Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2280: Season Preview Series: Rays and Brewers

Episode Date: February 7, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the Mets re-signing Pete Alonso, the Twins signing Harrison Bader, and the compressed standings in the newly released FanGraphs and Baseball Prospectus playoff odds. Then they preview the 2025 Tampa Bay Rays (31:35) with MLB.com’s Adam Berry, and the 2025 Milwaukee Brewers (1:09:55) with the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel’s […]

Should we use defensive runs safe? Or follow the OAA way? Who's gone away? With their quips and opinions? It's effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2280 of Effectively Wild, a Fanangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raulio, Fangraphs, and I am joined by Ben Lindbergh of the Ranger. Ben, how are you? Well, I'm remembering Scott Boris's classic line back in early November about Pete Alonso. Remember this one? This was one of his best slash worst. There's been a lot of talk about this being a bear market for First Baseman, but for Pete's sake, it's the polar opposite.

So he crammed in the bear and also the polar and also the Pete, but it actually did turn out to be a bear market for at least Pete Alonso. It did. No pun, no wordplay, no witticism could change the appetite for Petalanzo, which was not voracious among major league teams, but he has now found his way back to the New York Mets, which feels right at least, even if the terms probably aren't to his liking. It's a two-year, $54 million deal with a $10 million signing bonus, so it's $30 million basically for the first year. It's good in the AAV for one year,

but it's definitely not exactly the $24 million player option for the 2026 season. Not exactly what he was hoping for here. He chose this two-year deal over a different package from the Mets, which would have guaranteed him 71 million over three seasons. So he opted for the opportunity to test the market once more and to see if that would be a bear one.

First of all, Pete, many happy returns. I'm glad you found a home. I'm happy for Mets fans who have understandable affection for a good player who is one of their guys and $54 million is nothing to sneeze at. I don't have $54 million, Ben, you know? I don't. I don't have $1 million, one millions of dollars. Don't, don't. So look, he gets to do what he wants. I think I would have taken the longer deal if it had been me, but maybe that's a

take. I'm not here to be a take merchant. I'm not interested in that, but I struggle to imagine a situation where things feel like really positively different for Alonso two years from now. So I might have been like, hey, let's do three and make more money. But that's me. And, you know, there have been times in Pete Alonso's big league career, fully half of his big league seasons, in fact, where his WRC plus was appreciably higher than it was last year. He has sort of two modes, right?

He's either a 120 guy or like a 130 to 140 guy. And so he's been a better hitter than he was this past year, at least in the power department, certainly. But I think it's fine. I think it's good. He's- it's a good fit, you know? He's a good fit for the Mets. They're a good fit for him. He gets to be the polar bear. fit for the Mets, they're a good fit for him. He gets to be the polar bear, kill Grimace, you know? Like maybe that's on his to-do list. Maybe that remains from his time. You know, he's far from the only guy who fits into this category, but this is a Mets team that I think we can say is like in a new era, right? Even though it has, it has holdovers, it has, and it has big stars from the past era, but like, this is, this is Juan Soto's team now, right? And so I think maintaining

pieces of connective tissue to the prior times is like, is good. I think that there, it provides nice continuity for fans. And again, I don't want to make it sound like Pete Alonso is a bad player, he's not a bad player. But I think that when you look at this profile of player, it tends to be one that doesn't necessarily age super great, and his free agency was one that we often this offseason contemplated in conversation with Christian Walker, who got more money. And part of what I felt bolstered Walker's profile in a way that would have made me want to sign him rather than Alonso was that Christian Walker's a standout defender. And you look at Pete and you're like, that's not true now, it's not going to be true later.

So I sound down on this and I don't mean to. I just feel like I want to understand better what Pete Alonso thinks the world is. That he's operating it now and that he's going to operate in later because there just seemed like there have been a lot of checkpoints through his career with different agents, right? Boris was not his agent when he turned down the big extension, although I wonder, I do wonder, you know, like would the answer have been different if Boris had already been on board? I don't know. But like, you know, he turned down a much more lucrative deal a couple of years ago that would have paid him in excess of $150 million. And then he changed agencies. And, agencies, and this didn't go the way that it was clearly

meant to from his perspective. So I wonder what it's going to look like two years from now, and what does he think he's going to be able to play his way into that is going to be appreciably different than taking the third year. But like, you know, if he had taken that third year, it would have brought the whole value of the contract up to like 71 and that what it was reported. So like, maybe you think that's not enough for that third year. Maybe you think that that's underpaying you relative to your production. So maybe it's fine. But I just think it's an interesting choice. And I feel bad that his career often washes over me in a way that makes me want

to contemplate his next decision rather than the one he just made. So perhaps we should turn the mic over to you and you can talk about his fit for the Mets, but I just, when I heard it, I was like, I don't know if I would have done that if I were Pete Alonzo. I probably would have been like $71 million. Sounds like that, you know, $71 million, that's awfully close to a hundred million dollars. It's importantly far.

When you're very far from 71, then yes, the difference it feels. And then I am so far away from $71 million. You know, I just said I didn't have one or 54. Definitely don't have 71. So far away. What is that number? It's per debt.

Yeah. No, players, they're entitled to make many millions of dollars because they generate many millions of dollars in revenue. But also when we're like, I feel bad for Pete Alonso. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, I don't really feel bad. I feel bad in the sense that, look, in an earlier era, he would be making bank or more bank than this, or maybe if he'd taken that extension or just different sequencing of 2023. Yeah, right. But it's all relative, obviously. He'll be okay,

I think. But yeah, I think that maybe the calculus is similar to the one that the Boris guys from last off season made, which worked out in some of their cases. So Blake Snell, for instance, and Matt Chapman, and maybe it's kind of a, we'll rebuild our value and we'll be even better and then we'll get a bigger deal or we'll sign an extension or something. It's a little harder to envision that working out in the same way for Alonzo just because of his age and his player profile and he's coming off a couple of years, it's not so much a down year so much as it just looks like a decline at

this point, but, but maybe not maybe otherwise he believes there could be a bounce back. So he's still hit 34 home runs last year, right? He's still going to hit dingers. That he will do as long as he's in the major leagues, most likely, but the other stuff around that, he strikes out more than he used to. He's always been a very dinger reliant hitter, but even more so than before.

And obviously his value is very reliant on his hitting, cause that's kind of all that he's giving you war wise. So yeah, I think that it's a fine fit for the Mets. I would be happy if I were a Mets fan that the Alonso is back in the fold. He's a fan favorite. He hit a big playoff home run that will come up later in this episode. Like he's cherished member of this team and can still be a contributor. If not necessarily a star production wise, he raises the floor on this team.

And it's a tight division race. This is a really good Mets team, but also a really good Phillies team, also a really good Braves team. So they need every win. Like this is important for them. And he lengthens that lineup, even if he's not necessarily your prototypical number two or number three or cleanup guy anymore, he's still going to delay your getting to the weak underbelly of that lineup.

Because you get to the last couple spots at least there, and there are some questions. And if you had Brett Beatty or someone in there instead of Alonzo, then there would be more questions. So you can kind of take at least like an above average bad and probably an average player at worst to the bank for this year. And that's good. In addition to the marquee value of just people like him

and he seems to like the team and being where he is. So I don't know how he feels about value of just people like him and he seems to like the team and being where he is. So I don't know how he feels about if the reported extension offer was accurate and he ultimately settled for a lot less. I don't know whether he's crying over spilled milk or feels bitter or ruse that decision or what, but clearly it wasn't impediment to him staying here. So there was a lot of warring of words and public stuff in the press and leaks about interests from other teams. And then Steve Cohen coming out and saying

how arduous the negotiations were. And throughout all of that, even when it was being reported that, oh, it sounds like the Mets have moved on from Pete Alonso and they signed Jesse Winker and Steve Cohen saying this and that, it always felt like a reunion was fairly likely. I get that you only have a certain number of roster spots, whatever the general view of the Dodgers might be, but it always struck me as completely ridiculous that Jesse Winker

and his $7.5 million salary was really going to stop Steve Cohen from bringing Pete Alonso back if he wanted him. That just didn't seem, that made no sense. $7.5 million, that's nothing. He has so many more $71 million than I do, Ben. It's like a lot more, so you're notable. But yeah, you're right. There's so much about this Mets team that is exciting. There's such tremendous talent at the top of that lineup, but then you get to the bottom and you're like, you know, it's kind of amazing how much of a load bearing Jose Siri this team has, you know? And I don't like want a single Siri out in particular, I guess, but like

being able to say that you are not going to have to figure out how you piece together, you know, making Brett Beatty work is a meaningful upgrade. That's a good outcome for them because they've had guys, you know, if the intos took like a real step forward last year, he is like, he had a great season. He seems like he's going to be a good big leaker, but not all of their guys have hit the way that we thought they would. I mean, both literally and in a more figurative sense. And then, you know, you have like Jeff McNeil seems like he's just on the back nine and you know, guys like Sterling Marte hanging around. So like they have guys who you have to imagine at some point they're going to

be ready to move on from here. And so I'm glad that now it goes Lindor, Soto, Alonso. Like that's potent. He's going to be a big RBI man, that's for sure. If you still value RBI coming onto Soto and Lindor. What do we want to set the over under at actually? Because so to give some context to this for listeners, Alonzo had 88 RBI last year and he most often batted fourth in the lineup. A fact that I was able to very easily pull up with the lineup tracker player dashboard card at fangrass.com.

88 was the total last year, 118 the year before that, 131 the year before that. How many do you think where it's going to, I think it's going to be a lot. Yeah. Like when he had 131, that was when he was a much better hitter. Probably that was when he had a, he's hitting 40 bombs and a 141 WRC plus. I mean, he might still hit 40 bombs. I wouldn't put that. That's not out of the question, but the other stuff surrounding that, or when he

hit 53 as a rookie, he drove in 120. So, but yeah, I'm just talking about the OPP value where he'll be in the lineup, the number of opportunities that he'll have. I'd say if his bat remains in the 20% above average-ish range, then I mean, he could get up to like 125, at least let's say, you know, depends where they slot him in. But yeah, at least I'll set the over-under at like 125, which is a big boost from where he was last year. Yeah, there's always this push and pull with RBI where it's like, it's obviously about the guys who are hitting in front of you.

It's also about your own hitting ability. Yeah, that seems about right to me. That feels right. The polar bear back again. The virtue of Alonzo, one of them, is that he's always available. He's always in the lineup. He rarely misses a game. In fact, he did not miss a game at all last year.

And he's always in the like mid 150s, 160 ish typically. So he's durable. He'll be out there. And that's, that's always nice. Katie Grant It fits so perfectly though, right? Because I feel like a very reliably present ballplayer is often an earnest young man. And um, Pete Alonzo is, is seemingly quite, quite earnest. It just feels like it fits. It goes together well. Kind of like Pete Alonzo in the Mets. Yeah. And despite the way this plays out, I don't feel like Boris bungled it. I've certainly seen people say that and I don't want to be a Boris apologist here. I just feel like I don't know that there was a bigger offer out there for Pete Alonso.

Now, I think you could say that relative to the past, maybe Scott just doesn't have the ability to finagle more than a player would project to get at this point. Like, I don't know, this would be tough to quantify, though it probably could be done. I know there have been studies in the past that showed that. Boris and Boris Corp did do well, did get players more than they were projected to get.

I would guess though, that if you did some sort of study on this, that the impact of the agent on your earnings in free agency is less than it used to be. I just bet there's just not as much of an opportunity. And so, yeah, maybe that has made Boris less valuable as an agent, but I don't think he's fumbling the bag. I think maybe it's just, it's tougher to get teams to loosen the purse strings and to pull the move that he was famous for pulling, which was just do an end around the front office, just go directly to ownership and maybe he still does that sometimes.

And he negotiated the Wonsoto contract with Steve Cohen in the Mets. And that was just a case of like Wonsoto, of course, he's going to get a windfall in Piedmont, though not so much. So I don't know that Scott Boris was really a differentiating factor in either of those negotiations. But I would guess that it just matters less who the agent is and what the agent strategy than it used to be because it's just not so much about the interpersonal skills

and about producing your Boris binder and supplying your own stats and projections for a player. Like front offices have their valuations for guys and they're fewer owners probably now who are kind of shooting from the hip and going around their baseball people and just like, oh, the agent called me directly and I just agreed to a massive deal before I even read it by my GM or something. I just, I don't think that happens so much anymore. So yeah, maybe the value of someone like Boris when it comes to that, as opposed to who knows what else like endorsements and training facilities,

and I don't know what other ancillary value there is there, but I would guess that he impacts the earnings less than he used to, but I don't know that that's so much a reflection of Boris slipping as it is. The game changed. I think it does still happen. There are still guys who the primary path through which the deal gets done is ownership rather than the front office. I think you're right that it is far less frequent an occurrence than it used to be. And if anything, we often will see like the owner really bought into the process but still operating under the guidance of his ops group.

But there are some meddlers out there even yet. But I wonder if part of the way that we think about agent performance and measure it is going to start to feel murky in the same way that manager of the year does as an award where some of the things that an agent might do that are really adding value are, you know, they still result in dollars and cents, but like, you know, are they helping you to access endorsement stuff in the way that you need? Are they setting you up for investment opportunity beyond playing that kind of sets you up for life after the game? Some of which we can get public insight into, but much of which might happen sort of away from our view.

Whereas the free agent number is so public and so front of mind, especially for people like us. So I do wonder kind of not that like getting a new balance deal or whatever is like a soft skill. Like you just have to do a business negotiation. But I do wonder if there's some of that creeping into like agent assessment where it's just going to be harder for laypeople to be like, oh yeah, the best guy. But I don't know, it'd be hard to look at Boris's winter and be like, that was a failure. Yeah, on the whole, it's a case by case basis. Yeah. Pretty well for him. So we've got another preview pod for you today. We will be talking to Adam Barry of MLB.com about the Tampa Bay Rays, followed by Kurt Hoag of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel on the Milwaukee Brewers.

We didn't plan resonances between teams. It was just about how the projected standings shook out when I drew up the schedule, but it is nice when sometimes there's just a similarity or we can compare and contrast or like last time we talked to the two teams that were Roki Sasaki finalists and didn't get Roki Sasaki or the Brewers and the Rays have got to be the two most similar teams in terms of just the ways that they operate. And that's in part because a lot of Brewers executives are former Rays executives. And so they just approach the game in seemingly similar ways. They both often ball on a budget, exceed expectations based on their payroll.

Granted that Brewer's payrolls have typically been higher than the raise, but they do have that sort of, not gonna break the bank for big free agents, always gonna be trading people who are nearing free agency or letting them walk and taking the pick and then somehow coming up with replacements who are almost as productive as the guys they let go. Just a lot of similarities here and a similar farm system rankings this

spring. Some of those similarities will surface as we are conducting these interviews. And the only other thing I'll say before we get to that, well, two things, I guess. One is that the twins signed Harrison Bader, which is not that notable a move. It might actually be important, but we can talk about that when we get to the twins preview. But it's just notable because the twins essentially have this roster spot assigned to a Byron Buxton caddy. It's just, because the twins essentially have this roster spot assigned to a Byron

Buxton caddy. It reminds me, I'm just thinking of like players who were just paired with another player famously like back in Babe Ruth's days with the Yankees. The Yankees had Sammy Bird, who was a reserve and he was often a defensive replacement and pinch runner for Babe Ruth. And so he was nicknamed Babe Ruth's legs. And that was just like one of the things he was on the roster for. Hello, I am Babe Ruth's legs. Yeah. It's not glamorous, I guess.

I mean, even being the backup to Babe Ruth is not so bad. I'm Babe Ruth's understudy. He was actually, he played on the PGA tour too, two-way player. So, okay, club Babe Bruce, he played in the masters. So, I mean, maybe in, yeah, I guess he had a caddy when he was golfing. So yeah, he was the golf player. Doesn't quite work, but doesn't quite work. Anyway, it hasn't been the same guy though, for the twins. It's been a different guy every year. It's been sort of a rotating, like a fellowship of some sort.

It's like you're the understudy and then you pass that along to someone else. So Michael A. Taylor was that guy two years ago and he was great. He gave them exactly what they wanted. And then Manuel Margot was the guy last year and he was not so great. Yeah.

And so now they've gone to Harrison Bader, just a one year, six and a quarter million with some incentives and everything. And he seems more in the mold of Taylor in the sense that he really is an elite outfielder. Yes. Marco maybe had that reputation, but not so much the, the numbers to back it up at that point in his career. And he was a truly terrible pinch hitter last

year as was covered, I think on one of the year end pods last year, set a record for utility and consecutive bats or play appearances without a hit. So now they've gone to Harrison Bader who seems like he's tailor made for that role. And it's kind of funny, funny and sort of a sad way because so we'd all prefer that Byron Buxton were just healthy and great all the time, but that they have basically built this into their plans. Like, yes, we have Buxton, but we also have to have the guy who will play when Buxton is unavailable.

And I wonder what it's like to be that guy, to be the tailor, to be the baiter, knowing that that's your job, that's your assignment. You could find playing time elsewhere if you're Byron Buxton were to stay healthy. to be the baiter, knowing that that's your job, that's your assignment. You could find playing time elsewhere if Byron Buxton were to stay healthy, but you're almost like, okay, I know that I'm there because I'm the first line of defense, literally, like I'm the safety net for Byron Buxton. So I'm sure you're not rooting for Buxton to get hurt, but also you're like, this is my purpose on this team is for when Buxton gets hurt and then it's put me in coach.

I can play center field. So we'll see how Bader does and how much of an opportunity he gets, but it's gotta be kind of a weird thing knowing that that's you're like the, the break glass in case of Buxton injury guy. Yeah. I mean, like, I don't want to be cavalier about it because we have spent so much of this podcast over the years bemoaning Byron Buxton's relative lack of health. But I think on, on the one hand, you probably think to yourself, I'm

going to end up getting in there. And then, you know, there's the reality too, of the fact that both of their corner outfielders are lefties. And so you might end up having just like a useful platoon role if you're Bader as much as anything else, right? Like they have Trevor Larnack, they have Matt Wallner. And so I bet Bader, he'll spell Buxton on days where Buxton is like D.H.ing and getting some time off. But I imagine he'll do a little bit of platooning in the corners too, would be my guess. And so we talked about the twins in activity this off season, Harrison

Bader qualifies as a big addition for them, but we talked about the reasons for that too, but part of why I was bemoaning that is that they just clearly need depth and lack of depth has been exposed and they just seemed like, okay, if you're going into the season with a bunch of injury prone position players, then you have to have plan B and plan C, et cetera. So good that they got this guy. Okay. This is the week that playoff odds projections were unveiled both by fan grass where the playoff odds went live and by baseball prospectus where Picota went up.

And, you know, we'll probably be touching on that as we proceed through this preview series. But just my general observation, because it is relevant to all these conversations we've been having about competitive balance and parity is that things are looking pretty tight for the most part in these projections. Like they are pretty compressed. Now you have the Dodgers and then you don't have 50 feet of crap. You have a bunch of other good teams. That's a Moneyball reference, but you have a separation between the Dodgers and other teams. In fact, Picota has the Dodgers with a rounded up to 104 win projection,

which I know from previous research about Dodger's projections is, I think, the most optimistic projection Pacota has produced for any team in the past two decades, because there were a couple of years, the first two years when Nate Silver was doing Pacota, like 2003, 2004, the system was perhaps irrationally exuberant and you also had some super teams, but you had like 109 win projections and stuff that kind of got reined in a little bit. But since that, this is the most robust projection

that I believe that Pocotta has generated. We'll see if this ends up being the final projection. There's still spring training ahead of us, but yeah, that's pretty remarkable. But after that, there's a big step down and there just aren't really any other super teams, which was the case last season too. Especially in the AL, it's just really like in the AL, there's not a single team that FanGraphs projects right now for 90 wins, right? Like is what?

That's correct. Yeah. Is 89 the top? The Yankees or? Uh, and they're not even at 89. Okay. They're at 87.5. Um, yeah, a truly spectacular amount of compression really.

Even Appleman was like, I can't recall another year. I mean, we, the middle tends to be fairly large. Yeah. It's projections. We know like you're not projecting outliers, teams, you're not projecting luck, you're not rigorously projecting injuries exactly. And so yeah, like some teams will end up above, some teams will end up below. There's always some, some compression, but even by the standards of preseason projections,

this is not a lot of separation. Yeah, it's basically, you know, like you noted, there's the Dodgers up top. The Braves aren't that far behind them, but they're still like four wins off. And then, yeah, those two clubs are the only teams that we have projected for 90 or more wins, let alone, you know, we're not, we're

not looking at a hundred. Now, some of this stuff is going to move around. Most of the really big free agents are signed, but like, you know, Bregman will make his splash somewhere in here. Part of what will end up dictating this as it always does is injury, right? Because the thing that fuels these projections is our depth chart projections for individual players, which are a 50-50 blend of Zips and Steamer, plus the roster resource playing time projections. And then we run it through a bunch of stuff. And anyway, you can read Appelman's intro if you're curious about the ins and outs of

our playoff odds, but playing time is a big part of that, right? And so as guys get hurt or as guys assert themselves as viable big leaguers, some of this stuff will move around. And then of course, you know, they start playing games and that tends to move things too. And we will start to see some amount of separation, but yeah, it's real, it's really tight. And I gotta say, like, it's not that surprising that it's really tight. And I gotta say, like, it's not that surprising that it's really tight. This is what the structure of the league is incentivizing from teams now. So I'm surprised, a little surprised that it is this compressed, but the general direction of it, I think is pretty consistent with what I would have expected given the expansion of the playoff field. There aren't as many incentives to build teams that would

project for a hundred wins before opening day. And then when teams do that, we yell at them. CB Yeah. Yeah. I'm just glancing at the top of the Picota standings in the divisions, the NL East, they've got about a two-win margin, not even between the Braves and the Mets. And then in the AL East, it's like neck and neck. It's the tie, essentially, they have it between Yankees and the Orioles. And then the AL Central, it's just a few wins. And the AL West, it's just a few winds. So the only divisions with daylight, according to them, the NL West and the NL Central, where they have about a 10-wind gap between the Cubs and the Brewers. But then over at Fangraphs, yeah, you've got about a 10-wind gap in the NL West,

but everywhere else, it's close. I think the second biggest gap is NL East where it's about six wins with the Braves on top right now, but NL Central, it's like three wins. AL West, it's less than a win. What a gross little division the Central is. Yeah, it's not great. It's not great. Neither of them projects in a way that makes you go, oh, a new day has done.

Yeah. AL Central, about a win separation there. But yeah, the top projections for the Central teams are like 84 wins for the Cubs and 84 wins for the Twins. And then it's like a four win separation in the AL East too. So almost everywhere. Yeah. And sometimes it's not just two teams being close. Sometimes it's three or four. So we are looking at yet another season that a lot of teams are

going into it with a chance. Maybe if you're in the NOS, you don't have that strong a chance to win your division, but you still have a good wild card chance. There are just very few teams that you look at this and say no chance. They're just done before they even report to spring training. Yeah, it's amazing. Okay, well, let's take a quick break and we will be back with Adam Berry to talk about the race

followed by Kurt Hogue to talk about the Brewers. Where do you go in a world of bad takes for the good takes on baseball and life with a balance of analytics and humor, philosophical music Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Effectively wild. All right, it's time to talk about the Tampa Bay Rays, and we are once again joined by Adam Berry, who covers the Rays for MLB.com.

Welcome back, Adam. Thank you for having me, I appreciate it. So before we talk about who will be playing for the raise, we got to talk about where they will be playing not only in 2025 but beyond. Maybe we can start with the old place, the trop, and what the status of the repairs is and maybe you could just sort of explain to me the tactics and the tone that the team has taken since this whole saga started. Cause at times I've been a bit baffled by what the Rays aims are here or how they've gone about it.

And it seems as if they've kind of changed their approach at times when it comes to whether they want the repairs funded or when or how. So take us through this whole back and forth with various councils. I was going to say if we're going to start with ballpark stuff, we might not have time for players by the time we get through even one or two of the ballpark situations, much less all three. So the trop obviously had the roof taken off during Hurricane Milton

in early October. The ballpark belongs to the city, so it's the city's responsibility to repair it. I was actually at the city council meeting earlier this off season when they at one point agreed to pay, I think it was under the $20 million range funding to start repairing the roof, at which point team president Brian Auld during a break in the action came over to speak with a group of reporters and said that's actually not what the Rays wanted. They wanted a settlement because trying to move back into the trough potentially in the action, came over to speak with a group of reporters and said that's actually not what the Rays wanted. They wanted a settlement because trying to move back into the trough potentially in the middle of 2026 or whatever it may be would be too complicated, at which point the city council made kind of the extraordinary decision to call back that vote and not pass it. But they've continued to do kind of the bare minimum on their end that was required.

Fairly recently, the Rays came out and said, actually, we would like to be back in Tropicana Field for 2026, ideally at the start of the season to prevent that kind of on-the-fly mid-season move from a temporary location that has not been determined yet past 2025, back into the trop, all the while not getting the revenue from playing in their home ballpark, potentially being in another minor league park or elsewhere, who knows where at this point. So it is now their preference to be back in the trop for 2026. And just to jump ahead maybe a little bit here, the fact that the trop will be unusable this year means that their use agreement with the city is extended now through 2028 so you would be back in the trop potentially for three more seasons still

2026 through 28 to play out the use agreement there the city has come out and obviously you know they have to do it is their responsibility to fix the ballpark in accordance with whatever was 1995 original use agreement but they have said you know there's no deadline in that document. You know, they're going to do it to the best of their ability and everything that they need to do, but there is no set deadline. So that is much like everything else, still kind of up in the air at this point. And the trap itself, I had a lot of sympathy for the team initially because this disaster struck and affected the whole area, not just the baseball team, obviously, and this disrupted the raise plans.

But then the way they went about it seemed to sort of squander some of my sympathy, at least, just because it seemed like they were acting in this kind of mystifying fashion or entitled. I don't know whether I'm misreading it or less informed because I'm not in these city council meetings, but the brinksmanship approach that they were employing there, I don't know whether that soured fans feelings about them because again, this whole area is dealing with destruction and having to rebuild so it's not just a raise problem. So what has been their strategy here if you can discern it? It's been kind of confusing overall just given the fact that this was a done deal for the new ballpark last summer.

Signed, agreed upon, county, city, team, everything was in place. It seemed to be done and there was a little bit of an exhale, I think, from all parties involved, including fans. Like, all right, this is done. Maybe it's not ideal in everyone's mind that the ballpark and the team was going to stay in St. Pete, but you know, there was a future, there was a vision, it was done. And then this happens, obviously, this area is dealing with the impacts of back-to-back hurricanes at that time with the razor trying to figure this out. And there was initially some sympathy, I think, maybe more so on the team's part, because the county kind of delayed their funding, which also seemed to be a done deal based on the agreements that were signed last summer.

That only lasted seven weeks, basically. And then by that time, by the time they did approve the funding, the Rays had said, well, this no longer works for us. If the ballpark's going to open in 2029, there's this funding gap that we can't solve on our own despite the fact that it was written in the language of the agreement that the Rays were responsible for all cost overruns. So, and also, wasn't it that they had until March or something to issue those things. So it wasn't as if the council had, had gone beyond the time allotted, right?

Correct. Yeah. It, they said it through a wrench in their plannings with their development partners at Heinz and all the other companies that they contracted with and everything like that, that they had to call off some people who were moving down and whatnot that affected sort of the companies that they contracted with and everything like that, that they had to call off some people who were moving down and whatnot that affected sort of the timeline that they had laid out. Like, ideally, they were going to break ground last month, and obviously, you know, recent events have delayed that.

But then this is basically still at the point now where we're waiting on the raise. They have a March 31st deadline to show that they can hold up their end of the funding, that they have all the documentation and everything that they need, and also that they still want to do it. St. Pete Mayor Ken Walsh just came out Tuesday in his State of the City address and said, if the Rays are still a willing partner. Now the two sides are still talking,

but the fact that he said, if the Rays are still a willing partner, obviously creates some questions about whether in the city's mind this is still moving forward. And I don't think we'll have any answers until March 31st, basically that deadline and Stuart Sternberg's comments, most or all of which I think have come to the Tampa Bay Times, he's said that they're still deciding and they're still trying to make up their mind and still trying to solve this gap of whatever it is, $150 million and come up with that money to make the steel work. But the fact that there is uncertainty after everybody else

has agreed and it's now on the raise to decide has left a lot of things up in the air. So that's their strategy, if you can call it that, as it pertains to future seasons and their potential home. But let's talk about how they're thinking about the ballpark this season, because the Rays will, for once in their franchise history, officially give us a defense when we say Tampa instead of Tampa Bay, because they will be playing in Tampa and they will be playing in the Yankee Spring Training Facility. Talk to us about what changes that ballpark has undergone to bring it up to big league standard and how the team is thinking about how that park will play and how their season is going to look and feel because obviously they had

to move their schedule around when they're playing home games versus not try to duck Florida weather in summer. Tell us about what what Rays baseball might look like in the ballpark this year. Different for sure. The overarching sense of it. As far as getting the facility up to major league standards, they're actually in a pretty good place with that because of the work that the Yankees have done

last off season and especially this off season. I've heard some people say that it's gonna be like a top five home clubhouse type facility, not just by spring training standards, but by major league standards. And the Rays are gonna benefit from that because the Yankees have done so much not just by spring training standards, but by major league standards. And the Rays are going to benefit from that because the Yankees have done so much work on their spring training complex. The Rays were then responsible in a pretty short period of time for helping to repair the visiting clubhouse and some of the other amenities and facilities

that are required to meet a major league standard. But that put them in a pretty good place from that perspective whereas trying to go anywhere else in the area, Dunedin or Clearwater, would have required a little bit more work. So they're pretty well set on that front, but then yeah, it's going to be unusual playing outdoor baseball in Florida in the summer, which is why they did shift a couple series around to the Rays play a ton of games in April and May. They play a lot of home games really in April and even in May to start the season. They're gone for extended stretches of the summer. I think there's now a two-week West Coast road trip in August, which sounds great. They've shifted some things around like that, and they've also changed game

times, pushing them back in the summer to more of a 730 start, even 7 o'clock start in various parts of the spring and fall just to avoid the seemingly daily afternoon showers that we get here and some of the worst of the heat that you're going to deal with playing outdoor baseball in Florida. So they've made adjustments along those lines, but there have also been some roster adjustments that they've made as far as trying to pile up even more optionable relievers than usual. And they usually have quite a few on hand anyway, being the Rays, just dealing with the kind of unexpected and unusual for them circumstances of rain delays in games that start and then get postponed

or having to play double headers more often or things of that nature where they can be a little bit more flexible with the pitching staff. So otherwise, I mean, the offense, we can talk about this as we go on here, is more or less the same group it's been, but they have a little bit more optimism that you might get more out of a Brandon Lau, a Josh Lowe, a Jonathan Aranda because of

the dimensions of the ballpark, which are identical to Yankee Stadium, which of course tends to play pretty well for left-handed power. Yeah, I was going to ask about that. Were there other venues that you think they seriously considered for the short term? And if they decided on this one over others, was it more about the location or the quality of the facilities or the way they thought the park would play given their roster? I think this was the top option really from the jump for the two reasons you mentioned location and the quality of the facilities. Location, you could stay in the market. It's the least disruption for their staff,

their players, their fans. You could stay in the market. It's the same. It's on the other side of the bay, obviously. They hope to draw pretty well from this side, the Tampa side of the bay and the crowds that they are expecting in that 11,000-seat stadium. But as far as not having to overhaul a facility like you might have had to do in Clearwater, Dunedin or move out of the market, I know Omaha was one of the places that was at least thrown about just because of the quality of the facilities that are already there, that obviously would have changed a lot of things for them and thrown quite a bit into upheaval. So I think this was their top option, and it makes the most sense,

despite the obvious difficulty of having to play outdoor baseball in Florida. You must be so relieved that they aren't going to Omaha. Like you personally, Adam, must be so relieved. Yeah, and the Tampa ballpark is a lot closer to my house, and certainly much closer than Omaha I can say that much. So yeah, it is nice in that regard. And I've actually heard from a lot of fans even who are on this side who you know getting

over the bridge is a challenge or whatever. Sure. Already said they're going to go to more games and things like that. And obviously tickets are going to be more expensive because there's fewer of them. But it's going to be different and I think exciting in some ways for some people and certainly less exciting for others Let's move on now to the people who will actually be playing in that ballpark You mentioned that a lot of the cast of characters on the offensive side of the ball is same

I actually want to start in the rotation because there have been some changes here, right? There have been guys traded away. Jeffrey Springs is an athletic now changes here, right? There have been guys traded away. Jeffrey Springs is an athletic now, no longer a Ray. And then we have a lot of names that I think folks will be familiar with who have played in Tampa before, missed time to injury in Tampa before. So talk to us about how their rotation is going to fit together. And if you have any names for random pitchers who we will come to know as Tampa Bay Rays, we can perhaps throw those guys into the mix here too. Sure.

I think the rotation is kind of viewed as the backbone of the team. And I mean, that starts with Shane McClanahan coming back from Tommy John surgery. He's expected to be good to go from the start of the season, not totally sure how workload issues and constraints are going to pile up as the year goes on. But that just immediately adds a true top of the rotation arm to the group. And then behind him, you have Drew Rasmussen, who's he came back last year from his internal brace procedure, but it's kind of a two-winning reliever. He's expected to be a full-time starter, at least coming into camp. That's another guy who's performed extremely well when he's been healthy

enough to start. Obviously, injuries have been an issue there. Also another guy who's performed extremely well when he's been healthy enough to start. Obviously injuries have been an issue there. Also another guy who you have to consider workload concerns. And then you have three arms, three young kind of dynamic arms coming back behind those two in Ryan Pepio, who was of course part of the Tyler Glasnow trade, performed pretty well in his first year with the Rays. Taj Bradley, the former top prospect, who's had his ups and downs, but still just shows electric stuff and I think had one of the better stretches of any pitcher last summer, something to build on.

And then Shane Baas, another kind of perpetual injury concern and workload constraint guy who will also be back in the rotation to start the season. And then behind them or somewhere in that mix, you have Zach Lattell, who is perhaps the quintessential random Ray making starts and pitching innings for the team. He's also due back and I don't necessarily know how they're going to fit all six of these guys in. They're not even sure at this point heading into camp and I think it's kind of one of those, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it things because when, you know, Eric Neander has brought up the 2023 example of we went into that season talking about how the Rays had this great rotation and five traditional starters and here they are, what are they going to

do with all these pitchers? And that group never made one consecutive turn through the rotation due to injuries. So they're going to kind of let it play out and if they have to make that decision at the end of spring training, they will. But certainly for the Rays having too many starters is not a problem in any sense of the word. So that is the kind of the headliner of the group. I think maybe your random potential rate would be Joe Boyle who came over and that Jeffrey Springs trade with the athletics. Hard thrower guy who pitched really well against them

last year, which to be fair, a lot of pitchers pitch well against that lineup, especially at that time of year. A hard thrower, I think he's drawn some kind of internal Tyler Glasnow comparisons, big guy, good stuff, doesn't know where it's going. And Kyle Snyder's had a lot of success with guys who've had pass control issues and kind of harnessing them, getting them in the zone, throwing to bigger spots. And I think the Rays are excited about his potential, but also excited that they don't

have to rush him due to the existing rotation depth that they have. And he's mostly at least been a starter himself or was last season. Is there someone who is currently a reliever or projects to be who could make that leap to the rotation when inevitably the Rays end up not with excess starters but a dearth of starters? And of course they did deal Jeffrey Springs, as you just said, who was one of those converted guys in the past. So is there anyone who would be next up?

Right, the Jeffrey Springs to Zach Littell to question mark pipeline of Mason Montgomery is an interesting name there just as a guy who was a starting pitching prospect came up last year as a reliever showed really electric stuff that played extremely well out of the bullpen. And that's where he's going to be to start the season. I've personally wondered if he's one of those guys who you could say if it's not necessarily working out to start the season or if they do need depth in that regard. Is he the guy that they maybe consider trying to stretch out? I haven't been given any indication in that line. The fact that they moved him to the bullpen would seem to show that they'd like his stuff more out of the bullpen to begin with, but that's definitely an arm that I'm going to be watching just

because he was a pretty highly regarded prospect in their system recently and the stuff played up and he had so much success in that brief kind of September stint that you just have to wonder if there's maybe a little bit more there. We'll see how that how that plays out in spring training, I think. This is perhaps a good time to talk about the bullpen, which has a lot of familiar names and also some new ones. Pete Fairbanks will return on the other end of the spectrum. You have Alex Valletta, who came over from Detroit just this month.

So how are they thinking about bridging the innings to Fairbanks and who are some of the names that stand out to you here? A couple of guys who got a lot more work late last season when Fairbanks and Colin Poche were injured. Certainly not household names. Not that probably a lot of these guys are to begin with, but Edwin Usada was probably not a guy

who was getting a ton of talk heading into last season and then saw the MLB network top 10 list had him within their top 10 among relievers. He was just that good down the stretch of 1.5 ERA, struck out, I think it was 12 per nine, went below one and started to get a lot of high leverage work down the stretch. He seems to me like he'll probably slot into kind of that Jason Adam type setup role where

he can pitch in just about any role or any time of the game with the stuff that he has. It's played against righties, it's played against lefties. Manuel Rodriguez was another guy who kind of stepped into some high leverage work and did a really good job down the stretch. Kevin Kelly is probably still not getting enough attention for what he's done. He was a rule five reliever in 2023, had a lot of success that year, came back last year, was even better, pitched 70 innings, ERA below three, really more effective against lefties I think, given kind of the odd arm angle that you would expect to be, death on righties, he was

really good against lefties too. So it's a pretty deep group and then again they have more guys with options so they can be pretty flexible with that group. Hunter Biggie, who came over in the ESOCK Parade's trade, is kind of electric stuff. People within the industry kind of gave him a little bit of a Pete Fairbanks comp, just to sort of be the power arm and the power slider and all that. So a lot of arms, a lot of guys who are going to come out of nowhere for most people and be really effective, but I think they can head into this season feeling pretty good about the group they have because they kind of had to remake the bullpen on the fly each of the past two years and started off a little rocky and then kind of found their footing as the season has gone along, mostly by changing personnel.

I think heading into this year, they feel really good about the group they have and then the depth coming behind it. Well, maybe we can transition to the hitters and as noted, lots of holdovers here, but maybe we can start with one new face and that is Hasan Kim's. So what was the motivation for signing Kim? How did the raise and Kim get together and what's the hope for when he'll be back

and the plan for the interim? I think the hope for coming back would be May, maybe late April. Just coming back from right shoulder surgery, the Rays said they were really confident and happy with the transparency they got from his agent Scott Boris and the medical team that he's worked with just as far as getting a sense of his rehab as the offseason has gone along and now they'll feel even better having him under their hood, as they like to say, heading into spring training to finish out the rehab.

In the meantime, it'll probably be Taylor Walls, mostly at shortstop. Obviously, an elite defender who struggled with the bat and a little bit of Jose Caballero who started the season at shortstop last year, probably better suited as kind of a utility infield type. He might also get some work in the outfield this spring. And the motivation for Kim is kind of the story of their offseason on the transaction side, not the actual story of the off season, which was the stadium stuff. Yeah. The offense was not good enough last year.

It was the only the White Sox scored fewer runs in them. They were terrible with runners in scoring position. They struck out too much. The bottom of the lineup had too many holes in it. And the Rays have a lot of confidence in some of the guys they had coming back. You're not gonna go out and try to replace Yanni Diaz or Brandon Lau or Josh Lowe or Junior Caminero, but the positions where they could get stronger were kind of the positions where they typically prioritized defense. That

would be centerfield, shortstop, and catcher. And it's a pretty limited group of players that they thought they had access to where they could go out and get better offense, at least kind of league average, raise your floor type offense while also not compromising their defense. And Ha Sung Kim is basically the perfect kind of representation of that, a really good gold glove winning defender who they can plug in at shortstop

who has been at least a league average hitter, sometimes better. So he fits that category, Danny Jansen, the catcher they brought in fits that. And then they traded Jose Siri to essentially give center field to Johnny DeLuca, who kind of projects the same way, somebody who's going to be a really good defender and grades out that way metrically with more opportunity, and then is at least going to raise their floor offensively.

Nicole Soule There are other, I was going to say big addition, but that might be a little dismissive to actual big additions. But there are other sort of free agent signing was Danny Jansen. His defense has been okay, less good last year. The offense has been a little below the league average for a bit here, but I'm curious about the sort of interplay between him and Ben Roortvecht because Roortvecht came over from the Yankees. He got into a fair number of games last year. He does have a very solid glove against sort of middling offense, although that's not so unusual for catchers. So do they see Roartved as sort of the catcher of the future

and Jansen is there to help to bring him along slowly, or is that going to be sort of a rotating position from their perspective? I think they kind of see Jansen as more the front line guy coming in or at least in more of an even mix with Roartvet than they were able to you know play out last year. Last year they thought they were coming in with Rene Pinto as their their front line guy. He did not work out at all in Roartvet. You know started off hot enough that they felt comfortable giving

him most of the reps back there before Alex Jackson you know kind of came in as the very light hitting defensive minded backup in that spot. They wanted somebody who could take on a little bit more of the work to kind of preserve Rourke a bit and keep him in better offensive matchups while also still being able to use his glove because he is really good back there in Jansen. Like you said, the metrics have been fine, kind of up and down, better framing some years, worse framing other years. The throwing has certainly taken a hit, but he was like the best graded pitch blocker, I believe, last season. So he's got that going for him. But that's kind of where they see him fitting in is at least kind of holding the line. They have Dom Keegan in their system,

is kind of their catcher of the future at this point. Should get the AAA at some point this season, could be a candidate for, you know, whether it's next year or whatever it may be coming in and filling that job. But it seems like it's going to be mostly Jansen with Warped that mixed in there. Kind of similar, I guess I should say, to what they expected going into last year, but different than what they actually got last year. We talked about the epic bat flip and home run trot of Junior Caminero recently.

Is that a prelude to many more bat flips and home run trots this year? What are the Rays hoping for out of him? BF You mean universally agreed upon and not at all commented upon breakout picture in your cam and arrow? Is that what you're talking about? CB I see you've been listening to Effectively Wild. Yes, I wasn't going to go there. You work for MLB.com, but yes, that is who I am referencing. BF Yeah, they're expecting him to break through, let's go with that, and be what Eric Neander has described as a force in their lineup. I mean,

he was fine last year. He held his own. Certainly what you would expect are better than you would expect from a 20 year old coming up with not a ton of time in AAA. You saw the bad speed. You saw just the prodigious power. You've seen better defense, I think, than they expected, at least when he came up last season. And then obviously, you've seen the feel to hit and just the natural ability that he has offensively throughout his time in the minors. And I think

one thing that really showed with that the Lidome home run was just his flair for the dramatic and his feel for the moment and his desire to kind of be the guy. I think the Razor really excited about that. I mean, he's going to have to carry this lineup to a certain extent just because the lack of power elsewhere and the, you know, maybe just the lack of depth in certain parts of the lineup. But I think they're really excited about what he's going to bring to the table this season, with just the knowledge that he is the guy from the start. You know, he came in last year and there was some uncertainty after his kind of weird call up in 2023 straight from double A.

He got started the season in triple A, starting the majors. He went down to triple A. He's disappointed about that. He got hurt, which kind of delayed his arrival and then it just felt like it was a long time before he really got his chance. And then like I said, there were some highs and lows, roughly kind of league average offensive production from an OPS plus, WRC plus perspective. But you saw the flash just to believe that this is a guy that they can count on and build around.

And I think that is the plan for him. Hopefully many more bat flips to come. Jonathan Aranda has also been a popular breakout pick, which I object to far less. But what's the case for Aranda raising his game? We keep saying raising and it's not a pun. It's just it's just a word. You mean granted an additional option year, Jonathan Aranda? That's right. Yeah. Well, I feel like Jonathan Aranda has been a breakout pick for like three

years now, which is part of the reason that I didn't pick him personally heading into this season. Integrity. You've seen flashes of it. He's been so good in AAA and the Rays belief is that anybody who puts up those kind of numbers in AAA is going to find success in the majors. And it's come in fits and starts. He had a really good September when he got started to get a little bit more regular playing time. And I think the Rays are kind of banking on that. Karing Ford, like I said, another guy who should benefit

from the dimensions at Steinbrenner Field, should benefit from more regular playing time. Right now as the roster's built, he is probably the regular DH. Maybe he gets some time at first base so he can get Yanni Diaz off his feet. He could also spell Brandon Lowe at second. But just a guy who has hit everywhere he's been and the Rays are confident that it's

going to happen for him this year. And frankly, it might have happened last year had he not dealt with an injury near the end of spring training that kind of an ongoing theme for this team with him, Josh Lowe, even Junior Caminero once the season started. Just injuries kind of kept them from finding their footing and hitting their stride at the plate. So I think the Rays are really confident in him and counting on, you know, maybe this is the year for Jonathan Deronda and this is actually the year that it all comes together for him.

We talked about some of the upper level guys on the pitching side who might end up reinforcing this roster at various points, but who might we see playing at the big league level for Tampa? be playing at the big league level for Tampa. I'm so excited about that. Terrible circumstances, but boy, we're going to get way fewer emails. Obviously, Curtis Mead is sort of still floating around, but among their prospects or young guys who are currently parked at triple or double A, is there anyone who strikes you as likely to see big league time this year? I think you could see quite a few of them actually. Chandler Simpson is certainly the one who strikes me as maybe the quickest path just because of his skill set. The, you know, scouts joke that it's 90 speed and 10 power and I don't actually know if that's a joke anymore. He can steal 100 bases

and he might never hit a ball over the fence for a home run so that sounds like 90-10 to me. I would not be surprised if he gets to look in the outfield at some point, certainly as a late game weapon off the bench, but also a guy who really just puts the ball in play and lets his speed do the rest, led the minors in batting average, I believe, last season. So that's certainly one to watch. Trey Morgan was their minor league player of the year last season, an LSU teammate of Paul Skeens, who is their third round pick in the draft. They really liked what they saw from him. I would not be surprised if he's a guy who gets a potentially, you know, earlier look than some of the other prospects they have at that level, just based on their confidence that he's going to be able to hold the zone offensively.

He's also like, I mean, they throw around the phrase gold glove caliber first baseman defensively, even though he might get some work in the outfield, because they also have Xavier Isaac, first baseman who's a little bit behind him. And then Carson Williams, obviously, is their top prospect, a short stop who is truly a five tool or at least a four tool player. Power, speed, defense, cannon of an arm. The only question is going to be whether he's going to hit enough to get to that power and you know hit enough at the highest levels. But he certainly got all the talent. I think the acquisition of Kim maybe allows them the space to not have to rush him to

the majors, but certainly a guy that they would clear a spot for whenever he's ready. Because as much as the Rays value defensive versatility and use everyone at every spot, Carson Williams has never played an inning for them anywhere other than shortstop, which I think says a lot about his future with this organization. I meant to ask when we were talking about shortstop about Taylor Wells' defense, which is sort of divisive. It seems like the Rays think he's great, Defensive Run Saved think he's great, Statcast does not think he's great.

Statcast has him below average and DRS says he's one of the best and he'd better be, I guess, in order to be a valuable shortstop given how he hits or doesn't. So do the Rays have an explanation for the disparity there? And clearly it seems like they side against Statkast because they continue to employ him. Yeah, they think he's the best defensive shortstop in baseball. So they're certainly more on the DRS side of the argument. I've never heard any argument on the, you know, outs above average Statkast side of it, because everything they say about his defense is that he is not only their best, but the best that they have.

And just from my amateur eye test, like I would agree the guy makes plays that others don't. He makes tough plays look easy. His instincts in the field are about as good as anyone I've seen in whatever 15, 16 years doing this. He's super talented with the glove, which like you said, is basically the reason that you're running him out there

when he's, you know, posting OPS's in the 500s. And we even heard from some people inside the organization that if he were a 650, 675 OPS guy, he'd be their most valuable player like by a decent margin, which I think speaks to their view of his defense. The Rays as usual have a highly rated farm system. Depth is the strength more so than the standouts, other than shortstop, of course, but take us through the top guys and then take us through anyone else who might make an impact this season, whether it's via trade or via promotion.

Like you said, the depth does stand out and that was part of the explanation behind their trade deadline sell-off last year is that they wanted to add, especially pitching to the system, they felt good about the guys that they had and that position player group, especially with William Simpson, Morgan, Isaac, Keegan, the list goes on, but they were able to go out and add Aidan Smith. Dylan Lesko was a former top prospect who they think they can work on the control. Brody Hopkins is a guy who's graded out really well on some of the early lists and certainly from what I've heard about their system. Jackson Bowe Meister is another guy they added. Even Gregory Barrios, somebody they got in the Aaron Savali trade who they

think could be one of the best defensive players in their system a short stop. So they certainly added depth from that perspective, but a lot of the attention is going to be on that group that finished last season in AA. Carson Williams, Xavier Isaac, Braden Taylor, another first round pick of theirs recently. And I think what stands out more now is that it had seemed like kind of their pitching depth had dried up, but those trades and the emergence of guys like Gary Gale Hill, Santiago Suarez, even Trevor Harrison, who's a recent draft pick, kind of a local product guy, I think has really reinforced the depth of that in their system. and that has just kind of raised the floor and I think the ceiling to a certain extent of the system as a whole. I noticed that Eloy Jimenez is listed on the projected bench, so I have questions about

that when we get the Eloy breakout finally with the raise. And then also Christopher Morrell, sort of same question, is this going to be the place where he finally puts it together? Eloy, I'm not entirely sure. I think they're kind of playing that one as very much a wait and see how he looks coming into camp just because he was so bad to finish last season in Baltimore and he's played so little outfield.

But there's certainly a spot for him as a fifth outfield, right-handed hitting DH type. There's certainly be room for him on the roster. They're just going to see how it looks in camp just to see if the power, obviously the power, if he can get back to being the guy he was earlier in his career for the White Sox would go a long way for him. And the same goes for Christopher Morrell, obviously a guy they were really excited about, somebody they'd been interested in for a long time. And then he was kind of the centerpiece of the E-Soc Parades trade and he could not have made a better first

impression. He homered in each of his first two games with the Rays and then he was kind of the centerpiece of the ESOC Parade's trade and he could not have made a better first impression. He homered in each of his first two games with the Rays and then did basically nothing the rest of the way. I think he was a little bit better defensively maybe than they expected. They gave him a lot of work at second base. He looked good there. Right now his best fit on the roster is in the left field. It looks like that's where he's going to be the starter to begin the season. So they're kind of just hoping that a little bit more comfort, a little bit more time with their coaching staff and with their analysts and everything will help him break out and kind of find the, was it roughly like 30 homer per 162 game pace that he was on in Chicago. And even for all of his warts offensively, you know, he strikes

out too much, he doesn't walk enough, he's not going to be a high average hitter, that kind of power and run production can go a long way in this lineup when you're surrounding him with some of the other guys that they think can bounce back and break through. So he's a guy that they're definitely counting on. One of the guys Eric Neander mentioned by name at his end of season press conference is somebody that they think can bounce back this year and play a big part in their lineup. I'm curious kind of how the Rays view themselves within the context of their own division. Our playoff outs came out

yesterday, at least the first run of them, and you will be unsurprised to learn that the AL East is once again projected to be very, very strong, not a single team below 500. They're looking at a Yankees team that despite not being able to retain Soto brought in Fried and traded for Bellinger and added Paul Goldschmidt and got Devin Williams and the Orioles have this young position player core and no pitching at all. And you know, the Red Sox traded for Garrett Crochet and the Blue Jays are, you know, even if their resources weren't deployed quite the way they wanted to, like clearly keen to spend and try to make the most of what might be Vladimir Guerrero juniors last season in Toronto. And then you have the Rays and

they've made some additions and they have a good group, but you know, they're obviously up against a really tough slate from a division perspective. So how do they view themselves relative to their sort of AL East rivals? I think they would probably say no different than in any other year, just given how challenging this division can always be. I mean, you run through some of the names that you just did and some of the moves and it does feel like it's going to be even tougher than normal. But I think the Rays are pretty good at focusing on themselves and trying to get to the standard

that they need to be at to get back in the playoffs and so much of their philosophy. Like many other teams, it's built on the idea of just getting in and anything can happen from there. And I think they believe they have a team that's capable of doing that. Certainly the pitching, Neanderthals describe as a championship caliber unit. I certainly not want to bet against the Rays in their ability to find and produce pitching and a lot of their offensive capability is going to be based on those bounce back and breakthrough players that we've talked about to this point. So I think they're counting on enough of that going right and the athleticism that they have and the defense that they're capable of playing kind of supporting the pitching staff enough to get through. And by the time last season was over,

they had one of the better pitching staffs in baseball in the second half, I think just no offense to support it. You could say, you know, if they had had a couple more, you know, even league average performance with Rodgers in scoring position, how different would the season have played out for them? Will they have been more realistically in the wild card mix enough to not make those moves at the trade deadline, which then maybe impacted their standing a little bit more? So I think they're going in optimistic about their chances of at least being competitive within the division and certainly within the American league as a whole to potentially get a wild card spot.

This is an incredibly inconsequential question, but we recently had a bullpen catcher on the podcast and I noticed while looking at the Rays coaching staff that they have two bullpen catchers. Now, I'm used to the assistant pitching coach and the pitching coach and the hitting coach and the assistant hitting coach. We've seen all kinds of coach expansion. I don't think I've seen double barreled bullpen catchers before Charlie Valerio and Misha Dworkin, but this seems to make sense, I guess,

given how many pitching changes there are, especially with the Rays. I mean, you have to warm up more than one guy at the same time often. So is this the Rays bullpen catcher competitive advantage? Is there a senior bullpen catcher and Raze bullpen catcher competitive advantage? Is there a senior bullpen catcher and an assistant bullpen catcher? Is this even unusual? I don't know how unusual it is, but it does stand out that there have been two, because I don't think when I started here that there were always two. But two guys who I know that the players really value and appreciate their work a lot. You know, it does allow them to

be involved in different ways from a preparation standpoint, you know, as far as getting guys ready mentally, getting guys ready physically. And then, like you said, the double barrel stuff, like somebody's got to be back there catching their warm-up pitches. So two really good guys, actually, Misha and Charlie, who have been, they're just kind of part of the clubhouse culture, really. And it does help to have, you know, guys who can communicate with different players, certainly, you know, having a Spanish speaker helps out there as well. And, you know, somebody who can, it's also such a large group and such a changing group and they have to deal with so much as far as catching rehab bullpens and stuff as well

that those guys stay busy to the point where, you know what, it is probably a two-man job. All right. Well, our traditional last question is what would constitute success for this team this season? What's the objective? What should fans be expecting? On the field, it's just getting back into the playoffs. Like I said, so much of their philosophy

is built on the idea of getting in every year and letting it play from there. And that only works if you're getting in every year. You can't really afford breaks. If you're not pushing in, you can't really afford to be pulled out of the playoffs, I think. So certainly getting back into the playoffs would be a step forward, a bounce

back for the team as a whole, and off the field is once again for the whatever it is 17th year running, figuring out the stadium situation and getting a permanent solution in place, ideally in the Tampa Bay area. All right. Well, we always enjoy talking to you and reading your coverage for mlb.com. Adam Berry, thanks for joining us once again. Thank you. Alright, thanks to Adam. By the way, when we were talking about various short stops, I did intend to ask about Wander Franco, slipped my mind, which probably says something about his relevance to this roster. You're probably not missing much from whatever that answer

would have been because I'm not sure Franco will affect the 2025 raise. If you're wondering what his status is, he was added to MLB's restricted lists back in last July, so the raise haven't been paying him since then. In December, his trial was postponed until June. Because of the 36 witnesses scheduled to testify, only three were present in the courtroom when his trial was supposed to start. Even if it does start in June, it's expected to last for months. He's facing up to 20 years for charges of sexual

abuse, sexual exploitation against a minor, human trafficking, and he doesn't even have a court date set for the arraignment related to his arrest on charges of legal use and possession of a firearm, so it does not appear that there will be any developments any time soon. And of course MLB's decision about how to discipline him will await the resolution of those legal cases. And obviously the baseball aspects of his case, not the most significant in the grand scheme of things, but he does continue to cast a shadow over the organization just in the sense that his conspicuous absence is why we're talking about Taylor Walls, Hassan Kim, etc.

We'll take one more quick break now and we'll be back with Kurt Hoag to talk about the Milwaukee Brewers. Effective moral sauvage. Effective moral sauvage. Effective moral sauvage. All right, we're back. And so is Kurt Hoag, who covers the Brewers for the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and is here to discuss them with us. Hello, Kurt. Welcome back. Hey, guys. Thanks for having me again. So the Brewers, after yet another successful season,

did not give you a whole lot to cover this off season. You had to come up with your own material, not too many major transactions, but I guess we can talk about the ones that did go down and some of the departures and some of the additions such as they were. So maybe we can start with the Devin Williams trade for Caleb Durbin and Esther Cortez. What was the impetus?

If this is not the first time that we've seen the Brewers trade a prominent player and have to try to fill in for him. So what made them make this move? What do they like about the guys they got back and what's the succession plan? Anyone who has paid any attention to the Brewers over the last five, six, seven years, this is how they operate. The exception to the rule is not trading Willie Adamis, right? Before I'm sure we'll talk about him more, but he had one year left of team control and they played it out and he became a free agent and the Brewers got the comp pick.

They usually don't operate in that vein. They typically trade their guys before, you know, their top guys before the team control is over. This is sort of their method of madness. They have a plan. That's kind of like a general theme of the brewers as they just stick to their plan, no matter, you know, what else is going on around the league. Devin Williams, unlike maybe the Corbin Burns trade, this is coming from a position of strength for the Brewers. You theoretically feel like they should be able to backfill in the bullpen now, obviously. Devin Williams is one of a kind. He's an elite closer, elite reliever in baseball. And so there's no guarantees. but unlike last year and a couple of these other similar trades

that they've made, the Brewers are dealing from depth. And kind of what I liked about the return was they didn't just go with the normal prospect, controllable young talent. They did get a guy who has one year left of team control, and that's Nestor Cortez. Sort of seemed like he was a bit on the outs in New York and the Brewers have a need for some rotation depth. We'll see what Brandon Woodruff can deliver and how healthy he is. They have some young guys in that rotation as well, but that's a spot where the Brewers needed to get at least someone this off season and boy, oh boy, it sure seems like they weren't

going to get it by spending money. We haven't seen them really make a big splash deal in terms of dealing a high prospect capital either. So this is kind of one of the ways that they have to do it within the confines of like their parameters, how they work. So unsurprising to see Devin Williams dealt, kind of surprising to see not much else happen after that though. Kaitlin Luna We often focus on what like the brewers lost in instances like this. What did they like about Caleb Durbin?

Jared Slauson He kind of fits the mold of, like, you see a lot of the guys the brewers target. Laurenie It's shocking he wasn't a brewer already, candidly. Jared Slauson Yes. Well, he's like, he's from the northern suburbs of Chicago too. So, like, basically like from an hour away. So, he probably was a brewer and he just didn't realize it this whole time. Like Bryce Terang, Joey Ortiz, who they went out and targeted in a trade. Sal Freelick, these sort of these, these contact first, their physical stature isn't going to blow you off the charts. They play solid defense. They can play multiple positions.

Like this is the kind of guy they've targeted not only in trades like this. They got Ortiz in the trade, but in the draft. Terang was a draft pick. Sal Frelik was a draft pick. There are other guys too, like Eric Brown, their first run pick a couple years ago. He hasn't really panned out, but Tyler Black. This is the Brewers type of player, and if it goes as it has in the past, you look up and they'll have squeezed a win and a half out of him,

and he'll have played good defense and not wowed you with the bat. And that's kind of how the Brewers operate and in the past, this is how, you know, you look up at the end of the year, you're like, how did they win? How did they win 90 games with these guys? They don't really hit and there's just kind of a method to the madness, I guess. Do you think they surprised themselves by how smooth sailing it was last season? Just kind of cruising almost wire to wire, 93 winds, didn't really even get hairy in the central and that was after big departures, after burns, after council, after sterns of course, and they just didn't miss a beat.

In short, yes. I remember I was on last year with you guys and we're like, how's this going to go? It looks entirely different. And it went just about as well as it could up until Pete Alonso came to the back in game three of the wild card series. Things were going pretty swimmingly. I mean, Sal Freelick even hit a big homer in the playoffs. Jake Bowers had one too.

So it started to have a feel like this could be like something, you know, like the baseball gods might be shining on the Brewers. I think even the Brewers who internally were more optimistic than the external projections and predictions around the team were, they would, they would tell you that they did not foresee a 93 win season coming. A lot of things broke, right? They did deal with some injuries, especially on the pitching staff. But if you just look at a lot of like the individual performances, they had

players hitting their, I don't know, 80th, 90th percentile outcomes. Like Tobias Myers was not too far away from getting rookie of the year votes. Um, Bryce Terang won a platinum glove. This is sort of how the brewers have done it a lot in the past few years, but it felt like 2024 was definitely the most brewers of the brewer's seasons that they've had. Nicole Soule-North It's funny, you named two guys who hit home runs in the postseason, but not perhaps the most notable of the guys who hit home runs in the postseason.

We talk about guys who struggled to hit and after a brief adjustment period, the same can not be said for Jackson Churio. So I think his rookie season had to have gone about as well as they could have hoped, perhaps better, especially if you take out that early period of adjustment. Like I said, what are their expectations for him in 2025 and what aspects of his game are they hoping he will work on and continue to improve as he rounds into his sophomore season?

Yeah, definitely. The second half, not just the second half, but really the last four months of the year, he was probably one of the top 10 best players in the national league. Anyway, you spin it. He was playing like a star and he has the underlying talent the bat speed The foot speed the power like all of this to make you feel like hey this this could be real

And the Brewers expect it to be real and expect him to take the next step and jump fully two feet into superstardom this next year and like with the trajectory of what we've seen from him so far in his very limited time playing professional baseball, he's not even 21 yet. That is the logical next step. Now these things don't always go as smoothly as we'd like them to. A lot of times with the really, really special players, they can, they can make you forget how hard this game really is. And you know, maybe Cheerio is one of those guys, like he provides the moments that is like you think of his playoff, he had in the playoffs, he had two homers in one game.

He hit a couple big grand slams during the year. So some really clutch homers throughout, like he steps up in those moments and gives you like that little that feeling inside of like, oh yeah, this guy is, this guy's different, but who knows? Um, and year two, the league adjusts, as we all know, to players, you know, he will suddenly be the guy along with William Contreras that every team and every pitcher is game planning for. And the big question is going to be the swing decisions as the plate discipline. He was able to produce incredible numbers in the second half despite not really taking immense strides forward in terms of chasing

out of the zone. That's always something that makes you have a little bit of caution, but he was able to overcome it in year one and the tools are just so loud. And like I said, he has that special sense to him that you kind of feel around the special players that people that watch him, the Brewers, his teammates, fans would expect really big things out of him in year two. Although who knows these things don't always happen as we expect them. And it was huge that he stepped up the way that he did in the absence of Christian Jelic, who had been the centerpiece of the offense until he got hurt. So it was glass half full, glass half empty season for Jelich. He

hit better than he had in several years before he got hurt, but then he got hurt and he had back surgery. And that could be either a positive or a negative when you look ahead to the season. On the one hand, he addressed a lingering issue that had sidelined him, hampered him at times and okay, maybe it's behind him and he'll be back and better than ever. On the other hand, it's back surgery. That's pretty serious. So what are the hopes and realistic expectations for him? I've never had back surgery, but if you know people that have, it's never perfect even after the surgery. That is the big, big lingering question around the Brewers this year is, is what version of

Yellich do they get? And now this has been a question for the Brewers every single season since the pandemic is which, which Yellich are they going to get it and get all star Yellich. But like, it's different now around because we have seen yellage between 2023 and 24 when he's healthy. There's a direct line to great results. Not just good results great results. He was Tearing up the National League. He was he was an all-star starter Ops well north of 900 like he was on track to have a prior top three top four MVP season if he had stayed healthy, but that back has just been nagging him really for, for years and they addressed it. Like I said, that's a good thing. Theoretically, it won't be a lingering issue that just flares up and costs him weeks and months at a time, but it has a back.

We don't exactly know how this injury is going to heal, how it's going to affect him. So not a whole lot matters in spring training, but there is at least one thing for the Brewers that matters in terms of health. And that's like, how is Jelic moving? How is he swinging? Just how does he look? We won't know for sure until the games really start mattering, but we can probably get a little bit

of glimpse of like, oh, he looks like he's himself again, or there's something off here. So that's something to pay attention to if you're following the Brewers in a bunch of games that otherwise don't really matter. LSW I imagine that Milwaukee is hoping for more than just health from Reese Hoskins. That's sort of an awkward transition, would that you could blame what happened last year on injury with him. But 100 WRC plus isn't exactly what you want out of a first baseman. He exercised his end of an option to return. So how are they thinking about how they might be able to help Hoskins improve and sort of bounce

back to the guy he was when he was productive with Philadelphia? How's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how's, how, or it's quite possible too, that like the bat has slowed down. He's not moving as fluidly as he used to. Like he, Reese Hoskins isn't old by any stretch. Like I think we're actually, we're about the same age. So he really isn't old, but by baseball age, like he's, he's, he hasn't played, he hasn't played 15 years. So theoretically there, there's still some production in there. I mean, the power was still,

he still hit almost 30 homers last year. Like it was still there. The rest of his game, the defense, the walks, the swing decisions, all of that left really big question marks. And the fact that they're paying him $18 million this year is effectively like if you kind of think of how the Brewers go into each season and in the off season, they sort of generally have that ish level of money earmarked and they give it out somewhere, whether it's acquiring salary and a trade or whatnot. And they just haven't done that this year because they've already given it to Reese Hoskins

in a way, even though the contract was two years ago. So that has really given them issues this off season. Reese Hoskins, another guy that they need more out of this year for sure. Well, they could hardly get more out of William Contreras because he has become arguably the best catcher in baseball. He has a legitimate case at least. And I have a couple of questions about him. One is that the Brewers have been a file and go file and

trial team in arbitration as a lot of teams have, but it seems like they've gone away from that a bit. And maybe the league has as a whole, Matthew Trueblood just wrote about this in the context of William Contreras because they did settle with him in arbitration. So I wonder if you're aware of any change in team strategy as it pertains to arbitration, but more broadly, are the Brewers surprised that Contreras has become the incredible catcher that he has or did they forecast this for him? Because I think we talked at the time, a lot of people did, about how it was just an absolute steal that they ended up with him in that Sean Murphy trade, the S.D.O.E. Ruiz trade where he was not the headliner.

He was not even really the centerpiece coming back. They were just the third team in that trade and somehow they wound up with the best guy in the deal. For some reason. It was just an amazing nifty transaction and trade for them there. We talked about how the Brewers seem to have a knack for catcher defense and framing and improving people behind the plate. So he has just maxed out seemingly. He's become an absolute superstar. So arbitration strategy

and if they were a little surprised by how well they fared last season, have they also been surprised by how well they have made out like bandits in that deal? With the arbitration strategy There is a there is a definite difference in how the brewers are approaching this in terms of their willingness to strike these deals They did it last year with Devon Williams. They didn't it was like Soon after the number exchanging deadline, but still that deadline had hit. And we know what a deadline is. A lot of teams when that hits, sorry, that's we're done. We're not, we're not talking about this anymore.

They have like gotten around the system a little bit by doing these one year deals with the team option for the second year. They declined Devin Williams option this year. They will probably decline it with Contreras. So, um, it's a little bit of a way to get around it, like being used as a, as a player comp, but nevertheless, there is a direct shift and I don't know, I can't say for certain that it has to do with some of the past, like PR hits that the Brewers have taken. I mean, the Corbin burn situation was very messy, very extremely messy as we all know.

Uh, but don't forget like the Josh Hader situation was probably messier and we didn't really know the full extent of it until after the fact, I mean, like he told him he was only pitching one inning at a time. So there has been an effort, I think like organization wide top down to maybe avoid a little bit of the egg on the face. And the brewers were kind of in a tough spot. If you view it from the team lens this year, the numbers that they filed that it was like the brewers were very confident that they were going to win this case.

Contreras was shooting for six and a half million and like Cal Raleigh came in at five, six, I think this year. And that's a pretty similar comp to where William Contreras is right now. So they felt really good about winning it. But like, this is the question, is it worth, you know, there's the 0.9 million difference or whatever it was, is it worth the messiness and like Contreras probably wouldn't have taken it great. That's kind of one of the reasons that like transitioning to why he's good is, is basically he didn't care about defense in Atlanta and he has said as much and like his

way to playing time was to hit and hit left-handed pitching. So that's what he did. And the Braves took this as more so of a, oh, we don't know if he's really ever going to be a catcher. And William Contreras heard this, he knew this and basically like it's, it's, it's the Michael Jordan meme. He took that personally, um, actually cared about it, tried, and suddenly he's a really good framer. Now it took a step back last year, his defense did. So, um, we'll see, you know, where that ends up this year, because I think sometimes these players, you know, they're getting, what's going to get him paid. It's offense and he's getting closer to getting paid. There's still

a couple of years left, but like that's his main ticket to a huge payday down the road. So the, the brewers absolutely made out like bandits. Like we said, um, they had an idea that Contreras has all the ingredients of a really, really like complete hitter, which we don't always, I don't know if we think of him a really, really like complete hitter, which we don't always, I don't know if we think of him as such, but like the plate disciplines there, the raw power is top, top line. It's up there with some of the best in the game. And so you pair all this together and you know, you get him to care about defense and

suddenly you have a five win catcher each year. And that's what the Brewers are. Once again, I feel like I'm saying they need all these guys to perform well, but they kind of do. They don't have as much margin for error. You recently wrote a piece with the headline, what makes Garrett Mitchell the most fascinating player on the Brewers? So I will repurpose that headline and stick a question mark at the end of it and say,

what makes Garrett Mitchell the most fascinating player on the Brewers? How much time do we have? It's effectively wild. We got plenty. Garrett Mitchell to me is not only like one of the most fascinating players on the Brewers, but in baseball, but specifically to the Brewers, right? We talked about the Joey Ortiz's and the Freelix and the Tranks and the Caleb Durbin's like that is the Brewers model of player.

Garrett Mitchell is not that he is fast. So he has that in common with them and he plays great defense. So what's the big gap? Well, it's like the fact that this guy has serious upside and the fact that we haven't really seen him play a ton cause he's been hurt. Like these other guys just don't have the ceiling that Garrett Mitchell has,

yet they also don't necessarily have the floor either. Cause if you look at this guy's profile, right? He's been in the league three years, he's had injuries. So we don't fully know exactly what we're looking at here, but he's striking out at what like a 33, 34% clip for his career. And for most guys, that's untenable for success. Just that few balls in play, you better be slugging the ball like prime Chris Carter. And even then, how successful did his career end up being over the long

haul? So like, this is where the Garrett Mitchell profile gets interesting. Because how is he managing this? Because he's not a huge slugger. Turns out his swing decisions are excellent. He has entire swaths of the zone, basically fastballs above the letters or at the letters that he not only can't hit, but he doesn't really touch them. He doesn't follow them off. It's just a swing and a miss. So the only way to buoy that is basically not swinging at it. And what does he do? He does not swing at it for the most part.

And on top of that, he maintains aggressiveness with the pitches that he can handle and the pitches that he can handle he does damage on like there's real power in there we saw when he hit you know the big go-ahead homer in game two of the wild card series against the Mets you want to try to throw him a get me over curveball on first strike one like his swing decisions are good he might swing at it and he might absolutely obliterate the baseball so the Brewers just don't have players like this. And so it's going to be really interesting to see if he's healthy. That's obviously a big question with him, how he manages to perform over a full season,

right? Where pitchers start game planning for him more like we talked about with Churio. Does he face lefties? All of this. There's this big unknown still around him, but the ceiling is absolutely there. So the Brewers weathered the departure of Corbin Burns and there was some weakness in the pitching staff, which we will transition to soon, but I guess they more or less made up the war that they lost with the guys they got back from him. And one of those guys,

Joey Ortiz, is now also in the position of helping them replace yet another prominent free agent departure in Willie Adamis. So what's the infield plan? Do they think they can take another blow here and still get up and be good? I think yes is the answer to what the Brewers are trying to do. I mean, this is sort of their method. Like they have a plan, don't ever go push the chips too far in on any single season, build like a deep roster of high variable guys, some young guys in there, and then see where the cards end up falling. Like going into the off season, absolutely would have said there's, there's no way that they don't go out and get some proven player on the infield. Could be a third baseman, could be

a shortstop, could be like they can move some pieces around. They got to get someone, right? And I guess they did get Caleb Durbin, but that doesn't exactly reach the threshold. I think of what we were expecting, like maybe not a full Willie Adamis replacement, but someone with a far more proven track record than what they'll be rolling out as of now at third base. There's a little time left. Maybe they could sneak an 11th hour trade for a third baseman or something. Alex Bregman, still available. Alex Bregman, what do you think about a one year contract? Mutual option.

Mutual option. Yeah, it was always good exercise. You mentioned Adamis and I'm curious, what do you think about a one-year contract? Mutual option. Mutual option, yeah. Those always get exercised. You mentioned Adamus and I'm curious, you know, obviously he did not return to the Brewers, but was there ever a chance that he was likely to? Were there ever serious conversations between the team and his camp about a potential continuation of his services? Pete Slauson Yes and no. Yes, there were discussions. The brewers were floating out just a little over a hundred million from what I'm aware of. But the issue is that was never going to happen because think of how the shortstop market is shaping up. Basically, as soon as Dan's V. Swanson is the comp that I've heard has got his contract, understandably, Adamus and his agents and his people, that was what they were eyeing as the contract that he could and should get. And he ended up getting almost that exact deal,

beating it by a little bit. But yeah, those crazy shortstop winters that we had were bias and story and Bogarts and Swanson. They all got all this money. Like at that point, it was going to take a real hometown discount because the brewers quite simply aren't, they don't want to operate on that market. And like you could make a case for whether or not a seven year deal for Adamas in Milwaukee might not actually be that great of an idea, depending on how he ages at the back end of that. For sure, at least in 2025, boy, replacing Willie is going to be a challenge. Joey Ortiz will come over to Short theoretically, maybe Terang, and play great defense and probably

provide a solid war baseline. Willie provided a lot for this team in the clubhouse, on the field. There's a reason they didn't trade him when they, like we talked about earlier, they trade everyone in that situation, but they didn't trade Willie and that's how important he was to the Brewers. So yeah, there were kind of sort of efforts, but like it was always headed toward the same conclusion. I kind of feel like that's where we're at with William Contreras right now. Just sort of play it out, see how it goes. Katie Fetcher You mentioned earlier some of the pitching additions that they've made via

trade and some of the departures that they experienced last year. And I found myself often kind of confused by this Brewers team last year because Ben noted the ease with which they ended up winning their division. But they felt to me like a club that kind of was unmoored from having a strong identity in some ways because I have always, or at least in the last couple of years, associated them with very strong starting pitching, no offense at all, early exit from the postseason as a result of not being able to hit. And then there, which some of that ended up being consistent. But the pitching was not robust in the same way, at least by our metrics. So walk us through the rotation a bit. I'm curious not only about the

guys that they sort of currently have slated to be in the rotation come opening day, but also in sort of the state of Brandon Woodruff and his health and what he might contribute to this group. Yeah, well, let's start with Woody. Brandon Woodruff missed all of last year with shoulder surgery recovering that. And Pat Murphy just said a couple of days ago that he does not expect him to be ready for opening day. And like we had questions about the back surgery, we probably have more questions about a shoulder injury to a pitcher who has made his hay throwing like multiple bowling ball fastballs at 98

miles an hour. So yeah, what version of Brandon Woodruff the Brewers have, that's another thing to follow for sure during spring training. After that, Freddie Peralta, we kind of know what Freddie Peralta is at this point. He'll strike out a lot of guys, he'll walk guys, and then he'll give up homers. So that's your three true outcome, four-seam fastball pitcher. Nester Cortez, he's here. I think that'll be a really sneaky, good addition for the Brewers this year. Aaron Savali. They traded for him from the Rays. He will also be on the rotation. There's Tobias Myers who I'm not sure what to expect from him this year.

He flashed so quickly and greatly on the scene last year out of basically nowhere that you never really know what to expect from those guys in year two. It could take a really big step backwards or, you know, maybe, maybe a lot of it was real. That's sort of the Brewers main five. They have some depth, you know, beyond that. Aaron Ashby, another guy who had shoulder surgery, he came up as a reliever at the end of last year.

The Brewers are tantalized still by the idea of him as a starter. And like you see the stuff and the fact they throw five pitches and you're like, yeah, okay. I get it. But we're also like five years into this and it hasn't worked as a starter. And then there's DL Hall. We could probably say the exact same thing about him, except not five years, although maybe five years, because it feels like he's been a prospect for about 10. So the Brewers have guys, they have some interesting young pitchers beyond that.

Jacob Mazarowski is probably the name that most baseball fans will know. Is he a starter? Is he a reliever? We will maybe find out this year. Some other under the radar guys like Logan Henderson is at AAA. The thing the Brewers do is they always accumulate pitching depth and the end result somehow ends up being better than it feels like it should be even last year when you know some of the under the surface stats like the like the the team fit or you know your deserved run average or whatever you want to look at is

like a peripheral pitching stat said they shouldn't have been that good but they seem to all work in tandem like executing strategy and obviously the defense behind is great and that lifts their floor. If I had to guess, they'll probably be a above average pitching unit again, even if it doesn't feel like a great staff on paper. They didn't do much this offseason. They didn't really do anything in terms of the big league roster, but one of their big moves, and I say this unironically, was bringing back pitching coach Chris Hook, who's become very well renowned across the league. He was a free agent at the end of the year, probably could have picked from, I

don't know, a dozen teams that would have been interested in him for his work in Milwaukee and he re-upped with the Brewers. So like that is, we look at the end of the year, how did the Brewers do it? And it's like, it's sort of things like that, where they're not spending money directly on the payroll. I think they're like 22nd or 23rd this year. They've been decreasing in that actually as they've gotten more competitive yet they're finding these other marginal advantages that seem to have some sort of effect.

Yeah. Even as they have not made many prominent acquisitions, they have sort of flooded the zone with minor league contracts and minor league free agents and invites to spring training. We are so back. All of whom we drafted in our minor league free agent draft. I've recently heard one of them. Right. We were doing that.

My list was just full of brewers because they had signed everyone and I had some misgivings about, gosh, we're drafting too many brewers because they can't all get playing time, but who knows, maybe they can. So of all those guys they got, and I guess there's someone like Elvin Rodriguez, who was not a minor league guy, but he's coming back from Japan where he was fantastic last year, but Davy Garcia's here and Grant Wolfram and Bruce Zimmerman and just on and on, just a long list. Is there anyone in that mix you think has a shot at making this roster

and maybe making an impact? I mean, we'll have a bunch of them pitch up here at some point. I'm sure, uh, Davey Garcia is the name that you, you said in there that has stuck out to me throughout the off season, like digging into him, it's, I have some questions about how the white socks were. I have some questions about how the White Sox were used. Surprise. Big questions about like the plan the White Sox had for him. The stuff is still there as it's ever been. And sometimes like we can cling on to these pitching prospects for far too long. Speaking of which, the Brewers have JB Bukowskis

too. But David Garcia, Garcia feels like there's still some meat on the bone developmentally there and the brewers have a knack for getting the most out of their pitchers. I mean, they do it every year with these non-roster invites. So yeah, Davey Garcia is the name that comes to mind. I'm also like Vinny Natoli, some cups of coffee, maybe like liters of coffee at this point. He's been up a little bit. So just go to the Brewers roster, look at their non-roster invites, and then just store those names away. And there'll probably be two of them pitching in the bullpen by the mid of August and like the seventh inning role. Laurenie Larkin You mentioned Pat Murphy, you mentioned the

departure of Craig Council. I can't say that the Murphy season was underrated because he did win manager of the year, but tell us about how that first season at the helm went for him because from the outside, especially as, you know, we're sitting down to watch their postseason play, it just seemed like there was a lot of affection on the field for that guy. So how did the first year go and, you know, how does he feel about sort of the future going forward? I mean, this was the story of the 2024 Brewers really. And, you know, it's kind of funny. Like if you're someone that looks at the numbers and tries, you know, that's like, that's a way that you've, you view the game,

which I'm sure a lot of people listening to this podcast, that's sort of how you think of it. And like the manager's role is sort of this nebulous concept. I'm not really sure what, what it, you know, what it matters. And this actually didn't do a whole lot to solidify that because the Brewers had Craig Council, who obviously was viewed as one of the best, if not the best in the game. He got 8 million a year to go to Chicago. That seemed like it was the instance of the manager mattering. He was the one putting all the chess pieces in the right place. And turns out they just put Pat Murphy who's 65 and never managed in the big leagues before.

And it was a very different way of going about it. But it actually felt like he got more out of a team that wasn't necessarily all that talented than we had seen in past years. Like there's this, this obviously he was a very successful college coach and that was sort of the vibe around this team a little bit, like just unconventional ways of going about team building and the clubhouse and like all those guys would, would run through a brick wall. South Relic would probably run through multiple brick walls for Pat Murphy.

You could kind of see it in the field. Like I said, it wasn't always the most conventional way of managing. Like there was a day in Chicago at Wrigley after a game, the Brewers lost and like all their young guys had like baffling base running or bunt decisions where they were just, they were just bunting for the sake of bunting seemingly. Murphy's like not a bunt guy So in the clubhouse after the game while the reporters are standing there waiting to talk to some players a few of them were Seated around a couch and it's a small clubhouse

So we're all in the same vicinity and Murph walks over to them Has about a 15 second speech about like the bunting decisions very clear like he's not happy about their approach to these situations. And then he basically says, we'll talk tomorrow. He did it right in front of the reporters, which you absolutely just don't see in today's game. But that's sort of the Murph approach. Like he was himself, he's not interested in optics.

And I think on the whole, that is why over the course of 162 games, like the players really, really love the players really, really love him and really, really loved playing for him. The Brewers last year had a surprisingly productive offense as we talked about. One reason for that was that they hit well in the clutch. They had an 809 OPS with runners in scoring position, 668 OPS with no one on base. And usually you'd say, oh, there could be some regression coming there. It's hard to sustain that, but they've done something like that for

three seasons running now. And in our last episode of last year, I did a mini stat blast where we found that they actually had the most clutch three year stretch in history, just looking at their OPS with runners in scoring position versus their overall. And again, my normal inclination is just to shrug this off, but have the Brewers figured out clutch? Well, if they had, maybe the month of October would look good. Well, yes, I guess maybe the power evaporates.

It is fun to think about this should not have sustained for three years. It's kind of like the Brewers one run game record under council. Like they were historically good in one run games over like a five, six year stretch. And that everything that I, that I, and we know about baseball says like, yeah, enjoy it while you have it buddy. Cause soon you're gonna, you're gonna have that

oh, for 40 stretch with runners in scoring position and it's gonna suck. And I like,'re going to have that over 40 stretch with runners in the scoring position and it's going to suck. And I like, I want to say that's going to like, it's, it's bound to come back. Like there's no way the Brewers have just mastered the skill of hitting the clutch. Now I do think like there's something to the Brewers having like, like a quality of at bat that allows them to get more out of their offense than you would expect. They generally have guys that don't chase a ton and maybe there's something there with runners in scoring position. But yeah, I will be surprised if they are once again at the top and if they are, I'll stop questioning it.

But it feels like it, this can't keep happening, right? But then again, that's sort of like, that's sort of the Brewers since 2018. They can't keep just running away with this division, right? All of baseball has been mourning Bob Euker as we did on this podcast, but no one is mourning him more acutely than the Brewers fans and the Brewers organization. So can you tell us what the absence of Euker will be like in the broadcast booth for fans, for the organization, for the team, for the players themselves, because he was such a staple even in that clubhouse? Yeah, weird. You Bob and like the, the person he was, the, just his life, like it's all really difficult to put into words, but I think when, or if

you got to see him in his element, whether it's in the booth or really with the players, like he, he had a locker in the clubhouse. He basically was on the team for all intents and like that's how the players viewed him. That's where you know that like it'll be the most difficult and the most weird, but like you're able to see what impact he had on the team just kind of by being around. And as with everything in life, people will move on. You certainly won't be forgotten, but you kind of got to keep going on with life and the Brewers will play 162 games and they'll probably play most of them with him on their

minds, especially like the guys like Jelic and Woodruff and Freddie Peralta that have been around for seemingly forever now and really got to know him. So it's just going to be a weird year in Milwaukee. The home games you turn on the radio and you're not going to hear him or you're at the ballpark standing around in the dugout as you kind of do before a game. And there's no yoke there to just sit and tell stories about Johnny Logan and all these other greats that he played with in his time. So yeah, impossible, impossible to like summarize what he meant to the Brewers and Milwaukee and baseball as a whole. But

I think like, I also think I was thinking about this a couple of days ago. Sometimes, especially in sports, we don't like appreciate what's going on or what we have while we have it. Did we appreciate the peak of Mike Trout when we had the peak of Mike Trout? Maybe we did, but I'm not sure. I hope we did on this podcast. On this podcast, you did. You sure did. And Shohei, I feel like the Shohei appreciation. We couldn't talk about either of them more. No, no one will accuse us of having undercover either, I don't think. Yeah. So sometimes we do do a great job with it. And I think we did that certainly in Milwaukee and like me personally with, with you, just like

understanding and Pat Murphy would talk about this too, in his pregame sessions. Like, do you realize how, how lucky we have it to like have, go to work and see Bob Euker and to be able to have, listen to him call games. I feel like he was appreciated for what he meant and what we had when he was here. So I think that always makes me feel a little better and a little warmer about something that's really tough. All right. Well, we will ask you once again, what would constitute a successful season for the Brewers? Do they need to raise the bar?

Do they need to just meet the same standard as last year? Has the inactive offseason lowered expectations? What should fans be hoping for and expecting? I'm at the point personally where I'm looking at the Brewers and like, you gotta go farther. You gotta win the playoff series. And like baseball's fickle. We know this. We know that the Brewers are probably snake bit. There's some sort of unlucky curse placed upon them in the late 2000s to the 2020s on the playoffs. It just hasn't worked out for them despite the process up to that point being really good. So, you know, the off season has been incredibly quiet, but the Brewers maybe have earned

a little bit of benefit of the doubt because their process has been so sound and they kind of do the same thing year after year and even if this year isn't good, they'll probably be in the mix again next year because that's just how they're operating. But yeah, absolutely. After the way 2024 went where you're kind of just hoping Jackson Churio is good and you can maybe hang around the division a little bit and like not have to blow the whole thing up after that unmitigated success of a season. Anything short of that, anything short of going to the playoffs and like actually tasting some playoff success.

I don't think you could, you could constitute anything short of like a decent little playoff run as a full success. The Brewers have done this for, you know, they've been at this for the better part of a decade now and really don't have a whole lot of October winds to show forward. And so that's probably, probably got to change. Well, you can't go wrong reading Kurt Hoag's coverage of the brewers, however they fare at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Always a pleasure to read you and to talk to you. Thank you once again, Kurt. Thanks guys. That'll do it for today, Orioles and Royals up next. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to you. Thank you once again, Kurt. Thanks guys. That'll do it for today. Orioles and Royals up next.

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