Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2278: We Shall Not Look Upon Their Like Again

Episode Date: February 1, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Max Scherzer and Jorge Polanco signings, Scherzer vs. Justin Verlander, and the changes in pitcher usage over the course of those pitchers’ careers. Then (20:17) they discuss stricter restrictions on the size of fielders’ gloves, and the merits of a tax in Meg’s county to help pay […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2278 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm okay. Friday pod. Friday pod. Friday pod.

Friday pod. Last pod, which was a Thursday pod, we talked about teams that had had the most demoralizing off seasons. And two of the teams that we singled out have made moves since then. Even before I could post the podcast, I had to append a note in the outro that we had recorded prior to those transactions. So we somehow lit a fire under those two teams, even before our podcast was published. Yes, they're getting sneak previews of our podcasts. So the Blue Jays

signed Max Scherzer and your Seattle Mariners, sort of your Seattle Mariners, signed- Oh sure, now they're my Seattle Mariners. Resigned Jorge Polanco. So how much does that change your mindset about the Mariners? Jorge Polanco is back. I'm so confused, Ben, because here's the thing about it. Here's one of the things about it. They've resigned Jorge Polanco, and I believe that they have said that he is going to play third base. And you might remember, Ben, that they non-tendered Josh Rojas, who was already playing third base for them and had played third base very well.

One year of defensive metrics, so apply the usual grains of salt to your recipe, but graded out very well by OAA. A lot was written about the work that Josh Rojas had done with Perry Hill to improve his infield defense. And as a person who watched just like a probably unhealthy number of Mariners games last season, there were two things that I would observe. One, I was often impressed with Josh Rojas' defense. And I, you know, I had watched a fair amount of Josh Rojas in person when he was in Arizona Diamondback and his fielding

was, you know, shaky. And then in Seattle, his fielding was, to my eye, meaningfully better. Often, pretty good, you know, where I'd be like, that was a nice play that Josh Rojas just made. Like, he really whooped it over there. And then I would sometimes watch Jorge Polanco and I would yell at the TV about it because he's very bad field trip, very poor. Now, Jorge Polanco dealt with injury at times last year, but we knew from his tenure with the twins that like, you know, kind of on the downside of his career from a defensive perspective, the hope was that he'd be good enough in the field and that he would bring a worthwhile bet to the lineup. And I wouldn't say that his season went particularly well. Again, he dealt with some injury and I'm sure that that had an effect both

in the field and at the plate, but like would describe myself, Ben, as underwhelmed by Jorge Polanco in his first go-round in Seattle. Now, he has been resigned. He is going to make $7.75 million. Josh Rojas is making like 3 1⁄2 million in arbitration. So what exactly would we say we are doing here? That would be my review of this. Now, do I imagine that there is going to be like a huge, incredible, dramatic

difference between the Josh Rojas and the Jorge Polanco of it all next year? I mean, I don't know. Like, Josh Rojas, from a projection perspective, is projected to hit worse than Jorge Polanco, who I will point out is not projected to hit like great, but is projected to hit marginally better. And it kind of depends on the system that you're employing, but like marginally better than Rojas. So you're older than Josh Rojas and again has made me at times want to pull my hair out of my human head from a fielding perspective. So I simply say, huh? What are we doing? So that's what I think about that. In terms of Max Scherzer, whatever, I think it's fine. I have sort of the

same reaction to Max Scherzer that I had to Justin Verlander, which is he's clearly on the back nine and he's not a Cy Young guy anymore. And you don't know how many innings you're gonna get out of him because he made all of nine starts for the Rangers last year. The quality of those starts kind of varied. He was on the injured list, but he is entering the offseason according to him. He entered the offseason fully healthy with all of his various bits and bobs intact. And so if you get a healthy version of Max Scherzer, I don't know, it could be fine. You know, it could be fine. He and Verlander are like weirdly twinned now from a contract perspective. I think that there was like a merging of spirit or something.

But that's what I think about that. You know, I think it's fine. And I remain very frustrated and perplexed by my Seattle Mariners. But I also will admit, I have to, I simply have to, it is funny, Ben. That move, funny, funny sort of sense of humor in those Seattle Mariners. They lack many other things, but a sense of humor, they seem to have an abundance. So that's what I think about that. Well, mostly the answer to what are we doing here for the Mariners this winter has been nothing, nothing at all. So they did something and it's a proof of Depoto life. So that's reassuring. Don't think it dramatically changes my outlook for the Mariners or my evaluation of them as discussed on the previous pod. Scherzer, yes, you're right. It is really

interesting how he and Verlinder have sometimes gone together on the same team, but also very much in terms of contract structure and salary amount and AV and length. And so he did just a bit better than Justin Verlinder to the point that I almost wonder if it was like, just give me more than Justin. I mean, I have no reason to think that's the case or that there's a direct rivalry between those two was certainly when it comes to contracts, but it is interesting that the market seemingly valued them almost identically one year deals, Verlander got 15 million, Scherzer got 15 and a half.

And I guess if I had to pick one, I'd probably go with Scherzer too. I think I trust Scherzer more from a performance standpoint and trust him even less from an availability standpoint. Yes, we agree. And those things kind of come out to about the same, which is about what they got. I guess Scherzer had to wait a little longer. He had a workout the other day.

He put on a little display. He gave a pitching demonstration to teams. So there was maybe even more of a concern about his physical states, but yeah, when he has been healthy, he's been a bit more effective of late, of very late than Verlander, but I have a little more confidence that Verlander will take the ball, just less confidence in what he will do with it. I agree with that assessment in its entirety. Great.

On the whole though, I think it does make me feel more positive about the Blue Jays. I'm taking them off the list of most demoralizing teams, my personal list at least. They've gotten a few guys and a few guys that you're happy to have even if they weren't your first choices. And that rotation, it projects to be roughly middle of the pack, but you could imagine it being better than that. At least there's enough to dream on in that rotation. Again, contingent on health and availability as always, but if you could push Yari El-Redriguez to the

bullpen at least for the moment and if you get Alec Manoa back and he's healthy and effective, and I know that those are questions, but there's a little more depth there. And you got Gaussman, you got Berrios, you've got Bassett, you've got Francis, and now you've got Scherzer. If Max Scherzer is your fifth starter, then that's not that bad a place to be. Sure. Yeah. I think the way that I would describe the Blue Jays is that there's a lot of if and a lot of if that has to go right. But if that if goes right, it could be fine. I like that Scherzer's kind of in his itinerant pitcher era. He's just in his journeyman era here.

And that seems appropriate because he's someone who's so tenacious when he's on the mound that it seems like he should be someone who's also tenacious about staying on the mound, as is Verlander who has expressed his desire to pitch forever. But also Scherzer just, he seems like a tear the uniform off his back kind of guy, at least just in terms of his, his mien, his manner when he is on the mountains. And I know he's not like that 24-7. There's just something happens to him when he steps onto the bump, but I like that he retains the desire to step onto the bump because he and Verlander, they could call it quits now and that would be fine. And they could just sail into the hall of fame together.

I actually do hope that their last season in the majors is the same season. Yeah. Yes. I would like them inducted in the same class. That would be very cool. That feels right. Yeah. Yeah.

They've just paralleled each other in a number of ways, whether it's like the Tigers background or just the years and the effectiveness and they're just, aside from Kershaw, the two best pitchers of their era. And I don't want to cite Zach Granke either, but Orsi Suzbathe who just got in, but he's gone and these guys are still hanging on. So I want them to hang on as long as they can pitch competently at this level, even if they're no longer elite, even if they're okay, as long as they're not embarrassing themselves out there, as long as they're not hurting their teams. I'd like to see them last as long as they can.

They're kind of a link to an earlier era, especially Verlander who, when you look, he dates back a bit further. And when you look at his innings totals from earlier in his career, you're like, that's the career of a guy who's still active. LS. Yeah, they don't make them like that anymore. CB. No, that's a testament to his longevity and also just how quickly things have changed, that it really does seem like he's a relic from an earlier era. And I like that about him. LS. Yeah, I think that it's hard for me to mentally sort of separate them and part, you know, like they've literally been teammates, right? They are quite literally linked in that way, but they are

sort of of a piece to me in terms of both their quality and sort of the archetype that they represent. I think it would be very cool if they went into the hall at the same time. I can't imagine we will see, maybe not ever again, but that we will see many quite like them as the game progresses. And, you know, there are parts of that that are fine and there are parts of that that are a bummer. Not every guy can do what they did in any number of ways, right? They were quite singular in so many ways, but it's cool that they're in this phase. I don't know that we could attribute a certain number of wins or runs to the value that that

perspective and wisdom brings to a dugout, but they bring a little something with them above and beyond whatever they contribute on the mound to. And I think that that has some value. So yeah. Yeah. 2011, when they were teammates for the first time in Detroit, Verlander led the majors. That was his Cy Young year, his first Cy Young year, 251 regular season innings, 34 starts, and then the Tigers went to the ALCS.

So he pitched 20 plus more innings in the postseason. Yeah. That was not that long ago in the great scheme of things. He is still pitching in the major leagues and yet that is completely inconceivable now. They had this stretch where like exciting young guys rounding into elite Cy Young winning form and then they were both sort of franchise altering free agents for, you know, for different teams. I guess Verlander was originally traded to Houston, right? But then resigned. So like they had this like second act with new teams where they really altered the trajectory of those franchises. You would be hard pressed in a lab to construct a better free agent

signing than Scherzer signing with the Nationals from an accolades perspective. They want a world series with him, obviously, just this very special thing. From a dollars per war perspective, it's this like boop, boop, beep, beep boop like perfect thing. So it's just they are forever twinned in my mind and I would like them to walk across the stage in Cooperstown at the same time. I think that would be cool. So coordinate it guys, you know? Yeah. 2011 when Verlander had that workload, his third time through the order and his fourth time through the order, which was actually a thing for him. 23 of his games, he went a fourth time through the order, ultimately a fairly small sample, just 61

plate appearances, but still third time through and fourth time through, sub 600 OPSs in each of those splits, which was significantly worse than he was his first time through and second time through. That's how good he was. But also he was still so effective at that point. And those were probably the days when he was holding something in reserve somehow, and he would dial it up late in the game. He was still so effective then that even if we look at it through the lens of now and times through the order and say, oh, you know, she probably should have been pulled earlier.

No, not really. Because even if you had a fresh reliever, he's not going to be that much better than Justin Verlander was the third or fourth to the order. And if he were around today, if, if the same age and same stuff, Justin Verlander were pitching today, he would not be allowed to pitch those innings. And I wonder, I wonder about that. I think you're right, but I would perhaps put this qualifier on it. I think that that guy, even in today's game, would be given a lot more leash than most

starters because as his career demonstrated, and who knows if you shift it forward in time and send a ripple through with a butterfly, is it the same verlander? I don't know. But like, if you just time shift that guy forward, he could do it. He had the stamina, he had good health a lot of the time until the tail end here, right? Like teams, you know, presented with a player who can bear up under an increasingly workload and is willing to do it, you know, a lot of them would say, yeah, right. You know, would he throw 250 innings in a year? Probably not, but he would probably be one of those guys who like kisses 200 more often

than not. I would say, yeah, I feel comfortable saying that. Yeah. But that's sort of the ceiling these days. It's not higher than that. Maybe feel comfortable saying that. Yeah, but that's sort of the ceiling these days. It's not higher than that really. Maybe he kisses like 220. He's like, oh, I'm gonna give it a little kiss. Well, Logan Webb, I guess, is the closest

that we have to that, right? A Verlinder current teammate, and he's barely topping 200 these days. And that's just because it's sort of one size fits all, and that's what you're leaving on the table. Put aside all the stuff about the starting picture protagonist and the spectator perspective. I'm just talking about from a team wins perspective.

Yeah. You're leaving probably somewhere in the realm of 40-ish innings of peak Justin Verlander if peak Justin Verlander were around today. And we're saying this with the benefit of hindsight. Sure. innings of peak Justin Verlander if peak Justin Verlander were around today. And we're saying this with the benefit of hindsight. Sure. And we know that he has gone on to pitch like 15 more seasons and mostly was healthy until he got older and there weren't really after effects from this. I guess you could say that after his heavy workloads in 2011 and 2012, he

did have that dip, his mid-career dip, where he really struggled, especially by his standards, but even by anyone's standards, he was a below average pitcher in 2014 and 2013 was a bit of a dip and he had some injury stuff going on there. So I guess you could say maybe that the workload took its toll, but then he rebounded. Yes, with slightly lower workloads, but then he rebounded, right? But then he rebounded, yes, with slightly lower workloads, but not that low. Like as recently as 2019, when he won his second Cy Young of three, he led the majors with 223 innings that year

in the regular season, then went on to the World Series. And that was the same number of starts as he had had in 2011. So you're looking at, okay, eight years past there, and you essentially lopped off maybe 30 innings of the regular season of Justin Verlander. And if you fast forward to now, you're probably taking another 10 or 20 off the top there. And Verlander was just as effective on an in-printing basis in 2019 as he had been in

2011. So it's almost like a natural experiment. We have the same guy and this is what his workload is in the same number of starts. He just doesn't go as deep into games. And now he'd go even less deep if it were still peak Verlander. And so I think you're leaving something on the table there because the flattening of picture usage, you're not really making as much of a distinction between, well, this guy is our ACE.

So obviously we want to give him more of our innings because he's better than the other pitchers. So naturally we want to distribute the innings to him disproportionately because that benefits our team. You don't get that so much anymore or you get it to a degree, but it's just more muted because if the ceiling is now roughly 200-ish for even your best and most durable guy, well, then the differential between that guy and someone at the back of your rotation, it just can't be as big as it potentially could have been at one point. So I do think you're transferring some of those innings to maybe the underbelly of your bullpen at a certain point, or it's just going

to take a toll. And again, this is hindsight and we know that this is one of the best pitchers of the era and he proved durable and there aren't many pitchers like him. And if you were just projecting forward, you couldn't have the confidence to say, yeah, we can throw this guy for 251 innings and he'll be fine. But if he came along, teams wouldn't risk it. They wouldn't risk that he's an outlier. They would never find out that he was good enough and durable enough to do that. That's just not really within the possibility space for a starting pitcher anymore. And I think that's one argument just from a team perspective, putting all the other stuff aside, that you're potentially costing yourself something there at the high end.

LS FLEMING I don't want to overstate the case and you may well be right, but I just, I wonder if with a guy like that, if you end up putting him in sort of a Logan Webb usage category. And then at some point someone goes, can you throw a couple more? You know, could he like, could he maybe throw a couple more? You're right to bring up the sort of like mid-career swoon. And it's funny because I remember having, I remember having a conversation with one of my friends from grad school who was a Tigers fan and was like sad about Verlander having this wound. And I was like, well, I don't know, everything worked out fine for Felix. So maybe it'll be, and now, now I wish it were different, Ben, you know, cause who, who would I, whose career would you rather have? You'd probably, you'd rather have Verlander.

It did work out fine for him. The other trajectory is the one that really changed. So. Yeah. You can't say which direction it will go in advance. We cannot see the future. It's tough to predict baseball, Susan. So one other thing that could be different potentially, and I've wanted to bring this up for a bit and Patrick Dubuque just wrote something for

BP that gave me a reason to, one thing that could be different is the size of baseball gloves. Now this is something that Richard Hershberger, our past past blaster and historian, author of Strike Four, The Evolution of Baseball has advocated to me before when I've discussed with him various measures that one could put in place to affect whatever change you want to affect in baseball to boost offense or make the game more dynamic or bring babbup up or enhance base running, whatever it is. We talk about all these different mechanisms that could be used to bring about that version of the game.

And Richard has been an advocate of limiting fielder's gloves to deadball era equipment. Now that might be a bit beyond what most people are willing to do, but here's his case. The steady improvement in gloves is one of the great long-term changes to the game that attracts no attention. We Willie Keeler could hit them where they ain't, partly because fielder positioning was crap, but also because fielder's had less range simply by virtue of inferior equipment. I'd also note that probably because the pitching wasn't as good and so it was possible to actually direct a pitch in addition to making contact, you could kind of aim it. That's more feasible back then than it is today.

But also the gloves, and Richard said gloves have been regulated since 1895, but not in a way that seriously constrains fielders. And so that was the thought experiment that Patrick entertained at BP on Friday, just making minor adjustments to mitts. If we want to bring back BABIP, which has been down. And one of the reasons seemingly for that is that especially in the outfield defenders have gotten better about positioning and also probably just speedier and more athletic. And so they're catching more flies. There are fewer flies and liners falling despite the defensive positioning

limitations in the infield. And thus you have almost the lowest batting average we've seen, and then there are fewer runners on base and there's less scoring, et cetera. And so one proposal that Patrick is putting out there is that we could just trim the size of the gloves, not necessarily back to dead ball era, but maybe back to what they were like in the 50s,

for example, because as Patrick says here, in 1957, Wilson unleashed a new model, the A2000, enlarging the well of the glove still further and hardening the ring around the top of the mitt, making it snap over the ball and hold it tight. There have been models since, but the A2000 remains the basic structure for baseball gloves nearly 70 years later. They haven't needed to make changes, they've already won. So not going back to the pre-webbing days, but just to

maybe a smaller glove and a glove that makes it less easy to hold onto the ball once you have gotten it in your glove. And the effects of that could be significant, but the mechanism would be fairly subtle. So what do you think about that? If we stipulate that, yeah, we want BABUP to be higher, that'd be nice. It'd be good if batting average were higher. This would be one way to do it. You like it? I love it.

I think it's a great idea. I haven't had a chance to read Patrick's piece yet. So I don't know if he made reference to other folks who I remember Patrick's friend and mine Brenda Golowski advocating for this at one point. Yes, that was Patrick credited Brendan. Okay. Yeah. Of course he did. Patrick's good about that. I think it's a great idea. I think that if you can employ small changes to great effect, there's like a kind of nice bit of like trickeration from the fan viewing perspective that goes on here because you

wouldn't be able to tell from the stance, right? If you're watching a baseball game unfold and everyone has just like slightly smaller gloves, you're not going to notice. You didn't notice the bigger bases. You haven't noticed how the oven mitts are slowly growing over time, right? I guess this is the second minor and benign conspiracy that I maybe believe. But anyway, it wouldn't stand out to anyone in the crowd. And so you would get to reap the benefits of enhanced and increased babbip,

but you would be able to kind of tell yourself that it like, this kind of happened. And I think that we have such affection for the game as we understand it now. And we have such a, we hold so tight to it being the same, right, that it furthers tradition. And so I think that part of what helps us adapt to change is if we don't think anything happened at all, if it was sort of organic, you know, people were enthusiastic about the rule changes in a way that I was candidly a little surprised by. And part of my surprise was that I expected even though it was doing the thing that we all said, right, it was helping to, you know, like enhance base running and it was speeding up the game, it was so obviously stated, right? It was a big deal was made of it and you had to do

that because you had to explain why the pitch clock was there, right? And you had to explain the new pickoff rules and, you know, you had to tell people the pitch clock was there, right? And you had to explain the new pickoff rules and you know, you had to tell people the bases were bigger, even though again, I maintain you would not have noticed if no one had told you if they had just been made different overnight, you would have been like, those are bases, that's the size they are. You don't know, you don't know how big bases are. You didn't know before, you wouldn't have known after. But again, I was surprised that people were so gung-ho about it because it was so direct and it had to be. And I was pleased, but I think that we do better

with this stuff when we can just pretend that spontaneously overnight, everybody got better at hitting them where they ain't, you know? I think we do better with that. I think it's a great idea. Two thumbs up, five stars, no notes. CBer I like it too. I like something that's subtle, that's fairly unobtrusive, doesn't feel too heavy-handed. In fact, your hands would be lighter because the gloves would be smaller. And I do favor direct address for problems, I guess, more so than the double bank shot kind of theory of these

things. So for example, when it comes to say increasing contact, lowering strikeout rates, I favor just making pictures easier to hit if you can. And I know easier said than done, but I think there are things you could do, whether it's moving the mound back or my preferred solution to everything, which is just lowering the number of pitchers on the active roster that are allowed at any one time, thereby forcing pitchers to go deeper into games, not just Justin Verlander in 2011, but pitchers even today and making that more valuable and thus making it more emphasized by teams. That I favor just because, okay, if we can just make the pitches less fast or move a little less or whatever it is, well, that's the most direct way

to address the problem of hitters are not making enough contact. As opposed to this, which is more like, well, we'll make it more rewarding to put the ball in play because you'll have a higher batting average on balls and play. And then players will prioritize contact more. And that may well be true. It's just a little less indirect. You're relying on a couple of things happening there and an approach change, et cetera.

So in that sense, I say, if we wanna address the contact, let's tackle that directly. But if we wanna address the BABIP, then I do kind of like this. This is a decent way to do it. And I'm sure that people have proposed this going back decades. If I did one of my patented newspapers.com deep dives, I'm sure I could find people talking about this for half a century, maybe more. And just as when I proposed that we actually make the outfield a little bigger by widening the foul lines, and that's something that people have been talking about since the 19th century for some of the same reasons and with really the same goal. And I think this is just an easier sell than many of the things that people propose.

I think that's one of the great virtues of this because most fans couldn't tell you what the limit is currently for gloves. They couldn't tell you that it is 13 inches is the maximum legal size for a glove, which I don't think I even recalled. It was actually increased to 13 inches in 2016, fairly recently. So in 1990, then commissioner Faye Vincent cracked down on the trend toward bigger gloves and enforced the longstanding 12 inch limit and players protested, but I guess mostly abided by it, but also probably pushed the limits a little. And then eventually just what, nine years ago, they actually loosened the limits a little bit. So if anything, we're still heading

in an opposite direction towards bigger and bigger clubs. So I think this would be good because it's not one of these sacred numbers in baseball. Somehow 60 feet, six inches became sacred just because it's been that distance for a long time or 90 feet between bases. And so we couldn't tinker with the actual distance between the base pass, but we'll shorten it indirectly by making the bases bigger. So you sort of have to placate people who will be mad about any of these just inviolable limits.

This I don't think anyone would really be that upset about other than maybe some of the fielders themselves, like 13 inches. No one really knows or cares that it's precisely 13 inches, and no one could tell from afar. So I think it would be subtle and fairly effective. LS. And look, I think be direct, fine, but see what all you can do with small change first. I don't mean that I'm not like an incrementalist a lot of the time, but in this instance, I think it's useful.

It also, one of the appealing things about the glove being made smaller is that if it doesn't yield the desired results, it's very easy to change. And I think that there's value in exhausting those kinds of potential rule changes too, because we can be kind of stuck in the mud once we commit to a course. And it's good when we can say, yeah, that didn't work. And then, you know, everyone just go get your glove that you had in storage, you know, and when you're, when you're back there, go find the pants that aren't quite so see-through and bring those back to, you know, go get, go get your old pants. Like remember when

there was all the weird transfer nonsense in like 2014 or whatever? And then everyone was pointing out, this isn't working the way that it was intended to. And so they just changed it back. They were just like, yeah, okay, fine. We'll switch it up. And that's good. And I think that you have to have like a willing heart in order to do that. But I think the perceived sort of elasticity of the rule change itself is also useful there. And if all it is is like, yeah, go get your old glove, it's fine. Then that's easy, you know, it's good to have. I wonder where the point is that glove size becomes counterproductive, increasing glove

size. Like, where's the- This is the other great thing. You need to do both, you know? So you should have like the clown, we need a clown game. Yeah, if you have just the giant novelty glove, that would be good. Like if you had a glove that covered the entire outfield, let's say, well, that would be beneficial because you could just lay your hand down on the glove and the glove would cover the

entire possible space that a ball could fall. And wherever it fell, assuming it wasn't over the fence, it would be a catch, it would be an out. So that'd be great. But also you couldn't move with the gigantic glove. Now you wouldn't have to if it covered the entire outfield. But where is the point I wonder where it flips over from this is increasingly beneficial to actually this is hurting me now? It would probably differ depending on the position because if you're an outfielder, maybe the ability to control the ball or retrieve the ball from the pocket is not quite as important as it is for an infielder, let's say.

So you just want to block it. You just want to stop it from falling. As long as it's not so cumbersome that you can't run, then probably just more space to put between you and the ball would be better within reason. But then if you're an infielder, let's say, and you've got to get that ball out of there, well, even now players will sometimes lose the ball in the webbing and it'll roll around in there and they can't get a good grip. So if you had just this gigantic glove, you'd have a tough time on the transfer and that would be bad. So there must

be a point at which bigger is not better. I don't know that we're actually at that point. So I think it's still helpful to have these regulations, but smaller would be worse, I think in most cases for fielders, but not necessarily for fans. It might be better for fans. That's something else that Patrick considers. Would this be spectator friendly to see fielders not being as good, to see them dropping the ball more often?

In a way that makes what you're seeing look a little less impressive because when everything's going smoothly and you're making fine plays and you're just catching everything, it makes it look like the caliber of play is higher. Whereas if a bunch of balls are dropping, well then it looks like the fielders aren't as good. It looks like you're not seeing quite as impressive a display of athletic acumen. But then at what point does it become too routine? Maybe we want to see some bobbles. Maybe we want to see some balls clanking off of the tip of gloves or just fielders doing an Ole and missing them entirely because that's entertaining too. Not just because it leads to more base runners and maybe more base stealing,

but also because there's more doubt while the play is in progress. And how many times have we said, or you've said probably more than me watching college baseball, let's say. There's more uncertainty when the ball is put in play. You can't count on the routine plays being made or they're just not routine at that level, what would be routine in the big leagues. And so maybe that would be for the better that fielders just wouldn't be as good. There'd be a little more suspense on the typical play because you couldn't count on a guy gloving

it as reliably as they can now. Now, Ben, give yourself credit. You say that about college baseball all the time, that's one of your catchphrases. I know I said it about the Sonoma Stompers and the Pacific Association, although in that case, my heart was in my throat in all of those places, so it was kind of taxing for me.

A little different. Yeah. I think that there's a balance to be struck there because really, really good fielding is I think a delight to watch. And I do think the distinction between something being viewed as an expression of skill on the part of the hitter versus a failure on the part of the fielder, I think those things wash over us differently, right? It's like how we hold hitting streaks in a higher regard than on base streaks because we think

hitting is a result of skill on the part of the hitter and walks are the result of charity. And that's a false dichotomy, right? There are examples of both kinds of things in both camps and in both categories, but I do think you want to have the gloves be appropriately sized so that the way you perceive the increase in BABIP is, oh my gosh, look at these incredible hitters and not, oh my God, again, right? When it comes to the fielder. So I don't know, I don't know where that, that line lies. I'm not, I'm not familiar enough with the ins and outs of the gloves to be able to say, but I do think keeping some sort of balance there is a good thing to keep in mind as we prepare

to implement the small glove strategy. Small glove. Yeah. Errors are exciting plays, I would say. They are kind of, but if you saw a lot more of them, you'd get annoyed. Yes, I think that's true. And of course we have fewer errors than ever and that's largely an official scoring change more so than the players themselves.

And Sam just wrote about that and we've stat blasted about that before. So we don't have a whole lot of errors these days. I don't think there's been that dramatic a change in that lately. I think that's been a bit overblown, but it is true that there are fewer errors than there used to be. LS There is a conspiracy theory about it though. CB There is. Yes. And we need all the hits we can get at this point too. But I think that if you have what appears to be a routine play and then your expectation is subverted because someone screws up. Well, you are excited. One fan is excited in a positive way. Hey, I thought that was an out and suddenly we

got something going here. We have a state of execution. We have a base runner. And then of course, the person who's rooting for the defensive team is disappointed, but also their attention is peaked at least, right? They perk up a little, hey, he's screwed up. So it's not compelling in the sense of like a great display of athletic prowess. It's sort of the opposite of that. So it's, it's not like physically arresting really, but just in terms of something happened that I didn't think was going to happen and thus suddenly I'm

paying more attention than I was, then that is exciting. But you're right, I think within reason because at a certain point it would just become a comedy of errors and that's not what we want necessarily when we're watching baseball. Yes, it would generate discourse, which we are always trying to avoid. Which is ironic as podcasters and prolific podcasters, no less. We are trying to have a productive and enlightening conversation that's different than our discourse. Our discourse is different than other people's discourse. That's right. It's the children who are wrong. Patrick also proposed that maybe this would highlight the differences in skill among fielders. I will quote from him, smaller gloves would

allow the greats to differentiate themselves even more from their colleagues, demonstrating their softer hands and reflexes. I don't know how much we would notice that, but I guess there is a little leveling effect maybe if everyone has bigger gloves and there's more margin for error potentially. Still, you got to get there and that depends on your jump and your speed and your positioning and your reflexes and everything. But maybe there's just a little more leeway there. Whereas if you have a little less glove to work with, then yeah, maybe your control, your precision is more important and that would lead to greater variation among fielders

and greater appreciation for the finer points of fielding perhaps. Love to appreciate a fielder. You know? I do, yeah. Okay, I endorse this idea. I don't know where I would rank it on my hierarchy of ways to fix baseball.

I continue to think that it's almost just we're presented with too many options, which is heartening in a way. It's not as if this is an insuperable problem, any of these things in my mind. It's not as if we are completely at a loss. How do we bring about this type of change? Some of the changes would be harder to bring about than others, but I think in all cases, there's not really a lack of this would work. I think this could work. This seems logically like it would work.

If anything, there are almost too many different ways to approach the problem. If you want to increase offense or babbip, you could target the pitchers, you could do something for the hitters, you could do something for the fielders. There are all of these different ways, all these vectors that we could take to approach the problem. And maybe the best answer is a combination of more than one of the things, but it, it almost paralyzes people, I think a little bit because it's like, well, is that better than this? And you don't want to let perfect be the enemy of the good. And maybe you just try something.

But yeah, it's tough because then you divide even the people who agree on the change that they want to see, there are just so many different ways to potentially get from point A to point B that you can't get consensus on that. And so it's harder to get people on the same page, even if they are on the same chapter basically

about like what they want the sport to look like. There are just so many different, you know, choose your own adventure paths to that point. I think we should lean into ones that are simple and potentially silly. And so I think that gives a great deal to recommend it to the glove proposal. We're throwing our weight behind this one then. Yeah. It's not at the top of my list, but I think it's also pretty easy to implement and pretty unobtrusive and we could give it a go and see what happens. Okay. Let me ask you this. Am I right in thinking that you are a Maricopa County resident? Yes, you are correct.

Okay. So this does directly affect you and your tax revenue. I don't know how closely you have followed the latest from Arizona legislature. There's a lot of government going on these days and I wouldn't fault you for not being perfectly plugged into the minutes of Arizona lawmakers proposing tax arrangements that could fund repairs and upgrades for Chase Field. But there's been a bit of a development on that front this week. And the solution that is being proposed now, and this is a bipartisan initiative, and it seems like it has a good deal of bipartisan support in fact, is, and I will quote, this is from the Arizona Republic story, it calls for collecting the sales tax revenue from all purchases and

transactions at the stadium and income tax paid by people who work there, including the team's players. Those taxpayer dollars would go towards stadium improvements instead of funding state and local government services as they do now. At the state level, those tax revenues fund education, healthcare for low-income residents, prisons, and other programs. Pretty important stuff. Now there is reportedly, the team claims, a carve out so that 5% of the state's 5.6% sales tax would go to these things, leaving behind 0.6% that funds education.

So that's nice. That's big of them to allow education to still receive some revenue here. But they're crowing about the fact that there's no new tax, no new taxes involved here, which in my mind is really just a bait and switch, is just sort of a sleight of hand. It's a semantic difference. Is it a new tax? No, but you are appropriating the revenue

of an existing tax. And therefore, if you wanted to fund the things that are currently receiving that tax revenue at the same level, you would have to create a new tax to do that. I get why it's just politically more viable to sell it as we're not charging you more, but also the part that they don't say quite as loudly is, yeah, but as a result of that, we're just moving money around and therefore, there's less going to these essential services and more to the Diamondbacks who have said, again, big of them, that they will kick in some of their own cash here. So they would get from this,

they say, $15 to $20 million a year to fund these stadium improvements, which would be used only for reconstructing, equipping, repairing, maintaining, or improving the Major League Baseball facility, not for other aspects of the team. And the legislation would allow the team to use that revenue to borrow cash for renovations projects, according to Diamondback's President and CEO, Derek Hall,

who said that the team would be willing to put in up to $300 million of its own money toward the total bill. So as a local resident, as someone who goes to Diamondbacks games, who covers baseball events there, who has a stake in that facility being playable, and who also has some competing concerns and priorities. I wonder what you make of all this. Well, here's what I'll say. I appreciate that the Diamondbacks have spent some money on their team this offseason. I'm excited to watch Corbin Burns pitch as a member of the Arizona Diamondbacks rotation.

But the situation as it pertains specifically to education in Arizona is pretty dire when you rank the state in terms of like educational attainment, test scores, funding per student. We very routinely rank toward the very bottom teacher salaries. Part of that is because we have universal charter in this state. And if you want to know what a cluster that has been for educational attainment for public school students, you can do a little Googling. You're going to find plenty of ammunition there. So the idea of taking anything away from that part of the state budget in particular, I

find incredibly distasteful because we need more funding, not less. CB And again, there is a carve out for that 0.6% specific to education. Although, if you're slashing this other 5% that's going to other stuff, then maybe that other stuff needs money and maybe that comes out of education. Who knows, right? There's going to be the same demands, less supply. LS. Right. There are two sort of realities that I think are both true and are brushing up against each other, which is that Chase Field does desperately need renovation. They cannot open the roof with people inside. And by people, to be clear, they mean fans, right? They'll open that sucker up when there are other people in there. But if there are fans in the ballpark, in a way where you're like, I don't

feel very valued as a media member, but if the gates have been opened and fans are there, they can't open the roof. They probably can't close it either. They can't do anything with the roof. They have to leave the roof in its, you know, its current state. That's not the only thing. Like, you know, here's the thing about Chase. It smells. The bathrooms often smell and not in a, they are not well tended way. The staff there is great, but like you can just tell that it is, it is infrastructure

in need of improvement. They made the decision to put like bright fluorescent lights in the women's bathroom on the press box level. And I was like, I don't know that making it brighter in here is really helping to alleviate the problems with this restroom, but that's neither here nor there. So Chase Needs Work. And they did make some more cosmetic changes to it after the World Series run. So like, I think the video board got updated.

You can tell that the sound is better. Like they have made some cosmetic changes. They've spiffed it up a little bit, but they are at the point where they need to make sort of deeper, I imagine more expensive infrastructure improvements to modernize chase. But also I just don't, I don't find that to be, um, the most pressing budgetary need for people in Arizona, people living in Maricopa County. We have a lot that we want to do and need to do here to improve the lives of everyday

citizens. And I think allocating Corbin Burns' income tax to the ballpark feels like a very well-finessed PR solution, right? Because it gives, it lends the impression that the team is paying for all of it, right? There's like a, there's like a squirreliness to this and not just because they get to say it's not new tax, right? But that they're like, well, it's, it's the, it's the guys, you know, it makes it sound like Corbin Burns is paying for the roof to get improved. And I'm not trying to single out Corbin Burns here to be clear. I'm sure he didn't come up with the damn thing, but, um, it feels very slippery to me.

It is still fundamentally reallocating funds that would have gone to other public projects to pay for renovations to the ballpark. And like, I'm glad that Ken Kendrick is willing to chip in something, but you know, that ballpark is a lot fuller than it used to be and the team is better and you had a postseason run. And during the times of year when it is actually nice enough to have the roof open, it does like appreciably change the way that Chase feels, you know? Jake Mintz's impression of Chase was dramatically different one post-season series to the next one, the roof was open.

He's like, oh, it's not so bad in here. I was like, it also helps that it's not 110 degrees in October, but yeah, those things go together. So I always feel weird about stuff like this because there's a threat behind all of these things that, well, it's a nice baseball team you got here. It would be a shame if something happened to it. I mean, I'm not super keen on funding prisons, but I am keen on funding healthcare and education

and you know, all those other good social services that I think improve people's lives and would make Arizona a better place and Maricopa County in particular. So Ben, normally we try to do fun stuff on the Friday show, bringing me down. CB. Yeah. This is a scheme that I think is becoming increasingly common though. In fact, it has worked in Arizona because the Cardinals did something very much like this with State Farm Stadium in Glendale. And so this Diamondbacks Gambit is modeled off of that successful effort to use tax revenues. And I think it is particularly onerous maybe because often when teams try to get public funding for ballparks, one way they justify that, well, A, there's the bogus study that say it will create $11 trillion for the local economy,

but then also they say, and it will generate all this tax revenue. All these people will be coming to the ballpark and all these people will be working there and you'll get the proceeds of that for decades to come. And then if they're also kind of taking from that coffer too, after the fact, then that's not ideal. So it's just, I guess, look, the Diamondbacks don't own Chase, but they don't own it because, and I'm quoting Neil DeMoss, our former guest on Field of Schemes, they got the county to pay for it, then got the county to hold onto the deed so the team wouldn't have to pay property taxes. In all other meaningful terms, collecting all the revenues from it, including naming

rights, it is 100% Kendrick's building, but he would only be putting in half the cost of an estimated $600 million in upgrades while reaping all the revenues. I guess by the standards of public funding efforts for ballparks by sports teams, half is probably far from the worst. Sometimes they want the entire tab picked up. Sure. But yeah, I resent the whole idea of the no new tax. Right. It's very squirrely. It is, yeah. And I get why they do it and it probably works. And I've got to say, it'll probably work here. You know, like it'll sound enough different from the way

that these things typically go to be persuasive to people and they won't think about it much more than that. And that'll be that. And we'll continue to like not fund public education appropriately in the state of Arizona and then wonder why you have weird conversations and bad drivers. Probably because we're not helping everybody get through the way that we ought to. CB Well, does anyone think their state's drivers are good? I don't know. LS Our are actually quite bad though. We have a very high rate of uninsured drivers in Arizona relative to other states. Like there are benchmarks by which we are doing worse than other places over here. It's a weird little state, you know?

I like it quite a bit, but I have some notes for parts of it that I think could improve. It is funny that this is the thing that has bipartisan support in the state legislature where like half the body is like, you went is real and the other half is like, hey. CB. Those are the minutes of the sessions, just exact transcript from you there. That's exactly the way it goes. I'm sure it's not that exaggerated, but yeah. I know that-

LS. Yikes, you guys. There's a lot of like, ah, and then a lot of, ooh. I think that goes on in the state house these days. Much more than half of the population thinks that they're above average drivers. I know that's always the case, but- I was so afraid that you were about to tell me that more than half the population thinks that QAnon is real.

And I was going to be like, oh my God, Ben, the most depressing Friday show we've ever hosted. That's not quite the case. But yeah, people tend to overestimate their own abilities behind the wheel, except for me, because I don't rate myself as a driver at all, ineligible, NA. To be clear, your abilities behind the wheel would in all likelihood be quite poor as a result of that, although I have confidence they would improve over time. I'm a perfectly average driver. I do not think that I am the best. I understand there are

circumstances in which I get frazzled. I don't like driving at night anymore because the headlights are too bright. Too bright, Ben. Why are they so bright? That's a real thing. My mom has been ranting about that for years. It's a real thing. Yeah. We recently had a good feature on that at the Ringer. It was great. Yeah. Yeah. It's real. You're not imagining it.

It's not in your head, people. The lights are brighter. They're brighter. They're too bright. They're too bright. It's tough to see. Yeah. It's counterintuitive.

It's almost like changing picture usage where you think you're protecting people by lowering the workloads. And you think, oh, they'll pitch less and thus they will get hurt less. And then it turns out that, no, that's not quite the case. And maybe it's a peltzman effect sort of situation where, well, I don't have to go as deep into games.

I don't have to throw as many innings. All right, I'm gonna air it out and that'll be safe. But it turns out that's maybe even more dangerous. Similarly with headlights, I guess, probably we're like, well, it's gotta to be good to have better illumination, then we'll be able to see even more clearly except for the fact that yes, except that the people in oncoming traffic can't see at all because the image of your headlight is seared into their retina for the next minute or two. So it doesn't really work out so

well. Anyway, the Diamondbacks lease expires in 2027, so I'm sure that will be used as leverage even though, of course, they could just decide to extend it if they wanted to. But there has already been some rhetoric of it sure would be a shame if we had to pick up stakes. I don't know where they would go. I don't know how realistic that threat really is, but I'm sure that we will be hearing it if anyone in the public actually bucks at this potential. Not new tax. Totally old, same old tax. Okay, couple emails before we go.

Here is one that I have wanted to ask you that comes to us from listener Patrick, who says, I recall in a previous episode that Meg mentioned the idea that every MLB team should be required to have a Jersey guy. I believe this came up in reference to the White Sox and Luis Robert Jr. They recently tried to trade him to the Reds, or at least were entertaining the idea. Didn't work out, hasn't worked out. So you can still get a Luis Robert White Sox Jersey and wear it proudly for a time, but don't get too attached to it. Might not be the best purchase to make at this particular point. That got me thinking, couldn't this concept be something the league realistically implements? MLB and its owners clearly understand the importance of engaging

younger fans and mandating that each team have a Jersey guy could play a big role in driving that engagement. Plus determining who qualifies as a Jersey guy could play a big role in driving that engagement. Plus determining who qualifies as a Jersey guy doesn't even have to be subjective. They could base it on Jersey sales or similar metrics. For teams that don't currently roster a Jersey guy, there could be some kind of penalty like losing access to an international signing pool space or a draft pick. Of course, I imagine there'd be teams trying to exploit the system, like signing a Tim Tebow type player just to avoid the penalty. But overall, I think it's an idea worth considering. What are your thoughts on this? Could something like this actually work? And by Jersey guy, we're not talking Todd Frazier here. We mean the uniform

top. We mean someone who's you would want to wear and that you could count on being a staple on your team's roster for some time and a franchise player, essentially. Right, a franchise player. It would be so funny if they were like, we thought you meant a guy from Nutley. I think it would be a great idea. If for no other reason than it would guarantee at least one guy on every roster who probably is set to make at least $15 million a year. I don't know how you determine a Jersey guy. I think that you would have to sit and think pretty hard about how, how do we do this? How do we make this work? But I bet we could figure it out, Ben. I'm confident we could figure it out. We should have to have a Jersey guy. Jersey guy. Let's have a Jersey guy. Now, having a Jersey guy would come

with responsibilities. Pick a guy. Pick a potential Jersey guy, Ben. And he doesn't have to be from Jersey. He could be from anywhere. He could be anywhere on the planet kind of guy. Just on any team, anywhere? On any team. Juan Soto? Is he too good to be a Jersey guy? No, Juan Soto is a great example. So you're a fan of the Washington Nationals while they are still employing Juan Soto. And he is your team's designated Jersey guy. And then they decide to trade the Jersey guy. Are we going to say they can never trade the Jersey guy? They have to keep- Yeah, that's the thing. We can't really tie their hands and say you- You can't tie their hands.

Yeah. The logistics of this probably make it a little bit tricky, but I think that in order to be the designated Jersey guy, he has to be a guy who is under contract for the next, say, three seasons, right? And then if you trade the Jersey guy, a couple of things have to happen. First, you have to immediately designate a new Jersey guy. And that Jersey guy, we would have to put some sort of minimum, like production or salary.

There needs to be a floor. Like if you're the Nationals and you trade, you trade Juan Soto, you can't then immediately say like CJ Abrams is the new Jersey guy, cause CJ Abrams doesn't mean anything to Nationals fans yet and he's not established. He's not, he is the new Jersey guy because CJ Abrams doesn't mean anything to Nationals fans yet and he's not established. He's not a Jersey guy. He might grow into being a Jersey guy, but he's not currently a Jersey guy. So you have to have an immediate Jersey guy replacement and then you as the team have

to engage in Jersey guy, Jersey buybacks. Because if you designate Juan Soto as the Jersey guy and then you trade the Jersey guy and all of the people who have bought the Jersey guys Jersey are like, I have this Jersey, I have no Jersey guy. You as the team have to say, no problem, bring in your Jersey guy Jersey and we will give you credit toward a new Jersey or a different player on the team's jersey or the new jersey guys jersey. I'm trying to make it fun because we just contemplated like further defunding of education in the state of Arizona, which is kind of a slippery way on my part of describing that.

But you know what I'm trying to say, so I'm trying to do a bit. We're doing a Jersey guy jersey bit. And so in the Jersey guy jersey bit, you take your Jersey guy jersey to the Nats team store and you say, I have a Wansoto jersey. And then they say, no problem. Here are your options to replace the Jersey Guy jerseys. Yes, you have a trade-in policy. If the guy gets traded, then you can trade in your jersey.

And there might not be a jersey of equivalent value, depending on the makeup of the roster, because if you traded your franchise guy, but you're saying you get, yeah. I think you have to find a way to always have a Jersey guy. And so if you're not going to always have a Jersey guy, I mean, part of the appeal of always having to have a Jersey guy is that it potentially limits the tear down phenomenon because if you have a Jersey guy, do you want to tear down?

Do you just keep on Soto forever? I mean, look, I don't know how to do it, but it would be nice if everybody had a Jersey guy so that you could buy the Jersey guy's Jersey. Jersey. How many teams right now would you say lack a Jersey guy? For example, well, you could make a case that I was going to say the Marwins, but even the Marwins, Sandy Alcantara is a Jersey guy. For example, well, you could make a case that I was going to say the Marlins, but even the Marlins, Sandy Alcantara is a Jersey guy.

No, the Marlins have a Jersey guy. It's just whether they keep their Jersey guy, right? If you are the Miami Marlins, if you're a fan of the Miami Marlins, I think you feel really good having Sandy Alcantara's Jersey. Yes, but he's your sole remaining Jersey guy at this point. Or Yuri, no, you know who you're, I've said the word Jersey so many times, there's no meaning anymore. It is completely a Jersey. I could be saying poop, I could be going blah. Semantic satiation of Jersey guy, yes.

But Sandy's your Jersey guy or you hope maybe Yuri Perez becomes your Jersey guy. I was about to say Yuri. So maybe what you need is not, maybe every team has to have a Jersey guy succession plan, right? And if you have an approved Jersey guy succession plan, then you can trade the Jersey guy. But if you don't, you have to keep him. This would never happen. And I don't even know if it's a good idea, but I do like it anyway. I still like it, but I do worry about how much more we would have to say Jersey. And so then maybe I don't like it. But I think if you have a Jersey guy succession plan, you can trade the first Jersey guy. And then the next Jersey guy assumes the, you know, it's like you're the vice president. I don't want to make it sound like I'm advocating anything.

I feel nervous now. So I mean, look, anyway, Friday show. So like you're the Marlins, Sandy Alcontra is your Jersey guy. And then you say, okay, but Yuri Perez is our VP of Jersey guys. He's the assistant to the regional manager. He's next in the line of Jersey succession. He's next in the line of succession, you know? Sort of like how when fan graphs went to winter meetings this year. Dan wasn't able to join us, so he was our designated guy

to react to stuff when we had gone to sleep, really. So yeah, so I think that's the way that you could smooth it, right? Because you want to let people, I mean, you don't. But you have to acknowledge the reality of, if you're just a real I'm going to do this where a sh-t team, and you have to acknowledge the reality of like, if you're just a real I'm gonna do a swear s*** team and you have one really good guy and trading that one really good guy would appreciably accelerate your return to contention because you get, you

know, a couple top 100 prospects back for him and like it really resets your franchise. I don't know that I necessarily, I feel bad for the fans, but I don't know that I necessarily want to act as a roadblock to that trade. But you got to give fans something to lean on in the lean times and so you have to then designate a jersey, you have to have a Jersey Guy continuity plan. So like if you are the White Sox, I think that this means you're not allowed to trade Louis Farber Jr. because you do not have an appropriate jersey- Yeah, there's no backup there.

There's no backup there. And so in order to trade, maybe this makes things fun, in order to trade him, you have to have, you might need to have Colson Montgomery in the majors or you need one of your exciting young pitchers on the 40 man or you're like, I don't know, like who else would even fit into this? Like maybe, maybe you're like, Kyle Teal, come on down. I don't know if Kyle Teal is ready or not. I'm not passing judgment on that, but maybe the way out of the Jersey guy succession plan

gap is to promote from within. And then you're like, hey, now Colson Montgomery is our designated Jersey guy. That feels like a lot of pressure on Colson Montgomery. Yeah, that does. So you probably need, you need, in addition to an internal promotion plan for the Jersey guy succession, you need to have that guy on the big league roster for a little while and let him establish himself. So like, maybe you say Colson Montgomery has to guy on the big league roster for a little while and let him establish himself. So like maybe you say Coleson Montgomery has to be on the roster for, or whoever it is, I'm just picking the White Sox because that's what motivated the question.

He has to be on the roster for a year, a full season before he can be the designated Jersey guy. Now if you're, if you do a trade and you get an established big leaguer back and he's like good enough to be the Jersey guy, then maybe you're square right away. But if you don't have, right? Cause like, you can't make Andrew Benentendi

your Jersey guy. That makes no sense. That guy had a 93 WRC. He was below, he was underwater from a war perspective last year. Like he can't, he can't lean on that guy. If you're the Marlins, Declan Cronin would be my Marlins Jersey guy, but I recognize that that might not be the biggest seller to this point. No offense, Declan. I hope

it will be at some point, but yeah, maybe Perez, if you have a top prospect, perhaps he hasn't done enough yet. He had one promising rookie year and then he got hurt. Is that even enough? Because you assumed that Sandi Alcantara will get traded as soon as he proves that he can pitch at a high level. And then you're left with just the smoking ruins of that roster and a bunch of prospects and players you hope will make good and will ascend to the level of the Jersey guy. My main concern is that I don't want to reinvent the reserve clause here somehow and just say that teams can keep the Jersey guy indefinitely. But maybe is there some sort of NFL franchise tag as solution? I don't really want to do that either because that's again just further restricting player agency and just saying like, well, we can just lock you in if we meet certain criteria or a

certain salary and you were supposed to be a free agent and now you're not because we just, we Jersey guide you. And that's something that I'm sure that the players would be against and I probably wouldn't really be in favor either. I don't really want to restrict the autonomy and when you earn free agency, maybe if there's enough compensation, I don't know, maybe players would go for it, but it just seems like it takes long enough in MLB to earn your right to be a free agent. So to further postpone that. No, no, no such postponement. So really I think it might just have to be incentives. No, the Jersey guy is the team's problem.

Yeah, but I don't know that you could compel teams to do this because ultimately if you're compelling a team to keep a guy, then you're compelling the player to stay in place too. So you kind of can't do one without the other. So I think it almost might have to be yes, that either you have a foolproof succession plan or you just have enough incentives built in. I think we've answered questions in the past about like, if you had a one

one team player for his whole career, like maybe there would be some sort of discount for the team if they resigned that guy and kept him in that uniform. We've entertained that kind of concept in the past. So maybe there's something along those lines that could happen here, but you don't want to restrict the earning potential of the top players in the game either.

I don't think there's currently a team in baseball that does not have a single Jersey guy. I think that's probably pretty rare, but you can get to that point at times. Even the Marlins, they have at least one, even the White Sox have at least one, but you could imagine that changing in the near future. And even the Rockies, like are we saying Ezekiel Tovar is a Jersey guy? Who's the Jersey guy on the Rockies right now? There are options, I guess, relatively speaking. And maybe it's just someone who has a long career ahead of him and is a highly rated prospect. I do think you would have to demonstrate some success in the majors.

It couldn't be entirely forecasting and wish casting. Oh yeah, this guy's going to be good. You can't designate some highly rated prospect in AA as your Jersey guy before he's even made the majors. So I think you're right that he'd have to have some service time. Yeah, because it's a lot to put on him. It might negatively impact him as a person and his sort of experience of being a big leaguer. And then I also think that there's just the reality of like, you don't know that they're gonna do it. Even the best prospects can, first of all, they can flame out and not be what people think they're going

to be or they have an adjustment period. It takes them a while to like become what they're going to be, you know, because somebody has to be on a breakout list. So yeah, I had a dream about breakout lists, Ben. So really who won mlb.com? That's the answer to this question. I had a dream about a breakout list last night. And then I woke up and I was like- I know it's always dangerous to ask people to describe their dreams, but in this case, I am curious. Do you remember the specifics? I just was, it was a bad list and I was reading it and getting angry. So it like- That's just real life.

The concept of the foe breakout, I need the team from inception to get it out of my brain. That's what I require now anyway. It just occurred to me that probably Hermán Márquez is the Rockies jersey guy. And that brings up another wrinkle here, which is what if you are that type of player and you're still around, but you're no longer that elite talent. If you're someone who's been hurt for years, let's say, or you've declined, you've diminished. Let's say Mike Trout, who is a literal Jersey guy. He's from Jersey. He's clearly the Jersey guy. And I think on this Angel's roster, he is unquestionably still the Jersey guy. But if you had someone who takes a tumble off the pedestal and still fans retain fondness for them.

And they're grateful for the past service and the past stardom and maybe their career guy, but they're more of a marginal player at this point. Is that okay? I think that's okay probably, right? Like we could, you can retain your Jersey guy status as long as you're with that team, even if you're no longer playing at that level. It's almost like, would it have to be like a, is there a fan sentiment component to this? Like fans might have to, yeah, like a referendum on Jersey guy-ness. Like you'd have to have your audience, your spectators, your public designate the Jersey guy or protest the designation of a Jersey guy.

Oh, they would definitely protest some of the Jersey guys. Yeah. But there are a lot of players, like, okay, Charlie Blackman could have been a Jersey guy. Yes. Now he's retired and he's in the front office, but even when he was no longer the player, he was at his peak, people loved him and he was still there. And so he could be your Jersey guy, even though he had declined as a player, wasn't quite as productive anymore. So I think that's okay, but you would have to, I think, have the consent of your fans. Like they would have to say, yes, we still love that guy. He's still the face of the team.

He's still our franchise player, even if he's not that good a player anymore. You would have like the sentimental Jersey guy, right? Yeah. Kind of like how there's like special dispensation for established stars who are nearing the end of their careers in the all-star game now where they like don't count toward the, yeah, like they can be added. Um, like, you know, like it wasn't that how they put pool holes on them. In Cabrera too, I think. Yeah.

But yeah, I think having a sentimental Jersey guy is fine. Every fan base is going to engage with it a little differently, you know, there are going to be some fan bases where maybe they've been in the, the throws of a rebuild for a while and they have a couple of emerging young players who they're excited about. And like, that's where the, the sentiment of the fan base is really focused and so they pick a you know they pick an Adley or Gunnar Henderson or whatever to be like the Jersey guy because that's where they are but maybe you're going through a protracted fallow period and you want to like relive the good time so you pick a sentimental guy or you know that the team is about to embark on a teardown.

And so you want to have some appreciation for the good old days. And so you're a Mariners fan and you're like, can't griffy dreamers are juicy guy. That's what the team would want. But yeah, because I love to remind everyone about 95. But anyway, I'm just going to keep you know being a little bit rude about the Mariners maybe it'll help I don't think so. Two more Scott says a terrible but hopefully thought-provoking idea. What if MLB picked one World Series team each year the same way they picked locations for the

All-Star game by essentially giving each franchise the nod roughly every 30 years and letting them know years in advance. The other team would make it the usual way, via playoffs, for which the other 29 teams competed. When a team knew its turn was coming up in a couple years, would they basically tank in the years prior and then try to get all the free agents available that year and maybe trade prospects for any good player they could get, attempting to build a super team for their one guaranteed chance at being in the championship, or would they try to build a team the usual way, but to peak during the year they would get in? How would they manage the season in which they knew they would be in the World Series?

Would they rest players constantly to avoid injury and keep them fresh, knowing they had no need to win during the regular season? What would be the perfect amount of time to play someone so that they would be sharp for the World Series without being worn out or injured? How much does an MLB team need to play together to get the right balance of chemistry and familiarity with each other on the field? Would those preselected teams dominate the World Series every year because they could focus purely on winning that short series while other teams were worn out from having to fight their way in?

Or would the traditional finalists win because they had proven themselves to be the best team over a long schedule, while the other team was actually unproven, a purely theoretical exercise in constructing a best team that had ignored the regular season and playoffs. One danger for the preselected team is that they might pick a lot of injury-prone players and then not play them much during the season, saving them until the World Series, but if they weren't ramped up for the intensity of that one series or got hurt in it, the team could suffer. E.g. sign Jacob deGrom, but then he gets hurt in game one or is ineffective because it's almost like he's pitching a spring training game. Even

if the preselected team played their players during the regular season, they would presumably be waiting around for several weeks while waiting for the playoffs to pick their opponent. I'm not advocating this horrible idea, Scott clarifies, actually be implemented, but the discussion could go in interesting directions. And he says he's not advocating this horrible idea since two of his favorite franchises have not been in the World Series for 30 plus years. There's a temptation to suggest something like this for real, but no, it's a terrible idea.

That said, what do we think? Okay. So I want to make sure I understand. So in this scenario, are we effectively doing away with the American League and the National League? Because otherwise, it's a disaster. Because in any given year, fully half of the league knows that they cannot compete in the World Series. CB. Yeah, that's a good point. I think we would have to, yes, I think this would be the nail in the coffin of leagues. KS. Because otherwise, there's no incentive in many years for teams to remotely try to reach the World Series. If you're the Dodgers and it's not your year and you know that the team whose year it is,

because I imagine this would be announced in advance, is the Padres, what incentive do you have to, now you can take the long view and know that there are going to be years where it's either your year by rule or it's going to be years where it's either your year by rule or it's going to be a year where the team promised a spot is in the American league and then you still have to do your business against your NL competition.

But this feels like it would be disastrous for any sort of competitive atmosphere. So you'd have to do away with leagues and just have it be a free for all because otherwise you're, you know, people think parody is bad now. Like imagine, imagine. It would be 29 against one and also against each other, but they would know the target going into the year. And I still think that it would be very, it would be very bad for baseball because you, you know, having the leagues, like it feels achievable for any given team, uh, potentially. Right. If you've, you've put some effort into your roster, you have a good collection of guys, like in order to win the thing, you're, you're, the competition is the field, but like to get to the postseason, it's not right.

So it's like, it's a surmountable obstacle in theory. I don't like it because I feel like, you know, like the strategy part of it is interesting. Um, like how do you assemble? If you know, if you know, this is your ride, you're like, I think the place where we would actually see a lot of maybe big change would be at the deadline where you, if it's your year, you would survey the teams that had fallen out and like you would be much more willing to bring on like guys on who are about to reach free agency on expiring contracts. Cause you're like, it's going to be really good to have that guy come October. And this is our best shot.

You know, once we know we're going to be there in a seven game series, like, yeah, let's go. And all your guys are going to be super rested. Your pitchers are going to be so, you know, well rested. It'd be nice for everyone. Everyone's going to be in their legs. But as fun as the strategy would be, I think that having to ride the river of variance makes things much more satisfying. I want teams to be in the mindset of building rosters that they think can compete and scrap and get there on their own without being handed. It's very like, you know, you want them to really have to commit to trying to win, I think. Yeah.

I think most would because it'd be embarrassing if you were the designated World Series team and then you just had a really crappy roster. You'd want to show out that year. For sure. I think the teams that had their designated spot would work very hard to try to have a good club. But I think that the flavor of that effort would be shorter term deals that they don't have to then carry in subsequent years. And so I think that the general, it would sort of put the general competitive atmosphere of the game on tilt in a way that would be to everyone's detriment. Yeah. And 29 other teams are going into each season knowing that their odds are even more

remote. And so if the championship is the only goal, then you've just halved the number of spots that are there for the taking. And that's going to make a lot of teams say, why bother? So that's one of the ways in which this is terrible. Right. And so like if you, and like if you, right, if you kept the league structure that we have now, you know, so many teams would know that their odds were zero. And even if you didn't, like, you know, it's so much more of a free for all then.

So I don't care for it. The meritorious are just going to have to get in on their own merits, damn it. They're going to have to do the work. Yeah. I think maybe the biggest problem of all is just that I don't know that anyone would care about the World Series anymore in this scenario. If you're guaranteed a spot, if one of the teams just gets a spot

before the season is even determined, it's not gonna be something that teams would even wanna strive for. It's not gonna be an accomplishment if it is handed to you. The whole reason why it's something that teams want that there's a prestige associated with is because you actually have to earn it. You have to get there. I have wondered at times and mused about, well, there's so much randomness in the playoffs, so why do we ascribe so much importance

to this as it is? It's not actually determining which is the best team. And yet we kind of fool ourselves into thinking it is or pretending it is. Like you have to think that it's meaningful in some way in order to ascribe stakes to it and to feel any suspense and to want to watch it. You have to think it proves something or means something. And we know on some level that it doesn't really

or that there's a ton of variance that goes into all of these things. So the fact that people still care about the World Series as much as they do in a world where we know that a lot of it is dictated by randomness and not true talent, maybe that suggests that people would still pay attention even in this scenario where one team is guaranteed a spot, but I just think it would undercut the entire enterprise. It wouldn't be a worthwhile goal really. It's unless the teams that were

the designated World Series team, unless they were always powerhouses and there wasn't doubt about whether they were good enough to have gotten there legitimately. But if you're gonna do that every time, then why even bother with this whole arrangement? Yeah, you have to have at least a fig leaf But if you're going to do that every time, then why even bother with this whole arrangement? You have to have at least a fig leaf for competition and contention and we're actually finding

a deserved winner here or else what's the point of the entire enterprise? It's different from just getting an all-star game, is getting even a Super Bowl or something. Okay, you can plan around that, you can have a whole big event. It's not something that you need to get on merit necessarily. Usually those marquee events, the settings are handed out based on, well, who hasn't had one in a while or who has a new stadium or something.

But it's not something that anyone expects you to have to earn on the field by being good really. But this, no, this is, I hate to invoke the phrase, but it becomes a participation trophy at that point, at least for one of the teams. Now it would make it even more impressive maybe for the team that got there legitimately. Right. Just like we didn't have anything handed to us, we had to fight even harder to get here and you were born on third base and thought you hit a triple, right? But I just, yeah, I don't think

that would make up for anything. So all of the other questions presuppose that this is something that people would want. And I'm just not even sure that it would be meaningful enough anymore to construct your whole strategy around it, to assemble a certain roster that would peak at the right time, to tank so that you could get good at that particular time. That all presupposes that this is still something that people are sufficiently interested in to construct their whole strategy around. And I think the very premise is flawed. I agree.

Okay. Finally, Justin W, Patreon supporter says, I've enjoyed all the discourse on competitive balance and spending. I'm glad someone has. Jinks. Devil versus Udo. We can't do jinx on a podcast because we just have dead air for the rest of the episode. In light of the Dodgers off season moves, I think it's a positive shift to incentivize owners to take action rather than passively collect income. Beyond that, I'd imagine global interest in the Dodgers generates value for MLB and baseball as a whole. By growing their slice of the pie, they aren't necessarily taking away from other teams, they're doing their part in helping to expand

the entire pie. That's one way to look at it. Justin continues, I agree with Meg that it's on other teams to pursue their own edge to build long-term success and grow their brand, fan base, and value. We've seen with players like Roki Sasaki and Corbin Burns that money isn't the only factor in choosing where to play. I wonder what are creative ways a team could develop that edge within existing constraints to attract both players and fans? For example, could the Marlins leverage their location and go all in on being Latin America's team, cultivating predominantly Latin American talent and aggressively marketing to Latino

fans or of to Latino fans? Or, of course, Cuban fans. Or, could a team stand out by offering the best quality of life for players? State of the art training and recovery facilities? Personal chefs? Family first policies? Post-retirement career support? I'm sure this is just the tip of the iceberg, and I'd love to hear you and your listeners' thoughts on more out of the box ideas. So something where the big free agent comes to tour your park or you meet with them at their agency and you're trying to sell them on some unique aspect of your team. We're the team that does this thing particularly well.

Yeah. I think that there's a lot of opportunity there. And I want to be clear that teams to varying degrees are doing sort of different versions of the examples that were just provided there, right? Where they will focus a lot of effort in trying to appeal to and have meaningful outreach to different communities within their broader community who they think they have some sort of kinship to or could have kinship to. You know, we've seen and are continuing to see teams try to differentiate themselves

above and beyond what is required in the minor league CBA in terms of accommodation, quality of nutrition, quality of facilities, et cetera. So I do think that there are versions of this already in the works, in being implemented core to the identity of different clubs. You think about teams that have particularly strong reputations for a player dev on either the hitting or pitching side, right?

I think that there's room there. Like Sasaki is an interesting case because he is actually the kind of free agent where just because he is, you know, he's an established pro, but he is still relatively new in his career. There are things about his pitch mix that we know might stand to benefit from a little bit of development. And so, you know, he's sort of unique in terms of his ability to be marketed to you from a, from a player dev perspective, from a connectivity to marketing opportunities in Japan, et cetera.

I don't know if you can replicate that exact thing when you're talking about a guy who's further along in his career, a domestic free agent who maybe is a little less concerned with some of the other, um, like proximity to Japan questions, right? So some of it might be hard to, to perfectly replicate, but yeah, I think that there's, there's opportunity there. We saw some of it in 2020 when the draft was only five rounds. Um, and then everyone after that who was going to go in that year had to sort of be appealed to, to be an undrafted guy. And a lot of the very best draft prospects who didn't get picked just went back to school, right? But there were undrafted free agents in that 2020 class who signed because teams made a specific appeal to them or their agent about like, here's how we can

further your career. Look at the way that we, the track record of success we've had with pitchers, with pitchers like you, with helping guys tweak their swings, whatever it is, right? And so I think that that can be an appealing argument for all the talk we've had this off season about how superlative the Dodgers are at stuff, they're not the only team in baseball who has a good player development apparatus by any means. There are plenty of clubs that are doing really good work with their players to make them better.

So I don't want to overstate the case. I do think that at the same time that we have seen a narrowing of the gap in the broader sense from a baseball ops perspective in terms of like how smart teams are, how resource they are, you know, I do think that there are gaps and I think that there are gaps in player dev and it's not like, you know, there is a sort of a tier of team, a cluster of teams that I think do a really good job and have a track record of doing a good job for a while. It's not just the Dodgers, but you know, there are plenty of clubs that do not have the reputation

that LA has and for good reason. And so that might be an area where there's real opportunity for them to say, Hey, like we, you know, we do a good job with this. Hey, you're a veteran who has a great career, but like we can make you even better or we treat our people really, really well. You know, this is an organization that cares about its staff, not just on the field, but off. And here's how we've demonstrated that, you know, I don't that. I don't want to make treating people well

like a market inefficiency because that feels like taking a good thing and making it kind of gross, but there's room for that. There really is. CB I was going to say with Burns, I read an article that Tom Verducchi wrote for SI about how Burns, his free agency played out and how he picked his team. And a large part of it was just that he wanted to stay in Arizona and he didn't want to have to move and the Diamondbacks play there. So no one else could quite compete with that. But after there was interest from the Diamondbacks, then I will quote here, Corbin and Brooke, his wife leaned on other players, especially fellow

Boris clients to gather behind the scenes information about family issues. That's when the phone calls happened, Burns says, the way me and Brooke did it, it was basically looking at how would family life be? Is it going to be easy or tough? It does get more important going from one kid to three kids. Obviously you've got to have help because if Brooke wants to go to a game or just when we're on the road, do you have access to a doctor through the team? If all of a sudden the kid gets sick, how good are they then? And then there's schooling and daycare or when my kids are getting to the age

of when they're at the field, are they running amok or do they have activities? Are they able to take care of the families if I'm on the road and something happens? That's not something we had thought about initially until the free agency started coming up with, hey, you know, these teams are known for being really good and these teams not so much.

I wouldn't say it was top of the list priority, but you definitely take it into account. So yeah, something like this, I guess he's describing almost like a VIP personal concierge service, like we'll take care of everything for you, all the off the field hassles and daycare and here's a doctor and all this stuff. And if you're mega rich, like someone who signs a contract the size of Corbin Burns, then you could figure that stuff out, I'm sure. But if a team is offering to do those things for you and they have a streamlined process and other players and personnel will testify to the fact that, yeah, they're really as

good as they are claiming to be, because I'm sure lots of organizations say, yeah, we prioritize people, but we need some, some concrete examples of, okay, what's the differentiator? What do you actually do that other organizations don't? It would be tough to maintain that advantage because if you're one of the deep pocketed teams, then of course you could just do this better than anyone else too, in theory, at least. Yeah, in theory, but sometimes you're like, no, you can't have a suite. So yeah, right. So maybe it's just more and more perks and sweeteners and hotel suites and charter flights and all these things that the top free agents already get. Maybe it's just more and more of that. But if a team did establish itself as, wow, they are so great at supporting families, they go above and

beyond, that would be a good thing. And it would probably be cost-effective if it was actually helping you sign free agents. Even if you were spending some money on that in the grand scheme of things, it wouldn't be that much when we're talking about baseball salaries. But of course, it wouldn't be that hard to copy in theory. It would be tough to maintain these advantages because people know what other teams are doing and players move from team to team and personnel move from team to team. And so if you have some competitive advantage when it comes to recruiting, unless it's just like the power of personality, like you just, you happen to have some respected executive or manager who just players love and you've got that person and no one else does a little bit, maybe like the Dodgers front office and

Andrew Friedman and Dave Roberts, but otherwise it would be like, okay, they offer this service to families, fine, we'll now offer that service to families. And you, your lower resource team, you thought you were gonna gain an edge on us by doing that, well, okay, but now we caught up and now we're doing the same thing or maybe even better. So it would be tough to set yourself apart unless it's a geographic advantage advantage like we're in Miami,

we can lean into being the Miami team or yeah, the Dodgers have certain advantages being in LA also. So that stuff, yes, you should leverage and harness those things, but it's not really replicable for any team to decide to do that stuff. You kind of have to have the potential to do those based on your location or your tradition or whatever. So all the other stuff, I just, I think you could differentiate yourself. I just questioned how long it would last that you would maintain that edge. We're maybe underestimating like the teams that are committed to really

be in really be in sheep are going to like really be cheap. So there's that, If it kind of like raised the living standards for everyone, I wouldn't, I don't know that I would really object to that. It's funny because it's like on the one hand, you're right. Like these, if you're a Corbin Burns, you're so well-resourced monetarily that it might sound- Jared Sussman Yeah, even he said it wasn't his top priority. Lauren Ruffin Right. Or it might sound silly, but also like these guys are on the road so much and they're on the road so much for work. And so having like support from your employer

for your spouse while you're on the road and you know, she's taking care of your kids, like I don't know. I appreciate that as like a, I kind of appreciate that being made a workplace problem, you know? Because it's such a weird job. And so having, and they do have access to tremendous resources, particularly around like medical stuff. So I get what you're saying, but I also am like, you know, I kind of get that. Because like, it's gotta be, it's gotta be really hard to be one of the wives or girlfriends, especially if you have kids

and like, you're just solo parenting for so much of the year and your partner is going to be husband, boyfriend, whatever, is going to be so busy even when he is home in season that having, I get why there's all this family stuff that goes with it. It is fundamentally very strange, like relative to other jobs, how much like these guys' kids are just around. It's like, I don't think it's bad, but it, to be clear, like I get that there are parts of it that are nice, but then there's like weird, there can be boundary stuff that's kind of odd there.

Anyway, it's just like a very interesting and unusual workplace. And I can imagine it requiring relative to other workplaces, unusual accommodation, you know? And some of it is like, you know, they have leverage, so they're going to push their leverage when they have it. And that's fine too, you know? Sub tweeting Drake LaRoche over there. Come on. He's a hero. I'm just saying that like on the one hand.

I know. I think it's partly like if you have a cool job, whatever that cool job is, then your kids probably want to come to your workplace, which in most cases, a lot of regular jobs have bring your kids to work day. Sure. It's just that your kids probably aren't going to be quite as psyched to sit in your cubicle with you as they are to be in a big clubhouse. Right. And like, it's a weird one to, this is like a tangent, but like it's a weird one to navigate,

I would imagine, because on the one hand, like there's something nice about it. There's like this long tradition within the sport of like, you know, guys having their kids in there and they get exposure to a big league clubhouse and that informs, especially if they go on to be players, their understanding of professionalism and the game and all of this stuff. But also, if you're another player, you might not want a bunch of kids around, you know? And so it's a tricky thing to strike a balance on. I can imagine that be something that has to be regularly negotiated within the confines of that workplace. But like a lot of teams, their kids aren't necessarily like in the clubhouse all the time. Like they have like a room, you know? They have like a family room. Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I think we agree in theory,

if you could separate yourself somehow with these soft factors, then that's a good idea. In practice, easier said than done. And especially if it's something with player development, for instance, be good at player development. Well, yeah, every team wants to do that and has tried to do that, not just because it'll help you entice free agents, but because you will develop better players. You won't even need to spend on free agents because you developed such good players internally. So obviously everyone is trying to do that

and not everyone is succeeding or there's a sliding scale there. So that's kind of a, well, yeah, you would want to do that. Everyone is in theory attempting to do that. It's just not everyone can. Yeah. All right, that will do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening.

One more note on video game cover models. Sony claimed that Ellie De La Cruz is the first Cincinnati Red to be on the cover of a video game. I didn't care to dispute that because clearly there's a Cincinnati Red on the cover now, and I was more interested in trying to find franchises that had not had a representative yet. However, listener, Patreon supporter Chris Hannell notes that perhaps Pete Rose qualifies as the first red on the cover of a baseball video game, namely Pete Rose Baseball, which

was published for the Atari 2600 in 1988. Again, we could quibble with this one. There's no Red's logo or name on the cover, although he clearly is wearing a Red's uniform. You can see a sliver of his number. The other issue is that in 1988, Pete Rose was no longer a player, and he's pictured swinging as a batter on the cover. However, he was the Reds' manager at the time, so he was still affiliated with the organization, and he was presumably a Reds player when the picture was taken. If you want to count that, feel free. Amusingly, the Wikipedia page notes that when the game was re-released by Activision for

inclusion in Activision Anthology, which came out in 2002, the game was renamed Baseball due to the license deal with Pete Rose having expired. Given what we know about Pete Rose, I'm going to say that was addition by subtraction. If you'd like to do some addition by addition, you can support Effectively Wild by going to Patreon.com slash Effectively Wild, as have the following five listeners. Jenna Gardner, Francisco Dominguez, Stephanie Neely, Andrew Maxim, and Patrick Finley, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only,

monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, potential podcast appearances, discounts on merch and ad-free fan grass 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 us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. and so much more, check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site.

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at r slash effectively wild. And you can check the show page at fan-edit at r.effectivelywild.com, 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 hope you have a wonderful weekend, and we will be back with another episode soon. How can you not be predented? A stab blast will keep you distracted. It's a long song to death, but the short and the long will last.

How can you not be predented? A stab blast will keep you distracted. It's a long song to death, but the short and the long will last. How can you not be predented? A stab blast will keep you distracted. It's a long song to death, but the short and the long will last. How can you not be predented? A stab blast will keep you distracted. It's a long song to death but the shore to make you smile This is Effective and Wild This is Effective and Wild This is effective wine.