Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2250: BLAke SLAte

Episode Date: November 27, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley begin with a cold-open reaction to late-breaking news about Blake Snell signing with the Dodgers, then (19:52) banter about gift subscriptions, the Angels signing Yusei Kikuchi, and the Brady Singer–Jonathan India trade, follow up (46:58) on the Rays stadium situation, and, in the Thanksgiving spirit, discuss (56:59) things about baseball […]

Meg. Yeah. It's Ben. Yep. We're doing a cold open to this episode because we recorded, we were all ready to go, we were going to press publish, and then the Dodgers sign blakes now. And so we thought we would hop back on mic before you even heard our previous recording. Whoa. Is it even the same episode if we haven't done the intro yet? If we haven't officially started, is this even part of the podcast or is it in some weird nether realm that is not part of even the same episode if we haven't done the intro yet, if we haven't officially started, is this even part of the podcast or is it in some weird nether realm that is not part of any episode? I don't know.

Eliminal space. Exactly. What I do know, however, is that Blake Snell will be a Dodger on a five-year, $182 million deal. Credit to the Dodgers for getting it done before Thanksgiving. Yeah. A few hours earlier would have been ideal, but better than later. And this is big news.

This is our first really significant signing of the off season. Yeah. And a lot to discuss here. I guess the number one implication is that you are already in the red when it comes to your fund agent contracts over underdraft. Really rough. Yeah, tough because the prediction by MLB trade rumors, what was it? 160, something like that.

Thanks. Oh yeah. I took the under. 182 is a bigger number than that. Yeah. You're down, but look, I think if you factor in the particulars here, there's always something weird with a Dodgers deal. There's going to be some deferrals here, but not just deferrals.

It's like stretched out at the end, but also compressed at the start. There's a $52 million signing bonus, which is part of the 182, but you get it up front. I always think bonus is sort of a misleading term because it implies that it's extra on top of the contract amount. But no, the bonus is that you get a bunch of it when you signed. And then there's around $60 million in deferrals. And so you factor those things in and it drops the present value right around 160 million, which was the MLB trade rumors prediction, but we go by the raw dollars, the surface total. This is not as dramatic a deferral as Otani or anything.

I don't remember seeing exactly this sort of structure where it's like little up front, a lot on the back, party in the front, party in the back, whatever it is. It's just kind of unusual. We're continuing to push the boundaries of contract structures to experiment here. But the big takeaway is that the Dodgers, good as they are, got better. Snell and Scott Boris' agent certainly did better this time around. Yeah, Boris is back. That's the big takeaway here.

Everyone cares about Scott Boris and his reputation as an agent. So this will cover Snell's age 32 to age 36 seasons. No opt-outs or anything, limited, no trade protection. So what do you make of this signing and this match between team and player? So like, look, here's the thing on the one hand, I'm very happy for Blake Snell because you know, this is the deal he's been looking for, right? This is what he's been trying to achieve. Gets it done so early in the off season.

I bet, I mean, being $182 million richer has to just feel pretty good regardless of when it happens. Do you think Blake Snell is stretching out going like, man, what a, it's not even December, our business is concluded, I can enjoy my Thanksgiving, I don't have to sit and talk and he doesn't have to, you know, he doesn't have to go to Dallas now, you know, he's not required to go to winter meetings,

there's no hobnobbing, he just gets to enjoy his holiday season with his family. That has to feel fantastic, I'm so happy for him. I've, in fact, as I said on Blue Sky last night, never been happier for a pitcher. I absolutely hate to watch pitch. It remains a true fact of my life that the aesthetic of Blake Snell is just not for me. I am amused by the fit. I don't think it's a bad fit. I know that Blake Snell has had some

injury issues at times over the last couple of years and he doesn't go deep into games, but I would still consider him a reliable starter. More often than not, he's taking the ball every time his turn and the rotation comes up. On that score, he does something that I think the Dodgers really need. He helps to stabilize the rotation with his likely constancy, assuming he avoids injury issue again, right? He dealt with that. But he's going to have a normal off-season, normal spring training. Let's be optimistic and say that those things combined with a previous relatively good health track record will combine to have him pitch a full complement of innings. But it's still a Blake Snell complement

of innings, right? And that's the part of it that I find funny because on the one hand, yes, he does help to stabilize this rotation. And on the other hand, they still need a six man rotation, probably. Oh, sure. And they were planning that anyway. Anyway. Yamamoto and Dottani recovering. And so it fits into their plans, but it is clear that the template, the blueprint, the Dodgers pitching plan. Not fundamentally changing. No, not changing, right? We talked about that recently.

Would anyone learn from the Dodgers reliever reliance in the postseason? Would other teams say, hey, who needs starters? Would the Dodgers themselves maybe reach the opposite conclusion? Even though they won the World Series, they might say, hey, who needs starters? Would the Dodgers themselves maybe reach the opposite conclusion? Even though they won the World Series, they might say, hey, would it be nice to have some healthy, ineffective starters in October? Maybe we should pivot to dependability to the extent that that even exists among modern pitchers and we should go get some sort of healthy, but not quite as elite on an inning-per-inning basis guy, whatever qualifies as an

innings eater these days. Nope, not doing that, doubling down on their model, which is just let's get the nastiest guys and let's hope we have enough of them that there are three or four still standing when October rolls around. That's the plan here and will continue to be the plan. And so you look at their rotation and you'd say,

well, this is the best rotation in baseball. And I think it probably is on paper and projections wise, if healthy, the important caveat. So you've got Blake Snow, you've got Yamamoto, you've got Tyler Glassnow and you've got Shohei Otani. And then for depth purposes, you've got Tony Gonsolin, you've got Dustin May, presumably you will have Clayton Kershaw in the

mix at some point, and all of the upper level depth that was tested at times this season. Maybe Bobby Miller will actually be good this year. Maybe Landon Mack will be good. Landon Mack, right? Justin Robleski, Ben Casperius, all these guys are still around. Not a lot of lefties in that group, but now in Snell, they've gotten themselves a Southpaw. So the Dodgers, again, will go into the season with something like double digit major league quality ish starters on the depth chart. But all of the top six, seven guys were hurt this past year. Eight, I guess you could go even with Miller.

Will they stay healthy? Probably not. But they're building in layers of redundancy here. Right. hurt this past year, eight I guess you could go even with Miller, will they stay healthy? Probably not, but they're building in layers of redundancy here. Right. And even when Snell is healthy, famously, famously not a go deep into games kind of guy most of the time, right? I find the pairing so fascinating on one score because it's like Snell is not an efficient pitcher, he's never been efficient. We go back and forth between knocking him for that

and thinking it's this like galaxy brained approach. And I think, you know, it's probably a little bit of both. And so I am curious what a team like the Dodgers might suggest to him because, you know, Snow grew up array, it's not like that's a bad pitching dev organization. And so I'm skeptical that there's like efficiency meat left on the bone because I think if it existed that Tampa probably would have been like, and they would have done it, you know, they would

have sorted it out. But I am curious, like as he goes deeper into his thirties, is there refinement that they sort of suggest to him that he takes too. So you know, I'll be on the look for that. I'm sure I'll be the only one who'll be paying attention to that. Does this change for you anything about the Dodgers likelihood of signing Sasaki? Does this change anything for you on that score? I don't think it changes their... I don't think it does.

No, it definitely doesn't affect their interest. I suppose you could say Sasaki might look at this rotation and say, where do I fit in there are so many quality starters here. Ahead of Tony Gonsolin is the answer to that question. Yes. Like don't worry about it. Right. And unless he thinks it's too crowded, where am I going to get my starts?

But if I were Sasaki, given the issues he's had with durability and all of the challenges of switching continents, switching leagues, I might say, okay, pressure's off here. They don't need bulk from me. At least this season, I can be eased in and I could be the fifth starter. And yeah, if you're someone who's matchmaking Sasaki and the Dodgers, you add him to the rotation we just read out and it's really an embarrassment of riches.

And I don't think that's a done deal or anything. But if it actually does happen, and if you look askance at the amount of money they're paying for Blake's cell here, which I don't think it's totally exorbitant or anything, but I certainly can envision scenarios where it goes south. If you then add in Roki Sasaki at the rate he will be paid, well then suddenly as a combo deal, a package, it's an extremely sweet bargain. So yeah, if you add him to the mix, then it's just silly. So you look at their payroll and it's at $311 million right now projected, over $300 million competitive balance tax wise, so they're

certainly going to be over the thresholds, they're going to be paying the penalties, so 182 million for most teams is more for the Dodgers effectively, but they just drew almost 4 million fans in the regular season, then they got all that extra playoff revenue. That money's gotta go somewhere, and credit to the Dodgers that it's not going entirely to the owner's pockets. Are they done? Who knows? Certainly wouldn't count them out being in on other major free agents because they have really raised it to a higher level. It's not that they were ever cheap exactly or had low payrolls in the Friedman era, but the past few years they've decided when an elite talent is available, when a star is out there for the taking, and it just takes money mostly, then we're going to go get that

guy. And we will raise this payroll ceiling. And Snell is probably the best pitcher available on an inning per inning basis, unless you want to make the case for Sasaki or Corbin Burns. And it's really interesting to me that Snell cashed in this year as opposed to last year. I think it kind of tells you what teams value and what they don't because last year he's coming off a Cy Young season. Right. Yeah.

180 innings. Right. It's just it's such an odd thing about Snell because he has only twice even made it to 130 innings Yeah, both of those seasons he won the site But rarely does he get there there are different particulars of each market and teams that have different needs and Pitchers who were out there and everything so it's not exactly one-to-one and the only thing that changed is Blake Snell but he's coming off a season where he threw 104 innings and had IL stints and had an ERA that was almost a run higher than his 2023 ERA.

Someone might look at this and say, well, he was better positioned to sign this sort of deal last offseason. But no, because teams don't care so much about the hardware and about winning Cy Young. They care about what you're going to do for them. And he was just a more effective pitcher for the Giants in 2024. He lopped off about a walk per nine. That was just one of the highest walk rates of the century in 2023. And he just managed to pitch around it and raise his game when runners were on.

And that's tough to repeat, even though he has done it in the past and repeated it. But he raised his strikeout rate to a career high. He cut some walks. It was run off his fit. Yes, took a run off his fit. And that's what teams are really looking and caring about. So even though he's a year older than he was a year ago, because that's how time works, suddenly he generated more interest. And, you know, maybe they read the market differently.

And who knows? Maybe he told Boris, hey, I don't want to sign in March again. So let's let's get this deal done early. But it's not as if he took some sort of discount as far as we can tell to get his business concluded sooner. This tells you what teams value, just how good are you going to project to be on an inning printing basis, not what you did last year and not necessarily innings. Innings are a plus, absolutely, but they care more about the quality of the innings

than the quantity, or at least a team like the Dodgers does because they have depth and they have a bullpen and they have money so that they can withstand someone not giving them length. So it's sort of a sensible match, I guess, as Blake Snell's tour of the NL West continues. Yeah, if I were him, I would be thrilled. I'd just be happy as a clam. That's a weird expression. It is. Why are clams, I mean, I don't know. I like eating clams, but I imagine the clams don't like that Like I said, he gets to conclude his business early. He gets the deal he wanted He doesn't have to like keep doing this opt-out dance gets to stay on the West Coast

I don't know how much that matters to him, but it would matter to me, you know, cuz I'm from here So yeah, I say good for you, Blake Snell. I hope that my other contract picks can dig me out of this hole, but I would rather that players surprise to the upside on their deals than to the downside. So really, I'm morally coming out ahead even as I am losing the contest. Right. Now I wonder whether it will get to the point where people get fed up with the Dodgers even more than they are. If they get Sasaki on the heels of Siren Snell

and get him cheap, because that's the only way anyone is ever going to get him this offseason, then I think maybe people will really reach their limit with the Dodgers. There might be some grumbling. Yeah. Coming off of last winter with Otani and Yamamoto, with the World Series victory, even if the people who generally are in favor of team spending and going for it, and you can applaud that aspect of the Dodgers, don't be complacent. Yeah, you just won it all, but don't take anything

for granted. And you do have a couple vacancies. You're losing some guys to free agency. You've got Walker Bueller, who's a free agent, you've got Jack Flaherty, who's a free agent. So you do have holes to fill. But if they continue to fill those holes by signing players from the top of the market, and who's to say what they'll do on the position player side, if anything, there's gonna be even more of a Dodgers villain narrative

than there is. So brace for that, Dodgers fans, but you're probably used to that. And you've probably made your peace with that when it comes with superstars and championships. So I think that like the Sasaki thing will offend people. The idea that a guy who is artificially constrained in terms of the size of his contract going to a team that has all this money. It's like, no, leave that for the rest of us though. Leave it for us. But you know the deal that, and I don't anticipate this will get done, but the one that will make people go absolutely batty would be if Soto goes to LA.

That'll be the one that pushes people over the head. They'll call for an investigation. They'll want to get the FBI involved. They're going to say absolutely unhinged things. And I am skeptical that that will be his ultimate destination. I still think he's gonna, I think I think he's just going to be a Met now. I think that that's where I'm putting my, if I were a betting person, I think that's where I'd put it at this point. Because I think Steve Collins is going to be like, I'm going to splash some money. I think that's what I think that's where I'd put it at this point. Cause I think Steve Collins is going to be like, I'm gonna splash some money. I think that's what I think.

But anyway. If it were the Dodgers, even I might reach my limit. Even I might say, okay, this is maybe enough superstars for one team. Let's spread the wealth around a little bit. Talent wise, not just financial wealth. And of course with the Dodgers, it's not just about the money.

It's not just that they are willing to outspend other teams, but that they just have a better pitch to potential free agents, which is we make the playoffs every year. We just won the World Series. You get to play in a big market and get endorsement deals if that's something that's important to you. We are adept at player development. We could maybe make you better or prevent you from declining. And you get to play with all these other big superstars to seem to have fun sharing a clubhouse together.

So how can you combat that? You can maybe match the money, but no other team can match all of those other attributes. And so you do have to hand it to them, but also you have to really be frustrated about that if you're their rival and they continue to take the top talent. And yeah, maybe skill issue and you could just say,

well, you go and make the playoffs 12 years in a row and you run large payrolls. And there are some teams that could and should come closer to doing that, but ultimately, yes, if they get a couple of the top free agents in consecutive off seasons and you could even push it back to Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman, it might

reach the point at which, even though I don't think baseball really has a severe competitive balance problem despite the mismatches in payrolls, the sport just is not set up to be able to buy a championship consistently, even so it might get to a point where I'm kind of like, hey, other teams, let's step up here. Let's try to side someone and not have every single superstar be on the Dodgers. Yeah, I think it would be, it's good to spread the wealth around,

but the teams have to be the ones spreading the wealth, like it's a two-way street with the wealth and the spreading of it. Man, I can't believe you did that right before Thanksgiving. We had to get on mic to talk about Blake's now, my least favorite pitcher to watch. Just my least favorite, you know? Again, I'm happy for the guy.

Wish him well, not trying to say he shouldn't. He's an objectively valuable pitcher, right? Like, I'm not trying to dispute that. I'm just saying I have a deep aesthetic loathing of his game. So strong. So much, and like, I don't have that much conviction behind it, but I do have a surprising amount of conviction behind it, candidly.

And clearly teams prioritize the value more so than the pain of watching Blake Snell, aesthetically speaking, and so they should, unless it were proven to get to the point that people were tuning out and not buying tickets because they so hated to watch Blake Snell. We have any evidence of that. No, I don't think that's gonna happen.

And I think people are perfectly willing to put up with Blake Snell nibbling and throwing lots of pitches if it means that ultimately he puts zeros on the board. And that's what he does because fans wanna win and how you do it matters. But I don't think it matters ultimately quite as much as just the fact of the victories and the Dodgers have delivered those. And I'm sure that they and Blake Snell will continue to.

Shall we officially start this episode? I mean, yes, but I like we're calling it right. We're done now. We're done. We're done. It's done. We're this is the cutoff. No one else. If anyone else signs, you will have to wait until after Thanksgiving. Okay. We're calling it, right? We're done now? We're done? It's done? We're done. This is the cutoff.

No one else, if anyone else signs, you will have to wait until after Thanksgiving. Okay. Famous last words. Now, when Soto will sign magically. Happy Thanksgiving. Here's your primer on Beef Boys, Baseball's In, Roger Angel and Super Pretzels,

Williams asked a deal and Mike Trout hypotheticals. Waiting for the perfect bat from a volcanic corruption. Ladies and gentlemen, the Effectively Wild introduction. Hello and welcome to episode 2250 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs and I'm joined by Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer. Ben, how are you?

I'm doing alright. How are you? I think I have COVID. Oh, well, that's not great. But other than that, I'm doing fine. I'm doing generally okay. I'm living in a plague house. The sickness has come to my house as well. My daughter has strep.

I do not have strep. My wife does not have strep. So it has passed over us and we're all doing better, but we've all been varying degrees of sick for the past week to 10 days. I think it's passing. So that's good, especially because we would not want to infect our family. And I think we are healthy enough that we can see people for the holiday. So it worked out okay in that sense.

That's nice. I can't say the same thing about any of that. I'm negative so far, but I suspect I have COVID. So proceeding under the assumption that that is true. Well, I hope not. And if so, I hope it's not severe and that you recover quickly. We've all been through that drill a few times by now. We know how that works. We are going to talk about some baseball. I did just see a, are we doing skeet? We're not saying skeet, right?

Look, okay. Look, here's my thinking. You should say whatever you want. And it does appear that the consensus amongst the people is that skeet is the preferred way to refer to a post on blue sky. But here's the thing, I don't want to say that. And I'm not, you know, whatever. Like I don't, I don't want to make, I'm not trying to make a federal case out of it or anything, but I just simply, even though I will say kind of saucy, naughty things, don't care for it. Part of it is my age. I'm betraying my age, but I also am this age. And I don't

wanna do that. I don't wanna say skeet. I will also note that despite the popular insistence that skeet is the thing, when you're on Blue Sky, it says new post. So the platform seems to have weighed in on this question. And indeed, they don't call it re-skeeting, they call it reposts, you know, it's the reposting. So there can be slang in a place and it doesn't have to follow the official doctrine. And so I say unto you who prefer to skeet, skeet, skeet away, you know? But see, I can't say it, part of it is I struggle to say it one time and I struggle to say it without some very big swears following it. And that's because I'm 38.

And so I simply cannot. Yeah. Well, I'm sure tweets sounded silly when we all started saying that. Yeah, but it didn't sound dirty. No, it didn't. Both of these things have alternate meetings, but that one was tweeting birds and pretty sounds. And so it sounded silly in a different way, but not a dirty sort of silly.

Anyway, we'll all get used to it or maybe we won't and we'll just say something different or we'll start using some other social media network, who knows. But. People are not following my preferred pronunciation of the platform, which is blue ski, which also could sound dirty if you want, because it could either be a Midwestern dad describing what a volcano does when it erupts, blue ski, or it could be him exclaiming something in the bedroom. And that's none of my business, but look, no one's following my guidance and so I don't feel compelled to

follow theirs. But anyway, what was the post you saw? The point is, I saw something you sent out to the internet in one form or another about FanGraph's gift subscriptions. Yeah. I believe there was a post published at FanGraph about FanGraph's gift subscriptions and I'm not here to dissuade people from giving those. In fact, I would encourage that and it's a great thing to do.

It helps Meg, helps FanGraphs indirectly, helps Effectively Wild. Sure. All good things. All good. And I am also here to tell you that you can now give gift subscriptions to Effectively Wild's Patreon, which is a new option that Patreon just made available this month. So since it's a gift giving season, maybe you're signing up for Effectively Wild's Secret Santa,

which you can do between now and December 10th. And you know that your Secret Santa gift recipient is not a Patreon supporter. Maybe they'd like to be. You could give them the gift of an Effectively Wild Patreon subscription, or maybe you're just doing that for someone in your life who, you could give them the gift of an Effectively Wild Patreon subscription, or maybe you're just doing that for someone in your life who, you know, listens to the podcast, but isn't a Patreon supporter or doesn't yet listen to the podcast, but you think could be converted if they are gifted a subscription. You can now do that. So you can go to patreon.com slash effectively wild slash gift, and it gives you all the options and all the tiers and all the times that you can do that.

So we'll link to it on the show page. Took Patreon a while to get on board with the giving of gifts subscriptions, but that is now an option as is giving fan grass memberships. And it's just seemed like if we were ever going to point that out, this was perhaps one of the weeks that one might do that. Given that people are thankful, that we're thankful, we're going to be talking about that a little later. We'll be especially thankful if you purchase subscriptions for yourself or others to the

website and the podcast or the podcast, either, both, whatever floats your boat, we'll take it. And we will simply remind people again, I don't even know if the gift Patreon sub is an option in the iOS app, but we will simply remind folks that if you are signing up for a new Patreon subscription or gifting one, you should do it in a web browser instead of on the app on an Apple device because there is a new surcharge in the Apple store and it will be more expensive and that is silly. So sign up on an old browser and then you don't have to worry about that. So the angels have given themselves a gift and also have given Yusei Kikuchi a gift.

He is their gift, the gift that they gave to themselves and they gave him $63 million over the next three years. And you know what, Meg, the angels are going for it. They're going for it. I don't know what they are thinking except that they're thinking that we're going to go for it and we're going to try to pull a Royals here. And we talked about the angels not long ago on a previous episode because they had been so busy and they'd been making mostly minor moves. And we talked about, is this just depth? Is this just shoring up some weak points or are they really going for it? Do they see themselves as contenders?

And this is another little bit of evidence that yes, they do, that they think they can recover from a franchise worse 99 losses and a terrible disappointing season to perhaps bounce back or else why are you signing Yusei Kikuchi? And Artie Moreno has said that he thinks they can contend. Now that's something that sometimes you just say without actually believing it. And he might well believe it, but be wrong about that. That has consistently been the case for several seasons now. Several probably is an understatement, but I think they think they can do this.

This is the conclusion that I'm drawing here. And I think they're probably wrong as they have been wrong year in and year out. But you know what, with each piece of evidence that piles up, each trade, each signing, I think it is increasingly difficult to escape the conclusion that they think they can win. I think that your assessment of what they think is correct. I think you think what they think rightly.

Uh-huh. I don't think that they're correct. Can we strongman a case for them competing? Sure. Do we need to stick with their existing roster even with Cucucchi or can we add more to it? Because okay, so there was a time in the not too distant past when Mike Trout was the best player in baseball. And there was a time in the maybe further back than that past, but still not too distant,

when Anthony Rendon was like one of the better players in baseball. And the thing about both of those guys is that they have not been healthy or healthy and productive for the more recent past. So let's imagine for a moment that both those guys are healthy and productive. And let's imagine that some of the young players that the Angels have really pushed to the majors and quite quickly, even seemingly without Otani around anymore, they're still keen on this to draft guys who they think can be big league contributors in a relatively short order. We might have seen Christian Moore had he not gotten injured, for instance.

So let's say that they get some good production out of these guys and the guys that they've signed to be complimentary pieces allow their young players to get the rest they need to reinforce them to like have greater depth and better production out of their depth. They're still on a playoff team, but like maybe they add a couple more guys and you squint and then other rosters in their division decide to stop playing baseball and become like youth pastors. I mean, like it could happen at this juncture.

They wouldn't be to my mind, the worst team that's made a, a surprise wild card run, like in the history of the sport, you know, we're not talking about something unprecedented. I don't think it's likely. Strongest case you can assemble. I think you said strong man, the case by the way, as opposed to steel man the case. Steel man, strong man the case. Steel man, yeah. Strong man, you know, people are talking about strong men these days too.

But yes, you don't want to just count on everything going horribly wrong for everyone else you're competing against. But the angels have just fooled me so many times where they have reinforced themselves, they have rearmed, and then everything goes wrong. And Yusei Kikuchi has fooled me too, because I thought he was going to be better than he was with the Mariners, I imagine. Yeah. Probably thought that too at one point. I at least hoped it. Yeah. There was reason to believe you could steel man, you say, Kikuchi's case to be a better big league pitcher

than he was with the Mariners. And I guess that case was- But you couldn't strongman it because that's not a thing in this context. No. But I guess last year, last season was his steel manning of that case because he actually was quite good. He was quite good. It was a weird season because he started off really well and we were thinking,

oh, this is the year he's putting it all together. And then it wasn't going so great for a while. Yeah, the middle was poor. Yeah. And then the Astros traded for him and everyone thought they gave up too much and arguably they did, but also he pitched really well for them down the stretch. He kind of recaptured his form from earlier in the season and made some tweaks, made some changes and sort of threw more sliders and got more chases and fewer fastballs and all that. Good stuff when a team tells a player to do something differently when they acquire him

and he does and it works. It worked for a while. So I don't know why the Astros having paid a considerable price to acquire him via trade, weren't more aggressive this off season after he delivered what they hoped he was going to give them evidently, and now they have let him go to a division rival, but it does kind of concern me that he's coming off his best season. Yeah. And we have seen players, I'm thinking of Tyler Anderson coming off a good year, made some changes, then they go to the Angels and they regress. And Kikuchi going into what will,

I suppose, be his age 34 season. I don't know. He has disappointed thus far, except in spurts and he has impressed people with his stuff, but it's just, I guess he's been a bit too Homer prone. And so if you give him a league average home run per fly ball rate, then it seems like he should be better than he has been, but he has pretty consistently allowed a higher than-week average home run per fly ball rate, even in parks that you wouldn't think that he would do that. So I don't know. I fear that this will be another angels free agent signing, sort of buying high and then riding the collapse. I think I would say that they can be buying high and still get a good amount of production

out of him. What the last couple of years have taught me about Yusuke Kikuchi is that he is a streaky pitcher more than he is a bad pitcher. He has stretches where he is quite good. And it's interesting, Leo wrote about this for us when he wrote up the signing, you know, when you look under the hood, like his time in Toronto this year and his time in Houston this year weren't that different. And I know he had this stretch of ineffectiveness in the middle, but like I think that he is more often than not at

least serviceable. The home run thing is weird though. Yeah, he should work on that, but you know, he, I mean, he should like it'll go better for him if, if he did. Is Kukuchi likely to be like a Cy Young contender? That seems unlikely to me, but I think he'll be a productive pitcher for Los Angeles They might be paying him a little too much, but whatever like they have room. They have room in the payroll for that They're so far away from even the first luxury tax threshold that it doesn't really matter all that much

And so if they think that he can do something useful for them, well, then go and do it Like I think he's a better He has a better shot to be a meaningful contributor to their efforts than like Kyle Hendricks does candidly. So my guess is that Houston has confidence in their pitching development and also probably wants to resign Alex Bregman while also reducing payroll. And so that kind of puts a little bit of pressure on their payroll to the downside. And they're probably like, let's try to get Alex done. And then, you know, sorry you say, but. Yeah.

Well, I look forward to finding out what the angels do next. I guess when a player who's been on the whole somewhat disappointing hasn't delivered quite the return on investment that his teams hoped he would then goes to the angels, you tend not to think, well, that's when things are going to look up because that hasn't been the case since. This is where he'll put it all together. They will unlock the Yusei Kikuchi that we've been waiting for, or they will preserve that version of him that we saw for a good chunk of last season and they will ensure that that continues for the next few seasons. The angels

haven't done a whole lot to inspire confidence in that area. So maybe their luck will change at some point. Maybe it'll change. Yeah. It's just, they keep adding people and then I think, but they're still so far away from being good. Do they see it that way? And if so, then are they going to try to bridge that gap somehow?

Or are they just trying to put a respectable club on the field, which if so, great, I guess. Yeah, more power to them. Better that they lose fewer games. It's not my money. So I just wonder what this all portends because they really just, it's like the angels have probably made as many moves as the rest of the league combined, seemingly like moves of some significance or substance. So I don't know whether they're just like, well, let's get our off season shopping done early. They're not one of these procrastinators waiting until the day before Christmas to go pick up something. They're trying to get it all done before the winter meetings? Oh, we'll have everything wrapped and under the tree while everyone is running

around trying to get some scraps. Or does it mean that they foresee even more moves on the horizon? Fascinating, just fascinating that they've come out of the gate like this. I wonder too. I mean, like they know that they're not in the Soto sweepstakes. I think that a good bit of the market is being held up right now because of Soto not having made a decision. Which look, as a person who probably has COVID and would like to rest, is fine because like

let's take a couple days, you know, go spend time with your families. You guys, you have families. Do you like them? Do they like you? I don't know. Go find out for a couple of days. Why don't you? But I think that because a lot of the market is sort of hinging on what Soto decides, I wonder if there is some amount of like first mover advantage in the next tier down a free agent for teams that know that they're not in. And it's like, well, if you really like Kikuchi and you think that you're going to sign him, like go get him. If you really want Travis Darno, like go, go make that happen because other teams are like waiting around to see if they can give $600 million to Wansoto.

And if you know, you're not doing that, well then, then don't worry about it and go get your guys, you know? Yeah. It doesn't seem like they got a steal. Like he got an amount of money that was slightly higher than most people predicted at least. So it's not as if by acting fast, they got some sort of discount as far as we can tell, but they got their guy. And so maybe it's less about getting a discount and more about just making sure that you're

getting the dudes that you want to because you're willing to meet their market where either they think it is you expected to be, et cetera. Well, we know that he usually sleeps soundly, but has many more reasons to sleep even more soundly. All the books he can buy. I know. Oh my goodness. Yeah. So many.

Do you think that you say Kikuchi wants us a conversation pit in a library in his dream house? I could imagine that he does. He seems like a conversation pit in a library in his dream house. I could imagine that he does. He seems like a conversation pit kind of guy. You can nap on the benches in the conversation pit. I really want this for you someday. I'm just, I'm- For me to have a conversation pit?

I need to, Ben. Yes, because you just seem so invested in it that I am. I'm so invested. Indirectly. I am. I don't covet a conversation pit the way that you do, but I really want it for you. Thank you. That's such a nice thing to hear a friend say.

You don't have to be in constant conversation in the conversation pit. I think the name, it exerts a certain amount of conversational pressure, but really all the conversation pit is our couches brought low, you know, they have to like step down into and a couch is a great place to nap. I love a couch nap, you know? I prefer a couch nap, I think, to a bed nap because a bed nap, I'm going to be done with this and then we can get back to other stuff. Here's the thing about bed naps. I think bed naps should be, for me personally, in terms of my ability to bounce back from them and then go do stuff in the day, which is often what you need to do.

A bed nap should be reserved for when you're sick. I'm a fan of bed naps only when ill, because then if you just stay in the bed, you're like, okay, I'm sick. That's what I'm supposed to be doing anyway. I'm supposed to be resting so that I am no longer sick. Whereas a couch nap is like, okay, now I got the spring in my step necessary to go do stuff. This is why I don't believe in bed pillows on the couch unless you're sick. That's the one, one of the few benefits of being sick is that you get to have your bed pillows on the couch. Those are just my rules for myself. If you have other rules, bed pillows on the couch. That's just, those are just my rules for myself.

If you have other rules, those are fine for you. It feels less formal, a couch nap. Whereas if I'm taking a bed nap, then where's the line between nap and sleep? Sometimes I just, I worry that I will just stay there. And if I'm on the couch and I'm intending to nap, I think, oh, it's not that far to the bed. And in theory, it's slightly more comfortable probably, but it just feels like I'm just

sort of stealing something. I'm getting away with something. I'm not fully committing to a whole production here. I'm just lying down. And if I do catch some Zs, if I drift off for a while, that's okay. It's a couch nap. It's not anything planned. It's sort of spontaneous.

And yeah, I'm kind of with you there, I think. Even though on the whole, I would probably say that the bed is more comfortable. There's just something, you feel like you're getting away with something when you're on the couch nap. So there was another move that I wanted to talk to you about because this one was pretty interesting too. We had a trade, this is a little less topical, but it happened after a podcast and before we were going to do

our prediction review podcast, but the Royals Reds trade. Oh yeah. Yeah, this is kind of an interesting one that we didn't. I am so sorry for how weird I'm being during this episode. You were really enthusiastic about that one. So sorry. So happy to be reminded of the Reds and the Royals. Yeah, because I love Jonathan India's hair so much, so that's why I'm excited. Yeah, so the Royals get that hair and the rest of Jonathan India and also outfielder Joey Weemer, and in exchange, they send Brady Singer, starting pitcher to Cincinnati.

So I guess this is your classic, I don't know if it's trading from depth or surplus, but relative depth, I would say, right? To the Reds with their too many infielders problem, which turned out not actually to be a problem last year. It turned out if anything, they didn't have enough infielders, but everyone thought they were going to have too many and it looks like they're going to have too many again. And so they have finally resolved that somewhat here and they needed starters.

They needed pitching. They still do, even though they, they have the young core, the top of the rotation there, they could use a little depth and that is what Brady Singer signifies. So it's just a nice little trade of guys who are almost the same age and distance from free agency and picture for a hitter and kind of complimenting the needs and respective strengths of those teams. That's just a fun off season trade. It's not the most fun version of this because ultimately it's still Brady Singer and Jonathan India. So don't get too excited here. They're sort of the same,

you know, kind of equivalent talent level, which makes sense because they just got traded for each other. But, you know, they're useful players to have. They're valuable. They're, they're good. They will make your team better, but they're not necessarily going to be on the cover of the media guide. They're that kind of guy. It's funny because like a few years ago, this trade would have been such a big deal, you know? And, you know, I think that if there's one thing that we want to say is that, like, the reds kind

of maybe held on to Jonathan India for too long. But it seemed like Jonathan India was popular. He was like a popular clubhouse guy and was well regarded. And they did end up needing in field depth weirdly last year, even though we went into opening day being like, wow, where are they going to play all these guys? But, you know, they had dudes get hurt and suspended. And so then they were like kind of in need of that. And, you know, India's had his own injury issues.

I do worry for Brady Singer in that ballpark, just from a run perspective, like that could be going from Kauffman to great American. Yeah, that's tough. That feels like it might be rough, but these guys, they feel roughly equivalent in terms of their potential value to these teams. Maybe a ding India a little bit, because now he has to hit in a harder ballpark and maybe a ding Singer a little bit because he has to pitch in a, uh, hitter friendly park. But I think that kind of all comes out in the wash. When you look at that Royals team, they need offensive production.

It's got to come from somewhere because you know, Bobby, which when you're in Salvi can only do so much themselves. So I liked them trying to bolster that piece and yeah, they do have like, or had a surprising amount of depth when it came to pitching and Singer wasn't like a big part of their future plans, it didn't seem so I'm fine with them moving on from him and I got to contemplate Jonathan India's hair and then who else I would cast in the reboot of 1993's The Three Musketeers Other Than Him. I came up with some names, I'll save them for a different pod, but the fun,

nifty little trade. I like it when the centrals trade with each other, but across leagues. There's something about that I find really satisfying. I don't know, I just like it. So I will say people were like kind of mean about this trade when it went down, like people were scoffing at it as if it was obviously dumb, but I thought it was fun. And remember when I was ranting 20 years later, almost about the 2005 Cubs line up construction and how little production they got from the top of their order and how little on base ability they had there hitting in front of Derek Lee when he had his monster season. And if you recall the Cubs, the 2005 Cubs leadoff batters had a 299 on base percentage

and a 74 TOPS plus. Well, the 2024 Kansas city Royals leadoff hitters had a 270 OBP and a 71 TOPS plus. So they were considerably worse than those Cubs top of the order hitters. Now of course they had much better production out of the second spot in their way. Right. But, uh, What? Yes. Yes. And, uh, you know, less production than those Cubs got out of, uh, Derek Lee, who was mostly batting third for them. Maybe he would have been batting second in 2024, but yeah, the top of the order for the Royals

was a disaster in front of Bobby Witt. And so they needed on base. And I know they have to figure out where does everyone play and second base and DH, but India can get on base. And if they slot him in there, that would immediately be a pretty big upgrade for them. Yeah. Because that was just anemic top of the order for the Royals.

I agree. I ended up feeling very fine about it despite my initially loud enthusiasm on the pod and it wasn't just because of Jonathan Indy's hair. All right. And also just wanted to follow up because we talked about the Rays stadium situation and we noted, you know, we're not on the ground, we're not at these meetings, there are probably people who are more plugged into the ins and outs of the politics, the local politics than we were. And we got a message from one such person, listener Nick, who wrote in, in response to our discussion, he said, I'm a listener and also a community

organizer here in St. Pete, who has been part of leading efforts down here against public money for the baseball stadium. I actually ran for city council in the most recent election, unsuccessfully, unfortunately, but I've had many conversations about the stadium deal and have stayed very plugged into the updates. I'm one of a lot of people down here who find ourselves in a strange dynamic where we love baseball and don't want the Rays to leave, but also can't abide by publicly funding their stadium.

I appreciate all of your attempts to explain the updates as they come. Hopefully I can help with the confusion. At its basic level, the deal for the stadium has two different parts and is running through both the City Council in St. Pete and the County Commission of Pinellas County. In the agreements, the City of St. Pete offered sale of 65 acres surrounding the land with $130 million for infrastructure and an additional $300 million for the stadium specifically. Pinellas County was covering the other $300 million just for the stadium, so the multiple moving parts is what really helped to put a stick in the spokes of the deal moving forward. What is really going on, mostly behind the scenes, is that the Rays want additional money

and are using revenue losses from the destruction of Tropicana Field and a delayed start of the building of a new stadium as leverage. Also at stake is the 65 acres surrounding the stadium that is part of larger redevelopment plans. The Rays want more money, but if they officially terminate the agreement with the city they risk losing their 65 acres in downtown St. Pete. Similarly, the city does not want to end up in a situation where the Rays bail on the stadium and relocate, but control 65 acres of some of the most valuable property in the city the Rays no longer play in. That's why we found ourselves in the standoff that we do now.

The Rays can't really admit publicly that they just want the land surrounding the stadium because especially now the stadium isn't profitable and it's resulted in this bizarre media strategy in which they tell elected officials one thing in private and then go and say the opposite to the local media. Hopefully that was at least a little helpful in explaining some of what's going on. You can find some of the more historical context of that land

and what residents in St. Pete are fighting for in regard to the future of the historic gas plant district in the attached open letter to the city when this whole process was getting underway, which I will link to. So, as I said to Nick, that helped with my grasp of the details, but my main takeaway is intact, which is that I just continue to feel less sorry for the Rays than I did in the immediate aftermath of the storm, because it does seem like they are trying to use some leverage here to try to get a more favorable deal, which I guess that's what you expect these businesses to do.

But the way they've communicated this, given all of the other pressing concerns and demands on the budget and everything, it just seems to have rubbed people the wrong way, including people on these councils and me, even though I don't have a personal stake in this. So it's just a mess right now. And MLB is rejiggering the schedule just so that the Rays as they're playing in Steinbrenner field don't have to play so much in the middle of the year when it's going to be especially warm. And so now they have rearranged things.

So it's going to be sort of extreme. They're trying to avoid the heat and the rain. And so now the Rays will play 47 of their first 59 games at home, quote unquote home at Steinbrenner Field, and then go on the road for a not so nice 69 of the final 103. So that's going to be a strange season for them. It's almost like, I don't know if it's good

or the pressure's on, we gotta get off to a good start here because we're burning our home games and who knows? Maybe it's helpful for a morale perspective to have home field advantage a whole bunch early on. But then if it were me, I'd be kind of dreading constantly being on the road for the rest of the season. So it's really gonna be kind of a tale of two seasons for the race, lots of being home

and then lots of being on the road. Yeah, it's very strange. I don't know what my preference would be. On the one hand, like being home so much for a long time lets you really like Settle in so that part might be nice, but I don't know how I would especially feel about that I want to distinguish between like the raise as a business entity and doing their machinations and like the people who work for them who aren't those people, you know doing the machinations because I

I do have sympathy for what those folks are dealing with, but yeah, public facing, not the best you guys. I don't know. Yeah. The Pinellas County commission chair issued an ultimatum demanding the team detail in writing by Sunday, its intentions on the proposed stadium. This is after votes have been delayed and then the retraction of the appropriation to replace the roof after the raise were like, actually, we don't want to replace

the roof. And the raise just issued a pretty non-committal statement so far. So more to come, but it's going to be strange in any number of ways. I think I might actually prefer to start on the road. I'm the kind of person you tell me you've got good news and bad news. I tend to take the bad news first. I want to save the good news. Or if there's a meal, if I'm eating a meal and I'm looking forward to one part of the meal more,

then I will eat the food item that I am less enthused about eating first so that I can save and savor and anticipate the good thing that I find really appetizing. So I'll kind of eat around the thing that I find tastier, and then I'll save that for the grand finale. And so I think I might prefer to do that too, if I were baseball season and I had to have these

starkly different home versus away halves, or not quite halves of the season, I think I would just get the road tripping over with and then have the home portion to look forward to. Can I ask you a Thanksgiving food related question on the back of that? Are you a separate bites on the plate Thanksgiving food person, or you get a little bit of everything on the plate to have one special, one consolidated bite person? I am definitely someone who is of the philosophy that it's all going to the same place. And so I'm not too- That's such a terrible way to describe that. Why would you, what?

I'm not too precious about precious about, uh, you gotta keep them separated. And so sometimes I will have things like my, my giant baby salad that you have a been aghast about not giant baby salad. It sounds like an oxymoron, but Meg was saying it's the size of a baby. That's why she called it a baby salad. Baby salad makes it sound small, but it's the opposite. In fact, it also makes it sound like it's made out of babies. Yes, it does. And that is not one of the ingredients, but people are sometimes disturbed by the ingredients. You have so many ingredients in there. It's just like a-

Yeah, because that's the thing. I just put all sorts of things in there that I like individually with no real concern about whether they go together because I guess I just don't care as much about that. I just don't care about the synergy so much. I don't care about whether they match, whether they complement each other. Each individual thing is tasty to me. I'm happy to just have a great big mashup. So I guess that's how I feel about, if we're talking about individual bites as well. Okay. Okay.

Well, I find the way you chose to describe that to be kind of horrifying, but I agree with you, um, in terms of your general conclusion. So we can be at peace there. Yeah. Then again, I guess you might want to get off to the hot start, not so much for momentum and morale reasons as just, you want to give a signal to your front office, to ownership that, Hey, we're real, we're to give a signal to your front office, to ownership that, Hey, we're real.

We're going to go for it. If you want reinforcements at the deadline, if there's some sort of buying selling decision, then maybe it's better to start hot and kind of coast from there because maybe you're more likely to be a team that adds at the deadline instead of subtracts, or you can kind of control your resting and you're returning people from injury. There's just a little less anxiety about, are we going to get there? So maybe it would be more advantageous. But then again, I don't know, home field advantage, you know, you get to go last, you get your last licks, though I don't know that that's the source of the majority of the home field advantage

itself. I think it has to do with being home and knowing your park and sleeping in your bed and perhaps getting more favorable calls. And, you know, people are still trying to puzzle out exactly what contributes to home field advantage, but it's not just that you get to bat last though, that could be a bit of it. Yeah, I think a lot of it is sleeping in your own bed, personally, if I were gonna apportion out.

Or on your couch as the case would. Well, no, no, if you're a pro athlete, you should sleep in the bed if you're a pro athlete, is my opinion, because you get better sleep in the bed than you do on your couch, again, in my opinion. Well, seeing as it is Thanksgiving week, hence our discussion of Thanksgiving food, we thought maybe we'd give some thanks.

You proposed that perhaps this would be a fitting time to give some thanks and thanks specifically about baseball, which I don't know that we've ever done this exercise exactly. When you brought this up, I said, well, we do every 500 episodes or so. I guess we're halfway between a couple of those pods exactly with this episode, but every 500, we tend to get people together and talk about things we like about baseball. So that's sort of in that vein, but I don't know that we've done the actual, it's Thanksgiving week. Let's give thanks.

Maybe it's kind of a cliche, but hey, tis the season. So I guess we can do that. I am sort of scarred from when I was maybe in kindergarten, I don't know if I was five or six, and I did one of those Thanksgiving table dinner exercises where I had like a little song prepared and it was one of these like, there are so many things I'm thankful for, right? And like you'd point at each person at the table. Now I hate these activities now when we have to go around the table and people put me on the spot to talk and we have to say something we're thankful for. Hate it,

dread it, try to make myself scarce, come in after that's over and start eating after, which is not very, it's kind of an ingrate thing to do, I guess. How does that work? Wait, can I ask a clarifying question? You're not a sit all down together at the same time family? Are you like a potluck family? No, we're sort of, well- So you're just willing to be rude to avoid the exercise? Yes, yes, absolutely.

But also, yeah, the food tends to be set up on a table somewhere and so everyone's getting up and getting stuff. And then eventually someone's like, well, everyone sit down and then, you know, someone will read something or say something, but there's always someone missing. Someone's fussing, someone's puttering about or filling their plates. So usually you don't get complete attendance there. Anyway, to this day, I'm still haunted by this little exercise I did because people still make fun of me for it in a good-natured way. Just kind of remember little Ben 30 plus

years ago doing his little song and dance and saying what he was thankful for and pointing at us. I'm hoping now that maybe my daughter can do this and take the heat off me so that we can stop reminiscing about this thing that I did when I was five. So you're looking forward to generational traumas. Yes, exactly. Yes, it's her turn to shoulder this load. Okay, cool. Yes.

And so I would like no longer to be teased about this. It's not even, you know, it's like a loving, it's not spirited or anything, but it's, you know, vaguely embarrassing. So I'm ready to pass that mantle and my daughter can take it on. I haven't prepped her, I haven't coached her to do something at the Thanksgiving table, but you know, if it happens someday, if that supplant, I mean, this was so long ago, there were multiple people present at that event who are no longer living.

And yet I'm still- Oh, and they're still giving you a guff about it? Well not them specifically, but everyone else. Well sure, they're, I mean, I don't want to be insensitive, but they're dead. So yeah. Yeah, right. Exactly. But that's, you know, that's how long ago this was and it still sticks to me.

Anyway, I have, I guess, some baggage here about giving thanks, but this is about baseball specifically, which I don't think I did when I was five or six at the Thanksgiving table. So how do you want to do this? What sort of things are we saying thanks for? LS. Should I start with one? And then you can, be clear? I I think that this brief can be interpreted broadly And if you go in a very different direction than I do well, that's fine, Ben, you know that doesn't Proclude I think that's fine. But here I'm gonna start with one to set the table so one of my favorite things about baseball that I'm most thankful for about it is how much it tends to reveal itself as not being solved even when you think it is.

So like a couple of years ago, I very naively thought to myself, we kind of have this figured out, you know? We had talked, and we've talked about this on the pod before, that it felt like the big breakthroughs, at least on the analytics side, had sort of happened. We were nibbling around the edges, or teams were, in terms of trying to press their competitive advantage. And then I was revealed to be a real doofus, because not long after I had that thought, clubs really started to push forward with their understanding, say, of how much the shape and trajectory of pitches impacts their quality. We started, I think, to have a much better understanding of what makes even a good fastball,

which feels so fundamental. I think we really started to make progress in that space. And some of this is likely a result of the lag between the public side and the private side, right? But we had real breakthroughs there. Or, you know, think about how much more precise our vocabulary is to describe something like seam-shifted wake, which was a concept that existed, right? I think this is sort of a supplemental thing I'm grateful for, but like, you know, it was

really, I find it really cool that like there were pitching coaches who, they understood seam-shifted wake for a long time. They didn't call it that, but like they had an understanding of like why that pitch worked in a way that you wouldn't necessarily think it would just based on, you know, where it was being released from or its velocity or whatever. Like they really know that's doing, it's doing something, you know? And then we got better tools to measure that and then teams were like, oh, this is what it is. I really like that. It has this ability to keep kind of moving around on you. And as teams are looking for competitive advantage and maybe trying to do that sometimes honestly

and sometimes not, like they find new, they find out new stuff and that's really great because you know, it's just this like mystery puzzle box that keeps offering a new mystery. It's like when you have a dream and you're like, wow, there are all of these rooms in my house that I've never noticed before. How's that possible? And you get to go explore them.

It's like that. That's a good one. Yeah. And I do feel like, yes, on the public side, the revelations don't come quite as quickly or aren't quite as meaningful, maybe, but maybe I'm jaded. Maybe it's just hard to impress me as much and also maybe we're just not on the cutting edge the way the public baseball analysis community was a decade or more ago. Not that, yeah, there aren't still advances.

There absolutely are. And I think even if teams figure something out, or even if it feels like the pace of progress has slowed, then there's always the cat and mouse in the back and forth and teams beating each other. And then, you know, this is something that fascinates me across sports, really, with athletes just generally getting too good and too big and too fast and almost breaking the sport, and then you have to decide, do you want to change the dimensions of the field somehow to suit these new super-powered players?

All this stuff is always changing on a macro level and teams are pursuing new strategies and sometimes it makes the game more entertaining and sometimes less, but it's not static one way or another. And I think that is a key quality because I think I've said this before that even if you could engineer some perfect happy medium where everyone agreed this is the right rate of everything. We have everything in perfect equilibrium and balance and this is a good number of homers and a good number of strikeouts and a good number of hits and everything is right with the world. I think it would still be better to have things be a bit out of whack

because I like the change. I like getting to document how things are going up and going down. And remember a few years ago, it was different and this is a different brand of baseball. And maybe you like this one more, maybe you like that one more, maybe you like some sort of Goldilocks zone in the middle, but I think it's good that it is constantly shifting between extremes. I mean, you know, sometimes there can be a bit of whiplash if it's too much, right? If you're going from no scoring to all the scoring, you want it maybe to remain within a certain range, but I think it is good that it moves, that it's not just the same.

It's not a constant because that makes it more interesting. So I guess, yeah, if we're thanking for things in this vein as opposed to some of the highly esoteric specific sort of whimsical things that we tend to mention in those every 500. I have some of those. I don't because I didn't think of them and also I don't want to give them away for the next time, you know, episode 2500. It's not that far off. Got to save some material, but I think I would be thankful for how global the game is. I think that's something that delights me.

It doesn't necessarily have to be that way. There are plenty of popular sports that are not global to the degree that baseball is, though a lot of them are trying to increase their global appeal. But that to me is a very special quality that it's not just, oh, you've got some, some upstarts here, they're trying to spread the gospel of the sport. No, it's like the national sport in other nations. Right. That I think is a really cool thing because yeah, maybe it sort of started here.

I mean, maybe it started in England really, and then it kind of reached its current form here and then was spread elsewhere, but that doesn't mean we own it or have some sort of a monopoly on it and other people, other countries, they play their own brand of baseball. They develop their own baseball culture, which in some respects I envy. And I think, Oh, wouldn't it be cool if our brand of baseball was more like their brand of baseball. And it's just sort of this cultural exchange program.

And you have these different kind of like Galapagos islands of baseball where the sports evolves, not exactly in isolation, but somewhat separate. And it follows different evolutionary paths and it looks different and you've different kinds of players and different cultures around it and different ways to root. And it just also, I think, makes me feel like, oh, this thing that I invest all this time and attention in, it must be worthwhile. Cause it's not just like only Americans could care about this.

It appeals to people all over the world, even if there hasn't been a longstanding baseball culture there, even now it could catch on. And so I like that idea that even if it's MLB off season, it's on season somewhere. And even if it's nightB off season, it's on season somewhere. And even if it's night here, it's day somewhere and the sun never sets on baseball, basically. That's kind of a cool thing. I agree.

I think that's a really wonderful thing about it. It's nice. Did you, by the way, did you watch Taiwan beat Japan in the premier 12 game? Yeah, having just praised the global nature of baseball. No, I didn't not live, but I caught up later. I didn't watch it live either. I caught it the next day. What a cool, what a wonderful game that was. What a, it's on YouTube. Was it on YouTube? Did I watch it on YouTube or did I watch it on The Zone? YouTube? Was it on YouTube? Did I watch it on YouTube or did I watch it on The Zone? They were so loose. They were having a great time. They played a fantastic game of baseball.

That was the first time that Japan had lost an international competition since 2019. It was great and it was clearly very meaningful to the guys on that team. It was really a thing to watch. So everyone should check that out and stick around for like the post game ceremonial piece of it. Cause like it was a, it was a cool thing to get to see. So reassures me about it's a big world, a lot of things that separate us. This is, you know, kind of hokey, but it, uh, it does make me feel good that uh, people all over the world in vastly different circumstances

all can think baseball's kind of cool. There must be something pretty appealing about the sport. If people can come to the conclusion in so many different places and contexts that, yes, this is worthwhile. I'm ready to do another. Well, this one might venture into stuff we would talk about on another episode, but it's just so weird. You know, it's such a weird thing, particularly as a work environment. So like, here's the thing. They're doing sports and they're wearing belts. They're also, they're

doing sports and they're eating snacks, like on the field. And they, I've talked about this before, but it is so weird that we have to talk about it again. They have an entire little dugout and it is full of snacks and water and it is adjacent to an entire underground infrastructure that has a refrigerator in it and many refrigerators, presumably, not to mention all the food in the ballpark for sale, and yet they take little snacks with them onto the field. They are just there with their little snacks. They are a workplace that has a chaplain, you know?

All of them, I think. I don't think there's a single team that doesn't have like a team chaplain, you know? And it's because they have to work on Sundays and a lot of them are religious, but like, they have a chaplain and they work in a place where they sell beer. So that's funny. And then also, they lie about how tall they are, you know? And they put that online. They put the lied about, I was reminded of this in correspondence with Michael Bauman today, because he asked me, I'm not gonna give any of his piece away. I haven't read it yet, so that would be hard to do.

But he asked me if I knew what Travis Darnow's listed height is. And I guessed like 5'10", because Travis Darnow is 5'10", okay? He's 5'10". I've seen him on field level before. He's 5', that man is 5'10". Maybe 5'11", in spikes, but he is five 10.

His listed height is six foot two. That's a lie. That's just a lie. You know, I mentioned how the Astros are probably saving their pennies to resign Alex Bregman, who is listed at six foot and shares an infield with Jose Altuve. So not only is it a lie, it is a bold lie in his case,

because those two men stand next to each other and he's not six feet tall. No, that's a lie. You don't think that makes it easier for Bregman to get away with it, that he's standing next to Altube? Cause he looks big standing next to Altube. No, but it's not a big gap between them.

It is- Well, that's true, yeah. Yeah, and we know, look, Jose Altuve is my height. Jose Altuve is my height, and that's great. It's so cool that he's my height. He is listed at five six. Yeah, he's not. Okay? His listed height is five six. Alex Bergman's listed height is six feet.

He is, no, he is not half a foot taller than Jose Altuve. Absolutely not. That is a, it is just a lie. And yet it is a lie. He does, he stands there and he goes, here's my height. And his employer says, yep. And then they put that height on the internet. And we're all supposed to believe it's true.

And we know it's not. That's so weird. Part of this is that it is a game, a version of it has existed for such a long time. And so you pull forward in time, weird stuff you would not do if you were starting it from scratch. And some of that weird stuff is bad, right? Like we had to fight this whole long fight with Cleveland about their name.

If the league had started in 2000, there's no way that they would have named a team what we named Cleveland's team. They would have been like, that's ridiculous. Like, that's great. Well, they probably wouldn't call the Braves the Braves, but we pulled that forward in time with us, you know? And so some of the things that we pull forward in time are bad, but some of them are just

weird and we let them do it. Some of the belts are like sporty belts, you know, they're like sports belts, but some of them are, they're leather, Ben, and they are like, they're thick leather. They're like quality leather. I also saw a baseball belt advertised on YouTube the other day that is supposed to like help with posture and I was like Is it the material of the belt or you're just tightening it really tight? Like I don't understand and I'm not gonna order to find out cuz I don't I don't need that You know, I have problems with my back, but they're not gonna be fixed by a belt

I'm I'm clear all right about that But so it's just they're wearing belts, and they have snacks in their pockets. You know, that's so wild. And then they spit on the ground. How many workplaces that aren't baseball, is it okay for you to spit on the ground at your work and just like be like, someone else is going to take care of that for me? Working from home, we could do that, but then we subsequently have to clean up our own mess. Yeah.

Right. We'd have to clean it up. Plus that would be gross. I wouldn't spit on the ground, especially now because I'm pretty sure I have COVID. It's rapidly advancing. It's worse sitting here recording. All of that to say, it's just, it's so strange. It's such a strange workplace.

They bring their kids to work all the time. And I don't mean that in like, people should have access to quality childcare, but it's like there's this expectation not only that they come to work, but like people had issue with how much Drake LaRoche was in the clubhouse is my understanding. They were like, your kids in here too much, but they, their issue wasn't your kids in here, right? There was an understanding your kids going to be in here some amount, you know? And like that's part of baseball too.

That's so weird. There's a person whose job it is to like help manage the families and children and, you know, the affiliated people of the players. And that's a job that makes total sense because they're there all the time, They have to travel, you know, there's like this tradition of it being there. But objectively, again, if we were starting it from scratch, I don't know that baseball would be accommodating in that way, right? I don't think that the expectation would be your kids are going to be in here. You know, we need a person who's, who's paid by the team and like probably has a 401k and they're gonna help sort this out and like

take care of the kids and whatnot. I don't know if all the child care providers have 401ks. They should if they don't. All that to say it's a weird workplace and we get to watch it all the time and that's so great and so I like that about that especially the snacks on the field. The snacks on the field objectively might be the weirdest part you know that might be the snacks on the field. The snacks on the field, objectively, might be the weirdest part, you know? That might be the wildest thing about it. They're like, I have to have these sesame seeds while I stand stationary, because you're not eating them while you're, you're not putting them in your mouth while you're fielding the ball. You're Alex Bregman lying about your height with snacks on the field. That's amazing. I love it. It's so weird. What a weird. And so for me, a person who likes weird stuff, it's great. There was a recent Atlantic article about why baseball players

are still chewing and spitting. Why are they so messy? Well, I think there are a lot of theories and time-honored tradition. I think part of it is that it's just passed down through the generations that this dates back to when everyone was chewing tobacco and then that became gum and then that became seeds and it's just sort of this. Some of it's still tobacco. They lie. Maybe, but there's still this just oral fixation and it's also just you grew up emulating the generation in front of you and you want to be big league. And that's what it is to be big league too. Exactly. Right. So it's just a tradition. It's just kind of a cultural moray of the game. And yes, there is more downtime,

even in a pitch clock era, you can do that. It's just more feasible. It's maybe more boring in a way, but it is also just easier to do. You're not constantly in motion. There are a lot of breaks between plays. So yes, it's just, imagine doing that if you're playing hockey or something and you're just chowing down and spinning seeds all over the ice. It's just, it's not going to work as well as it does in baseball. So I think there are a lot of reasons and it is again, one of those cases where if baseball started today, would they all just constantly chew and spit? Probably not, right? Probably not.

They don't do that in football. I mean, they're moving around more, but less in some ways. They're moving around more violently, I guess, so you wouldn't want to be- CB And you're wearing a mouth guard. So yeah, that makes it difficult just out of mechanical level. LS Yeah, the fields being different, the fields being the same in some ways, but different in many others, the existence of Baltimore, that doesn't happen in other sports. That's like a very fundamental thing to have vary. It's so strange. Oh yeah. You're getting dangerously close to the territory of when I spent weeks extolling

the things about baseball that were different from other sports, arguably. But it is one of the things we're thankful for, that there is this allowance for variation because it gives us different, it's like you're dropping into different little ecosystems. We're talking about Brady Singer and whether it's a good trade or not for the Reds. Well, part of that is that that part plays a particular way. What? That's wild. The smoothie center and crypto arena aren't that different.

They play baseball or basketball in those places. Smoothie King Center? Where do the Pelicans play? Don't they play in a place named after the smoothie king? I'm not making it up. CBer I think also that another, not the Myrtle Beach Pelicans, that's not the Pelicans you're talking about. LS No, the New Orleans Pelicans. CB Yes.

LS Smoothie King Center. CB Yes, yes. LS It's named after the smoothie king. CB You're not making this up. LS I'm not. CB It's next to the Caesar's Superdome. LS Right. This is not evidence of my having COVID. This is just, I'm okay. CB Another thing people say about the chewing is that it dispels anxiety.

There's a lot of time to think in baseball, a lot of time to dread. And maybe, maybe the chewing helps with that. And people have all of these theories about, you know, it's like a timing mechanism, the chewing, it helps you if you're preparing for a pitch or something. Like a leg lift? Yeah. Or people also say, and this is kind of one of the pervasive theories is helps you if you're preparing for a pitch or something like that. Like a leg lift? Yeah. Or people also say, and this is kind of one of the pervasive theories is that it's dirty

out there. There's dirt. It gets in your mouth. We answered an email question about this, how much dirt do you ingest? And so maybe your mouth is dry and you've got dirt in there. And so you need to chew. You need to get that dirt taste out of your mouth and that dryness. You get the saliva flowing and that's maybe you need something in your mouth

because of that. So could be, who knows? It's just one of these things. I don't know that there's any one reason necessarily. It's just a tradition and kind of a nice one. And you know, I don't think it's really so much for the nutrition. Get your salt intake there. That's probably other ways that one could consume that other than just spitting and chewing constantly. So I was going to say that mine, I guess it kind of goes hand in hand when we're talking about the origin of the chewing is that baseball is as old as it is. I am grateful for that. You could imagine that that could be a turnoff for some people. I think it is.

There's too much tradition. There's too much history. It's too hidebound. It's too stick in the mud. They literally stick with the same mud for almost a century at this point, as we discussed recently. But to me, that is great because I like history. I like the stories. You can never fool yourself into thinking. You know everything there is to know about baseball because you can barely scratch the surface.

everything there is to know about baseball because you can barely scratch the surface. And if it were some upstart league where you were kind of getting in on the ground floor and it were taking off before your eyes, that would be sort of exciting, I imagine. And you know, maybe there are other things I'm into that are more like that. And that can be kind of cool to see them spread their wings and find an audience. And it just seems to me though, that there are so many stories to tell about baseball and how many hours have I lost browsing through newspaper archives, reading history, possibly apocryphal, trying to pin down whether this actually happened and how it's just the deepest pool you could ever dive into. You could immerse yourself in that for a lifetime and not come up for

air and not know the half of it. So that I think is really great. And I always appreciate getting to dive into examples of times when people were fretting about exactly the same thing that they're fretting about now and what was going on at the time that gave rise to those same concerns and how did people respond to it then. And you can bring some perspective to all the modern fretting and hand-wringing, hey, it's ever thus and always thus and all this has happened before and it will happen again, and you can bring some perspective to that kind of myopic presentism that we all default to. I love that about baseball. So if it were something that had started in my lifetime,

and I could really wrap my arms around it because I was there from the start. Again, I'm sure that would have some appeal, but I like the fact that I'm joining late, I'm catching up, I've spent my whole life kind of catching up to this ongoing story that is baseball, and I will probably spend the rest of my life vainly trying to catch up to it and keep pace with it. I really appreciate it, and this is gonna kind of make me sound like a stick to sports

person, that's not how I mean it. But we do live under a constant barrage of horrors. And so I do appreciate the ability of baseball to, and I'm going to do a swear Shane, to like take you out of the bulls**t for a little while. And baseball comes with its own fair share of bulls**t. Um, and I think one of the things that baseball is really great about in sports is I think a powerful tool for this, just generally, regardless of the particular contest, that it gives you this fun thing to have community around and to talk to strangers about, and also like a kind of lower stakes place

to sort of contemplate important questions. And it's not lower stakes for the people involved, but like on the level of, you know, world peace, lower stakes, right? Because the enterprise is entertainment, even if the people involved are having to make their way in the world. I think it's valuable in that way. Like it gives you a place where you're like, Oh, I kind of need to like have an understanding of how like labor relations

works, right? Or like, this is a, this is an arena where we have to engage with like the role of race and gender in our society and sexuality and these things. But also you get to watch a big home run, you know? And so I think that the ability to bop back and sexuality and these things, but also you get to watch Big Home Run, you know? And so I think that the ability to bop back and forth between those things and to get a break, but also have to sit with it, like makes it this really powerful social force. And I do think that there are very few things that like can quickly iner you to a stranger

better than, hey, you're wearing a team hat, how about Bobby Witt Jr. or whatever, right? You know, it gives you like a common language with people. But I think it's important to be able to like enjoy things and take a break and have this like communal exercise that's ultimately frivolous, but also very meaningful. I think that's very powerful. And I really like the sports gives you that. So yay for baseball. I find it the most compelling one of those, but other people can sub in other things.

Those people might not be listening to this podcast, but if they are like, that's fine. You can like soccer. I don't get it, but I appreciate the athleticism, but it's not my sport, but I'm glad you like it. I mean, you, Ben, I don't know how you, I don't really know how you feel about soccer. Like where do you, it doesn't matter. I was gonna say, where do you put soccer in the hierarchy? And it's like-

I'm not anti, but- I'm not anti, it's just not, I don't seek it out. I watched it during the Olympics, but I watch a lot of, to be clear, I watched a lot of random sh** during the Olympics and I'm like, this is the best sport there's ever been. Particularly when you set it in and around Paris, I learned, wow, what a backdrop. Anyway.

Well, mine would be similar, I suppose that, and I'm sure I've talked about this cause what haven't we talked about at some point, but, uh, the feeling of, now I just talked about how you, you can never feel like you've mastered the subject because there's always so much you don't know and can't know, but also sometimes you can do some nifty little investigation into something and really get a concrete satisfying answer. Yeah. And it's wonderful because it's hard to do that in this world. Yeah.

And it's hard to do that in this world. And it's hard to do that in baseball too. There are always these confounding factors and maybe you think you have an answer and then someone points out, Oh, you didn't correct for this or adjust for that, and then you feel silly because some something was skewing something or other, but there are times where you can just have a really well designed study and baseball it's, you know, it's, it's messy and there's a lot going on, but less so than in pretty much all the other major sports just because of the way that the sport is set up and the start and stop and the not quite

one-on-one nature of it, but closer to that than many sports with continuous motion, it lends itself to analysis because it's so old, all these things, all my things that I'm thankful for kind of coming together here. But because there's just such a voluminous record, just exhaustive detail about everything that has happened on the field for so long, we have such great data, we can check our suppositions, we can run these studies. It's almost this natural experiment that's been running since any of us was born and hopefully will last long after we're gone. And we can use this incredible data set that we've all built up for no real reason other than the fact that we wanted to, that we felt like it, that we enjoyed it, that we were all into this and we all just collectively

cared about it. And we can use this wealth of knowledge and information to pose fascinating questions. And then sometimes when everything shakes out right, actually come up with a satisfactory and illuminating answer. And there's just no better feeling for me. It's just a complicated world. There's always nuance. It's hard to ever know anything in any sort of definitive way.

But sometimes on a baseball field, you can come close to understanding and to really feel feeling like you have plumbed the depths and pierced the veil and solve the mystery. And when that happens, when a podcast segment or an email answer or an article comes together that way or a stat blast or whatever it is, And you can actually just say, you know what, asked and answered. I was curious about this thing and now my curiosity is satisfied because baseball provided the tools to answer that question. That to me is just an immensely fulfilling feeling. I really appreciate how unpredictable it is. We get, we get a lot of guff. Well, it's not just unique

to us, but I think that, you know, when you're in the prognosticating business, by which I mean, we have projections, um, and playoff odds, like we get, we get a lot of guff and sometimes, um, people take it too far. Um, but generally I think people, like they want us to say, your team is going to win. And when we say your team might not win, then they get grumpy about it. But we thought the Tigers were a bad team. We thought the Royals were a bad team. We projected them to not make the postseason and they did, you know, they outperformed their preseason projections. They were two of the teams that had the biggest shift in their, um, postseason odds. And I think that's beautiful, Ben.

And I really like, I want us to be thoughtful about how we do those things and I want the like methodology to be sound and for it to be rigorous and all that. But I say this every time I introduce the positional power rankings, I really like that we get it wrong at least some because it'd be so boring if we had it all right. You know, you have instances of like things surprising you in a disappointing way. Like I'm sure Braves fans would have preferred that their season unfold the way our projections said that it would because it would have meant a full season of Ronald Zucconi Jr. and Spencer Strider and that's not what they got.

But you know, I bet Detroit fans were pretty stoked and I bet Royals fans were pretty stoked. And that's really nice when that works out that way. You know, the Diamondbacks were in the World Series last year. That's crazy. We didn't see that coming. We thought that they might be an interesting wild card team, but we didn't think that they would make the World Series. We weren't totally convinced they would even get into the playoffs, and they did.

That's so cool. So I really like that about it. I think that it continues to surprise me. This might be related to the it not being solved thing, but I think it's a little bit different that there are teams that manage to outperform. And some of the ways they do it are completely unsustainable. And other ways they do it are a signal to you that they're about to embark on a stretch of competitiveness that is going to be a lot of fun for their fans.

You have both versions. And I think both of them are fun and have their place. And then you have years where the Dodgers win the World Series, you know, it doesn't always work that way. Sometimes things are a little bit chalkier, but not always. That's cool. Yeah. I think there's a perception in some quarters and not in all quarters.

And also this might be accurate in some cases that stat heads are upset when things don't go the way they're quote quote unquote, supposed to, the way the projections say they should or the way the run differential says they should. And yeah, I'm sure there are instances of people saying, this is silly, this is frustrating, this upsets me because it goes against everything I thought I knew. But I think mostly that's not the case that we do tend to appreciate the randomness. The only thing that maybe gets annoying is when people act as if it's not just randomness.

You never know for sure, but people will always inevitably come up with some meaning, right? It's the, the XKCD like supplying some meaning after the fact for what is this essentially a random number generator. There might be more to it than that, but I think as long as everyone involved is saying, oh, wow, this is so weird and improbable as opposed to using that surprising outcome to try to dunk on someone or say, Oh, the numbers nerds got that wrong because they didn't take into account X or Y or hard or gumption or whatever it is. Right.

Again, not suggesting those things don't matter at all, but also if we're going to have a good faith discussion about these things, I will admit that yes, those things might matter in some cases. And the other sides, to the extent that there are clearly delineated sides like this, should concede, I would say that yes, sometimes stuff just happens for no apparent reason and you don't really have to read all that much into it. It doesn't necessarily disprove everything that we thought we knew. This is not necessarily the comeuppance that you've been waiting for.

It's just, you play enough seasons with enough teams and enough games and some strange stuff is going to go down and it's unexpected, but it's also expected that that will happen in some quantity. And so when it does, you can just say, man, this is weird. Didn't see this coming, but I'm going to enjoy it. This is fun. This is improbable. Maybe I can quantify exactly how improbable it is, and that will make me appreciate how

just strange it is that we even got to see this. And that can be fun on its own. So I don't think it has to be a cause for some kind of conflict, but sometimes it is. And probably there's fault and blame on both sides in those cases. But just saying it's not inherently like that, that we want things to go the predictable way, because that would be boring if they did. Right, yeah. Sometimes it's not that your projections are bad.

You know, your team did something unexpected. I understand that the guardians have to post something on their social media accounts, just to name one team at random. It's so confusing. Your front office uses projections. I don't know. It's so strange. Anyhow. Well, I don't know if you have any others that you really want to get out there,

but I think I am sated much as I am after a fulfilling meal. I can settle back and digest, but yeah, go ahead. I have two and they'll be quick. One is quick because we talk about it so much, which is how consistently present baseball is allowing you to nap on the couch, not in your bed for me, anyhow. But just like the constancy of it is really nice because there are times when there are really high stakes, but it is nice to be able to engage with it as much and in a variety of ways because you're not going to run out. I mean, you do eventually run out because the season ends, but you know, it's like I'm

a football fan. There's only so much, you know, and so it does tend to occupy a lot of my time during the season because then, you know, it only happens once a week. I mean, it doesn't. Also, what's with the, so many Mondays where we have two Monday night games this year. I don't know what's up with that. Like stop, too much, but not enough.

And then you feel like you have to watch it. So I really appreciate that piece of it. And then also we're just watching the best guys right now. And that's not to say that there aren't players from the past who were amazing or that there aren't players from the past who were amazing or that there aren't players from the past who were amazing who if they were brought forward in time could play in today's game. There absolutely are. There are guys where it's like, wow, you know, that guy would be able

to hang in any area because he's amazing. And we have tools that can teach us how, which is also really cool about baseball, but to your point earlier, but in terms of like the physicality and the training and the professionalism of the sport now, now there can be downsides to that. Sometimes it's like they're a little too good, but you know, it's like that, it's like that opening day ad from a couple of years ago. These are the good old days, you know, we're seeing, we're getting to watch the really best guys. And that's pretty amazing. And in moments where I feel frustrated with the sport

or the league or whatever, I do try to return to that as like a North star. Like, yeah, there's stuff I would change and there's stuff about the politics of the sport that I don't like, or the way that labor is working right now, or, you know, I worry about the environmental impact. There are big things, big challenges both now and that we might anticipate in the near future. And we should take those things seriously. And I don't want to discount them. And we are getting to watch the really the very best guys who've ever

done it. And that's so cool. So we should be thankful for that. I am in like an active way, really, you know, is like a, a thing I returned to when I'm I'm feeling the, my interest, not waning, but like, you know, where I'm feeling down about the sport, which, you know, the, this, this, uh, league, right, not baseball as a sport, but this league, it gives you plenty of opportunities to feel kind of down. But we do get to watch the best guys and that's so cool. So yeah, I'm grateful for that. Yeah.

I'm with you. Yeah. And I hope that this podcast in its constancy serves the same purpose that baseball does for some people. We're always there, even if it's Thanksgiving week, we're going to be here. We're going to put those episodes out. We're going to give you something to listen to, keep you company while you're traveling to and fro. Hopefully you're enjoying the family time if you're having it, but if you're not, then hey, here's a podcast. So we'll, uh, we'll tough it out with you.

So thanks for keeping us company as well. Of course, we are thankful for you and thankful for the people who enable us to continue to do this podcast. Including, can we just shout out, including producer Shane. Thanks, Shane. Of course. You're going to edit so much pod today. We really appreciate it and we hope you have a safe drive to your holiday destination tomorrow. Yes, indeed.

That'll do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. If you'd care to express your thanks for the show, you can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild, as have the following five listeners who have signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free, and get themselves access to some perks. Justin Meeks, Ezra Thompson, Joseph Cross, AJ, and Matt Stryker. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, the next one of which is going up soon, playoff livestreams, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, discounts

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links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. Happy Thanksgiving. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. Who do the fewest games a hit for the cycle? How many teams had a player named Michael? Which big league player has the best team life hacks? What would baseball look like if everyone had their packs? Find out on Effectively Wild. Find out on Effectively Wild.

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