Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2277: The Most Demoralizing Offseasons

Episode Date: January 31, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the overwhelming listener response to their previous conversation about cover models for baseball video games, and Ben issues some “Bo Nos” in support of his previous Royals reporting. Then (18:19) they talk about the Rays signing Ha-Seong Kim, Roki Sasaki “prospect” rankings, a recent leaguewide run on relievers, […]

Have a catch and a slog with me in a virtual rise. From small sample size, these fun facts must lie. It's effectively wild. A strange book could hang. Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer joined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello Meg. Oh, hello.

I think a clarification is warranted. What? Meg. Oh, hello. I think a clarification is warranted. What? I've looked at my inbox in the podcast label and it's very much the Troy walking into the burning room with the pizza in the community GIF. That is what has greeted me over the past couple of days because we had some people write in about our conversation last time about video game cover models. People had some thoughts and mostly they were extremely similar thoughts. But valuable thoughts nonetheless, thoughts that needed to be expressed. Sure.

Perhaps didn't need to be expressed quite so many times, but no individual emailer could have known how many times it had been expressed already by other emailers. Therefore, we ended up with a mountain of emails on mostly the same subject. And you know what? I brought it on myself.

I stand by my reporting to be clear. However, there are a couple of caveats that should have been mentioned to forestall some of this fan mail. Can we call it fan mail? I don't know if that would- Issuing a correction on my previous post. I'm not actually issuing a correction. I'm issuing a clarification.

I'm issuing a additional wrinkle. So I'm not walking back anything. However, I am pointing out what was a close call. So we had a conversation prompted by the announcement of the new MLB The Show 25 cover models, three of them this year for the first time ever. And Ellie Day-LaCruz is one of them in addition to Gunnar Henderson and Paul Skeens and the press release that was put out by Sony noted that Ellie De La Cruz was the first Cincinnati Red to be featured on the

cover of a video game. That's the language that the press release I received in my inbox before the deluge of other things I received in my inbox said. So I crowdsourced in the Patreon Discord group and put out a call and did a little research myself and consulted some other experts and tried to canvas people to come up with any other franchises that had not yet had a representative on the cover of a baseball video game. And collectively we came up with, I don't want to shirk responsibility here,

I came up with, but relied on the wisdom of crowds. And we decided that the Royals had not had a representative on the cover of a baseball video game, which I still stand by. However, we had a number of people, a high number of people write in to say, what about Bo Jackson? Right.

Now I should have mentioned Bo Jackson on the previous podcast. Could have saved myself a lot of emails. And you as well, because you were included in the deluge through no fault of your own. Yeah, I was included in the deluge, but just to peel back the curtain for listeners,

in a moment like this where the deluge is clearly the responsibility of one person, like loosening the winch, loosening a winch, using a winch to loosen that, whatever, anyway, when you're the one who opens the dam, I'm like, you gotta- Now we're gonna get emails about how one uses a winch, but yes. Yeah, don't, don't, please don't.

No, it was on me. It was- Yeah, it was on you. So I was like, this is- My responsibility to respond to these yes. Yeah, don't. Don't. Please don't. No, it was on me. Yeah, it was on you. So I was like, this is- My responsibility to respond to these emails. Yes. Or not. I didn't have to, but I did.

But you did. You know, it's the same way that I responded to all of the Rude Dodgers emails, because I was like, that feels like a Meg problem. Which then led to many more emails in your inbox because you get my responses as well, so sorry about that. But on the previous podcast, I listed some candidates, some, some guys I said were maybe snubbed as potential Royals cover models, and here's where I erred. I did not mention Bo because what I did, I made the mistake of sorting by war. And I looked in the baseball cover model, video game era, 1988-ish on, and I sorted by the highest war

Kansas City Royals over that period. And that list did not include Bo Jackson, but that was my mistake to sort by war. I sort of sorted by Bo Jackson, and then the Royals would have been on that list, and he would have been a very clear candidate to have had video games named in his honor to have been featured on the cover of video games. And in fact, he was more than one video game

as it happens. Fairly obscure, I would say, in the grand scheme of things in the firmament of baseball video games and fairly early on in the era of actual sponsors and spokespeople and people who were put on a cover. So we got many emails about the Nintendo Entertainment System game, Bo Jackson Baseball, as well as the Game Boy Color game, Bo Jackson Two Games in One. You can guess what the two games were. One was baseball and one was football because I don't know if you know this famously, Bo Jackson, he played both sports professionally.

Yes, so I submit and I maintain and when I responded to these people, most of them actually agreed that neither of these counts. And here is why I've become very familiar with the specifics of when these games were released and also Bo Jackson transactions. So both of these games came out in 1991. And by the time they were released,

Bo Jackson was no longer a Kansas City Royal. He had by that point been released by the Royals and signed by the White Sox. So he played with the White Sox in 1991 and Bo Jackson two games in one for the Nintendo Game Boy. That came out in the summer of 91, I believe June and Bo Jackson baseball for NES that came out even later, I think in October-ish of 1991.

And by then I will brook no argument that he was no longer a Kansas City Royal. Now, he was wearing blue on the cover of these games. And so one could say that they were Royals inspired. The Bo Jackson two games in one cover, I wouldn't call that Royal blue. That's just kind of a generic dark blue that he's wearing in my mind.

But Bo Jackson baseball looks very much like an airbrushed Royals uniform. And if you want to claim that that counts, I guess you could. But in my mind, it's pretty tenuous because neither of these games had licenses. So other than Bo Jackson, they didn't have player names, they didn't have team names, they didn't have team logos. So nothing identifies him as a Kansas City Royal, other than the fact that on at least one of them, the uniform he's wearing looks like it was originally a Royals uniform. Now, if that were the only objection, if it just was that it was not identified as the Royals explicitly, but he was with the Royals at that time,

I would say, okay, that counts because he was a Kansas City Royal at that point. But the combination of both of these factors of a no actual official Royals logo and documentation, and he just wasn't on the Royals anymore. In my mind, that rules out both of these games from qualifying as a Royals cover model on a video game. Do you think that's fair?

I think the distinctions that you're drawing are fair. Your analysis is ultimately unchanged, even if proactively accounting for the bow of it all. Well, at the very least would have spared us some emails, but might have put people at ease that you would consider the question. I mean, you hadn't, but you would have reached the right conclusion if you had. So that, you know, it's okay. I should have been more thorough.

I should have been more comprehensive. I should have accounted for all the possible options and he was among the best of them. But I still maintain the Royals have not had a cover model on a video game. There is also another game that someone pointed out, which I think came out in 1990, which is one of those tiger electronic handheld games, like an LCD game with the two screens and a bunch of buttons where you'd have to have the batteries in there and then it would do little bloops and bleeps, that kind of game. And it was, again, two in one

football and baseball LCD video game. And that one, I guess, technically did come out while he was still with the Royals. Again, he is not wearing a Royals uniform. He appears to be wearing an angels uniform. It doesn't look like the Rose at all. Yeah. And it's not identified as a team. And this doesn't count in my mind. Maybe you think that I'm ruling these out on technicalities, but I'm not talking about a Tiger handheld LCD game here.

We're talking about full fledged video games that would come out on a console or a PC or some other platform. So, but, Bo was the closest. And again, this just hammers home, I suppose, just how far the Royals have been from having a truly legitimate cover model for a video game that we have to grasp at straws here. And look, it came close. If these games had come out, say, even six

months earlier in one case or a year earlier, video game development times and timelines were shorter than it didn't take as long to make games. But nonetheless, if these games had come out in 1990 instead of 1991, I would have said, okay, count it. But as it is now, the Royals in my mind are still not on the board and thus we need to get Bobby Witt Jr. on the cover of next year's edition of the show. Right. This is all really in service of a campaign. Yeah. I'm rooting for the Royals here to be clear. I'm not trying to exclude them from the list. I want them to be on the board. You want them on the list and you want them on the list in a way that is full-throated, that is unambiguous, right?

Yes. Where their fans can point and say, ah, good for Bobby, you know? You want them to be able to have that feeling. And right now, it takes a little emotional work for them to get there. And that's what you're trying to remedy. So I think that really, Royals fans should view you as sort of rowing in the same direction ultimately. And I will say that most people were receptive to your responses once you sent them. You had a lot of practice to make sure that they were dialed in just right so it works

out. Yes. A few listeners received a form letter from me because by that point I had typed out the same response several times and I figured. Several times. Hopefully they will excuse me for copying and pasting. I bet they will. I didn't actually have to answer because I could have just waited for this episode

and then addressed everyone at once, which is what I'm doing right now. Sure. And so maybe it's a flaw in my makeup that I felt the need to respond directly. Partly, I suppose, because I just couldn't bear the thought of so many people thinking I was wrong for the couple of days between podcasts.

And also, you never know, someone might've listened to that last episode and not listened to this one, and they would never have heard my follow-up, and they would persist in thinking Ben was wrong on the internet. And I can't have that. Can't have it. I greatly appreciate your instinct to respond to emails because I'll admit that

often I come to the end of the day and I'll think to myself, oh, God, I should answer some effectively wild emails. And then I go to my inbox and I'm like, don't have to do that. Ben already did it for me. And what a nice bit of generosity from you. Now that you've said that, I'll start slacking off. No, please don't. I get so many, I get so many emails. It's just like a lot of them. I mean, I'm sure you do too. You get all the podcast ones plus others I imagine, but it's a lot. I will simply say that it was worth asking the question, everyone. That seems like a worthy candidate to consider.

And I think that your answer was fine, but it was worth asking. You know, it just was. Yeah. Oh, yeah. No, it was a valid response. And I appreciated some people who wrote in and did all this research themselves and came to the same conclusion, but still wrote in as an FYI, just said, oh yeah, I know he was no longer a royal and also it doesn't

identify him as a royal, but just in case you didn't know. So some people did the extra legwork there. And then plenty of people said, I know this is a pedantic and apologized in advance, but we have again brought that on ourselves by being pedantic on the podcast and A number of people said you've probably gotten this from a number of other people Which was also accurate, but just to be safe also a couple of other clarifications There was a nationals Expos franchise representative I noted because Vlad Grero senior was on a game in the early 2000s. I think I said that the Nationals hadn't had one,

or at least I wasn't aware of the Nationals having one. I didn't really research that that much because I figured an Expo covered it. But we did get someone writing in, Sean, pointed out that there has been at least one National on the cover of TAP Sports Baseball 21. Juan Soto and Ronald Acuna were featured at tandem cover and Soto was still a national at that point. We also got several emails about whether this was actually the first

Reds representative as Sony had claimed whether Ellie was the first. A bunch of people tried to make the pedantic point that actually there had been a Cincinnati Red on the cover of a video game, not a baseball video game, but at least the wording of the original press release just said video game, because Deon Sanders was on the cover of Primetime Football 96. And Deon Sanders, another multi-sport athlete.

I wish we would someday see the likes of a Bow and Dion again, but they may have passed into posterity, but I don't think this counts either as I took pains to point out because by the time prime time football 96 came out, which was at some point in 1995, late 1995, Dion was no longer a member of the Cincinnati Reds. So we don't even have to have the existential conversation about whether if Dion is photographed in a football uniform, if he's on the Cowboys or whatever, is he also like, is it two in

one? Like, is he still a Cincinnati Red in some way, even in his cowboy's capacity? Or is he only a Cincinnati Red when he's like on the clock as a Cincinnati Red? And that's a philosophical discussion, I guess. Sure. You know, people have been trying to puzzle out for eons, right? The Holy Trinity. I mean, the Father, Son, the Holy Spirit, the Cincinnati Reds, and the Dallas Cowboy, are they one and the same?

We don't actually have to parse that because Dion had been traded from the Reds by the time that game came out. So under the same technicality, he had been traded to the Giants in July of 1995, and then he did not play baseball in 1996. And then he did resign with the Reds in 1997. But again, I don't think that counts. So hopefully all objections laid to rest, addressed here belatedly, and maybe some stragglers will continue to write in. We will get a trickle as people catch up, but then I will be able to point them to this episode. To the episode, right.

And say, hey, way ahead of you. Yeah, we got it. We figured it out, buds. I don't mean to denigrate to people writing it because I do generally. No. We love getting emails. We welcome them. In fact, I think I solicited them. And so I welcome them with open arms and I don't know how we would get through the off season without our listener emails. And I hope that the listener-host interaction is one of the selling points of this podcast, that we're pretty reactive and responsive and that we incorporate listener feedback into the show.

And it's part of the pleasure of doing the show most of the time that people write in and have interesting thoughts in response to what we say and clue us in to things that we weren't aware of. Right. Also, sometimes we were aware of them because we already got 30 emails on that subject, but that just goes with the territory, occupational hazard. Every now and then one of those situations snowballs and you can sense it building immediately because one will come in almost immediately after we post the podcast, which often I post the podcast in the middle of the night, but there are people who hop on the pods immediately.

And then when I get one, sometimes I brace myself because I know, uh-oh, this will not be the last one of these emails. And we're in for a couple of days now because we're not recording until Thursday. Uh-oh, trouble. But yeah, it's fairly rare that it becomes a burden, but it's a welcome burden because we love our listeners. Oops, all emails, really. If one wanted to come up with a label for it, it might be oops, all emails. Well, people seem to respond to that topic. People enjoyed the discussion as did I. So close, but going to go no on Bo.

All right. There have been a few transactions, not the most intriguing transactions, but one at least of some note, Hassan Kim has signed with the Tampa Bay Rays. That's right. We should talk about that one. You have widened your lead in the free agent contracts over under draft, which is just insuperable. It's going to turn out to be one of the widest leads ever in the history of this draft. You say that and I on one very important level being the reality that we're grounded in today,

you're correct. But in the hypothetical of tomorrow, I don't know, like maybe I still have two big deals to be graded and maybe I will be fantastically wrong. And then the gap will, at the very least narrow. We don't know, who can predict tomorrow? Really, who can predict it? I mean, we tried, but. I'm fairly confident predicting it, but then again,

bad predictions is how I ended up in this predicament to begin with. But the ones that you have remaining on your board, it's like the under-unpedo Lonzo or something, right? Yeah, and Fragman. Yeah. Yeah, that seems safe. So I think you're good.

I think so, probably. I think I've just about been mathematically eliminated here, unless someone signs for infinite dollars. I don't know how we would even score that, but unless- I think you would just win. Yeah, I guess I would just maybe win. I will note though that I was very confident in my Willie Adamus under, and I was wrong about that. But also he signed at the beginning of the off season and now it's the end of

January. So I think I'm in okay shape, but we must hedge against the possibility of future disappointment. And so here I am doing exactly that. Well, the Rays have hedged against not having good enough short stops, which they didn't last year, at least depending on what your defensive metric thinks of Taylor Walls. So the Rays have signed Ha Sung Kim to a two-year, $29 million deal, which has an opt-out after the first season. So he will make $13 million this year with a couple million of incentives. And then the opt-out opportunity, if he does not opt out, then he will have $16 million coming to him in 2026. But if he comes back and is healthy and productive, then he

will probably want to test the market again. And maybe that's not the worst thing for the Rays because they always have 18 prospects coming up and infield prospects. And Carson Williams is their latest in a string of short stops of the future. So he could very well be ready next year if Kim proves that he's healthy and bounces back and wants to become a free agent again, in which case the raise may not be players for him at that point.

So it may end up being a one-year deal, but Kim has gotten himself some insurance and security if he is not able to come back at full strength. And wouldn't be the worst thing for the Rays, probably if that turns out to happen. He's a good glove at the very least, one would think. And I like that move for them. It absolutely improves their projection there. There's certainly some uncertainty about when he'll be back, maybe May. He's not going to be back for the beginning of the season. And you never know, there could be setbacks.

We have to hedge here too, but it's good. I think this is the kind of moves that the Rays don't make often enough because we always say, yeah, they're good and they have good prospects and they've got good player development, but if they didn't cheap out, if they also spread some dollars around, then they could have a bit of a buffer. They could have some depth and this is the kind of move that they should make more often. So good for them for making it for once. Yeah. I like the fit.

I like the player. I think that I like those things even with the, you know, appropriate caveats that you applied in terms of when he might actually be ready to take the field. I think that makes a lot of sense. Good on you, Reyes. I like it. I think it's good. Yeah. There are other teams out there that seem like they could have used Hassan Kemen. I don't know if they're a little worried about the medicals or just don't want to count on someone who might not be back at the start of the season, but are currently counting on someone who would probably be worse, whether that's

Atlanta or I don't know, there are other contenders with question marks, the Yankees, we could probably name a few others as many great short stops as there are out there, there are still some teams with uncertain shortstop situations. So I'm sorry that he and Jerks and Profar were broken up. I hope that they will still be besties and will stay in touch via text and FaceTime and catch up over the offseason, but they are separated for now. Well, and you point out Atlanta as a team that could potentially use him, and who knows,

maybe this is simply a delay of a reunion and he'll find his way to the Braves eventually. It's a very stratified position because the really, really good short stops are really, really good. And then there's a lot of like, meh, you know, there's like kind of a lot of, I wouldn't go so far as to call it suck, but there's just like, there's some meh out there, you know? And there, there are teams that could change their fortunes just by having their players mature and take steps forward and have some of their prospects like really grab the reins of a, of a job that's currently open. So it's not a permanent level of meh, but at the moment there's a lot of

meh and then there's a lot of like, wow, he's like a perennial all-star and it doesn't feel like there's a lot in between. Carson Williams currently ranks in the top 10 on MLB Pipelines prospect list, which I mentioned he's number nine. I mentioned because they have Roki Sasaki up top at number one. And I get that because technically he has not played in MLB, but I think we need to move beyond and many sources, including fan crafts have moved beyond ranking Japanese players, pro players, whether they be NPB or KBO. No, no, you are not being sufficiently nuanced in the distinction you're making. We will rank Broky.

Oh, is this because of the international signing? Correct. Okay. Right, so we have made the decision to not rank players like Yamamoto, who when he came over was not eligible for the prospect promotion incentive because he was a true free agent and signed a big league deal, was almost assured to make camp out of spring training.

I imagine that Roki Sasaki will as well, but he is eligible or I should say the Dodgers are eligible for a prospect promotion incentive pick should he finish in, you know, as the Rookie of the Year if he gets certain Cy Young finishes. So that's the distinction that we're drawing. There's guys like Roki Sasaki who signed under the international amateur bonus pool regime, right? And then there are foreign professionals like Yamamoto who are not eligible to win their team a prospect promotion incentive. And that's the distinction that we are going to be drawing. So we will rank, we will rank Roki. Okay. I guess that's a sensible distinction. It always, it seems silly to me in the sense

that- I totally get it when you, when publica- I don't think that there's a wrong answer here. That's what we've decided to do. But like I know that baseball prospectus for instance, they didn't rank Rokey because he had not yet signed when their top 100 ran, but I did ask a friend of the pod, Craig Goldstein, if they would have and Craig said no. I don't think they ranked Otani either and we did. And I'm sure some sources ranked Yoshi last year, I would imagine. I don't know. I don't remember. I know BA didn't. They're drawing the same sort of distinction that

we are. I think that particularly for the outlets where their ranking influences the prospect promotion incentive sort of pool. I don't think I'm speaking out of turn by guessing this. I would imagine that there is a particular sensitivity to including guys in your top 100 who fall under those strictures so that they qualify. Although BA ranks guys based on either innings or at bats and doesn't remove players based on active roster days. So like there's, you know, there are sort of edge cases all along the way here. Yeah. Historically, I think the convention in most places has been to rank and I'm saying going back years, for instance, Baseball America ranked Hideki Matsui as its number eight prospect in 2003, for instance. Now, I guess there wasn't that much precedent at that point. Ichiro had come over,

but there hadn't been as many NPP players as there have been now. And I suppose you could say that there was still more uncertainty about how the production would translate. But I think for years after that, if I looked back to see say, Dice K or Darvish, I'll check to see if some of those guys were ranked and I'd imagine that some of them were, okay, Baseball America ranked Dice K Matsuzaka as its number one prospect heading into 2007. So this was a fairly common convention and technically speaking, I guess it's accurate that you're an MLB prospect if you haven't played an MLB yet. Okay. BA also had Hugh Darvish as number four. Ooh, a bit of a slight there in 2012. Or was that the year, maybe that was the year when it was like Harper and Trout and Nat Moore and it was kind of stacked at the top of that list. So maybe that's why.

I think that might be right. But he was ranked. So until fairly recently, that was kind of the dominant way to do it, that if an international prospect was coming over, regardless of age, they would appear on the top prospect list. And it has seemed silly to me in recent years, just because if you've been a big leaguer in your country and it's a high level league, especially if you're a veteran and especially if you've excelled, if you've been an ACE over there for years, it just seems sort of silly to group you with guys who've been in

AAA or AA or even lower. But technically I see, pedantically speaking, that you are probably a prospect in MLB until you have actually debuted there. Yeah. And I think that drawing this distinction between foreign pros, I think is the language that's in the CBA and players who qualify their team for a prospect promotion incentive if they place sufficiently know, place sufficiently highly in the awards voting. Like that seems like a reasonable distinction to me. It does

feel weird to have guys who are, say, eligible for the Rookie of the Year award not on prospect lists. That feels like an issue with the Rookie of the Year award more than it does with the prospect distinctions that we're drawing. But you know, I think individual players interact with this stuff differently. Like I'm trying to remember, maybe it was Masataka Yoshida a couple of years ago was insulted by the notion that he was going to potentially garner Rookie of the Year votes because he was like, what are you talking about? I'm not a rookie. Like I've been a professional at the highest level in Japan for years. B.A. had Yoshida ranked number 87 heading into 2023. So that was just a couple of years

ago. Yeah. And so I think that some of this stuff has evolved over time and I don't think that there's like necessarily a wrong answer here. I'm not going to promise that our thinking on it's going to stay the same forever. I know that there is some value in there being consistency year to year, but it's a tricky thing to sort out. CB. Mm-hmm. Speaking of Hassan Kim, he was ranked number 78 by Baseball America heading into 2021. So I guess, yeah, it's kind of a carve out for KBO, NPP, and then maybe CPBL, but then it depends. Obviously those leagues are of varying levels

and caliber of play. So NPP is at the top of the hierarchy when it comes to non MLB leagues in the world. But there's a step down when you're talking about even the KBO. So I could see an argument for, do you just go by, were they a major leaguer in their country? But then what if they're in a country without a big baseball presence? That's not a big baseball hotbed. So yeah, it's tough to classify. It's just always, I do a little double-take when I see someone like Roki Sasaki at the top of the list, even though he's accomplished

so much. Although he's more of a prospect, I suppose, than say Yamamoto. He's younger. He's a little less of a finished product or polished, or there's still questions about how he could improve and put it together. But yeah, you get what I'm saying. You're picking up what I'm laying down here. I do. I just had to clarify so that in two weeks when Roki Sasaki is on our top 100, you're not like, what is happening over there? We've also seen just a late run on relievers, which I don't know that... Yeah, individually, not quite as compelling to talk

about, but I think double digit reliever moves, major league relievers in the past week or 10 days or so, just I'll reel them off. So the Guardian signed Paul Seawall, the Pirates signed Tim Mesa, the Dodgers did officially sign Kirby Yates, the Royals signed Carlos Estevez. The Tigers signed Tommy Canely. The Mets re-signed Ryan Stanek. The Cubs traded for Ryan Presley as we discussed last time. The Reds traded for Taylor Rodgers. The Padres traded for Ron Maranaccio.

The Reys traded for Brandon Isert. The Mariners traded for Will Klein. I wonder if this was a reliever run touched off by, I don't know, Dodgers signings, Tanner Scott, the top guy in the market is off and then a bunch of other dominoes fall? Or whether it's just, well, we're coming up on pitchers and catchers reporting and maybe we need more pitchers. They're just a lot of relievers, so there are more reliever moves to be made, proportionally speaking. And maybe it's just sort of, eh, we can leave that until the end of the offseason.

There will be a half-decent reliever hanging out there, and if we don't get a name guy, then we can create a reliever. That's how a lot of teams end up with good relievers anyway. But I do wonder if there's an aspect of, uh-oh, that team just got this guy and that guy, and suddenly the list of options is dwindling. We better get our reliever. Yeah, I think that it's a combination of things. I mean, sort of where in the sequence you are depends a little bit, but like unless

they cut someone, the Dodgers can't sign anybody until the 60 day open. So there is that. The inn is now full. Full inn. No more room at the inn. Put the no vacancy sign up. CB 0 But technically it seems like you have to be right this time. LS And I put the caveat of, unless they cut somebody on it, right? CB 0 Yeah, they could kick someone out of the inn and then they could bring someone else in.

LS Right. They could jettison someone from the inn, but absent a desire to do that, the Dodgers are full. So take the Dodgers off the board. Maybe you don't have to contend with negotiating against them in a way that you find useful. I think a lot of the high profile free agents are just off the board now, away from the reliever market. And so teams that are kind of done are like okay let's wrap up the last little

bit of business we have which I think often does pertain to the reliever group especially after the top top line guys go and as you noted like Tanner Scott has signed the other sort of high end relief arms are off the board so you're left with teams that are like okay I got to round out the back end of my bullpen. I need a set up guy, whatever it is. I do think that the impending report date of the pitchers and catchers has something to do with it too, because you presumably want to get those guys in camp and on their way as early as possible. And, you know, maybe everybody saw the Guardians like sign Paul Seawald and then they were like, ah, panicked. So it could be any number of things.

Yeah. It's just a classic bank panic. The economy's collapsing. We got to withdraw. Uh-oh, the Guardians got Seewald. We got to get our guy. I did notice that Ben Clemens minor league free agent draftee James Karanczak was signed by the White Sox, which minorly deal, but still probably.

Good for Ben. Yeah, bodes well for other Ben, I gotta say. I have no other observation about these specific reliever moves other than the fact that they broke up the brothers. We've had multiple brother combos broken up this off season. They broke up the Nailers and now they broke up the Rogerses. And I'm sort of sad about this, particularly the Rogerses, just because they were so unalike as pitchers, which was just endlessly entertaining, just the difference in release points. And so I enjoyed that. Again, I'm an only child.

I'm a New York lonely boy, so I don't know what it is to have siblings. And for all I know, distance might be preferred at times. It seems like, oh, what a wonderful dream. We both made the big leagues and we're teammates too. Maybe it's too much. Maybe you need some sibling rivalry apart from each other at times. But I'm sure it's also probably nice to have your bro, your bro's got your back and he's literally got your back if he's in the same clubhouse. And that's probably nice sometimes. LS I wish that we could get a truthful answer about this question, maybe more than almost anything. Because here's the thing, none of these guys are gonna say,

oh, thank God, you know, they're never gonna admit to that. First of all, their moms read their press. So they can't be out here saying, I hate, I hate my brother. I hate him. He's the worst, you know, this is like the relief of my life that I get to move across the country. To be clear, I say that not having like any, I don't know the Rogerses any more than I know the Nailers, so I'm not suggesting that there actually is that kind of discord, but even if such a discord existed, we would never, we would never be told, right? And so I do wish that we could get an answer that we could know with certainty, like is this something of a weird relief or isn't it?

I would be bummed out. I'd be disappointed. Like, imagine, you know, there's so many big and small benefits to having your sibling on the team, assuming that you have a closeness with them. Like, imagine one of your parents' birthdays happens during the season. Between the two of you, one of you is going to remember to call your mom, you know? And if the other one forgot, well, mom doesn't need to know that, does she? She doesn't need to know, you can call her. You're going to have comfort and familiarity when you're on the road. I think it would be nice.

I think it would be a nice thing. One of my only regrets about living in Arizona is that I am at a distance from my sister. So I think it would be nice, but we'll never know. We'll just never know, Ben. Yeah. And especially if you're talking about twins, which we are in the Rogers' case. Rogers' Of course, you have a twin bond and twins are very close in many cases. You'd think that twins might want some space more than anyone else just because

they're so often forced into proximity. But the twins that I have known, often pretty inseparable. Yeah. And that includes my wife and her sister who are not identical twins, are fraternal or, I don't know, serural twins. Yeah, I was going to say, is there a different terminology when they are, uh, lady twins? CB 05.30 Yeah. I, I think you can say sororal, but- LS FLEMING. Sororals. I mean, can you say sororal though? Cause that seems like a- CB 05.30 Sororal juror. Yeah.

LS FLEMING. Sororal juror. It's the spin-off from Ruhlger. That's great. Yeah. But yeah, I don't know if it's, is it like sexist that girl twins have been labeled as fraternal twins all this time? I mean, probably. Maybe, but they are very close and they have other siblings of different ages, they're also pretty close to, but they're closest to each other because they were so close to each other in age and in school and

everything else in the womb, in the cradle, et cetera. I don't know if I like the word womb. I don't know if that applies to the Rogerses, but that only intensified, that only enhanced the entertainment value of the fact that they were so dissimilar as pitchers. And they still are, they're still alive and pitchers just on different teams. And still quite distinct from one another so far as we know. As far as we know.

But that really added to the comedic value of them being on the same team and twins and then just being polar opposites from a release point perspective at least. So I hope they're not too sad. But yeah, you can see it being dysfunctional in some cases, maybe especially if there's a older brother, little brother, and there's like the little sibling syndrome. And maybe that could push you to even greater heights. It could be sort of a dysfunctional relationship

that nonetheless spurs you on to greater accomplishments. Kind of a Dave Davies, Ray Davies in the Kinks kind of dynamic where they couldn't stand each other often, but they made incredible art together. And only after a few decades did it break up the band. Maybe it's that sort of dynamic where you're pushing each other to even greater heights, but then also maybe you're pushing beyond each other's limits at times too.

So yeah, that would be good if we could ever somehow get them on the record. I guess we should have Johnny O'Brien, effectively Wild Legend back on the show. And I don't know whether we asked him at the time, cause he was a twin brother of Eddie O'Brien who has passed and Johnny is 94 now. So he has not been on the show as a non-agenarian, but, uh, you know, maybe, maybe only when one brother is left, you probably don't want to speak ill.

Right. I was just going to say, I think you're less likely to get an honest answer if you couldn't stand the guy's guts, if he's dead. Can't get back to the other brother in that case. So if you really did want to get it off your chest, and I'm not saying that you're saying that you didn't love the guy or something, just maybe, maybe it's a little too much to spend the year round to be coworkers and family members on top of everything else. That's just a lot. That's a lot of the same person in your personal space.

Yeah. You might enjoy their company, but not want to be with them 24-7. I am grateful for the timing of the trade because Michael Bauman had already claimed a piece about Trevor Rogers. Yeah, no relation. No relation. And then Taylor Rogers was traded and so it allowed for the following one-two punch on the blob roll, revisiting the Trevor, Trevor, not Taylor Rogers trade, followed by Red's trade, Taylor, Taylor, not Tyler or Trevor Rogers, as Jay Jaffe's trade react. And that made me happy.

It was nice to have a little chuckle. One other bit of news of note, we had a Steinbrenner crying poor. We had a Steinbrenner chiming in to say that they can't compete with the Dodgers. Now, I think this is maybe a bridge too far even for the people who are very much sympathetic to the idea that the Dodgers have broken baseball and that they're kind of in a league of their own from a payroll perspective, et cetera. I think when Hal Steinbrenner of all people tries to get in on that rhetoric and tries to be like, yeah, I'm just like us, I'm upset at the Dodgers too. How can

we possibly keep up with them? I think even the people who are inclined to commiserate about the Dodgers are probably rejecting the application for admission to that club from Hal Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, who said, via Yes Network, which is a network owned by the New York Yankees and thus the Hal Steinbrenner by extension, he said, speaking about the Dodgers spending money, it's difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kinds of things they're doing. We'll see if it pays off. They still have to have a season relatively injury free for it to work out for them." Now, first of all, I don't think it's too soon to say that it has paid off for the Dodgers.

They just won a World Series. They just beat you in the World Series. They just beat Al Steinbrenner's very team and they have made the playoffs a dozen years in a row and won the division most of those years and have not been bad for an extended stretch in decades. I think it's safe to say that it's paid off. I guess it's too soon to say whether it will pay off in 2025, but in the grand scheme of things, yeah, I think it's paid off. And they don't actually have to have a season

relatively injury-free for it to work out for them because they didn't last year, they had the opposite of an injury-free season and guess what, it worked out for them. But the point is for Hal Steinbrenner to say, it's difficult for most of us owners, you know, just most of us owners, these lowly owners, just trying to make ends meet, just trying

not to be thrown out on the streets, just trying to make our mortgage payments. Most of us owners out there, we can't possibly compete with the Dodgers. I think even the most Dodgers hating party, probably also a Yankees hating party because no love lost for the Yankees among people who think that the Dodgers have broken baseball. The Yankees originated that. They were the Dodgers before the Dodgers. They were more the Dodgers than the Dodgers are. They were the evil empire. And even though Hal is not George and Hal has actually set some limits, much to the dismay of Yankees fans, you're still literally the Yankees.

You are still the most valuable franchise in professional sports, at least in North American professional sports, and the highest revenue, I think, right? Or right up there. And those revenue figures often don't even factor in Timo networks. You're the Yankees. You print money.

If you wanted to sell your franchise, it would sell for more than the Dodgers. Probably especially because the Dodgers have about a billion dollars of deferred payments coming down the pike. So Hal, please spare me. It's difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kinds of things they're doing. Come on. But no, look, there are some flaws in this. Potentially obviously we don't have full transparency into almost any of these teams books, et cetera.

So put the usual caveats on it. But Forbes put out their list of sports franchise values in December of last year. The Yankees were fourth, first in baseball, the only baseball team ranked in the top 10. Indeed, I think the only baseball team in the top 20. These are not just North American teams. You have like Manchester United, Real Madrid, et cetera in here. Yeah. And the Cowboys, I assume. Right. So it goes Cowboys, Golden State Warriors, Los Angeles Rams, which I was very surprised

by and does make me kind of question the entire list, but we'll set that aside for now. And then the Yankees at $7.55 billion. The Dodgers are $2 billion less valuable from a franchise perspective. I don't know how Forbes accounts for or if they do account for the deferral. So who knows that might not be in here at all. I don't know. But basically, shut up. I mean, I'm sorry to be rude. I know that lately I've been on this kick about our emails. Now they've gotten a little rude. Some of them a little rude. Need you guys to tighten up, but shut up.

You know how, come on. Like, come on. No one wants to hear this from Hal Steinberg. In 2023, I guess this is the Forbes figures, the Yankees revenue was more than $100 million higher than the Dodgers. And granted the Dodgers just won the World Series and they have Shohei Otani now, and I'm sure that's changed the equation.

But you are still literally the New York Yankees. And MLB just announced another record high for revenues, 12.1 billion in 2024, which is just baseball revenue and doesn't really account for team owns, RSNs and also all the real estate development stuff, which technically is classified as non baseball revenue, even though it's highly dependent on the presence of the baseball team. So they're raking in the cash, they're rolling in it. Not every team, obviously to the same degree, but the Yankees and the Dodgers.

You can't save most of us owners. 28 other ownership groups are like, most of us. What are you talking about? What are you talking about? Yeah. No, it's you guys. It's you and the Dodgers and us and Steve Cohen. Right. I was going to say, and throw the Mets in there if you'd like. Yeah. I think that that's a defensible choice. I do think this is interesting. The part of this that I actually think is most worth monitoring is if we get additional indications from Steinbrenner that he views himself,, in the coming season, but also in the year after

that, does he view himself as being distinct from the Dodgers and the Mets in terms of like the category of owner that he is? Because it might say something about sort of where alliances will be drawn in the coming CBA negotiations. I do think that we are sort of on track for it to be the most fractured the owners have been in quite a while when we go into that CBA. And what that means in terms of the likelihood of a lockout, the persistence of such a lockout if it occurs, I don't quite know. But it does make me a little bit worried because any fracture in the big market, very wealthy group seems like it is going to end up being bad for the pace of the negotiations, the

likelihood that we get a full season and those sorts of things. So I think that that piece of it, apart from me being snarky is worthwhile where it's like, seems bad, that part seems bad. Yeah, if Hal had been talking about, say, specifically signing Japanese players, maybe given the Dodgers recent success, you could get away with it's difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kinds of things they're doing just based on location, let's say. Okay, maybe it's tougher for the Yankees to land

Otani or Yamamoto or Sasaki. Now, they had other Japanese players in the past, it's not impossible, but it maybe is a little harder given the travel time. And now given that there's a big fan base built up in Japan and there are a lot of prominent Japanese players on the current roster. Okay, sure. And also just the track record for player development and pitcher development, which the Yankees have to some extent too. Yeah, I was going to say. They are well regarded as a particularly when it comes to their pitching development.

I think that they have a fairly sterling reputation in fact. Yeah. If you just offered something in the vicinity of $800 million to Juan Soto over the life of his contract, and then when you lost out on Soto, you pivoted to spending hundreds of millions of other dollars on other prominent free agents, then please spare me. Spare me. It's difficult for most of us owners. I can just imagine him pulling out his empty pockets as he gives this quote, poor Hal. The heart bleeds the world's tiniest pinstriped violin for Hal Steinbrenner. I did want to ask, and maybe this will be our last topic of discussion here, which team you think has had the most demoralizing offseason? It's obviously not the Yankees, far from the Yankees, even though they lost out on

one Soto and they have their owner pretending that he's a man of limited means. But which team do you think has had the most dismaying off season when it comes to what they've done or what they haven't done or the messaging that we have heard from them? I guess I'm mostly speaking of inactivity. I guess it could be if they've been busy, but you don't like the moves they've made, but even more so just sort of sitting out the offseason at a time when it seems like they should not be doing that. I have a couple

of candidates for you. Okay. You ready? Okay. So the most obvious candidate to me is the Toronto Blue Jays. Okay. And I want to make clear that I like the moves that they have managed to make. Anthony Santander is a good player and they've definitely bolstered their bullpen in a way that was quite important, but I think is going to be meaningful for all of our quibbling over the names of his children and how those names are spelled. Brian Jeff Hoffman is good. I think that Yumi Garcia is a good addition to that team. So I like what they have managed to do, but I think that it's a really demoralizing feeling

to clearly have ambition for much more than that in terms of the caliber of player you're trying to attract and to come in second place multiple times. So I think that that's demoralizing, right? Toronto is doing or attempting to do the thing that we often encourage teams to do, which is spend to get good players who they think are going to bolster their team. They're in a transitional phase as a franchise or about to be in a transitional phase, right? Where they are coming to the end of the Son of Stars era and they're gonna have to redefine themselves as a franchise or not. I mean, maybe they'll, you know, resign Vlad E and then they'll make some other moves and

it'll be fine. But my sense is that their fans feel as if the situation is very tenuous and that they had a real need to try to win now, given the contracts they have that are coming up, the free agents that are going to hit the market in the next two years, and they just weren't able to close the deal on a lot of those guys. Yeah, there's a strong case for the Blue Jays, especially because this is not the first time that they have tried and come up empty for multiple prominent free agents. And I guess it's the, is it better to have loved than lost kind of conversation? Is it

better to have tried and lost than never to have tried at all? And personally, I think it is. It's a different kind of dismay. If you keep putting yourself out there and you keep getting rejected, then that hurts. That's a blow to your self-esteem. But I think, I don't know, then you're just kind of blaming the world. You're blaming national boundaries. You're blaming geography. You're blaming exchange rates, as opposed to blaming your ownership. Cause I do think that Toronto has made a real attempt to sign guys and they just keep coming up empty on some of their targets. And I would say the fact that they have at least made some moves that they have signed some players you've heard of that they signed Santander, that they sign

Hoffman, it was not their first choice. It was maybe not their fifth choice, but at least it was like ranked free agents on a free agent ranking. Sure. Totally. And there are some other contending teams that have not even tried. Can I offer some additional candidates here? Actually, let's stay in the same division as the Toronto Blue Jays.

And I would like to offer unto you the Baltimore Orioles. Because look, I like Tyler O'Neill fine. I like Dylan Carlson fine, I guess. I like Charlie Morton fine. I like Charlie Morton fine. But here's the thing about the Baltimore Orioles. They have a really incredible young position player core, and those guys are marching ever onward toward free agency.

They need more help than they have, And they haven't really done anything, at least at this juncture, to secure that help. Their rotation as it is currently constituted is Zac Eflin, Grayson Rodriguez, Charlie Morton, Dean Kramer, and Tomoyuki Sugano. Okay, fine. But like, here's the thing, that's not enough. You need more than that. You need depth behind that. You need a, no offense to Zach Efflin, no offense to Grayson Rodriguez, but you know, they kind of need like a, say Corbin Burns at the front of that rotation, right? They need really impressive frontline starters. They need greater depth behind those guys. I don't quite know how the Orioles understand themselves from a competitive perspective

because the Yankees are still an intimidating force within the division, so to our know. They only have so much time with these guys. And then you have, you know, their owner coming in who was supposed to make everything better, right? Who was supposed to usher in a new era of Orioles baseball and he's out here asking for a salary cap. So if I'm an Orioles fan, I feel very disheartened because I think that there was optimism in their fan base that the penny pinching ways of the past were maybe going to be over, that they were really going to take a step forward. And there's a lot

still to recommend this team. There's a lot of talented players on this roster. It's not a bad rotation necessarily, but they're not pursuing an ambitious course. And the fact that their owner is like, I'm going to do a bobblehead and also ask for a salary cap doesn't make you feel like, you know, generous times are necessarily ahead. So what are you doing with? Bobblehead. Who? David Rubinstein, he made that comment while at Davos, which was funny because it's just like

you're hobnobbing with billionaires and you're advocating for a salary cap. Now, what he actually said, I wish it would be the case that we would have a salary cap in baseball the way other sports do. And maybe eventually we will, but we don't have that now. I suspect we'll probably have something closer to what the NFL and the NBA have, but there's no guarantee of that. And he went on to say, I think the big city teams have some advantages. Now in Los Angeles, they have another advantage. They have Japanese players, a number of them that they got like Shohei and people in Japan really love watching the Dodgers and they sell a lot of merchandise in Japan for Dodger players. And I think the implication was franchise values would go up

more quickly if there were a salary cap. Yeah, I guess there probably would, maybe if owners didn't have to spend as much. Probably most MLB owners would say what Rubenstein said here that, I hope we have a salary cap, but yes. And he did also say that he was intending to raise payroll and, you know, let's, let's put the money where the mouth is and see them really splurge on someone that would ease the blow of this quote. But yeah, he's not an outlier in any respect here, but just given that there was some optimism that, oh, it's going to be different from Angelos and we were going to see a lot of

spending. And I don't know whether it's Rubenstein or whether it's Elias or whether it's some combination of both, but yeah, it has been a disappointing off season for the Orioles. They just, they have not gotten the guy, the capital G guy that they really should get that they have room for or signed someone to an extension or something, something to compensate for not getting a superstar landing one of the top free agents on the market. And it is kind of again with the Blue Jays discussion, is it, we've had this conversation about,

is it better to have a good team that gets eliminated on the last day of the season or gets knocked out in the first round of the playoffs, perhaps without winning a playoff game, like the Volta Warriors have had happened to them lately. Is it better to have that or is it better to just not even be in contention, not even get your hopes up, not just resign yourself to not being good,

just be the Rockies, let's say, and just accept that, yeah, we're just probably not gonna be good, and it's not really a letdown, it's just kind of a low-grade disappointment, but it's not the acute pain that one feels when one allows themselves to hope and then that hope is dashed. So we've gotten back and forth about that, maybe even specifically about the Seattle

Mariners who might also come up in this conversation. LS. Yeah. So sure. Let's talk about those Seattle Mariners because they are absolutely on this list. They have signed one big league deal this off season. It's with Donovan Solano. And look, here's what I'll say about Donovan Solano. I think Donovan Solano is like a useful complimentary piece. I think that in limited playing time, fine. I'm here for a little Donovan Solano. Donovan Solano

is 37. They're bringing him in mostly to play first base. This is a team that has one of the most exciting position players in the game at the sort of the prime of his career, right? One could argue that we haven't even seen the best version of Julio Rodriguez yet because we want to see him put together a season with fewer ups and downs, right? A more complete, consistent campaign. Arguably one of the best rotations in baseball, one of the better bullpens in baseball. And as we've recently discussed, particularly intimidating at home when you can lean into your ballpark and just shove fast balls down the throat of your opposition and not give up any runs. And they've made one big league signing and it's for, again, like a role player or a guy who would be a role player on a team that took the word

contending seriously. So I understand that they are one of these teams that has sort of an unsettled TV situation and that I'm sure is contributing to their cheapness, but I'll say the following. First of all, shut up. At a certain point, you as the ownership group have to decide that you have an opportunity in front of you that is both very exciting and potentially quite lucrative, right? Because good playoff caliber baseball, a deep postseason run at home is a lucrative proposition for any ownership group, right? And it's mostly just exciting because you are a team that has never been to a World

Series that has had very limited postseason success. We have not forgotten how long the Mariners were out of the postseason. Just because they managed to break the streak does not mean that like the prior 21 years of ineptitude are erased. So I think that it is perfectly fair for fans to look at this team and say, your understanding of your goals going into every season need to be just fundamentally different and more aggressive than other teams in baseball. And until you demonstrate that that is your understanding of your obligations to that franchise, you're going to be a disappointment. That's true of the ownership group and it's true of at least parts of the senior leadership within the front office because this is a very incomplete but potentially

exciting team. And I understand that like the guys sort of on offer on the free agent market this year, maybe you don't view all of them as perfect fits, but like the Mariners weren't in on Ha Sung Kim. Really? Like they couldn't do better than the Rays did? That's embarrassing. Like be serious.

And it's, it's frustrating because there are so many people who work for that team, who like really want to win and the players clearly do too. And they're like a good time, but they're so frustrating. And it's like, Jerry, if you can't convince ownership to spend, which I will remind everyone is a skill that some GMs have demonstrated and others have not, Jerry among them, then you need to look at your very well regarded farm system and decide which of those guys you can part with.

Go get somebody. What are we doing? You know, what would you understand your project to be? I'll tell you what they're doing. In the last week or so, they have signed two players to minor league contracts who amused me. They signed Luis F. Castillo and they also signed Julio E. Rodriguez. So they signed a different Luis Castillo and a different Julio Rodriguez.

The Julio is a catcher, I believe, but still you have to identify them by their middle initials because they are not the more famous Luis Castillo and Julio Rodriguez of the Mariners. I assume they're not doing a bit here. It kind of reminds me of when the angels had minor leaguer Mike Fish playing centerfield for them while they had Mike Trout starring in the majors,

but probably a coincidence, but quite an amusing one. I do wonder whether the fact that they had Luis Castillo and Julio Rodriguez, the ones that everyone knows, whether that made them at all more likely to be the team that signed Luis F. Castillo and Julio E. Rodriguez, not for the entertainment value, just because maybe they

were more likely to sort of stumble across them. Just like maybe they're searching on their internal system. Like they're looking up the scouting reports or they're looking up stats for the big Luis Castillo and the big Julio Rodriguez. And maybe they're just more likely to see the other Luis Castillo and the other Julio Rodriguez. And maybe they took a second deeper dive on those guys because they came up when they searched in their internal system or something, maybe? Or it just could be a complete coincidence. LS. It could just be a complete coincidence. I mean, I share everyone's amusement. I don't know that I appreciate the havoc that this could wreak on the player linker, but

you know, Julio E. Rodriguez has the initial and Luis Castillo, does he have the initial in his MILB player page? I don't think he does, Ben. I don't think he does, Ben. I don't think he does it all. Got to do something about that. But the Mariners, they have had many a video game cover model, but they have not won a world series and really you'd rather have the world series probably and fewer of the cover models or really maybe you wouldn't. That's a debate that we have also had.

Just, we talked about that recently when we were talking about Ichiro, that there's a real value from a fan perspective, from a spectator's perspective to having compelling, unique stars. Even if you're not winning a World Series, it's still nice to have entertaining players. And that's the consolation for Royals fans. You may not have had a video game cover model that passes muster for me, but you did have Bo Jackson, literally Bo Jackson, one of the most entertaining baseball players of all time. And you have won world series,

including one in recent memory. So yeah, it's just a land of contrast really. So we have the Mariners, we have the Orioles, we have the Blue Jays. I would nominate a perennial nominee, the Pittsburgh Pirates, but even more so than usual. Yeah, they were going to be next on my list also. They just signed Adam Frazier or re-signed him, which might be the rare case of signing

someone and just making the offseason even sadder, which is kind of mean to Adam Frazier, but it is sort of, in what way do you think that this is furthering your competitive goals here? Haven't you seen this film before? And they are just so perfectly positioned to add to their roster what with Skeens and Jones and even excellent prospects coming along and just an entire almost homegrown talented rotation and who knows how long the health will hold up and you just have to supplement and you just have to get some competent position players. You don't have to break the bank even. Maybe you do by pirate standards, but by any other team standards, just, just go sign some mid tier free agents and give some support to Skeens and Co. And they have just entirely failed to do that.

And it's not really surprising. And so maybe it's a little less demoralizing just because no one really expected Bob Nutting to do anything other than nut. But we would really just now more than ever like to see him invest in this roster and yet again, he has failed to step up. I don't want to draw a false equivalence here because despite my annoyance with the Mariners, they obviously are spending a good bit more on their baseball team. Uh, then the pirates are and they have a Julio. So there's that, which is quite a boon and a Calralli for that matter. Who could forget the big dumper? But when a lot of your young talent is concentrated

in pitching, I do think that it elevates the urgency of trying to contend because you just don't know how many healthy seasons you're going to get with those guys. And every season where Skeens and then, you know, Jones to, you know, an important, but also I think importantly, lesser extent is healthy and throws a full year and you don't get to the postseason is a waste of a season. And I think that like Adam Frazier's fine, Tameza's fine, you know, again, these are guys who are, I think nice complimentary pieces on a contending, mostly complete roster, right?

And there's real value in that kind of guy. I don't wanna say that those role players aren't important because guys do get hurt and you know, in that kind of guy. I don't want to say that those role players aren't important because guys do get hurt and you need to avoid holes in your lineup and you need competent bullpen arms. There's real value in selecting with care to like Boris said a little bit, the flowers that you put around your main plantings. I would suggest that Adam Frazier may very well be the hole in your lineup that you're trying to fill. Well, there's that, but you know what I'm trying to say?

Like I don't want to say that like this sort of broader category of player doesn't have a place. And we have seen, you know, this might be overstating Adam Fraser's contributions at this stage of his career, but like we have seen contenders sort of felled by having inadequate depth and having, you know, real black holes in their, in their role player pool. Like no, having said that, I remember Adam Fraser kind of being a black hole for the Mariners. So like, you know, these things kind of come and go. But I think that there's value in bringing those guys in. And I think that if you're a team like Pittsburgh, there's a version of the strategy of, hey,

let's cycle through some guys and see who we can make something of, who we can help, which sort of post prospect players can we adjust and tweak or give playing time to you and see what they can do with a little bit more run. But like Adam Frazier doesn't qualify as that, neither does Tim Mesa. So the strategy you're picking is one that feels like it has missed and skipped several steps. Like if the pirates had gone out and said, you know what, we're really excited about some of the young guys on our team and we're going to sign, I mean, I guess they wouldn't sign Bragman because they have a good third baseman, but you know what I'm trying to say. We're going to sign, go blow away Pete Alonso.

Like what are we doing? You know, like, I don't know, he could be useful. He has some runs. Like go get that guy. You know, if you do those things, if you really bring in players to lengthen your lineup, to really improve your offensive prospects. And then at the end of that, you say, you know, we like Adam Frazier is sort of like a complimentary depth bench guy. Okay, great. That's fine. I'm not going to think twice

about that signing, but when that's your signing, buddies. Pirates, Mariners, Blue Jays, Orioles, Bodies. Pirates, mariners, blue jays, orioles, different degrees, gradations, different reasons and causes of the frustration. I think there's one more to round out the top five and even has a legitimate claim to the top spot. And that's the Minnesota twins who have not done a thing really. They haven't done anything. And also sat out last off season for the most part and the trade deadline and paid the price for that and saw exactly what can come of that.

And the ramifications were that they missed out on the playoffs and they don't have a lot of depth and they're depending on guys who get hurt a lot. And they probably have even less depth than they did. And that's just not a good place to be in. According to John Becker of FanGraph's accounting, there are four teams that have yet to sign a major league free agent, at least to a fully guaranteed deal, and that's the Brewers, the Cardinals, the Marlins, and the Twins. So the fact that the Twins are in that category after having missed out, they have a core that's good enough to contend and they have things to prove and playoff success to have.

And it seems like they're squandering those opportunities. And I guess we can clearly identify why that's happening, that they're selling the team. And also there's broadcast uncertainty. So it's not a mystery about why that has happened, but for fans, that doesn't really make it much less frustrating. Aside from the fact that I guess you can say,

well, we will be freed from the poll ads, hopefully sometime soon, and maybe the next ownership group will be better. But in the short term, you're still missing out on some primo opportunities. Yeah. I was going to maybe skip the twins because the potential sale thing I think is a complicating factor that really probably is hamstringing their front office, but it's definitely fair to mention them. And you've just brought up another team that I think is like a dark horse for this, which is St. Louis. What are

you guys up to there? You know? Excuse you. All you're really doing is sitting out here trying to trade Nolan Aeronauto. Yeah. The only reason I would exclude the Cardinals is that, A, they have a track record of extended success. And so to the degree that you build in a little grace period and goodwill, they have not been out of contention very often over the past couple of decades. And also I think there was a sense that they needed to reset and sort of, yeah, like more than the typical team that talks about retrenching or resetting or step backs or rebuilding or whatever it is. There was a sense that the Cardinals really did

need to do that and improve their processes and that at one point they were cutting edge and then they fell behind. And they also did kind of clearly telegraph that they were going to do this. And by do this, I mean, not do anything really, which doesn't make it easier exactly, but at least they've been kind of clear about it where they're like, look, we need to do some stuff. We're going to focus on player development and the minor leagues and our prospect pipeline, and we're going to build up our, our development staff and we're going to modernize. And there's a new guy who's about to be in charge and at time, who at least in retrospect has did a pretty good job

building up the Red Sox system. And so for all those reasons, I think a transitional year where you are just sort of sitting things out, it's not good, but to me it's in the next tier down. It's more good, but to me, it's in the next tier down. It's more understandable. Yeah. And the Brewers staying within that division, that also sort of sucks because they're a team that should be contending and the Cubs have made some moves and made some upgrades. The only reason I don't include them is that they have a track record of succeeding and of exceeding

expectations. And at this point, I feel like you doubt the Brewers at your own peril until proven otherwise. And I thought that they weren't going to be as good as they were last year. And they surprised me and they've handily won that division. And they have had kind of a raisey, I mean, they have a lot of they've handily won that division and they have had kind of a raisey, I mean, they have a lot of raise pedigree in that front office, but they've just, they found guys and they have managed to just kind of churn and let guys go and then bring in replacements who were less heralded, but were pretty productive.

And they've been doing that for a while now and with different managers and different GMs and Popos. And so they've earned enough credibility in my mind where would you have liked to see them spend? Yeah, absolutely. But they have at least balled on a budget. They've kind of made it work. I guess you could throw the guardians into this category too. They've made some additions, but they've also made some salary dumps and nothing new for them. But they also year in and year out, almost find a way to succeed and contend and be in the running at the end of things. So when you have that track record, I'm a little more inclined to give you a little leeway

and say, well, they've made it work. And it'd be nice if they didn't have to, just like if they had more margin for error, but until they stop making this work, then you kind of have to hand it to them to some extent. And the brewers, I guess, given the market and the media market and everything, they've spent, I suppose, commensurate with that more or less over the last however many years. So it's not a pirate's sort of situation with that is what I'm saying. It's a different kind of category. Yeah. I think that it's fair to note that and good too, but I just want to be mindful that we're not letting diminished activity and

payroll expectations over a long time let anybody off the hook either, right? Like, are we grading the Brewers relative to what they've done in the past? Is that totally fair? Do you know what I'm trying to say? Like, we should know. Like, hey, you guys could poke around a little bit if you wanted to. I think you're right that if you are trying to assess sort of organizational want, that it is a different situation, franchise to franchise, and that not all of those teams are sort of on the same part of the want continuum. But like, you know, hey, you guys could do a little something. One major league for agent signing is not too much to ask for any organization, but

yeah, the goal ultimately is to win games. And a good way to win games is to spend on players. But the goal is not to have a representative payroll. It's good if you do because it helps you win. But if you have been able to defy that pattern and win anyway, well, you're giving the fans what most of them ultimately want, which is not to ensure that the players are well compensated, but to win games. And however you do that, I think that's, it's just, you can't condemn to the same degree if you've had a track record of actually contending. Now it would help you continue to contend if you spent. We're on the same page here. The Marlins, now they're in the pirate's perennial disappointment kind of category. I would separate them somewhat just because this winter specifically, spending

wasn't going to do anything for them because they're just too far gone. And so if they had signed a major league free agent for show, they should absolutely spend some money because they're getting a lot of revenue sharing and there should be a grievance filed if they don't spend any money. It is pretty shameful to get all that money and basically have that cover your entire payrolls. But I'm just saying from a wins and losses perspective, they're more hopeless right now than the pirates are. And also at least they're embarking on a plan and maybe it's kind of a depressing plan, maybe it's a tanking style plan, which is tougher to pull off these days,

but they have a new administration. They go get the guy from the raise. They're building from the ground up. They're stockpiling prospects. It's going to be a while, but in the short term, spending just would not have made much of a difference. Maybe it would have made your records slightly less embarrassing at the end of the season, but that's about their ceiling at this point.

So it is compounded by the fact that the Marlins have so often been in that boat over the history of that franchise and have so often pulled the plug and started over again. But I guess you can't blame Peter Bendix for that. You can kind of blame Bruce Sherman for that for his tenure, certainly. But yeah, again, this goes back to is it better to be hopeless in a sense? Because at least you're not letting anyone down because you've disappointed them so many times that they don't expect anything of you anymore. That's not something to strive for either, but it's a little less acutely disappointing.

The only other team that I might mention is the San Diego Padres. Now they're maybe the best of the teams that we've mentioned here, which I think keeps them out of the top tier, but they were on that list of teams that hadn't signed a major leaguer, I think until they signed Elias Diaz just recently. I think that got them on the board. And that's not an issue. I think you mean, uh, all-star game MVP. CB. Yes, I do. One in the same, but they got off that list kind of on a technicality there,

because that's not the most exciting edition. And there are still rumors flying by the day about Dylan Cease being sent out. And maybe it's more disappointing because they've just done such a 180 when it comes to spending. And it's, I don't know whether you could call it a cautionary tale or Icarus, do we need to invoke Icarus here? Do we need to just say, this is why people are mad about the Dodgers because the Padres, as of a couple of years ago, they were the case that we were all pointing to and saying, see, you can do it and you don't have to be bound by market size and you don't have to cry poor the way that Halst Einbrunner is and you can spend.

And Peter Seidler was the poster boy for that and he was putting his money where his mouth was and he built a contending team. And then a lot of things went wrong, both for the Padres and for Peter Seidler personally. And obviously illness struck him and then broadcast uncertainty struck the team. And now there's all this behind the scenes drama with ownership and Seidler's successor. There's all this behind the scenes drama with ownership and sidler successor, and you put all of that together and the Padres were this shining hope that we could point to and say,

see if other teams just tried, they could be the Padres and they could win. And that did work for a while, but there were people sort of sounding the alarm and saying, oh, this is gonna catch up with them and it's not gonna work long-term. The way that the and saying, well, this is going to catch up with them. And it's not going to work long-term the way that the Dodgers, well, they can just keep throwing money at the problem. And it's not like they've spent on wisely either, but money doesn't

guarantee you a title, but it does give you a strong sizable head start on winning a division or making the playoffs. There's absolutely a relationship there and to say that there's not a parody problem in baseball or competitive balance problem in baseball because the built-in randomness of the playoffs bails you out. Yeah, that's not super satisfying. There's a built-in randomness in the regular season too and good teams can go bad and bad teams can be better than anyone thought, but the Dodgers have been insulated from the vagaries of the regular season to a great degree by how much they've

spent and also how wisely they've spent it and all the other institutional advantages. So if you wanted to draw a contrast, you could say, look at the Dodgers, look at the Padres, these two teams were trying to go head to head and there was this exciting rivalry for a little while there or it looked like there was going to be. And then the Padres ran up against the limits and some luck didn't go their way. And that's true in terms of run differential and record in season two. And a couple of seasons ago, how they were seemingly a better team under the hood than they were in terms of their record and they missed the playoffs. And that's really costly for a team like the Padres, where as a team like the Dodgers, they could weather some misfortune and some slings and arrows. So I think you could draw a distinction there

and that's why maybe Padres fans are upset, especially when Roki Sasaki goes to the Dodgers for almost no money. And I saw that the other end of the Padres ownership dispute just counter sued and claimed that they missed out on Roki Sasaki because of this ownership drama and the resulting instability because Sasaki had cited the Dodgers front office stability and ownership stability as a reason why he went there. I don't know whether that's true. I don't know whether this dispute about Padres ownership was a real factor for Roki Sasaki. This could just be a war of words and lawsuits. But I think you could point to the Padres and say, gosh, how far they've fallen from just ramping up the payroll to trimming now for consecutive off seasons. Katie S thing demonstrate to me how important sort of the commitment of ownership to the project

of winning can be. The market is different and the resources seem to be somewhat different. And obviously their broadcast situation is in a different spot. But like, I think that in terms of the desire on the part of the key person in the ownership group to win, like you could point to say John Middleton as a parallel to Seidler, right? And who knows? He might've just said, we're going to just keep floating the team because we know that we had bad luck the one year and it was weird and fluky that our record in one games was what it was. And we have confidence in this group and we think that we have most of the guys that we need, but we also acknowledge that they're continuing to age and are going to need reinforcement at some point. And so

we're going to commit to this thing because we think that it's worth it. We don't know what his sort of counter would have been to this situation. So to me, it mostly speaks to like having a person in that seat who is really gung-ho about bringing a ring and a parade to the city. It matters a lot. It's important for the sport overall to have a couple of those folks, right? So that they can, you know, bid against each other and create a healthy market. But I also think that having someone who is really putting the ring at the top of their hierarchy of needs, it does impel more spending from other owners. Baseball got worse when Mike Elich died. It really did. That guy was important. He's not the only one who can do that kind of stuff. But having guys like that, particularly in markets that aren't New York or Los Angeles,

I think has a lot of value for baseball. So yeah, that's what I think about that. All right. Well, I think we have named the top candidates. If anyone else wants to make a case for their team as the most demoralizing, feel free to write in. Somehow we're going to get 17 emails that are exactly the same about some team that we didn't mention here. I'm trying to scan the list. Who are we admitting? I'm just looking at the spot track offseason

spending leaderboard, which ranges from, this is in terms of total dollars committed over many years in some cases, so it's sort of a silly way to look at things. But the Mets are at the top at almost a billion bucks, $976 million. It ranges from that to the Cardinals at the bottom at about $17 million, along with the Marlins, and then the Rockies and the White Sox and the Brewers, Pirates, Twins, Mariners, Padres, Nationals. It really is shocking that Jerry and AJ have set out the off season the way that they have. I feel bad for fans of those teams. I almost feel bad for those guys. I don't know how responsible they are for the spending patterns. Probably to some degree they are certainly, but they just got to be jonesing to make some moves because it's just completely out of character

for these two to sit on their hands this way. I worry that they are tied up in a basement somewhere like so many victims and trapped. Trapped. Me too. Yeah. Trapped. I like it when we refer to teams engaging in a period of retrenchment because that's how the family and persuasion referred to their

situation. We need more Jane Austen in our transaction analysis. She would have loved to observe the winter meetings. I feel confident in that. Yeah, classic. A family of means is laid low. They suffer some misfortune in the market and it's a riches to rags to riches story. Yeah. Very, very Victorian or pre-Victorian even in some cases. Look don't underestimate your Captain Wentworth. I don't know who that is in this analogy, but where my persuasion heads at?

One of the better Ostens. I'm right about this. We want great expectations for teams. Not enough are fulfilling them. No too much sense and sensibility as it were. Hey-o! Is that S-E-N-S-E or C-E-N-T-S? Oh, that was very feisty. I like it. All right, just been here now. Maybe sense and sustainability would have been even more apt. That's the word that so many front office types tend to use.

Bo Jackson messages have continued to come, so I gotta post this podcast as soon as possible. That's the only thing that can end them. Another thing that has continued to come after our recording is signings of free agents, including signings by two teams we just talked about. The Toronto Always A Bridesmaid Blue Jays. They wooed and signed Max Scherzer to a one-year deal, 15 and a half million, just a hair over what Justin Verlander got from the Giants. by a hair here, I mean half a million bucks, and the Seattle Mariners re-signed Jorge Polanco.

So we were talking about the most demoralizing off-seasons, well, the off-season wasn't and isn't over. There's still time to make some moves. Salvage that off-season, maybe it's too late to turn that off-season frown upside down, but you could at least level it out. And I'd say the Blue Jays have done that at this point. You land a few significant free agents, you trade for Andres Jimenez, you trade for a good Guardians guy and also a not-so-good Guardians guy, and you make a good faith effort to ink some others. In my mind,

you've certainly signed yourself out of the conversation for most demoralizing offseason. And the Mariners have Jorge Polanco back. Anyway, not a shocker that some of the teams that we had singled out as having some of the worst and least active offseasons were the ones to make subsequent moves. It's regression to the transaction mean if you haven't made many moves, then roster-wise you probably still have the potential to make more than most other teams do. So a little less sense and sustainability to joke about than before. You can help sustain this podcast by throwing some scents our way, C-E-N-T-S, at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild, where you can sign up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free, and get yourself access to some perks.

As have the following five listeners, Philip Tapley, who, along with Michael Stokes, produced today's Effectively Wild intro theme, the first fresh addition to our rotation in some time. Submissions are always welcome, send them to PodcastofVangraphs.com. Other Patreon supporters to thank today include Christopher Fletcher, John Thomas, Rob Myrune, and Scott Hughes, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff livestreams, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, discounts on merch and ad-free FanCrafts memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter you can message

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You can find the Effectively Wild sub-edit at r slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show page at Fan Graphs 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 one more episode before the end of this week, which means we will talk to you soon. Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, how can you not be horny about baseball? Every take, hot and hotter, entwining and abutting, watch them climb diggin' mountain. about baseball.