Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2080: The Most Interesting Offseason Storylines

Episode Date: November 4, 2023

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about which MLB franchise will win its first championship next, the postseason “second-chance issue,” Clayton Kershaw’s shoulder surgery and other Dodgers decisions, a change in Astros primary catchers, the Braves re-signing Joe Jiménez, and Nelson Cruz’s career and retirement, then (1:05:20) discuss the stories they’re most interested in following […]

Effectively Wild is here for you, about all the weird stuff that players do. Authentically strange and objectively styled, let's play ball. It's Effectively Wild. It's Effectively Wild. It's Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2080, like the scouting scale of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of Fangraphs.

Hello, where are you on the scouting scale today? Oh, gosh. Can I answer that question with any degree of confidence? I'm still quite tired. Cats, man. Sometimes the cats, they get you in the night. But I'm well other than being tired. So, I'm like, well, let's put me at, I'm like a 55 right now. Let's put me at a 55. Well, let's put me at, I'm like a 55 right now. Let's put me at a 55. Okay. Not bad. Above average. That's all we need here.

So I just went to Fangraphs.com, a great website about baseball that I browse from time to time. And I saw a headline on a new post by one Chris Gilligan. And it says, who will be next to win their first, as in their first championship for the franchise, now that the Rangers have finally gotten on the board. And I thought, what a perfect banter prompt for the beginning of this podcast. I have not yet read the article because I don't want to spoil myself on what Chris concluded. I don't know if you edited this one. I didn't. So I have not yet had a chance either.

All right. Yeah. So we can each answer this and maybe speculate about what Chris said. And he seems like a reasonable sort. So I have no reason to think that he would come to a different conclusion than we would. But we've got five options. We have your Seattle Mariners, we have the Milwaukee Brewers, we have the Tampa Bay Rays, we have the San Diego Padres, and we have the Colorado Rockies. So, of those five, who's most likely to win the first?

Should we go in ascending order of likelihood? Because the least likely I think is probably also the least controversial. We're both picking the Rock group, they will post predictions that we made. It's often not me making the prediction because I try not to, but sometimes I can't help it. Sometimes we do drafts of, say, which teams are going to win a World Series in the next five years or something. And it's never spot on. We never nailed it. And so I'm envisioning now hundreds of episodes, hence someone saying, I was just listening back to episode 2080. And they both wrote off the Rockies and said, there's no way they're going to be first. And then what do you know? Rockies 2024 or 2025 world champions or something like that. So it probably it wouldn't be our our worst prediction. But yeah, I don't see any reason not to say Rockies.

to be done i think organizationally with colorado and they'll just forever have to overcome the fact that they play baseball on the moon you know and so it would take some real doing even if you were to transplant and we've talked about this as a topic before like even if you were to just wholesale lift a front office um that we think of as being sort of further along in its use of analytics than the Rockies are, you still have the natural barrier of the, you know, the Rockies themselves, as it were. Yeah. The other thing is that the Rockies are the only one of these teams that is currently bad, right? All of these others were winning teams, right? The Padres just barely crossed that threshold of winning team and had the underlying numbers of a much better team. And then the other three were either playoff teams or the closest call to a playoff team. So that's why the Rockies are in a tier of their own. That's one of the reasons why the Rockies are clearly not the answer. But then how do we pick among these other four? It does get harder.

Yeah, it does. Because not exactly super teams among them, but all kind of around the same sort of neighborhood-ish in terms of 2023 results? Yeah. And I think that if you had asked me about this six months ago, well, my answer would have been the Padres with a bullet, right? Because of where they were in terms of their roster and also because of what I perceived to be a real willingness and capacity on the part of that ownership group to just spend as much money as they needed to to try to keep up with some of the bigger market clubs. And I think we're in a spot now where we know that they had to borrow money to cover some of their operating expenses.

We don't really know where the RSN piece of it fits into that picture. That wasn't a big part of Ken and Evan's reporting on that question. But I think that their desire and willingness to spend is probably unchanged. But I think that we kind of have to see where the dust settles in terms of San Diego's capacity to do that to the same degree. And I don't mean that in a woe is me way. They just have this very strange situation that developed quite suddenly with their regional sports network. And MLB has said they're going to backstop

all of those teams and they have backstopped all of those teams and they recovered some money from Valley. But it is a more fluid situation than I think we would have assumed it to be even a couple of months ago, right? So that puts them in a different spot than I would have had them potentially. I don't know. It's really, that's quite tricky. I think maybe I would put the

Brewers as above the Rockies, certainly, but the fourth team in that tier, if only because they are also seemingly embarking on a period of transition within the club, not just because of whatever is going to end up going on with Council and with Stearns' departure, but as we talked about, there's work to be done on this roster. And even in their rotation, which has previously been such a strength for them,

they have this weird combination of injury and then looming free agency for some of their biggest names. And they have also constrained themselves from a budget perspective. So that combination maybe puts them fourth for me. But then picking them, you know, betwixt and between the Mariners, the Padres, and the Rays is tricky because, well, I don't need to say more about the Mariners than I've already said a lot. I did a really good job of sticking to my word and not talking about them after Jerry had his little gaffe. Well, they weren't in the playoffs, which helped.

Right, but, you know, don't issue a challenge, Ben. I can be self-aware on occasion. It does happen. Tampa, the thing that we would say in their favor, right, is that they have this very good demonstrated ability to sort of maximize limited resources through scouting, through development, through the machinations of their front office. They also are budget constrained.

They have to grapple with the reality of the fact that they are in all likelihood a Wander Franco-less organization going forward. And they play in an incredibly competitive division. And so when you think about how are they going to be able to stack up against a Toronto, a Baltimore, at some point, you imagine that the Yankees and the Red Sox will be good again. They just have a very hard sort of road to hoe in terms of securing the division title and potentially a first round bye, which is meaningful in the playoffs. And, you know, they've had like these early exits from postseason play lately that I think are in some respects due to the vagaries of the postseason, but in

other respects, like kind of illuminate something about the way that they have constructed their rosters and they have their own injury concerns. So there's like a lot of push and pull there. Do you have Rays thoughts before I? Yeah, I would say that the Rays would be at the top of my board probably just because they're perennially contending. And that's what this comes down to. I'm not predicting who's going to have the greatest postseason success. So it's really just about qualifying for the playoffs. And the Rays do that pretty consistently.

It's a tough division or is usually a pretty tough division. But they are among the best teams in it. So, yeah, I don't see how you could not. And they have young players in a farm system. Even if they are without Wander Franco, they've just still got a ton of talent. So it gets tougher after that. I think the Rays would be clear number one for me.

Rockies would be clear last. And then the other three kind of in a jumble. Yeah. The Brewers have been the most consistent playoff team of the three over the past several seasons, but I don't know if you can count on that continuing. And then yeah, Padres also have prominent free agents and potentially a Soto trade, etc. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm going to go Rays, Mariners. Wow. The Mariners haven't even made a World Series, so that would be a nice hurdle for them to clear.

They're the one team that hasn't even won a pennant. So, I'm going to be optimistic and say, say Rays, Mariners. Man, I want to say Padres, but I don't know. Padres, Brewers, Rockies, I guess. Padres and Brewers are pretty much a toss up for me. I love your Mariners optimism, Ben. What a treat that is. I find myself in a spot where I don't quite know what to think of them right now, honestly. I wonder a lot about like Jerry DePoto's capacity for shame. You know, I've been thinking about that specific question a lot in the last 24 hours, because like there's a version of the aftermath of the foot in mouth is to comment that a front office executive has made in quite a while where they look around and go, we gotta,

we gotta do something about this. We just gotta do something. And then there's how these things normally go. So, like, I've been just thinking about, like, shame and our capacity to feel it and how good or bad it might be. So, that's what I'll say about the Mariners. I don't know, man. It's going to be fascinating to watch. Does another team in your division winning literally the World Series when you could have been the division winner instead of the team they defeated on their way there had a couple of things gone differently? Does that motivate you? Or do you look at that and say, oh, this is also random. We're just going to run it back. You know, there's like there are a couple of different ways that that can go. So those are some thoughts that I have about those teams. I guess I'd pick Tampa, but I do think that like it's not a given, but none of these are given. So what do you what do you do except say this is historically in the last little bit been the best of these clubs.

Well, as Chris points out in his piece, all four of the non-Rockies teams had better odds of winning one this year than the Rangers did, according to Fangraph's preseason. So anything is possible. And as recently as late September, the Rays, Brewers, and Mariners all had better odds of winning the World Series than the Rangers did. So. Oh, boy. Oh, boy. I wonder if that group will look back on the last week of the season and think about it often in the years to come. I do wonder that. Yeah. It's weird to know what like wakes people up at three in the morning when you don't know them well, you know, that feels intimate. During the postseason, Tori Lovello talked about how some of the umpiring calls and results of things kind of woke him up at like three in the morning. And I was like, it's weird to know that, Tori.

You know, that's, I don't, we're not, you know, we don't exchange Christmas cards. So that's a weird thing to know about someone. Yeah. But here we are. Well, it doesn't look like Chris comes down clearly on a favorite. He does rule out the Rockies right away. Doesn't rule them out winning a World Series, but rules them out as the best team to pick here. Yes.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, again, like so many things can happen. The world is full of infinite possibility. Yeah. If I were doing other Ben's prediction method of predicting things that I think are maybe more likely than the consensus, even if I don't think they're the likeliest outcome, then I might say

I'm going to go with the Rockies because I think it's possible and other people might think it's impossible and it's entertaining and it's thought provoking. And also if they somehow did win the World Series, I would look very smart. Right. But but I can only be the Ben I am. And so I will not say the Rockies. But looks like Chris says if I'd written this piece last winter, I would have expected the Padres to be the most likely to end their franchise-long slump. If I'd written it in June, I would have sworn it would be the Rays. But the truth is we're in an era in which the door could be open for any of these teams to win their first Rockies fans. Keep the faith. So, yeah, let us know what you all think.

At some point, we will know hopefully how wrong we were or how right we were. I will look on the bright side. But it was good news for you predictions-wise, actually. Chris Hannell updated the Effectively Robbed preseason prediction game, as you probably saw.

You predicted that a team would win its first championship of the franchise and that evidently catapulted you into the lead in the still not yet final preseason predictions game. I am floored. I am flummoxed. I am just really quite shocked when it comes down to it because I was doing very poorly in the prediction game up until like I think even just a month or two ago. If I managed to have won the minor league free agent draft and the prediction game in one year. Yeah, the year of Meg. Do I just retire? Yeah.

You know, am I just done? I don't know what to say about that, you know, because it seems like I can't believe it, really. Preemptive, possibly premature. Congratulations on your double victory, at least your single victory. Yeah. Well, we know I won the minor league free agent draft, which I and I don't say this to um offend the prediction game but like that that one was quite um important to me um and i feel quite gratified i would have been happy to just place well but um yeah man those rangers way to way to go so yeah yeah. Yeah. Yeah. One more time, I will return to the topic of playoff randomness before

we hopefully leave that behind for a while. Very eager not to talk about playoff format fretting for a while. But Joshian just wrote about this in his excellent newsletter. And I thought he made a good point, framed things in a way that I guess we had potentially touched on, but maybe hadn't put it explicitly in these terms. past postseason and last postseason was partly just the regular randomness of baseball coupled with lots of off days and nothing to talk about except who was upset. But I think he makes a good point here that really it's what he calls the second chance problem. So he thinks that this has a lot to do with the direct confrontation with the randomness of the playoffs that happens when a team that finished behind another team in the same division then upsets that team in the playoffs, because that really just throws it right into your face, right? You just had this six-month-long regular season where you battled it out to decide who was the superior team and who finished ahead of whom.

And then next thing you know, there's a short series and the team that was worse over the long haul emerges victorious and just wipes away everything that happened in that whole season. You had just invested all your time and attention in. And that really hammers home that this is weird, that specifically has only become an issue really recently, because obviously before you had expanded playoffs, you just, you won your league, you were the champion. Or later when there was just a World Series, you won your league and you got to play for the overall championship between leagues. Maybe that's why they still call the regular season the championship season, even though it's been so de-emphasized, right? I think that's exactly why, Ben.

I think that's precisely why. In 94, or really 95, because there were no playoffs in 94, we had second-place teams getting another chance for the first time. Right. So you could finish behind another team. You didn't have to be a first place finisher. You could still qualify for the playoffs with wild cards. However, at that point also there was a barrier in place that prevented the second chance issue from presenting itself right away. Because at first, a wildcard team could not play a team in its own division in the first round. So as early as 1997, the Marlins won the wildcard that year, they finished behind the Braves, And then Miami played the Giants in the first round rather than the top-seeded Braves. And that was really an acknowledgment by MLB that this second chance issue was an issue, right? That they built that into the structure from the start.

that into the structure from the start, that was sort of a tacit acknowledgement that this would be bad if you finished behind a team and then immediately you got to play that team and potentially beat that team right away. So they built in some protection there to avoid that problem. And I guess that year, those Marlins, who were nine games worse than the Braves in the regular season, they won four out of six over those Braves to win the NL pennant and then the World Series. So the second chance issue reared its head that year, but not immediately. You at least had to win another round before that became an issue. Then in 1998, they eliminated the preset home field, but still kept the rule about the first round matchups. So the Red Sox won the AL wildcard after finishing way behind the 114 win Yankees.

And they didn't play the Yankees. They played the then Indians, the number two seed in the AL. the number two seed in the AL. And then in 99, both wildcards were shifted away from the intra-division foes in the first round in 2003-02. So that principle that teams from the same division couldn't meet in the division series, which I guess is kind of counterintuitive, given the name. But if you were a division rival, you couldn't play another division rival in the division series through the entire eight team playoff format. But then we got the wildcard play in game. And at that point, the center could not hold, they could not keep this rule, this prohibition, because you couldn't know who the number four

seed would be until that wildcard play-in game was played. And they couldn't just hold up the entire scheduling process until that game was decided. So they had to acquiesce to this. And so in 2012, the Orioles beat the Rangers in the wildcard game. They went on to play the Yankees in the division series. From 2012 through 2019, there were six intra-divisional division series matchups. However, MLB kind of lucked out during those years because the division champion won five of the six. And the only exception where the inferior team beat a superior regular season division rival was the 2015 Cubs, and they won 97 games.

So they were still a pretty good team. It didn't feel super fluky. And so essentially for years, MLB said, we're not going to allow this. And then they said, okay, we have to allow this now, but it just didn't really come up. It didn't become a problem. And then we got to 2022 and 2023 and suddenly big issue. Right. So last year, the Braves finished way ahead of the Phillies and then they lost three or four to the Phillies and were eliminated. And then the Dodgers finished way ahead of the Padres, but they lost three or four to the Padres and they were eliminated. And then the Dodgers finished way ahead of the Padres, but they lost three or four to the Padres and they were eliminated.

And then this year, the Braves finished way ahead of the Phillies and then they lost three or four to the Phillies and they were gone. And then the Dodgers finished way ahead of the Diamondbacks and they lost three straight to the Diamondbacks and the Dodgers were done too. So everyone's been saying,

is it scheduling? Is it these teams are rusty? Is it something else? But Joe argues, and I find it pretty convincing that the reason this seems so egregious that it has really caused so much existential strife and questioning of whether we need to do something about the playoff format is because even though the playoffs were a crapshoot and we were exposed to that concept, we were not really confronted with this second chance issue that just made it that more glaring. And now we have for two straight winters. So I think that holds water for me. Yeah, I think that that is a keen insight. I don't know. It just suggests that like, we want to be tricked a little bit. Yeah. You know, like, I think that when you're confronted with the

possibility of a division rival potentially being the one to knock you out and quick, something about that's like, didn't I just deal with you? Like, you know, and so I do think that having a greater sense of remove there has a meaningful impact on your sort of sense of the thing, because even in an era like this where you are now playing your division rivals a little less often than you did and you're seeing your team play against every team every year. And so you have, you know, even if it's not a highly refined sense, you have some sense of these clubs that you might face in the postseason. There is something, I think, uniquely chancy that you feel as a fan when you're and you see your team playing a division rival that you have a lot of familiarity with. And you might even have particular memories of like, oh, my my gosh you remember the last time we saw these guys and that guy did that thing and then we lost and so i i do think it it kind of puts you at an unease very quickly whereas if you didn't have to see those guys you'd be like oh well the marlins we're not gonna suffer any ill fate at the hands of the Marlins.

We didn't ever see those guys. We already dealt with them. Yeah. Stay down. Yeah. They have the impertinence to challenge us once again and perhaps top us even. So that kind of clarified things for me. I think Joe has put his finger on something there and identified an issue.

The problem is he does not have a solution to this problem. And in fact, he suggests that it could become worse with future expansions to the playoff format, because if we expand to 14 playoff teams, then you're probably going to get some sub 500 teams sneaking in there. And especially if we, say, expand the league as a whole and then you get 16 teams in there, then that would be kind of commonplace. Right. And so sometimes those teams would be matched up with teams that trounce them for the first six months of the season. And sometimes they will beat those teams over a best of three or best of five or whatever it is. So I don't know what to do about that because you could talk about receding and maybe that

helps a little bit, but you're still going to get this second chance issue. And as Joe says, it's not quite as cute and endearing when you have that sort of upset in MLB after playing 162 games to get there as it is in whatever March Madness or some other sport where there are fewer games or there's just less emphasis historically on the regular season. I think that that is really an underrated piece of all this. And maybe it's a different way of saying something that we've hit on before, which is that when you have such a robust regular season, we do settle into this idea that we have a really good sense by the end of the year of who was good and who was bad, and that that is a meaningful answer, that it is backed up by, you know, months and months and months of everyday play. Whereas like, you know, my experience

of being a football fan, for instance, you feel the in-season variance, I think much more acutely when you're only looking at a season that lasts, you know, it lasts over a period of months, but is, you know, a much shorter, you know, fewer than 20 games. And so you're just much more keenly aware of the role that sort of chance and bad hops can kind of play in the fate of your team. And I think it does put you in a mindset to accept that randomness much more willingly once you get to postseason play you know we are we are so grounded in not certainty but confidence in terms of our pronouncements about you know what it all means when it comes to the baseball regular season and like i think that there are definitely teams in say the nfl where you're like that's a really good football team. But a common sort of thread of commentary in a lot of modern football analysis is like,

you know, you got a lot of, you got a lot of, hmm, don't know if they're good teams, right? And a couple of bounces, you know, that one fluky thing that happened, that goes a different way. And suddenly, you know, bing, bang, boom. And sometimes I hear football fans sound frustrated by the fact that they can't tell which teams are good. Yes. And sometimes they are energized by that.

They're intrigued by that because it's anyone's game, right? So I don't know whether that's better. I kind of like that we have the regular season that does sort of separate the wheat from the chaff, except then the chaff just comes right back again and beats the wheat. Hopefully I have the right parts of those crops in the right order. We're not farmers. I think people know that about us. They're forgiving. They definitely do now. Yeah. I don't think they were confused about our farmer status previously, Ben. No, probably not. But yeah, I mean, like it can be quite frustrating to sit there and be like, I've just spent weeks and weeks of my life watching this No, probably not. The NFL is undergoing its own sort of stats revolution for good or for ill.

But I do think that people, even as we are able to say that team is really good, that team is less good, this team is hyper-efficient on third down, this team has a great red zone offense. Even within that, there is still this patina of, but you know how much weird crap happens in football every week. And then, you know, sometimes it can diverge pretty profoundly from that team is good, but they're on the outside looking in when it comes to the playoff picture. So I think that that plays a, that's a big part of it. I really do think that it's a big part of it. Yep. Well, that post by Joe is not behind the paywall. You can read it in its entirety at joshian.com. Want to give it a plug because I cite him often and enjoy his work. And you can subscribe at joshian.com as well.

But I will link to that post for you to peruse on the show page. So the offseason has begun. It has. Yeah. The drumbeat of transactions has already started. Some signings, some extensions, and so forth. There were just a few minor items, and maybe not so minor items, that I flagged so far. First, remember we answered a listener email recently about whether maybe Clayton Kershaw should start later next season.

Maybe he should only pitch half a season. Maybe he should sit out the first half or so, and then he could avoid injury and maybe would be less fatigued when the playoffs rolled around. And it turns out he was listening, and he said, that sounds like a great idea, and I will immediately undergo shoulder surgery. Yeah, so apparently he had to do that.

It wasn't, I guess, an elective procedure. He has had shoulder surgery. And he says he is hopeful to return to play at some point next summer. Yeah. This stinks, you know. It does. It does stink. You said there's been a couple of transactions.

It's been very Dodgers heavy, actually. So we'll have a couple more to talk about. But I don't think that this is particularly surprising. Perhaps the extent of the surgery and the duration of his absence is maybe longer than I was anticipating. longer than I was anticipating, but he was so obviously compromised toward the end of the season and certainly in the postseason that it seemed all but certain that he would need some sort of, you know, work or cleanup done to be able to pitch next year. But, you know, we're in such a weird spot with him because there's the reality of the injury and what that might mean for his ability to bounce back. And then there's the extent to which he has sort of artificially constricted his own market,

right? It seems like he's really only interested in continuing to pitch for the Dodgers, potentially pitch for the Rangers, and how those things sort of interact with one another. Like, I don't want to say that we've seen the last of Clayton Kershaw. I certainly hope that's not true because that would be a really down note for his career to go out on considering how wonderful it's been. But you do got to wonder, like, what does next year really look like? What is the ceiling on what he might be able to contribute? So, Ben, you know, what a Friday news dump, as it were. Yeah, right.

So, obviously, it doesn't really affect his career's perception or anything like that. He's a legend, if anything. I mean, we talked about this when we talked about his playoff history and just how do you hold it against him when he's clearly not himself? Like, it's pretty obviously a physical issue. It obviously was in that case, at least. And so you add it to the pile of Clayton Kershaw can't pitch in the postseason, but really it's Clayton Kershaw can't pitch with a shoulder that he needs to have surgery on, right? So all you can do is say maybe you can fault him for a lack of endurance and for a tendency not to be at his best when October rolls around because health is a skill and it is important to be an ace when your team

is playing playoff games as well as during the regular season. So if he has had some greater tendency to break down and wear down and be fatigued when October rolls around, then you could hold that against him. But I would rather hold that against him than to suggest that it's some sort of psychological failing. Yeah, or skill issue. Yeah. If anything, the fact that he's having shoulder surgery probably establishes that, at least

when it comes to 2023. But yeah, you would figure, if anything, maybe it makes it more likely that he returns to the Dodgers. Not that the odds were ever great that he was going to go anywhere. He was going to do anything else. Maybe the fact that the Rangers just won a World Series might have made them a little more appealing. But I can't imagine that the Dodgers would ever not offer him a deal unless it got to the point where he was so compromised that he was pitching like Felix was at the end of his tenure with the Mariners, right? Sorry to invoke that memory. Absolutely nowhere with that one. My goodness.

Apologies. But Clayton Kershaw pre-shoulder surgery was still including one of the best pitchers in baseball. So he was going to get an offer to come back and he probably still will. I wonder whether he will want to sign before he has clarity on how his rehab is going and how he's feeling because he has suggested in prior off seasons that he wanted to take some time and see how his body was feeling and everything and maybe even more so now. So he's not in a position where he needs security, right? Like he's not one of these players who's, I need to sign a two-year make-good deal and get the security while I rehab so that I could,

you know, maybe the team will get me at a sweetheart deal in the second year if they give me some security this year. He's playing Kershaw, so he doesn't really need that sort of arrangement. So I wonder whether he will want the certainty and stability or whether he'll just say, let's see how it goes and how the Dodgers are doing then and how other teams are doing. And it would give him the freedom and the flexibility to assess the season that he would have had if

this had been purely a, I feel like sitting out half the season and seeing how I feel. It's interesting, right? Because on the one hand, like he's never, so he doesn't need the money, right? Like that piece of it is sort of, he's in a very secure, I would imagine, in his life spot, right? And so I suspect that what will dictate where he goes is like who, you know, the combination of do they want me, but also will dictate where he goes is like who you know the combination of do they want me but also like where do i feel like i am going to be the most useful i just really struggle to think of him in like a a more mercenary kind of role where he looks around come may and says you know who really needs some help right now is the baltimore orioles just to like

pick a you know team like purely at random that is good but might need some starting pitching help just like one and it's occupying my mind space so I struggled to think of him in that role which you know if he came to occupy it I wouldn't knock him for like if this is his kind of last hurrah he should go where it feels like he can, you know, be a part of something. But because he doesn't need, you know, he's not like signing his first free agent deal or anything like that. I almost wonder if that makes him more likely to sign and re-sign with LA sooner because he's like, this is where I just, why are we going to mess with other stuff? Like, this is where I belong. And I wonder if there are any implications about the rehab process and facilities he can use. Yeah. People he's comfortable working with. Yeah. Yeah. Where it's like, I want to be, you know, if he has confidence in the Dodgers to sort of shepherd his recovery along and isn't, you know, is really just concerned with being in

the best possible shape he can be when he returns. Maybe he just says, like, I know these guys, they know me, they know my shoulder, they know my arm, you know, I'm just gonna get this done. And I could also see, you know, him sort of returning the favor is maybe too strong. But, you know, we remember there have been times where he has been in a position to be a free agent and potentially get tagged with a qualifying offer. And they basically elected not to do that so that he could have maximum flexibility in his signing. And maybe he'll say, we have an understanding about where I'm going to go, but maybe it's useful to you from a payroll perspective to not have even a small deal on

the books. So I'm going to sit this one out until it's sort of necessary for us to get it done. I don't know. Like there are a lot of ways that that could go. I think quite often there is such a business-like kind of vibe to this stuff. It can be so transactional. And there are, I think quite often there is such a business-like kind of vibe to this stuff. It can be so transactional. And there are, I think, very few cases where you can point to both a player and an organization and say they are endeavoring to do something different between them. They have other considerations that are maybe not as important as the money piece or the competitive fit, but are clearly part of that conversation in a very real way in a

way that they often aren't with other teams and clubs but i think kershaw falls into that sort of realm where it's like this is our dude this is a franchise icon this is our future hall of famer and we have a a real an actual relationship that sort of moves beyond just player and organization so it'll be it'll be interesting to see sort of how they make that all fit, but I will be, I'm not going to make a bet because the last time people did that, they had to bike to Chicago and Ben, I'll simply just like expire if I have to do that. But I would be very surprised if he, I would have greater confidence that he would retire before he'd end up wearing another team's uniform. Yeah, I could maybe imagine him doing the mercenary thing if he had never won a World Series and really just wanted to get one.

Except the Dodgers are almost always your safest bet to be the favorite when the season starts. Yeah, that or Houston. That I have a very hard time seeing. Yeah, that or Houston. Yeah. That I have a very hard time seeing. Yeah, true. But maybe if he's like, man, I got to get this playoff monkey off my back again because I got it off and now it's back on there a little bit. So maybe then. But again, that's contingent on the Dodgers not looking like a playoff team midseason, which that would be surprising. Monkeys, what scamps.

And, you know, based on some of their other moves, they are going to need starting pitching. So what a transition, Ben. Very, very good. Very, very good. They decided they did not want to be back in the Lancelin business. At least not at that price point, right? Yeah.

I was, were you, I was a little surprised. I wasn't hugely surprised because, um, while he was better, he was not what we might call good in the Dodgers run. But I guess I maybe thought that they would just exercise their club option so that they were like, you know, who's a live body with an arm attached? Lance Lynn, who's in our uniform. But, you know, I know that they have some payroll. This might be an offseason where every team that spends money wants to maximize its payroll flexibility as much as possible in pursuit of Otani. So perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised after all, Ben. Maybe I should have expected it, you know?

Yeah, it takes me a little while to really ramp up to caring about the Dodgers declining an option on Lance Lynn or even the Dodgers signing Max Muncy to a two-year extension, which is notable news. I just assumed that they were going to do that, you know? Yeah, right. And even though the World Series was not adrenaline-inducing still, it just takes me a little while to get back in the mindset of, okay, I got to care about these things that will affect championship probability by points, you know, oh, whatever, right? As opposed to every game is swinging that significantly. It's just the stakes are suddenly lower. Although if you root for a

team that didn't make the playoffs or that's been out of it for a while, you're probably raring to go. You're like, hey, I've been waiting for them to conclude that October business so that we could get down to the business of building our team again. Yeah. So, yeah. So that and Joe Jimenez signing with Atlanta and donating his 1% to the Braves Foundation, one of the great mysteries of the sport. Can I say something? And I want to, before I say it, I want to be very clear how strongly I am kidding. I want to be very, very, very clear because I'm about to use words in sequence that were I not kidding, were it suggestive of knowing something would be very alarming. But are we sure that the Braves Foundation isn't like a criminal syndicate of some kind? I'm not sure because I'm not sure what it is so i cannot confirm or deny or refute that are the atlanta braves made are they in fact is this protection money that is being it's not a funny thing to joke about but it is a curious i mean i just

if for no other reason as an aside than if I were a professional athlete with the financial resources of a professional athlete, like, you know, no offense to the Braves Foundation, but I might want to direct my own charitable endeavors. You know, I might want to have my own say in what those are. And who knows if they'd be the same as those of the Braves Foundation. You just wouldn't. You don't know, Ben. I don't know. What do those folks get up to? No, I don't know.

And Craig Calcaterra pointed out, I think, that there's some precedence for a team to be up to shenanigans with those charitable funds. Granted, Frank McCourt, during his time with the Dodgers. So he was just up to shenanigans writ large yes generally yeah this was one manifestation of the shenanigans yeah that was one of the the shenanigans it was a shenanigan shenanigans are they like um is it like mushrooms shenanigans mushroom shenanigan but yeah you never know never know, right? I always wonder, maybe this has been written about, but do they take the 1% off the top after they agree to the, like, is it priced in? Do they agree on the terms and then they say, hey, we want to put in our

press release that you gave 1% to the British Foundation, so we will tack on 1%? Or is it like you negotiate terms and then they spring it on you like, Hey, by the way, like some kind of convenience charge when you buy tickets on Ticketmaster or something. Got to get the Swifties going after the Atlanta Braves. I, I wonder, well, first of all, no one could in any kind of good faith act surprised at this point. Like if you are signing a contract extension or a new deal with Atlanta and you're like, what do you mean there's a surcharge? They'd be like, well, haven't you been reading our press releases? It did feel like the offseason had really started when the Braves announced their own contract. You know, I was like, oh, we're back. You know, it's time. It's November now. It's November now. Right.

Yeah. And I mean, also, I kind of wonder about like, at what point does it come up in the process? Yes. But then also the apparent unanimity of it. Yes. And granted, the Braves have managed to convince so many of their players to sign extensions in the first place. But then you'd think someone would opt out. It's like when you're checking out at the grocery store or something and it's like, do you want to donate X whatever it is to some worthy cause? And maybe you usually do it because you support the cause or you just feel the shame that you were wondering whether Jerry DePoto feels right.

Oh, I don't round up. Yeah. I mean, that's okay. Right right so so you would think i do other stuff i don't need a safe way to help me exactly you know direct my my 50 cents yeah people have their own charities and you you kind of feel guilty about not donating but it's like no i look i do all these other things but yeah but but you can't prove it to that person it's like no i don't want to add 50 cents to help orphans or whatever. It's like, here are all my charitable donations. I'm going to bring all my receipts next time. I'm going to change, but the look of complete indifference that I am often met with by the 18-year-old who's checking me out at Sprouts can't be overstated. So I think you can let that one go. I just invite you to let it go if you want to. That's probably true.

Yes. They couldn't care less, I'm sure. And I don't know what the rate of giving at those prompts is typically anyway. Anyway. But yes, there's got to be someone who says no at some point unless it's just added on. Unless it's just, hey, we're going to do this because it'll make us feel good or it'll make us look good that we're getting our players to do this. But really, it's just us chipping in and making it look like we took it out of your cut or something. So yeah, I want to know more about the mechanics of that, but more interested in that than I am in the fact that Joe Jimenez signed a three-year

contract for $26 million and that the Braves Foundation gets 1% of that. Although the one interesting thing about that that I saw was Craig Calcaterra pointed out that he will sign he will make now more than Ozzy Albee's could possibly make over those next three years. Yikes. Joe Jimenez, who is he had a pretty good year for a reliever. No, that's a that's a an Ozzy Albee's motivated yikes and not a Joe Jimenez motivated yikes. So Jimenez, $26 million over the next three years. Ozzy Albies guaranteed $18 million and can at most make $21 million. So yeah, just the latest illustration. Did Ozzy Albies also have to give 1% to the Brave Foundation Foundation because they should waive that for him. I am so glad you asked. It appears that Ozzy Alves has his own foundation, and this is part of the confusion. It's like, are all of these, are they like laying claim to other work that these guys are doing? But if you look at the Atlanta Braves Foundation 2022

Community Impact, this is just on their website. It's like 13,000 servings of fruit will be produced annually from community orchards planted through the Pitch In For The Planet. 45,000 pounds of fresh produce distributed through the Home Plate Project. Three dogs found their forever home through dog days of summer at Drew's Park in partnership with the Ozzie Albies Foundation and Lifeline Animal Project. And I'm here to ask, only three dogs? Only three? That seems like a typo. It's like, only three dogs found their forever home? Just three?

That's not enough dogs. No, it doesn't seem like the greatest utilitarian return on investment there. But the Braves just unanimously philanthropic. I'd love for if anyone has combed through all of the press releases to see if there's anyone who has not elected to do this. Are there any holdouts? And if not, then what kind of threats are they holding over these guys' heads? How does this work? I need to know more. Anyway, those were some transactions and injury-related news. There was also one bit of news about, not a transaction, but a bit of a change on the depth chart for the Houston Astros at catcher.

I was kind of amused to see the headline at MLB Trade Rumors, Yainer Diaz to be Astros primary catcher. I was kind of amused to see the headline at MLB Trade Rumors, Yainer Diaz to be Astros primary catcher in 2024. So Astros GM Dana Brown said that Diaz will be the main guy next year. That's a please stop asking me about this announcement. And this is also maybe a Dusty Baker retired announcement, right? Would this have happened if Dusty had not retired? And granted, Dusty was pinch hitting for Maldonado on occasion in the playoffs there. But would he have anointed Yainer Diaz as the first string catcher at this point if he had stuck around? I kind of doubt it. So that seems like, yeah, we're making a change at manager,

and thus we are also making a change at catcher. Thanks for your contributions, Martine. But we do need some modicum of offense, especially if we're not going to get really great defense anymore. Yeah, I am unsurprised by that. Wait, I want to return to the Jimenez thing just because I love the reliever free agent market. I love it so much because reliever performance can be so volatile. And yet it is a place where teams often exceed what the like straight like dollars per war kind of calculus would perhaps lead you to expect them to do. And I just find that fascinating, Ben. I just

find that so fascinating. And like they only do it. It's not like every reliever gets a deal like that. But like if you have had a pretty consistent OK time, you might make some OK money as a free agent reliever. And I just find it very fascinating. So I just want to like, you know, shout out that free agent market because it can feel very, you know, especially in a year like this where the expectation, the consensus is that it's going to be kind of blah and very slow going. This might be a very slow developing market. It's just like it's nice to have a little bit of something to think about and wonder. So there you go. That's me thinking about relievers. And the last little bit of news is that Nelson Cruz is retiring. Not a shocker. He is doing a little mini retirement tour. I love this so much. He's visiting every city, right? Playing every team and taking a bow one last time.

time? I think it's wonderful that he has lead them to sort of do this tour in. It's nice that he is doing that for fans in the DR and, uh, boy, did I enjoy watching that guy hit for a really long time. And, uh, from everyone I know who has covered him in various spots, like just, uh, you know, a good, a good egg. Um, what a career, you you know like an interesting career at times fraught career right like he did have the ped thing but right no one really cares about that like nelson cruz isn't a hall of famer but like he was quite quite good for a long time and i think particularly since um he obviously took being a mentor seriously trying to make sure that younger guys were treated well it was a thing he took seriously and then obviously his charitable efforts particularly in the dr like just uh you know that's a good that's a good egg we think so that's nice and

i hope he gets to do something like fun and nap as much as he wants. Oh, yeah, right. No constraints on his napping. No. No limits. No limits. I was going to ask you, yeah, if you think he is maybe the player who has put his PD suspension behind him most, just like erased it almost from people's memories. Yeah. from people's memories. And I guess there may be more obscure players who people just don't remember at all. And they wouldn't even remember that that guy got popped at some point

just because he's so unnotable. But for a player of Nelson Cruz's caliber, I wonder if there's anyone, because I saw some kind of career encapsulations of him written in various places that just didn't even mention it. You know, it's not in the first few paragraphs, really, of his baseball obit. And maybe it's partly that, yeah, he's not going to be someone who gets serious Hall of Fame consideration. So

it's not going to exclude him from Cooperstown or anything. And then maybe it's also just that that was a long time ago, right? What year was it that he got suspended? It was quite a while because he- 13, right? Wasn't it 2013? That sounds right. Yeah. So it's been a full decade. And just the fact that he played for so long and he's 43 years old now, so he's kind of put it in the rear view mirror. And also, I guess the fact that he came back and was just as productive, if not more so after the suspension, which in a way, I guess you could have said would have increased suspicion that he continued to be so productive at such an advanced age with a PED suspension in his past.

But it seemed like more so people kind of concluded, well, I guess it wasn't the PEDs because he's still really good. Or maybe just because he seems to be a good guy otherwise and was a good clubhouse mentor and all of that, that it just kind of faded away. People give you a pass maybe to some extent, depending on whether you've done some penance or whether you're easy to root for. I think that he occupies like this perfect sweet spot, right, where he, you know, he's still a good he was still a very good player. He had incredible seasons after the suspension, but was never you know like he didn't it was clear he wasn't really gonna be a serious contender for the hall of fame and so we knew we weren't gonna have to do that discourse so i think people were like preemptively not annoyed yeah in a way

that like they you know so so obviously are with other guys who have had, you know, associations with Biogenesis or whatever. He was like, he was good, right? Like he was an all-star. He, you know, he had a postseason round MVP. He won the Edgar Martinez award. Like he was a league leader in a couple of stats a couple of times. But, you know know i think because he was in this like good but not great on a hall of fame trajectory like spot in terms of his on the field stuff and then was so obviously committed to good work off the field that i don't know i think people were just happy to give him a pass like the the guy won the Roberto Clemente Award. He was like the Marvin Miller Man of the Year at one point. He just I think that he was in this sweet spot where people were like, he seems like a nice guy. He's a good player. We're not going to have to do this Cooperstown nonsense later. Like we can move on. I don't know. I think he was in this perfect position. It was nice. Yeah. And I was going to bring up the Hall of Fame not to suggest that he would get into it,

but just to point out that he is in Cooperstown Company. Sure. There was an entire episode or a large portion of an episode where Sam and I talked about Cruise and his unusual career trajectory. I think it was episode 1588, which was back in 2020. Now that the book is closed on his career, 19 years in the big leagues, 464 homers and 130 OPS plus, right? And just such a late bloomer. Yes. Plus. Right. And just such a late bloomer. Yeah. And so if you look at the company that he keeps, as you were saying, like it was never really clear that, oh, he's going to contend for the Hall of Fame. It was always kind of clear that he wasn't. But from the day that he got a starting job, he played like a Hall of Famer.

that he got a starting job, he played like a Hall of Famer. It's just that he didn't get a starting job until his age 28 season. He finally played 128 games and then 108 and 124. He didn't, I mean, 159, he finally played in 2012 when he was 31, but he wasn't really a regular player for most of a season until 2009 with the Rangers when he was in his age 28 season. And so if you look at his career war, almost all of it is from that point on. So baseball reference, he has 42.2 career war and 40.9 of it was from his age 28 season on. That's great. Yeah. And that is actually a really impressive total from that point on. So if I just look for, just sort by career war for position players at Baseball Reference,

players at baseball reference, like here are the guys within, let's say, you know, okay, 40, 41 war he was, let's say from age 28 on. So if I just say like within two war of him, okay, like 39 to 43. So you have a effectively wild legend, Eddie Stanky and Jack Glasscock there. You have Tony Perez. You have Alan Trammell. You have Todd Helton, Billy Williams, Jorge Posada, Tony Gwynn, Norm Cash, Jose Bautista, another famous late bloomer, Frank Thomas, Jesse Burkett, Brian Downing, Stan Hack, Sam Crawford, Carlos Beltran. Those are the guys between 39 and 41. So tons of Hall of Famers in that group who are just below Cruz or Helton, maybe a likely Hall of Famer. Killebrew, Tony Phillips, Ryan Sandberg, Zach Wheat, Davey Lopes, Art Fletcher, Mickey Mantle,

Dolph Camilli, Joey Votto, Gary Sheffield, Willie McCovey, Eddie Matthews, George Brett. I mean, these are name brand Hall of Famers who basically put up the same war year versus year as Nelson Cruz from like the day that he finally got his starting job. So like from the second that he was an established big leaguer for the rest of his career, he was a Hall of Famer, basically. He just, he didn't get to play prior to that. And part of it, I guess, was that he didn't hit great in his first couple exposures to the majors, or at least like 2006, 2007, he played 41 games, 96 games, he didn't hit in the majors, even though, as I recall, he was raking in the minors during that time, right? And I forget, I think Sam and I talked about whether

he was blocked or whether it was just that he didn't perform in the first chances he was given. But some guys, they get a late start like Edgar, right? I mean, you know, people don't believe in them or there's some other good player entrenched at their position. And sometimes that can make a difference. So, you know, he would have had to come up several years earlier really to have a credible Hall of Fame case. But when he was in the big leagues and when he was a fixture, he basically was a Hall of Fame level talent. So, yeah. Yeah.

And really, I do think that so much of, well, I don't know. It can cut both ways, right? I was going to say that so much of our reaction to these things has to do with sort of the existing level of like affection or animus that we have for the person involved and there's something to that sometimes when you like really love a guy and then you find out you know he used peds like it can have sort of a reverse effect where you're less inclined to forgive him because you feel betrayed right like oh i thought he was so such a great guy and it turns out he was using peds and i think he was just in a sweet spot and people thought he was

like a sweetheart and so they were like yeah whatever you know and i'm sure that there are people you know peds bring out such a strong reaction in some folks so i'm sure that there's someone somewhere that's like no no, he is a criminal. Throw him out of baseball. But I think that people, you know, when you're not having to preemptively litigate, like, what do we do with PDs, with folks? I don't know. Your read on it changes really dramatically, I think. We just get to be happy for this dude. We're not going to have to justify a Hall of Fame vote on Twitter around Nelson Cruz. So who cares? Of the 169 AL, NL Hall of Fame position players, the mean, the average war from age 28 on is 38.4 and the median is 36.1.

And Nelson Cruz was 40.9. So he was, however you slice it, better than the average Hall of Famer from that point forward. And I think there's a saying, sometimes people say you become a Hall of Famer in your 30s, right? Because so much of what separates a Hall of Famer from a non-Hall of Famer is can they sustain it? Do they stay healthy? Do they age well, right? But that kind of presupposes that the typical Hall of Fame talent has a productive 20s because they come up and they produce well when they're young. So usually do you have the durability and the staying power is the separator for him. It's kind of flipped on its head because he did not have a Hall of Fame 20s. He barely had a big league 20s and then he had a Hall of Fame 30s

and late 20s and early 40s. So it just, it wasn't quite enough. Here's a question. I'm going to ask you to be a little philosophical. How much of people's willingness to move on? And I can ask this question because guess what, Rangers fans? Your team won a World Series. You had a parade today. So I can bring up David Friesen. No one can, you know, it, this man has experienced divine retribution in some way, shape or form. And we may we may all move on now because he's already had a moment where it's like, oh, yeah, yeah, maybe so. Yeah, he's suffered enough. Yeah, suffered enough. Last thing here. I just wanted to ask you, since we have embarked on the offseason, you said you're excited about the reliever market. But what are you looking forward to or what is most intriguing you about this winter that the market is said to be banal, is said to be not an exciting free agent class? Thin.

So what is drawing your interest? It doesn't just have to be not an exciting free agent class, right? So what is drawing your interest? It doesn't just have to be free agents. It could be trade candidates. It could be anything. It could be rules changes, whatever it is. But what's getting you going here as we look ahead to, gosh, just a few days. November 6th is when free agents can sign with other teams. November 6th is when free agents can sign with other teams and then there will be options and opt out stuff and non tenders and qualifying offers and all the rest of it. GM meetings will be right in the thick of it. Arbitration, et cetera, et cetera. So what are you into? What are you looking forward to what would your reaction have been if i've been like arb mostly i'm really gearing up for arb yeah well i i think that the most exciting um part of it is gonna be seeing i mean like otani obviously is like in a tier on his own in terms of um the intrigue surrounding

what he decides to do and i am fascinated by like what that contract is going to look like from a pure dollars perspective, obviously. But I also am just really curious, like what what he is going to prioritize, how much he actually ends up talking about that. I don't know. But, you know, are there aspects of this process that are really meaningful to him beyond simply the money? And how does he think about the relative competitiveness of the club that he ultimately signs with? And, you know, how much sort of holdover is there for him from his experience with the Angels when it comes to like really just wanting to see October baseball? So I'm fascinated by what his like hierarchy of needs is for lack of a better way of describing it and then i think the the most interesting thing for me beyond that is just like

where do the international guys end up signing you know i think we've agreed that the most intriguing group beyond otani is you know yamamoto and john hooli and matsui And so there's like this group of really good guys coming over from, uh, MPB and the KBO. And I'm really curious to see where they land. Um, and then I think the broader kind of meta thing that I'm curious about is like, okay, so we've all agreed that this market is kind of underwhelming from a position player perspective. And so I'm really curious what's going to happen with the tier of guy who is like a good big leaguer, can contribute a lot to a championship club, might not quite be in that tier of dude where you win because of him, but he's going to add a lot to what a club can do.

So like, you know, you're Matt Chapman's, right? I think there's like a clear and identifiable group of those guys on the position player side. And I am fascinated by what their market ends up being, both in terms of how quickly it develops and how lucrative it ends up being. Because you could look at this class and say, it's kind of blah. And that means that everyone's going to be, I mean, certainly down relative to the contracts we saw given out last year, at least, you know, apart from Otani and then maybe like Yamamoto

and, you know, that kind of group of guys. But if you're the guy who's thought to be like the good position player, you know, if you're in that group, does that end up being kind of lucrative just because of scarcity? Like, so I'm curious to see how that goes. because of scarcity. So I'm curious to see how that goes. And then I guess the final thing that I'm interested in is sort of how do the Rangers, Mets, and Padres get talked about, probably mostly on background, but how do those three teams and their spending habits over the last year get talked about? And what are they used to justify when contracts start to get signed? You know, I don't know that ownership will even necessarily have to reach for the Mets and the Padres to say, this is why we didn't spend a lot this offseason, because it's, you know,

such a kind of mediocre market. You don't have, you know, it's not like you got, there's no Corey Seager, right? Again, I'm setting aside like Ohtani, right? And Yamamoto probably is in that tier. And, you know, there is actually a good amount of quality starting pitching available. But on the position player side, like if you're an owner, you don't even necessarily have to reach for a cautionary tale to justify not spending a lot because it's like, who's there to spend on, you know? But I am curious to see like how those three seasons get interwoven into the signing and expenditure justifications that we see emerge over the next couple of months because they have powerful narrative pull. And I view the Rangers

as having equally strong narrative pull, but I suspect that MLB ownership will not agree with me. And so I'm curious to see how that all kind of shakes out. And I have one more thought, but I'm going to let you talk because I feel like I've been monologuing. Well, you mentioned the Asian players sort of saving this free agent class from being boring. So, yeah, that is one of the top storylines for me. And it's partly just because when you're talking about the international players, at least, there's a little more mystery surrounding them for us since we haven't seen them day in and day out. And our projections are maybe not quite as precise when it comes to players who are changing leagues like that, even though often, as we've said, the star players continue to be very productive when they come over here. But still, it's like new blood, right? It's not just guys we've been watching every day play. It's an influx, right? It's new people who are going to

be added to our main characters, right? So I'm looking forward to that. And yeah, just Googling top region lists, Keith Laws for the Athletic just came up first. And I think it looks like five of his top 11 players are Asian players. That's lumping together Otani and international players, but still you have Otani and Yamamoto. And then you also have, I guess, I mean, there are some players who are lower on the list,

like Kenta Maeda and Hyunjin Ryu, if we're going to include any Asian player, including those who've been in MLB for quite a while. But you have Lee Jung-hoo and you have Shota Imanaga, another excellent Japanese starting pitcher. Yes, that's right. Who's going to be posted. Who Zips actually likes better on a per inning basis than Yamamoto.

Oh, really? Yeah. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah. So I would be surprised if the very top of free agent lists had that many representatives from any Asian country, but especially players who were coming over to MLB for the first time. So, yeah, I guess it's four, not five, but even so, it's still pretty impressive.

not five, but even so, it's still pretty impressive. And I guess I'm also, yeah, I'm interested in whether the scarcity leads to higher prices or not, because in theory, there are so few appealing free agents that that might just mean that there are fewer teams in need of players at those positions, right? Because that's kind of how it works. You became a free agent. That means that your team perhaps has a hole or at least has to replace you. And so if those guys aren't becoming free agents, maybe that means that the needs aren't there either. There's less supply but maybe less demand as well.

So it does put you in a bit of a pickle if you're one of the teams that's trying to get a lot better. But maybe it means that there won't be as many teams needing to make those moves. Maybe. Maybe there are a couple of clubs that wish they could build a time machine and go back in time and sign a different guy. Who could say? Who could say even which club I'm thinking of? You know, like which one?

Which one, Ben? I know you were saying that at the time. I was saying that at the time. I was saying that at the time. I was right. Also, oddly intrigued by the Craig Council market. Oh, sure, yeah. Still getting around Craig Council. Talking to people, not just the Mets.

And you might as well, even if he's realistically not going to go to the Guardians or wherever else, he might as well talk to as many teams as, you know, get that leverage, right? Build up your market. That would be so funny if he went to the Guardians. Oh, my gosh. I will laugh so, so hard if that happens. I will be endlessly amused by that. You know, more than it is actually funny, I will be amused by it.

Right. So maybe it's a sign of the relative lack of intrigue of this offseason that I'm not intrigued by a managerial market. But he's, I think, kind of the consensus best manager in baseball now. Yeah, I think you're right. Obviously, that team would almost certainly be happy to have him back, but he's testing the waters. He's exporting the market, as he might as well, even if he thinks he wants to stay, you know, get that raise, right? And there is a post at MLB Trade Rumors that just went up, headlined, Craig Council reportedly looking to reset market for managerial salaries. And this was a report from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. He's looking to reset the market for managers in terms of salary. I don't know if this is like a selfless thing. He's trying to help out all the other managers. There's no managers union that would be pushing for him to do that. Right. But whether he's doing it to look out for others or he's just doing it to increase his own salary. That's interesting. And he will be much in demand and there are some vacancies and all of them are interested in Crane Council. And it's interesting because obviously

his former boss is now running the Mets. And so that's a natural landing spot. But then as we've talked about, do you really want to inflict Mets managing on yourself if you've been successful and happy so far? Do you want that sort of scrutiny and media attention? It's not the clap. It's not, but it kind of is in a baseball sense.

Oh, no. What a terrible thing to say. So, yeah, I'm curious. How high can that market for managerial salaries go? I guess that's something I'm kind of willing to throw around in service of securing, you know, an Otani or a Yamamoto. So I will be curious to see kind of how he behaves and understands the market. And, you know, does he view those guys as impactful enough to say, you know, this is my big card to play. And so I'm going to play it.

And, oh, okay. I have one more. This isn't really free agent related, but, and I think we talked about this at the time of the hiring, but, you know, I think Stearns is very well regarded in the industry. You know, we did see while he was in Milwaukee, him have a little, you know, bit of the cost cutting money saving, especially on the scouting side. And some of that, you know, I think can be attributed to the Brewers and the sort of budgets that they were sort of constricting. But I'm curious to see like, what we come to know of his like real true baseball philosophy from a personnel perspective. Um, now that he's in a market where those restrictions are presumably being lifted, um, and where he's working for an owner who, you know,

on the one hand has just like buckets of money to spend, but guys who become hedge fund billionaires tend to appreciate cost savings. So I will be very curious to see like how how do how we get to know him now that he's in in New York. So there's that piece of it. And, you know, how does his sort of approach and philosophy interact with with Cohn's sort of proclivity to throw money around when he views it as necessary. So I think that's something that will probably take more than just an offseason to evolve, and it has implications that reach far beyond free agency for the folks who work for the Mets. But that is something I'm really fascinated by. Yeah. Obviously, you need to know if and when and where Rich Hill is returning. Oh, yeah. Now that Nelson Cruz has retired, I'm hoping that Hill will come back. I know he had expressed interest in coming back at one point and then wasn't pitching so well.

He did suggest maybe he would do a half season strategy. So we'll see what his market looks like. And yeah, Otani in a way, the sweepstakes is, or at least the contract structure might be even more interesting than it would have been before the injury, because if not for the injury, it just would have been who will offer the biggest number. Which would have been interesting in a way also, but maybe there would have been a little less creativity with the structure or fewer factors to consider. Right. So, as you said, I don't know whether we'll get any window into his thinking during or after the process, but it will be interesting to follow that at least.

And I guess I will be paying attention to whether we get any indications of further rules changes. I don't think there will be anything as sweeping and dramatic as we had this season, obviously. And I get the sense that Rob Manfred wants to not pump the brakes, but at least take his foot off the gas a little bit. I'm doing driving analogies. Hopefully that was more or less accurate. Yeah, that's good. That was okay. I know about the two pedals that you have and what they do, basically.

Do you know which one is which, though? Well, the fact that you have to use one foot for both really, I think, would be a problem for me if I ever had to operate those pedals. Maybe your daughter should drive you around. Yeah. I think I would have trouble with that just because I you know, I have two feet and there are two pedals. And I think, and I know why you want to use the one. Yeah, they really discourage you from using both your feet when you drive, Ben.

Yeah, that's one thing. That's a big no-no. That's a driving no-no. Intellectually, I know that. And probably if I ever actually had to drive, I would learn that, I hope. But I think that might be one of the hurdles for me to clear that I would just feel like, hey, I have two feet and two pedals, you know, fancy. You hear meet left foot, meet breaker, whichever one is on which side. Well, so here's the thing. I don't want you to ever drive.

Yeah. Gas pedal, brake pedal. You know one of those things at least. Yeah. Yeah. I'm not a farmer, but I am a driver. You're a driver. Yeah. You are licensed to drive. I am.

I have a need for speed some of the time. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. Don't drive with both your feet, Ben. You know, it's like you need both your feet for bicycling. Although I think that they actually have, I'm given to understand that like there have been some real accessibility advances in the biking space. So maybe they've kind of worked around that.

But yeah, don't drive with both your feet. Don't do that. You know, they're like this big no-no. Yes, you can confuse yourself and you can press the wrong one. Yes. Right? Yeah. Not an issue for confuse yourself and you can press the wrong one. Yes. Right? Yeah. Not an issue for me.

I don't press either of them ever. And to be clear, you don't have to drive if you don't want to drive, Ben. Yeah. I maybe should, though, at some point, but we'll see. Just think, they let 16-year-olds do it, so it can't be that hard. But that scares me. That makes me want to drive less if there are going to be 16-year-olds on the road, although I guess I'm going to be on the road sometimes one way or another. I just won't be behind the wheel. But that started with me saying that Rob Manfred was going to operate one of those pedals or not. And I think he wants to just take a beat and say we made some major changes and they were largely successful, but we don't want to push it.

Right. Now, he could have said, let's seize the moment. Right. And we were vindicated. And now we'll have the political capital to pass all sorts of new measures. But I think he doesn't want to push too hard, too quickly. And so I'm sure there will be some minor moves maybe made. So I'm sure there will be some minor moves maybe made.

Again, I think he's keeping his powder dry to get robo-umps implemented probably in 2025. It's sounding like maybe a challenge system of some sort. If it is just that, that would be great. Yeah. So maybe he'll just want to call in his favors for that and not do anything drastic this offseason. But will there be some slight tweak to the playoff format? Will there be any consideration of expanding the positioning restrictions and implementing the pie slice, which haven't heard a lot about this season? I slice, which I haven't heard a lot about this season, but maybe since there wasn't a dramatic effect on Babbitt and balls in play, obviously. And will there be anything else talked about along those lines? He did recently express his interest in further lowering the limbo bar when it comes to the active pitcher roster limit, which I was heartened to see,

but I think he said probably not next season. So, and they were testing some even stricter pitch clocks and that kind of thing in the minors, slightly stricter, but I don't know that people just seem so satisfied with the way that went that I'm not sure there will be much impetus behind further lowering the limit there. So I don't know what else could be potentially on the table, but I'm almost in the mindset of, hey, MLB tinkers with its product now. Whereas before it was like, if they change anything, wow, this is something out of the

ordinary. Now it's, I almost expect them to change something. They've moved the Overton window when it comes to how much you can change your sport, I guess, which is probably a good thing because it was overdue. Wow. You're doing a bunch of politics and a bunch of driving metaphors. I'm enjoying that. I think that we will see minimal rule change stuff. I think you're right that like the next big thing is going to be a strike zone related implementation,

probably of the challenge system. I am like encouraged by how universal the praise for that seems to be and how receptive to that praise he has seemed to be. So, you know, that'll be interesting. But I think that they do seem to be taking a slow and steady wins the race kind of approach to this stuff, which I think is the right one. Like it's, you know, let the dust trying to find the guy who did this. So it's not him by himself, but like, it's like you want an optimized game and you want it to be like run by a bunch of eggheads. So like, yeah, dude, this is what your bosses hath wrought. So there's that piece of it. I wonder when the first notable signing will be. You know, like I don't want to insult Jimenez and I don't want to insult Max Monty, but like, you know, which is who's going to be the big, the first big, big signing. Right.

And will Otani want to take care of business quickly or will he want to wait? And will that dictate the pace of other moves? Yeah. Big sign. Big sign. the market is of serious contenders who will be waiting to see where Otani goes before deciding how much money they have to spend on anyone else. But yeah, that's something that could cause a slowdown potentially when there's such a clear number one or even number one and number two with Yamamoto. So yeah. By the way, on the pitch clock topic, I saw that JJ Cooper tweeted the postseason pitch clock stats the other day. The average MLB nine-inning postseason game took three hours and one minute to play this year. There were two postseason nine-inning games that lasted three and a half hours or longer. And on average, postseason games have taken around three and a half hours to play over the past decade.

taken around three and a half hours to play over the past decade. So the average postseason game was matched by two games, basically, this postseason. And yeah, even with the postseason slowdowns that you anticipate, it was still basically three hours on average. And again, there were barely any extra inning action, too. So yeah, it wasn't notable. There weren't a lot of violations. The games were fairly brisk by postseason standards. Sam argued in favor of relaxing the pitch clock on some big plays, give guys a chance to take a curtain call and drink in the crowd and let all of us enjoy that. Just a handful of occasions. I'd be fine with that. I think there's some regular season precedent for that. The umpires have discretion. They do.

You know, if they want to give someone, you know, someone returns to their old ballpark or whatever, or it's their last play appearance for that team and they want to drink in the adulation, they do have some leeway to suspend and teams can, I think, request that in advance maybe. So something like that might make sense, but it was not an issue very often. No, and you know, not an issue. And we like had bullpen games. So, you know, and I, I know that I would imagine that those were the ones that were toward the longer end of the spectrum, but even still, like they were, they were still pretty zippy considering what they were doing. So, I don't know.

I thought it was a success. All right. Well, if there are any interesting storylines that we have omitted here that you all are really excited to follow, please let us know. I am excited to get excited about things if there are things that we left out. Yeah. Did you mention Cody Bellinger specifically? I'm kind of interested in him. Oh, no. But now that you say that, yeah, Cody Bellinger, what are they going to do with you, Cody? Keith Law has him second on his list, which is aggressive. I guess that's kind of an

indication of the class, the quality of the class. But still, I mean. I'm not going to give away where he ranks on our top 50, which will drop next week. But he is well ranked, put it that way. So, yeah, I will be fascinated to see what teams make of him, you know? Yeah. And, you know, while we're interested in the teams that underperformed this season and what do they do, what do the Mets do, you know, while we're interested in the teams that underperformed this season and what do they do? What do the Mets do? What do the Yankees do? What do the Padres do? Also very interested in what the Orioles do, if anything, right? Because they're maybe at the top of the list of like, okay, I know it's not the strongest market, but you guys got to go get

someone. Like you have more prospects than you could possibly play. You have so much payroll room. You have all the payroll room, long term and short term. You've got a great foundation that's going to be cheap and good for years to come. So will they sign anyone to extensions? And will they supplement these prospects with some really elite talent? Will they go get some top of the rotation pitchers, right, which is an area of need for them? There's really no reason for them not to do that in a strong starting pitcher market, at least relatively speaking.

So they've got to be aggressive. I mean, they'll be good probably if they just run it back, but they really need to add. I'm sorry if it erodes your prospect rankings, Michael, but at some point you got to let those go. It's a good thing. It's a good thing if you're good and you graduate a lot of prospects and you trade prospects for good players because you were a good team. Now, it's OK. You can be pleased about that. And sort of the same for Cincinnati, too.

Yeah. I suspect that the question is not a matter of room. It's a matter of will. And we will get an answer to that, I suppose. So, there you go. All right. Well, we will be covering all those stories and more. All right. Well, we will be covering all those stories and more, and maybe we'll talk about free agents even more when that fan graphs list drops potentially.

Oh, yeah, we should do that. That's a, you know, that's chance to check out a very exciting NPB matchup. Speaking of Yoshinobu Yamamoto and also speaking of great pitchers who have struggled in the postseason, he is one. But on Saturday in Japan, I believe at 6.30 p.m. Japan Standard Time, which would be 5.30 a.m. Eastern on Saturday, 2.30 a.m. Pacific, Game 6 of the Japan series, NPB's World Series, is being played between the defending champion Oryx Buffaloes and the Hanshin Tigers, and it's an intriguing matchup for two reasons.

The Tigers are leading the series 3-2, and if they win, they will break the curse of the colonel that has haunted them ever since 1985. As explained on Effectively Wild episode 1698, it involves a statue of KFC's Colonel Sanders being rudely immersed in a river. Hanshin has not won a Japan series since that year. They have the second longest title drought in Japan. We talked about the definition of droughts recently. I think it takes less time to be a drought in NPB because there are fewer teams. So the curse is set in

sooner. But they have a chance to snap that one and opposing them will be Yamamoto. Best pitcher in Japan, about to be an MLB. This will be his sendoff start in a must win game. And he hasn't won any of his four Japan series starts so far in his career. He had a lousy start in an earlier round and then he had the worst start of his career. Gave up seven runs in five and two thirds innings in Japan series game one. This is a guy who has not allowed three or more runs in consecutive starts in the past three regular seasons. So a lot at stake in NPP, and I'm sure a lot of MLB scouts will be on hand. Here's the catch. I don't think you can stream it legally from the US. There's just no legal streaming service you can watch to my knowledge. So you're on your own there. There may be streams on the dark web. I wouldn't know of such things, but just letting you know, the MLB season is over, but there's great baseball elsewhere in the world. And we sometimes talk about that too with your help. If you are supporting us on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up

to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay almost ad free and get yourself access to some perks. The following five listeners have already done so Thank you. There, of course, you can also get access to monthly bonus episodes and playoff live streams and discounts on merch and ad free fan graphs, memberships and so much more. Patreon dot com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions and comments to podcast the fan graphs dot com. You can rate, review and subscribe to effectively wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook dot com slash group slash effectively wild. You can follow Effectively Wild on Twitter

at EW pod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash effectively wild. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will try to cram in one more episode before the end of the week. So I won't wish you a wonderful weekend yet, though I hope you have one, and we will be back to talk to you soon. Yeah, yeah Don't wanna hear about picture wins Or about gambling odds All they want to hear about My child has vitals And the texture of the hair

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