Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2246: Soto’s Suitors

Episode Date: November 20, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley solicit listener suggestions for an upcoming podcast series, discuss what they would ask potential employers if they were on a Juan Soto-esque free-agent tour, and banter about the Orioles dismantling “Walltimore,” the far-less-settled-than-expected situations of the A’s and Rays, differing medical evaluations and Brusdar Graterol’s role in the Mookie Betts […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2246 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of FanGraphs, with a cold, and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer also with a cold. Ben, how you doing? Ben Lindberg You sound more or less like yourself right now I would say. Meg Rowley Yeah, I'm on the back half for sure.

Ben Lindberg Yeah, I'm still in the middle of it so people will probably be overly familiar with my phlegm and my mucus by the end of this episode. Apologies. I'll try to keep it to a minimum, but it's that time of year. Yeah. I mean, our Patreon supporters are very familiar with your colon, so what's a little flim between friends after that? Exactly. Yeah. We're all very intimately acquainted at this point. Another thing that comes around

roughly this time of year is the holidays holidays and we keep cranking out pods, but sometimes we have done some sort of special series or something, something that we can maybe bank a little earlier to make it easier on us and producer Shane. And five years ago, I did a series of episodes that I dubbed the Multisport Saber Metrics Exchange where I talked to analysts from various other sports about the state of Saber Metrics Exchange where I talked to analysts from various other sports about the state of sabermetrics in their sports. And that was fun, could probably use an update, but we were thinking something similar that we might pursue this year around the Christmas New Year's period would be a series of conversations

about baseball jobs, maybe unsung baseball jobs of some sort, sort of under the radar baseball jobs that still would be kind of cool to hear about. And so I'm just throwing this out there to the listeners to suggest jobs that they would wanna hear more about so that we can maybe arrange interviews of that sort. I've been thinking of, for example, bullpen catcher. You often hear bullpen catcher, best job in baseball. And I had a bullpen

catcher on the late lamented ringer MLB show and that was fun, but I don't think I've ever had a bullpen catcher on Effectively Wild. So that's a possibility or maybe a team social media person that was actually suggested by a listener not long ago. Anything along those lines. I did a groundskeeper interview back in the Jeff Sullivan era, six years and a thousand episodes or so ago. It doesn't mean we couldn't do that again, but some of these things we've done over the years had an organist on the Ringer MLB show at some point, but I think maybe not uneffectively wild.

So that kind of job, it's just part of the fabric of baseball, but it's not maybe one of the more common or prominent ones. And it just sounds like it would be fun to hear about from someone who does that. So please email us, let us know what stands out to you as a possible person we could talk to. Could be a specific person if you have a connection or want to recommend someone, but more generally- It could be you. It could be you, yes. But it could also not be you and it could just be a general idea of it'd be cool to hear from this type of person. So let us know.

Yeah, let us know. Was Jeff like hiking in Patagonia or something when you talked to the groundskeeper? I think Jeff may have been there actually for the groundskeeper interview. Oh, okay. You said Jeff era and I was like, what far flung country was he hiking? Well, he was often doing that. It's true. So another baseball job is outfielder and hitter. That is a job that Juan Soto has and he does it very well. And there are various teams talking to him about that job. We're hearing every few days about some meeting he has had, some extended

meeting with the Mets or the Yankees or the Blue Jays or the Red Sox or whoever it is, I'm always curious what goes on at a meeting like this. I was just thinking, if you were in one-soto shoes or you're a one-soto level free agent, the cream of the crop, the most elite type of free agent, the type that gets wined and dined and gets to sit down with the owner and the GM and the manager for hours at a time, what would you be looking for in one of those meetings? What would you ask other than the obvious, how much money will you pay me? Which is probably not something that comes up in that meeting or is probably not expressed by Soto himself, but obviously is

important. But what else would you hope to accomplish with one of these free agent ballpark tours? Oh, what a good question. You're right. Cause it's like there's like a tier of free agent where that meeting is you're making your own sales pitch to them about like why you're good, why you're a good fit. You're interviewing them, yeah. But when you're Juan Soto, you don't have to worry about making the case for yourself. The case has been made, right? And so I think that the first thing that I would be interested in, and I think we got

a sense of this as a point of very frank conversation in the sort of aftermath of Otani signing is, where do you see the team in the next couple of years? What is your commitment to winning? How do you view yourself in the competitive landscape? And probably most importantly, like to the extent that there is a gap between where the team is now and where you understand the team needing to be in order to be a real world series contender. How, how do you plan to close that gap?

Right? What is the commitment of ownership to closing that gap? You know, like Soto is in this amazing position where like he's so young and he already has a ring, but like he strikes me as a very competitive guy. I'm sure he wants to go to a team that's going to contend. The leaked list of teams that we have seen as being the ones that he is like sitting down and having these meetings with suggests that that's true.

So that would be, I think my first question, like where do you see yourself? Where do you need to be? How do you collapse the gap between those things to the extent that there is one? And if there isn't, how do you continue to sustain the position that you occupy as like a team in the top tier of contenders?

I think that that would be the very first one. I do wonder, this is sort of a question as way of answer, but I do wonder in moments like that, like how specifically you get into the nitty gritty around like existing personnel, right? Because Juan Soto's deal, the sort of baseline consensus is that whatever deal he ends up signing will be at least a decade long, right? That he will be in the place he's going to be for at least 10 years. And that's enough time for like a lot of people to come and go. Right. I always wonder when you're in the room and you're not only looking at a very big deal,

right? Such that you don't have to sell yourself, but also likely a very long deal. Like, do you ask about the current field staff? Like, does that matter? I mean, it surely matters some, right? It matters in terms of how you answer the first question that I said I'd pose. But if there's someone currently with the organization who, like, kind of rubs you the wrong way, do you worry about that if you're a guy who's gonna be there for the next 10 years?

So that's the thing I always wonder when these guys are going in and having their little chats. In a way, it makes that sort of thing more important because gosh, I'm gonna be there so long. So all these soft factors and personality clashes could really matter whereas if you're signing a one year deal, it's like, yeah, I can get through it one way or another.

But it also then becomes really difficult to actually gain insight into that question because no one can predict the future, no one knows. And I wonder how often these meetings are really decisive because they can say whatever they want in that meeting, they might even mean it, but things change. People die. People sell teams.

People change their level of investment. You could say, yeah, we intend to compete and we think we're going to spend X or Y, but you're not necessarily obligated to do that. You can kind of say whatever you want or things can change and the teams themselves don't really know how good they'll be, which is why you could almost draw your conclusions A from, well, did they make me a big offer? Because if this team is going to lay out 600 million bucks or whatever it is to sign one soda, well, that in itself is probably a better indication than whatever they're saying in that meeting about whether

they're serious about contending and how much they're going to invest in that roster. So you would almost learn more from that and just from the track record. If you're talking to the Dodgers, you don't necessarily need the Dodgers assurance. Yeah, we're going to continue to try to win. Like you just look at the roster, you look at the fact that they haven't missed the playoffs in 13 years or whatever it is. Like you can be pretty confident. Literally just won the World Series. Yeah, exactly.

So the proof is in the pudding in a lot of these cases. Now, if you're say talking to the Red Sox, maybe that's a more relevant discussion because this is a team that used to spend a lot on its roster with its current ownership and won a lot of World Series as a result and lately has not been spending quite as much and has gone by modern recent Red Sox standards. It's been a while since they've won one. So you could grill John Henry a little bit and say, are you now distracted by your other holdings here? Are you more worried about Liverpool and the Penguins than you are the Red Sox?

Are you planning to get back to the top of the scale spending wise? And again, he may or may not actually tell you the truth, but it might be something worth asking at least. Yeah, I think that there are definitely teams where it is a more sort of relevant direct question than with others. Like if you're the Dodgers, now here's one for you. Here's a Dodger specific one for you. So we know when Otani signed that part of his contract involves assurances that certain

key decision makers will remain with the team and if they don't, then that has repercussions for his ability to like get out of there, right? So okay, okay, so what if you're, what if you're Juan Soto, but you're also a trickster and you're like, my requirement is that Andrew Friedman leave. I don't see, I don't suspect that Juan Soto would say that because he seems like he's doing a pretty good job. They again just won the World Series.

But do you think you'd use it as an opportunity to do some little jokes? Do you think you'd go in with the desire to do a bit? I think I'd want to try to do a bit, just to break the ice, to be like, look, I know you've been hearing a lot of really terrible puns and wordplay from Scott, but I also can do a bit and here's my bit. I want him fired tomorrow. Yeah. You just walked in with a straight face and the owner's sitting right next to Andrew Friedman and you're like, you can have me, but Friedman's got to go. He's got to go. Yeah. Who do you want? Do you want me or do you want him and the certainty

of Otani? Like, you know, dealer's choice on that one. And then just see what happens and go, nah, I'm kidding. Hi, Andrew, I'm Juan. Nice to meet you. It's a high stakes game because you don't want to give anyone a reason not to offer you $600 million. But on the other hand, maybe they'd appreciate a little levity there in the room. I think that I would.

I were a very serious baseball sort, I would appreciate levity very much because so much of what you're doing is like, on the one hand, incredibly stressful and serious, certainly very time consuming, but also trivial, right? Like it would be a weird life, just like our lives are weird where it's like we have these jobs and we like them a lot and we spend so much time doing them. But also like fundamentally, like you have days where you're like, well, this is, I'm an unserious person since this is my full-time job that lets me pay rent and buy salad. So I would appreciate levity if it were me. And it would

be telling, right? Because I think that the best people to hang out with for more, for a decade or longer are the people who don't take themselves too seriously, right? Who can kind of like have a little fun at their own expense. Those people are a good hang. You want to invite them to weddings and stuff. So it would be an interesting character test. Pete Slauson Less than the back of his mind, Friedman's

like, haha, wait, was he serious though? Was there a curdle of truth in there? LS. No, but you got to, you have to immediately make clear that you're doing a bit. That's the enjoyment of the joke to go, ah, just jashing with you. I guess you care about other more concrete stuff too, like facilities. And I think that there would probably be things, now, would you get an honest answer? I don't know. Would an honest answer matter? Because are you the same kind of person? Who knows? But like, you know, if you're, let's say, let's say you're Wonsodo and you're going into the Red Sox, you know, you probably want to talk to somebody like, what's it like to live in Boston? You know,

do people like it here? Or like, I think there are others, like, if you, he's not going to be a royal, but like, if you went to Kansas City, you'd be like, so is this barbecue actually that good? You know, tell me about it. Like there would be things, if you're, if you're looking at a contract, the length of which Soto unquestionably is like, yeah, we've talked about this. You're about to be a very rich person or a richer person in Soto's case, because he's done quite well for himself in the arbitration process. But you know, you can insulate yourself to some degree from the parts of living in any place that aren't great. But like, at the end of

the day, you got to live in the place and presumably you want to like it, at least enough to tolerate it. And so I think you'd start talking about that piece of it. I don't know that I would ask the team. I might ask the team, but I don't know that I would consider the team the best source to give me the skinny on what it's like to live there. I might talk to people who had played for that team. I might talk to just experts on cities in general, who aren't even baseball specific people.

Do you think Juan Soto is like, get me an urbanist right now? Yes. Right now. Just go to the Chamber of Commerce and the Tourism Bureau and you can hand us some pamphlets or something. Yeah, but we have talked about that. And yes, I do think that that kind of wealth, if you're at the top tier of free agency that qualifies you for this sort of meeting,

then I think you are sort of insulated from the vagaries of what is it like to live here, because you can afford to live in the best part of whatever town it is with the best school system and get your food flown in, you know, whatever extravagances you want you can do. So I think it matters a little less probably at that sort of tax bracket, but I might talk to people who played for the team. That's the other thing is that you want to get a feel for the person who's going to be your boss and signing your paychecks and penciling you into the lineup and all that, but can you get that great a sense in a sit down for a couple hours or a meal? Everyone's going to be on their best behavior. It's not like in the thick of a season when things

are going wrong for the team and tensions are high. I don't know that it's that great a reading on what it will be like to work with and for these people on a day-to-day basis for the next decade plus. And that might again be a better timeto-day basis for the next decade plus. And that might again be a better time to talk to people who have played for them. And this probably works the other way too, where the team could ask the player about their training or their work ethic or what they want to improve or anything. They might also get a better reading on that from their previous teams or people who've known them or played with them or been around them because, you know, people are not going to be entirely

honest about themselves or maybe they think they are, but they're distorting things in some sense. And it's just that meeting in that room is not really reflective of the lived experience of a team and a free agent over the next however many years it is. So I think there's kind of a limited insight you can get, though I would guess that a lot of players, they probably might not know as much about an organization as you would think. They might know less than we know about, say, the state of a team's farm system. And again, I don't know that you necessarily want to trust the team's word on the state of its farm system, but players, they're busy, they're worrying about themselves, they kind

of have tunnel vision to an extent, they play all the other teams, they see the other cities, but are they studying the farm system rankings and the prospects and all of that? I would imagine that some of them are pretty oblivious to that and they can be. And so when you're sitting down, you might be asking about that, although you, again, might just be as well served by going to the board at fancrafts.com or something, right? But probably they want to know those things. And yes, the facilities and what's the spring training set up like and what sort of advanced pitching machines do you have and how many coaches and all of

these things. Again, some of this information is just publicly available, but you might just want to get it straight from the horse's mouth. I also think you're going to get the, I don't need to put like a value judgment and call it lying, but you're going to get the sort of the best impression that a team can put forth in a meeting like that. But I still think that how they talk about themselves and how they present what they

think the best version of themselves to be, like there is, that is instructive, even if it isn't a completely accurate picture all the time. So I think that there's still something to be gleaned from that. And it would be of interest to me. And I don't know, I think you're right that most people can kind of keep it together for the length of a dinner, right? Can be pleasant to be around for the length of the dinner. But I'm here to tell you, Ben, some people cannot do that. CB. That's true.

LS. Some people are not capable of that. and that is interesting to know also. But yeah, if you're Soto, I'm sure that he, in addition to the insights that he's getting from Boris and his Boris representation, because it is useful to remember that, yeah, Scott is quite involved in his free agency, but the day to day of being Juan Soto involves a lot of people from Boris Corp. It's not just Scott, right? But like if I'm him, I'm calling up other, I'm calling up players who have played there in the past, who don't play there anymore, who don't have incentive to necessarily have incentive anyway,

to like give it to me in a rose colored glasses kind of way. There are probably a lot of things about Soto as a human being that we don't know that are important to him, maybe it's important to him that he not have to be insulated by his wealth wherever he lives. Maybe he wants to be able to walk to the neighborhood bar and have a drink or who knows? I don't know what's important to Juan Soto. I don't know the man. We're not acquainted. Yeah.

Well, we should have him on the podcast for a few hours or take him out to dinner and then we'll know him much better. I'm sure he can fit us into his schedule. Do you think that we would have several hours of things to talk about with Vansala? I mean, probably if he gave us that amount of time, sure. I don't know if he'd wanna talk to us for several hours. No, but I would have things to ask him.

I would have things to ask him, but do you think he would be more or less likely to talk to us if we were like, there's this baseball movie with a haunted pool. Do you think that would make him more likely to talk to us or less likely to talk to us? Sometimes players appreciate the more off the wall questions because they get so many of the more standard ones

that it's a nice refreshing change for them. So you never know. When they roll with them, it does tell you something about them. It does. You learn something about Brent Rooker when you're like, tell us about food and also whether you would sacrifice your family

to the haunted pool on behalf of your own career. Yes, we are hoping to have Brent Rooker back on the podcast sometime soon, by the way. I cannot wait to see if he wants to talk to us again. I'm so excited to find out the answer to that question. I'm not going to take it personally if he's like, the haunted pool people, I'm good. I'll understand. Anyway, I would love to get kind of a fly on the wall perspective of how these things

work. Also, because he's so young, I don't believe he has started a family yet. And so that's something that you might ask. Well, that would probably come up at some point in the free agent meeting, but if you are not at that stage of your life, then you might not have as many questions about the way that- School system. Yeah, that or the way that teams treat,

say significant others and kids and what sort of facilities are involved for them and community events and that sort of ballpark participation that could come up maybe and maybe he's planning for that to be a factor at some point during the life of this contract. So it still could be relevant to him. But yeah, I just I'm coming to this from the perspective of someone who picked a college without ever visiting. You too, yeah, we talked about that.

We both did, yeah. And we were just like, yeah, you know, that seems good. And it was, it was fine, you know. I mean, would I have made a different decision in retrospect? Maybe it's not something I stress about. And I don't know whether doing a campus visit before I showed up for orientation would have changed my mind about anything. But at some point you have enough information

about something that physically being there may or may not change your mind. And it's just, again, it's never gonna be fully representative of what it's gonna be like for you. So you just kinda get the best little snapshot you can. Yeah, a little snippet. The family thing strikes me as the sort of thing that a good veteran mentor would be like, hey, you're not thinking about this yet.

And I don't know much about Soto in terms of his personal life or romantic attachments. So I don't know for all I know he has a long-term person and they're already thinking about these things. I have no idea one way or the other, but it does strike me as the sort of thing where like if you're a veteran and you're one of the guys that Soto calls to be like, hey, what's it like to play for the Dodgers? They'd be like, hey, so you're not thinking about this yet, but just so you know, like when you get to a point where you're having kids or what have you, like they're really good at doing this or this team is really, you know, actually when you get to a point where you're having kids or what have you, like they're really good at doing this or this team is really, you know,

actually makes things weirdly difficult for like the significant others and children of whatever. Like that's a good veteran. Hey, you're not, but you will care about this. And so here's what I think about it. You know, how comfortable is the plane? That kind of thing. Yeah, it's, I would think maybe that in the past, there might have been bigger differences among teams in terms of how their front offices operated. So it might have been more useful 10 or 15 or 20 years ago to hear from a GM, or I guess you didn't even have po-bos at that point, but the decision-makers, just because you had a-

They just weren't called that then. Yeah, I guess so. But a big divide, new school, old school, philosophical difference among teams that might have swayed you at that point. And now there are still differences, certainly, but I don't think they're quite as pronounced as they were back then. And again, you can kind of glean this stuff from the outside to some extent. But at that level of how wealthy he's about to be, and frankly already is, but

you would think that these little soft factors might actually matter more because- Right. Because the money's just going to get done, right? You'd think. I don't know whether players and agents actually look at things that way. It does seem to still matter to them who offers the most, even if it's a difference between just being fabulously wealthy and fabulously wealthy plus a couple more millions of dollars that won't really affect your quality of life in any way, just in terms of bragging rights or helping pull up all boats in the free agent market or just getting what you can because that's a natural impulse for people.

It does seem like just who has the high bid still matters a lot. And yet you would think that it might matter less than some of these other things. Just do I like the city? Do I like the ballpark? Do I like the climate? That would matter a ton to me,

just like how hot is it? Because I don't like when it's too hot and it's getting hotter all the climate. That would matter a ton to me. Just like how hot is it? Because I don't like when it's too hot and it's getting hotter all the time. So that would be worth many millions of dollars if I'm already going to be guaranteed five or 600 million, just not having to play in 100 plus degree heat constantly. That would be worth way more quality of life-wise to me than getting an extra 10 million or whatever it is over the next decade, because that would have really no discernible effect. So you would think that these little things, these little differentiating factors would actually be the deciders, but I don't know that they are that often. I do think it often comes down to who offered me the most.

often. I do think it often comes down to who offered me the most. I think I would have like a list, and again, this is on some level a fundamentally ridiculous thing for me to assume I know what would be important to me in this situation, but I would have a list and I worry that my list would be quite limiting to me in terms of the, well, the number of destinations and also having leverage in the negotiation. But like, I don't have, I wouldn't have interest in doing spring training in Florida if it were me. It's so spread out and then you're in Florida, you know, that's the other thing about it is it's in Florida famously, which isn't for me. But you know, so like that's half the league out and some, some of the big spenders just

like gone. Would that be a decisive factor for you given that it's again a month out of the year, which that's not insignificant, I guess, if you're signing for 13 years or something, you're talking about more than a year of your life. And it's more than a month for the players, right? Right. Yeah, it's true. You're there from mid-February

till the end of March, most likely. And again, you can afford to live wherever the heck you want. And you could have a helicopter carry you to the games if you wanted to, that level of wealth. But yes, I guess it is actually kind of significant when you think about it. If it's just a tiebreaker,

if it's just the difference between 600 million and 607 million. It would be important to me to be able to like go out and you know, enjoy the city in part because, and again, this perspective might get very quickly altered by the kind of money we're talking about, but I always like it when a player just like lives in a place, you know? Like they don't have like an off season and do whatever you want, you know, like it's none of my business fundamentally, but like I like it when players

just like are in their place. Like I'm a, you know, I'm a Seattle Mariner and also a Seattleite or, you know, surrounding cities, a lot of them end up living on Mercer Island. But, you know, I like that. I think that that's nice. Also, as a person who, you know, wouldn't mind being buried in the front yard of the house that I'm renting right now so I don't have to move, like the idea of having to move, there's so much movement, you know, there's so much movement in being a pro athlete and especially a pro baseball player, just on the road constantly. So the idea of being like, look, I have my spring training place that I have to rent every year, live every year for two months, but then the rest of the time, this is where I live. I know exactly where the mugs are in my giant kitchen. Welcome to my sunken living room. Here's the

library. I'm just listing the things that I would buy if I won the lottery. But that would make the experience of living in the city really important to me because I'd want to enjoy living there because I'd want to live there, you know. I won't list all of the major league cities I wouldn't live in. That's rude to those cities and I haven't been to many of them. So what kind of informed perspective do I have? But like that would be important to me. I imagine making a stink about any of those things would potentially depress your market

because you're limiting the number of teams you could go to. You would strategically have to pretend to not care about some of those things so that you at least take meetings with, you know, teams that do not fit that criteria, but have the room to sign you to a big deal because you want to maximize your earnings, right? So it would be very tricky. And that's why it's good that he has, you know, so much help because I would find it overwhelming the process. The other thing to ask about would be how that team views you or plans to use you. Now that was very relevant in Shohei Otani's case

because of course there was the open question of, am I a two-way player? Do you see me as more of a pitcher or a hitter? What sort of schedule will I be on? What sort of constraints on my usage will there be? That was huge for him. I don't know that the typical free agent, there's really that much uncertainty. So I don't know again, whether it was the angel's willingness to use him as a

two-way player and then ultimately to take all of the limitations off, whether that was what swayed him, he really hasn't said, they haven't said, no one seems to know exactly what it was. He just had a feeling that that was where he wanted to go. But that's why I look back on that as an admirer of Shohay Otani and an enjoyer of his career and say, I wouldn't change anything actually. I'm kind of glad he went to the angels because if he had gone

somewhere else, who knows, butterfly effects, maybe something changes and he doesn't get the chance to be to Heiotani the way that he did. And now he's on the Dodgers and he won a World Series and eventually we got to see him play for a good team, but we got to see the fully operational show Heiotani with the Angels and you never know if that would have happened exactly the way it did somewhere else. Now, if you're Juan Soto, I don't know that there's really that much to ask. Do you see me as a left fielder or a right fielder? I guess would be a question. Or how long do you view me as an outfielder as opposed to just limiting me to DH duties? And again,

I don't know that you're going to get that much insight because ultimately it's going to depend how he plays and what the needs of that roster are in the years to come. And you're just not gonna be able to forecast that accurately in that meeting. But it might still be instructive to say, how good a defender do you think I am? Now, are they gonna be honest? That might also be interesting.

If they just came out and said, you know what? Gold Glove finalist, one soda, we don't actually think you're that great out there. I would appreciate the honesty. I think I would too. And then it depends. Yeah, like does he want a yes-men? Does he want flatterers?

Right. Or does he want someone who's going to give it to you straight, which ultimately might be more valuable to you? And then can you make me better? Now realistically, I don't know how much better Wonsodo could be because at the plate, at least, he's basically a perfect being. So if someone said, hey, we think you could be even better, I'd be all ears. Eventually, you're going to decline and you're going to slow down a bit.

And so you might be interested in signing with a team that could help you age gracefully. And again, I don't know that you can forecast who's gonna be good at that type of player development by the time I, Juan Soto, have hit my decline phase. That's theoretically several years down the road, at least, and there will be so much turnover by then that who the heck knows, right? But if you're someone who's at a lower tier of free agency

where you're really interested in what can I do to get better and what pitches should I add and how could I change my repertoire and my approach. Then that becomes a very important factor. And we've seen that and people have signed with the Dodgers or with the Rays just based on their reputation for improving players. But yeah, if you're one Soto, I don't know how much you're thinking about that. Even if you're not super egotistical, even if you're open to improvement, that currently

isn't a huge need for him immediately, which is why he is getting so many suitors and why the courtship is so intense. But for some players at least, that would be pretty interesting. Or if there's some sort of blockage on the roster, if there's someone who plays at the position you've been playing, or if there's the top prospect coming up behind you plays at the same position, you might ask how do you intend to handle that. So yeah, these are the specific things that might be relevant for a specific player in a specific team. But I still sort of think that if I were in this position, I might go along with it because what the heck, it's a long off season and what's so bad about being fetid everywhere

you go and treated to nice dinners and such. But I don't know that ultimately it would come down to what I saw or heard from those people there as opposed to what I learned from other sources or knew coming in. But what if you also were obsessed with Fogo to chow? Well then, yeah, that becomes an extremely important factor, but also not something you necessarily need to hear back from the team. You just go to the Fogo website and say, how far away is Fogo?

And you're kind of covered there. What would you, if you were, this is a dangerous question because, okay, I don't want to say you're weird about food because that has, again, is loaded as judgment that I don't mean, but you have described yourself as not being like a foodie. That's not an identity you ascribe to, right? Like that's not how you understand yourself.

So I'm not stepping out of bounds to say that, but like, what do you think the optimal free agent dinner is? Right? Do you lean into, and I'm not asking you to pick a particular cuisine because hopefully you have enough sense to do like a little bit of advanced scouting, right? Show that you know how to scout guys and are picking a cuisine that Juan Soto is partial to. little bit of advanced scouting, right? Show that you know how to scout guys, um,

and are picking a cuisine that Juan Soto is partial to. And again, I won't assume to know because I don't know him, but like, do you lean into that? Do you say we happen to know that like Juan Soto loves sushi? I don't know, but I'm picking a thing and we have a really great sushi restaurant in town. We might have several, we're're gonna take him to that. Or do you say, okay, I don't know that Juan Soto has an evolved opinion on Skyline Chili, so let's take him to the best Skyline Chili to pick something to make him not sign.

I'm not apologizing for my stance on this. Just like, do meat sauce. What is wrong with you guys? Anyway. Yeah. I guess one approach would just be to try to wow the person. Just the most expensive, finely catered, bring in some sort of celebrity chef or something, which would not resonate with me as I have discussed on Patreon bonus pods. So that would suggest a lack of awareness of my particular proclivities. Now if you've got some super fancy food that I liked, if you plied me with caviar, which I think is delicious and I haven't had in years because I am not one Soto, then I'd appreciate that.

But I think probably the best approach would be if you took me to a diner. I would want to be brought to a diner because that would suggest that you have done your research. You know my tastes. You know I'm a big diner guy. You know if I'm coming to your city, that will actually be pretty important to me, the proximity to diners and the quality of said diners. And also just not presuming that you are ordering for me, essentially, that you're taking me to a diner where I can get anything, which is one reason why I like diners so much. The world is my oyster and you have this improbably large menu that has many different, very diverse foodstuffs that can be assembled and delivered immediately to me. That is what I value in a diner. And so I would appreciate that not presuming to say, we think this is best for you, but to provide

the diner menu approach to free agency, which is just, we want to please you. What do you feel like? We're willing to just roll with whatever is best for you because you are our priority. So that would go a long way with me. Bring me to a diner. Nicole Zilberbourg Okay. Yeah. Diner. What do you think about Denny's as a diner? Do you think Denny's is a diner? Can a chain that affects diner vibe actually be a diner? Jared Svelter You know, I have kind of complicated feelings about that. I have enjoyed going to say a Ruby Tuesdays type place. Oh, Ruby Tuesdays. You know what? I haven't thought about Ruby Tuesdays in an age, Ben.

Yeah, that kind of like Ruby Tuesdays, Chili's type, you know, these like places that- Well, see, but Chili's is- Okay, look, we're going to save- I'm putting a pin in this conversation because this weekend we are going to record a bonus episode for patrons and I don't want to exhaust other people. I instead would like to inflict this monstrosity of a topic onto our wonderful Patreon supporters. But chilis and adenis are not the same. That's not the same kind of scene. One is more of a restaurant or at least is aspiring to restaurant status

and the other is more of a diner. I just wanted to make sure that there wasn't like a weird chain restaurant blindness at play for you. No, not at all. I've enjoyed all of the above at times. Ruby Tuesdays, man. They have like ribs at Ruby Tuesdays. Yeah.

Where's my nearest Ruby Tuesdays? Ruby, and why is it Ruby Tuesday? It's Ruby Tuesday, not Tuesdays. Tuesdays. Ruby, and why is it Ruby Tuesday? It's Ruby Tuesday, not Tuesdays. Sorry. I don't think that they're in Arizona. I think there are no Ruby Tuesdays. Well, clearly it was not a huge factor for you in deciding where to live then, proximity to Ruby Tuesday.

No, I did not base my decision to move to Arizona based on my access to Ruby Tuesdays. We don't have, I don't think we have them in Washington either. So I didn't grow up a, I didn't grow up a Ruby Tuesdays head. Do you think that they were like, do you, did Ruby Tuesdays start before or after Ruth's Chris Steakhouse? Why? What is it? We still haven't gotten it.

Where is our long form on that? Where is our multi-part podcast series on the origins of Ruth's Chris Steak? What a stupid name for a restaurant, that is impossible. What were they, do you think the Ruby Tuesdays people were emulating that or do you think they were like, look, we're going for a weird name and it does have multiple words in the title, but.

That's the apostrophe usage there. Quite confusing. Is it Ruth's Chris's Steakhouse? It's Ruth's Chris because- Ruth's Chris. There was a woman named Ruth who owned it and then there was Chris Steakhouse and so it became Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. No, no, no. There was not a Chris Steakhouse.

There was. Like a human being named Chris. It was last name. It was steakhouse. Is that what you're trying to tell me or was there just a Chris steakhouse? Chris's steakhouse. Just Chris. Ruth's Chris steakhouse. I like to imagine that it is a family with multiple Chris's.

And so they were trying to decide like which Chris, you know, and they were like, oh, Ruth's Chris, you know? Like Aunt Ruth and her husband Chris. And they have a steakhouse. CB. This has been a nice little Patreon bonus pod preview for those of you who have not subscribed now. I'm sure you'll just rush to

sign up immediately having heard this whole taste. LS. I have a low stakes rant. I have one holstered. I am ready. I am ready, Ben. CB. Save it for the bonus pod. So we should also, I suppose, now that we've covered that important ground. I mean, have we? Well, yeah. I think we've set it up, we've previewed the ground, we haven't covered it, but it remains uncovered, you know? Like little birds can come and pick the seed out of it. That's how uncovered it is. One thing you might ask if you're one Soto is, are you planning any significant ballpark

alterations that might affect my offensive performance. That might be relevant, for instance, if you are sitting down with the Baltimore Orioles right now who have decided to repeal Baltimore. They are rolling back the changes, which is to say, I guess they are rolling in the wall and also lowering the wall. And so, Baltimore, which worked too well. This was prior to the

2022 season when Camden Yards was a pretty offense friendly park. And in an effort to balance things, they moved the wall back in left and they also raised the wall and they went too far, seemingly. That weird little cutout. Yes. And so now they are undoing part of the changes. They're hoping for a Goldilocks wall out there, a happy medium where it is neither too offense friendly nor too frustrating for hitters who get a hold of one and then find

themselves stymied by the wall out there. So it's being pulled in between nine and 20 feet. And then it's going to be such a range. Yeah. The wall will no longer be 13 feet tall, but eight feet tall in some areas and six feet, 11 inches tall in other areas. So we're going to be bringing back. Camden was really the sweet spot for home run robberies and Baltimore hurt that status somewhat too.

So we're gonna get back to that now. So this is the goal is to essentially just make it more neutral. So according to the park factors at Baseball Savant, the three year rolling factors. As of 2021, the final season before Baltimore was inflicted upon everyone, the home run park factor in Camden, Oriole Park at Camden Yards, excuse me, was- You don't have to listen to them. Don't comply.

No, was 124. Be ungovernable, Ben. Yeah. to them. Don't comply. Was 124. Be ungovernable, Ben. Yeah, so 100 is average, higher means it inflates homers more. Only Great American in Cincinnati was more home run inflating. The overall park factor at Camden was 105, which was tied with Cincinnati for the third most offense inflating park. And then in 2024, with the full three years of Baltimore, the park factor for Camden Yards has been down considerably, down to 93. So it has gone from enhancing homerun hitting to significantly suppressing it, though the overall park factor is 99,

so only slightly pitcher friendly. So it's not as if it's gone to an extreme necessarily, but there have been a lot of hitters dating back to the beginning of that move that have been pissed at times. And we're familiar with that from old Petco and other places that were more extreme, hitters just don't like it when they really rip one and they're denied by the wall. It's just, it's annoying for them. It would annoy me too. It would probably annoy me too.

I always say, does it really matter anymore because teams are not really being misled by park factors. They know they're looking at these things. They're looking at their quality of contact and they're projecting in their own parks or a neutral park. So I don't know that it matters as much to your earning power, let's say, as it used to, because I think teams are taking these things into account, but it still matters probably in terms of your own satisfaction sometimes. Sure.

Because you hit a ball hard, you just want it to go out. And it might matter in terms of your fan perception. Right. It's just going to be frustrating. So I get that. And yet at the same time, you don't want to hurt pitchers too much. I want it to be the case that it would actually be beneficial to have more extreme parks and then teams

could tailor their rosters and their player development philosophies to those parks. It would be fun, I think, if that were the case, because we like the fact that ballparks differ. They differ less than they used to, but they still differ more than the arenas in most sports and that is a quality about baseball that we appreciate. And so I wish it were more of a commutative advantage to say, here are the unique characteristics of our park. We're going to design our team with these characteristics in mind and we will have a

huge home field advantage and we will reap the rewards. But in practice, it seems like the more important thing to teams is not to scare anyone off. Yeah. And maybe Baltimore is strategically announcing this now because the Orioles expect to be big players in the free agent market. I think they should be. I think the time is ripe for that.

That was one of the things I talked to other Ben Clements about off season storylines. Will the Orioles really spend with new ownership? Just seemingly perfectly positioned to do that. So if they are interested in luring some high price free agents, Wansoto or otherwise to their park, then they might want to say, hey, by the way, no more Baltimore. Then again, I guess if they're going after pictures, that might hurt if anything. But it just seems like on the whole, you don't want extremes. And

that sort of saddens me, but I understand. How much of this change do you think is them being tired of Ryan Mountcastle walking in and being like, and another thing about Baltimore, you know? Because he's the guy who's always held up as being, you know, sort of Particularly hurt by Baltimore. Well, it's more makes me think of the show fringe remember the show fringe I really liked fringe. Yeah, a lot of people like fringe. Don't bring it back. Write new stories. Anyway, Baltimore Orioles fans always seemed annoyed when you would bring up Baltimore and how weird it Well, like what what a weird self-inflicted little wound. And I agree with you that like the extent of that wound, the severity of it was overstated in the popular imagination.

But like objectively, like it did something, you know? It looked goofy out there. CB Yeah. There were a lot of times where a ball would have been out in 29 other parks, but it wasn't in Baltimore. And while it wasn't in Baltimore because of Waltz. Yes. They play in Baltimore. They don't live in a parallel universe known as Baltimore. It's true. I'm fine with this change because I don't think

that Baltimore was much of a silly little difference apart from the name, which is fun to say. And you know what? You can still call the wall, Baltimore. It's not like there's no wall. That would be a very funny change. Yeah. Some people propose that too. Go back to the roots. No offenses. Yeah. Yeah. I think the league would have something to say about that if you tried to go with a no offense approach. But I think that you can still say Baltimore. And really, it didn't do

it, you can still say Baltimore, and really it didn't do that much. It wasn't like Tall's Hill, you know? It's not like that. It was just an overreaction and now they fixed it and I think that's nice, I guess. Or not. I don't really care, you know? To your point, I don't think it really made that big of a difference. I'm happy that maybe Ryan Mountcastle will have a better experience of going to work than he did previously, because I do think that you're right, that teams aren't like fooled by park factors anymore. Like they're not sitting there thinking like, oh my God, every person who's ever played for the Yankees is the best powerhead or alive. And it's like, no, they just have like a little league ballpark, but, um, very expensive one, but little league ballpark nonetheless.

I don't think they're fooled, but I do think that it impacts your experience of playing for a team and it impacts your perception on the, on the free agent market. And there are things about you that are tied up in, you know, stats like home runs. And all of a sudden you go from being a guy who like hits a normal number of home runs to being a guy whose total might be, even if only slightly, artificially suppressed by Baltimore. Do we really want to imbue Baltimore with that kind of power? Baltimore. I don't know, we decided it was a silly episode. We didn't say it out loud, but we did decide it, and now I'm leaning into that, to Baltimore.

You could imagine a city called Baltimore, but I think we would make fun of the people who live there. You know? Well, Baltimore sounds on Sirius. It sounds like some sort of sci-fi construction. Like Don French. Yeah, exactly. As previously established. So this is not the most disruptive ballpark situation

in the American league East because the race situation, we talked about it recently, but their new park, their next park that continues to look more tenuous by the day. And as we know, they will be playing in a minor league park, in a spring training park, in the Yankees' single A park in George M. Stryne-Brennerfield, which as we said, not only would it be amusing if the A's say won the AL East out of that park, but also

if they ended up playing the Yankees in the playoffs in that park, because it does seem like they would actually play postseason games there unless there were some other alternative arrangement worked out to sell more tickets. they would actually play postseason games there unless there were some other alternative arrangement worked out to sell more tickets. Imagine the Yankees losing to the Rays, the Rays going on to win a World Series in George M. Steinbrenner Field. It would be amazing.

It would be pretty funny. I want it to happen so badly, actually. That's what I've decided. I thought a lot about it this week and that's what I want from this season. The Rays released these dystopian park photos of the trap and we're getting, as many people have pointed out, all sorts of orange juice named changes because we're no longer going to be graced with Minute Maid Park in Houston.

That's getting a rename. Oh, we're not? No, that's getting- Oh, I missed that. Yes, they're not changing any walls. The roof is not removed by a hurricane. No, that's getting- Oh, I missed that. Yes, they're not changing any walls. The roof is not removed by a hurricane. Are they gonna call it Baltimore Park?

No, I don't think so. But no, the new Astros Park will be Deichen Park. I assume that's how you say it, which is like the big industrial air conditioner manufacturer. Yeah, sure, why not? So yeah, we're going from Enron to Orange Juice to air conditioners. It's an interesting progression, but nothing else will change there. But I'm just thinking about the fact that the A's and Rays now will both be playing in minor league parks in 2025 and also will be very much unsettled long-term. It seems briefly, at least maybe,

like there was some certainty with these two teams and their long-term situations, because Rob Manfred has said, we gotta figure this out, these two teams, before we can have expansion. Yeah, which seems overdue, It's been quite a long time. We got to figure out the A's and the Rays. And for a little while there, at least on paper, it seemed that they were figured out that the Rays, they had their new ballpark deal,

they were going to be staying in the area, and the A's were going to be moving to Las Vegas. Now, in the short term, they're both going to be playing in minor league parks in places that are not going to be the site of their permanent long-term parks. And of course, people continue to speculate that Vegas is just vaporware, that the A's will never end up there. And so there's a question about where they will go long-term. And now the Rays are almost equally unsettled. Will they even be in Florida? Will they be in the area?

Will they be moving to Montreal or Nashville or who the heck knows? So it seems as if having at one time appeared to have gotten some closure, whether it was satisfactory closure, whether people were happy about it. No, that's a separate question, but at least it did appear to be sort of a settled question of where these teams were going and when, which then led you to believe, okay, maybe expansion is actually next up. Now, we're not back to square one exactly, but we're pretty far from being able to say, here's where these

two teams will be playing in 2028 or whenever, right? So it really has not improved either in the short term where two of the 15 teams in the league are gonna be playing in minor league parks in 2025 or in the long term. It's not great. It's not great. It's very up in the air.

The whole thing feels very precarious and unsettled and I don't have any good Solutions to offer other than to say that I hope that wherever they end up that no Tax payer dollars are expended to make it happen But I remain skeptical that that will be true. And so I don't know man. Not good. It's not good I'm gonna try not to delight in this. It's not good. I'm going to try not to delight in this because it's not a good situation for the sport. However it needs to resolve itself, it's fundamentally a pretty bad thing actually. But if you're Rob Manfred, aren't you just hopping mad? Aren't you so fierce? I bet that guy's so pissed. I bet he leads

every conversation with acquaintances with the fact that this has happened. And I don't mean that in like a, you know, he's indifferent to the circumstances in Tampa or St. Petersburg rather, that have facilitated this. Like, I'm not trying to lay that at his feet, but you just know that the guy's like, I had this sh** figuring out and now it's all up in the air again. And maybe they will just, maybe the A's will just end up in Vegas and like that part will be done, but the Tampa stuff seems like it's gonna, you know, it's just gonna take a while to work itself out. And building a new ballpark, I can't imagine, you know, it shouldn't have been a budgetary priority to begin with, but if you're that community, is that the thing that you want to be spending money on? No, you got other stuff you need to sort out for the people who live there, you know? CB Yeah. And the league has no one but itself and John Fisher to blame when it comes to the A's. The Rays, it's a little bit of a different situation.

LS Yeah. And I want to distinguish but fixed in between them. CB Yeah. But the end result is that they're in minor league parks for now and we don't know where they're going after that. So different circumstances and yet also very similar circumstances in other respects. One other thing I wanted to bring up, I'm always interested in when a team's medical evaluations of a player differ and sometimes we get some insight and reporting into that. We know that say one team turns down trading for or signing for someone and another team takes the plunge. Jack Flaherty, for instance, this past season where it was reported that the

Yankees either had a deal done or were well on the way to potentially acquiring Flaherty or were certainly at least talking to the Tigers about trading for him. Then they decided that there was some sort of lower back issue that unsettled them and that scuttled that. The Dodgers, of course, went and got Jack Flaherty and didn't seem like the lower back was his issue, at least for them, and that more or less worked out. I don't know if the Yankees regret that. They didn't need starters quite as acutely as Los Angeles did, which is maybe why the Dodgers just had a higher risk tolerance where Jack Flaherty was concerned. The Yankees might look back and say,

this guy made two starts against us in the World Series, only one of which was actually effective. But even so, I wonder whether that would be enough for them to go back and say, wish we'd gotten him, if only to keep him out of the clutches of our eventual World Series opponents though. Maybe. You never know. Maybe they don't even make the World Series if they had traded for Jack Flanagan. But I was thinking of this in terms of

Brewstar Graturil in addition to Flaherty because, and also related to the Dodgers, because it was announced that Graturil is having shoulder surgery. Yeah. He's gonna be out for at least half of next season, it seems, which stinks because he missed almost the entire 2024 season with shoulder injury and then came back and hurt his hamstring, was it? And then made it back in time for the World Series,

but only got into, what was it, seven games or something all season. It was one of those tough ones. I think we talked about at the time, the ultra tough one, you come back from a long. And then immediately. Yeah, and then right back on the IL with some other injury. Thanks. Yeah, so the shoulder problems have been a recurring issue for him.

And that reminded me that Bruce R. Grotterall was in the original incarnation of the Mookie Betts trade. That's right. Yeah, back in February, 2020, the original deal was that the Dodgers and the Red Sox were going to make a three team deal with the twins and the Dodgers were gonna get Mookie and David Price and a bunch of cash to cover the price of Price's contract

as ended up happening, but it was going to be that the Dodgers were going to get Gradaroll, or no, I guess it was that the Twins were just going to send Gradaroll to the Red Sox and the Dodgers were going to send Maeda to the Twins. Yeah. And then Alex Verdugo would still go to the Red Sox. And that general framework still ended up being what happened, but it was different in the specifics because it ended up just being a two-team deal. And instead of Graturil going to the Red Sox, they got Verdugo and Jeter Downs and Conor

Wong. And then the Dodgers and the Twins made their own separate trade where they exchanged Maeda and Gratoral. And it was reported that the thing that sunk the original way that this was going to go down was that the Red Sox didn't like Gratoral's medicals and specifically that they didn't like that they evaluated him as a reliever, not a starter after seeing his medicals, which is not usually what you hear. Usually it's like we think he's going to break, but the Red Sox, at least the way it was framed in the reports was that they just thought he was going to be a reliever. And I guess that has been born out. He has been a reliever

and also he has continued to get hurt and hurt his shoulder specifically. He had already had Tommy John by that point and I think had had a shoulder impingement previous to that deal being agreed to in theory and principle. So there was already cause for concern there. But I'm just wondering whether they, the Red Sox, would still do the deal the way that it went down. Now, a million Red Sox fans are screaming out, just don't do the deal at all. This is the notorious trade for Mookie Betts.

Yeah, I have a feeling that of all the parts of that deal that they're like losing sleep over, Brewstar doesn't really rate. No, and I don't know whether they would do anything differently or not, because it was pretty clear at the time that trading Mookie Betts was a bad idea on many levels. And so it wasn't as if that was a huge surprise. Maybe the deal he ended up signing with the Dodgers, maybe they'd in retrospect say, oh, well, we could offer them that. Who the heck knows? But I just wonder whether that evaluation, which I guess was accurate, he has not been a starter and

also he's had trouble staying healthy as a reliever. But also the guys they got instead, Jeter Downs of course played part of a season for them and then was gone and didn't play well. And Connor Wong has been with them but hasn't played particularly well either. And so if you look at the tale of the tape, fan graphs war wise, Gratteral has produced 3.1 fan graphs war as a reliever for Los Angeles, despite the fact that he hasn't started

other than I guess some opener games and has been on the IL a lot. He's still produced roughly three times as much value as the combination of Downs and Wong because Downs was slightly sub-replacement level with the Red Sox and Wong has somewhat surprisingly to me produced only 1.4 war total in his 285 games with the team. Now granted, Gradarol is done for half of next year at least it sounds like, and Wong is coming off his best season with the Red Sox, at least offensively. So I don't know whether they would

trade those guys now. But I wonder in retrospect whether they would say, well, we were right about Gradaroll not being the starter that we thought he might be, but also we were wrong because maybe we would have been better off with a good, if sometimes injured reliever instead of what we got. Cause Wong, even as a above average hitter, as a catcher was also the worst framer in baseball this past year. And that really tanked his value. So overall, Granaroll has been better. It's just one of those semi-interesting what-ifs. Yeah, well, and you know, it just, I think part of what it points to is that like,

when you have, you know, first of all, like, remember how the Dodgers got Mookie Betts in that deal? Right, so I don't want to say like, you know, they were- Was the headliner, yes. Yeah, they were looking for different things. Like they were like excited about a reliever. No, like they were excited about Mookie Betts. That was the, that was like the thing that the Dodgers were trading for. But I think that

their roster holding aside the Betts of it all was just in a pretty, at the moment that they did that deal, a pretty complete place. When you have a really good full roster, a guy being on the starter reliever line is like, well, okay, like hopefully it works out, but if not, like he'll just be a great bullpen arm for us. And that seems fine. I think you're right that there are organizations that have different baseline risk tolerances for injury.

And the Dodgers have shown themselves to have a very high risk tolerance when it comes to pitching. And that starts before guys are even in their organization. They're like, oh, do you just said TJ, whatever, we'll draft you, sure. They're not that cavalier about it, but I think that their tolerance for risk in that area is higher in part because they have so many different

avenues of talent acquisition open to them that if they miss on any one guy in any one avenue of bringing talent to the organization, we'll just go out and do it a different way, a different place, you know? So you can take on the Brewstars. Or maybe what it tells us is that they were in search of a pitcher who in whatever capacity, either as a starter or a reliever, looked like he wanted to punch God at the end of every outing. You know, they're like, we need the God puncher, bring that guy, that's the difference maker for us, the guy who punches God.

It really is very dramatic. It is one of my, I want Brewstar Graterall to be healthy for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I think Brewstar Graterall is just like a very satisfying name to say. I really enjoy Brewstar Grateral is just like a very satisfying name to say. I really enjoy Brewstar Grateral. But the other reason is that I really like the part at the end where it looks like he's punching God, you know, because he's so uppity God, you know, he needs to be in his place. Maybe that's why Brewstar keeps getting struck down for his just offending the divine. Yeah, creating lore right here on Effectively Wild.

But does he like Fugo to Chao? Let's find out. And lastly, which probably we could have led with in terms of its actual newsiness, but it's the type of news that I've gotten a little less interested in or a lot less interested in as time has gone on. This is awards week. It's also the official start of Hall of Fame season just because the ballots were unveiled. Not that it's a surprise who the leading Hall of Fame candidates are. And again, I have to some extent checked out of these processes either officially or emotionally over time.

You were part of the problem, it's true. I've kind of just cared less about awards voting in general, not even just in sports, but just why do we need to do this and what does it ultimately mean? It doesn't change how we are obligated to perceive these players or how they performed, et cetera, et cetera. But people still care about it or at least care about it to the extent that they care about anything in the middle of November in baseball. So I guess the notable news is that we have Rookie of the Year award winners announced on Monday. Paul Skeens, one in the National League, and Louise Heal, one in the American League.

And also, yeah, there's some Hall of Famers and Etros on the ballot. Don't think that's a surprise to anyone, but he is. So Skeens, I guess this was a slight surprise to me, not that he won necessarily, but how handily he won, how easily he won. I thought this was gonna be a bit closer. Even if I don't have a vote in this case or choose not to have one in the

Hall of Fame case or don't care as much as I used to about the outcome of the vote, I still care a little bit just in terms of kind of a curious how other people approach these things and evaluate these things and what it says about the state of player evaluation and perception. And if I had had a rookie of the year vote, I think I probably would have gone the way fan graphs own Dan Siborski did and cast by vote for Jackson Merrill. Yeah. If I had actually done the work to evaluate the candidacies, which I didn't do

because I didn't have a vote, I may well have changed my mind, but just my snap judgment is, you know what, kind of like Meryl here. But I have no problem with Skeens winning this thing. I think it's fairly close, but the vote itself was not actually that close, right? Skeens got, was it 23 of the 30s? Correct. Yeah. Yes. And Meryl got the other seven.

Yeah. Yeah. Very tight little fields. Right. And that's not surprising. I, you know, it was either going to be Skeens or Meryl got the other seven. Yeah. Yeah, very tight little fields. Right. And that's not surprising. I you know, it was either going to be Skeens or Meryl most likely Jackson Churio didn't even get a first place vote. And in this case, like this was just a much sexier race, frankly, than the AL race, because the the best NL rookies were just better than the best AL rookies, probably in terms of their long-term outlooks, but certainly in terms of the seasons that they had in 2024. And Rookie of the Year is an award where not all of the winners had fantastic seasons.

It just depends on how good the rookies are that year, whereas there's always someone who had a really good season, an MVP caliber season. It varies. You might not have a 10 or 11 war guy every season, but the MVP or at least the most valuable player is always going to be good. The rookie of the year, depends. So this was a little less interesting in the AL, but it is, I guess, kind of compelling to me that Skeens was such a clear choice for people. And maybe it's just the fact that like this was his year. Whether he was the most valuable rookie in 2024 is very much in dispute, but was he the rookie of the year in a narrative sense? Yes, I think that is equally clear. And maybe that carried a lot of weight here. LS. I think that it did. I think I also would have voted for Jackson Merrill if it had been me.

I found Dan's line of reasoning very compelling in terms of like the relative degree of difficulty that they each faced and the expectations that were heaped upon them within the context of playing for a contending team versus not. As Dan acknowledged, obviously Skeens had his own expectations to fulfill as the former number one overall pick in this huge star. But in terms of like the relative position of the Padres versus the Pirates, you know, San Diego had the potential to be a postseason team, even though we thought that they might take a bit of a step back because of some of the moves that they had made. And so here's, you know, here's Merrill and he's having to like learn a new position

on the fly. And it's not just a new position. It's like one of the hardest defensive positions, right? He's trying to be a premium center fielder on a potential postseason team. And, you know, he had all these big moments as a rookie, which isn't to say that Skeens' campaign was incredible. It was, but like just the, for me, like the volume of work and the circumstances and like what he was having to do, I probably would have also gone with Meryl. But I think you're right that like, it's kind of funny. It's like if you took like the fame part of hall of fame and the star part of all

star, and then you like ported those concepts into rookie of the year, I think that that was a big part of why Skeens won. And I don't want to dip, like, you know, say that he had a bad season or something like that. Like, I think like there's an argument to be made that Paul Skeens is just like the best pitcher baseball right now. I don't know if I would make that argument, but you could make it in front of Like there's an argument to be made that Paul Skeen is just like the best pitcher baseball right now. I don't know if I would make that argument, but you could make it in front of me and I

wouldn't be like, look at this jabroni, he doesn't know anything about baseball. I mean, I feel bad for Jackson Merrill, to be clear. I feel kind of bad for Jackson Merrill. I think it might be good for the sport that Paul Skeen's won rookie of the year, you know? Like, might be. I feel like there's a lot of pressure on him and Libby Dunn to stay together. I hope they don't feel like, there's like so much Libby Dunn in the Paul Skeen's experience from the league's perspective. I hope, I don't know them.

Maybe it's fine. Maybe they don't mind having pressure to stay together because they're like, we like staying together, but it feels like there's like a lot of pressure on that relationship in a way that I feel badly about. They're just such young people. They are quite young, yes. They're so young and so much pressure. Anyway. It was almost like mirror image ballots. It was like 23 first place votes for Skeen's, 23 second place votes for Merrill, and then almost everyone agreed, oh yeah, Jack Satreo third.

He was 26 third place votes for him. Shota Imanaga had four and that was it. Just four people got votes and I guess ultimately the point totals weren't that different. It wasn't a complete blow out because Merrill was second on so many ballots, but obviously it was convincing who was actually the winner here. So I don't have a problem with it, but it somewhat surprised me that there was so clear a consensus. And I've seen people saying, oh, the pirates, they got hoisted. You know, there were pirates petards involved here because Skeens gets the full year of service time and the pirates do not get the draft pick reward for Skeens getting the rookie of the year because they did not promote him for the opening day roster as the Padres did with Meryl, which would be part

of my argument for Meryl over Skeens. He was just there the whole time. He was there the whole season. It wasn't Skeens' fault, but Merrill was a staple from day one. And I don't know how much extra credit I would give Merrill for voting purposes for the degree of difficulty of being up on opening day and having to do that position switch. That makes it more impressive to me. It doesn't necessarily make it more valuable war-wise. I guess you could say it more impressive to me, doesn't necessarily make it more valuable war wise. I guess you could say it was valuable to the Padres that he was willing and able to make that last minute switch short notice like that. But you know, do you give extra credit for the degree of difficulty or do you just look

at what the player produced on the field? I don't know. But I don't fault the pirates. I don't, I don't think this is like, uh, now you are suffering for your service time manipulation of Paul Skeen's. Cause I just, we talked about that a bit at the time and I don't think it was anything egregious. You could look and say, okay, if he was one of the very best pitchers in

baseball from the day he was called up more or less than maybe they could have called him up sooner and he still would have been helping them. I think that's probably true. And we talked at the time about, are they being too cautious with him? And should they just let him go deeper into these games? They really, they ramped him up slowly and he just had so few professional innings prior to the season that I just kind of gave them a pass on not having him up right away. Even though he was so effective when he was, I don't really look at that as one

of the more glaring cases of a player being kept it down. So do the Pirates wish now that they had promoted him earlier so that they could get that draft pick? I don't know, maybe. But then again, probably they don't wanna take any risks with their franchise pitcher and they're probably pretty happy with how things worked out. Yeah, I think that they're probably pretty happy about it. And then over in the AL, Luis Hill won this was a close race.

Luis Hill just barely edged out Colton Couser of the Orioles who plays not in Baltimore, but he does sometimes take aim at Baltimore. This was just a five point difference, 106 to 101, and it was a 15 to 13 difference in first place votes. And I didn't really know which way this one would go, and I didn't have as strong a feeling about which way I would vote. And Austin Wells, you could have said that he was as valuable as Luis Hiel to the Yankees. And he ended up a distant third and then Mason Miller,

a distant fourth as well. I did love that there was like, that there were three guys who placed in the top couple. And all of them were dudes who there was ambiguity about whether they were actually rookie eligible. Yeah, right. Heal, three years removed from his major league debut, but still rookie eligible. Heal, Wells, and Miller were, and I'm not trying to be rude to baseball reference in this moment, but all three of them started with incorrect rookie eligibility on the player

pages at BRAF at the beginning of the season. People were like, they're not rookies. They can't be on your prospect list. And I was like, yes, they can. I counted. **Jade Lennox** So four players got votes at all in the NL and in the AL. Seven players did. And I know they're Orioles fans upset that Colton Couser was denied. And they're probably Yankees fans who think Austin Wells was better than Luis Hillel and I don't know that Louis Heel is great long-term you look at the NL field and you think well those three guys if they stay healthy they could be among the best players in the National League for years and years to come they're all so young they're all so good. In the AL, not necessarily. Louis Seal is older than one Soto.

He's 26 years old and he had a season that, again, he was sort of a surprise staple in the rotation, wasn't even supposed to be there until Garrett Cole got hurt. And then he really bailed out the Yankees when they were shorthanded and gave them 150 plus innings with the above average ERA was definitely a low babbit guy ERA better than FIP type and also had sort of a second half decline. Yeah, I was going to say he was really a, you know, a different guy in the second half than the first.

He was like very, very good in the first half. Yes, right. And so maybe that takes a little of the luster off, but he did enough to get just a tad more support than Colton Couser. And again, there wasn't as, well, I won't say as clear a choice, but just as appealing a choice in this field. If any of those NL guys had been in the AL instead, they probably would have been unanimous first place choices, right? Yeah, for sure. And so in the AL, you take your pick with somewhat slimmer pickings. No offense to those

guys, but they're not Jacksons or Skeens'es. So I don't know whether that says anything, whether it's a referendum about the way that voters or some small subset of voters evaluate players these days, because yeah, if you were to look at FanGraph's war, you would say that Austin Wells was considerably more valuable than Lewis Heal. Austin Wells, 3.4 war, Lewis Heal, 2.2 war. Note that we need to be super dogmatic about ultimately somewhat small-ish differences in war, but clearly Austin Wells, a distant third here, people weren't really seeing him as a serious contender, even though he was mostly the full-time starter at catcher and above average hitter. He slumped as well later in the season and in the postseason, but he was an above average

hitter overall and a catcher at boot, and a good defensive catcher. So we're just talking about Conor Wong being one of the worst framers in the AL. Austin Wells was one of the best, and it seems like maybe the voters didn't value that that much, which then leads me to one of the questions that I'm mildly interested in about the Hall of Fame ballot and the support of the players thereon, which is will the good framing catchers get credit for that or not? Will Brian McCann and Russell Martin, will they get to stay on the ballot? Will they get a good deal of support? Because the framing boosted wars would say that they are quite legitimate candidates and the non-framing inclusive wars would say that they are not.

So that'll be sort of telling and I and Jay Jaffe and others have written about that for years now. Just how will that affect these players Hall of Fame cases? And if we're talking about Joe Mauer or Yadier Molina or Buster Posey, they don't necessarily need that to get them over the hump. They had more convincing traditional cases, but these guys depend on people factoring that in, and I'm not sure that voters will. I think that enough voters will to keep them around until Posey. And then I think they get a bump, a bump of more support once Posey hits the ballot. Cause like Posey was a very good framer, you know? You're right to say

that he doesn't need that piece of it to like make his hall of fame case, but I think it will be part of the conversation for him. And then maybe those guys get a little bump. So all that needs to happen is they have to stick around long enough for him to hit the ballot and then maybe they get a bump after that. Maybe. Yeah. Or maybe Posey hits the ballot and everyone realizes, oh, Posey was way better than those guys.

Well, yeah. I mean, like that, to be clear, I don't think either of those guys are actually going to get into the Hall of Fame. No, neither do I. And I don't feel that strongly about it either. I don't think either of those guys are actually going to get into the Hall of Fame. No, neither do I. And I don't feel that strongly about it either. I don't know that I do either. We care about framing and we value framing and we appreciate framing.

Yeah, I don't know that I think those guys are Hall of Famers though. It's tricky from a Hall of Fame perspective because so much of that depends on who's in or ready and who's out and what's the baseline. And with framing, you have framing stats going back a ways. We have framing estimates going back to at least the beginning of the pitch era, 1988 on pitch by pitch data, but better data just since 2008, the pitch tracking era. And that means most of baseball history is not covered. And you might have it at best crude estimates based on, you know, did pitchers do better with certain catchers than others?

And are the samples big enough to draw some conclusions about strikeout and walk rates there and that stuff isn't easily publicly available. And so you might say, well, if we want consistent standards, then is it fair to give extra credit to these guys in this era where we can measure this if we can consistent standards, then is it fair to give extra credit to these guys in this era where we can measure this if we can't measure it or can't measure it as precisely for earlier eras? And then you have the looming possibility of ABS and maybe framing won't even matter anymore. And maybe we're in this window, this fairly short in the grand scheme of things window where we know how valuable this is and we can measure it and we

care about it before it then goes away again. And so it's like a quirk of history that Russell Martin and Brian McCann then hit the ballot and could at least be valued for that, whereas others might not have been who might've been just as deserving. So it makes for kind of a confusing discussion. I would say I hope they at least clear the threshold and stick around so that that discussion can continue to be had. LS. Yeah. And I think, I do think we're used to dealing with a version of this in the Hall of Fame context, right? You know, war, I think is easy, just as a general stat, is easier to sort of look back on guys from earlier eras when they say,

come up for committee votes and say, oh, we didn't appreciate how valuable or good this player was, but we have the benefit of war to help us sort of color our understanding of his career. That isn't always compelling to the people who are actually voting on whether or not a guy gets into the hall of fame, but like, I think we understand that our statistical record gets improved and enhanced and that our tools improve over time and you know, that some things come in and out of style, like framing is valuable until it's less valuable or until it's pretty standard across the board and the guys who can't frame aren't in the sport anymore. Are we going to have a new appreciation or a renewed appreciation for stolen base leaders

with the new rule changes like two decades from now? I don't know, maybe, but I think that we do a reasonably good job of putting that stuff in context. So we're going to see. Yeah. And presumably we'll have Jay Jaffee on at some point for his annual Hall of Fame ballot breakdown. So we don't have to go too in-depth here. But that is one of the questions that interests me.

I'm not interested really in will Ichiro be unanimous. He should be, but he wouldn't be the best player not to have been. So it doesn't really interest me that much whether there's some holdout for some reason or another, but I am kind of interested in Cici Sebastia's performance. LS. I'm sorry. Did the dog just make a noise? Okay. CB. Yes. She just yawned. She's over the Hall of Fame. Grumpkin, not that interested in Cici Sebastia's candidacy, but yes, I'm kind of interested just because it wouldn't totally shock me

if he just got in first ballot, but it also wouldn't shock me if he was very far from getting in. So that'll kind of maybe be a tell about like, are we ever going to get new pitchers in the hall who are not Verlander and Scherzer and Grenke? Like, is that the standard or will the standard be lowered? Because you could say that Cece is kind of comparable to Andy Pettit, but doesn't have any known P.D. strikes against him. And you know, there's a lot of other off the field and legacy and narrative stuff that I think helps him. So I think he probably deserves to get in. And if he were not, not to get close,

and I kind of think he will, but if he didn't, that would be sort of a setback to the, we ever going to put pitchers in anymore? Or like, we're just deciding that if you don't win 300 games, then you're not a Hall of Famer because that's just not going to happen anymore. So that'll be kind of telling. Even Felix, I guess, might be a bit telling. Like I don't think he's going to get in, but his level of support might be revealing. I think that CC will get in. I don't know if he will be a first ballot guy, but I think he's a deserving Hall of Famer. I think Felix will not get in. I think that's okay. I don't think Felix deserves to be in the Hall of Fame. He's in the Hall of Fame of my heart. He's a Mariners Hall of Famer, but I don't think that he should be in the

hall. I just don't think that the statistical case is there for him. But I think C.C. will get in. Is he like kind of on the edge from a statistics perspective? Like maybe, but I think you're right that other aspects of his case, which I do think should matter, will matter and will push him over the edge. And I think that there are a lot of voters who are keen to establish like what is the new baseline standard for modern pitchers because we can't just not ever have one again. We can't, no, stop, what? Can't do that. Would be, I think just like a fundamental misunderstanding of what the whole should be. So I think that

there is a real desire to start to establish what that baseline is. And I think that Sabathia is a great first case. And I think that like unanimous cases really matter and really don't. Like, I think it's ridiculous to say, like, who is voting to say that Ichiro doesn't deserve to be in the Hall of Fame? Now, maybe you're a strategic voter and you're concerned that if you give, you know Ichiro's gonna get in and you have to give his spot to other guys

whose cases are fringier. But I think that the number of times that that is like a really important thing to do are actually pretty low because I think that you can get guys, you can get the guys in, you know, you sacrifice your strategic vote to somebody else. Like what are we doing? But also it doesn't matter because he's a Hall of Famer. So like, why do we get worked up about it? By the same token, the first ballot thing, it doesn't matter, but it does. It matters to them, you know? And if you think he's a Hall of Famer, why isn't he going in on the first ballot?

We don't have to hold back, you know? So there are all of these weird little bits of etiquette and fuss that we bring to the process. And on the one hand, I agree with you that they don't matter, but I also think they do really matter to the guys. And so I just hope that to the Hall of Fame voters who are eligible and choose to participate on like some people on this podcast, that like just be thoughtful about your strategic voting because like sometimes strategic voting is necessary

as we've recently learned, but that doesn't mean that these other soft factors don't matter to the individuals whose cases are being evaluated. So like think about that too, you know? I assume Billy Wagner will get in also. I will be all worked up if not. I would not, but I would expect that he will

and I'd feel sorry for him if he didn't. Also just who will take a leap. There are some other guys who've had a high level of support. Will they get some big boost or will you get someone like Chase Utley who debuted on the ballot last year? Maybe he makes a leap and everyone realizes, oh, he's the new stat head cause or darling. It's interesting, Patrick Dubuque wrote a little bit about this, that it seems like

maybe the online era of Hall of Fame discourse has made that phenomenon more common, the phenomenon of the player who debuts low and climbs over a long span of time to ultimately make it. There's always been a bit of that, but Patrick noted that in the entirety of the 1970s, three players were elected to the hall after their fifth year of eligibility. And if Wagner gets in this year, it'll be four in just the past six years. And I think that's okay. I think there are people who look at that and say, why should you triple your level of support while you're on the ballot? If you're a Hall of Famer,

you didn't do anything to bolster your case. You didn't play any extra games. If you had, you would have rendered yourself ineligible for another five years. So how can so many people have changed their minds? And obviously part of that is just the specifics of who's on the ballot any one year and is it crowded and do you have to vote strategically? A lot of it though does seem to be that there is this constant discussion and that everyone is privy to it or subjected to it as the case may be. And you have Ryan Thibodeau's ballot tracker. And so everyone is hyper aware of the level of support and Jay Jaffe's coverage and his player profiles and his book and all of these things. And you have people campaigning and sometimes successfully

campaigning to get players in. I think there's just much more of that kind of concerted effort and then minds get changed. And I think that's okay. I don't agree with the final evaluations in every case, but I don't think we need to be tied to that first year level of support. And if you change your mind because you learned more, no, I'd suggest put a lot of time in and do your research the first time you're voting.

And you might not need your mind changed so completely later on. But I would rather have people concede, hey, my mind has been changed. You've persuaded me. I've come to see the light on this player. Then I would have them be stubbornly tied to their first evaluation. And what else are we going to be talking about in mid-November? So hopefully this is something that tides us over or serves as a supplement until the hot stove really heats up. LS. I'm struggling to get worked up about the Hall of Fame yet, but I will find my way to it, I am sure. And yeah, it's always good to admit when you've been able to change your mind. And I think that ultimately the memory of like unanimous versus not, it fades,

you know, it fades with time. We remember in the first couple of years, but we tend to forget after that because guess what? You're a Hall of Famer and your plaque's there. Like that's the thing that really matters ultimately. Yeah. I guess in the era of incredibly polarized voting, it's almost heartwarming that so many people can have their minds changed about baseball players with the right arguments that that could actually penetrate or that some new information could come to light or be presented in such a way that people might find it compelling. That's kind of nice, I guess. So that would be the positive spin that I'd put on it. Yeah, there you go. This is about having optimism about humanity ultimately.

All right, that will just about do it for today. I'll just remind everyone that if there's an under-publicized baseball job you think we should talk to someone about for that potential upcoming series, please do let us know. Also, if you are part of this mass exodus from X slash Twitter to blue sky, Meg and I and the podcast are on there. Many of you have found us already. I'm at Ben Lindbergh. Meg is at Meg Raller. The podcast is at EW pod. I haven't actually started posting there. I barely post anywhere these days, so I haven't decided how to handle that, but I appreciate that thousands of you have decided to follow me without a single skeet or whatever we're calling it as a proof of concept.

Perhaps I'll start skeeting or reskeeting at some point, and I guess we'll all decide whether we're actually gonna call the messages that. Meg has been posting the pods on the EWPod Blue Sky account, so you can find those updates there. You can also support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild, as have the following five listeners,

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Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. Come for the ball, banters free. Baseball is a simulation, it's all just one big conversation. Effectively wild.