Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2192: Both Sides Now?

Episode Date: July 19, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the highlights of the All-Star Game, a hypothetical Evan Longoria unretirement scenario, the newly announced 2025 regular-season schedule (featuring Tokyo contests and a “Rivalry Weekend”), a baseball movie-mention conspiracy theory, players possessed by Gameday 3D, the timing of Martín Maldonado’s DFA, and the potential effect of moving the […]

Take me to the diamond, lead me through the turnstile, shower me with data that I never thought to compile. Now I'm freely now a scorecard with a crackerjack of a smile, Effectively Wild. I am doing okay. How are you? I can hear the cough drop in your mouth. Sorry. I know it's what everyone says they want from their podcast is like more hard candy sounds. More lozenges. They're like, where are the lozenges? Where is representation for me, a member of the lozenge community? And I am here to say that I see you.

And look, I know this isn't a great mouth sound. And I am here to say that I see you and look, I know this isn't a great mouth sound and I am sorry, but I also know that it is better than the alternative, which is the hacking cough noise. So here we are, you know, we make compromises to get by sometimes. Yeah, and the good news is that Eric Longenhagen will do most of the talking

on this episode. So we just gotta get through an intro and then we'll just, yeah, we'll just tag in Eric and he'll take it from there. He'll be here to break down the draft and also other stuff, including some comments about potential draft pick trading in the future that Rob Manford made. Just a few things that we can touch on before we bring in Eric. I hope that your all-star experience was positive despite the vocal challenges. Well, you know, it occurred. It was loud and now I am home. So all of those things are true at once. Yep. Yes. We should speak to some acoustic issue expert at some point because we got an email from one listener, Joe, who wrote in about that, who does that sort of work professionally. I think we've heard from a Patreon supporter who has done that in the past. It's a failure of acoustics. If you're too loud, then you have potentially done something wrong when it comes to crafting the auditory environment in your event space.

So at some point we can discuss that in some depth. But yeah, it was an okay all-star game. Look, with an all-star game, you're just going to get a parade of pitchers. That's what happens. You say, and a parade of players. And you probably won't even get to see all the players. And you will see pitchers for an inning at a time. And that's all you're going to get. And so there's only so much hype, I guess you can generate, even if it's

the Paul star game and it's Paul skeans and it's his big debut in this marquee jewel event for a national MLB audience. It's still kind of you blink and you might miss him because he's good and he'll probably have a hitless inning and then he'll be out of there. And everyone was hoping, oh, I hope someone gets on base so that we can see Skeens versus Judge. And Juan Soto obliged and got on base as is his want. And then he brought up Aaron Judge, as so often happens in Yankees games. And then Judge swung at the first pitch and he made it out. And it's like, oh, we've been building this up for days. And, you know, that's sort of what happens.

So you can't always count on that delivering. But congrats to Skeens for being the youngest rookie starter of an All-Star game since Doc Gooden. And he's having a heck of a season, even if we only got to see him for just a glimpse on that stage. Yeah, it was interesting. Again, I was up in the stratosphere of the Oxbox, as far away from other people as I could manage. And it does go by quick. It's funny. It was less loud during the All-Star game than it was during the Derby, I found. But still, very loud. There were highlights. It was fun to see skeins. It was fun to... I can't believe that you haven't brought up Otani homering yet. What's going on?

He does do that often. Are you okay? So that wasn't really out of character. That often. Are you okay? So that wasn't really out of character. And it was great fun to watch Mason Miller just blow 104 past him. That was cool. Yeah.

I do like that when a player like Duran, who he's been one of the most valuable players in baseball this year, but if you're not a Red Sox fan, he's not a household name yet. And so to have someone star in that event where maybe some people who are just paying attention to their team and their team is not the Red Sox, they're like, oh, maybe I should check out what this Terran guy is doing. And then you realize, oh, he's doing that a lot, actually. It wasn't just in this one game. So that's nice when you can get publicity for someone who absolutely deserves that sort of spotlight given the season that they're having yeah i thought that that was i thought that that was nice it had like a good energy to it um i'm given to understand obviously i was not watching the broadcast but that the the attempts to talk to players on the field failed catastrophically because of the noise

so maybe the sound uh is exactly what it should be, actually. You know, maybe they've dialed it in just as in like silent or actually quite loud protests to a phenomenon that we've objected to several times on this podcast. Yeah. I wouldn't want to have to subject everyone at every game to deafening noise levels just to do away with the in-game in-player interview. That's the one context where I'm okay with the in-game. I was just about to say, I was just about to say, you know,

this is, go ahead. We have granted this as an exception, although it's still not my favorite. Like I, I am no long, you know, when we're in a moment like that,

where the results of the game does not matter, it could not matter less than it does, except if somebody gets hurt, which thankfully didn't happen. It is the appropriate context, but that doesn't mean that it's good. It's still not good, Ben.

Just watch them. Just watch them. There's a lot of roping at the All-Star game this year. They were really into roping. They really leaned into the Western cowboy motif. Yeah, I know that horses participate in rodeos and those rodeos are themselves loud, but it can't have been good for the horses

to be in that ballpark. I finally landed on my diagnosis for Globe Life in consultation with a friend of the show, Jordan Schusterman. Here's what I've decided. It feels much more like a football stadium than a baseball stadium. I mean, obviously the field isn't configured that way. That would

be a weird thing to discover in person, right? It's weird that it's actually a football field over here. But just in terms of the size and the comfort with it being quite loud, it feels much more like you should be watching 11 on 11 in any given moment. So I think that's where I've landed on Globe Life. I am happy to be home, Ben.

I'll admit that. I don't mean it as an insult to the good people of the greater Dallas-Fort Worth metro area, but some of that might be because I endured like four different flight delays and a gate change. That airport is out of control. What are, I'm going to use the word y'all, even though I feel like I'm not regionally entitled to it, even though it is a perfect, it's perfect. It's perfect. It's a perfect word. What are y'all doing down there with that?

That place is unhinged. Makes no sense. Ain't it the Dallas Cowboy Club? I had a good quesadilla. It was nice. Happy to hear it. Well, at the All-Star Game, listener Joe researched that the last time a starter went more than an inning in the All-Star Game was 2018. And it was Max Scherzer, I believe, who pitched two innings in that game. Although Blake Snell, of all people, in relief, pitched an inning and two thirds.

I think the last time that a starter went more than two innings was Greg Maddox in 1994. So different era. It's been a while. And I totally understand that. And I'm not saying leave them in, even though it would be nice if you left the big stars in. It's also nice for the other guys to get in the game.

And even if they're just in short bursts, they are trying. They seem to be taking it seriously, which is different from, say, the NBA All-Star Game, where you might be more likely to see the stars stay in the game, but they are not taking it seriously to the point where it becomes kind of an embarrassment. So, you know, it's a balance. But I think the MLB All-Star Game is still maybe the best in an environment that is not really conducive to All-Star Games being big news anymore. I did see that there was a promo put out because we're all focusing on like, oh, post-All-Star break is starting and MLB released the 2025 schedule. I'm like, gosh, I'm not in a 2025 mindset yet. Yeah. So the season is starting in mid to late March with a Japan series, a Tokyo series, and that should be good. It's Cubs, Dodgers. And so you're going to have a lot of

Japanese representation on those rosters. You have potentially Otani returning as a two-way player and doing it on that stage maybe. And the Cubs put out a great promo I thought that was really well done promoting Seiya Suzuki going to that game. And then they had kind of like Seiya as the young kid, as the young hitter, and then Shota Imanaga as the young pitcher aspiring to play on this stage and then growing up to be the guys they are today, right? And then going back home to play in the series and everything. It was great because they juxtaposed it.

They had the side-by-side, one hitter and one pitcher. And I thought, the Dodgers, you got to put out a reaction video. You got to do your version of this where not Shohei and Yamamoto, I guess you could do the same sort of format, but no, have the young Shohei hitter and the young Shohei pitcher. And they could both be the same kid playing multiple parts. Although there's been discussion, what if they're two guys, conspiracy theory, but no, it's one player. So you could recreate that format with just the one

young Shohei Otani doing both things. That seems like a nice opportunity to me. Yeah. I think it's, you know, this is an area where it feels like they do, I don't know, they do a good job kind of thinking through what's going to make this not only fun for MLB fans, but for fans overseas. Like, let's actually lean into that. And I feel like they do a pretty good job with that stuff. And it's always exciting, even if it confuses people. Like, when do your playoff odds actually start? Why are your positional power rankings not done yet?

Because, look, what are we going to do? What are we supposed to do? What are we supposed to do? You know? Yeah. The big news, relatively speaking, with the schedule reveal was this rivalry weekend that is happening. And there have been sort of rivalry weeks before, but it's a rivalry weekend next May 16th to 18th. Okay.

And the conceit is that you'll have all the regional series because you're going to have extra games next year, just an extra series against your interleague rival. And so this rivalry weekend will be 11 series between prime interleague rivals and four other regional matchups. And so it's like the real rivalries. And then it's the one where it's like, okay, I guess that kind of counts. It's technically a rivalry, I guess. And I think this is cool. I applaud it. It's worth trying. I don't know And I think this is cool. I applaud it. It's worth trying. I don't know that I'm hyped about it exactly for that reason that, A, there aren't that many rivalries in baseball worth getting excited about. I don't want to insult anyone in the quality of their regional rivalry.

But I think fans of certain teams will acknowledge we just don't really have a natural rival like that, exactly. Some, there's just more juice to it than others. And then also because baseball is not a sport that is really watched nationally by most fans, it's not like you're just going to be glued to the TV watching every rivalry game and series that whole weekend. Most fans, I mean, they might watch their team's rivalry series and that'll be nice, but they're probably not going to tune in. Like, I don't know how much it'll enhance that experience for any individual fan that, yeah, the other rivalry series are also going on while my team is playing its rival.

I don't know that that's really going to move the needle that much, but hey, sure. Experiment. Try something. It's fine to try stuff. hey sure experiment try something it's fine to try stuff and like you want to you want to have the situation where you can be like does the mariners rivalry with the padres really move the needle does the vetter cup matter versus should they just lean into being the seattle denver series and make it about you you know, those states aren't coming. But then it's like that's true of a lot of states now.

So maybe that isn't a natural rivalry anymore. Oh, Mariners are coming to the D-backs. Yeah. Nice. Yeah, Ben. That's the Meg series. That's the Meg series. It's not even a rivalry.

It's a why not both series. Yeah, it's the why not both series. Oh, I bet both teams will lean into that from a marketing perspective because I am so famous. Reminds me of there was like a Justin Bieber quote once where he was talking about his sports fandom and he's just like, I want them all to do well. Like I just, you know, it's not really a competitive thing for him. He just wants everyone to have a good time and feel like they did their best. Yeah. So notice this comment from Evan Longoria. He did an interview where he disclosed that he is not officially retired, but he is sort of quasi-retired, which I guess we knew based on the fact that he is not playing for anyone right now.

But he mentioned he didn't completely close the door. He noted, one of the only things I haven't accomplished is winning a World Series. So if you said I would go hit 80-0-8-0 for the rest of the season, but the team would win the World Series, then I'd go do it. But that's probably about the only thing I'd want to do. And I'm sure that he knows that's probably not going to happen. It doesn't seem like anyone's been knocking at his door, although he was just on a pennant winning team last year. So you never know. But A, would a team come to him and said, if you sign with us, you're going to go 80, you're going to bat 80. It feels very unnatural to pronounce a batting average that doesn't start with a zero.

It's less than 100. Yeah. I guess the team would not be saying this unless the team had received some vision from the future where it was like, well, look, you just got to carry Evan Longoria on your roster and you'll make it all the way. And then they'll say, well, we don't want to butterfly effect this thing. We got to carry him because we know that we're going to go all the way. And so we'll just have him on our roster as kind of a dead weight performance wise. But maybe it's not the team saying you're going to hit 80. It's Evan Longoria's personal prophet is telling him that. But my question is, would you want to do that to cross off that box? Let's say, you know,

you've had a near Hall of Fame caliber career, Evan Longoria, you could just ride off into the sunset, but sure, it'd be nice to get a ring. But if that were the condition, if the, whatever the baseball wizard or the baseball god or the baseball trillionaire or whatever, who's engineering this here said, yeah, you can win your World Series and get your ring, but you are going to suck the entire time. You're going to bat 80. Would that even be fun for you to get that ring? Because like, would you feel like you had earned it?

Would you feel like you had contributed to that championship? Did you just write your own podcast and email that? Pretty much. Yeah. Okay. Well, so let me answer your question with like another question, right? Because did you pay attention to the Futures Game coaching staff rosters this year? No.

Okay. I can't believe that. How dare you? Really? We already covered last time that I didn't watch the Futures Game itself, but maybe I was really glued in on the coaching staff steps. I wasn't. I wonder how much it would matter to a guy if he won a ring as a coach, like as a member of an organization in an on-playing capacity, whether it's being a coach, being in player dev, front office, what have you. Player dev people are in the front office, if you know what I mean, versus actually being on the field. Here is a human person who coached the futures game mitch morland mitch morland was the first base coach for the al squad and let me tell you

mitch morland being the first base coach for the american league futures game made me feel older than ethan solace playing in that game and he is 18 so if it were me, I would seek to preserve my dignity. Because, you know, if you win the World Series, I guess a lot of it's just going to get forgotten. Like your performance isn't necessarily going to be retconned to be good, but it's going to be determined to have not mattered. Right. fine. But also when Evan Longoria was like the top prospect in baseball, a bright, you know, when he was a bright young thing with this entire future ahead of him, right? He envisioned winning a World Series and like helping to win, right? Being a guy you win a World Series because of, not in spite of. You don't want to be self-conscious when you're dogpiling. Like, do I deserve to dogpile? Did I do anything? Now, if he's batting 80, maybe one of his few hits was a walk-off in game seven or something. Exactly. It's when you get the hits that count. Although, I don't know why he would be pinch hitting in that situation if he's batting 70 coming into that game or something. But still, yeah, if you had one huge hit where you felt like okay i i did something

right but otherwise if i felt like they won in spite of me right i wouldn't want to wear that ring really i wouldn't feel any personal pride yeah right it wouldn't feel the same whereas like if you do elvis andrews was a coach for the american league squad and though he played in baseball last year yeah like he played major league ball last year right i'm not i'm not misremembering the trajectory of elvis andrews career so like wanting to win a ring is such a natural thing when you're a player and i you know you can never you can never say for sure that it's gonna happen to you There are no doubt Hall of Famers who never want to ring. You know, you just got to take your opportunities where you get them. So maybe all of that is to

say, just do it, you know, just do it. Even if you're going to hit well below the Mendoza line, because you're right. Like maybe, maybe your one hit is like a big home run that decides a game. And then you're a hero, even if the rest of your time was terrible but i think that there are just a lot of ways to be engaged with the sport and i think that maybe it would be like it's a nice recognition of how much of a team effort how much of an organizational effort it is to win a world series to say, no, I could go be a coach or I could work in a front office in an

ops capacity. Who knows? You're in Longoria, but you can write your own ticket if you really wanted to. No, I probably would not want to hit 80. It feels so wrong to say batting average like that. It just feels wrong. Elvis Andrews did play in major league

baseball last year why he was i was just we were sitting there and i was like what is he doing here he could he could be like a i mean look did he have an 81 wrc plus last year yeah but he was still a good defensive player he was worth he was above replacement level last year. I mean, it was for the White Sox, because, like, of course, but, like... Well, yeah, he's a few years younger than Evan Longoria. And another player who is slightly younger than Evan Longoria,

and maybe winding down his career here, is Martin Maldonado. We've talked a lot about Maldonado. He just got designated for assignment, maybe mercifully, by the White Sox. Gosh, we talked about the value of game calling last time. And it seems clear that teams thought he provided some because they continued to carry him even when the things that we can quantify better suggested that

he was not contributing much more than Evan Longoria batting 80 would. So he had a WRC plus of 11 this season, which also sounds sort of unnatural to say. He batted 119. At least he got to the three digit. He beat the 080 mark. 119, 174, 230. But here's the thing. His offensive stats looked a lot worse before, like a week before he got designated for assignment because he had a hot streak. He had a torrid little streak heading into the all-star break. In fact, if we play some small sample shenanigan games here, Martin Maldonado was maybe the second hottest hitter heading into the break. If we just, if we say July 3rd through July 13th, and we set a minimum of 15 plate appearances, I'm crafting this list to include Martin Maldonado, but you had Reese Hines of the Reds on top with a 418 WRC plus in 24 plate appearances. And then Martin Maldonado, five games, 17 plate appearances, 316 WRC plus in 24 plate appearances. And then Martin Maldonado five games, 17 plate appearances, 316 WRC plus.

He hit three of his four homers on the season in his final five games, I guess. Like he just went off and I wonder how he felt to get DFA at that point. It's like, yeah, you stuck with me all this time. And it's not like they had to promote someone immediately who like they couldn't wait or something. It's like they were biding their time. They're like, is he going to turn it around? And then suddenly he finally hits more than he has

like the entire rest of the season combined. And that's when you DFA him? No, I'm not suggesting that he has meaningfully changed his projection or anything. And if you determined five or six games ago And that's when you, do you have, I'm not suggesting that he has meaningfully changed his projection or anything. And if you determined five or six games ago that you didn't want to have Martín Maldonado taking up plate appearances for you anymore, then that probably still applies. But sometimes the timing is weird where someone's having a rough season, but they won't get

released until after suddenly they turned it on and like were better than they had been that entire time. And like that's when the axe falls. It's got to be sort of a strange feeling. Particularly when you play for a really lousy team, you know, it's like, what does it matter really? Let me soldier on, why don't you? One other thing, maybe two other things. I was talking to Noah Gattel, who is a contributor to The Ringer and writes about movies mostly. And he wrote Baseball, the Movie, a book that I had him on the podcast to talk about one of the episodes you were away.

And we have kind of corresponded about baseball movies. Every time there's a sighting of baseball in a movie or a mention of baseball in a movie, we will DM about it and kind of track it. Because my contention, which we discussed on that episode, is that baseball continues to be overrepresented in major movies. Even if we don't see baseball movies so much anymore, we see baseball in non-baseball movies. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, more than you would think just given its prominence in the contemporary culture. And so he was pointing me to a couple other examples. And, you know, I let him know it. It seems like there's going to be a baseball scene in the upcoming Superman movie.

Oh, really? Because there were scenes being filmed and people saw that happening. And then he let me know that in Long Legs, a movie that I will almost certainly not be seeing, there is a scene where, you know, the Mariners just casually come up. One of the characters mentions his Mariners. And then it's in Twisters, which I have not seen sick anymore so I can go to Twister's. It really needs to be good, Ben. Needs to be a good, fun, dumb time. Apparently it is. And there is a baseball scene that serves a similar function as like the A Quiet Place Part Two baseball scene where it's like the calm before the storm. In this case, a literal storm to kind of convey that pastoral, peaceful, small town life. You have people play playing a baseball game. Sonic the Hedgehog, we've documented this in any number of examples.

Same thing in Twisters, apparently. Why is this happening? We've speculated maybe it still is kind of the historic romantic hold that baseball has on the culture, or it's the people making movies now. They grew up during a time when there were a ton of baseball movies, etc. Maybe it's just a cinematic sport. It's conducive to movie making for various reasons. But Noah brought up the idea, maybe pure conspiracy theory here.

What if MLB is paying for product placement here? What if it were to come out that there were some behind-the-scenes deal? placement here? What if it were to come out that there were some behind the scenes deal, there was some sort of payola situation going on here where MLB not disclosing anything, but just making some sort of agreement with the studios here. Hey, if you have a role for sports in your movie, if a sport or a team has to be mentioned, just put our thumb on the scale, make it baseball instead of something else. If that came out, I mean, it would be a good marketing, I guess. I welcome it. I applaud it. I like seeing baseball in my media. Would that be a scandal? Would that be smart? Should this

be happening? Because so often the problem with product placement is it's very obvious sometimes, and then it can look kind of corny, right? Sure. But if they had been perpetrating this slyly sneak baseball into movies where some of us are like, this is almost suspicious how much baseball there still is in these baseball movies. But most people probably aren't going to be making that connection. They'll just think, oh, baseball, what a nice sport. I should check that out again, right? It'd be brilliant. This would be a great scheme. I think it would be great. I don't think it would be a scandal. I think it would be some of the better marketing dollars that the league had ever spent. I haven't seen it, but I'm given to understand, spoiler

alert for A Quiet Place Part Two, but I'm getting to understand that everybody gets massacred at that baseball game, so that could go either way in terms of inspiring you to want to go play catch, I guess, but I think it would be fine. Look, there are a lot of institutions in this country

that spend money on movies to make a certain thing look good, and I think baseball is among the more innocuous ones, really. It's outside a lot of the time. Maybe not in Texas in the last couple of days, but it's outside. You're being active.

You're having fun with your pals and your teammates. It's beautiful, Ben. It seems beautiful. There's this new Darren Aronofsky movie coming with Austin Butler caught stealing a burned out former baseball player who's plunged into a wild fight for survival in the downtown criminal underworld of 90s NYC what a log line so yeah we're we're building back up you know there's been baseball mentions in non-baseball movies there have been some smaller scale baseball

movies like Ephus and You Gotta Believe. And then there's Night Swim. It's kind of in a class of its own. We're building back up, I believe, to just a full-fledged, just big budget baseball movie. It's coming back. I know that they only make sequels now, so it might have to be like a sequel

to a previous baseball movie. But hopefully we're making the, the cinema safe for baseball movies again. Do want to say though, if they do bring baseball back to the big screen, I hope that they don't do it in a way that mirrors my recent experiences with StatCast 3D. Have you seen the StatCast 3D? It's like the stick figure kind of graphics that show plays, right? And, and they're a little less stick-like than they used to be, but it's like the stick figure kind of graphics that show plays, right? And they're a little less stick-like than they used to be. But it's the purpose of this, I suppose you might say, why do we need the little stat cast like ragdoll figures when we could just watch the game?

And sometimes that is true. But the idea is that you can kind of watch from any angle and you can slow it down and you can spin the camera around because it's just the the tracking the player tracking and so you can see it from a perspective that the camera might not have captured but the thing is it glitches sometimes and terrible things happen to these players digital virtual bodies this has happened at least a couple times i just sent you a couple examples and i will link to it on the show page. There was one. It basically looks like the players are being raptured or are possessed or there's some sort of exorcism happening here. Oh, no.

Portrait cave. Yeah. It's like gravity got disabled somehow. Oh no. So there was a Rocky's walk off with Jake Cave and everything looks normal. Oh no, what's happening to Al Jardino? A chest bump and then suddenly Jake Cave started levitating and his anatomy contorted in painful and impossible ways. And he just ascended into the Denver air, the thin air of Denver.

He just he took off and it just looked incredibly painful. And then there is one with Alex Verdugo with his recent defensive miscue in a game against the Orioles. And if this had actually been what had happened to his body, then you could forgive him for the misplay. Because, you know, his neck is clearly broken. He has lost all of the bones in his body. You know what it kind of reminds me of? You know, the most recent season of Stranger Things, when, like, Vecna will be going in for the kill on a character,

and then they do the really, like, spooky horror movie, hyper-articulated, like, you know, bone-snapping stuff, which the first time you see it in that, it's like, holy Moses, that is scary. It kind of has that flavor to it. Do you think that Alex Verdugo has seen this? Do you think that Alex Verdugo was like, oh, come on, it wasn't that bad. Right.

This is making me look worse than it was. Yeah. But also provided me with a great excuse because this is why I missed the ball. I was broken everywhere. Everywhere. I will link to this. I know this doesn't translate particularly well in an audio medium. But once you start watching, you're going to laugh and laugh and laugh.

And I will leave you with this before we bring Eric in here. I did, as promised, do my deep dive on moving the foul lines, widening the foul lines and the effect on offense. I talked about this, I think, episode 2175. And at the time we got an email about it and I noted this is not the first time someone had proposed it. And I went through the 1970 proposal and it was actually tested and won minor league park for that season. I had no idea how deep the rabbit hole went when it came to the history of proposing that we should move the foul

lines to help hitters. It always recurs, this idea, when batting average is at a low ebb, as it is now, and someone gets the bright idea, we should just widen the foul line so that that'll help hitters. And no one really remembers that this was proposed in a previous round of, oh, what are we going to do to help the hitters, right? So I've documented the whole history of the proposals and the re-proposals and the backlashes. And it goes all the way back, as far as I can determine, to Harry Wright, the Hall of Famer, all the way back in 1888 was, I think, the inaugural person to propose this, as far as I can tell. But it has been proposed independently, I believe, in eight different decades, which might either suggest that this is never going to work, give up,

or it might suggest that, you know what, there might be some merit to this idea if people keep thinking of it over and over and over again. Anyway, I wrote many thousands of words. There were graphs, there were screenshots. I will link to that so that you can check it all out. But I will leave you with my estimate of what the effect on offense would be. And I had some help here from the analyst Matan Kay, who writes for his own medium and also for the Down on the Farm substack. And we did our best to estimate and quantify what the effect of this would be going with the 1970 version of this, which is just flaring out the lines by three degrees beyond first and third base. So not starting at home plate and though that it was

the original version of this, but based on what we could tell, and it's tough because StatCast public data doesn't really contain locations for foul balls that weren't caught. So we had to extrapolate, but I think it's a pretty decent estimate. If you were to change by even one degree, which would be almost imperceptible, we calculated, and by we, I mean mostly Matan, that it would be a difference of 3.4 points of batting average and about 0.122 runs per game per team. And if you go with the three degree difference, then you triple that. And you're talking about 10 points of batting average and about almost 0.4 runs per game. We would basically be back to roughly 2019 level scoring, but without

the extremely lively ball and the historic home run rate, it would be a little higher, but it wouldn't be quite so extreme in some ways. We just have a more robust offense and we wouldn't have a 243 batting average. We'd have a 253 batting average. And all you have to do is just shift those lines a little bit. There's no rule against it. It might be tough in Fenway and Wrigley in places where there's no actual place to do this because the stands encroach on the outfield corners as it is. But if you could do it, it would be pretty unobtrusive, pretty low risk and low effort. And if you could offer Rob Manford that deal and say, hey, Rob, just a slight change to

the foul line trajectory, people might not even notice. And suddenly you would not be talking about, oh, batting average, it's back to almost 1968 levels and strikeouts and scoring, et cetera, et cetera. I feel like that'd be a pretty good deal. I think that that's right. I think that's right. There are other things in its favor and other drawbacks and downsides. And I lay out all that case there. things in its favor and other drawbacks and downsides. And I lay out all that case there,

but I feel like I have joined a lineage, just people who have been radicalized over the centuries who have come to this idea and have said, what? We can't do that. This is 90 degrees. It has always been and must always be. And then you start looking into it and you're like, huh, you know what? This might make sense. I'm not coming off of my move the mound back proposal or my limit the number of active pitchers on the roster. I'm still supporting those, but there are downsides to those or ways that would be tough to implement that I think this less direct method, it might just be in the way that

you don't want to change the length of the base pass. Okay, make the bases bigger and it'll have some small effect. This will have actually a sort of sizable effect for a low investment. I think I've kind of come around to provisionally supporting this or at least saying, let's bring it back. Let's see it in action at Lab League or an independent partner league or the minor leagues or whatever. Let's get some data on this.

I think it actually has some sense behind it. I think that that's right. And I think the intervals between my sneezes is getting smaller and smaller. Okay. It's another thing I think. Then let us call in the cavalry and talk to Eric Longinagin of FanCrafts about the draft. Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, how can you not be pedantic about baseball?

If baseball were different, how different would it be? On the case with light ripping, all analytically. Cross-check and compile, find a new understanding. Not effectively, why can you not be pedantic yes when it comes to baseball how can you not be pedantic

alright well I was reading our iTunes reviews recently always a fraught endeavor I know this one was good though

five stars much appreciated had only nice things to say except for one flaw. The only flaw, it needs more Langenhagen. That was, didn't subtract a star, just a word to the wise. And I was like, we like Langenhagen, but how much more could there be, realistically, because he's already the most prolific guest in effectively wild history. So we have to let some other people come on the podcast sometimes. But we have taken that feedback to heart. And here we are with more Long and Hagen. Hey, Eric, how are you? Well, I'm very proud of my grandmother for learning how to leave iTunes review comments. Yeah, that's impressive, because there's no way you would know how to do that. Online reviews and such doesn't seem like really your bag, but your grandma's all over it.

Well, I guess like, you know, I have a Spotify account and this and that stuff. Like I, it is mostly social media that I've purged myself of, but not like the internet. A form of social media, maybe a podcast review. Nonetheless, you are helping juice our stats here by coming on the podcast and satisfying this person, though I guess we can't get any extra stars. We already have the maximum amount of stars, but maybe someone else will give us some stars for having you on. You're a star of Effectively Wild, frankly, and also of the baseball draft community. And we are here to talk to you about that as we do just about every year at this time. So the draft, you went to it, you have chronicled it. And I guess we could just start with a very broad question. I always just ask, can you sort of sum up the class? Because it was an

interesting top of the class, at least. There were multiple people, seemingly, who could be possible number one picks. You know I follow these matters very closely. I have my mock and everything. But people's mocks, it seemed like, went pretty well from what I understand. So I guess there wasn't a lot of super off-the-board picks, but tell us a little bit about what teams we're working with here. It wasn't a very good draft class as far as talent up top. It wasn't a very good draft class in terms of depth through mid to late round two and beyond, like kind of petering out on players you really like somewhere closer to like the start of the fourth round.

Whereas in a good draft year, the number of guys who would be pro-list ready from the jump ends somewhere in between rounds four and seven. And so at the very, very top, there was no Adley Rutschman. There was no Bobby Witt-type guy at the very top of this year's draft. There was not a Paul Skeens or a Wyatt Langford or a Dylan Cruz you would probably have to go like five or six deep in last year's class before you could start arguing between who you would take in a vacuum number one the top of this year's class were like that guy from the the 2023 class but you know there's still a lot of good players that come out of any draft class. I had a person who's been doing this for a long, long time mention the 08 draft as being similar in quality to this draft,

so folks can Google that one and see. That's the comp I was going to make, too. What's going on with that? But at the very top, obviously, with the draft lottery, we have the two teams that trained in Goodyear, the Reds and the Guardians, picking at 2-1. Cleveland's very interesting. They're the type of team that are as progressive as it gets as far as scouting, using data, video, and technology. There have been times when their area scouts, their scouting staff, doesn't really go to college games in person at

all until the college postseason begins. There's much less of that going on, whereas they're finding ways to deploy their scouts in person in spots where there isn't as much data or video to access. And that's interesting, but it's always been a thing that's applied to the mid to late first round. Like Cleveland's pretty good typically, but their 2022 season was, or 23 season rather was not. And so, you know, they win the draft lottery and here they are. And so, you know, their choices up top were Travis Buzana, second baseman from Oregon state, Australian kid, pretty special high school athlete in athlete in Australia, started playing varsity sports. He was on their cricket team at his high school when he was in

seventh grade. He lettered in something like half a dozen sports. And he was a known guy as soon as he came to Oregon State. This was a guy, as soon as he showed up on campus that freshman year was like, all right, this guy can hit. There's real first-round ability here, and it's about manicuring his defense and seeing how much power develops. He's still not a very good defensive second baseman, but he's as well-rounded a hitter as was available in this class. Statistically, his performance,

if we're just looking at the college track man data, was in Tier 1 right there with Georgia third baseman Charlie Condon, who went third in the draft. They were Tier 1 together on their own in terms of the data output from 2024 season, and Bazzano was absolutely in the 1-1 mix pretty cleanly. And then there were another handful of players who I think you could argue, depending on need, especially picking up top like Cleveland and Cincinnati are and contending in a sense, hoping to be competitive and contending the next year or two, the rest of this year, whatever it is, like you could justify taking a player like Chase Burns at number two, which the Reds did. a player like Chase Burns at No. 2, which the Reds did.

This is the consensus best college arm in the draft out of Wake Forest, started his college career at Tennessee, and he was a famous high schooler too. Chase Burns was typically ranked at the back of the first round in the comp round. When he was coming out of high school, he was already throwing so, so hard, has that prototypical 6'3", 6'4", pitcher's build, and went to Tennessee, was very good there as a freshman, was essentially demoted from their rotation, in part because of their depth and in part because he was struggling to throw strikes, was demoted into the bullpen, and he was nails in a long relief, high leverage, closer type role the back of his sophomore year, but transferred to Wake Forest for his draft spring and was really, really good as a starter there. And that's upper 90s consistently, up to 102, huge, two breaking balls, upper 80s slider that he'll drop, run that fastball past you at the letters and then drop the slider into the zone off of that pitch. And then the curveball plays like even deeper in the

bottom of the zone and below off of those two pitches. They all kind of interact with each other in that vertical way. And he's going to be in the big leagues pretty quickly. And so, you know, he went number two to the Reds, Charlie Condon at three to the Rockies, monster season, he slugged over 1,000. It's one of those where you think it's like, did I typo? Is that his OPS? It's like, no, that's his slugging percentage. He had almost 40 bombs and could maybe play center field.

They announced him as an outfielder. I would like to see them try him in center field and just see how it goes. I do think there's some flaws on defense. He's much, much bigger than a typical third baseman. We'll see how his body and athleticism, his mobility develop over there. Indeed, they should probably try to keep that alive too if they can. A mix of outfield and third base would be a good thing for him to do developmentally, in my opinion.

Condon, I was lower on him, I think, than the consensus because when you put swing after swing after swing on on tape, the barrel feel isn't really there in a way that I would have been comfortable taking number one, but his offensive performance was right there with Bazana. Even when you're looking at things like swing and miss, his performance on paper in that regard was much more encouraging than the look. Those three guys were at or near the top of everyone's list. And then the group that was either right behind that or among them, depending on who you were, and certainly in my opinion, these guys were, were Hagan Smith, the lefty from Arkansas, who I have as the best pitcher

in the draft, just because of fastball playability relative to Burns. Just more ride, better angle, that kind of stuff. J.J. Weatherholt from West Virginia, who came into the spring as my top player, and I left him there when draft time came. He dealt with a hamstring injury this year. He didn't have the same kind of offensive leap that a lot of the juniors in this year's class did because in part of the offensive environment around college baseball, which is just growing in explosivity. I think that JJ's hamstring had a lot to do with that. And he's only one of that top group who does a little bit of everything where he can play defense up the middle better than Bazana does. The contact piece of it is there. The power component of it was more there, especially pull

side power during his sophomore year. And I'm just more likely to take, you know, to look at the sophomore year, the Cape and Team USA performance in your junior year, all as one hole rather than, you know, the recency bias of the junior year. But of course, like players get better. And so you want to try to capture that too. And balancing those things can be challenging. But, but Weatherholt was just the most well-rounded guy of this group for me. He goes Of course, players get better, and so you want to try to capture that, too, and balancing those things can be challenging. But Weatherholt was just the most well-rounded guy of this group for me. He goes seven to the Cardinals. And then Jack Heglione, the 2A player from Florida, went six to the Royals.

Most likely just going to be a hitter. The velocity on the mound, at times it's been upper 90s, up over 100 from the left side, with enormous power, just totally ridiculous 70 or 80 grade power and hasn't focused on hitting yet. You have to project on his plate discipline. We're talking about two full standard deviations and a little bit more below average in terms of what his college chase rate was. So really, really concerning on that end. But this guy's physical tools are unbelievable. With rest, if he doesn't hit, I think it's safe to say like, okay, we have a fallback where this guy's going to blow 100

from the left side out of the bullpen or something like that. I think that's totally reasonable. You want him to develop as a hitter and be, turn into the college version of what shohei otani has become and we've talked about caglione on this podcast before and so yeah like that was that was the group at the very very top for me it is a group that will fall you know overall in that like 50 to 100 ish range on the pro 100 i'm not gonna you know windmill slam any of these guys in my top 10 or 25 overall i don't think like uh other than what condon and caglione might be able to do i don't

think any of these guys really belongs up there in that mix with like the roman anthony's and spencer jones's of the world you know their talent has just turned on a different level. So you can kind of see when you're comparing apples and oranges in that sort of way, how the very top of this class was lacking relative to what we look at from these pro prospects. Xavier Isaac's batting practice at the Futures game was comparable to what Jack Caglione's would probably have been had he taken bp with those guys and xavier isaac has demonstrated like i can do this up through high a where jack caglione has like a 40 percent chase rate against the sec i wanted to ask so you know you noted sort of the

the lack of uh high school depth we did see a couple of high school guys go high, including Connor Griffin. And I wanted to ask about, can you contrast sort of the thinking with a team like Pittsburgh, where, as you noted in the piece that went live at Fangrass today, like this is a team that needs

a big league hitting and soon, right? Because they have this exciting group of pitchers, but they haven't been able to actualize their hitting prospects in the same way. Contrasting that with a team like Cincinnati, which is like, we need pitching and we're taking it right now because we think Chase Burns can probably get there sooner rather than later. When you're looking at this class from sort of a draft strategy perspective, were there any teams that stood out to you

as either aligning really closely with what you thought they would do or deviating in ways that were interesting? Yeah, definitely Pittsburgh. If you would have asked, well, I guess you sort of did ask me to like via a mock draft, determine like what are, what is this group most likely to do? And I would have guessed, you know, I would have put the Pirates in the chance they draft based on need more than baseline buckets. Just because of what's going on with the big league team. Like this front office group has been there for a minute now. I think there's clearly encouraging there, you know, encouraging development at the big

league level. Some of these guys have not quite clicked in the biggest of ways. We know O'Neal Cruz is more talented than his results. We know Brian Hayes is more talented than his results have been on offense. And this has been a common theme for a lot of their hitters. Jack Swinski hasn't been able to sustain what he did last year and on and on. And so to run some college hitters up to your big league team as like, you have Skeens and Jones and Bubba Chandlers on the way, et cetera, would seem to make sense. You could justify it, but I'm a best player available guy. Is Connor Griffin, who they

took at nine, that player? Yeah, I think there's a chance he is. He arguably has the most upside of any player in the draft. There are people who are just like, ah, yeah, there's a chance he's Mike Trout, right? Like Mike Trout had hit tool risk in high school too. And that's what, you know, Connor Griffin looks like as a guy where there's scary contact issues looming. Does the swing work? Is it tweakable? I think these are justifiable concerns based on what I've seen from Connor Griffin, which was mostly last summer and then I think like four or five games on tape here this spring. I did not go see him in person this spring. He is much different as a physical

entity right now than he was last summer. When I first saw Connor Griffin. He was like a beanpole type guy, where it was 6'3", 6'4", lanky, all kinds of room for strength. And he's long and he's long levered. He's long back to the ball with his swing. He inside outs a lot of contact that ideally hitters would not be. And when you start facing pro velocity, that can become a problem. We see it become a problem for a lot of players. It's been a problem for Jackson Churrio this year. It'll be a problem for Junior Caminero when he first comes up in all probability. Dylan Cruz has issues with this. Until you start facing 96 plus all the time, we just don't know whether you're going to have the ability to make the adjustment that closes that hole or just have enough juice and

barrel feel that you can inside out those pitches and it's fine. There are all kinds of avenues that you can succeed even when you have this issue. And so we're going to see if that's true of Connor Griffin. And if he can, then holy cow, because he does everything else. Like there are a few baseball players I have ever seen since I've been doing this, that when they at his size go from zero to 60, like that, like truly unbelievable how fast this guy reaches top speed for a guy, his size, normally bigger guys like this take a few strides to really get going. And this guy, it's like instantaneous. And you can count on your fingers how many strides it takes this guy to go from base to base. And he has all the other,

like this guy was the best pitcher on his high school team. He played shortstop for them, but he's probably going to play center field in pro ball. All the stuff where you're like, oh yeah, you're the freak athlete on your high school team. And we're going to ask you to do some stuff in pro ball that is maybe better suited for your athletic skills. And so you might take a leap that we don't expect you to because of that. So, you know, this guy is in of that ilk. It is going to be very fun to watch whatever happens. I wonder how quickly we are going to know. And what's awesome about this is everyone listening to this can go on YouTube and search for the account Mark with a C, Roach, R-O-C-H-E. And that person works for the Pirates and just streams with TrackMan feed and all that stuff, all of their complex games. And so when this guy signs and goes to the complex in Bradenton all their home games

you're just going to be able to watch like you're going to get to watch this guy play make his pro debut in all likelihood so uh and that's true of a bunch of the other Pirates draft picks because they ended up taking a bunch of high school kids so it wasn't just like their first round pick where they deviated from what I would have expected uh and maybe even from what they had incentive to do but like they did it up and down the first two days of the draft. They took Levi Sterling, a pitchability type guy from California, Notre Dame High School in Cali, which is like Hunter Green and Giancarlo Stanton, and that's their high school. Wyatt Sanford, who's generally seen as one of the best

shortstop defenders in the class, period. Projectable lefty hitting shortstop who can really play defense, who's going to go to Texas A&M and who Texas A&M really, really wanted to go. Like they really wanted him to go from the sounds of things and they had money on the table for him too to go to school.

And, you know, the Pirates drafted Wyatt Sanford from Independence High School in Texas. And so they were interesting. And then I guess the Brewers is the other one where the Brewers have employed this strategy before where they go high school heavy, where they cut early and then can use the bonus pool space they save from their early cut to do a bunch more high schoolers. They did it last year. Cooper Pratt, who's in the Futures game for them this season, was I think a sixth

rounder who they got done for like, you know, 1.6 million or something like that. And they took a bunch of high school pitchers with interesting fastball traits later for like in the mid six figures, guys ranging like 250K to 550K or so. They got a couple of those guys done later as well this year presumably because they did not like the way the first half of the first round went in front of them they pivoted to this strategy immediately so braylon pain who they took at 17 was generally seen as more like second third round prospect uh the team's a million bucks, give or take, for some teams in terms of what they were willing to do for him bonus-wise. Definitely more of a

model-driven pick in some respects because he's shy of 18 on draft day, so that's very Brewers-y, right? But the slot value at that pick 17 where Braylon Payne was drafted is $4.5 million. He's not going to get that. He might get two. Two and a half is sort of where I would expect that to fall. And then they use that extra money to do Bryce Mekage, who in the second round, high school pitcher from New Jersey, 57th overall, 67th overall, another high school pitcher from New Jersey, Chris Lavonis.

And then you see more on days two and three, they have a bunch of other high schoolers who, between now and signing deadline, they essentially can negotiate with, especially those day three high schoolers. They're not going to get all those guys done. And maybe some of the guys they took late on day two, even they won't get done. Now, if they don't get the late day two high schoolers done, they lose their slot value from their pool. So it's more important to get those players signed. Right.

Or else you're going to lose 200K or so from your pool for your ninth and tenth rounders. But you can try to get James Nunnally, who they drafted in the fourth round, done. get James Nunnally, who they drafted in the fourth round, done and try to make those puzzle pieces of your bonus pool fit in the way that is best for you and the players also find agreeable. And so just the sheer number of guys they did it with this year was really turned on 10. And our good buddy Jake Mintz of Yahoo Sports, we were talking about the draft before things fired off and we were talking about whether or not teams

had incentive to do this type of strategy this year because it was such a weak high school crop of players. Are we going to see less of it this year than we normally would because there just isn't as much talent to take a depth-driven approach? And Jake was just like, I think that's BS. If you trust your room and you trust your player dev,

then why wouldn't you do it? And I think that that's right. And this is definitely one of those rooms where it's a smaller room. The number of people who are sitting there making decisions for the brewers in the draft room is a handful of people, not a couple dozen. And the dev group is involved. handful of people, not like a couple dozen. And the, you know, the dev group is involved and they do a pretty good job. And so, yeah, it's going to be very interesting to see how this group does. And then Seattle, like the last couple of teams,

as far as like interesting strategy, Seattle also sort of did a version of what they did last year. They had way more picks to do it with last year where they ended up with like a bunch of high upside high school hitters. This year, they took a very expensive pitcher with their second pitch ryan sloan whose number you know before the draft a team told me like in their database for like this kid wants four mil so the slot value where they took him is 1.6 now i don't think he's gonna get four but he might get three three five and uh so then when the the mariners pivoted to like underslot guys early and when you do that you end up with the cream of the crop of your grad students and fifth-year seniors and guys who are going to sign sign for way way way underslot

it's like hunter cranton from kansas is a reliever it's a fifth-year senior they took him in the third round, uh, slot value. There's 800 K you know, a hundred Cranton is not going to get a lot of money to sign. He's a fifth year senior, but he's good right now. Like he sits mid upper nineties with a good breaking ball. He's going to move fast. He conceivably be in the big leagues before the end of this year. You know, he's an older guy. He's born inober of 2000 they drafted a kid uh in the fifth round who was born in 1999 so this is what the the mariners did on day two is they took a bunch of like 23 year olds who aren't going to sign for very much so they could get sloan done but also

they had their pick of the litter from those 23 year olds uh you know brock moore their seventh rounder from Oregon, was a reliever at Oregon until late in the year. Pac-12 tournament, Meg and I saw him start. They were just like, let's try this. And he held 94 to 97 for six innings. And there's maybe more in the tank there developmentally than just a 50-year senior reliever with a mid-90s sinker.

So really interesting from Seattle. And then the other two teams I want to mention are the teams that didn't really have picks. So the Giants who like gave up comp picks or who forfeited picks for like signing free agents and the Cardinals too for like signing Sonny Gray. The Cardinals did not have a second rounder. And so, you know, when you don't have that second round pick, you also don't have the bonus space from that second round pick. And so I thought like it was interesting what they did in the seventh and eighth round. They took injured pitching, right? Like how can you find upside in this class that lacks picks? our guys coming off a TJ Finlay was last year.

Duck Canich was this year. And that can just like mid nineties with carry and a good breaking ball. He was a famous high schooler and it didn't work out going to school. Finlay is, you know, lefty with cut carry fastball. It doesn't really throw very hard, but you know, guys coming off a TJ can,

if they rehab in a certain way, sometimes they end up throwing harder. And Finlay was like, you know, 90, 91 with, with cut and carry. And I i'll be interested to see he's going to be back i think before the end of this year where his velocity is at because that's a that's a fastball type that could really pop if he's throwing harder and then the other one is the giants um the giants did not have a two or a three so like dakota jordan from mississippi, who this is another guy where like he's enormous. He's like six foot even, but probably 230, two sport athlete type guy where the power and the speed is ridiculous. And it's just a swing doesn't work. There's no chance in my mind that he hits if that doesn't change.

if that doesn't change, but you know, he's got late bloomer traits to sport guy. As I said, the physical tools are turned on 10. So, you know, I think pipeline and BA, they definitely had him ranked like really,

really high because of those tools. I'm so worried about him not hitting that. I had him like in the eighties. He might be over slot in the fourth round where they got him. I'm not sure, but that's one where it's like those him. And then their fifth and sixth rounders, Jacob Christian and Robert Hipwell, their smaller school college hitters. Christian was at a, was it a division two school or an NAIA school? I forget, but Jacob Christian was at a, you know, a D2 school, I think in San Diego

before he transferred to the university of San Diego. Had a monster junior year. Looked really good. His BP at the Combine was very good. Super big physicality, 6'5", 230. And then Hip Wells from Santa Clara, it's more like physical 6'2", 220 or so with short levers and feel good about him hitting and maybe being a second, third base, offensive oriented type guy. He also had a good VP at the Combine, in my opinion. So for their lack of

picks, I thought that San Francisco taking a developmental project with bigger tools than a fourth rounder typically would have, and then betting on these small school guys, I guess it's more like mid-major schools. But especially with Jacob Christian having transferred, it's like, let's take a chance that this guy is real rather than take someone who went to LSU but has been exposed in a way. Let's take a chance that this guy's actually good rather than the guy who played at a big school, but we know is kind of mid. Well, you mentioned what the Mariners did on subsequent days. We do have to talk about what

the Mariners did on day one, but I'll let Meg ask that question as the resident Mariners fan, because I've been doing the distracted boyfriend meme with Jack Caglione and Gerangelo Sancha, just kind of, oh, they're two-way player, but ambidextrous pitcher. Interesting. But I will ask first about the power environment in college, because you mentioned that Condon hit almost 40 home runs. Looking forward to watching his work in Coors Field someday. And even I know that's a lot of home runs for a college season because they don't play that many games. He hit 37 in 60 games. because they don't play that many games. He hit 37 in 60 games. That's an impressive ratio. In fact,

he set a record that was set last season by Jack Caglione with 33 homers, and then Caglione broke his own record with 34 this year, or he would have if Condon had not already broken his record and gone ahead. That's in the composite bat era, I should stipulate. But where are all those homers coming from? They didn't suddenly substitute metal bats back in there. We're not hearing pings, right? Like what is happening here? Where's this explosion come from? And how has that affected the evaluation of not just hitters, I guess, but all players?

Yeah. And I linked to a couple pieces from pitcher list in Baseball America in my overall draft roundup. And there's much more in there. But there are definitely... Bat manufacturers are finding ways to satisfy the rules that NCAA baseball has put forth for bat use while still almost like golf club creep. You know what i mean uh where like the performance of your implement is is is increasing we don't know what's you know necessarily going on with the baseballs themselves either so there are equipment related issues

there are people in baseball who you know scouts who have mentioned to me the idea that like teams are maybe cheating, the bats are juiced in a way, you know, signs, stealing accusations, things like that, that might be favoring the offense. That stuff's, you know, cheating is not new. I suppose that could be part of it. And then the other thing is, I wonder how the transfer portal is impacting some of this stuff, where if I'm the best pitcher at UNC Wilmington, and I transfer to North Carolina, and now at North Carolina, I'm the setup man, rather than starting at UNC Wilmington,

where I would be throwing six innings a week or whatever it is, I'm the setup man at UNC, and a worse pitcher is filling my innings at UNC Wilmington. throughout college baseball where the average pitcher or the quality of pitcher per inning has dipped because the concentration of the pitchers has you know is moving towards some of these bigger schools like anything i feel like there are so many things changing as a result of like one route change to a process uh Really between the pandemic and now, so many things about college athletics have changed. And I do wonder if it's more than just like this bat terms of average max 90th percentile average exit velocities. There's really no change from 2023 to 2024 in that way. back and dig through like the zip files of stuff from 22 and and earlier uh to see if we've seen a shift since then in terms of measurable exit vilos i also think like you know facilities i think the way facilities in college baseball are built it's not like every stadium is facing

almost every pro baseball stadium faces northeast like if you're looking out from behind home plate toward the mound you're you're facing northeast uh because of like the sun and but uh i think college baseball it's much more variable and some of the reasons that college stadiums are built the way they are is like to take advantage of that particular location's environment like for wind and stuff like that. And so, you know, college baseball is just like, it's going to have, I think, a more explosive offensive environment

for other reasons. But I really do wonder if the transfer portal has shifted the way talent pitches innings, the number of innings, and like the people who are filling, you know, the innings at Stanford when, when Quinn Matthews gets drafted and when this and that guy transfers, they still have to face the hitters at Oregon state, you know?

So I think that the, that some of the gaps between the have programs and the have not programs in college baseball have grown as a result of the transfer portal. And someone has to fill those innings. And those guys are still facing good college hitters. So I think that might have something to do with it too. So the switch pitcher, we're here. I can't believe we've gone 33 minutes

without talking about this. Eric, introduce Mariners fans and really baseball fans more generally to Gerangelo Sainja. I'm saying that right, right? Sainja? Yes, it's Gerangelo Sainja. And we've, you know, Sainja we've probably talked about on this pod before because he's been a dude since high school. He was not throwing quite as hard from the right side in high school he was more like peaking where he's sitting now in the mid 90s and yeah it's i don't want to be a wet blanket i'm so encouraged that it was the mariners who drafted him because you know of the teams who i would trust to coax as

much out of him as a left-handed pitcher as can be coaxed you know they're on the short list but yeah this is a this is the first line of my blurb on sanja is what if pat venditti sat 95 and that you know might be what we get here i think at the very least that's going to be what we get because uh if sanja doesn't develop as just a right-handed starter who i still expect should throw left-handed situationally they're just going to be opposing hitters who their kryptonite is that low slot sweepy lefty slider and that's what he's got like he's a soft tosser with a long breaking slider from the left side he has that like loogie look and there are just matchups where that's exactly what you want and so i don't see

anything wrong with in certain situations him doing that uh but just because he throws so much harder from the right side uh i think that overwhelmingly that's what he's gonna do and there's it's maybe even likely that that's's what he's going to do. And it's maybe even likely that that's just what he does, especially if he does develop in a way. Adding length to his slider from the right side is going to be important. Developing his changeup when you're a switch pitcher and you go left on left, you don't really need to develop a right-handed changeup. And so that's going to be another thing that like, I think is going to dictate what his role is and how much we see him

actually switch pitching is if he can develop a weapon to get lefties out as a right-handed pitcher, it becomes much less likely that we see him pitch left-handed. So I'm really excited. He seems like a really great kid. Everyone loves Drangelo and, uh, you know, it made me so happy to see like him and Logan Gilbert hanging out during all-star BP, just like, yeah, do an interview together and, you know, hanging out with guys like on the field. It made me really excited to see that this is it felt like it was not real like

in high school you're just like all right like this is cute then by the time yeah he was a sophomore at Mississippi State it was like no this kid's gonna go good and he went you know like half a round higher than I even had him ranked so I think it's really exciting. I thought the Mariners class overall for the second year in a row was very exciting and well executed. And yeah, I hope that let's just watch and see how it goes. It's probably going to not, not be a thing that we really get to know and learn about how this is going

until next spring. I guess you could argue that both arms, there's like lower mileage on both because he's like taking some of the burden off. But yeah, like really, I forget what the date was. It's in the blurb, but there's a certain time during the season. I think it was early May

when he just stopped pitching left-handed and for the rest of the collegiate season was like exclusively throwing right-handed. So next spring, everyone show up to Peoria and watch Drangelo's sides. And, you know, let's see where things are at. I think that that's going to be a lot of fun. Which sides? You got to specify in this case. Side session, to be clear.

Side session, yeah. We'll find out which side. Well, if we are excited about his future, particularly because he was picked by an organization that has a demonstrated ability to get the best out of pitchers, I feel like now is a good time to talk about Brody Brecht, who I'm sorry to do this to Rockies fans, but is a right-hander out of Iowa

who I think a lot of people were very excited about and went in the comp round to the Rockies, and a Paul fell over the draft room, and I got very upset and escalating messages from Michael Bauman about what they are going to do to his boy. And we should talk about Brecht specifically because he's an interesting guy, but I also just more generally am curious how you think about this question of what an org and its player dev can do to help or hinder a guy when you're thinking about, you know, where do you place him on the hundred? How do you think about his potential ceiling and development going forward? So let's start with Brecht as he is, and then we can maybe talk about the second thing. Yeah. So Brody Brecht from Iowa, again, two sport

athletes who wanted to play football at Iowa. It's part of the reason that he went to school at all, because there were teams on Brody Brecht when he was in high school. He was one of those spring risers from unconventional baseball location in Iowa. Those Midwest locations, really like Ohio West through the Great Plains states, are often where our spring pop-up guys come from. And so, yeah, like Brett goes to Iowa. He walks 25 guys in 22 innings as a freshman. He walks 61 guys in 77 innings as a sophomore. Uh-oh, not really getting a whole lot better. And then 50 guys in 78 innings as a junior. But his stuff is ridiculous. It's upper 90s

with, in my opinion, two potentially elite secondary pitches like his slider is as close to an eight as you're going to see it looks like brian abreu's slider where it's like 88 plus and has a ridiculous amount of depth for that much velocity and then he's got a splitter that falls off the table too obviously his lack of command hinders the effectiveness of both at times just because they're not being located and i kind of played myself here because I ranked Brody Brecht in the middle of the first round, and I thought to myself, you sly son of a bitch. This guy's going to go to Baltimore or Atlanta or the Dodgers or the Yankees. They are going to see a guy with that kind of upside on the board in the late first round in a draft that doesn't

have a lot of upside and they're going to trust their player development groups to do something with this guy and you're going to look so smart in like 12 months for having this guy 13th and then the rockies called this name and i was i was hysterical with laughter. Everybody else was bummed. And I was just like, of course this is what happened. Now, here's what I'll say about the Rockies and player development. It has been not good. They have made changes.

There are people who, I watched Chase Dollander this weekend too at the Futures game. He looks good. They haven't ruined him. Right, right. You could argue he looks even better now. There are people who think he is better now.

I heard proactively from people who read my, you know, night one recap, who were like, hey, like, just so you know, we think things, there's evidence things have gotten meaningfully better there this year. And so that's encouraging. And I really think the Rockies can scout, really, really believe that the Rockies can scout. They've got, and some of it is like the dudes who roll through Scottsdale, who I see all the time, but you learn about their flaws over time sometimes, like, you know, Yankeel Fernandez, and, you know, they whiff on the Arenado deal. Like, there's certainly not all of this is good, right?

Yankeel Fernandez chases and is a corner guy, and so it's scary, but when you see 19-year-old Yankeel Fernandez and you see, well, I guess the first time I saw him, 17-year-old Yankeel, it's like, holy cow, look at this guy. And the Rockies have so many players like that. The pitching down here, this calendar year on their complex,

has been unbelievable. And it's been that way for the last couple of years. And their group of position players down here, too. And so at some point, this team has enough talent in the farm system that number one, like I believe that there is a core competency here. I think their international scouting department is stellar. And I think, you know, their amateur department has done pretty well. I think that they've super duper whiffed on some of their pro side trades.

They've super duper whiffed on some of their pro side trades and teams think that they are weird to deal with in that space in terms of like the way conversations unfold with Colorado is specific to them and unique to them and not really like the other teams. But it does seem like things are getting better there. They're still predictable in some other ways. Like they want fastball guys with sink, you know, LeBaron Johnson, who they took later from Texas is like a giant college downhill sinker guy. And, you know, that is still a consistent through line through their org. I don't know if that's Coors specific or if they just don't know yet, like, Hey, like approach angle is a thing. And, you know, the correlation is this, like they don't behave that way hey like approach angle is a thing and you know the correlation is this like they don't behave that way but that might be because of where they play so yeah i like we're

gonna see this is i wrote in the piece like this is your mulligan for riley pint is the same sort of guy it is monster stuff with three command can you make his fastball play a little better and get him synced up enough to like throw starter level strikes and so that he doesn't go through the same trauma that Riley Pint went through to the point where like Riley Pint voluntarily retired for a minute,

you know, as like a 23 or 24 year old. So this is their chance for karmic retribution around Pint voluntarily retired for a minute, you know, as like a 23 or 24 year old. So this is their chance for karmic retribution around Pint. And I really hope that, I really hope it happens because I ranked Brody Brecht 13th in this draft. I think I asked you about this on a previous pod appearance, but time has passed. We have more information now. Bob Nightingale went viral on night one in the way that only he can by tweeting MLB draft. Nine of the first 21 players selected in the first round are black players. Hashtag diversity. And the idea that he was attempting to explain there, I don't know if a hashtag diversity ever serves anyone well, but he was picking up on a notable development there. And we have talked on this podcast most recently when the Rickwood game rolled around about the decrease in black player participation in baseball over the past few decades. MLB has been attempting to address that and has had various programs going, which some of these draftees were involved in to try to promote participation. So have you seen those efforts paying dividends? I mean, are you seeing a difference in the demographic makeup of draftees?

Is it noticeable in recent years or not really? I guess, I mean, first of all, I do think it would be a strange thing to like track the race of players and be like in a database somewhere. So I'm not doing that. Yeah, it is. Yeah, there are people who have done that just to kind of capture the increase and then the decrease and everything. But it is to try to label people it's always you know yeah and you don't always know right like you have to know like jack flair if you're just looking at people's profile pictures as a you know and going through all the players would you know that that Jack Flaherty, like in his profile picture is like biracial? I don't know. So, but anyway, I can tell you that when I interact with folks who are like our staff at the, for the breakthrough series, that they're amazing people who this is like absolutely vocational and that every MLK weekend here in Arizona, that that breakthrough series easily has the most talent

of any of the often two or three high school showcase events that are going on here, and that it's a great event where they comp the players' travel and room and board and all that stuff and have pro instruction from former you know, former black players, Tom Gordon and the Troy Hawkins or, you know, Marvin Freeman.

And it's real. Like it's not, I wash. I think that baseball has an uphill climb in our culture as far as like black kids are concerned. I just think like other sports capture young people in general their their attention more readily the dynamics that are that lead to that you know horse racing and boxing used to be a big deal in our country too like this stuff just ebbs and flows so uh i don't know. There still is a socioeconomic issue. Like, even. And then of course, like those two things are

inextricable in a way. Right. But also, yeah, like it is good. We've had moments like this. You know, I wrote a piece a couple of years ago after the futures game, the title of it was the futures game was black because in that particular futures game, the kids who played the best, it was just like, hey, here are a bunch of good young black baseball players. And even just team by team, when I was growing up, my Phillies had a lot of black players.

Ryan Howard, Jimmy Rollins, Dominic Brown, Michael Bourne was on the team. John Mayberry Jr., Tom Gordon was in the bullpen. There were a lot of guys, and now the Phillies are hyper-white. I don't think that the Phillies are suddenly like, I don't know about black players. I just think that this is sometimes how it is. Their teams do a much better job in like scouting in the front office

than other teams do on this score like the Diamondbacks scouts are run the gamut like the Diamondbacks have women and the Diamondbacks have black folks and the Diamondbacks have like Latino dudes and you know

are doing a much better job than a bunch of teams who I'm going to not name out of courtesy to like, I'm just not. I've seen, we've got a buddy who takes a photo of a team's scouting staff every year and they're all white. So he sends us the photo every year and it's like, it's a bunch of gringos

on your, on your pro scouting staff. Like, you know, that's an issue, but yeah, I think it's encouraging. I still think baseball, as far as, you know, I was watching PTI like I do and Pablo Torre's on there, you know, sitting in for Will Bond. And I love Pablo and Anthony Kornheiser together so, so much. And they're talking about Paul Skeens and they're drooling over Paul Skeens. And they're like, this guy was starting an all-star game

a year after he was drafted. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, boy, that's amazing. He sure is amazing. And then they get to the end of the episode and they're like, hey, the MLB draft is this weekend. Do you care basically? And and they're like, hey, the MLB draft is this weekend. Do you care, basically? And Pablo was just like, no, not really. And earlier in the episode, you were just like,

hey, Paul Skeens, isn't this amazing? The MLB draft, he was picked a year ago and now he's this godlike entity, he's a phenom. And you're right about, but we couldn't care less about the draft that starts in a couple of days. And it's like, ah, so you recognize the significance of this thing in 15 minutes earlier and then dismiss it, you know, before you wave the Canadian flag

at the end of the episode. And, you know, like I said, I love those guys. I think Pablo's show is the best, you know, sports show period, his YouTube show. But yeah, like people just don't, it doesn't grab people. And I don't know if it's my fault. You know what I mean? Like, do I have to be on a soapbox more about like this stuff?

I don't want to do PR for MLB. That's not my job. But I do think like there's just, you know, when our kids are putting on cowboy boots and a Stetson and kids at the NBA draft have like translucent suits or whatever they had. You know, there's like a different flavor to that that I think is just younger, not necessarily blacker, just younger. And that is and cooler. But but I, you know, I don't know how to solve that issue. It's just like tight, buttholed, rich people like baseball more than other folks seem to.

And that's like a prereq when you got to fly your kid to Fort Myers six times in an 18-month period because you think that's what's going to help him get one of only 11 college scholarships. That's an issue too. Every college baseball team should be completely scholarshiped. So if you want to go to Vanderbilt to play baseball,

you've got to be able to pay the tuition to go to Vanderbilt probably. And again, socioeconomically, guess who's more able to do that? It's like Christian white kids. And so that's who ends up doing it and playing baseball. And so, yeah, like anything else, it's a very complex issue. anything else, it's a very complex issue. And the people who run the breakthrough series for Major League Baseball, I've never heard them complain that they feel underappreciated or underfunded by the league. Certainly, there's no amount of money and time and thought and attention that the league could devote to that. That would be too much because cultivating talent is such an

important part of sustaining you know did you guys see the espn um what was it like the hundred top 100 athletes of the 2000s did you guys take a peek at that at all yeah no oh may check it out where would you guys know don't look yet meg okay i'm not where where would you guess on the top 100 and it's like olympic athletes too like michael phelps and whatnot okay where would you guess the first baseball player is 59 it was before that who would you guess it is since 2000 uh otani otani is in the 60s i think okay there are two guys in the top 30 oh who are baseball players yes okay uh think more body of work across this century so far okay mike trout yes he's number two among baseball players in 30th overall okay in the 2000s ishiro Ishiro's 37th. He's fourth among baseball players.

Fifth among baseball players. Okay. Hmm. Tell me. Pujols is, they put Pujols first. Okay. And I would say that based on,

you know, since 01, when he came up, you know, he's, he basically enveloped the entire, from, you know,

the start of the century till now. Right. So, makes sense. Miggy is 33rd yeah pujols was 24th overall yeah first among baseball players clayton kershaw was 31st overall miggy was 33rd each row 37 bonds 38 um so anyway but, like that's where baseball players start, right? Like in our cultural zeitgeist, uh, Floyd Mayweather, um, you know, Lewis Hamilton is 19th. Do you know what he does, Meg?

Isn't he a NASCAR driver? Yeah. Yeah. I know stuff. Formula one. Formula one. Okay. Like, I mean, they're cars, right?

Are they different? I know they're different. I know they're different. I know they're different. I right? Are they different? I know they're different. I know they're different. I know they're different. I was doing a little funny. I know they're different. No one send an email. It's fine.

So, you know, like, this is sort of where baseball is at. You know, the first guy is a quarter of the way down the list. I think that's like, it's sort of an uphill climb for us. And I think that's okay. Like, that's okay. I'm not fatalistic about that. It'll be fine. Like at some point people want lo-fi, you know, peace and quiet that baseball theoretically should provide folks at Globe Life Field running the soundboard. The reviews are in, they're universal, they're not good. They're not good.

I think all that, all the noise, the vibrations from it must have killed any airborne germs that Meg was putting out because I feel pretty fine. So, you know, I'm interested in the metagame more so than the individual players in many cases. I'm part of the problem, I guess, when it comes to draft appetite. But I am always interested in why are teams doing things on a more macro level? And you mentioned in your piece, teams leaning on college contact hitters. And maybe that was partly, as you also said and documented, not a great high school class. And you have different constraints when it comes to you only have so many rounds now and you have expenses for minor leaguers and things have changed, right? And you might have major league teams and college teams both aligned on actually wanting more high school players to go to college, et cetera. But college

contact hitters, if that was really a priority, is that more because of some change that teams foresee in the game that we're gravitating more back toward contact mattering more or is that purely just we think that these guys will just be the best hitters because if they can make contact then we can teach them to do other stuff well whereas if we just get someone who has great power but no plate discipline or whatever, or swings and misses a lot, then maybe we can't actually develop them as well as we would like. Yeah, I think it's mostly the latter. I think in any draft room, the question needs to be posed, what is an eight and what can we develop? What can we coax out of these guys? And, you know, you saw this with pitching start like a decade ago,

where it was, you know, I think we can actually make guys throw harder. So why not take Shane Bieber and Tanner Bybee and players like this and then do the you start throwing harder thing. Whereas things like spin and command maybe are more innate and tougher to teach. And I think as far as applied sciences are concerned that hitting is starting to make progress in an accelerated way. And so I think, you know, folks can go to the Red Sox list and read the Christian Campbell blurb. That's a guy where there was no power in college, like none. And a lot of contact. The Red Sox took him. The Red Sox take a lot of players like this and attempt to get them to swing harder, attempt to change the way their body's moving in the box that will coax more power and bat speed out of what they're doing. And it comes at the sacrifice of some contact, but not enough to tank the overall profile.

And on balance, you've improved what that player is able to do offensively overall. And I think there are some teams who have prioritized contact just because of like, you see model driven teams do this all the time where they take a smaller contact oriented guy. Milwaukee's taken a lot of players like this over the years. Cleveland has done it. Boston has done it. The Rays used to do it, kind of moved away from it to an extent. used to do it kind of moved away from it to an extent. Chandler Simpson, who's in their farm system, is a guy who was a super-duper contact college player, but some of their other, Ryan Cermak, Brock Jones, they're toolsy, power, a lot of swing and miss. So Tampa's become more of a

mixed bag. But yeah, all the things that go into hitting a baseball, your hand-eye coordination, But yeah, like all the things that go into hitting a baseball, your hand-eye coordination, you know, all the way on down, it's a number of things. And I think it's a greater number of things than are involved in basically any other baseball skill. Your freaking eyes are involved. So, yeah, I think that it is more innate, so to speak. It is a thing that is harder to teach to be able to put the bat on the baseball. We do see teams, I think, gravitating toward guys who have demonstrated some ability to do that more so than their peers because it is almost seen as like a prereq, especially as pitching. Pitching, I feel like, is just as good as it's gonna be uh across the player population

you know it's just as many guys throw really hard now as ever before and have their stuff engineered in a specific way to max themselves out than you know than ever before and so getting hitters i just think it's unimportant thing also, the data has, it's like including enough of a sample for enough guys now for you to be able to do it. And so even, you know, five, ten years ago, it would have been like the SEC schools, the Big 12 and ACC schools, where you'd have enough of a track man sample to feel really good. And now the kid at Bucknell has one. So the technology has pervaded college baseball enough that not only does the kid from Bucknell and College of Charleston, do they have enough of a track man sample, But the road teams coming in there to play at those schools that have a unit, they're generating data as well. And so it's not

just the home games for Vanderbilt that are being captured. And all the data is being shared now, which I linked to old McDong and Hagen pieces in the draft recap too about, I think maybe one of them is just a solo byline, but at a certain point, none of this data was shared. You could buy Vanderbilt, their track man unit, install it for them on your dime, and then have exclusive access to their track man unit, which is literally a thing the Houston Astros did.

And then it seems like the Guardians complained because they didn't want to get, number one, into a data arms race with teams like the Yankees and the Dodgers. Cause they don't feel like spending money. And also at a certain point, there aren't any schools worth putting a unit into anymore. All the good schools you're playing musical chairs, like trying to put a track man unit in at Florida and at LSU and at UCLA.

And before you know it, like there aren't enough units. If you're exclusive to an individual unit to And before you know it, like there aren't enough units if you're exclusive to an individual unit to like, you know. So a bunch of teams would have been left out almost entirely

in all probability. And so now we share, right? So, you know, the nuance of it kind of goes away. That metagame aspect of it changes and everyone is working with the same data.

Everyone's, you know, feeding the same data into their regression models. And the teams that are more successful are the ones who the bad teams hire people away from to make their team better. And so they bring that school of thought with them. And it has been teams like this

where contact-oriented players have been a priority. And so I think that also that philosophy has spread too. So it's silly to grade a draft in its entirety before these guys perform. Most of them haven't even signed. And so it can be hard to say who fell undeservedly, who might surprise us. But I'm going to ask you, who went either later than you anticipated they would or maybe went in a later round who you think is going to end up having a bigger big league impact than where they were taken or their bonus might indicate at this juncture you can name a couple guys

sure so sometimes it's just like situational where the guys go. So I've got a couple of high school arms. Joey Oki is a high school pitcher who the Guardians drafted. I had him ranked 40th. He went 84th, right? But that's more about what his bonus is going to be, money they saved, because Bazana is not going to sign for slot. And so that's why Oki was available where he was available. It was money-wise and not talent-wise that he ended up there.

There's a guy who was at West Virginia named David Hagerman, who had the internal brace style Tommy John this year. I had him ranked in the 40s. He went 133rd. from a body and stuff, like the way he looks and how nasty his stuff is, you know, up to 98, pretty consistently mid nineties, big, long six, five type guy,

uh, plus slider 86, 88. Like it just looks really righteous to me and it's, it's violent. And, but like, as far as build and capacity for movement and all that stuff are concerned,

I absolutely had that guy in the front half of the second round. And I stand by that, but he went like 100-something. If there was a reach, look, I'm just scared of Vance Honeycutt. You want the opposite of what I was mentioning with contact-oriented hitters? Here's your guy. So Vance Honeycutt from North Carolina. He's their center fielder. He is a great defender.

He can really run. He's got power. I do not think Vance Honeycutt is going to hit, right? Like, he's one of those players where he entered the year as a potential top-ten pick, and just, you know, the swing is grotesque-looking to me in terms of what's happening with his hands before they actually fire. And he's got breaking ball recognition issues.

And so those two things together to me are just like absolutely terrifying. Had him in the 40s. He went 22 to Baltimore. And the Orioles, I think, believe that they can fix this guy. That they, you know, see his physical ability and think it's worth it to take a chance on him at 22 even if it doesn't work he can still play centerfield defense like he's probably going to be some sort of big leaguer it's just about how good and they've done this before right with judd fabian from florida who's the exact same guy

exact same guy and so you know honey honey cut to me was like a reach, but if they can actually tweak or fix him, then that'll be very good. The kid from Bucknell, who I mentioned earlier, Sean keys, I had him ranked close to 60th, like back of the second round,

he went one 25. So that's another guy who fell super strong guy. Folks with teams were telling me when that they had pre-draft meetings with him when he walked into the room they could not believe how yoked this guy was uh something about the way the bucknell uniforms hang off of the player's body were just like not flattering on tape and then they get in a room with this guy and they're just like holy cow this is like absolutely a pro athlete and so like like Sean Keys from Bucknell, very interesting guy who went later than I had him ranked. The Phillies first rounder, Dante Nori, he's a high school player. He turns

20 in two and a half months. And so I don't necessarily believe that you have to adhere to what your model says in a strict way it's good to to have you know give put a human coat of paint on it we've seen plenty of players who are either older than average or younger than average for their class and models you know are going to tend to prioritize the younger guys. We've seen plenty of players who, even though they're 17, physically they are more mature and vice versa. Simeon Woods Richardson is a great example. And Simeon's in the big leagues, and that's great. But when Simeon was drafted, he was still 17, but he wasn't, like, projectable physically. He was basically what he was going to be.

Very advanced player. And then there are some times when a high school player, you know, like Colson Montgomery was 19 on draft day, but he's like a cold weather Midwest kid, multiple sports, like all kinds of other stuff that would indicate, hey, even though this guy is 19 years old, we should round up on his skills

because of these other, you know other unquantifiable factors. So Dante Nori is going to be 20, and that's like really old for a high schooler. He's a couple months too young to be a draft eligible college freshman next year, like just by a couple months and so i don't know what to make of him he does not have very much physical projection this is the philly's first rounder he's you know high school kid from canadian his dad works for the timberwolves right like isn't his dad there like in their front office or their coach or something like that in their front office or their coach or something like that. This was an interesting one that as I was woe-jing on draft night and I'm, you know, shuttling around,

the Phillies are taking Norrie to other teams. It is one of those where the response, normally there's no response or there's like a, yep, we have that too or something like that. This was one of those where it was just like, huh? You know, was the collective response and so you know nori was i did work on nori before the draft and he was one of those where i watched him i was like okay this kid's a prospect but i'm not gonna put him i

determined pretty quickly as i was doing film study like all right this is a prospect but not someone who i'm gonna put on my top 100 for this draft. And so we'll see what he signs for. The Phillies didn't do anything else, like, up and down their draft that I immediately look at and go, oh, okay, that's where the money that they saved on, like, Dante Norrie is going. They took Griffin Burkholder, another really fast high school outfielder, with their second pick. I thought that pick was fine, but it wasn't like, oh, okay, well, they got Burkholder, another really fast high school outfielder, with their second pick.

I thought that pick was fine, but it wasn't like, oh, okay, well, they got Burkholder. So I see what they did. No. So I'm still trying to suss out what happened there. That would be another one where I'm just like, ah, you proved me wrong, I guess. And certainly that's happened before and will happen again. Although, what's David Schneider hitting now? But, yeah, so those are my guys. I think just looking at my board and like who went meaningfully

sooner or later than the range I had them in. I did want to ask you one more thing, which is not about this draft, but about the draft in general. Rob Manfred made some comments about a willingness and openness to trade draft picks. Potentially, this is a collectively bargained issue. So goes, how do you think that will affect how teams operate? I think it'll be like the NBA where, well, the NBA is so weird because the second round is such its own thing. It's not even really thought of as a present asset it's like a derivative but uh i think there would be some teams who behaved in a pretty extreme way around the trading of draft picks i think especially with so few minor league roster spots where you have a 20 round draft but you only have like 160 domestic

minor league roster spots you just don't need to turn over that high a percentage of your of your minor leagues every year if you're a team like the dodgers who has a pretty stocked system like i don't think you're really upgrading with what you're doing for some of your draft picks. I think the Brewers draft strategy this year illuminates some of that. They're not going to sign all 20 of these guys. They're probably going to sign 14 of them, give or take.

They punted on half a dozen draft picks to a certain extent. I think that that would be something that teams did pretty frequently if they could trade draft picks. They'd be trading draft picks away like crazy. And other teams, imagine being Pete Bendix

and Frankie Piglieri, and you're in Miami now, and it's your show and your system's not good, like really not good. Offensively bad. Give me all the draft picks you can. I've been watching the Giants hard knocks on HBO and the Giants are going to trade for Brian Burns. They haven't done it yet in the show. And they preview the next episode and the Giants GM

is talking to Dan Morgan, the Panthers' new GM. And you hear him say in the episode preview, like, I need players too. And you can just hear Dan Morgan on the other side of the phone going like, my team is god-awful. So I want like a bunch, I need a volume of picks from you to trade you this elite pass rusher.

And the Giants guy is like, hey, like our team sucks as well. So we need a seventh round pick. It's better than the guy we have playing our backup safety right now is worse than our seventh round pick is going to be. So we need those guys and the Marlins and the White Sox. And they would be trading for picks, I think, pretty frequently. I don't know.

They got to have a way to make sure it's not so many picks. You don't want the entire Dodgers fan base to tune out of the draft because their team doesn't have a pick. That would be bad for the draft as a thing you're trying to turn into an event. So you don't want anyone to overdo it, I don't think.

But at the same time, the notion that a team might move, that the White Sox might trade Luis Robert for the first overall pick or whatever, would be very engaging to fans. I think that you would want to come up with a system so that you can't have teams completely divorcing themselves from the draft process uh there would be teams who you know just this is all just coming to me stream of consciousness now guys but do you have any doubt that there would be an owner who is just like screw this like if we don't really just trade all our draft picks all the time we don't have to have an amateur scouting staff then right and so my costs my costs are like this when i don't have an amateur scouting

staff you're telling me i don't have to great let's trade them all first you know we the the double a player you get for your second round pick is uh all to you know jerry jones would just do the draft so let's trade our second rounder for a guy at double a we that's a sure thing to hit on then whoever we're going to take in the second round so screw this like fire all our amateur scouts and uh well let's trade all our draft picks like you know you have to think that uh if there's one thing about baseball people, especially the type of baseball person who tends to climb through an organization now, they're going to exhaust any avenue of thought about how they might take advantage of the new rules. And the owner is going to be part of that process. Yeah, loopholes are going to be looked for and strategies of an extreme nature are going to be considered and it will probably take some amount of dialing in before all is said and done

uh you know the toothpaste will be out of the tube for a small amount of time you'll sign you know a bunch of latin american players for way more than your international bonus space allotment. And you'll take your two years in the penalty box, whatever, we don't care. And then we'll come back and do this thing. And we've seen versions of this before, right? Just in other markets as other rules change. I think I'm for it because it would be fun and fascinating to see how that stuff unfolds. And it would add nuance to a thing, which isn't typical. Anytime these changes are made to these processes of talent acquisition in baseball, almost always it is stripping nuance, you know, because nuance costs.

And so, you know, this is a situation where it would be different than that. It would be the opposite of that. The same thing with the challenge system, where it would be adding nuance. And so I'm generally for that. Yeah, it sounded like Manfred was sort of saying that there's more interest now because teams can be trusted not to do something stupid when it comes to that. That's essentially what, that's exactly what he just said. Yeah. He's like, they're not, they're not dumb now. You know, he didn't say it quite like that, but he got close to saying it quite like that.

He said, yeah, he said, I don't think we have that many stupid clubs. The clubs are really sophisticated now. I do think there's a really good argument for allowing them to decide how to use their resources. Whereas in the past, he said the position the clubs have taken over time in terms of what they want us to do at the table has been a product of a balance between flexibility in terms of utilizing the resources available to you on one hand and paternalism on the other. Yes. That is, I'm going to prevent you from doing acts because I think it would be stupid. So, I mean, you might be right that there aren't stupid teams. There are still some cheap ones,

You might be right that there aren't stupid teams. There are still some cheap ones, or at least some cheap owners. And so they might do something stupid out of cheapness, potentially. But maybe they realize that to be a cheap team, you actually have to do well in the draft, right? That's one of the avenues that you can perpetuate your cheapness and potentially content. So we'll see. That'll give you even more to break down in the future. Thank you, as always, for coming on and breaking the draft down for us.

We have given the people what they want, or at least one person, that guy who left an iTunes review. Hope he's happy. And I'm just always amazed by the depth and the breadth of your knowledge. And I always wonder whether when a new draft class comes in, they displace players in your brain somewhere in the recesses of your mind. Like do you eternal sunshine like the 13th rounders from 2009 or whatever, or do you just continually add to your mental library, which I guess is what you hope happens as a scout, that you just see more and more players over time and you're able to develop patterns, whether it's consciously or not. And you can recognize, oh, I saw this guy who did that and this guy reminds me of him and maybe he'll follow the same progression.

But I don't know how much mental bandwidth one man can have when it comes to just knowing thousands and thousands of baseball players, most of whom never pan out professionally. So always impressed. And I'm glad that you can keep track of all these guys because I know I can't. Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for having me on again. I do think I have like a finite amount of disc space and that, you know, we're starting to get to the point where some of that stuff is slipping. Like if I went back to the 2017 tab on the board, even just the pro group, you know, we're going to get to a point where it's just like, oh, you know, your memory has to be jogged by Robert Gesellman's existence, right?

Like you see his name and you're just like, oh yeah. distance, right? Like you, there you see his name and you're just like, Oh yeah. And you know, could I produce, could I produce like my top 100 from that year, even though Carson Fulmer started a major league baseball game, like within the last week, you know, I, you know, I would have a hard time conceiving of him in that moment. Like the sparkle quiz of players in my brain is, you know, at some point, like, it's just like, ah, I can't fill out all these. All right. That will do it for today.

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