distractions and interference, it makes it more complicated. If things get out and they're not finalized, then you're bombarded with text messages, calls and emails. I just don't see any upside. It just doesn't help anybody. There's no benefit. It's not conducive to doing your job. It just makes it so much easier to work when there are no leaks and having all those distractions. And he went on to say, we've had free agent agreements or trades that hit a snag from a

medical standpoint where things were restructured or fell apart, but nobody knew any of it. Players went on to sign with other teams or trades went on with other trade partners. The team wasn't hurt by it. The players weren't hurt by it. Things can happen. I'm a huge sports fan myself. I'm a big Atlanta Hawks and Falcons fan. I love reading all the rumors and gossip. As a kid growing up in Montreal, I'd go to the Corner Star on Sunday and get Peter Gammons' notes column in the Boston Globe. I loved it. As a sports fan, it's great. It just doesn't help the Braves. So it is kind of interesting. I mean, first of all, to think about how they manage this, right? Is it not actually like the KGV, hopefully, where people are worried about being sent to the gulag or something if they speak. But I wonder how you do that.

Like, how do you get all your front office folks from buying in to like loose lips, sink ships and actually keeping quiet? And I wonder what other competitive advantages there are, because sometimes it doesn't really matter if someone leaks something and something is reported before the team reports it. I mean, that's kind of typical. It can be messy sometimes, certainly with the Correa saga and the Giants and the way that worked out. I mean, I don't know whether they would prefer that no one knew they had ever been interested or had a deal with him or whether it's better to know that at least they wanted one now that we know it's not just them raising flags on the physical. But sometimes it can be an issue if something leaks before a player is informed of it. And then it can be emotional and you can feel betrayed or blindsided or something. There are probably other competitive advantages of some sort. Not always, but is this indicative of like that front office kind of running a tight ship and signing everyone to extensions? Is that related to the fact that they never talk about anything or does it go hand in hand or is it unrelated?

I don't know, but I'm curious about how they manage it, I guess, when it seems like no one else can. Yeah, I would imagine that like they have to be pretty, I don't know, on the one hand, you'd say they have to be pretty totalitarian among their own staff because you'd think that somebody would call somebody, but the fact that it doesn't even really leak on the agent side is the part

that I find the most surprising, right? Because, you know, you could say, we're taking a super hard line. If we figure out who leaked, you're fired and do it. And then people will be like, we're not going to leak. And I'm not saying that would be a proportional response to leaking trade stuff, but you could imagine that. But it's surprising that they're able to keep the level of quiet they are on the agent side,

if nothing else. But then again, like since so many of these ones that they end up announcing are like, we've signed this guy to a multi-year extension, maybe the agents are like, yeah, I'm happy to be quiet because, you know, Sean Murphy just got big money or something. So even if it's slightly below market money, so, you know, there might be something there, but I like from a player perspective, I do like that we don't get leaks out of that front office. Like we all remember Wilmer Flores, you know, it sucks when you think you're being traded and then you have a big emotional reaction to that potentially.

And you're thinking about like, where am I going to live? And to inflict that kind of disorientation or potential disorientation and emotional response on someone and then be like, never mind, they didn't call us back. Right. It's like, that kind of sucks. Yeah.. They didn't call us back. Right. Yeah. That kind of sucks. Yeah. Players, they know what they're getting into. Yeah.

But still, like, even if they understand that it's just part of the business and part of this profession, I'm sure there's still some lingering hurt feelings or bitterness, you know, whether something happens or not. So if you can minimize that and just make everyone feel really wanted, is that going to help you sign them to an extension because they don't know that at some point you tried to trade them? I don't know, but I guess it can't hurt. But yeah, you're right. Nightingale leads this column by talking about how leaky agents are and how it's common practice for agents to reveal where their client is headed and what he'll earn before he takes a physical, let alone the deal becomes official. You see it all the time with agents revealing player signings, agents rushing to inform reporters that their client has just been traded, and agents giving out access to the union website for contract details. Hundreds of minor league signings the clubs have yet to announce in arbitration case settlements. Of course, I'm sure a lot of them are leaking to Bob Nightingale himself, but he doesn't explain how it is that if agents are often the source, how Atlanta manages to clamp down on that avenue too. that they're worried that they'll be blackballed or something or that the Braves won't deal with them if they leak.

And so they're kind of cowed into quiet too. I don't know, but it's fascinating. Yeah, they are a chatty bunch, Ben. They are agents and scouts, chatty. Yeah. Oh, yeah. All right. Well, we can end with a pass blast before we bring Dan on. So this is episode 1953.

And this pass blast consequently comes from 1953 and from Jacob Pomeranke, Sabre's Director of Editorial Content and Chair of the Black Sox Scandal Research Committee. And Jacob writes, 1953, Otto Graham and Tommy Pham. Otto Graham, and Tommy Pham. You'll be forgiven for not remembering when Mickey Mantle's tenure as commissioner came under fire or when Duke Snyder finally dethroned Branch Rickey as champion of the Dodgers Fantasy Football League. That only happened in Ford Frick's imagination back in 1953. Baseball's commissioner surprised a lot of people before opening day in 1953 when he issued a sternly worded edict warning players from getting involved in high-stakes wagers with each other off the field. Fantasy football wasn't the player's game of choice back then, and the closest comparison to Tommy Pham in those days was hot-headed Billy

Martin. Syndicated columnist Robert Ruark was one of several writers who mocked Frick's warning to the players in this piece from May 14, 1953. Quote, I reckon the nation is safe for another year, since friend Ford Frick, the Galahad of baseball, has issued a stern injunction against the game of hearts at high fee, and he has warned in a voice of doom that gambling is wicked for ballplayers. Commissioner Frick has declared himself against games of chance for high stakes, and especially against consorting with shabby characters such as bookies. The deplorable state of Monte Carlo Daring Do, which aroused Mr. Frick's official concern, comes as a result of pregnant rumor that the young farmhands are outdistancing themselves in clubhouse games of Parcheesi or whatever they play these days. But if I am Mr. Frick, I will not worry too much about excessive gambling among his flock because unless baseball players have changed since my day, they experience acute agony at parting with a dime. It used to be a nickel, but now inflation's

here. Jacob concludes, Frick didn't call out any specific incidents or name any players who were throwing too much money around the pool rooms or poker tables, so his warning came and went without too much fuss in 1953. Who knows what he would have thought about today's big-money clubhouse bets between players, some of which spill over into public knowledge, at least when Tommy Pham gets involved. We do not know if Billy Martin ever took a swing at an opposing player for drafting 49ers quarterback Y.A. Tittle over the Browns' Otto Graham with the number one pick. However, we do know Martin once punched out a marshmallow salesman and lost his job as the Yankees' manager. That story was not a figment of anyone's imagination. So I guess this is

another. The more things change, the more they stay the same, except these days everyone is gambling and betting and sometimes hawking things and serving as spokespeople. And that is mostly allowed to this point. And the commissioner looks the other way or actually looks right at it and says, more. So I guess things actually have changed in this case. This is the same in the sense that players and people in general want to wager and want to bet on stuff, but the relationship to it has changed, at least in an official capacity.

Did I say that Pete Rose opened sports betting in Ohio? Yes, he placed the first legal bet. He bet on the Reds to win the World Series. Ha ha. Alright, we will be right back with Dan Simporski. All I know is every time That your lips have parted Right behind my back

That's how rumors get started That's how rumors get started All right, we are back, and we are joined now by Dan Zaborski, senior writer for Fangraphs, creator of the Zips projection system, coiner of the term zombie runner, which I think will be his greatest legacy. Certainly it is on this show, but for this segment, we'll be talking a lot about Zips. Dan, welcome back.

Thanks for having me. I have mixed feelings about zombie runner because I've kind of coined something for something I hate and wish to not be a thing. Yeah. Yeah. Well, still, it's better to have a term for it that is not misleading, I think, and is not already a term for something else that is completely different. So if we have to have it, then I'm glad that we have something appropriate to call it. And we have you to thank for that. So sorry to distract you from your creating gronks with AI on Twitter, which is immensely disturbing. But we are actually going to talk about baseball instead of AI gronk, I guess. So we figured that the offseason is obviously not over. We've got plenty more offseason to go, but most of the offseason transaction activity has been completed to

the point that your colleague Ben Clemens is running retrospectives on the top 50 free agents because almost all of them have signed. There aren't a lot of impact players left, which doesn't mean that we could not see some signings. And of course, there's Carlos Correa out there still, which I guess is one exception. But because we can almost kind of close the book on free agency, we figured we would sort of survey the league with you and look at some weak points that there's still time to address in theory, but particularly on contending teams, some positions that are shaping up to not be very productive and where teams might still want to try to tinker before opening day, if possible. So we haven't seen the numbers.

You're looking at the numbers, the Zips goldmine. So I guess we will kind of go where you want to go, but you're in the middle of your Zips team-by-team projections. So you've kind of gotten a handle on teams and positions, and your Shohei Otani projection is out there, and it is spectacular and robust. Were you expecting differently, though? No, I wasn't. I think it would be a big story if it says Zips projects Otani to have 1.4 war. Yeah. Well, I've seen some people, because they don't combine the projections, they'll show

the top projections and there won't be Otani on the list because they will not have added up his projections as a pitcher and as a DH. And if you do that, then you have him at eight war, which is how far above the next best player is he at this point because that's that's like trout territory have you had another player other than trout in that rarefied air well i don't even have trout in that rarefied air right now no you used to yeah i may used to but you know zips zips doesn't know everything about a player's playing time for obvious reasons because it's a computer and i'm not putting my thumb on the scale but it is aware generally speaking of trout's age the time he's missed the injuries so trout doesn't really get trout projections anymore

but otani does have the best projection i don't have any pictures with a five war by themselves this year it looks like no hitter is going to end up with a projection of seven war going into the season. Because the two guys last year, Juan Soto and Fernando Tatis Jr., there are reasons to like them a little less than at this point last year. Even Soto, who, I mean, he didn't have a great year by any stretch of the imagination. So Otani is kind of projected to be the MVP. And I kind of hope that whatever happens, it's clear-cut enough so we don't have to have the same arguments this year because those judge versus Otani war MVP melees were extremely exhausting. Yeah. Some people look at that as a feature, I guess, that we actually have something to debate.

And it's not just, oh, this guy has a way higher war. So he's the MVP. So in this case, they were both so great. I mean, it was only tiresome for me when people were trying to tear down the other one to boost the other up. And I was just kind of like, they were both amazing. I don't even care who wins the award because they just both had unbelievable seasons. So let's celebrate both of them. And something you just said sparked something in me. Are you at all surprised that pitchers, individual pitchers still command the contracts that they do, given that you said you don't have any individual starter, even with a five-war projection? I mean, obviously, starters, as they pitch fewer innings, maybe they're more effective in some cases on a per-inning basis.

But if you can't count on someone for a lot of innings, I always just wonder, is this going to depress salaries? Because I think Rob Mainz has found as much the fact that you still have to have as many innings pitched, but you distribute them over a greater number of pitchers. pitch, but you distribute them over a greater number of pitchers. And so any individual pitcher is just not going to give you as much as a top position player, right? Even in this day and age where we have more rest for position players too. So I keep kind of waiting for starting pitcher salaries to decline accordingly, but it doesn't really seem that they have. It's like the bar, the limbo bar for innings pitch keeps going down and down, but it doesn't really seem that they have. It's like the bar, the limbo bar for innings pitch keeps going down and down, but the top pitchers still cash in. A lot of pitchers who were sort of mid-rotation guys did really well this winter. What's kind of curious is,

as risky as pictures are and the concerns about playing time, is if you look at some of the, if you named contracts that did not work out well for the team, you actually name a lot more hitters than pitchers. I think to an extent, the worry about pitchers is largely priced in when you look at the salaries. Like Verlander's various contracts,

those pretty much all worked out. King Felix, his contract worked out fine for the mariners sure of course as well yeah it feels like these things are priced in better and priced in earlier i think because you know there's kind of a cultural already teams discounting pictures to a degree because you had a lot of when free agency was first the thing you had quite a few pretty awful contracts for teams for pictures and free agency, like Wayne Garland's 10-year contract and things like that. I think that, generally speaking, when I look at picture projections versus hitter projections, the picture projections are actually coming a bit closer this offseason to the Zips projections. It's like the hitters are the ones who are exceeding it which is a curious thing yeah i guess because in a way pictures don't

really age pictures break until you get towards like upper 30s right i guess there is steven strasburg would be kind of the yeah well steven yeah We hope you pitch again. But yeah. Right. But all you have to do is look at the Zips projections for say like Verlander and Scherzer and see like, oh, provided that there's some expectation of health, as long as their peripherals are good, it doesn't mean they can't have an almost five, even though not quite five war protection. Yeah. And I guess the pitchers aren't the ones getting the 11, 12-year contracts, right? So that's part of it, too. You can kind of count on Verlander and Scherzer. Well, even despite their advanced age and injury histories, it's not a bad bet for a few years or a couple of years in Verlander's case. Well, that was kind of a tangent, just occurred to me. thing that occurred to me is that you have kind of tracked for some years whether teams were actually paying a premium for stars, right, for being able to concentrate a lot of war in one roster spot. I mean, I guess Otani would be the best example of that in that you're getting almost

multiple players for one roster spot. But in the past, it was always a running source of consternation, right? Like, why aren't teams paying more to concentrate those wins in that one roster spot? It's maybe more valuable to have one four-win player than two two-win players, right? Because you only have to use one roster spot. But I think you've observed in recent years that that was not the case anymore, that teams had sort of wised up to that. So I guess that's probably even more the case now. I don't know if you've looked at that specifically. Yeah, I call it the Oakland A's paradox. Only I do it because the A's in their bad years,

they can find, you know, 25 or 26 one win players. But the problem with having 26 one win players is all of a sudden now you're a 73-win team. Right. And if you find 100 one-win players, yeah, you have good depth, but it's not like you can utilize it on the team in any meaningful way. So I think that to an extent we always kind of expected wins to be a little less linear in this sense. But you can read back a lot of Fangraph's articles. Craig had one, Ben. Going back to the start of it, generally speaking, it's still found out as at least sort of linear,

just based on history. I think you're kind of running up into teams' ability to or willingness to absorb risk, to putting $60 million in a single single player in a season even if there's an argument that it seems logical now in recent years i'm not getting that it's like a curve or anything yet but i've moved to a stepwise function simply because it does the evidence is strongly showing that teams are kind of discounting like win number one so right right now, Zips projects that first win is less valuable and the rest of the wins is more valuable. So it's not really a pretty curve or anything. It's more like a floor going onto an on-ramp. Okay. It's like a cigarette or something. Okay. Well, you mentioned the Oakland A's. I guess that's a good way to segue to weak positions,

although they might have so many that we might not even talk about them. And we're talking mostly, I guess, about contending teams because you assume that non-contending teams are going to have some weak spots. Yeah, like we said, OK, what are the weaknesses of the Reds? Oh, the players. Right. So where do you want to start? I don't know if you want to go position by position or team by team or just sorted by the least war or whatever. You're the one with the spreadsheet. I think the most interesting place to talk about where there's still holes are the teams that are on the cusp of contention, where they could be contenders, but they might not be. Because those are the teams that most – because the you know, the Mets at this point, getting Carlos Correa is great,

but as weird as it is, they don't really need Carlos Correa to be serious contenders. And I'm sure someday we'll figure out what's wrong with Carlos Correa, if it's the ankle or something else, or if he ends up with a one-year, eight-year million dollar contract from the Pirates,

which would be an odd turn of events. But teams like the Angels and the Orioles, these teams do have scenarios in which they are contenders. It was something I warned about, especially with the Angels, when I ran Zips, is please don't just add the war up. Don't. I mean, Carson warned you about karate chops for years for a reason. It wasn't just the typical threat of violence you get when reading a statistical baseball piece. You know how those pieces always come with threats of violence. Yeah.

I mean, you have to. It makes dealing with criticism a lot easier when you can say, well, you know what? I could tell you, but something bad might happen. Hint, hint. a lot easier when you can say well you know what i could tell you but you know something bad might happen it didn't uh but the angels their depth is not great and they're a team that obviously they're uh i talked with meg about this when we were doing the article that they are there is ownership concerns because that's kind of in flux right but they also seem to be a team that they sign their stars really well generally and are willing to spend. But they do leave positions undone, I would say. I don't think the Angels infield is great. I would have loved that the Orioles got a real starting pitcher. There's a little bit of risk and bias involved because I'm supposed to hate every team equally. But I'm from

Baltimore, so I do like the Oriioles being a good team and i so wanted them to have carlos rodan he would have been such a nice fit and they could have signed half of the free agents available and still had a payroll below the white socks the orioles that is a weakness that i'm really disappointed to see is going to be a weakness going into the season short of a major trade which i'm not sure is really going to happen at this point. I don't want to take us too far afield, but that sort of raises a question for me that maybe we want to circle back to later. But, you know, when you think about the Orioles, I don't disagree with you. I wish that they had sort of fortified what is a fun and exciting but still incomplete team.

They also strike me as a team that has at least one position in starting pitching where they might outperform just based on the fact that, like, I think that Grayson Rodriguez's projection is pretty impressive given that we don't know exactly when he's going to be coming up and that he hasn't seen big league time yet. But are there other clubs like that that strike you as, you know, if you had been able to put your thumb on the scale and sort of told Zips, no, no, this guy might, you know, you might be discounting this one too much because he's a rookie and hasn't debuted yet. Are there other teams that strike you as having that potential to outperform?

And I guess, are the Orioles even among those teams? I think that the Guardians starting pitching is probably better than Zip says. I mean, it likes Tristan McKenzie, and I liked him last year. I put him in the breakouts list. We won't talk about some of the players that were on that breakouts list. Like a certain ex-Mariner picture on the Blue Jays, which did not work out. That's one of the hardest things about running projections, is you do have a tendency to want to put your thumb on the scale because you look at it and say oh that's that's not right that looks

really really weird and i think one of them actually is on the orioles generally speaking i think the pitching projections probably look about right but zips really like dean kramer like really really like dean kramer to the point where people were like asking about like why Zips likes it so much more than Steamer. And I'm always like, well, you know, I don't run Steamer, so that's really hard for me to ask because that's a very common question. Why does Zips like this player more than Steamer? I can tell you why Zips likes the player, but I mean, Jared and them aren't saying, hey, Dan, you want to look at all the code? Like, sure. I mean, Jared and them aren't saying, hey, Dan, you want to look at all the code?

Like, sure. And so I try not to get too much into who I like and who I don't. Because last year, I thought that the Tigers were better than Zips was saying. Zips was saying, you know, low eight, low 70s for the Tigers. And I thought, hey, you know, they have some interesting pitching. They might get enough offense to make an approach at 500. And Zips totally showed me because the Tigers were not a pretty team at all. Right. Yeah.

And so what does the, I guess, do you have a projection for the Orioles starting rotation or the weakest spots on the Angels? Are these like replacement level or just not far above replacement level? Well, generally speaking, the starting pitching for the Orioles and the projections is extremely weak. Nobody outside of Kramer really has like a three-win projection

or is really even a threat to. Some people talk about their various Kyles that they have in the organization. Gibson, Bradish, there's another. Brnovich, is he still on the Orioles? I'm trying to remember. It's always, i hate rosters for fringe players this time of year because you're never quite sure who's where yet they just really needed another arm at the top of that rotation and when you look at players like wells and bruce zimmerman i mean they don't get really

great projections and i don't think steamer disagrees all that much with it uh grayson rodriguez did get course, an excellent projection. So I'm hoping he works out. And John Means is going to return at some point. So there's some upside there. But the Orioles could have used a picture. I do think the Angels, I really think they should have been in the Carlos Correa sweepstakes. That was a team that it makes sense for them to be

as long as you're going to have Otani and Trout and hopefully healthy Anthony Rendon. That's just kind of disappointing. And they're not really a marginal contender. They're a really good team. But I would have liked the Braves to pick up another corner outfield because left fielder is kind of, you know, Eddie Rosario, Marcelo Zuna.

The rest of the team is pretty bananas. But left just doesn't seem that exciting for the Braves. Well, it's not too late to get in on the Carlos Correa sweepstakes, potentially. So there's still time. What about teams like the Rangers or the White Sox? Like the Rangers have upgraded a lot, the White Sox not so much, but maybe have some stronger projections i mean they're sort of in a similar spot on the depth charts even though they've kind of taken uh different trajectories to this point oh the rangers it's funny you look at the rangers infield and you're like wow this is this is a really good team

uh nathaniel lowe or lao i always forget which one can't pronounce his last name uh marcus corey singer i hated that when when they were all with the rays yeah like okay nathaniel low brandon lau now josh is he a lau or a low or is he like louis or luve or i i hope he just says one of them but low should be the default assumption it's really brandon lau is the one just injecting yeah he's coming out of the works we never knew there should be so we were very fortunate that Eric Gagne and Greg Gagne didn't play at the same time. Yeah.

You look at their infield and you think, well, that's a really good team. You look at their outfield and like, oh, that team's going to do well in the Pacific Coast League. I mean, Zips might be underrating Adonis Garcia. I mean, he does have better defensive numbers than Zips is projecting, but he's also not a young player.

He has kind of one really good skill offensively. I mean, it's a good skill to have in power, but Zips isn't excited about him. Left field, it was some Josh Smith, Bubba Thompson. It's never a good sign when you're looking at a team's depth chart and you're wondering if the player on the depth chart is that same guy you remember. Like Brad Miller, is that the second baseman a while ago,

or is there just some other guy named Brad Miller? It is the second baseman one. But I really think that they are kind of one of those marginal contenders because they're strong in a lot of places. They're pitching, of course, with a healthy Jacob deGrom looks terrific. All of a sudden you have deGrom, Gray, Perez, Evaldi, Heaney. I mean, that's a pretty good rotation. I mean, Dane Dunning is kind of a fallback position. Jacob DeRizzi is kind of a plan B. And that's a good rotation if things work out. But I would have liked to see that team go after, say, Brandon Nimmo. He would

have been a lot of fun to have in Texas because you don't necessarily have to play him in center field. They can play Tavares if he works out. They don't need Nimmo there. But I think that remains a need for the Rangers. And I'm not sure if they're really gonna be able to address that before the season. Among some of the other teams that either were in the playoffs last year or sort of flirted with contention right to the end, are there others that strike you as having like obvious spots of vulnerability? I'm always more worried about the Astros catcher situation than the Astros are. I mean, they love Martin Maldonado and he works really well with pictures and all that good stuff. But then you look at him batting and you think,

oh, I wish they had a better catcher than that. I don't think they agree with that by any stretch of the imagination. I'd also have liked the Padres to be a little more aggressive at DH. I mean, Matt Carpenter was a lot of fun last year, but I'm not sure that the Padres necessarily want to roll the dice with that. And I think you necessarily don't want to just commit to Tatis as the DH. I think there's a lot of sorting out there. I think they could have used another outfielder better than Adam Engel on the roster, but it's hard to be too greedy with the Padres because it's not like they haven't done

a lot in the last couple of years. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. One thing that stood out to me, just looking at some projections, like a lot of teams have weak DH projections, but maybe that's just a factor of just sort of the way that teams use the DH spot these days. It's just not a lot of dedicated DHs, everyday DHs. It's just sort of a rotating catch-all kind of position where people get partial days off,

or you just cycle people through there with a few exceptions, like just looking at the DH projections. I mean, it's also just, it's hard to accumulate a lot of war just as a DH with the positional penalty, unless you're raking like Jordan Alvarez or something. So that's probably part of it too. And maybe it's still just kind of a hangover effect of pitchers hitting and NL teams still kind of figuring out how a universal DH world works. But there are a lot of teams where you kind of look like, that's a DH? that's your designated hitter. Is that guy going to hit? But I guess it's usually not just one guy. Yeah. The problem you run into is you don't really get a lot of DH prospects because most prospects you want to be playing a position

because that's going to be where they're most valuable. And as you say, it is kind of new and NL teams are still kind of integrating their rosters into it. I think there's an argument to be made that because of the sudden change, that first base DH types might be slightly underrated kind of in a real-world sense right now from the positional adjustments. I mean, we could do probably a whole episode on positional adjustments. I actually use a lot less of a penalty. Well, not a lot less, but I use less of a penalty for DH and zips than the generalized one. I mean, there have been a lot of fights on Twitter and sabermetric circles between like Tom Tango and Jeff Zimmerman gotten it last year and and just generally people fighting about dh penalties it's a very nerdy world when that's what they fight it's like

you go on twitter and most people are fighting about politics and you look at baseball world how dare you give the dh a larger penalty than first baseman in positional adjustments i do think that the evidence at least as far as i have been able to put together strongly suggests that sitting on the bench and coming in and hitting is kind of difficult yeah i know david ortiz talked about that a few times that it was a hard thing that is it took a while to get used to as a young player sitting there and just coming into the game even if you're not a good defensive player and i think some of that we see also in pinch hitting because everybody hits pretty awfully as a pinch hitter. The pinch hitter penalty is massive.

But if we're rating pinch hitters, I don't think we would necessarily say, well, they have no defensive value. But no, they have the value of sitting on their butt for eight innings. So, I mean, there are a lot of things we could talk about with DHs. I do think that it's almost an opportunity for teams because if you really do have someone who's good as a dh and you're not having to use it kind of the rest day

half spot like the baseball equivalent of like casual friday right that that you can get a pretty good gain from having a a terrific hitter at dh who's comfortable with the spot and rakes wanted to ask you about the dodgers because of they're either now neck and neck with the padres or a bit behind the padres projections wise and they usually have so much depth and redundancy and also star power i don't know if they have positions now where they project to be below average but there's got to be somewhere they're quite close at least right so yeah below average for the digers i mean you looked at the at the zips projections especially the little graphic that that we put together and you say oh there are some places that don't look

great center field zips using the death part playing time zipsips has Trace Thompson and James Outman as a below-average combination centered by a hair, and Outman and Miguel Vargas as 1.2 or in left field. And, you know, most teams do have some kind of hole, but it's almost unusual for the Dodgers to enter a season with this kind of hole. I wrote more about it, but the thing about the Dodgers this year and that outfield, outside of Mookie Betts, of course, is it kind of feels like their plan B out return, which I don't think anyone was really hopeful for, and I don't think the Dodgers were, has kind of put them in an odd position

since they want to reboot their penalties, and they literally have no room. I think it's, what, less than a million? Have either of you checked that recently? It's really like, oh, we can't even get a utility infielder without giving up a contract so the dodgers i mean they're still a very good team and you'd be crazy to say oh this team's gonna go 85 to 77 but i think they're weaker now projected than in any recent offseason i can remember

wanted to ask about the mariners another west coast team, because they're another team that's, they got over the hump. So you can't say they're on the cusp, but they're not necessarily assured of being back in the playoffs. I don't think any Mariners fan takes making the playoffs for granted after one year. And they just signed AJ Pollock, but they have not been super active in free agency. So what is shaping up as their potential weak point or their weak points or places where perhaps they could have spent? I'm not super crazy about their DH position. I'm not really excited about Pollock. And it does seem to be like one of the teams that it's just going to be the part time old outfielder resting up catchers and outfielders. So I'm not I'm crazed by the DH position.

I don't think it's a particular highlight of the team. I think one of the things that makes the Mariners difficult to upgrade is they're really solid kind of everywhere. Right. And you look at like really the entire infield. To upgrade any of them, you kind of need like a four or five-win player, and there are only a few of them available in free agency and it it takes a lot you have to trade a lot of value to pick up those types in the trade market so i don't think that they're like that much better

than last year but i think they were also just because of the contours of the roster we're a really hard team to upgrade this this winter yeah i meant to ask when you mentioned center field for the Dodgers as a potential weak point. I guess that's a potential weak point for a lot of teams because we're kind of at a low ebb for center field offense. We've mentioned this before. I think Rob Means just wrote about this at BP. Center fielders had a 688 OPS collectively in 2022, which was bad even by 2022 offensive standards. And you still have some stars there. I mean, that was with Aaron Judge playing a good deal center. And of course, with Julio, speaking of the Mariners and Michael Harris and Mike Trout, I don't know how much

longer Mike Trout will be a regular center fielder, but he's still out there. But take away those guys. And I think it's like a 662 OPS Rob noted, which would be worse than even catchers hit collectively. So I don't know if it means anything. It might just be one of those cyclical things where some positions are strong sometimes and some positions are weak sometimes, but just there's some star power at those positions, but only a very few. And beyond that, there's just, it's not a lot. like you could probably point to a lot of teams and say centerfield looks a little iffy, at least offensively, like the Astros, too, for that matter. I mean, they just won a World Series having iffy offense and production in general from centerfield. So it didn't stop them. But but that is kind of a feature of a lot of teams. It feels like it changed fairly quickly. I would go back a few years and it seemed there were a few years, if I'm not mistaken, where center fielders actually out hit corner outfielders as a group.

Now, I could be lying about that, but that's just my memory is faulty as I grow older and I decline into senescence. But it feels like it changed fairly quickly. And I guess the loss of Bellinger seems to be a big part of that because you look at the 2019 NL MVP race and you look at where they are now because no one's going to even try to play Christian Jelic in center anymore. Bellinger's basically a glove defensive center fielder.

That's his value now. I don't think anyone kind of expected that a few years ago. Oh, he's going to be poor man's Kevin Kiermaier in a few years. Yeah. I was just also looking because we talked about the Angels and on the depth charts, at least, this probably doesn't quite mirror your projections exactly, but the Angels also have the worst bullpen projection and they had one of the worst bullpens in 2022. Now, I don't put that much stock into bullpen projections.

I mean, there's like less than a four-win range between the best projected bullpen and the worst projected bullpen. And ultimately, who knows how that will all shake out. But there are some teams like the Angels and the diamondbacks are down at the bottom there and those are two teams that are maybe in sort of similar positions hoping to sneakily contend for wild cards and and the cubs not far above them so you have the angels the diamondbacks you have then the tigers cubs pirates rockies a's like bad teams but but also the Angels, the Diamondbacks, the Rangers are down there. So I don't know how seriously you take a bullpen projection or how much you actually like. Bullpens are hard because you also don't necessarily know what the mix is going to come out as.

Yeah. Like if you look at our depth charts, you see like, you know, we have like 15 guys for each team and it's always hard to tell because they're so volatile. 15 guys for each team, and it's always hard to tell because they're so volatile. I mean, there's generally broad agreement between Steamer and Zips in projections because they are going to tend to come together because both of these projection systems have been around for a long time. So there's a lot of disagreement between Steamer and Zips on a few things, and Zips actually kind of likes a little bit the Angels bullpen, but it does not see it as a team strength.

And I think that generally speaking, the Angels probably had bigger needs than the bullpen, even if it wasn't great last year. I mean, you look at Steber, he has pretty much just Estevez and Quijada above replacement level, while Zips is more optimistic about it, even though it does have them kind of in the middle of the pack. But it likes pitch pictures like Aaron Loop. So you're going to have some disagreement there, and it's probably not going to be the thing that separates the good teams from the bad teams, generally speaking, even though bullpens are the things that fans seem to think are the most important. Because there's five teams whose fans think their bullpen is the greatest ever, and 25 teams who think that their team would be in the playoffs if not for their bullpen. Yeah. As we've talked about, having a bad bullpen can really make

for a bad spectator experience. Especially if you're a bad team and you just can never hold a lead and you feel like you can never make a comeback because your bullpen's going to cough up runs or any game that you lose because your bullpen blew it. That's going to happen sometimes inevitably, but it hurts worse. It stings more, I think. So when you have a team that is good in every other respect, but you constantly feel like your bullpen is sabotaging you, it stinks. So you can't always predict which teams those will be, of course, and then you get october and suddenly bullpens that you thought were unremarkable will be nails for a month so who knows but it is very frustrating

when you're in the midst of uh your bullpen just killing you day after day and uh some of the uh the basic closer stats that still exist tend to kind of push people that direction because they see blown saves and they say well if we turn some of these 25 blown saves into wins we we have a great team and it's it's it's it's hard to really tell people what's wrong with that in like five words they need to explain oh well you know that you know that you can blow a save without having a realistic way of getting a save because blown holds are saves too. And lots of blown saves turn into wins and you can blow more than one save in a game. And it's sometimes hard to get that across.

I want to ask about the Brewers because they actually have one of the highest team war projections on the fan graphs depth charts which which might sort of surprise people i think uh the thing about them i mean they're not one of the highest but they're kind of middle of the pack like they're right around the phillies or the rangers you know teams that have uh made more of a stir this offseason but the thing with the brewers and i guess it's kind of always the thing with the Brewers, is that they don't have star power, right? I mean, they keep hoping that Christian Jelic will be a star again. But in the absence of that, all of their projected positions and positional totals, it's one something, two something, maybe three something war. And I guess that kind of goes along with what you were saying about

teams that don't have necessarily a huge gaping hole like the Mariners. And so you'd like a little bit more production out of some of those positions, but it's also tougher to target one where you could make a massive upgrade. So the Brewers, they've done a good job, I think historically, of just accumulating depth and not having a whole lot of sub-replacement level positions, but just not a lot at the top end. I mean, beyond the rotation, I guess, which is perennially a strength for them. Yeah. It's something I did talk about when I ran the brewers projections. They're solid everywhere, but especially on the hitting side, they're not really exciting anywhere. They could have, you know, a top, they could be fifth or

sixth in the league and run scored with Luis Urias as their best offensive player, maybe. Maybe that's an exaggeration, but it's not really that far off. The pitching is pretty exciting. I'm not really sure if they're gonna be able to keep it together much longer simply because of free agency and their probable lack of interest in spending $200 million to keep Corbin Burns or Brandon Woodruff. It's one of those things where you say, I would have liked them to do more, but realistically, it probably wasn't going to happen because that is a team that could have gone after Nimmo. I mean, Aaron Judge in Milwaukee would have been a lot of fun. I mean, Aaron Judge in Milwaukee would have been a lot of fun. Yeah.

Yep. I don't know if any Brewers fans actually allowed themselves to contemplate that possibility. No, I mean, I've been trying to contemplate and make happen Carlos Correa to the Orioles. No, it's not going to happen. Because I just sit here and I think of Gunnar Henderson at second maybe and Correa at short and Mullins in center and Adley Rutschman behind the plate. And I'm just daydreaming and just thinking to myself, oh, that would be special and I could die happy. Were there any teams, I know that we still have a good number of them to do, but of those

that have run, were any who's either collective strength or weakness kind of surprised you the diamondbacks zips loves the diamondbacks young pitching basically one of the hardest things about minor leaguers right now is that there's such a difference in the offense between the minors and the majors right now. And I think a lot of fans might not have noticed it, but while offense disappeared in the majors, it's exploded in recent years in the minors. The Pacific Coast League was up near six runs a game, and that was their biggest since, I think, like 81 or 82

or somewhere around there when it was a notorious league for offense. So the Diamondbacks have had a lot of pitching prospects that have survived in that kind of offensive environment. And since there's such a difference between the Pacific Coast League and the International League and the majors in offense, you get kind of a weird thing where a lot of times Zips at least has the translation for a picture as a lower ERA than they had in the minors, which doesn't happen that often. You mostly saw that like when the Brewers had a AAA team in Colorado Springs and there was kind of that difference between the mile high air and Milwaukee. So Zips likes their starting pitching a lot and sees them kind of as a

marginal contender right now, a team that is somewhere like in that 82 to 85 win range. One other team I wanted to ask about is the Phillies, who added Trey Turner this offseason, and so they obviously have a great projection there. But in the absence of Bryce Harper for probably at least half the season and in the outfield for who knows how long, maybe most of the season, how does the outfield look? I mean, what does Zips think about Brendan Marsh, who people hold out hope for that we will see more from him? from him but you have that and then you're still projecting you know castellanos and schwerber out there playing the corners as long as harper is unable to play outfield so what does that do to the overall productivity of that outfield well zips is not on team brandon marsh at all and was not a fan of the brandon marsh trade zip sees that sees that swap of Marsh for Logan Ohapi, who I love saying. It makes me think of a pale ale.

I think, Ohapi, pale ale, IPA. I think that's an outfit with some problems. Luckily, I think Kyle Schwerber and Nick Castellanos are poor enough defensive players that you're not going to get in a weird situation where they say, hey, do you think one of them can play center field no it would be amusing maybe not for philly's fans not for philly's fans but as kind of like for the science and the comedy

i would have loved to see at some point the schwimmer castellanos harper outfield just to see what happens right yeah oh and what about white socks second base oh i i don't know if i want to talk about that that's that's i the white socks are a very frustrating team in a lot of ways yeah because there's there's a lot to like about them as the rebuild and that it is not a lot to like about how they've been run kind of in like the year and a half or two years that they've been serious contenders. I would have trouble telling, you know, Remy Gonzalez, Yolbert Sanchez, Lennon Sosa, Larry Garcia, who's still around for some reason.

I'd have trouble telling them all apart as players. It's like the most disappointing chimera in like Greek mythology. Right. Oh, and also the other Sox, the red ones, they seem to have some weak spots too. We've talked about their perplexing roster and general strategy, but there

seem to be some positions there. I guess some outfield positions, DH elsewhere, where it's not looking super strong, and for that matter, starting pitching, right? Yeah. You look at their starting pitch and you say, okay, if everyone's healthy, maybe.

But right now we have in their projected rotation, Chris Sale, who does not have a great injury history recently. James Paxton, who has an injury history so significant that you're always kind of wondering, oh, right, he's still in the league, isn't he? Which isn't a great thing when you're pending someone in for your third or fourth starter. I do like Kluber and Nick Pavetta will eat innings, but it's not an exciting rotation. I am still shocked that they actually got Devers for a long-term deal. I did not think that they were going to do that in the end. So last thing, maybe only tangentially related to baseball, since you do mess around a lot on Twitter with various AIs and just in general, but also with chatbots and with AI art, et cetera.

Some things, you know, you've had your neural networks and you have it generate various amusing things. But I wonder because, you know, we've gone through our phase where we had our little effectively wild scripts from chat GPT and sort of ponder whether this is just fun or whether this is a sign of the end times. And I wonder where you stand on that. I feel fortunate from a baseball perspective because I was just reading Joe Posnanski. He's a big chess fan, and he was writing about how chess bots have basically solved chess and we're a long way from like Garry Kasparov versus Deep Blue. Like it's not close anymore, you know. And so now any bot, any sophisticated bot can beat the best players in the world probably, let alone normal players.

And you almost feel like chess has been optimized, sort of. Like there's always a best move you could make. There's always a better move you could have made. You don't feel like you're discovering anything new necessarily. It's like it's sort of a solved science to some extent, which doesn't mean it can't still be fun, but still. And, you know, you've played all kinds of other games like that, whether it's Hearthstone or, you know, other games,

maybe that strategy games that can be optimized or can be solved in a way that baseball can't quite, right? We figured out some things about baseball, but it can't be solved in quite the same way. And it's not players against a computer, it's players against other humans, at least for now. So I wonder whether you fear for our livelihoods in our future or whether you're not that concerned about the apocalyptic dystopian scenarios and you're just enjoying yourself. Oh, I I'm enjoying myself. I kind of figure that the robots take over. I'll kind of be the ally and kind of turn in the turn in the the straggling humans for a preferred place as a, you know, the robot human Civil War collaborator. Oh, no, Dan. I'm sorry.

I'm like the blue pill guy. I'm Joe Pantoliano in The Matrix. I want the steak. I don't care if it's real. That's terrible. But I enjoy AI stuff a lot. I probably do too much and I stand there wearing like, oh, I hope I need to kind of tell Meg that I'm actually running Zips right now and I'm not just doing this all day. Right. I mean, how far are we from an AI just developing its own projection system and we can just ask ChatGPT what the weakest projected positions on the rosters are,

and they'll put you out of business. I mean, zips kind of is, yeah. I mean, there's actually predictive algorithms in the same kind of concept as it. I've actually asked, you know,

chat GPT for zips projections for fun and ask how zips works. And I enjoy the answers I get from zips or from, from chat GPT, or I like to use and for kit which is another implementation i've been doing that for a couple years i kind of have some of that hipster like disdain i'm like for the for the johnny come newlies for ai it's like you know i was i was posting weird stuff from ai like like three years ago i mean i've i've posted like cocktails that I generated for each Fangraph staff. I once generated a signature weapon for each member of the Fangraph staff, which I kind of should try to find while I was doing this.

I didn't know that would come up because I actually have a huge giant folder of neural network stuff. People are going to need them if you're here to turn turncoat. People are going to need them if you're here to turn turncoat. Yeah. Well, you could tell the robot overlords that you were on board early before everyone else got on board. So you're not afraid, or at least you're not afraid because you're going to be on the robot side. I have it open now, and I found the Meg Rowley cocktail that I generated. Oh, no.

Terrible. It's one and a half ounces of Cayman Island rum. Half an ounce of Becerro Cachaça. I could never pronounce that. Half an ounce of cherry hearing and orange twist. Add all ingredients in the shaker. Shake and strain into highball. Delicious. I'm not a big rum gal,

so I don't know. Is it the sweetness? Yeah. Yeah. Tends to be. And some of that is likely what it is often mixed with. But yeah, it tends to be a little sweet for me.

So the AI has got to do some work. Yeah, I did find the signature weapons for Fangraphstaff. I didn't give you a weapon, though, Ben. Oh, well, I'm not on the staff. Dave Appelman gets a poison-tipped umbrella. That seems appropriate. Meg gets a steel butterfly dagger. Okay.

Jay gets a cast iron skillet i can see that happening ben clemens gets i don't know how this works a manual typewriter with machete oh wow some of them are a little weird eric yeah that's a frisbee with attached taser wire i don't know what that means and yikes jason martinez gets a power drill with spike wrapped in dynamite creative well i've wondered just because we've run through scripts that some of our listeners have generated of effectively wild conversations and they don't sound like us but they sound vaguely like things that we could talk about yeah and i've just kind of been curious about what it's even drawing from for a podcast right

like we don't have transcripts available online that it could comb through. I guess we have podcast descriptions. It can extrapolate very well though. A wiki. Yeah. Because they literally went through, you know, billions of webpages and stuff.

And I've done some things by request for people because I've, through experience, I've gotten kind of the hang of manipulating GPT-3 to give me things I want. Like a while ago, I gave Mike Farron and Jim Duquette on MLB Radio Network a list of possible episode titles from Neural Network, like Mike Farron and Jim Duquette start their own paranormal investigation TV show, or Mike Farron and Jim Duquette study Wade Boggs' battle socks. I didn't know he had battle socks, but the neural network thinks he did.

Well, I hope you'll put in a word for us when you're, you know, the lackey to the robot overseers. Please just, you know, say something nice just so they don't come down on us too hard. But you can follow Dan's ongoing Zips Projection team-by-team series. And of course, as the season gets closer, I'm sure you will regenerate projections for teams and players. And we're always paying close attention to those. And I guess the offseason,

at least the offseason activity, ended earlier than usual. Do you have a theory about that, by the way, before we let you go? Just why it happened so quickly? Is it just that there was a lot of money in the market this year? It was a semi-normal off-season again, post-peak pandemic, post-lockout, et cetera? Or do you think that this will be closer to the new

normal than the pre-pandemic off-seasons when everything was extremely slow and we lamented the death of free agency? I don't want to call this a trend. I'm sure it helped that there's a little more money in simply because probably, you know, leftover spending from last year that never really came together and the little boost from the MLBAM sale of the rest of their share in that. I do think that it's generally because there was more money available. There was a moving up of some of these of the threshold for luxury tax. So teams felt a little more comfortable with doing that. I hope that it's more like this in the future off seasons, but I don't really want to get my hopes up yet because the luxury tax threshold does not move up all that

quickly past the initial bump up. Okay. Well, you can read Dan at Fangrass and you can find him and his gronk eating laundry pods, AI generated images on Twitter at D Zimborski, which of course is just like it sounds. S Z Y M B O R S K I. Thanks, Dan. Always a pleasure. Thanks for having me on, guys.

All right. Before we finish up here, I want to send our best wishes to White Sox reliever Liam Hendricks, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and started treatment this week. Everyone loves Liam Hendricks. Why wouldn't you? Not only is he one of the, oh, handful of best relievers in baseball, but he's extremely Australian. He can be quite profane.

He does not warn Dylan before he does a swear. He's also thoughtful and a good quote and philanthropic and a popular teammate. So there's been an outpouring of affection and well wishes for Hendrix. We hope that we see him playing baseball again sometime soon because that would mean he's healthy. After we recorded and spoke to Dan about the Angels, they signed Brett Phillips. I don't know how much better that makes them or how much it addresses their replacement level problems, but I'm imagining Brett Phillips palling around with Shohei Otani, and I'm enjoying that prospect already. Shohei pulling a prank and making Brett Phillips do his honking goose laugh. Sign me up. Also, speaking of Matt Vierling and Carshield, there was a Reddit post on the Baseball subreddit on Monday where someone made an all-Carshield team, the best players at each position who have appeared in a regional Carshield commercial.

Matt Vierling did not crack the lineup. I don't know if this is because the user wasn't aware that Matt Vierling is a Carshield sponsor or because he just didn't merit a starting spot, but I will link to that on the show page for anyone who's interested. A few other follow-ups. Got a bunch of responses to our pedantic conversation last time about why we use dashes instead of slashes to represent a hitter's hits and at-bats. One Patreon supporter, Tex, proposed that it could be that the numbers are usually smaller and might get confused with normal fractions in print, as in one-third or one-quarter or two-fifths, fractions in print, as in one-third or one-quarter or two-fifths, whereas football or basketball shooting or passing attempts regularly go into the double digits, and the slash can help save space. We also got an email from another listener named Ben who said, I think most modern mathematicians wouldn't agree that batting lines are fractions. Of course, there's a relationship, the batting

average calculation more or less, but it's not identical. An easy way to see the why is to think about one for one, three for three, and six for six as fractions. They're equal, but it's not identical. An easy way to see the why is to think about one for one, three for three, and six for six as fractions. They're equal, but they're very different batting lines. Another way to say the same thing is that if someone tells you Shohei Otani batted 500 for the day, that's not enough to know whether he went one for two or two for four. There's a whole branch of mathematics category theory devoted to being pedantic about this sort of thing. I don't know how many listeners will find this as fascinating as I do, but hopefully it at least confuses the issue enough to let us all relax about dashes slash slashes, not dashes dash slashes. The only sure way to fight pedantry

is with even more pedantry. Thank you, Ben. We also discussed the best ball to substitute for a baseball, and I think the most popular listener suggestion was a lacrosse ball. Listener Alex in Cleveland said, a lacrosse ball would be the most fun, similar in size, so gloves wouldn't have to change. I've hit lacrosse balls with a baseball bat. They travel for a mile. Not exaggerating, I've hit a lacrosse ball coming in at batting practice speed that has traveled 600 or 700 feet, and I was an average high school player. It was like giving 1995 Frank Thomas a drop five aluminum bat. There could be no H-back gloves as it would blow through the webbing with 160

miles per hour exit velocity. This should be a part of All-Star Weekend. That is the problem, one of the problems with other balls. Some of them would be very hard and dangerous to field. On the episode, we settled on tennis balls and tennis rackets so that fielders would maybe have rackets or rackets and gloves. And this actually has been done. There is tennis baseball. There are some videos online of tennis baseball. It looks fun. I will link to an example if you're interested in checking it out. We also answered a question about minor leaguers requesting a trade and how bad you could be in a short span of games, Miguel Andujar came up because he managed to be a winner more below replacement level in a mere 12 games. And

listener Eric wrote in to say, I'm probably not the first to alert you to this, but Miguel Andujar did indeed request a trade after being demoted to the minors in 2022. Still think the Yankees should have gotten Cabrian Hayes or Brian Reynolds from the Pirates for him, but what can you do? As we noted, if you're in the minors, you don't have a ton of leverage in your trade demand. And Duhar evidently had been seeking a trade since the end of the 2021 season, and he didn't get traded, but he did get selected off waivers by the Pirates late in September and got to play in nine games for them. So he got out eventually. Finally, I did a stat blast about the late Nate Colbert and his ownership of the all-time Padres home run record.

I mentioned that he had equaled Stan Musial's record for five homers in a doubleheader. But listener Jake pointed out that Colbert was actually there for Musial's five homer feat. He was a St. Louis native and was originally signed by the Cardinals and rooted for the Cardinals. So he saw Musial hit those five homers before years later doing the same himself. Thank you for all the responses to what we discussed. It's nice to know that people are paying attention and care enough to write in and let us know about little things like this that help enhance our discussion or fill us in on things that we missed. You can also support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. The following five listeners have already signed up

and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, get themselves access to some perks, and help us stay ad-free. Jeremy Erdley, Russell Spalding, Evan Watson, Sam Perrin, and Hans Randall. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to

the Effectively Wild Patreon Discord group for supporters only. Close to 950 members now. It's a great growing community. Be a part of it. You also get access to monthly bonus episodes of the show, or at least a show, hosted by me and Meg. And you can get discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships and playoff live streams

and much more. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can contact me and Meg through the Patreon site. If not, you can still email us at podcast at fangraphs.com. And of course, you can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can also rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter at EWpod.

You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Thanks to Dylan Higgins for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. I got too far from my race and I forgot where I come from And the line between right and wrong was so fine. Well, I thought that Howie loved me, but she beat me like a drum.

My day will come if it takes a lifetime. Yeah, go ahead. No, you go ahead. No, you go.