Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2100: Here’s How Our Bold Predictions Did

Episode Date: December 19, 2023

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, FanGraphs’ Michael Baumann and Ben Clemens, and Chris Hanel play a quick round of “College Baseball Player or U.S. Space Shuttle Astronaut,” banter about the Braves’ series of recent, red-paper-clip-style trades (5:21) and the Diamondbacks re-signing Lourdes Gurriel Jr. (14:13), and then revisit, dissect, and score their bold preseason predictions from […]

Does baseball look the same to you as it does to me? When we look at baseball, how much do we see? Well, the curveballs bend and the home runs fly More to the game than meets the eye To get the stats compiled and the stories filed Fans on the internet might get riled, but we can break it down on Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2100 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of Fangraphs.

Hello, Meg. Hello. of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. We have a full house today. Also on the line, we have Michael Bauman of Fangraphs, who recently mailed me a Christmas card addressed to the Otani family. Thank you for the card. So this is, I've been doing this because I can never remember if your wife took your last name or not. She's not. Okay. So maybe next year I will address it to the actual residents of your house. Well, it was delivered. So I guess the U.S. Postal Service considers me an honorary Otani.

They don't know Shohei Otani doesn't live in your apartment. No. No one knows where he lives. Well, maybe Portia the Show Bay. But also with us is Fangraph's Ben Clements, aka Other Ben. Doesn't seem to matter what he do. He's always number two. He's just Other Ben. Anywhere else, he'd be a 10. Hi, Ben. How's it going? You're Ben-off for me. And finally, we are joined by Effectively Wild listener, Patreon supporter, and Patreon Discord group founder, and also Twins Playoff Lost Streak documentarian, Chris Hanel.

Hello, Chris, and congrats on snapping the streak with your video. I did it myself, single-handedly. No one else gets to take any credit except me. That's the way that I'm going with this. Make another video. Maybe they'll win a playoff round. We'll see. They did win a playoff round.

Oh, yeah, you're right. I forgot. Wow. Please don't put that on me. They want a wild card round. I'll give them that. Okay. Wow, okay.

I hear the discount in your voice. Oh, my God. We're not relitigating this again. We can't. We can't do it. We've already settled this question. Apologies, twins fans. You're all mad at me now.

Wow, I am deducting more points from the exercise we're just about to do right now. Yeah. Well, Bowman's going to put me through an exercise before that exercise, I think, but we are all here today to reconvene after convening just before opening day when we made our preseason predictions, which was Chris's suggestion. And Chris also kept track and scored it and made graphics and has an eight-page Google Doc with all the results. So we played a prediction game, and the book isn't completely closed on every single prediction, but almost every prediction is decided on.

I've seen enough. Yes. You can call the result. We have a winner and losers. So we will just go through the predictions and remember what we predicted before we knew as much as we do now and what the audience thought of those predictions and which ones came true or didn't. I have a couple transaction-related questions to ask, but Bauman, do you want to put me through this ordeal? Yeah. At least one person at the winter meetings said how much they missed college baseball player or, so we're going to play a quick round of that. It wasn't me. I wasn't at the winter meetings, but yeah, it wasn't other Ben

either because I think he was sick of spending time with me by the end of the week. So we're going to do three questions. It is college baseball player or in honor of For All Mankind, which is out now, college baseball player or U.S. space shuttle astronaut. Oh, wow. OK. I've at least heard of some space shuttle astronauts, unlike every college baseball player. So first one up, Sherwood Spring. Sherwood Spring. That is an astronaut, I believe. That is an astronaut. He flew one shuttle mission on the space shuttle Atlantis in 1985.

I might be enough of a space nerd to actually do okay at this game. Okay. He was the... All right. Next one up, Jonathan Vastein. Next one up, Jonathan Vastein. Jonathan Vastein. That doesn't really ring a bell, so I'm going to guess college baseball player. College baseball player. All right. Infielder Vanderbilt. The last one is Story Musgrave.

Story Musgrave. Okay, I've heard that name before, so that's got to be an astronaut. That is indeed an astronaut. I've heard of this before, so that's got to be an astronaut. That is indeed an astronaut. I've heard of this guy, so he's an astronaut. He's actually rather a famous astronaut. Yeah, can't be a college baseball player. I wouldn't have heard of him. Yeah, he's the only person who has flown on all five space shuttles,

had a ridiculous 30-year career at NASA. All right. Yeah, this game, this is good. I got you with the Lincoln assassin thing last time, so I need to find a better crop of comparables. It has to be something I don't know anything about. So you've screwed up the game. You've played right into my hands here.

This is excellent. Damn. All right. Well, I do have a question for you and other Ben, because you have both written about Braves trades, I believe, in the past few weeks. And I got to ask you to help me make sense of what the Braves are doing. You can all chime in on this one. normal moves. They've extended Pierce Johnson and they re-signed Joe Jimenez and they signed Reynaldo Lopez and they exercised Charlie Morton's option and they declined some options. Since then though, they have been hot potatoing players in a really weird way where they keep acquiring guys and then getting rid of those guys and maybe the dust has settled now. So I want to

ask what you think the net effect of all of these trades is. So just to recap, mid-November, November 16th, they traded Michael Soroka, Braden Shoemake, Nicky Lopez, Jared Schuster, and Riley Gowans to the White Sox for Aaron Bummer. The next day, they traded Kyle Wright to the Royals for Jackson Coar. And also in a separate trade, the Royals acquired Nick Anderson from the Braves for cash. Then December 3rd, they took Coar and Cole Phillips, traded them to the Mariners for Jared Kalanick, Marco Gonzalez, and Evan White. We played what did Jerry DiPoto do as a result of that trade. Then two days later, they flipped Gonzalez with cash to the Pirates for a player to be named later. Three days after that, they flipped White with Tyler Thomas to the Angels

for Max Stassi and David Fletcher. Then the next day, they traded Stassi and cash to the White Sox for a player to be named later. Ben, you wrote about the Stassi and Fletcher trade or trades, I think and you basically said like this is too boring to write about like don't even bother reading this post essentially but I asked him to do it anyway yep then December 15th most recently now they traded Drew Campbell to the Padres for Ray Kerr and Matt Carpenter and finally on the 18th finally for now this is earlier today as we record they released Matt Carpenter. And finally, on the 18th, finally for now, this is earlier today as we record, they released Matt Carpenter, which is quite an insult because I guess they couldn't even find

a taker for him. They managed to flip everyone else they acquired, but I guess no one wanted Matt Carpenter. Anyway, the upshot, they took on Fletcher's remaining $14 million salary, about three quarters of Gonzalez's $12.25 million salary, six and a quarter of Stassi's $7 million salary, $4 million of Carpenter's $5.5 million salary. So they've gained Ray Kerr, Aaron Bummer, Jared Kelnick, and David Fletcher, but they've also added enough salary for people they aren't playing that although their payroll is fifth in MLB at $230 million, their luxury tax payroll is third at $268 million above the threshold. So is this some sort of red paperclip arbitrage brilliance or is Alex Anthopoulos mad

with boredom because most of his roster is signed for the next decade? What is happening here? So I had that same thought that Alex Anthopoulos is just locked in the best roster in baseball and is just doing make work stuff to make sure he doesn't get automated out of a job. But so I'll just, you know, as the person on this call who has by far the most experience working in finance, I'm just going to go out and say this is the only publicly traded team in baseball. They're doing stock manipulation, right? This is like someone's – What does this have to do with the Braves Foundation?

Do you think Evan White is donating some of his salary to the Braves Foundation? I guess they – Evan White is maybe the one person they're not paying not to play for them. I mean Evan White is also – Evan White's contract is a charity in and of itself. Oh, wow. So, but I think it's interesting you mentioned One Red Paperclip, because I don't know if you actually read the One Red Paperclip transactions I did last year when I was bored. I referenced One Red Paperclip in my Rays story that went up today. But most of them are not interesting.

Most of them are like trading something worthless for something else worthless. And then at the end, he sells like a concert ticket for a house. And like, it works for that really well. But most of these are very one red paper clippish. They're like trading something not very useful for something else not very useful.

But I mean, how much would you pay to get Jared Kelnick on your team on arbitration for a while? I mean, that's basically the question that the Braves answered, like $20 million or so. Yeah. I know they had just too many players maybe. And so they had to get rid of some players and clear some space on the 40 man. And then maybe a bunch of those guys were – areigible and could have been non tender candidates anyway, potentially. But especially with like Kerr and Bummer, were there no left handed free agent relievers?

It would have been so much simpler to just sign someone. I don't know what that market looks like. But I mean, I guess it's it's fine if like all they had to do really was upgrade their left handed relief. You know, just about everything else was set on this roster. so i think fletcher makes a lot of sense for them like if you're gonna do all this shuffling and take on money you should have it be for a role that you really had trouble filling in the past yeah that's like utility infielder if you're gonna have dead money like once they had decided to take on dead money for kelnick which fine like that kind of makes sense left hole left field is a hole in their roster and he's young and the braves love like locking

up young people with a good contract so if he plays well this year they'll probably extend him but once you've decided to do that it's a lot more useful to have fletcher as your dead money than uh than like evan white who you're just not going to play so they did a few extra trades to get the um like overpaying is the wrong way to say it, but a salary that someone wouldn't get on the open market. They'd rather have theirs be David Fletcher, who will play like a lot of useful innings for them than Evan White, who wouldn't. And then they had to do Max Stassi to make the money work. But Max Stassi is never going to play for them.

And I bet you they got a reasonably good player to be named later for him. Yeah, maybe. Right. So we still don't know the identities of the PTPNLs. But they did start this sequence with Nicky Lopez, though, who could have been their David Fletcher. Right. Well, if Nicky Lopez could have been their David Fletcher, he would have been their David Fletcher. Right.

Maybe. Maybe, I guess. Yeah. I don't know. It's extremely elaborate this looks a lot bigger than it is i think because particularly in the first couple trades there were a bunch of guys who were basically non-tender candidates who were former first round picks or like you know soroka and right have been good in the major shoemake was a first rounder and like those guys

are either cooked or injured and we're gonna get let go for nothing anyway so i think that yeah particularly that white side that first white socks trade like looks like a blockbuster and it really was just these guys are all gonna be free agents anyway also i think aaron bummer is really good i think he's the best player in any of these yeah that that trade didn't blow my mind when that was done i got it i understood and then there were so many more trades yeah i to me it's like they got aaron bummer then they got jared kelnick and they were like uh well yeah i don't know what to do with these other guys we got to to make the mariners uh or to help the mariners drop a little payroll so like let's just yeah

furiously churn them okay the raker one i, I don't get. I got nothing for you. I love that that happened late enough that I was like, oh, do I really need to assign something with Matt Carpenter and Ray Kerr? And then this morning they just let Carpenter go, and I was like, I guess we're just not going to write up this trade. It's fine. Yeah, it's okay. It's now been covered on Effectively Wild, so you can check that box. Yeah, there you go.

There you go. Okay. Well, it's inventive. I'll give them that. They are just tap dancing and spinning plates over there. They didn't really have to do much of anything, I guess, but they're keeping busy. You know, they're staying warm over there, I guess. You've now introduced the terrifying idea that Anthopolis is in fact so bored that he's creating work

and that he will decide to do that later and later into this week and then into next week when we are dark and I am just saying Alex spend time with your family no one does busy work over Christmas mean famous last words yeah yeah what are you what are see now Ben you have volunteered you are speaking this into existence and now next week when I need someone to write up a big trade, I'm going to be like, hey, Ben, guess what we're doing today? So big trade is fine, but you know that this trade will be like. Tiny. I don't know, trading for someone who's retired, but whose contract is still going. He'll trade for Prince Fielder somehow.

And he's going to end up with a Corbin Bernson snow globe on his desk. Yeah. Yeah, see, see. his desk yeah yeah see see i mean so the way to prevent this i'm going to cobb county for christmas so i can just find alex anthopolis and like tie him to a radiator or something comparatively speaking the diamondbacks just uh you know bringing back lourdes guriel's it's just so simple just you know we'll bring back a player who's pretty good and we'll give him an expected amount of money for a few years and we get an option and he gets an opt-out and we were happy with each other and it's all

so simple just no subsequent moves have to be made because of this move anyone have any thoughts on the diamondbacks resigning lord escarreal jr i freaking love Lord of Scurriels. I feel like the guys in the Diamondbacks clubhouse also love Lord of Scurriels Jr., so I know they seem pretty stoked. I still think that the D-backs would benefit from a big bopper DH, but it sounds like they're still in the market for a big bopper DH,

and there are a couple of those guys available. I really like the D-backs offseason. I think that the reception to it has been muted relative to what other folks in their division have done, which is understandable because they, you know, literally traded for Glasnow and signed Otani if you're the Dodgers. But I don't know, like they won a World Series. Nope. Or they went to a World Series.

Sorry. For all mankind did that to a World Series. Sorry. For all mankind did that. I made that mistake too. Hey, it's okay. I forgot the twins won a playoff round, technically. But they went to the World Series. They had money as a result of that. And they were like, hey, let's go spend some of it so that we can try to be competitive in this division,

of it so that we can try to be competitive in this division, which I think will prove fruitless from a division race perspective, but puts them in some good wildcard position. And I like it. They're doing what we want to see teams do when they've had a successful postseason run. So good job, D-backs. Proud of you. I saw in the second to last paragraph of Dan Saborski's breakdown at Fangraphs, he said something about how, you know, the Mariners could have used someone like this. I don't know if that was an editorial mandate or he just twisted the knife just on his own. Had nothing to do with that, you know. Maybe Dan just knows me. But I don't have anything to do with that.

That was Dan all on his own. All right. Well, we have bantered long enough i think we can move on to our game here and i guess i'll let chris mc so we're going back to episode 1987 here the 2023 preseason predictions game march 29th we got together and we we made what were supposed to be sort of bold predictions. I think that was the idea. These were mostly... Yeah, one of us did. I was proud of how bold I was with my predictions.

You were all very bold. It was all very bright. I was really... Actually, wait, before we start, can I break some news? Sure. Steve Cohen has fired David Stearns. What? So this comes from Eduardo Escobar's social media, of all places. He took Steve Cohen out to dinner over the weekend, and then Cohen got a series of phone calls that resulted in firing his front office. It turns out that he was approached with the opportunity to hire Theo Epstein and Kim Ng at a discount but they had to come in a package deal and he had to accept the offer on the spot and so he did it and so escobar asked cohen why he agreed to the offer and cohen said that he

didn't want to have bogo pobo fomo at fogo oh my goodness yes oh no wow i have been i've been saving that for weeks now i should have said no i should have said no you cannot break some news i just needed to hear those groans that's all i needed i knew where this was going yes i i i was wondering if i was going to get cut off halfway no let me finish you still want to let this guy mc ben i have a second thoughts but this was his whole idea so take it away chris whatever order you want to recap yeah things in well the first thing i want to say is ben you were really worried when we talked about the original idea that everyone was just going to say no to all 40 things and that the voting

would not be interesting. Well, we had 912 ballots. Out of those 912 ballots, only two people voted no on all 40 and two people voted yes on all 40. Every other ballot was completely unique. There were no duplicate ballots among the rest. So this was very wild and varied. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to go through our four contestants from last place to first place, and I will rank them by how likely people thought they were, and we can break them down that way, which means we get to start with a Mr. Ben Lindberg. Yes. Just to remind everyone, the way that this works was we made our predictions, and then we put it up to the audience, and they judged how likely

they thought each prediction was to come true. And then the more likely it was, the less credit we got if it came true, because the idea was to have things be bold, but within the realm of possibility. So we were trying to reward ourselves for long shots that paid off, that came in, right? And I think though, what I learned through this process is that people want to vote yes. People, if they're participating in this poll, they don't want to say, well, this won't happen. This won't happen. They want to believe. Yeah. Ryan Nelson and I had a very long conversation after the episode aired and Ryan was very much like, I think the correct move is to just vote no on everything. And I'm like, I don't think that's the winning move, but you're going to statistically have a positive score at the end.

That's for damn sure. But there's a lot of these that I'm just like, the percentage is like, no, none of you understand statistics. What is going on here? Right. Well, yeah, it's like the Ben Clemens prediction method, sort of, right? Where it's like the Ben Clemens prediction method sort of, right? Where it's like... You go for the thing that is more likely than people think is likely, but that

doesn't necessarily mean it's likely in the aggregate. Right. Even though all or most of these things were less likely to happen than they were to happen. So in theory, everyone should have voted no on pretty much everything, but they kind of did a sliding scale. They did some inflation. They're like, yeah, I could imagine that happening. Okay, I could see it. So I feel like that might affect my strategy next year if we do this again, potentially. I would like to do this again.

Yeah. Well, I had a lot of fun with this. It ended up changing how I watched the baseballs. I have never watched so many Daniel Vogelbach on base situations. Yeah. Like my MLB TV subscription got a lot of work this year. He really let me down. Well, I'm not blaming Vogelbach, but we'll get to that.

Yeah. Anyways. But that's the thing. Like because we weren't rewarded as much for the long shots, I feel like, as we should have been, maybe. And so I feel like this goes against rewarding boldness because people aren't going to vote, no, that's not going to happen as much as they, quote unquote, should. And thus, when it comes true, you're not going to get as much credit as you probably should, given how unlikely it actually was to happen. Well, we got some really big long shots that ended up paying off. I'm not going to end up winning this game as a whole, but I think I took home the biggest individual win on a long shot. You got it. So yeah, we'll get to that.

Okay. Yeah. All right. So you can start with me. Yeah. Yes. So there are three predictions that are still outstanding i all three of them are looking like no's and they're not going to affect the ranking so we'll go with that

and when we get to the listener scores at the very end that'll also have an impact there but we start with number one there will be a minor league game fixing scandal and And this earned a 12% vote. And Ben, I think it's very fitting that ignoring college baseball was to your own detriment. Yeah, it's true. I know. I saw some conversation about like, does this count? No, it doesn't count. But I feel like I was in the right ballpark, so to speak. I mean, physically the wrong ballpark, but conceptually speaking, the right ballpark. Except that I guess the college baseball betting scandals were not game-fixing scandals, right? As far as we know, Michael? Yeah, it was like sharing of insider information.

Yeah, no indication that anyone was throwing games or anything. Although the details of the Iowa stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I lived in Iowa City for many years, so that was very games or anything. Although the details of the Iowa stuff. Yeah. Yeah. I lived in Iowa City for many years, so that was very wild to watch going on in terms of just how much was happening in Iowa. It's just like, whoa.

Yeah. Huge summer for Iowa athletics. Yeah. Your last name was Ference. You had a very interesting year. Well, I might run this one back next year because I still believe in it long term. And what I should do is we'll have

like media member betting scandal. Like that doesn't even feel unlikely, unfortunately, though I know that the PPWA is working on trying to at least have some language saying don't bet on sports if you report on sports. You should have come to the meeting, Ben. You should have come to the meeting, Ben. I wasn't there, but...

But he's a member member in good standing but uh yes i that just feels inevitable at this point but it for reasons that are even clearer maybe than the minor league idea but hey i'm happy that this didn't happen but i i still think it might at some point number two okay ronald acuna jr will have a 50 50 season this earned 14 another very low ranking this was no but really all season it really felt like acuna was like one hot streak away from being on pace but he ended up only with 41 home runs now my question to you, if you hadn't watched this season and I told you that Acuna's home runs and stolen bases added up to 114,

what odds would you give that he actually did have a 50-50 season? Really good odds, I think. Yeah. Yeah. I feel like I got this one right in spirit. Yeah. It doesn't count,

but my point was basically like, yeah, he's going to come all was basically like yeah he's gonna come all the way back and he's gonna have a monster power speed season and he did it just yeah he absolutely did in every single way except the actual stat yeah okay um number three major league baseball will institute the pie slice rule in 2024 now this is one of our three to be determined however they have announced a slate of rules that they are looking to make for 2024. The pie slice is not one of them, but they have 45 days, according to the CBA, which I have now read. And Meg, I totally get it now. Yeah, that'm totally into reading the CBA. All of the appendices at the end is always hilarious. But yeah, this is probably not going to happen.

18% voted yes, but we're looking at no. Yeah, my rationale for that was just that I didn't think that the shift restrictions would have enough of an effect that they would declare it mission accomplished, that they'd be like, all right, we need to go further and we need to now prevent infielders from standing right a hair to the side of second base. We have to carve out this pie slice where they can't stand. And they were still testing that in the minors this past season. I think the Florida State League at least had the pie slice rule going on. So I feel like the shift restrictions didn't have a huge effect, but I guess it was a big enough effect that maybe they feel like that's enough for now,

or they don't want to pile on, they want to wait a while. But I don't know, I guess my point with making this one was that like, I didn't think there'd be that dramatic a shift, so to speak. And I guess there wasn't an enormous difference compared to the other rules changes, at least. It kind of felt like it got lost in the shuffle a little bit. But there was enough of a difference on at least certain types of batted balls that maybe they're satisfied for now. I don't know. Yeah. Number four, no team will win more than 97 games, 25%. And Bauman, you were quoted as saying i think this is the single projection that will lose someone the most points you were very very wrong

but yes the braves orioles dodgers and rays all eclipsed 97 um so ben only lost 25 points for that because only 25 of people voted yes. I did not have enough faith in the listeners. Yeah, I was picking up on, I thought, less super, super teams this year than there had been in the recent past. And the projections, I think, leveled off somewhere around 97, which was weird because there had been triple digit teams typically for, for several seasons at least, which was not really the norm going back a bit, but it had been recently. And I thought, okay, maybe we won't have like a super duper team. And I guess, you know, the Dodgers won a hundred games, but they didn't win 110 or 11 or whatever. Like there wasn't, you know,

the Astros kind of fell back to earth. There were good teams, but they're. The Rays won 99 games. Yeah. Like teams, but they're the race one 99 games. Yeah. Like you don't need super teams to get over 97. No. Yeah, it's true. But,

but the, the high end was a little lower than it had been recently. Once again, the spirit of the prediction. Yes, there was more parody in the league, but not enough for your prediction. Yeah.

Um, next, uh, number five, Juan Soto will beat Otani to a 500 million dollar contract so this is tbd and it's not the end of the year yet and so it hasn't signed yet so i guess this begs a question that i don't believe has been discussed at all on effectively wild how are we valuing otani's contract yeah we should talk about that one yeah we should talk about that a little bit

yeah it has otani received a 500 million million contract or are we going with net present value in which case Juan Soto still has a chance? Or even if it is like sticker price, does it count as receiving it when he only starts receiving it 10 years from now? Yeah, that's right because Otani is so deferred that Soto might actually get his money before Otani does. Well, he'll beat him to the contract. This is very specific wording. During Otani's career, he's making that John Singleton money. Yeah. Right.

Yeah. Okay. Well, I knew this was a long shot with Boris, but I figured I'd try it. Well, 33% of listeners agreed with you on that one. Okay. Number six, sticking with familiar territory shohei otani will earn 12 plus f war and there is no joy in mudville mighty shohei has gone

sproing yeah it uh it was looking pretty good for a while actually i mean that was very it was i i was checking in on this about once a month and looking at the war, and he was within the margin of error right up until he got taken out. Right. Would have been even closer if I'd said baseball reference war, which has tended to be a bit higher on, I guess, his pitching war. So he got to 10 baseball reference war, and had he pitched the full season, he might have made it, but he ended up at nine Van Graaff's War, but yeah, he made a run. I just clicked on his page to see how much he ended up with, and the banner was blue instead of red. It's weird, right?

It was jarring. Yeah, it's weird. I don't know. This is what loyalty costs you, I guess, Ben. Yeah. All right, What's next? The Padres will have the National League's best DH war. This was 35%.

And Ben, as a Twins fan, I too love Nelson Cruz, but I'm afraid that this is the season that he finally got caught napping. Yeah, that did not happen. No. Yeah, I wanted like an old guy still got it one last hurrah for nelson cruz and matt carpenter who we mentioned earlier given the fact that no one wants matt carpenter you can uh infer from that how his season went i mean it was basically the fourth annual this is the year nelson cruz finally drops off a cliff and it was bound to

happen eventually so So yeah. Where did they actually end up in this? Let's see. Very low. I don't have the number in front of me because it was so not close. Eighth. Yeah. 17th in the majors. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. The Phillies won that one. Oh yeah. That's yeah. I mean, they should, their entire team is DHS.

Yeah. Let's see. I mean, they should. Their entire team is DHS. Yeah. Let's see. Number eight. And now we venture into votes where the majority of audiences agreed with you. Anthony Volpe will have a better rookie season than Derek Jeter based on an average of F4 and B4. This was so close. Yeah. They tied in b war but in f war jeter had 2.2 and volpe had 1.9

which is like one five for five game might get you there kind of thing man and just came so close if only he had had that uh chicken parm meal mid-season when they went over his old plate appearances and changed his stance or whatever it was, and he got hot for a little while after that. If that had happened at the chicken parm party, if that had happened sooner, maybe I would have made it. Close. I mean, I guess it depends on what defensive metric you look at with Volpe, because some are higher on him than others. But the ones that counted for this, I guess, defensively. Not high enough.

Yeah, right. OAA was lower on him, right? But DRS was higher on him. Yeah, I thought he'd have a less flashy rookie season than Jeter and obviously wouldn't be as good offensively, but maybe would make it up on the defense. And yeah, close. Yeah, 61 percent of listeners agreed with you on that one i'm surprised okay um number nine daniel vogelbach will steal a base and i just when i when you sent me the list because i got the list from you because i had to set up the google forum i got the list i hadn't been able to listen to it yet and i saw that one and i'm like they get the assignment. Okay. Yes. This is the chaos that we're after. Yeah.

He didn't even attempt one. No. Come on, Voguey. So this is my argument. Vogelbach completed the season with zero stolen base attempts and then Buckshaw Walter was fired. Coincidence? I think not. Yeah.

Well, that's going to be relevant to another prediction later in this draft, right? Yes, it will be. That's right. But 67% of people said yes to Daniel Vogelbach stealing a base. How could he not? But that is everyone wanted it to happen. Right. Like there was, other than the commercial, there was no reason to think that that would happen.

And everyone was just like, let's speak this into existence. New rules. I mean, the commercial was about the new rules, how it made it easier to steal. Plenty of slow guys could sneakily steal one every now and then, even before the new rules. He could have gotten away with it once if he had picked the right moment, but fortune favors the bold.

And then finally, number 10, coming in at 80%, and the one prediction you got correct the rockies will make a trade at the deadline oh yeah it is but it's not to to make it she wins that you get it right but so this was one that i kind of wished i had been on the line to adjudicate because i when i saw that and then during the season, I was like, well, wait, when is at the deadline? Because they had a trade a few weeks before that. I had to be like, no, that's not close enough. But then the Rockies traded Pierce Johnson to the Braves on July 24th.

And I was like, yeah, that's close enough. Like no one's going to object to a trade a week before the deadline is being at the deadline. So, yes, I will count that one as yes. Meg, you said it's time. What a snarky pick. I mean, they hadn't made one, but they didn't make one like last year, right? You never know what the Rockies will do or not do at the deadline.

And often they're just like, yep, we like our team the way it is. No notes on the present Rockies roster reason yeah can i tell a funny story apparently pierce johnson grew up next to one of my like distant relatives on my mom's side and uh they were like i i saw them at a family event not pierce johnson he was busy i assume and they were like we're so happy you know he got you know he's going to be here in Colorado and I was like did you not like him very much and then I was so happy for him when he got traded and they were disappointed I was like no this is this is better for Pierce if you want good things for the you know young man who had to come retrieve baseballs from your

backyard every now and again like this worked out better for him trust me all right who is uh next or what's my score i guess you finish with a negative 279 points all right hey i'm gonna take this as a compliment my positive spin on this because i'm mr chalk you know and i i feel like I really went against my nature here and I tried to go out on a limb and I went a little too far and the branch cracked and deposited me on the ground and I lost. But I'm pleased with this result because my main concern was don't be too predictable. Actually make a bold prediction for once when someone asks you to do that. And maybe I went too bold. Maybe.

That's so sad. That's so sad that this counts as bold for you. Well, you weren't the boldest, according to the audience. We now turn our attention to the person who was, which was a Mr. Ben Clemens. Ben had the highest potential score out of everybody at the beginning of the year. He could have earned 655. He earned negative 245. Uh-huh. All right.

If the one to be determined still goes the way that we expect it will. But we have, starting off with Ben Clemens, the Dodgers will lead or tie for leading the major leagues in wins. 18% agreed. And Ben started by saying, this is my least controversial prediction. And then the audience said, no, it is the most. Really? Only 18%. In retrospect, it doesn't sound bold. Well, I think 18% is right. It's just that everyone misjudged all of my other ones. Yeah.

I mean, I know at the time we thought the Dodgers were vulnerable, but in retrospect, when are the Dodgers ever vulnerable? Yeah. Just in the postseason. There was actually at no point during the regular season the Dodgers had the most wins in the league. It wasn't that far off, though. They made a late

wasn't it that they made a late charge but they won 100 games yeah yeah right right but in terms of the number of games that they were behind whoever was leading was always at least five or something like four games they ended up four games behind the braves that's not terrible yes well as a twins fan i can tell you that coming back four games with three to play is actually possible shout outs to 2009. Number two, Seiya Suzuki will lead all qualified NL Central hitters in WRC+. This was a 22% agree rate. And this was actually really close. Cody Bellinger led the NL Central with 134.

Suzuki came in second with 126. So actually, pretty good job there. But also 22% is way too high for that prediction, I feel like. Yeah, there's a lot of hitters in the NL Central. Yeah, there's a lot. And so getting second place is really good. Number three, and the one that you got correct, Kodai Senga will accrue the most f war on the

mets pitching staff um he was also the only pitcher to achieve qualified status for the mets but he accrued 3.4 war so on the board 24 agreed so that earns you 76 points yeah was that even close i'm guessing no not even close yeah he ended up with 3.4 pitching war and next was justin verlander traded after accruing 1.9 for the mets he basically just had to stay upright yeah and he was going to make it but he also out ward verlander on the year even counting his whole season that That's true. Yeah. Narrowly. And quite a bit over Scherzer. Yeah. Yes.

Number four, Juan Soto will win the National League batting title. 27%. That's so outrageous. 27% of people? Really? 27% of people forgot that Luis Ari arise existed well it's just like like even luis arise shouldn't have been 26 yeah yeah especially because soto wasn't even a high average hitter in nope 2022 he batted 242 low average yeah i mean he won a batting title in 2020 he had a 300 average in 2021 but it's not like he's a perennial batting title guy necessarily.

So, yeah, that's what I'm saying. People just want to believe. He ended up ranking 21st in the National League in batting average. He had a 275. His batting average did go up, just not enough. Number five, with great suspense, Ben Clemens listed off Gunnar Henderson, Corbin Carroll, Jordan Walker, and Anthony Volpian stated that none of them, zero, would win Rookie of the Year.

Whoops. 33% said yes to that. Yeah, I think that one was one where I shouldn't have done a none of, because a none of is very unlikely. Yeah. But like if I'd done a one of. Maybe one of, that still would have been wrong, but that would have been more in the wheelhouse. Yeah, but none ofs are actually pretty unlikely, but I don't think I, it's hard to predict

them as being unlikely. Yeah. Number six, no player will steal 50 bases. 36%. Again. This was like, I feel like this was already settled in July. Oh, yeah. Like, it was like, we were looking at the pace and it was like, there's just no way.

Well, I thought this would be like a 5% vote or something. 36%. Yeah. Yeah. Because, like, clearly someone was going to steal 50 bases. I thought this was, like, an extreme outlier take. Yeah. And yet, and yet you still had the boldest predictions, according to people.

And most of the reactions we're having to these are like, this should have been voted way lower. Yeah. Which is a really interesting juxtaposition, given your predictions. I tried to go pretty out there. I thought, again, the spirit of maybe the top end won't be as high as some people are projecting. Because, you know, people are like, are we going to get like a 100 stolen base guy again? Right. And I'm pretty sure when someone asked me early in the season, I said I thought 60 or somewhere between 60 and 70 would be the high, which wasn't far off.

Just because people were so reluctant to run, probably some people should have run even more than they did. Like Ronald Acuna being the high man, he's not the fastest guy by a long shot. So probably someone else who's on base less than Ronald Acuna even could have surpassed him if they'd really wanted to.

But it just seems like hard to change old habits or people just concluded that the injury risk and the wear and tear just isn't worth it, even if you think you can swipe some back. I think the threat emerging from the bends is that where you guys went wrong is you had a lot of quantitative predictions. And if there's a number on it, then you can talk yourself into whatever. I think. So we should have more vibes based predictions. Okay. We'll get to that in a second. Yeah.

But that's also interesting because, Bauman, you were quoted during that prediction as no one's going to steal 70. Well, good thing I didn't make that one of my bold predictions. Yes. And he could. He got there barely. Yeah. Like 73, right? Yeah. He did get there got there barely. Yeah. Like 73, right? Yeah.

Get there. He did. Next, no player will top eight pitching or batting fan graphs war. 38% said yes. And Acuna and Betts also said yes and both hit 8.3 fan graphs war. So that is a no. I think the audience did a good job there. I think that

was not unreasonable yeah um number eight juan soto will sign an extension before december 31st 2023 this is obviously still tdd but given his press conference with the yankees hat i don't think this one's happening probably not but yep still got a little time here. And I would just say, I don't want to speak for you, but personally, I am fine with the end-of-year player-related ones just not happening. I'm just really trying to not make my mom mad next week. This is one of my goals. But yeah, 45% said yes to that.

uh but yeah 45 said yes to that uh number nine one of my favorite predictions that happened during this event randy or rosarina will steal 40 bases and have a negative bsr uh 48 said yes the answer was no randy went the other way on both counts he only stole 22 bases but then had a 1.8 bsr yeah this is another victim of the um the all of the above kind of deal like yeah or the none of the above like this is actually really unlikely it's like so hard to steal that many bases because you have to be pretty successful yeah also be a bad base runner overall but i that's like a little math trick yeah and why would i make a math trick as a prediction that seems pretty dumb in retrospect i think that this prediction and the poll response really speaks to it's not so much about like what people think is likely but it also

is about whether a prediction confirms someone's preconceptions about a player yeah that people wanted like oh that totally makes sense that that zany thing would happen. I do want to offer one. Michael, you credited Sam Miller while you were discussing the saying, if you've never missed a flight in your life, you've been leaving for the airport too early. That was Nobel Prize economist George Stigler that said that. But also Sam. You know what? Stigler's famous for Stigler's law of eponymy, which is that no scientific discovery is named after the person who invented it. And Stigler credits somebody else with coming up with that postulate.

That's amazing. That's wild that George Stigler – I had no idea he was going to enter my life in another way like that. That's incredible. This factoid is brought to you by Raymond Chen and the Effectively Wild Wiki. George Stigler, I had no idea he was going to enter my life in another way like that. That's incredible. This factoid is brought to you by Raymond Chen and the Effectively Wild Wiki. We got to do like Nobel laureates in economics or college baseball. If you want revenge on me, did Sam say this or was it a Nobel Prize winner? Right.

Yeah. Okay. Number 10. O'Neal Cruz will hit more home runs than Giancarlo Stanton and you were basically banking on Stanton getting injured, which he did and then O'Neal Cruz said, hold my

fibula. 54% people said yes to this. I was heartbroken when O'Neal Cruz got injured because I thought this was going to happen. I thought that this was, I thought Stan was going to have a down year and O'Neal Cruz is going to, you know,

really explode onto the scene. And then he did not. And I'm very sad. I'm really looking forward to seeing them next season. Kudos to Ben Lindbergh though, for really working the crowd during this one. Yeah, I remember that. Yeah, he was like, oh, this is really likely.

Oh, no, this is absolutely, I don't understand. This is not a bold prediction. And yeah, the majority of the audience agreed with you. Nice. I still lose. Projection system-wise, it was a pretty bold prediction. But again, I really feel like I didn't do a good job picking my predictions. I tried to go for things that I thought were very unlikely,

like that I thought were mathematically unlikely, but would happen. And that's silly. Like Bowman said. Yeah. I mean, I still liked your selection overall. I think some,

like there was a couple that came close, but I'm going to be really interested to see how you adjust next year. I am at least very gratified that I got the, the highest possible score. And I thought my highest possible, I thought my possible score should have been much higher than it was. And I still managed to pull it out. But yes, that leaves you with negative 245. And now we come to the wild ass portion of our show.

And the one that was the hardest for me to track. For many reasons. Michael Bauman. Yeah, this was made for Michael Bauman. Yes, four predictions correct, six incorrect for a total of plus 45 points. And we start with number one, People Magazine. We'll name an active MLB player sexiest man alive. 10% of people said yes to this.

It should not have cleared two. I just like this without like, even though that was the least likely, I was like, okay. And I looked into this. I ended up looking into the history people magazine there's only been like two people who were named sexiest man alive who weren't actors or in the entertainment industry and one was john f kennedy jr and the other one was an athlete and i can't remember who it was but i think it was a tennis player at the time i don't have that in front of me but yeah it was like athletes almost never come on this thing

like and i think carmen played college football no so the original version of this was an active mlb player will i swear to god this is true the original version of this was an active mlb player will go on a date with tay Swift. But she was in a relationship at the time. I couldn't think of another equivalent pop star. We would be having a very different conversation right now if you had gotten that close. I've been thinking a lot about how I'm going to refine this for next year. Yeah. Who is the Travis Kelsey of MLB? If it had not been Kelseysey if it had been a baseball player somehow who would it have been so like my stand-in was julio rodriguez but

he's dating a professional soccer player i believe too young too young for yeah too young for yeah we don't want to do age gap discourse. Please no. Joey Votto. Joey Votto. Oh, that'd be a fun one. Sure. That'd be a very fun one. I hope he's playing next year. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I hope it works out for Taylor and Kelsey, obviously. But, you know, Joey's out there. But, yeah, I did follow up on this on the podcast when the people list came out because Otani was mentioned. Mentioned. Yeah, like they had a breakout list, like they had sexiest athletes or something, and he was prominently featured on that. But that's a far cry from being the actual sexiest, which as we know, as everyone would have predicted, was Patrick Dempsey in the year of our Lord's 2023.

Can I claim that as no, I said active, so I can't claim can't claim that Chase Utley wins by. Yeah, right. No. OK, next. God, an animal will kill another animal on the field of play during a Major League Baseball game in a manner visible to spectators. The specificity of this prediction became so important in ways that none of us could have seen. 12% of people said yes, and they were correct. And out of all of the judging that I did, this is probably the most contentious on the list but i went through and i listened to your discussion very close multiple times and humans were never disqualified as being a part of this prediction and my the biology professor in me is like those are animals and will brennan counts as an animal and he smashed a ground

ball when the guardians faced the white socks on may 23rd this counts as yes put it on the board but yeah even a week earlier it was zach gallen uh killed a bird during uh during warm-ups or something like that yeah the zach gallen close call was when i started to spec that suspect that we had like meddled with the forces of nature yeah i we i remember you and i were talking on twitter about whether that would have counted or not and i was like if it had been during a game yeah i would have counted that and yeah it ended up we only had to wait another week which was the weirdest thing ever right and a sign that this was going to be a very fun year not for the bird but for this Yeah, this made me wonder because there

were enough close calls with this thing that I wondered whether there's just more death taking place on baseball fields than we normally credit. And we were hyper vigilant because of this prediction. I guess when it's a player throwing something or whatever and exploding some animal, that's pretty well known, when that does happen. And it's fairly rare when it does, but it's usually a big story. But I wonder whether there's just more mortality taking place in a typical season, whether this wasn't really that much of a long shot. Number three, the Phillies will use Gay Bar by Electric Six as a victory anthem at least once this year 19 of people said yes to

this now i do want to note bauman said that one of his strategies was to incept this absolutely would have counted that absolutely 100 would have counted. Are any of you familiar with Taskmaster, the TV show? Yes, I'm an avid Taskmaster fan. Yeah. So Mark Watson, there was a task that never got televised that Mark Watson talked about where he had to make five predictions for the year. And it never got aired because one of his opponents made predictions that would have been illegal to broadcast. I think because they were like, in England, they have very strict laws about the election process and whatnot, like endorsing candidates. And I think it came across like she was basically like, Labour's going to win or the Conservatives are going to lose.

So they never used it. But Mark Watson made five predictions that he was like, I think I can make this happen. That they sounded really weird. And then he was like, a cat will appear on this thing or something like that. And he was going to do all of that. And I thought that that was brilliant. And Alex Horn at the time was like, yeah, no, we would have counted that if we had actually done that. So, yes, if you'd figured out a way to do that.

But also. I made two mistakes here. Oh, yes. Please tell me. Please tell me about those mistakes that you made with this prediction. So the plan was to befriend Garrett Stubbs, who controls the playlist and is also, unlike almost every other player on the Phillies, actually goes into the clubhouse for pregame media.

And so there were probably like five or six times during the season where I was in the clubhouse and Garrett Stubbs was just hanging out and I had no reason to talk to him. Like I had actually ended up writing about it, but it wasn't until like their very last homestand. And I couldn't figure out the moves that would get me from introducing myself to do you know Electric Six? That is a few jumps. And like I absolutely could have like talked to him about almost anything. do you know Electric Six? That is a few jumps. And like, I absolutely could have like talked to him about almost anything. I couldn't figure out how to get from there to

not just Electric Six. And this is my second mistake is instead of using any Electric Six song, specifically saying gay bar, because I think I could have sold synthesizer or danger high voltage, or I buy the drugs a lot easier than Gay Bar. It's part of the reason it was such a funny prediction, but also it's a specific sell that I didn't feel comfortable making to a stranger.

But also, I would have been almost 100% relying on you to know if it happened or not. Because it's like, would that be an article that someone wrote like i was gonna probably just need video from your twitter account of it blasting in the clubhouse if i'd gone and done it i would have made sure to uh let at least one of the phillies beat writers now just to be on the outlet or on the lookout also stubs's spotify um his his playlist for phillies post-game stuff is public. So if that had ended up on there, I would have sent it to you. Oh, but would that have been proof that it got played in the clubhouse as a victory anthem? I certainly would have attempted to pass it off as such.

Okay. Okay. Well, 19% of listeners agreed with you, but it did not happen. I'm very sad to say. Number four, eight teams from the two East divisions will finish with more wins than any team from the two Central divisions. 21% said yes. Not only did three teams from the East beat out the Brewers, only three teams from the East divisions beat out the Brewers at 92 wins.

But even if you take the Brewers away, only five beat out the 87 wins of your AL Central champions and winners of three postseason games, the Minnesota Twins, get bent, Michael Bellman. This was closer than I thought it was going to end up being. Really? Yeah, the Brewers ended up, well, no, the the effing Mets let me down. But I think first time you've ever said that. Well, it's the first time I've ever been disappointed at the Mets losing. I can say that.

But now I stand by this one, even though it ended up being, like you said, spectacularly wrong. Yeah. And spectacularly wrong in a way that made me very happy. So that's that's where I derive my glee from it for. said spectacularly wrong. Yeah. And spectacularly wrong in a way that made me very happy. So that's where I derive my glee from it for. Number five, the savviest pick in all of this game. LSU players will be selected with the first two picks in the MLB draft. 26% said yes,

and your knowledge of the SEC paid off, Forko. There was a late rumor that the Pirates were going to try to go underslot with Max Clark. And I think, did Kylie report that rumor? I think that's right. Yeah. I'm just going to say, I remember distinctly wanting to kill Kylie a few days before the draft. And I don't know if it was because of this or something else. Could have been any number of things.

They made me sweat because Dylan Cruz apparently was not going to deal with the pirates, and they could have gone any number of directions. It is nice how this gave us a rooting interest in things that otherwise I wouldn't really have felt invested in or had any personal stakes. Yeah, next year it's going to be, will Paul Skeens go to space? Yeah. Yeah, next year it's going to be, will Paul Skeens go to space? Which adds a whole new context to Meg going, Skeens, on the podcast during this, which was really funny. Yeah.

Skeens. Number six, the one, the prediction that kicked everything off. Lance Lynn will have a higher F4 than Jacob deGrom, 32%. Said uh said yes you counted basically on degrom getting hurt but you did not account for lancelin having the worst season of his career it never occurred to me no uh degrom accrued more fan graphs war in 30 innings than lancelin did in 183 how close did i get oh uh not close uh let me that's disappointing the ground was really good in those 30 those 30 innings yes he was uh lance lynn last year had a fan graphs war of 0.5 and uh uh jacob degrom so one and a half jacob degrom had a war of one and a half yeah

so you were one war off i thought the dodgers fixed it man that's rough yeah that's that's uh one you can kick yourself over just like now i don't no regrets i'd do it again yeah i mean one of mine my uh cutting board predictions was uh that livy would rise up paul skeens and that happened and i was kicking myself all year yeah one of your one of your cutting board predictions was also one that i gave you and then you used it at the end of the episode byron buxton will be a qualified hitter which is it's good that you didn't use that. But yeah. Yeah. Okay. Number seven, Starling Marte will hit less than 20 doubles. 42% said yes, and you were correct.

Or should I say Ben Lindbergh was correct. Sterling Marte only hit seven doubles while having a down year. But you scored 58 points for that one. I don't understand what your thought process was for how you made that prediction. I was betting that Ben would hem and haw when asked a simple question for like 40 seconds, and then he came right out. Right out, yeah. Number eight, no game will end in a clock violation. 60% said yes, and you were correct i wanted so badly for this to be wrong i was let down and then like on april 3rd literally like

in the first week of the season there was a team that there was an out recorded by clock violation with one out in the ninth oh the mets did it Mets, their penultimate out was recorded on a clock violation while facing the Brewers. I was like, this is absolutely going to happen. But that is the closest that we got the entire year. Once we got to like April 15th and it didn't happen, I knew we were safe. Yeah.

Number nine and the most legendary pick. A CBA will not enter into force in minor league baseball during the 2023 regular season. Now, the polling was still open when this news broke, and this was polling at 82%. And there was a massive shift afterwards, but there were still people voting the other way, even though it had already happened. But 42% still agreed with you, even though the news had already broke that you were wrong. Right before, I was like, should I text someone from the union and see if I'm going to look like an idiot making prediction it was like nah i don't need to do that you got yeah but yeah the the end result 66 ended up agreeing with you

so you lose 34 points and then deserved every one of those 34 last points finally number 10 more pitchers will appear for the pirates that will qualify for the ERA title league-wide. 67% agreed with you. Only 30 pitchers appeared for the Pirates. Can you guess the one team that actually tied the number of pitchers? Oh, Jesus. Here, I'll tell you this. I remember I was tracking it, and I couldn't. The Pirates had an unusually stable season.

Yeah. 44 pitchers qualified for the ERA title league wide. The Philadelphia Phillies had 44 pitchers appear for them. Really? Yes. Yeah. I'm surprised by that. According to my sources, 44.

So yes, that results in 45 total points. And we come to the winner of our event meg rally with five correct four incorrect and one to be determined uh it that's right go with the no that i'm expecting for your one you'll end with 60 points um but you you cleaned house and for all of the ones that Ben Clemens is like, I was too precise. You leaned into it and rocked this game. Yeah. Yeah. This was wild.

We'll start. At the time. Especially because in the beginning, I looked like I had just totally whiffed on this draft. You felt like you hadn't followed the assignment or something. Yeah. I didn't feel

sufficiently bold. I thought that all of my predictions proved to be too chalky and that I was just gonna, even if I was right, I was just gonna lose

because they're so I mean, you have parlay bets. You have parlay bets that ended up coming out in this. I do. It's shocking for someone like me who, you have parlay bets. You have parlay bets that ended up coming out in this. I do. It's shocking for someone like me who, you know,

like probably still doesn't totally understand how that works. You know, like it's fine. Don't worry about it. I mean, I guess it makes sense for me to say this as Mr. Chalk, but it does make sense to kind of be chalky in this game, I feel like, because, again, people want to predict that things will happen. And so you're not going to get rewarded as much by the long shots if they come in. Granted, like most of the longer shots just didn't come in anyway.

So it didn't really pay off. big a gap between their levels of support for things that are really likely and things that are really unlikely, then it kind of favors you to not go super unlikely, I would think. Yeah. Well, I think Bauman had the right attitude. I think at one point he said- I so often do. Yes. You said something effective. I have one that I think is more likely, but I don't think the viewers will think is as likely. And I'm guessing that's the draft one. Was that the one that you were talking about?

You never said which one you were talking about. But you said one of your picks, you were like, I'm pretty confident this happened. I don't think anyone else would think that. I think it was the clock violation one. Oh, the clock violation. Yeah, I was certain that that was going to hit. Okay.

Well, number one, we start with one that didn't come through, but was really damn close. Zach Gallin and Logan Webb will lead NL Cy Young voting one, two in either order. And they ended up being two, three. Yeah, I should have. I should have said that they would finish in the top three. I should have been a little less precise here. And I think it would have served me well. Only 12 percent agreed with you. That would have paid off huge. But yeah, you came damn close.

Number two, the one that I'm mystified that people, the amateur draft will get rained out and relocated somewhere else in Seattle. That is a level of specificity that I did not expect would earn 21% yes. That's like a lot of people being like, yes, a trope about seattle that i agree with this will definitely happen we didn't even know if the draft was going to be was going to be outdoors yet we did not we did not know one way or the other and let me tell you it was a beautiful day when they i was actually like there was like a few

days before i was looking at weather reports for seattle and i'm like what am i doing with my time here like i'm gonna know the day number three the top two prospects gunner henderson and corbin carroll will win rookie of the year 22 said yes they did wow they did that's amazing wow that's wild and it was like that was pulled that was pull to pull right like that was just all year it's like yeah that's probably gonna be what happened well in the beginning of the season it looked like a young gunner might uh have a rough introduction that lasted long enough for him to to get got in the al rookie of the year race um and then it ended up being fine you know he ended up

really turning it on but his his first couple weeks i think was um was not bad considering um his level of pro experience but not like god, you know? But then it ended up being fine. It did. And you earned 78 points. That's like the most chalky, but like so, so chalky, but then it circles around into not being chalky. Cause like, even though, yeah, like they're the favorites, it's still unlikely that they will both win the way that they did

so yeah yeah um next one another another winner for you a team that has never won a world series before will win it this year it wasn't the team that you wanted but it was a team that had never won a world series 29 said yes and the texas rangers took the piece of metal. And I even, I saw it live, saw it in person live. And I'm sure the first thought in your head was, I just earned 61 points. It was not. I don't think you knew that this, like this I think was what put you ahead of me

because I was tracking it. And I remember feeling like the sense of loss to rival what I felt when I was in the building when the Phillies lost their first ever game seven. And yeah, you left it for like right down to the wire. It was right at the wire. Like you came on strong right at the end of the year.

Thanks to this one. And then the last one that we'll get to next one. Only five players will hit 40 home runs, but Aaron judge will hit at least 50. 41% said yes. Six players hit 40 home runs. Aaron Judge was not one of them. He certainly had the pace, but he didn't have the playing time. time nope no um number six francisco alvarez will hit at least 20 big league home runs 41 said yes zips projected him at 21 home runs at the time he hit 25 put her on the board and this is exciting for me for multiple reasons because i i don't play fantasy baseball, but I do play in a Diamond Mines Sim League. And Alvarez was one of my draft picks this year.

So everything was coming up Meg with this one. It was good to see him come on. Okay, this one. This one might be one of my favorite picks because when I was like, what is going on? We will see at least 5 40 plus stolen bay seasons but not more than seven 48 said yes meg uh would you like to give me some lotto numbers after the show this uh i i well i don't think this should have earned 48% voting, and yet here we are. Exactly six players met the criteria.

Ronald Acuna Jr., Ruiz, Carroll, Abrams, and Nico Horner with 73, 67, 54, 49, 47, and 43 stolen bases, respectively. Precision of this completely outpaces the confidence I had that I knew sort of what impact the rule changes would have on the stolen base environment. Like I knew it would change, but I didn't know if we were like overestimating what was going to happen, the number. And then it ended up being it ended up working out for me. But I wasn't confident that I really understood the true impact that this would have. So I'm shocked. I'm shocked, really. Really threaded the needle there. Very, very much so.

Number eight, the Orioles will beat their win total from last year and still miss the playoffs. 60% said yes, the Orioles did too well and ended up making playoffs. that was a no half right yep half right number nine this is your one tbd the brewers will trade corbin burns by new year's day 73 said yes i've seen reports that basically said the brewers don't think they're moving him yeah clock's ticking and uh obviously meg's rooting against the trade at this point because you've already won rooting against our trade just so strongly like yeah the game's already

locked yeah like but i you know it's like um even if it affected the game this is this is how committed to not making my mom angry i am because you know what mom hates? Me working over Christmas. She hates it. It makes her so angry. Well, then let's make sure that Corbin Burns still has a Brewers jersey on by January 2nd. Yeah. And for Brewers fans primarily, right? The people who benefit the most from this are all the good people of Milwaukee who want to see Burns in their rotation and get to enjoy him and not feel like it's all getting torn down to the studs. But right below those people, it's me and my mom. And so, you know, let's keep all of the constituencies in mind here, I guess is my point. This is a broad coalition coming together for a bright future. We come to our final prediction.

We will see at least one midseason managerial firing. This was the chalkiest pick. 92% said yes. Lol, Mets. And this is, okay, this is fun because Showalter was fired on the final day of the season before the game. However... And I know that there was controversy around this counting for me. Yes, I was talking with Ben about this, because at the time I marked it as yes,

because I believe it meets the criteria. However, he still did manage that game. And given the wording of the prediction, I believe it still counts, because he was fired midseason. Like he was told, you're out. But I think that this I think that this counts as yes,

which is good because if you were wrong, Bauman would win the event. As much as I'd like to split hairs, you don't need to like the Giants actually removed Gabe Kapler before the end of the season. Kai Correa managed three games. True.

That's true. Now, does the last series of the season count as in the spirit of midseason? Yes, it does. But since we already brought up Taskmaster on the show. Yeah. Amidst the season. Yeah, the season was still in progress. It is posterior season.

Well, now I'm going to say I totally forgot about Kapler. I was focusing totally on Showalter. And if it was three games before. Yeah, typical East Coast bias. I live in Oregon. I don't know what you're talking about. But yeah, I forgot forgot so this isn't even a controversy so i would argue it's still controversial but i'm gonna lose on a technicality

yeah i don't want any of your sass there is a difference like you know if you're deciding to to kind of pull the plug on someone mid-season that's a different mid-season as in like in the middle of the season or somewhere close to the middle of the season. That's a bit of a different message maybe than just like, eh, you know, the season almost... We're going to let you go in a few days anyway. We might as well get a head start, which sometimes seems strange.

It's just like, why not wait? You know, why not just let them finish out their term here and not have the indignity of a mid-season firing. Sometimes you're sick of looking at his stupid face. Maybe so. Yeah. But that, you know, it's a less meaningful difference than like if you're firing someone, you know, before the break or whatever.

And then you have to figure out a real interim person who's taken over a big chunk of the season or hire someone full time. It's a different kind of thing. But technically speaking, and that is what counts here. It is absolutely. Is Jack McKeon still alive? I think so. Yeah.

Let's play that parlor game for a little bit here. He's 93 years young. Yeah. He could still come out of retirement, finish out a season for someone. But yeah, that counts. But it was close. It was closer than people thought it would be, I'm sure.

It was coming down to the wire. But yeah, Meg ends with 60 points, according to my projected finish. And with that, we close the book on the 2023 preseason predictions game. And we have some listener scores for you uh so as we know we got 912 uh results or 912 submissions and based on my projected scores i will give us our top 10 uh and so obviously because people are making guesses on 40 predictions that are just 10

these scores are going to sound way higher than what we've been talking about here. But 10th place, N, that was the submission name, N, with 638 points. Brian Hamilton with 650. Octo Paganini with 650. Tom, 670. Rich, 672. Mark Arduini, 684. Alan H, 670. Rich, 672. Mark Arduini, 684. Alan H, 698.

Kevin Paskurek, 760 points. Recent effectively wild Patreon guest. Yes. Little Matty with 868. And your winner, who broke four digits, Ryan Westhoff, with 1,066 points. What a show. Yes. Absolutely amazing showing from Mr. Ryan Westhoff.

Please report to the counter for your free steak sandwich after the show. Yeah. Congrats, Ryan. Yeah. And so, yeah, this was a lot of fun. And I was really, really gratified that Ben did take me up on this and then allowed me to set all of this up and do all of the scoring i had i had a blast with this and i'm looking

forward to it for next year i don't think you should be surprised by that if there's one thing that i've come to learn about ben it's that he is so willing to let other people come up with content i mean great i've been on the show four times now and I haven't paid the Patreon tier exactly once. Yeah. You're doing a lot of other work that, you know, brings value and support to the pod.

So don't, don't sell yourself short. Oh, thank you. I was going to joke like Eric Langenhagen sent his $5,800 in, but at this point, right? Right.

Yeah. Yeah. As a, as an anti-predictions person, typically, I enjoyed this exercise and would love to do it again. And we'll see how we will adjust the types of picks that we make next year. I'm trying to remember if the one time I'd actually worked for you, you paid me or not. Wow. I don't think you did.

Me? Wow. This was way back you did. Me? Wow. This was like way back when you were running BP. I've heard a guest article. I don't think I got paid. They should have been 50 smackaroos should have been coming to you for that back then. Knock on your, I'll send an invoice in next year's Christmas card. All right.

With interest, that could set me back at this point. I do want to ask as a final thing, I am, because people have, all of you have said in one way or another that you want to tweak your strategy for next year. What are you, what are you thinking you need to adjust? What is your, what's your plan? Well, I mean, as I said, I feel like this does kind of favor not being that bold, but the game itself, the point is to be bold. It's more entertaining to be bold. So even though I feel like the competitive advantage, like the market inefficiency here is being less bold than everyone else, that would also be a lot less entertaining for our listeners.

So I'm not going to do that. But the problem is if you make something that's a very chalky pick and then it ends up being wrong, you get penalized more. Yeah, that is true. And so there is that swing. So you do have to kind of balance it. You can't just come out and be like, a player will hit a home run in a game.

Yeah. Well, I don't know. We have a few months. Nudity is the answer to your question. Nudity? How I plan to adjust. There will be nudity a few months. Nudity is the answer to your question. Nudity? How I plan to adjust. There will be nudity in my predictions.

Nudity. All right. Well, content warning is out. Yeah. I look forward to forgetting my experience of this draft entirely and then panicking on air when we do it again next year just to stay true to myself. Well, and Ben's already said, what, less math? I'm just'm just gonna go bolder i feel like my issue was that they weren't bold enough i just need to go like much more off the wall make it clear that like like okay say a suzuki will lead the nl central in batting that's really crazy but you

could convince yourself you got to do things that you can't convince yourself right and i feel like some of bowman's predictions did a great job of that. Some of Meg's did as well. And that's what I've learned. Just go crazy. Thank you. Yeah. You want to get on the board, though.

Like, you want to get one. Do you feel better for having gotten one right than zero? Because I don't really. I do. I feel a little bit better that I got one right. I think I do. Yeah. I didn't get skunked.

So, okay. Well, Chris, thank you for overseeing this and suggesting it in the first place. And we will have a few more months to mull over our predictions for 2024. It has been my privilege, sir. Thank you so much. All right. Well, after that conversation concluded, Bauman said there were no legit mid-season managerial firings all year, but we had a mid-season NHL coach firing while we were recording this podcast. I don't think any of us predicted that. Somewhere there's a hockey podcast where they made pre-season predictions. Maybe that one worked out for someone. Also, at some point in this episode, maybe when I was joking about Livvy rizzing up Paul Skeens, I referred to an idea being on the cutting board. Ever since then,

I've been thinking, did I say that? Is that an expression? Is that just a blend of on the chopping block and on the cutting room floor? Aren't chopping blocks and cutting boards sort of similar things? These are the questions that run through a podcaster's mind after they record, but before they press publish. But what runs through our minds even more often is, gosh, it's great when people support us on Patreon,

which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. The following five listeners have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. A Quint, Tony, Mark Goble, Penelope Maddy, and Devon Brennan. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, one of which we recorded over the weekend and will be releasing soon.

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EWpod, and you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. Shane McKeon is off today, and so filling in for him is Jordan Allen. Thank you to her for her editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. Effectively Wild.