Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2252: There’s Gold in Them Thar Bats

Episode Date: December 4, 2024

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about their obliviousness to Juan Soto signing rumors, what should count as a team claiming to have tried to sign someone, a rash of recent real signings, the strength of the free agent market so far, the Dodgers’ accounting tactics and misperceptions about deferrals, the decline in therapeutic use […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2252 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raulio of FanGraphs and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? How was your Thanksgiving? It was nice. Yeah. And you know what?

My Thanksgiving did not include, I consumed plenty of food, but I did not consume a single Wonsodo trade rumor, or signing rumor that is, there probably haven't been any trade rumors as he is not currently under contract with the team. But I have successfully avoided imbibing any Wonsodo related rumor. Now I have seen allusions to rumors, it's one of those everything I have learned about

one Soto rumors has been against my will. Just from general browsing, you know, I'm in our Patreon Discord group or our Facebook group and maybe someone alludes to something and I kind of catch snippets as if I'm walking down hot stove street and I'm just catching little fragments of conversations that are happening around me. But whenever I see that it pertains to a one-soto signing rumor, I do not pursue that. And so I have not really actually comprehended a complete one-soto rumor. I knew that there was something involving with the Red Sox and like something about apartments or sisters or something. Like I saw sentence fragments and I did not investigate any further and I still don't really know what it was regarding.

I get the sense that there were some not entirely trustworthy, credible sources floating something or other out there. Cause I saw the Jeff Passon tweet where he sort of snarkly on Thanksgiving said he was thankful for people who don't make up rumors. So I knew that there was some sort of smoke out there, clearly no fire that has resulted in his subsequently signing. So I have not missed anything.

I don't feel like I'm any less informed about the current state of the Wonsodo market or the likelihood of him signing with any particular team than someone who has been refreshing MLB trade rumors and looking at every tweet. I have missed it all and I feel equally well informed. I'm in a pretty similar boat. You know, I've had to adapt my news gathering routine now that I'm not on Twitter anymore because there is a there's a helpful bot on Blue Sky that is like aggregating the the scoops men

from Twitter it is porting over their tweets onto Blue Sky and many of the scoops men are themselves on Blue Sky although not pass in that pass in account that's not a real that's not, that's not real, that's not Jeff, you guys, that's fake, that's not Jeff. In case anyone was confused, that's not Jeff. Blue Sky does not yet let you set notifications for particular accounts, tweeting or posting. I'm not saying skeetting, I'm sorry,

I'm not calling it that, it's just not for me. And so what I did over the Thanksgiving holiday was, you know, on a semi-frequent basis just scoot over to trade rumors because I figured that required the least amount of scrolling on social media during a holiday when I was trying to like be offline if I could and, you know, have a good relaxing time, watch some football. I did that, but having Ben satisfied that he did not actually sign anywhere, I felt free to ignore all that stuff. I was like, I don't need to know. Like that will inevitably, whatever morsels of it end up being true, because some of it, some of it might be true. Maybe his sister

really is looking at apartments in Boston for him. CB I think so. I think so. But again- CB I knew there was something involving a sister at apartments, but that was- LS Yeah. But it has the feel of like Kukuchi organizing a fancy party at a sushi restaurant, you know? Like it has that from last year. Yeah, and that was completely made up. Is the implication here, again, now I'm inquiring and so I'm making the mistake of asking to know more,

but is the implication that they're a package deal and that wherever Soto signs, the sister signs? Or is it that the sister was a location scout for Soto searching for an apartment for him? Okay. We will remain ignorant of what that rumor consisted of. If I had to speculate, if I were preparing to sign with a team, but was keen to keep it under wraps for as long as possible, but was similarly keen to get a jump on my real estate search, which like, you know, relatable. I have Zillow

open right now, Ben. I might send a surrogate to commence that search, right? To say, hey, I don't even know what a sister's name is. That's how not into this room where I am. But I might say, hey, sis, will you go and check out a couple spots for me and see if I might like them. But again, why? You know, what rush would there be? You're Juan Soto, you're about to sign a deal that makes your grandchildren wealthy. I would hazard the guess that there is no place you would like to live that you would not be able to kind of sort it out, even if maybe we're under contract to someone else, you know? And I think, I think it would be fine. So I think it's probably nonsense, but maybe it's not. And if it isn't, it will be in the, the tick tock of the deal that inevitably comes out whenever he inevitably signs somewhere. So I felt unbothered by it.

I'm trying to locate peace where I can find it. And this was one of the places I was like that, if she is looking at apartments, maybe she's going to go to school in Boston. Maybe she's about to embark on graduate studies. Maybe she just likes Boston. I don't know. I don't know her. You know? She doesn't have to be bound to one's auto. Exactly.

She can move wherever she wants. She can be anywhere. Remember years ago, was it Manny Machado who's... Oh yes, all of his in-laws and family members, it was, let's sign them to persuade Machado to sign with us. And guess what? That didn't end up mattering. He did not, he didn't, it didn't happen.

It didn't happen, Ben. And so I just don't, this isn't, it's like, you know, when the Rizzler emerged on the scene, I was like, that's none of my business. I don't know what that is. I don't care to know. It's not my business. I think part of it, I will acknowledge, is that I don't really have that is. I don't care to know. It's not my business. I think part of it, I will acknowledge is that I don't really have a stake in this.

Now, if I were a fan of one of the teams that was rumored to be in the hunt for Soto, I would probably be less able to resist. And so this is me, my neutral, impartial, not really rooting for any particular team. I can just wait for the dust to settle and see where Soto signs. I don't stand to benefit from his decision in any way. And so easy for me to say, and even you as an assigning editor, someone who, whenever he signs, you got to swing into action.

You got to start directing traffic. Maybe you have a pre-write already arranged, but okay, well, you're on top of it. I actually have, Ben, here's how on top of it we are. We have two pre-writes. Whoa. Okay. Yeah. Well, because, you know, who knows when he'll sign?

And it's the sort of thing that someone's got to get on right away. And so we've got Ben Clemens ready to go and we have Michael Berman ready to go because you got to have all your time zones accounted for. You know, Dan's ready to run up the Zips machine and get a little quick react out there. We're all set. You know? Yeah.

I'm prepared. Okay, so you're prepared. I was gonna say, you have maybe more incentive than I do to monitor that closely so you can hop on it that second. Hop on it, yeah. If one soda signs, I might be called upon to write about one soda. I think you will probably have to write, yeah. I think you're going to have to do that.

Someone certainly will at the ringer, but it's probably less imperative that I see that the instant it happens than for you. That news will wend its way to me one way or another. So not concerned about missing out on the Wonsodo signing when it happens. If the rumor consisted of Wonsodo will sign, then I would find that credible. I do believe that he will sign somewhere and maybe even in the not too distant future. But you start getting more specific and you bring in sisters, then I'm not sure how much to believe in that. And I don't care to know more. And so that's where I am. I'm not saying this is

a superior way to live one's life, but I think it is for me the superior way to live my life. And so I am enjoying being blissfully ignorant, which I think everyone who has been monitoring the one Soto rumors more closely than I am is just as ignorant as I am. So I have not actually missed out on anything, but I am excited for when the actual news arrives when he does actually sign. That will certainly be something that I will want to know more about. LS. Yeah.

The only sisters that you should be concerning yourselves with the first week of December. CB. The bad sisters? On Apple TV Plus? No? Okay. LS. No one is watching these shows but you are. And guess what? Props to you, sir, because you're keeping a whole industry alive all on your own.

What would Apple do without me? They'd probably be bankrupt by now. Yeah, I was going to say the only sisters you should be worried about in the first week of December are the Haynes sisters from White Christmas. You like Christmas music. How long have you- I do. How much Christmas music have you consumed in the last week, Ben? Quite a lot, actually. Not even of my own volition. My mom switched it on when we were in the car back from Thanksgiving. She switches

right over, got the Delilah on there with her various pablums and trying to say innocuous things and thank people for stuff. And I'm like, Delilah, just put on the music. That's what I want to hear right now. Especially when Delilah, she's making these personalized music picks for people based on the backstory that they give her of their relationships or whatever. But her choices are constrained by the Christmas music because the Christmas music is all essentially the same subject within some variants. There's only so much personalization you can do and so someone will give this heartfelt sob story how thankful they are for this or that and then a generic Christmas carol goes on, which is nice,

but I just wonder what exactly the connection to that personal testimonial was. Anyway, I'm happy that the Christmas music is back. I also have other things to talk about than rumors that I have not paid any attention to. So we are eventually gonna have to get to the golden bat, which we'll talk about in just- Golden at bat. Golden at bat, excuse me. It's not a golden bat.

It is not. It would be funny if you had to use a golden bat during the golden at bat. You know, really lean into the bit. That would probably negate the advantages of the golden at bat. Well, it negate the advantages of the golden at bat. Well, it could be golden colored, you know. Well, that's true. Yeah, it might be heavy. But then again, you'd pack a wallop if you actually made contact.

It just seems like the bat control, the bat speeds might not be there necessarily. But one thing I have been enjoying in the realm of rumors is Davy Andrews' We Tried Tracker at Fangrass, which is a phenomenon. Maybe it's giving it too much credit to call it a phenomenon, but it is a trend that we have discussed on this podcast that we tried after a team misses out on someone, then you inevitably get maybe it's a beat writer, maybe it's a national reporter, says something about how team X or team Y that did not end up signing that player tried. And sometimes the attempt is said to be more serious than others. And that's something that I think Davey is already wrestling with, what counts as we tried and the

way that he seems to be handling it currently, he has a whole tracker where he's monitoring these things and he's soliciting tips. and it's a very fun thing. I'm glad he has decided to actually track this. Maybe we can talk to him about it when it's all said and done. But he now is color coding the tried, the language of it, right? So if it's just Team X was in on someone

or if they had a Zoom with him or something, he's just recording how it's just team X was in on someone, or if they had a Zoom with him or something, he's just recording how it's reported. But I wonder what your threshold is for saying that it constitutes a WeTried. And I applaud him for, I think, taking a pretty broad definition and just throwing it all in there. And then you can sort of set the minimum level of, you know, requirement for qualifying as a, we tried wherever you want. Right.

But for you, is just saying that you were in on someone, is that enough or is it that you have to say like, well, we had an offer out or here was the terms of our offers. Like, does it have to be more substantial or can it just be sort of like, well we were interested in him, that's the weakest one and will encompass the most teams. And it's so weak that I don't even know

if they're really trying to get credit for that. Like if it's, you know, if it's like, if it's really, we tried, the idea behind it ostensibly is that they're trying to excuse their failure by saying, well, we made an effort and we didn't end up with the guy, but we were willing and he just chose someone else. And so it's sort of an excuse and sometimes a legitimate excuse

because sometimes you really do try and they just decide to sign with someone else. You might even offer the most money and they might decide to sign with someone else. You might even offer the most money and they might decide to sign with someone else. They are free agents. They can sign wherever they want. So you don't get your pick of the player if you express serious interest necessarily, but sometimes it is a face saving measure almost certainly where it's just making yourself out to have been a more serious contender than you were. So for you, what kind of clears the bar for it being an actual attempt to establish some legitimate

effort? I think that you have to have had contact with the player or his representation. I think there has to have been actual contact between you and him. Now, how substantial that contact is, I need to think about that a little bit more. But I think that you really have had to have had a conversation with the guy. It's not enough to just say, well, we had interests in him. I have interests in all kinds of things. It doesn't mean I'm gonna do it. It doesn't mean I'm gonna enter into a long-term pact of some kind. And so I think you really have to have had some real contact with the guy.

He might not say they tried, but he should say in response to the news that you have told someone we tried, yeah, I had a conversation with them. It didn't go anywhere, but we talked. I think that's required. That can just be for show, of course too. It's just kicking the tires, doing due diligence,

even establishing that there was a conversation so that you can satisfy the Meg rally requirements for a We Tried. I guess it depends what you're trying to track. I just question whether you can even hold the team accountable for the attempt, if all it is, if they were just saying to some national reporter, we were interested in him.

To me, like a real, we tried, it almost has to be we made an offer. That to me, that's like a, cause that's, that's a attempt. I mean, just talking to someone, you didn't try really. You, you talked to them and maybe they said, like one of them he was debating whether to include was A's manager, Mark Kat Katze saying that Walker Bueller didn't want to go to Sacramento, which I would imagine is not an uncommon sentiment among

players, major leaguers who want to play at major league parks. So that I guess kind of constitutes so we tried. Like if you did actually express legitimate interest and he was just like, well, no, I don't wanna play for you, then that is a we tried. That's the opposite of trying by John Fisher maybe, but it's a try by Kotze or by the A's front office. So I guess maybe it matters whether you're trying to track the weakness of the excuses.

Cause I guess if you volunteer the information at all that you were in on someone, I kind of question whether it's the team volunteering this always or whether sometimes it works the other way where it's the reporter probing and saying, were you in on? Cause I wouldn't fault the team if John Heyman or someone is going to the front office and saying, were you in on that guy? And then they're grudgingly saying, yeah, we were interested in him. And then Heyman tweets, they were in on him. That seems like sort of a no fault thing to me for the team, unless they really, they knew he was going to put that out there and they were just waiting for him to come to them? Right. I guess like so much of it always reads as artifice to me that I'm struggling to

like get worked up at the notion that does this constitute real effort or not? And it's like, well, I don't know. You had to schedule a phone call. These are busy people. So it's something. Clearly it's insufficient effort, right? Because you didn't get the deal done. And it's not even effort that would lead you to say that you were left at the altar or whatever. Yeah. If you just called to say, Hey, what are you looking for? And then they say, say to figure and you say, Oh, too rich for my blood. Well, you didn't try. You inquired and then you decided not to try. Yeah, that's fair. But if you called and you were like, hey, maybe we can get something done. And

then Walker Buehler says, I'm not living in Sacramento. I can just watch Lady Bird again. That strikes me as different. So I think you have to evaluate both the action of the team and then what they have the ability to react to, like what they are being given on the other side of this two-way conversation with a player who has agency potentially for the first time, because you can make a sincere effort. And then again, Walker Buehler can say,

I don't wanna play there. And you didn't get an opportunity to try more, but maybe you would have, but you're like, I don't want to be a stalker. That seems like we've got enough problems organizationally without that accusation. If you did make an offer, I think you legitimately tried. I suppose it could just be a smokescreen still. It could be an offer that you knew wasn't going to be accepted and you just did it so that you could say we tried, but that's a little more elaborate.

And at least there was some risk that that player might have taken that low ball offer you, you technically tried. So anything short of that, I don't know that I would say it qualifies as we tried. And so therefore maybe it's even more in the spirit of what Davey is doing, that you should track the ones where it's less legitimate. If you say, well, we actually made a competitive offer for him and he just chose the other team, well, you actually did try, I wouldn't say that's just an excuse, so maybe you really want to track the ones that are even more mealy

mouthed, but it's just, you know, it's hard to know the provenance of these reports. Right. I find it to be such a funny instinct because let's imagine you're really trying to get a guy, right? Like you, you're the giants and you have a jersey ready, you know, you're prepared to call your press conference. He likes to go somewhere else or you find something in the medical that you decide you just can't live with. I get wanting to call your press conference. He likes to go somewhere else or you find something in the medical that you decide you just can't live with. I get wanting to say, like, believe us, we wanna make this team better.

We're working really hard to make this team better. But I think that at a certain point, fans just don't care. They don't care how hard you're trying. They wanna see that proof in the pudding. They want to see, that's an odd expression. Is it like proofing? Like that's not, you don't proof pudding like in a baking way. That's such a weird expression.

But anyhow, like at a certain point, the level of effort doesn't matter. And I would even go so far as to suggest Ben, that at a certain point, if you're trying really, really hard and you can't get any of these guys to sign, that's almost worse because that suggests the dreaded phrase of our time, a skill issue. And fans don't have a lot of patience for skill issue, you know, they don't have a lot

of patience for failed attempts and they really don't have any patience for you can continuously failing to get Impact players signed into the organization. So it's a it's an interesting thing to insist upon Sharing or to volunteer if as you're suggesting there are instances where it is being Solicited by a reporter rather than you saying no, we tried. You put it in the paper that we tried. So it's a funny thing. CBer Yeah. The original full expression was the proof of the pudding is in the eating. So that makes it more clear. LSF Oh, okay. That makes more sense. Yeah, that makes

way more sense. I'm no longer confused. Thank you. CBer Yeah. We shouldn't have abridged it. We should keep the full thing. Because proofing is like a thing in cooking. And so to say the proof is in the pudding, it's like, well, but I would also perhaps offer that Brits use pudding differently than we do. And so in some of those instances, maybe you would proof that pudding. Proof that pudding. Proof it then. There were some teams that tried and succeeded. There have been a few signings since we last spoke.

So the Mets tried to sign Frankie Montaz and they did. And the Cubs tried to sign Matthew Boyd and they did. And the Red Sox and Rangers tried to sign Aroroldis Chapman and Kyle Higashioka respectively, and they succeeded. Also the Dodgers extended Tommy Edmond. So all of those things happened. And if you have takes on Montaz or Boyd or Chapman or Higashioka, please feel free to fire them off.

But my collective take about all of the activity that we've seen so far is that spending is not down. There's no evidence thus far that teams are reeling in the spending based on concerns about RSNs and less broadcast revenue, which was a worry that there would be legitimately less revenue and also that there would be legitimately less revenue. And also that there would be some owners who use that as a pretense not to try, but thus far with the signings that we've seen, those I mentioned and then Blake Snell and Yusei Kikuchi and Travis Darnoe, all of these deals just about are coming in at or above the projected amounts. So I just summed up the significant signings. I guess there have been seven signings of

players who were on either the MLB Trade Rumors or FanGraphs top 50 free agent lists, if not both. So I defaulted to the FanGraphs one if a player was on both or if a player appeared on the fan graphs list at all. So, Roldis Chapman, he signed for 10.75 million. Ben Clemens had him at 10. The crowd had him at 10 also. That's the median crowd source estimate. Frankie Montas, Clemens had him at 24. Crowd at 26, he signed for 34. Snell, Clemens had him at 105. Croud at 120, he signed for 182. And yeah, net present value a little lower maybe, but not that much lower, still higher than the estimates.

Kukuchi, Clemens at 51, Croud at 54, actual 61. Darnow did not qualify for the Fangrass free agent list because he was not yet a free agent in time. The Braves hadn't declined his option. And I will say that there had been reporting that they were picking up that option, which is why he wasn't on our list, okay? We didn't make a mistake.

There was reporting and we went on the reporting and then they changed their little minds. Yes. And it made me very stressed that I had made an error, but I don't think I did but I don't think I did. I don't think I did. Well, helpfully, Ben in the text did include what the estimates would have been if he had appeared on the list and Clemens would have had him at 8 million, Crowd at 7, he signed

for 12. Because we did Crowd source on him. Yeah. And then the other two guys who signed who I believe were not on the Fangrass Top 50, Higashi Oka was on the MLB Trade Rumors list, projected 15 million. He signed for 13 and a half, so he's the only one who was under and just barely. And then Boyd, MLB Trade Rumors had it 25 and he signed for 29. So these aren't enormous margins, but if we add up these seven players,

they have collectively gotten $342.25 million committed to them. And the totals of the Clemens plus MLB trade rumors estimates were 238 million, so just under a hundred million less than they actually got. And that's a pretty big percentage here. We're talking about 238 projected, 342 and a quarter received. So maybe we should have taken more overs in our MLB Trader's top 50 for agents over under draft potentially. But I don't know what to make of this, whether this is just skewed because these are the first guys to sign.

And so maybe they just happened to be the guys who got good offers and snapped them up and jumped to them. And maybe these dollar figures will come down as the offseason proceeds, or maybe the rumors of the demise of revenue or owners being squirrely about that were exaggerated somewhat. Yeah, I do find reason to be optimistic on this score because I mean Snell, like Snell is acknowledged to be one of the best available starters in this class, set aside what we may think of him in terms of the aesthetic experience of watching him.

He was a top of the market guy. That can't be said for most of these other signings, right? And I don't say that like they're bad players, but like for instance, Matthew Boyd didn't rank on our top 50 and neither did Higashioka. And although I think both of them were highlighted as free agents who other members of the staff would have included if they had been in charge of the rankings. But you know, like Matthew Boyd, he's a back of the rotation guy. He was thrust into a bigger role than that with

Cleveland and he performed admirably, but ideally he's like your fourth starter, right? The same can sort of be said for some of these other guys where they're not in the very top tier. And so for, for them to be exceeding expectation in this way, for, you know, for Montas to have gotten this kind of money from the Mets for Higashioka to have done well, for Chapman to have done well, where, you know, I think you can say what you want about where he sits as a reliever now. He's still useful, but he's not the guy he was. All of that to me seems very optimistic. Now, you know, I think it's useful to note that like the Mets have money to spend and they seem

keen to spend it. So are they paying some kind of premium? Maybe just to get the guys that they like best. I guess that's possible. The Cubs have sort of been squirrely about their ability to spend in the past, but they're a team that should be spending and should be spending sort of at the top of the market. So maybe you want to discount it slightly. It's not like we're not seeing the guardians come in with a deal that is 10 million above market and then we could say, oh gosh, I guess everybody has money to blow this winter. But I think the fact that guys who are not at the very tip top of the market are doing well seems, that seems good.

That seems good, Ben. The strike's knee is good. Now, the bottom could fall out of the rest of it and then a couple of weeks from now we'll be sitting here wondering like what the state of affairs is going to be for the league going forward. But I don't know, these early returns seem good. So that's good. That's good. I'd rather miss the other direction. I'd rather come in below all of these estimates and just get blown out of the water in our contract draft than the opposite. It's nice when these guys make their money. Imagine, you're Matthew Boyd. What a winding road you have traveled in your big league career. You've had to deal with going from team to team and injury and like, you know,

sort of an uncertain situation. It's nice to get two years of certainty and to have that done in December so that you're not signing in the, you know, in the, what he signed in like the middle of the year with Cleveland. So like, that's great. That's great. I'm so happy for Matthew Boyd. I'm happy for Frankie Montez. I'm happy for all. Like, it's great. I think Cubs fans would probably be happier if they felt like they were in the market for superior pitchers as well. It just-

Well, maybe they are. You don't know. Maybe they are. We don't know. The messaging out of them and again, you just- Oh, have they been, see, I didn't pay attention to any of this. You, you, I think there's been a sort of a preemptive, only the Soto rumors, but you were like, I got to hone in on those cubs. Yeah. Well,

I think probably because there haven't been any cubs Soto rumors because the cubs have kind of issued a preemptive, we won't try. It seems like when it comes to the top guys on the market, that's the sense that I'm getting. And I don't really understand why that is given their resources and their place in the division. And competitively speaking, it seems like they should absolutely be a team that's going for it.

And they just, they haven't really, other than Danesby Swanson, who was what? The fourth best shortstop or something on the market that year. They have not really broken the bank lately for the top guys. And they have Bellinger I guess, but they, yeah, they should probably be mentioned among these other teams when it comes to the top guys. And it seems like they're not as often. It should be.

But the Edmund deal, I think a lot of people, I think, were kind of taken aback a bit by that dollar figure because it was five years and 74 million. That takes him through 2029 and then there's a club option for 2030 for 13 million with a buyout. And it's one of these deals where 25 million is deferred, but there's a $17 million signing bonus. Dodger's just making everything increasingly complicated for John Becker and all the rest of us. So he has concluded, John, that is that the final present value for Edmund

The final present value for Edmund is more like 65.2 million for 13 per year AAV for CBT purposes. When you put it that way, I think it seems quite reasonable. It seems fine. Yeah, totally. And not just because they're the Dodgers and they can afford Tommy Edmund, but because he fits them well. He's the kind of player that they've had for quite a while, the Chris Taylor types who maybe are not up to snuff anymore, and Edmond, they set their sights

on him. They made a move for him. He was fantastic for them in the playoffs, obviously, and he's just a solid player and he can play short and center field. And that is true super utility play. There aren't that many players who have that skill set, who can play multiple up the middle positions in field and outfield fairly adeptly and also have a decent bat. So that's a nice player to have around. Yeah. And particularly, I thought that this point that Bauman made in his write-up of the extension was well put. They have had this kind of guy on the roster for a long time. They love their super utility dudes. I think that the necessity for that kind of player and one who can play a good up the middle position, ways greater now because you're not putting Otani

in the outfield, right? So he is just a full-time, fully entrenched DH. And you can't really move Freeman off of first base. And so your ability to like hide a bat in a position is somewhat limited because you just have those guys and hey, what a great problem to have, right? You're not mad that you're penciling Freddie Freeman and Shohei Otani into your lineup every day, but to be able to concentrate that kind of defensive versatility in one guy, I think is particularly valuable to them at this point in

their roster construction because you can't have Otani go fake it in the outfield, so you can't use DH to like put a bat somewhere. So it's good. It's good, Ben. I like it. People were freaking out and I do, you know, I was a little snarky about this at the beginning. I do think that the skill issue thing is sort of overplayed as a phrase. I'm getting sick of it.

I want us to come up with a new phrase. It is a skill issue to default to that same phrase over and over again, verbally. I know. I find myself in a real bind, but I do think that it has some explanatory power when it comes to the Dodgers because look, it's good for us to think about the competitive balance of the league. And I think that it's useful for us to make sure that not all of the best players end up on the same team, but guess what?

They can't all end up on the same team because there are more than 26 of them in baseball and you only get the 26 roster spots, right? So at least on the active roster, you have your 40 man, right? But I just have so little sympathy for the people who get twisted up in knots about this sort of thing. It's like, first of all, you are allowed to do deferrals also. That is not something that is like the sole province of the Los Angeles Dodgers. And there's this idea that like you're somehow cheating by deploying financial resources that are available to you. And when you're assembling a good ball club, baseball is so hard, right?

You don't, you don't need to make it harder by constraining yourself to only drafting and developing and then what you're able to do, uh, from a trade perspective, it's good to be good at those things. The Dodgers are good at those things as part of why they're such an exemplary organization, because they are good at those things. And also they seemingly just are not worried about, there's something really optimistic about the amount of deferrals that the Dodgers have lined up actually, because they are

counting on remaining very rich, which seems like a good bet, and civilization persisting long enough to have to deal with those contracts. Or maybe it's profoundly pessimistic because they're going to be just like, whatever. We're not going to have to pay those. Society will break down. Right. We're going to be fighting the water wars by the time we have to pay Otanian. Exactly. Right. And the details about Snell's contract came out per the AP. His contract, his deferrals run through 2046 and it's 66 million of his 182 million deferred. And according to John Becker of Fangraph's calculations, that brings the final present value for his 182 down to 156.8 or an AAV for CBT purposes of 31.4. So it

does bring the numbers down, but again, anyone can do this. The Dodgers didn't invent deferrals. I've been meaning to do a deeper dive on the history of deferrals and maybe I will on an upcoming episode because these things go back like 50 years. Like this is not a new tactic and the Dodgers have been doing a bunch of them lately. I think basically the Otani deferrals broke people's brains, which I get if you're not in the weeds on this stuff because that was a unique contract and it was hard for people to parse if you're not really listening to Effectively Wild or reading fan graphs. Hey, I'm here to tell you that if you are listening to Effectively Wild and you're

reading fan graphs and you still found it hard to track, that's okay. That doesn't make you a lesser in any way. It was complicated. Yeah. It was complicated. But Otani's deal, A, the conclusions that people drew about that, that yes, he did kind of take a short-term cut to help the Dodgers, but also they had to put all that money in an account, in an escrow account.

There's all these complicating factors. And of course, he is just a unique player in terms of his endorsement dollars that made that palatable to him. So you could almost put that contract in a separate category from all of the other contracts that they've signed that have included deferrals. So I think there's just still a lingering perception that there was something underhanded that the Dodgers did there and that they got this unfair advantage. And Otani, by the way, was talking to his other suitors with the same framework.

And ultimately he chose the Dodgers, but he was bandying about the same contract structure to the other teams he was talking to. So it wasn't just specific to the Dodgers. So I don't know exactly why the Dodgers have seemingly doubled down on this lately, but again, anyone could do it and it's not a new idea. The one thing that has kind of confused me

is this apparent recent trend, maybe trend lit, towards deferrals and signing bonuses in the same deal, which is a quality of both the Snell and Edmund deals that they both got deferrals, but then they also got signing bonuses, which seems extra complicated because the deferrals bring the net present value down because you're distributing that money over a longer period of time and you don't have to give those millions to the player until those millions are worthless in purchasing power. but then

the signing bonus does the opposite. You're sort of front loading and giving them that money now. And so I was wondering, well, why combine both of those tactics in the same deal? Why not just do less of a deferral and don't bother with the signing bonus? So I asked John Becker of FanGraphs about that and he just sent me a response which I will read aloud in real time here. I think there are multiple levers here. Teams as rich as the Dodgers can afford to cut Snell a check for 52 million on January 20th and it makes no difference to their competitive balance tax hit whether they paid him all in one go or if they just spread that 52 million out over the life of the deal. Conversely, because of the time value of money, 52 million now is worth more to Snell than

10.4 million a year for five years, even if the league doesn't see a difference for CBT calculations. I think that makes players more amenable to deferred payments since they're getting cut a massive check a month after they sign the contract on the deferral end of it for the Dodgers. The benefit to them is of course lowering the CBT hit while also spreading out cash flow for longer. That's something that teams who would or could be changing hands wouldn't want to do, but

the Dodgers are presumably confident that Guggenheim baseball will continue to own the team for a long time. So that's his explanation. He has thought about that more than I have. That seems reasonable. So if you were wondering about that as I was, then that could be the answer. One last thing I wanted to say before we get to the golden ticket and the golden at bat is that there was a report as there always is an annual report issued about the drug testing in the past year. And the interesting thing to me about this wasn't the scarcity of positive suspensions, there weren't a lot of them, but the decline in therapeutic use exemptions, that's actually kind of interesting to me,

because there has been a pretty dramatic decline in the number of players who are getting therapeutic use exemptions. And there were various things that you could get a TUE for, but a lot of them were for ADD or ADHD. And there was a lot of reporting and consternation among players even about the number of players who were getting these therapeutic use exemptions. And the implication was that maybe they were finagling drugs that they weren't entirely entitled to. Maybe they didn't, because it was a fairly significant percentage of all players who were getting these therapeutic use exemptions.

And I know that prescriptions and diagnoses of ADD, et cetera, have been up just in general, not just in baseball, but it still was pretty disproportionate. I think Russell Carlton has written about that too. And it has come down pretty dramatically lately as the scrutiny has increased because it was those numbers were going up and up and it was raising some eyebrows and people were saying, are there just kind of Dr. Feelgood, Dr. Robert, you know, who will give you the prescription so that you can get the

therapeutic use exemption. And players were saying, maybe this is just like a legal way to get greenies, basically. And so this seemed like, you know, maybe it's a loophole. Obviously, you don't want to deprive anyone of like treatment that they should be receiving, but also it was just a disproportionate number of players seemingly. And it was just 65 in this most recent report, 65 players got TUEs with 61 of them going to players on ADHD drugs. And this is like half of what it was not that long ago. Yeah. And there aren't fewer players now. If anything, there are more players. So like in 2014, they were 112 TUEs, 2015, there were 113. It was getting up to basically like double where it is now. And I don't know exactly

how they have cut down on that, assuming it's not just like doctors legitimately prescribing these things less often because they're just not merited or whether there has been some kind of scrutiny or crackdown, but that's interesting. It doesn't seem like something that would have happened just on its own. Yeah, I don't quite know how to account for that either. I guess it's possible that there's been great advances in dodging tests, but I don't know how to account for the therapeutic use, but you'd expect there to be some increase, you know, because like you said, there's just an increase in diagnosis. And so I don't know why that would be different in the baseball playing population than it would be in the population

overall. But yeah, it is a bit odd, isn't it? All right. I guess that brings us finally to the golden at bat. Okay. So like what a way to find out that the commissioner also star podcast, you know? I'm kidding. Kind of. No, this is very effectively wild coded here. In fact, I thought we had discussed this specific hypothetical at length. Yeah. I was looking for when we did and I now doubt that we did at great length. I was talking to Raymond Chen, keeper of the Effectively Wild Wiki, and he actually has transcripts, automated transcripts generated on a lot of episodes. And so he was able to find an aside, a reference to it in episode 2172. We talked about the

Savannah bananas doing this golden at bat style thing, but it doesn't seem like we ever actually talked about it in full. But who knows, maybe it was some long ago hypothetical because this has been floating around for a while. But the idea is, this is something that Rob Manfred, he ran up the public flagpole on a podcast a couple of weeks ago, and then Jason Stark wrote a deep dive into how this would work and whether it's a good idea and talked to a lot of front office people and players and field staff about it. And so this has been making the rounds. It's kind of a classic.

It's early December. It's around Thanksgiving. It's pre-winter meetings. Not much is happening. This is a good time to have this sort of discussion. But the very concept has gotten people riled up. All worked up. It's been the talk of baseball.

Here's the thing. I read this article and I was trying to, my initial reaction, and spoiler, I have not come around to this idea. So no one get all worked up. I'm going to remain sort of skeptical of this and think it around to this idea. So no one get all worked up. I'm gonna remain sort of skeptical of this and think it's a bad idea. But I was trying to account to myself for why, what about this is different in my base reaction to it

than the pitch clock? Because you could argue, right, that one of the things that was distinctly baseball that was foundational to our that was, you know, foundational to our understanding of how time passes in the sport is that it was, it was untimed. Right? And it is still sort of, right? There's no running game clock, but we have this pitch clock and you have to account for the pitch clock and you

get, you know, dinged with balls if you don't, if you're the pitcher. So to go from a completely untimed experience to one that has the intervention of the clock in some regard is a pretty profound change to the sport. So what about that is different than this kind of intervention where you can interject an ideal matchup, right? Quote, unquote. Yeah. We should explain what this is. If people somehow have avoided this, I just sort of assumed everyone is hearing the same sort of gossip and consternation that we are. But the idea of the Goldenet Bat is that you, and the specifics vary, but you can put a better batter up in certain situations who is not do up in the order. So

it could be you get one golden at bat a game. Maybe you get it if you're trailing in the ninth inning. That was Jason's preferred way to implement this. You could limit it. It could be like a, you know, last resort sort of thing so that it's not happening that often. But that's the idea. You break the batting order, one of these fundamental laws of baseball, and you can send up your good hitter in this high leverage moment when he otherwise would not be batting. When he otherwise would not be batting. The idea being that you can architect the, you know, Ohtani Mike Trout matchup that we saw at the end of the WBC, right?

Which everyone agreed was like this wonderful thing. And guess what? I agree. It was this wonderful thing. You know, so what about that? What about that intervention is different from the pitch clock, which I was enthusiastic about and remain a fan of.

What about this is different than the use of the challenge system? Where one of the things I have noted in my advocacy for the challenge system, which remains perfect is that it interjects strategy into the game. And that's fun. It's fun to have strategy and to have to, you know, get good at something and to see how teams are going to react to that and when they deploy their challenges and not. And it would be interesting depending on the implementation of this role, which as an aside, like seems if it ever happens years away, um, in terms of it making its way to the majors, but depending on the version of

it that you would see, do you, as Jason notes in his column, do you use your golden at bat in the second inning with the bases loaded because you have the opportunity to blow the game open. Right. And so I was trying, I was wrestling with that. Like what about this is different? Why do I have this aversion to it? And part of it is we already have a mechanism to monkey with the batting order. It's called pinch hitting, right? We already have that. And so sure, are benches generally much shallower

than they've been in prior eras? Yeah, they have been, they are. Do you necessarily have your best guy available to you in a pinch hitting situation? Probably not. Your best guy is probably already playing. But there is a means by which teams can say, we are not satisfied with this matchup. We want a better one. And so guess what? I'm calling in a pinch hitter. And I like that that decision is constrained by the quality of the roster you have and that it doesn't artificially alter the batting order, which Jason acknowledges would be potentially a side effect of this, that you could use your golden at bat, that hitter could make

an out and then maybe he's just up again. And I was like, wait a minute, he doesn't get to go twice. It's crazy. This is baseball. I also think, and then I'm going to let you talk because I'm kind of, I'm still working through the good argument for why this sucks because I feel confident that it does, but I want to be able to in, in the situation where I find myself in the security line at Dallas Fort Worth and Morgan Sword is there and I have to say, Hey Morgan, can I bend your ear

for a minute? I happened to run into him in the security line in Nashville last year. This is not unprecedented. And then I was like, I hope he doesn't listen to the pod because I'm worried about your name. Anyway, neither here nor there. I've lost my train of thought because I went down a Morgan cul-de-sac. Jason makes the point in his column and I don't, you know, I haven't listened to Manfred's

podcast appearance. Weird sentence. So I don't know if Manfred is bringing this particular argument to bear, but there's this notion in Jason's column. And I think among the people who he talked to, um, that like other sports get to engineer these moments much more, um, than baseball. And that's true, but only kind of, right? Because he's like, if you're in the super Bowl, you just get to put the ball in Patrick

Mahomes' hands in the biggest moment. And it's like, well, you do if the Chiefs have the ball, but they don't always, right? The amount of intervention that we allow in other sports might be bigger than it is in baseball, but it's still limited by the game state. You don't get to say, hey, you know, you're driving and that's exciting for you, but we'd like LeBron to have the ball now, so we're changing the possession arrow. No, that's not a thing. And so we already see some amount of game state sort of control coming to bear and we give baseball managers the ability to maneuver within that a little bit already and I would rather see teams commit

to better benches than this weird business. I also think, sorry, I am going to let you talk, I swear. I also think that this both overstates the degree to which putting a better hitter in that circumstance results in a good outcome for the hitting team and understates how cool it is when a less renowned guy comes up big in a big moment, you know? There's a lot to be said for your Mike Trouts and your Machados and your Otanis. That's all very exciting, right? We want to see the bat in Wonsodo's hand, but it's also cool when like your backup catcher ends up being the dude who wins you a playoff game. And does that happen every time? No, but guess what? You know, Wonsoto doesn't hit a home run every time either. So there.

CB Yeah. I have a lot of thoughts too. JG Tell me. CB And first of all, I guess I should say that I think a lot of these things are total trial balloons. And the purpose of this is you float it up and then people shoot it down and you say, oh, okay, maybe we shouldn't push on that one. Remember a few months ago when Jesse Rogers reported that people were talking about six inning minimum for starters and we all got up in arms about that? I haven't heard a whisper about it since

and even then it was very vague. It was like people around the league have discussed or something. It wasn't anything official. This, there's a little more substance to it because Manfred himself brought it up and the way that he phrased it was there was a lot of buzz about it at the owner's meetings. But again, the fact that he chose to publicize that buzz maybe suggests that he wants to see which way the wind is blowing if this gets put out there.

And I guess that does suggest that he might have legitimate interest in it if he wants to gauge what the reaction would be if it were to be serious. So that's just to say, there might be not that much substance to this and we're working ourselves up over not that much. But when the commissioner says something, you know, in the past, he has expressed his desire

to do certain things that he subsequently did. So you gotta take it somewhat did. So you got to take it somewhat seriously. So I think if you're wrestling with why is this different from the pitch clock, I do think it is significantly different from the pitch clock because A, the pitch clock, the time between pitches was already on the books. It wasn't enforced, obviously, but there was a rule about how long you could take between pitches. And so the pitch clock was just enforcing a rule that was already in place and had been in place for a long time and just was not policed. So it wasn't really actually changing anything fundamental

about baseball in that sense. I know it was widely perceived to be and in a way it was because you did have an actual clock counting down. And then again, it didn't do away with that. Well, baseball could be infinite nature entirely because you could still just continue to hit foul balls forever. You could keep walking. You could like, there is no end time. It's not like in another sport where the clock is counting down and it counts down to zero and then the game is over. And then it's done. Yeah, your unit of time essentially is still out. And if you keep not making them, then you can extend the game indefinitely. With the pitch clock and the zombie runner and everything, MLB has certainly made it

much harder to do that. But it is still not fundamentally altered in that way, I would say. And also, the pitch clock was returning baseball to the way it used to be. It was trimming time off that had been added. Whereas this is fundamentally overhauling something that really hasn't worked this way at all. And so it's not, let's roll back the way things were

a few decades ago. This is, let's pretty fundamentally change something about the sport that makes baseball baseball. Right. And you could determine, well, that's not a great aspect of baseball and maybe it should be changed and it would be more entertaining. And I have been wrestling with that myself because yes, you're right. In other sports, there are still some constraints, but a lot fewer, at least

in some sports in basketball and football. Like if you are on offense, then you can distribute the ball the way you want to. You can't just decide spontaneously to be on offense and magically you are. But when you are, you can hand the ball off. You can have your great quarterback throw. You can give the ball to your best shooter in basketball. Right. So there is a lot more leeway there and arguably that is more entertaining.

There are certainly times when it is more entertaining and there are probably times when I lament that if you have some scrub up in a high leverage situation making the last out, yeah, it's super exciting if that guy comes through improbably, but he's probably not going to. That's the whole reason why it's improbable why he does. And then that's kind of a dud. And you might think, well, wouldn't it have been cool if you could have had a better batter up there?

And yeah, in a way it would have. I think if you just impose that now, it would seem sort of cheap, right? It wouldn't seem as special because the magical thing about Trapp-Nottani was that everything had to work out just so in order for that to happen, for those circumstances to transpire. And so if you could engineer that more often, it would be less special. Now, maybe it would still be more special than the matchup you'd get as an alternative. So maybe you're letting the perfect be the enemy of the good there. Another thing I was thinking is, well, am I making the same argument that people used to make in favor of pitcher batting when

they would say, yeah, pitchers are bad at batting, but isn't it magical when Bartolo Colon hits a home run? It's even more special because it's so rare. And yeah, it was cool when that happened once, but it just, it happened so rarely that it wasn't worth it to me. But fundamentally, is that the same principle saying, well, yeah, you get heroes, you didn't expect to be heroes. And that's cool. Wouldn't it be boring if the hero were always the star? Isn't there some value in variety?

But then am I saying that it's actually worth watching worse guys flail? And maybe it is, but is that some sort of just like, austerity, is that some like puritan desire to deny ourselves pleasure or something? Cause that's the way it's always been. And like, that's the way baseball works, you know, tough luck. These other sports, uh, they don't have it as hard as we do where, you know, things don't magically line up that way that often.

And maybe I'm just being stubborn and purist about it. Well, I think a couple of things about that because it's a good, it's a good argument to be prepared to counter. I think the first is that the gap between like your least good, either starter or pinch hitting option relative to the best guy on your team, it might be significant, but in terms of the gap between that guy and like a league average hitter,

it is maybe non-existent relative to what a pitcher would be, right? Pitchers were, I'm gonna do a swear, dog at hitting. They were so bad, they were unplayable. If they were purely hitters, they would be non-prospects. That's how bad they were at it, right? There were a couple of exceptions to that, but there weren't very many.

They were bad. They were bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. We got a lot of questions about like the slippery slope of the DH and what should we have designated hitters for catchers or short stops or some other offensively weak position. They are so far and above. So much better.

How good or bad pitchers were the worst offensive position, just so much more competent offensively than pitchers were collectively by the end. Wild, wild gap, a wild, wild gap. So I think that that's important to stay. I also think that like this to me, give me a second to try this argument on, because I might talk myself out of it. But you know, baseball is already in a way that makes it very different than football or basketball or probably soccer. I say probably because I just don't know the sport well enough,

but I think I'm right. You have an individual matchup taking place within a team sport. And we like that blend, right? That you have the hitter squaring off against the pitcher and the two guys are locked in battle. But to me, this sort of fundamentally misunderstands what that balance should be because it's still a team sport, right? And I think that it's good for teams to have to, you know, construct their rosters in such a way that they don't have an absolute zero sitting in their lineup from a hitting perspective, right? And this, you know, one at bat in a game isn't probably enough on its own to completely upend that.

But I think we want these decisions to be geared toward teams putting good guys out there, right? Putting guys out there who you can stomach, taking an important at bat. And if you can't, that you have a bench option who you think is a meaningful upgrade in that situation and you go and say, get your bat buddy. You know, like buddy, that's a name that men have or a nickname they have sometimes, right? That's a thing that a coach would say, buddy. And so I, I think that this kind of tips the balance in a way that I'm not comfortable with because I want, I want to continue to have the tense, you know, postseason moments where the camera feels compelled to

zoom in on the hitter and then look at the pitcher and he's wiping his brow and what are they going to do? But when you zoom out, you see a team and that's, you know, that's important to our understanding of the sport. So does that, is that a compelling argument? Should I try that one on Morgan in the security line at DFW? CBer It'd be a bummer if you were the guy who knew you'd never get to bad in that situation because you're not good. And again, in the past, maybe you just would have been pinched for and the effect would have been the same. But there might be some ruffled feathers and

some bad blood and you'd have to look, they would test this in the miners for years, of course, and exhibitions, and they'd get people used to the idea. And maybe you could sell it as, well, don't you want to win? You got to put the team first. And sometimes that means giving up your at-bat to the better player. But I wonder what this does even from a labor perspective

in terms of the distribution of salaries. If you limit it so it doesn't happen that often, maybe it doesn't totally destabilize everything, but you would definitely have the superstars being just more valuable because they would just get more high leverage plate appearances. I don't know, depending on how you implemented this,

maybe it wouldn't be enough to really skew historic stats because guys would just be getting way more plate appearances if you're Aaron Judge or Juan Soto or someone. If you're just coming up to the plate way more often than one normally would, then are we gonna have issues with historical comparisons across eras because of the inconsistent conditions there? When I was trying to steel man this,

not strongly as we established. No one's ever gotten that wrong. I don't know why you would pretend that they had. Just in case someone was confused. I was thinking, well, wasn't I the guy who not long ago was pretty anti-intentional walk because I didn't want the bat to be taken out of the better batter's hands.

And I wasn't saying let's engineer more of those matchups. I was just saying, let's not lose the ones that we're lucky enough to get. And is there some way that we could get around this or disincentivize intentional walk so that when we do get fortuitously one of these exciting better pitcher matchups, then it's not done away with by just a free pass. So the desire is there on my part. I sympathize with the desire to have more of those exciting matchups.

And I do think you could make the case that that is a selling point of other sports relative to baseball. And yeah, even if it were more common, it would be less special each individual time it happened, but it would still happen more times and the total specialness would probably be increased. But it does just fundamentally upset me on some levels. So I am interrogating my own reaction to this to make sure it is not just reflexive. It's always been done this way, but I'm with you also in that,

well, aren't there other methods we could explore here that are less dramatic, less going against a fundamental law of the sport. Like if it is that we want better batters up in those situations, yeah, why not do something that would help encourage teams to bring back the pinch hitter? And here, of course, I'm going to get on my hobby horse because it happens to line up with what I already think should happen, which is limit the number of pitchers on the active roster.

And if you have fewer pitchers on the roster, then you have more room to carry a better bench bat who's limited in some way, but maybe would be that guy that you could bring out there. So this is something I already support that would help with this a little bit. And then, you know, there are other things you could do if this is about increasing offense or something. Well, again, I think there are less drastic interventions. So if it's about creating more exciting moments, okay, that's somewhat persuasive. But I do worry, you know, if you're sort of

sanding down all the elements that make your sport distinctive and you're chasing like, oh, we want to borrow this thing from that sport and borrow that thing from that sport. And maybe that could be smart on some level, like, hey, if there's something entertaining about that sport and you could import some of that into your game and it's more exciting for everyone, okay, why be bound by tradition? But I think you could take that too far where you just, you'll lose what makes you unique in that connection to history and tradition

because you're just chasing the latest trends, right? Yes, and this is the other thing, thank you. This is the other thought I had where I was like, you know, this comp might be a little bit muddled, but it's like, this feels like the equivalent of getting bangs after a bad breakup Where it's like if I saw a friend doing this I would be like are you okay? The sport is doing well, you know the pitch clock worked really well

I think a lot of people are excited about baseball have some self-respect You don't need to do this like gimmicky. I'm gonna do another swear bullshit To attract who you know if they want to do this gimmicky, I'm gonna do another swear, bullshit to detract who. If they wanna do this in the All-Star game, go to town. Or the Savannah Bananas by all means. This is what the Bananas are for. Yeah. Right.

I'm totally fine with that. I think that if it's an exhibition play, the entire point of the All-Star game is to get the very best guys and also whoever plays for the Rockies together and say, we're gonna match you up and you don't normally play together, but guess what? Now you get to and that's fun and exciting. But it is understood to be artificial. It is understood to be architected. This is different in that it changes the state of play from what it has been for a really long time. For what?

It's like, it feels clickbaity, you know? So no, I do think, Ben, it's worth investigating if we should be letting white men go on podcasts anymore, because some of the ideas that you guys cook up on those, you know, I have notes. We're gonna get emails about that. You'd have to get a lot of co-hosts,, a lot of fill-ins if we banned me from Effectively Wild. I'm not saying every one, but I'm just saying I'm not the first person to tell the

joke that what do you call a group of white guys, a podcast? Like you have a Murderer Crows, you have a podcast of a guy. Yes, particularly in the sports world and the baseball world. Yes. But yeah, if they wanted to test this in exhibitions, okay, I have no problem with that other than does this then normalize it and it's one step closer to actually implementing it in real games. I do think you need it a little less in the All-Star game because everyone's an All-Star. So even if it's your one representative, that guy's still going to be better than the guy that you're using the golden at bat for in a regular game usually. And also we could go back to just like leaving the starters in the All-Star game longer if we wanted them to be in the game later. Like that's the way it used to work.

And I get that maybe it's nice for each individual fan base to see their guy out there to the extent that anyone particularly pays attention to the All-Star game or cares about that representation anymore. But yeah, I mean, sure. It seems like more palatable, but also less interesting even to me in that context. So, I don't know, it makes me deeply uneasy. And so I have been examining my own feelings about why that is and I trust that impulse

to some extent. Like if this makes me feel like, no, this I reject this instinctively. This is not baseball. You know, you gotta listen to that gut feeling sometimes, but also you don't want to just solely default to this makes me uncomfortable because it's new and different. But yeah, continuing to explore it.

I'm just not sure that the juice is worth the squeeze here. Yeah, I don't care for it. I think it feels gimmicky. I think it feels forced. I think that the sport should just sit with the triumph of the pitch clock for a little while and then think about whether it really needs to do anything. Because I think that the answer to that is going to be no. So I don't, I don't, I don't like it. I know. I get the impulse to strike while the iron is hot, while you're still in the afterglow of the pitch clock success.

And you could say, well, let's back off a bit and let's not rock the boat too much. And this happened and now we can take a bit of a break here. And of course they have other initiatives they're working on and they have the challenge system and everything on the way. So they don't want to use up all their political capital on something like this necessarily, but you could say, well, that's the best time to act. Once you finally overcome that resistance to doing something drastic, if you do it and it works, passes with flying colors, then you say, Hey, okay, that was nothing to be scared about.

Let's try something else while this is still new. And we're thinking of this as a recent example of a somewhat risky rule change paying off. Mostly I feel betrayed by this. And let me, you're like, please say more. You know, we have been over the years quite critical of Rob Manfred, but I think one area where we have sort of defended him is that we're open to there being change in the game and we think that the tinkering impulse comes from what is ultimately a good place, right?

That it is good for us to not rest on our laurels and assume that the game can just continue on as it always has. And we've defended him. And then he goes and he says this and I feel like, why did I do that? I gave too much rope. If I had known he was going to use that goodwill to propose nonsense like this, I would have just said the pitch clock was bad, even though I don't think it is. I mean, I wouldn't have. That would have been ridiculous. But you know what I mean? It's like, hey, hey, don't push your luck, buddy. There was an anonymous front office executive quoted in Stark's piece who said, tried to

draw the distinction between this and the other rules changes that have been implemented and said, with the other rules changes, you're trying to create the best version of baseball. But with this rule, the golden at bat, it's like you're trying to create a different sport. You're trying to create something else that's kind of like baseball, but not really. Maybe that's a fine distinction, but I think there is something to that. LS. There's something to that. I think there's something to that. I really do. And I just, like, leave it, let it sit for a minute, you know? Let it sit and breathe because you don't have to keep doing all... Save your social capital for the challenge system, which as we've said is perfect.

Go out of here, Rob, you know? Yeah, he's got bigger fish to fry. He's got broadcast deals, there's a CPA coming up, there's expansion, there's the A's and the Rays. I'm not saying he can't consider more than one crisis at once. But this isn't a crisis, is it? is, I'm not saying he can't consider more than one crisis at once. But this isn't a crisis, is it? No, it's not, but he should be exploring more than one idea and more than one solution at once, but this would not be near the top of my priority list where I commissioner.

Yeah. It would be in fact a thing that I would say, don't ever bring that up in public again. I'd say that. Don't ever do it. Don't. For all we know, maybe some owners were pushing for it and he was like, you know what? I'll just put this out there and it'll get shot down so hard that that'll drive a stake into it.

Who knows? Maybe Rob's on our side. Could be true. Could be true. In which case, I apologize and I look forward to learning that in the security line at DFW. Alright, just been here now. It occurs to me, belatedly, that I have another objection to the Golden-at-bat idea that has nothing to do with the concept. The name is another problem. It's not the Golden-at-bat.

It's the golden plate appearance. We can't know beforehand whether it would be a Golden-at-bat. The Golden-batter might walk. He might get hit by a pitch. He might hit a sack fly. Rob, if you're gonna go gold digging, you gotta describe what you're doing accurately. Zombie runner, not ghost runner. Golden plate appearance, not golden bat. How can you not be pedantic about wacky rule changes? See, this is what you're getting from Effectively Wild that you're not getting anywhere else. Objections to the golden bat idea? Sure, dime a dozen. Suggestions that it should in fact be called

the golden plate appearance? Only on EW. Or we could just keep calling it golden batter like the bananas do. That works too. Well, after we finished recording, the Athletic reported that the floor for Juan Soto appears to be $600 million,

that all remaining contenders have made offers above that amount, and given that the MLB trade rumors and fancrafts predictions for his contract total were at or below $600 million, it would seem we are headed for yet another number that exceeds expectations. Soto's agent Scott Boris, by the way, said on Tuesday that Soto has begun the process of eliminating teams, but that nothing is imminent, he did not mention Soto's sister or anyone's apartment search.

Boris also addressed what seems to be a faster moving market this year, and a more robust one, as we discussed at the top of this pod. He said that last year clubs weren't interested, they just didn't call, the market for free agents last year started maybe in the middle of February, it was that different, people like to register that it has something to do with me, I'm just a functionary of the system. We've signed six, seven players already this year. These are the processes of demand and when teams and ownerships choose to move in the marketplace. He was asked why teams are moving faster this year. He said I wish I could answer those questions, I do. I think a lot of it has

to do with media certainty. The streaming thing that they have going on is very viable, very profitable. I don't think they like to say that, but obviously the markets indicate that there's a different attitude about what it is. I think he's alluding to MLB's plans for a new national TV package in 2028, but that's still a few years off, and far from a certainty. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to Patreon.com slash Effectively Wild.

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And you can check the aforementioned show page at FanGraphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode soon. Talk to you then. Romantic, pedantic, and hypothetical. Semantic and frantic, real or theoretical. They give you the stats and they give you the news.

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