Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2285: Shoeless Sho

Episode Date: February 19, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a player who signed an extension (Geraldo Perdomo), a player who didn’t sign an extension (Vladimir Guerrero Jr.), a player who’s switching positions (Mike Trout), and a player who’s not switching positions, at least for now (Rafael Devers), plus an update on Meg’s updated beliefs about Shohei Ohtani’s […]

Keep you company, they'll keep you sane A long bike ride or a slow work day Megan Benwaxing about a playoff race A blues bad's hard It's effectively wild Hello and welcome to episode 2285 of Effectively Wild Baseball Podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer joined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello Meg.

Hello. Taking a brief break from our season preview series before we put our noses back to the grindstone and continue on. But it's top 100 prospects day, week, month at FanGraphs and Eric Langenhagen will be with us shortly to share his latest prospect evaluations and wisdom. We have a couple quick news items to react to and then you have something in store for us That I do not entirely know the nature of but I'll tee you up for that in just a second It might be for all I know but we have an extension we have a non extension We have a position change and we have a non position change

So the extension is the diamond axe. They extended Geraldo Perdomo. Geraldo Perdomo. Yeah. That's how the PA guy at Chase Field says his name when he comes up to back. Geraldo Perdomo. So I'm broken now in a very specific way. Yeah. Those things do stick in your head. I still have those Bob Shepard pronunciations of Yankees names that will go to the grave with me, but Perdomo, they bought out his remaining Arb years and at least two of his free agent years, potentially more.

There's a team option here. So it's a 26 through 29, 2026 through 2029, four-year extension with a 50-year club option guaranteed 45 million can go up to, I think, 72. And I like an extension for a non-elite player. Me too. I mean, to pay a back-handed compliment to him. I don't know if that isn't a compliment,

but so many times we focus on the extensions for the tippy top prospects and the young superstars. And I like when we just get an extension for a guy who's good, you know, he's pretty good. He's like an average player, like he has been average-ish, he projects to be average. Why shouldn't your average guys get extensions too? They have value, you know? Why not lock up average for a while? So I enjoy his player profile, which Dave Andrews wrote about for FanCraft. Because as I said, he's kind of average-ish and yet nothing about him is really that average. Like collectively, holistically, he's average, but he's not really the individual components of his game. Like he's, uh, he doesn't swing.

He bunts a lot. He just takes a ton of pitches. There are divisions on his defense. Uh, some defensive stats say that he's not so good. Some say he's pretty good. It seems like the Diamondbacks think he's good. So yeah, I say normalize extensions for guys who are average. I think that's nice too.

And I guess the only question is, what does this portend for Jordan Lawler, who is the Diamondbacks number one ranked prospect, according to Fangrass 14th overall, he also plays shortstop. So what does that mean? I don't know. I don't know either.

Does he though? Who could say? Yeah. I like Perdomo very much. I think you're right. I don't want to like overstate the case and say that he's like the best player in baseball because that'd be absurd. But I think he's a perfectly good average player.

You want Perdomo's on your roster, particularly when you have other guys who are meaningfully better than average. And so I think that's useful. Perdomo's also one of those guys who, and this is like a non-quantifiable thing, but clearly like a really good clubhouse guy, glue guy. The D-backs, I think, have been high on his personhood for a long time. He did not get traded away at various points, and there has been interest in him over the years. He is seemingly well regarded by his teammates, delightfully flipped off the Trackman

unit at Salt River Field one time during an early implementation of ABS in the Fall League, which just is one of the funniest things in the history of mankind. But yeah, like a weird player in a lot of ways, you're right to say like just bunce, bunce and bunce and bunce and his defense is divisive. Watching him, I have found it to be mostly fine. I am curious not just what this means for Lawler, but I have questions about, maybe we can talk about this when we do the D-backs preview in greater detail. I am just going to be really curious to see sort of how the D-backs infield trends defensively without Christian Walker. And that's not meant to be like a knock on Josh

Naylor, but Walker was just so good at first. And I do think that he helped to improve how guys like Cattelmarte and potentially Perdomo looked defensively. So there's that piece of it, which time will tell, But I like it. I like Geraldo Perdomo. I think Geraldo Perdomo is good. And I think he's like a nice complimentary player to a team that does have standouts at other spots. And I'm just happy I get to continue to hear Geraldo Perdomo, that's how it sounds. That's how it sounds every single time. It's great.

The guy who did not sign an extension is a more prominent player. Vladimir, Vladimir Grillo Jr. is not signing an extension with the Blue Jays. He said a somewhat unusual deadline. You often see players set a pre-season deadline in the year before their free agency, their walk year. And he set a after the first full day of spring training deadline, which is kind of early, but he seems to be sticking to it. And he said that was that. And you never know,

these are all negotiating tactics. And if some massive offer came from Toronto, then he could be free to change his mind. I'm sure that's happened. I can't remember offhand, but someone will write in and remind us times when someone set a deadline and said, no, I'm going to free agency. And then after that agreed to an extension with that team, that must have happened.

Like even in season, I get why they do it opening day because they don't wanna be bothered with the negotiations and everything in season. Again, if you get blown away, then maybe you say, well, huh, now I don't have to worry about free agency at the end of the season. This is actually less to worry about, but I get why you wanna focus on what's going on on the field.

And so yeah, this is a little bit early, but it's not a shock. And he was pretty frank and he said, well, they said what they were offering and I said what I wanted and the numbers were not close. So he did say over the off season, I think that the Bujays had offered him something like 340 million, which yeah,

seems like he could certainly get more than that, at least based on the season he's coming off of, though he's been up and down over the years, but it's no hard feeling seemingly he seems to really like Toronto and he seems open to staying there, except now the Bujays have to bid on the top free agent and that always goes great for them. So it doesn't sound like it's going to be a hometown discount situation, but it's not entirely out of reach. They still have something of an inside track.

I totally get why guys do this. You want to be able to focus on the task at hand, which is playing baseball. I also think that it just gives you an easy like out when you're asked about it because you can just be like, we've, we're, you know, the deadline's come and gone. We're not thinking about that now. We can address contract related concerns in the off season. I will be very interested to see kind of how his market trends and emerges. Obviously, like he's a very good player. His 2024 was superlative. I think it was good for him to demonstrate the ability to sort of bounce back from what

was a down 2023. I will be very interested to see like what a year with a more normal Babbitt might look like for him. Because he, I don't know if he's going to be like a 342 Babbitt guy all the time, Ben, you know, that seems like it might not be. He's not the typical profile for a 324 Babbitt, but he had a great year last year. I don't know. We'll see. He had two stolen bases. I wonder who were those two stolen bases against? That's spectacular, good on you. But yeah, Vlad's a great player.

I don't think that he should take a discount and I imagine he will be well compensated. The thing to remember about that guy is that whatever concerns you might have about how his defense might trend over time and what the body might look like, he has shown an ability to be sort of adaptable to those questions and he is still just about to turn 26. So young, Ben, you know? He's another young guy. The position change I alluded to is Mike Trouts. He is officially no longer a center fielder.

He is a right fielder. We kind of knew that this was coming or that some position change was coming and it was time. It was, if anything, past time. I thought there was some possibility that he would just DH, but I guess they're easing him toward that.

Let's go to a corner first and then maybe we'll get there someday. Part of me is happy that he'll still be out in the field and part of me thinks we just need to put him in bubble wrap and the closer to that he is the better. But yeah, even though not all of his injuries have been ones that you could trace directly to him playing center field. Some of them are just running the bases. Some of them are a swing, but who knows how the wear and tear of just covering more ground out there manifests itself. So you had to do something and I'm glad that possibly belatedly, but he has recognized the necessity of taking it a little easier

on himself at 33. So I find this interesting. I guess like if you're the angels and Trout is insisting on being in the field at least some of the time, you wanna do that. I mean, on the one hand, I guess they have Jorge Soler. So DH is presumably occupied. And I get not wanting to play that guy in the field, but obviously like do you think Trout's more important to your franchise?

Mostly I don't know that they have like a guy who's like a really good center field around their team at all. So this doesn't solve a problem in terms of like what center field looks like in terms of its defensive output. No offense to Joe Adele, but it does maybe save trout some. I don't know. I just feel sad about the angels generally in my trout specifically. So if this does it, then cool. But I don't know that like, I don't know. I don't know, Ben. I'm underwhelmed. You know, they don't have like a guy where I'm like, yeah, I get that

guy in center. Even when he was in center field over the past, however many seasons of not being able to stay out there, he still graded as a above average center fielder. Like he never completely lost the ability to play the position. He just lost the ability to play any position because he was hurt. So it'll preserve some of his value. If he's able to slide over to right, he could be a good corner outfielder. If he can

stay out there. And you know, if you want to see his, his wars climb, then that would help in theory. But yeah, eventually he'll be DHing and I hope that he can stave that off a little longer. But if he has another injury this year, again, I'm trying to ward off those dark thoughts. But if that happens, like I wonder if this is sort of a one season trial to ward off those dark thoughts, but if that happens, like, I wonder if this is sort of a one season trial, like, okay, let's see if you can just slide over and stay out there. And if not, then we really just, we got to keep your bat in the lineup. We got to do everything we can to keep the bat and not the rest of you. I mean, we need the rest of him to hold the bat and run the bases and everything. But the contributions he makes in the field

a little less important than potentially the hitter he could still be. The position change that is not happening, at least as of today, as we record, is Rafael Devers. It's getting messy there in Red Sox camp. And we could probably save a deep dive into the situation because we're about a week away

from the Red Sox preview. Yeah, and who knows what will have changed between now and then. And we can get some good insight into the personalities involved here and everything. But it did make me reflect on just how I feel in general about players insisting that they are entitled to play a certain position and where my sympathies lie

because Devers, very frank, very adamant, he does not wanna move. He sees himself as a third baseman that's been his position. He wants it to continue to be his position. He says that some assurances were made to him when he signed his extension a couple of years ago. Granted perhaps by Heim Blum, who's. Right.

Different administration as it were. Same ownership, same manager. So it's not like entirely different. There's some continuity here, but, but maybe the person who made that promise to him, he was coming off of a better defensive season at that point. And unless you're getting that in writing in a contract, which I don't know that a team would do or has done, but like unless it's in writing, then it's always subject to change because yeah, they can promise you something, but if you lose the capacity to play that position,

they're not going to keep running you out there just to stay true to what they told you in a negotiation. And he's not like completely unplayable there, but he's not good and probably he's not going to get better. And I guess I get how he feels cause he's kind of like the franchise player. And also he's 28. He just turned 28 in October. He's younger than Alex Bregman. So he's probably like, why should I move for this guy who's older than me and also just got here? Like I'm the guy who stays, you know, Mookie's gone and Bogarts is gone and I'm the career Red Sock potentially. And yet you're moving me. So I

of Red Sock potentially, and yet you're moving me. So I sympathize and yet there's a limit to my sympathy, I guess, like as pro player as we typically are, I guess I always feel like, you know, when you sign the contract, you are sort of signing away the specific way in which you're deployed. Like, you know, within reason, I'm not, as long as you're not being endangered or something,

but when it comes to your role in the rotation, let's say Marcus Stroman, a little bit upset that currently he's not on the depth chart in the starting rotation for the Yankees or Devers here at third. Part of me just feels like, you know, you sign the contract and then you kind of got to go where they tell you to go. Or else I guess you can use whatever leverage you have, your soft power as a

player, which is what Devers is doing. And I guess he's entitled to, to try to apply that leverage, but yeah, I just, I always feel a little like, you know, you signed, you're getting this money that doesn't necessarily guarantee you anything beyond that. The degree of concern I have with the move itself, starts to decline rapidly once a player has guaranteed money. Like I, I think that there are situations where players are deployed in such a way that does eventually harm their free agent value.

And I have a tremendous amount of sympathy for that. And I think we tend to see it more actually on the pitching side of things than the position player side where a guy might be relegated to bullpen duty in a way that suppresses his value. And that's a problem. And like, I want to take a critical eye to that kind of usage. Yeah. Like Marcus Stroman has a, an option that he's probably thinking about because he has, I think 140 innings and then there's a $18 million player option.

Now he's made more than a hundred million dollars in his career. So he's not like some pre-ARP guy or something, but, but yeah. Yeah. But like, you know, there have been instances where this is, you know, you're raising a great example where it's like a guy has incentives in his contract. You want to be sensitive to that and mindful of the motivations that teams might have to suppress value, or maybe it's a guy who hasn't reached free agency yet.

So I do think that these sorts of decisions bear scrutiny and that we should have a healthy degree of skepticism about them. Having said that, I now want to turn our attention to a situation like this, where there are sort of two kinds of management that I think need to go on in a situation like this. I think that it is just from a personnel, HR, people management perspective. You want to treat players, particularly when they are sort of franchise players face of the franchise important within the clubhouse. You want guys to have dignity and to be afforded dignity. And it isn't easy to hear, hey,

your play at this position. Now, I'm going to interrupt myself again and say my understanding is that they plan to deploy Bregman in second base, right? But we talked about one of the benefits of Bregman signing with Boston, one of the pieces of the roster fit that I really liked is that Devers is not a good defensive third baseman, and this gives them optionality on their infield to slide Bregman over and have a better defender there, even if it's just a better defender-laden game. But like there is a reality that Devers needs to kind of grapple with and that the Red Sox need to grapple with, which is that this guy's eventual home is not going to be

third base. He's going to age out of that position at some point. Now, whether you go through the trouble of that for a guy who might not be on your team next year because of Bregman's options situations, that's where like the people management piece of this comes in, right? So Devers is an important part of their franchise. He's obviously a tremendous hitter to your point. He's like the guy who stayed or was allowed to stay because remember when the Red Sox traded Mookie? That was weird. But like, you want to treat that guy's role and position and place on the roster with respect and dignity.

And this to me suggests like failure of people management behind the scenes because I don't think it's wrong to move Devers off third. He's not good out there, you know, like it's just, that's the reality. And I don't think to your point that like, you're guaranteed a particular role or deployment in the field in perpetuity when it starts to move against the winning interests of your club. And I think, I think that players in general are sympathetic to that notion, right?

Like players wanna win too. This is a spot where you and the player should be able to find a way to be directionally aligned, because Devers, I'm sure, wants to win a World Series, and so do the Red Sox. And if they think that Bregman playing third base is the way for them to increase their chances of doing that, I want to think that like Rafael Devers is a reasonable person. And if he is approached in the right way and is talked to like in a way that helps him

sort of preserve a sense of his value on the team, which is inarguable. It's just not at third, maybe, maybe, maybe, then there seems like there should be a way to have that conversation. And so what I am interested in here and what I will be interested in diving into in the preview is like, how did we get to this point? Because for a player to have a public facing statement like Devers is having, suggests that there is a breakdown behind the scenes in communication and personnel management. Because you had to anticipate when you signed Alex Bregman that someone's going to be like, hey, you know what Alex Bregman is good at doing apart from hitting the ball into the Crawford boxes,

playing third base. You have an entrenched third baseman, so how's that playing time gonna work out? Like you have to know that question is coming. Of course it is, of course, Ben, of course it is. So anyway, this is me rambling my way into being like, what are you guys doing behind the scenes though? Like surely this should have been sorted out

before you got to camp. I mean, I know they just signed Bregman, but like they didn't just sign him yesterday. So anyway. Yeah. Yeah. And look, maybe it's just not worth the trouble and where do you put Yoshida and maybe Bregman would be fine at second and Tristan Casas comes out and says that he thinks Bregman should play second and Devers should play third. And yeah, maybe at a certain point it creates enough of a headache that you say, eh, this doesn't matter that much. But that's only because your player didn't do something sort of selfless and team first.

This is an area where I do actually value when a player puts the team first and says, yeah, I do think like this is leadership, this is value, this is me being realistic. Because another thing about players and people just in general, we're not always the best self-evaluators, you know? We can be a bit biased when it comes to our own performance and we can look at ourselves through rose-colored glasses. And it'd be one thing if Devere said, yeah, you know, I struggled a little bit, but I've been working really hard and I think that I've made strides and this is going to be a good defensive year for me or something.

He didn't acknowledge that he's had any difficulties there. He said he thought he was good there last year. Like he had a good defensive year, like he doesn't seem to see any problem, which makes me think that we're going to get more of the same, like if he thinks that things are going great over there, then why would he change? And sometimes again, it's not like a manipulating, avoiding an option sort of situation, sometimes it is actually the best thing for the team to move a player or limit a player's playing time

like Marcus Strowman, if he could look coldly and clinically and impartially at the other options for the Yankees rotation right now. And this could certainly change between now and opening day, but he's probably not one of their top five starters right now. So I don't think that the Yankees are trying to do anything nefarious here. but he's probably not one of their top five starters right now. So I don't think that the Yankees are trying to do anything nefarious here.

They're just trying to do what's right for the team. And so when Bregman says like third base is my position, it has been, but that's always temporary. You know, no one has permanent claim over a particular position, no matter what your status is with that organization, no matter what you've done in the past, it's always temporary. Everyone, you're gonna move at a certain point,

you're gonna retire at a certain point, so it's your position until it isn't your position, really. And maybe my thoughts on this are kind of influenced by growing up watching Derek Jeter insist on playing shortstop forever, and A-Rod coming in and being the superior defensive shortstop and moving to third base because Derek Jeter was going to play shortstop until the day that he retired. And he was the leader and he was the

captain and everything. And I always thought, yeah, you know, like a true leader and captain would have said, hey, I'll go wherever what's best for the team. So it is something that seems slightly selfish to me, or it would seem, I think, laudable if you said, yeah, you know, I'd rather play third, but if this is what's best for the team, then all right. And like we should say, like Bregman has said, he'll play wherever, you know, like, you know, he, cause I was like, did Bregman say that? And then I was like, no, he did not say that.

He said he'd play wherever. And I want to be, I want to be mindful of a couple of different things here. Like I understand having pride, pride in one's own play is a valuable asset to major leaguers because they are doing this incredibly hard thing that by all rights, like they should do less well. Pride is useful. I think that having the, God, I feel like I'm psychoanalyzing this guy. I was going to say having the self-esteem to know that you can just play a different position and it would be fine, but I don't know what his self-esteem, I don't know Devers, I don't know him then. Maybe it's super high self-esteem because you

can't conceive of the fact that you might not be good enough. And I also want to be sensitive to the notion that Bregman did just get there and who knows what Devers' reaction to their each deployed in the field will be a couple of weeks into camp when they've been teammates for a while and like have gotten to know one another and you know have a couple weeks of play under their belt and can say like, hey, here's what's right for the team. Like I don't want to overreact to these things either because it's early in camp and that's part of why I put some of this stuff like on the Red Sox as an

organization, unless any of the individual players involved, whether it's Devers or Koss is coming out and saying where he thinks Devers should play or Bregman being like, whatever, I'm just happy to be here. You know, like this stuff tends to sort itself out. And I understand being a little bit defensive when you're like, Hey, I, I'm the third basement for the Boston Red Sox. Like I signed an extension.

They told me that I can play there. Like I have an understanding with this club. Why would that understanding change for a guy who like just got here? I don't want to like lard up their comments with all of this meaning because who knows what that meaning is going to be like come opening day, maybe two weeks from now, Devers is like, yeah, Bregman looks great out there and I want to do what's best for the team. And I don't know, I just, I view these things as like kind of in transition and in process a lot of the time, especially when there's like a new person in camp.

And so I don't want to, just like, I don't want to say like, clearly this is evidence that the Red Sox are going to be in one of their drama years. You know how the Red Sox like have these weird drama years every now and again? Or it's like we're just I don't know all of a sudden have decided that we all freaking hate each other in this clubhouse and are gonna fight and be nasty. Like they just have those years where it's like what's going on over there? Are you all getting divorced at once or something like Jesus Christ? I hope the Netflix cameras aren't following you for that season, I guess. I mean, I'm sure Netflix is like, have a drama year, have a drama year.

But anyway, all of us to say, like, I think that you're right that players should have self-awareness. I think that it is good for guys to be willing to be adaptable and flexible in these moments. And there have been times when no less illuminating than Derek Jeter has been stubborn in a way that proved to be explicitly detrimental to his team. And you want to avoid that players, it doesn't speak well of you when we get to the legacy assessing part. Not that like Jeter's legacy is in danger, but when we are adding up the things that Derek Jeter could have done better in his career,

this is on that list, right? Like, this is one of those things that people will point to and be like, hey, you should have been less freaking stubborn because there was a guy who was better than you at that on the roster. And if he had been allowed to play there, like, that might've been for the betterment of your team. So don't be a horse's ass, right? But I also don't want to overreact because it's early in camp and like, you know, who knows what they end up saying at the end of it. The Red Sox should prep their guys. Everybody should be a little less sensitive. And also like, you know, you gotta do what's right for the team at a certain point but also you as a team should figure out a way to communicate this stuff to your players in a way that lets them feel like they are being respected and have dignity

but also don't be so full of yourself but also have self-esteem so that you can go to this incredibly hard thing. Anyway, managing human beings and their feelings is really challenging. And all of this makes me wonder like whether Cora is good at it or not. I don't know. And maybe he's fine. I don't know. Like, you know, one wonders. He's had some successes in that area. He's had some notable failures in that area. We've all probably been in similar situations at work. Someone else gets the-

I've never been defensive once in my entire life. What are you talking about? Yeah. Someone else gets the promotion. Someone else gets the assignment. You think you're better than they are. You have seniority. You were entitled to that

and you have a choice, how am I going to handle this? Am I going to sulk or quiet quit or something? And you can, you can leave, you can say, hey, I'm going to go somewhere that properly values me and I'll show you, or you could rededicate yourself and work hard there and prove them wrong. And rededicate yourself and work hard there and prove them wrong. And, you know, they'll change their ways. Most of us don't have the job security and the lucrative salaries that Raphael Devers has. So our options are maybe a little limited in those situations. But, you know, we've all been in those frustrating situations where something doesn't go your way and then you have to do a little self-rekening and say, am I being objective here? And if you are, then okay, how am I going to handle this? Maybe I will talk to my boss, I'll talk to the coworker, whatever it is. And also most of us have much less public jobs than Raphael Devers and people don't know the ins and outs of like what you're

doing and what you were denied the ability to do. So it's a weird job that we have such visibility into all of the minutia of these people's lives. And like, you know, I'm mindful of like getting into interpreting tone and like what have you with a guy speaking through an interpreter also. Like these are just like complicated things and they involve understandable human emotions in addition to the like beep boop boop realities of like what you know Stadcast says about Devers' defense.

I mean not that you have to look at Stadcast to know he's not good out there, you know, it's just not. But so like that part isn't untrue, but it still involves human feeling. And I think that these guys are understandably derive a lot of their understanding of themselves and their value from their ability to do this job because it's very lucrative, it's high profile, all this stuff. So I just, I think that it involves like the sensitive management of an important business decision that is also tied up into like tender human feeling. And so I want to encourage guys to like have self-reflection. But I also know that like that just requires proactive management because we all have our tender human feelings and sometimes our tender human feelings get revealed and you and I get to do it in like the comfort of our own home.

And he has to do it like with a bunch of microphones in his face. And so I don't know, I just, is Alex Gore good at this? So that's, that's maybe my biggest reaction to it. But, but I think it'll probably end up being fine, Ben is the thing. I think that when it all comes out at the, you know, when they suit up on opening day, it is going to be fine. And like we should, we should point out that like Devers said later in that same availability, like that he appreciated the moves that ownership had made and like appreciated them investing in the roster in the offseason and so like

Anyway, I'm not saying you're painting a picture here. That's unfair I just want to make sure that we're not painting a picture of Devers is this like, you know Yeah, he wasn't like irate or anything like Like yeah. Anyway, it was going to attract attention. It's a noteworthy thing to have said. I think it's right for us to talk about it, but also, you know, anyway. Lastly, I got a message from you Saturday evening. Have an important update to my Otani dog conspiracy theory.

Yep. Yep. I do. So I'm bracing myself. Let's hear it. Yep. Yep. I do. So I'm bracing myself. Let's hear it. Yeah. Okay. So I want to put everyone in the scene because Saturday, look, were we still frantic implies

a frenzy that wasn't present, but busily like little Keebler elves assembling the top 100 over the weekend, We were, Ben. Had I slept a lot? No. Couldn't tell you that I had slept more the night before that message than I did, say, the night after, or the night after that. But hadn't slept much. Contemplated doing this entire podcast in a Elaine Stritch voice.

Like, that's kind of where my brain's at, where I've been seeing that commercial where Elaine Stritch is singing, are you having any fun? What you're getting out of living? And it's been stuck in my head and I have been talking like that for the last two days. Was worried I would talk like that for the rest of my life. Kind of like how I did my Elizabeth Holmes voice for you one time. And then I was like, oh no, I'm going to talk in this register for the rest of my life. So anyway, in a weird head space, I guess is the takeaway here as the rambling for 15 minutes about human feelings might have clued some folks in. But here's what I've concluded. We are in a new phase and I have to admit something.

I have to present to you my reading of the facts as they are on the ground and say, I think that's Otani's dog now. You know, I think that, I think that we have reached. Now, not before, but now. Not before. I stand by my prior statements. I am not issuing a correction on my previous post, I do think that there was a time, a protracted time, a prolonged time, where that dog was a literal decoy, where that dog was being primarily tended to by others, where the relationship between that dog and Otani was not the relationship between that dog and Ohtani was not the relationship, say, that you have with Grumpkin or that I have with my cats. No, no.

He was, dare I say, an employee. But now, Ben, now, I think that's Ohtani's dog. I think that there is, like, we have, it's like a Netflix Christmas rom-com, you know? They started out as strangers, but now they are family. And you might say, Meg, what inspired your change of heart? And I just am here to tell you that like, it started with an Instagram post of the dog and Otani, and it was clearly pictures taken. Now I am assuming that these are Otani's feet. I wasn't, not in a weird way, okay?

But the pictures, and I think they were re-posted by the MLB account, So I'm like kind of stalling so that I can go and find them again, because, um, describing them with accuracy is probably important here, but like, you know, all of the Dodgers pitchers and catchers and most of their position players really have, they've reported to camp, right? They're, they're at camp now. They've reported to camp, right? They're at camp now, and so pictures from Arizona have emerged. And this one just struck me as like, maybe it's on Ohtani's account. I will say following baseball players on Instagram is really dangerous because sometimes it's

nice and then sometimes, okay, it was on O a honey's oak camp and then sometimes you learn that like Mitch Hanniger is like a chemtrails guy and that's disappointing to discover What's up with that Mariners? Anyway, so oh, yeah, he's got like full feet out on Maine Oh, Tony, oh wait showing feet show feet. He showed feet. That's so funny Ben. Okay, so let's tighten up Meg explain yourself this feet. That's so funny, Ben. Okay, so let's tighten up Meg. Explain yourself. This series of photos that Otani has posted on Instagram is the dog approaching him on the couch and being like, hey, what's up, dad? You know, he's got, hey, what's up, dad energy to him. Otani is clearly relaxing at home in his Arizona rental. Again, feet on main. Somebody's got to tell him. But anyway, there's the dog. And I was like, that feels like a,

hey, I am here for my pets now, dad kind of posture. You know, that's a, hey, am I allowed to be on this couch in this rental? I don't care. Give me my pets." And so I was like, hmm, I think the dynamic has changed. And then I was sent video from like a Japanese Otani fan account that had footage of Otani and Decoy at Camelback playing outside. And, you know, Otani's like throwing the ball around for decoy and they're interacting. Scout friend of mine sent this here to me because he knows about the conspiracy theory. And I just like, this is just his dog, you know, it's his dog now. They clearly have a loving bond. The dog is so excited to see Otani.

At the end of the video, I think another player's dog comes into frame and it's like a little pity mix and like Otani's very sweet with that dog. Help to do some reputation rehab for pities, Otani, that would be my, because they'd still, so many of them are so sweet and they get all this flack and many of them are very nice and they're in rescues all over the place and people are apprehensive about it. But so many pities are such good dogs and they just need the right owner. And so anyway, I think Otani should become a pity guy too. And it would be so funny because he could have like this big burly pity and then this little dog with his little backpack.

He should get a little backpack for a little pity and it will be so cute. So anyway, all that to say, I think that my initial read of the relationship between this man and his dog was right. There was in the beginning, something weird about that dog. And the way that they trotted that dog out felt strategic and it felt false. And I do not think that that dog was initially like really Otani's dog despite the evidence that is in a literal federal criminal complaint. But now I think that that's Otani's dog. I think that they have a loving bond.

I think he has become a member of the family. I think that that dog is going to be an important part of Otani and his wife's kids life. I just think that it is now Otani's dog. I was right before, but I have to acknowledge the change in circumstance. New information has come to light. And in addition to learning that Otani does not have any compunction about putting feet on Maine, I am just here to say, I think that's his little dog, you know? I'm happy for them both. And it could be a Netflix plot, you know? It could be part of a, I don't want,

when I say that it's like a Netflix Christmas rom-com, I don't mean to suggest he's in love with the dog. That would be crazy. But I just mean, like, isn't that, you know? The kind of love that a pet person feels for their pet. Right, for their pet, where you would kill for that animal, you know, but you're not married to it, I guess is my point. This is just like a pet. It doesn't know your name and you're going to pay the bills, but it's one of the most important living things in your life, you know? This is

the bargain we make. We bring them in, we give them scritches, we give them foods, we give them all of the toys, we buy many toys that they decide they do not like, we get one of those little cat fountains because we think the cat's going to like it, and then the cat we think is going to like it doesn't use it ever but is starting to use it in a way that's very exciting. And then to bring it full circle, you sit there and you say to the cat when the cat is using the cat fountain, you've seen these cat fountains, Ben, you know, where the water flows in an active way instead of just being stagnant in a bowl.

You think that, okay, so you buy one of those and then again, like the cat you think is going to like it, barely uses it, and the cat you think is going to like it barely uses it and the cat you think is going to be completely indifferent to it is like, hey, and then the cat who was the original real recipient quote unquote of the fountain uses it and you get excited and then you say to that cat as if you are a lane stretch, are you having any fun? What you getting out of living. All I can say is, I'm glad you've rejoined the reality-based community.

No, I was- It's good to have you back. No, don't get it twisted. I was right before, or crazy before, but I am acknowledging a change. I am acknowledging, I am updating my prior... In the relationship, not in your evaluation, just you've got new information. My initial eval was correct. My initial eval was right, but now it's different. And so,

one must acknowledge the reality in front of oneself and say, he loves that dog and that dog loves him. And they seem to be in a pet carer, pet owner vibe. Do people get worked up about pet owner? Does that bother people? I don't know. Anyway, language changes. But I'm just here to say, I think he loves that dog and I think that dog loves him. And maybe I should have made this update earlier. I did note that the little backpack was kind of a turning point for me. But maybe

it was a turning point for him and I should have picked up on it then. I should have been like, that guy has been hitting the ball hard in AAA for a while. I should have been like, mm, you know, that guy has been hitting the ball hard in AAA for a while, right? I should have updated my eval sooner. I'm trying to bring it back to the back half of our episode, but I don't know if that's given us a real transition. Probably get to that part. But yes, this is an important update. Thank you for relaying it.

And I have an update and I'm here to tell you that instead of trying to find that photo on various Instagram accounts, you could have gone to Shohei Otani's Wiki Feet page because it's there. Those people, they're on top of things. They hatch fast. Look, I don't want to shame anyone for what makes them happy or excited. I do find, I do take issue with wiki feet though.

It feels invasive. Otani didn't consent to that. He put the picture on the internet, certainly. Yeah, he put the feed out there. But also, I think one should be able to post pictures that are incidental foot pics and not have fear, you know? That feels like a, well, like a thing that he should send his little dog after you for. I think the biggest part of this update

is me debuting a new voice, actually. I cannot wait for the reviews of my online stretch. Everyone should, you know, just like, it's not my fault that it's on that Volkswagen commercial and now is in my head all the time, you know, just like, it's not my fault that it's on that Volkswagen commercial and now is in my head all the time, you know? Couldn't tell you what the Volkswagen is that they're selling. Is it a little electric van? I don't know, but I know that Elaine Stritch is in it.

Not in the van. I don't think that's true, but. Decoy's feet are in this photo just as much as Shohei's are, really. Anyway, he probably didn't consent to that either. People don't get into dog feed, Ben. They're kinky. They're not that kinky. Shohei Otani's rating on here, I assure people.

This is my first visit to this page. 4.84 out of five. What is he not good at, really? Having feed, apparently. Look, this is perhaps a conversation for the Patreon and not the main feed. I am curious but have no desire to either investigate or receive feedback, but I am curious like what the average is on WikiFeet. Yeah.

It's got to be high, right? Because whenever anyone makes a comment about feet, it's always positive, right? It's always nice feet. It's never like, oh, weird looking feet. And a lot of people have weird looking feet. And yeah, I don't know if you're like a- I would say that in fact, most feet are weird looking. It's the feet, you know? Like, again, it's not my thing. So- Yeah, me neither. I'm not sure if it's like a selective sample thing where we only see the feet comment when that person has whatever qualifies as nice feet, or if you're a foot person,

then maybe all feet are beautiful to you. I'm not exactly clear on what the criteria for making a foot fetching are exactly, but yeah, you tend to see foot praise more so than foot condemnation. So, I guess that's nice, you know, it's paying people compliments, whether they're wanted or not. People are going to be like, I didn't expect there to be a feetuck on the main. Has anyone ever asked you for pictures of your feet, Ben? Actually, no.

I got asked for pictures of my feet, yep, on Instagram. Someone was like, I hope this isn't random. I'm like, what other possible word would one use? They didn't like the podcast though, so that's good. That's nice. And you wonder why Meg's Instagram account is private. This is being a woman on the internet, I suppose. Although not exclusively.

Anyway, let's take a quick break, and we'll be back with Eric to talk about the top 100 prospects. Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, how can you not be horny about baseball? Every take, hot and hotter, entwining and abutting, watch him climb, dig a mountain, nothing's about nothing. Every stitch, wet with sweat, breaking balls back, Well, we are joined now by Eric Langenhagen, who is one of the top 100 prospect evaluators. In fact, I would venture to say he is quite close to the top of that list.

He certainly is at FanGraphs, and he certainly is on the list of effectively wild guests. Rank the rest of them. Be specific. I'm sure that would be fun. We'd get no emails about that. I'm sure Eric has thoughts on that that he would probably share privately, but maybe a Patreon bonus pod in our future. Just blow up all of your relationships with people in the industry. Did you see Bill Murray's bit on the 50th anniversary Weekend Update

bit on the 50th anniversary weekend update like segment. Yeah, a little like that. Sort of like that. Well, 50th anniversary of Fan Crafts and Effectively Wild, which we're getting there. Yes, we are. He'll come back and share. But he is the author of yet another list of the top 100 prospects in baseball as he is the lead prospect analyst at Fan Crafts and and also the lead effectively wild guest in terms of number of appearances. And he is adding to that list today. Welcome back, Eric.

Hey, thank you guys for having me again. Yeah, Keith Law, I wouldn't be here without you. And so I can't put you anywhere, but number four. You wrote a book with Kylie. So that probably guarantees him an upper level spot, I would guess. But yeah, everyone else, fair game. I forget whether we've talked about this, but do you ever consider, have you ever considered making Meg's job even more difficult by not confining yourself to 100 by actually expanding and contracting the list depending on how good the class of prospects is as you do with the team lists. Because I'm just wondering if that were the case,

then how many names would be on this year's list? Because this seems like not the strongest year. That seems kind of like the consensus opinion. I guess you could say the same about last year too, but if the list ebbed and flowed not based on SEO and arbitrary round numbers in our base 10 society, but in terms of how many prospects you strongly believed in, where would this year's list rank in terms of prospect list length? There's so many things, you know, firing in my brain right now. And one of them is the list is 102 guys. There are probably a couple more players who if I really wanted to squeeze the toothpaste tube as hard as I could, you could 50 them and it would be fine.

In general, the approach is to have a dynamic, non-round number. It's totally arbitrary to have just 100 guys on there. And there is this seeming disconnect where people think that because a guy is not on the top 100 that he's not good or that maybe I or we don't think he's any good, whereas 100 guys is like three prospects per team and teams have more guys than that. So generally, yes, I would agree with you. I would also say, yeah, the class is not the awesome killer. Like, we have 118 guys on here class, but also I think in the past, when that would

be the case, that there was an overzealousness, the hit rate on these guys and what it means really to be a 50, there aren't even necessarily 100 guys who fit the bill in the minors at any given time. Doesn't mean you can't rank 100 or more guys, even if you have a realistic expectation for what they're gonna be.

You know, the Alan Rodens of the world, Alfie Other with the Blue Jays, who I think is a good player, but I wouldn't consider him a 50, like a top 15 left fielder in baseball, basically. I'm not quite ready to say that guy's going to be that for a five or six year window, even if I think he's a good player.

And then I think the other thing that is at play here is as proliferation of this underlying track mandate has occurred on the public side where we're using it to help inform our evaluations basically across the board at this point, it's just much easier to see how the guys could fail. When you have what their chase rate is and you have what their like in-zone contact rate is and then you look at the big league player population and you go, uh, only five guys. The big leagues have a whatever, you know, this bad.

You can start to see how you don't want to windmill slam a guy in your hundred anymore or way up in your hundred anymore. You move off someone who got $4 million in the international space a couple years ago because the guy has a 63% contact rate in low A. In the past, maybe you would have said, ah, you know, he still hit a bunch of home runs and ba-ba-ba, but now you say, no,

binarily I'm gonna slide this guy out of this. You cannot have enough confidence in this guy. Whereas the inverse of that is these players who are performing at the upper levels and maybe they were an undrafted free agent or whatever it is. And instead you're doing a real due diligence on like the patent eels of the world to try to decipher whether they're, you know, they belong in this space. So my allergist once told me, I don't know if more people are allergic to peanuts now, Eric, but we are certainly better at diagnosing it. I think that's sort of at play with the prospect stuff too, where it's just much easier to see where things could go sideways for any one of these guys.

Jared Ranere Can't even bring anything peanut related to my daughter's school. It's dangerous. Have I forgotten that on an occasion? Yes. Hopefully I didn't endanger anyone. It was packaged. It wasn't opened.

It's okay. But yeah, you ranked 133 guys four years ago, but maybe that was a post pandemic, you know, backup, probably pile up with no minor leagues season in 2020. And that was a post pandemic, you know, backup probably pile up with no minor leagues season in 2020. And that's shifted stuff too, because the roster rules changed in 2020. So that September days count toward rookie graduations. And then we had the prospect promotion incentive clause after that too. So, you know, that stuff is causing, you know, some players to debut because the teams have the incentive to have them debut on the active roster. And then the players who are up in September are just more likely to graduate now because, you know, those days count for their Rookie eligibility roster day limit, whereas before, you know, until 2019, they did not. So yeah, there's

definitely like a higher rate of guys who debut and also graduate than ever before. Hosting We can talk about Sasaki, but I feel like we've already talked a lot about Roki Sasaki between me and Ben, between the three of us. So maybe we can look at the group just after Sasaki, sort of the Roman Anthony down through Carson Williams group. And that includes some guys who listeners will have seen in the majors, Dylan Cruz and Jackson Job among them. As you were looking at sort of that next group of guys, your top 10, we have a couple of blasting guys. We have some heavy Aleast representation here, but take us through sort of that group and how you thought about sequencing them betwixt and between each other because Roman Anthony is a very highly regarded

prospect. He was number one for some publications. You have Sebastian Wolcott, who was like meaningfully younger than some of the guys on the list. So talk to us about that top 10 group. I really think that Roman Anthony, the Red Sox outfielder and Dylan Cruz, the Nationals outfielder, they're two guys who are right there. They're going to be impact players. Anthony, it's just such unbelievable strength and bat speed from the left side of the dish. Is he going to play centerfield in Boston? Probably not. Not only is that a complicated centerfield to play on its own, but with Jaren Duran having broken out there with Sedan Rafaela,

you know, a gold glove caliber centerfield defender there, Anthony's going to play the corner. He probably would have anyway. So, you know, as far as the future value piece of this goes, the 80-70, the 65 groups, those are for the, you know, Acunha's and Tatis's. And I like Roman Anthony a lot and this, you know, the grade that he has here is what I would expect like a consistent all-star three-win player type guy, but not like on the level of those aforementioned dudes. And so that's like where I've got Robin Anthony,

Dylan Cruz, blazingly fast, not great centerfield defense. How that plays out, you know, long-term, we'll see. You know, I have a centerfield evaluation here, but with him like being below average there, they moved him off the plate last year against righties to try to stop him from getting crowded in around his hands. If you watch Cruz left-handed, right-handed, you'll see his position in the batter's box is just dramatically different.

Really thought that was a difference maker there. And some of the same like Jackson Churio adjustment period stuff that we saw last year, I would expect some of that from Cruz for some of the same reasons as Churio. But maybe this proactive move has made that not true, that, you know, he's going to be crushing right away. So those guys are both high floor, all star types. Sebastian Walcott and Samuel Basayo behind those two. Walcott's a teenage shortstop in the Ranger system.

Basayo is 20 and a half, big physical lefty hitting catcher with the Orioles. Both those guys, it's ridiculous power and up the middle. Like who can we expect to hit for just absolutely high end enormous power and stay at an up the middle position? And it's those two guys. Walcott, I have him ahead of Basayo just because I feel more certain about two things there. One is that he can stay at shortstop. And the other, his plate discipline is just better than Basayo's, which is sort of a problem for Basayo. Basayo's had some injury stuff. He didn't catch a bunch at the beginning of last year. His arm strength

in the past was like high and plus plus. And then last year was like above average to plus. And so that's, you know, an interesting thing to watch out the gate in 2025. But both those guys is just like enormous plus plus power at an up the middle position. And then the group behind them, it begins with Andrew Painter, who was also just like on this level, elite talent, checks all the boxes, size, delivery, everything, looks fine during the fall league, but he's a pitcher. And so he's behind this other group where, if you told me in a year, these guys would be 65s or 70s, I would totally believe you. But for each of them, Walcott is just his youth, Basayowitz, the chase and some of the injury defense stuff,

and then Painter, it's your picture. For now, you're like in this group behind the rookie Anthony Cruz guys. And then following painter is Christian Campbell, Dalton rushing, Jackson, Joe Carson Williams. Christian Campbell's fascinating. He's only played two years of high level baseball. He was a redshirt freshman. He was like old for his class coming out of high school, goes to Georgia Tech. He redshirts and then he's a redshirt freshman who's age eligible for the draft in 2023 and then absolutely explodes in 2024. And obviously that one year college track record, it creates volatility relative to the Dylan Cruzes

of the world where Dylan Cruz was a dude in high school and then went to LSU and was amazing for three years. Like there's just a super long track record there. He's amazing the whole time. You know, your confidence level in a guy like that is different than Christian Campbell entering 2024. He's destroying A-ball, but he was a college hitter. He should be doing that, but there's clearly been an approach change here because he was

a Punch and Judy, lots of contact, guy at Georgia Tech. And now all of a sudden it's like, wow, there's power here too. And he races all the way through the minor leagues. He's performing with power the whole time. And there are still just like surface scratching elements here. It's so amazing that in his second year of high level baseball at all, that this guy just tore apart the minor leagues the whole year, climbed all the way to the upper levels of the minors.

What's going on here is unique. He still does not have a real defensive home. He's a bad defensive infielder. They tried him in center field more in the beginning of the year and then towards the end of the year, it was more of mix of third base and shortstop and second base. There are details about his defense in his report. People should read. How that shakes out, I really don't know, but the hit and power piece of it is there for Christian Campbell. Dalton rushing Dodgers catcher, just does everything. Amazing arm, defense is still a little not awesome otherwise. They might move him to left field just because they have Will Smith,

right? You might see him this year, does everything. Jackson Jobe, Tigers pitcher, folks saw him in the playoffs last year. A little weird that they announced, Jobe announced, whatever. I don't know how that transpired, but I saw this on the internet. Curveball is coming back for Jobe. It was a big thing for him in high school, was a thing for him first pro season. Since then, it's not really been there. Slider, cutter, change up guy now. So we'll see how that looks.

But yeah, Jackson Joe, you saw him, he's great. And then Carson Williams is at the back of this group because the guy, I just never seen him recognize a breaking ball. He has power, he's an amazing shortstop defender. There's just more hit tool risk here. You know, it's enough that I wanted him at the back of this group, but when you're talking

about a gold Glove shortstop with plus power, I just had a hard time moving him down any more than this because those two tools are so big. Yeah, I want a monster up at the top of this list. I want a, not the nickname for Sasaki. I mean, like, I want someone who has a 65 or a 70. I just want, you know, like guarantees, future superstar basically.

And I'm sure that a lot of the players you just named are gonna be good. And there might be some superstars in that group, but yeah, I miss the, just the no doubter. You want a gunner up there. You want to- Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's just not there, or I guess he is.

He's just in the big leagues. Those guys have gotten promoted maybe, but we did get an email from listener Reggie who compared a bunch of lists, Fangrass, Baseball America, Baseball Prospectus, the Athletic, ESPN, Pipeline, and he sent us this data that there were 53 prospects who appeared on all six lists,

21 who appeared on five of six, 12 on four of six, 10 on three of six, that accounts for 96 prospects, and then there are 25 prospects who are on just two lists, while 50 appear on only one list, resulting in 171 total players who are identified in the top 101 of BP or top 100 elsewhere. So 171 guys in the top 100 or top 100 ish in six sources. Do you think that is the right number of guys who should be mentioned on this many lists? I don't know one way or another, but I wonder what you think. And this could be affected by the fact that this is not the strongest class, but just in general, do you think that there is hurting when it comes to this, that we're not getting the Ann Selzer poll outlier of prospect lists?

Yeah, what could that do us this year, Ben? Yeah, I'm not necessarily saying that, but just the outliers, because people talk and compare notes, and you probably can't help just being somewhat influenced by peers. So I wonder whether you think there's a hurting when it comes to prospect ranking and whether it's greater or less than it used to be. I think there's hurting, but I don't know how much of it is social and how much of it is everyone is using the same data. That we're all more or less looking at a version

of the same spreadsheet when we're doing this. And then the things that separate people are more strategic or approach driven or, you know, for me it's, or I like to think it's watch the guys play defense and get that part of it right. That's mostly facilitated through synergy. But I do think that there is an element of it that occurs because, yeah, you just cannot help.

Even a guy as offline as I am sees enough stuff that makes me aware of what other people's expectations are. And it's as simple as having a chat every week at the site when the questions that you get create a context for it that you didn't ask for when it's just like, why do you hate whatever player? And it's just like, well, I have him ranked like 30th overall in baseball.

So why do you think I hate him? Like he must be fifth on or whatever, right? Like no matter what you do, the spoilers are being brought to your front door and you can't help, but yeah, it's just human nature to know, oh my God, like I don't like Miguel Vargas and everybody else loves him or whatever it is. Like, oh, Colton Kouser, like everyone is in more

than I was pre-draft now. What happened with that? But as far as the number is concerned, yeah, I think the distribution curve of that is really fascinating. I bet you there's even more overlap at the very top, like the top 50. The overlap, I bet you, would be very strong. Yeah, hyper-concentrated. Yes. And then I think that just doing the audits from 2017 and 2018 lists the last two years has made me aware of that piece of it where, as I'm building the tables for those, it's just like, oh yeah, like after the top 50, there is just way more variation list to list. I know that there are teams who have done studies as a way of educating their scouts,

basically, of when you're grading guys, keep in mind that there are probably X number of guys like this in the minors at every at any given time and that number has tended to be from like 125 to 175 that like I've got a slow mo high speed video shot over a scout's shoulder of this sheet that was like sent to them and their scouts that has like the tiers that they would say, Hey, a player like this is, you know, tier is ranked, you know, one through 15. And then the next is like 16 to 50 or whatever, like where they think the tiers of talent start to fall off. Baseball America does a piece where they say like, here's everyone who, someone

on our staff like voted for to be on the a hundred this year, which is, you know, is a brilliant idea. And I think that I wouldn't surprise me if their total number of guys as a group is similar to that hundred and seventy7 number or whatever it is. And once you get through my picks to click, guys who I expect will be on the 100 next year but aren't right now, the number also gets to about 177. So yeah. It's kind of like when writers at Fantgrass or baseball prospectus or wherever will do

preseason predictions of who will win the division or something. And then a lot of people predict the same things and then people say, oh, it's group think. And maybe there's a little bit of that, but also it's just like, even if everyone thinks this thing is the most likely, right? It doesn't mean they think it's a guarantee or anything. It's just, well, if this is greater than 50% or whatever, then I guess I'll go with that. And then you'll end up with 30 people all saying the same thing because they all think it's the most likely, but they're well aware that something else could happen. It's kind of like with prospects, I guess you're getting at it with the,

everyone's working with the same information now. There will certainly be guys who weren't ranked who in retrospect should have been, but would there be any rational basis for projecting that they'll turn into what they will turn into, right? Like, I guess you could just be a scouting visionary and you could just have such a keen eye that you pick up on something that no one else picks up on. But sometimes guys do just kind of come out of nowhere and it probably would have been like bad process to rank them, even if you get a good result. Right.

And then at some point when you're doing this, you have to ask yourself, how is it I should be approaching this? Should my list be like attempting to most accurately predict in exact order what the career war for these guys is going to be or what the war for them will be during this X amount of time. At a certain point, Elie de la Cruz was risky. At a certain point, that was a guy striking out 30% of the time in the low minors. And you know there have been other players like him in the past who have not succeeded

whose names are harder to conceive of because they didn't become even Joey Gallo or they didn't become O' know, even Joey Gallo or they didn't become, you know, O'Neill Cruz as flawed. And you can see the flaws in O'Neill Cruz still what they are. But at a certain point, the ceiling is whatever. And you just have to bet, you know, it's more of an expected value calculation, I suppose. Well, how can I write this in a way that makes it sound scientific? But no, it's really like, holy s***, look at Ellie Dayla Cruz. Look at him. Oh my God. And that's what makes you go in. Sebastian Walcott is the same thing. At a certain point, Walcott was

just like striking out a third of the time on the complex. And then in 2024, the Rangers gassed up his promotion pace and he responded each time. And now he's a 19% strikeout guy and that maybe that's the anomaly or maybe he got better. A Bayesian approach means I'm not really letting players get better in my head. How much of this needs to be regressed and how much of this is this guy's actually getting better. So all these things are coming into play, projecting what the path of the hurricane is,

has an error bar that you know about. And at a certain point when these guys are first drafted or signed, that exists where Connor Griffin might be amazing, or he might be terrible for a while. And maybe there's Bubba Chandler and there's Mike Trout. And at a certain point, distinguishing them is not really a feasible thing. Maybe you do have the magic dust or whatever it is, but you know, at a certain point I would value them in a similar way.

Some of the guys who, you know, are maybe unique to my list this year are like guys who have just thrown 140 innings and been pretty good. And they've done it for multiple years and they're going to be in the big leagues this year. And the guy in a ball who I like is playing Russian roulette with his elbow every week for the next four years before he's sniffing the big leagues. And my approach to that has just like, not totally changed to the point where I'm ignoring any young pitcher, but like, you know,

it's definitely influenced who's on here in that 50 tier group. Yeah, I wanted to ask you, you know, you, you referenced this a little bit in the intro to the hundred and I think you have been working through your approach to this, particularly in the audit pieces that you mentioned, but what have been some of the heuristics or profiles that you've found have been sort of consistent performers for you as you've been putting the 100 together? You like up the middle guys, you like pitchers with proximity to the big leagues who performed well. What are some of the profiles where you think you're more inclined to say, yeah, this has substance to it from a performance perspective. I'm comfortable

putting this guy on the hundred. Well at the very top, it is sort of what Ben said, except in a more granular reductionist sort of way where I want sevens and eights. So if you go to like, you know, the plate discipline leaderboard and sort everybody in the big leagues by like contact rate, some of the guys at the bottom of the list are like Judge and Shohei and, you know, Teoscar Hernandez and Brent Rooker and Ellie. And so it's not that they're bad players, even though they have a 70% contact rate, but they have all the monster other stuff going on. And so that's where like the Walcott's and the Basayos and some of these guys come from

where you stop caring about what the flaw is because what's happening is so, so big. What is good is just so elite that not only are they going to overcome whatever's going on that isn't good. Julio Rodriguez was 15th from the bottom in contact rate last year. Are you kidding me? I know it wasn't a great year for Julio, but he's awesome. Devers is down there too. And, but why? Because well, Julio turned himself into a plus plus runner and good defensive center fielder and kept his power even though he lost like, you know, 25 pounds or whatever it was. Kyle Schwaber has, can take any person on the planet deep. He's a threat to go deep every at bat. And so that type of thing is what's going on up top.

And then more towards the middle and back with the position players. Yes, it's, can you play up the middle? Do I feel confident in that based on having watched you play defense enough to feel confident in it? Does the degree to which you are good at it move the needle for me or are you just fine? And then the contact piece of it, is it stable? Is there some sort of underlying chase thing here or there that is going to make me want to round down on what you're doing on offense?

Those are the things that are at play for the hitters, mostly in the mid to back of the list. And then you can see them tiered that way, that on this year's top 100 that like Travis Bazzana, Leo Dallas DeVries, Alex Freeland, Jesus Maday, you can just, you know, the names in that, that little snippet there should be familiar to people because they're just the types of up the middle players who might go toward the top of the major league baseball draft like Travis Bazzana was just the first pick in the draft. All those infielders there stacked with him are just one-one talents basically right there

with him. Below them, you start to see me mix in the freakier corner guys, the Kevin Alcantara and Jack Caglione's of the world. So yeah, I think having an approach where the defensive spectrum is prioritized, big tools are prioritized, especially in the places where they're not a good fit where the defensive spectrum is prioritized. Big tools are prioritized, especially in the places where they're not a good fit on the defensive spectrum. That's been my approach for the position players. And with pitchers, there's still like the, hey, it's beating you over the head with how talented this guy is. That's your, you know, Thomas

White is a lefty in the Marlin system who's on the list this year. Who's a player like that where, hey, you're a six foot four lefty who throws in the mid nineties and you have a good breaking ball. You should probably be on here. But the guys who have over the course of several years, two, three years in a row worked 120 or more innings, ascended to double and triple A and had success there. Even if that success isn't complete in

every way. The demonstrated durability thing there is just such an important part of it. It's such an important part of it. And so that's on this year's list. It's like Braxton Ashcraft and Yann Yael-Curette and Jake Bloss and Will Warren. Those guys are there. Parker Messick is there and does good stuff. And Chase McDermott is there. And he's flawed and he walks guys, but he has like four good pitches. And he's led the Miners and Strikeouts the last three years combined.

And so guys like that are important to me. And then the flip side of that coin is the guys where it's round up when it's postseason time and this guy is going to go four or five innings and that's it. And no one can touch him for those four or five innings. Or he's the guy in the middle of the postseason game who comes in for two innings and is totally dominant and you go, yeah, this guy absolutely should have been on this year's top 100. Like when the game changes in the playoffs or in any kind of must-win scenario and Yilber Diaz or Brody Hopkins or George Klassen are just in there throwing 100 past everybody

or whatever it's going to be. Those guys also matter to me. And all those guys are on, you know, the 40-man roster or close to it. And basically they're, yeah, like Moises Chasse is on the Phillies 40-man. If he were their best reliever by the end of the year, it wouldn't surprise me. If he's in the playoff bullpen

and nobody can touch his fastball, I wouldn't be surprised. And anticipating who those guys could be, you know, Edgardo Henriquez from the Dodgers. They put him in the bullpen last year. Okay, fine. But like, he's a 21 year old who touched 102 and has a vicious, unbelievable slider. And if you were like, Hey, why wasn't Mason Miller on people's top 100? Which I think he was. Yeah. At a certain point he was, but like those guys, you try to hit on those guys too. Like who wouldn't want Mason Miller or Edwin Diaz

to be on their top 100? I know in one year at least on this podcast, we had a scowdy prospect ranker on and also a statty prospect ranker on together. And they kind of talked about each other's lists and guys who were on both and guys who were on together and they kind of talked about each other's lists and guys who were on both and guys who were on one and not the other. And so Dan's Zips top 100 is also out and I'm sure that you've taken a look at that

too. Are there any guys you look at on a stats-based list now and say, oh yeah, I wonder if I'm overlooking something there or not really because stats and scouting information have converged to the degree that there's probably more agreement among those types of lists or you're looking at all the stats that are the inputs into a Zip's top 100. So probably you're not going to be taken completely by surprise. I think as model driven approaches to understanding the players among big league organizations, is that it becomes more common and includes the reports of the scouts and the organization a lot of the time as part of what's like an input in the model. I can look at Dan's Zip's list and know even where the players that I'm

Skeptical of myself. I know why they're on here. I think more and more some of my job or any buddy who's like analyzing a player probably part of your job is to know when to say uh-uh that's wrong and Also, let it guide you as a way of like flagging who you should be watching to confirm whether or not that player is good. Matt Wilkinson is a pitcher in the Guardian system who is like the Jeremy Brown of pitchers in the Meyer Leagues right now, okay?

Does everybody understand what that means? Who's listening to this? Are there people who weren't born yet when that book came out? But- Not selling jeans here. Like Matt Wilkinson, his nickname is Tugboat. People maybe know about this guy.

And you know, Matt Wilkinson's like a husky dude, but you watch him and he's like really loose and limber and it works for me. And he's one of those guys where if you just watch him and he's like really loose and limber and it works for me. And he's one of those guys where if you just watch him on the backfields and there's a really husky older guy who's pitching in the A ball game on the back field during spring training and he's thrown 89, it's really easy to go home that day and be like, now we'll consent like, no. And then when it's May and he's striking out two guys per inning, you should go even just

that, not even an advanced, whatever his vertical break is, not even that. Just like, wow, this guy's carving. The fat guy, the 24 year old fat guy is carving like maybe I should double back to that. And so it kind of cuts both ways, but there are definitely players on Dan's list like Chase Madroth I like Chase Madroth not like 38th overall like him because of Some of the scouting like can you play defense anywhere and you know, Michael Arroyo is another one. He's 63rd on Dan's list He's a second baseman in the Mariners org There are people who really

like Michael Arroyo and I watch Michael Arroyo and say, Hey, Jeter Downs, nice to see you. Where it's like, oh, you're getting, you can't get on top of any of these fastballs. Your numbers look good because guys in a ball throw 90. And I don't think it's going to work. And so like Michael Arroyo's stuff on a spreadsheet, I get it and I see it and I go, okay, I got to make sure I watch Michael Arroyo. And then you watch him and I now feel free to say, you know what? Uh-uh, I'm skeptical of this guy, or I'm skeptical of Sal Stewart. There's a reason that I can rattle these names off. It's because Were they asked about in your chat by any chance? No, South Stewart was not. Was Arroyo? Yes, Arroyo was definitely asked about, you know,

Lazaro Montes. Like there are guys where I can see why Braden Taylor, a third baseman in the race system, is 34th on Dan's list because he has a 24 degree average launch angle. If ground ball rate is in your model and as a proxy for how much power the guy is going to access, I could see why the model says, yo, look at this guy. And then you watch him and you go, oh, he can not get on top of a fastball to save his life. And guess what there are a lot of in Major League Baseball? Right-handers who have a fastball that can just

live up and away from you and, you know, or whatever it is. Casey Schmidt. Casey Schmidt, your chase rate is two standard deviations below average, and you're at double A? I'm scared of you. You just have to know when to say, uh-uh. And I think increasingly that's becoming the scout's job in pro baseball is for the director who is looking at the model.

And even though scouts inputs are in the model, some of it is the data analysts stuff too, and the model really loves whatever guy. And I'm really resisting saying some players names right now because there are specific examples of guys I know about where the org was like in a trade discussion, the model and the analysts love player X. And whether or not the scouts get to veto it basically has been a point of contention that has and has

not worked out in some cases where the scouts have been like, uh-uh, don't do it. And the team did and the guys lemon and it's sad. So yeah, I think like that's definitely at play and is a very, very important part of the way I'm trying to approach what's going on when we settle down. But for sure, like, you know, some of our data I'll just like send to Dan to use for the purposes of making the Zips top 100, because I want the Zips top 100 to be rad and as correct as possible and trying to execute what it is trying to execute. This list has a lot of catchers on it. 16, I think we have 16 catchers on the top 100, which as you noted in the intro is more

than like the total number of corner guys in field and outfield that you have. Do you attribute that to anything that isn't just, hey, this year there happened to be a whole lot of good catchers in the minors or is there something more sort of systemic at play here, do you think? It's probably a little bit of both of those. There's definitely an industry inventory issue at catcher and they're just more valuable than their peers because the demand for them at the big league level is so high. They're so prone to injury

because of what they do for a living. Having guys, the fringe of your 40-man catchers, they hop around and they blossom late even when their prospects took Travis Darnoe a while to just be healthy enough to be this good. Tyler Flowers and James McCann and guys who break out and become relevant in their mid to late 20s. It's very common just because Jonah Heim, Jonah Heim, it's just, hey, he's a switch hitter. He's big physical six, four guy. And it just took time. And then I think the other thing about this group is catchers end up playing other positions.

Like Dalton Varsho at one point was a catcher, and Carlos Santana at one point was just a catcher. And so it was, it depends how hard you want to lean on it, but Bryce Harper was a catcher. There are lots of guys, and they're pretty obvious, I think, on this year's list of prospects who fit the bill in terms of you're listed at catcher right now, but there's a chance that you just don't play there, that you hit enough that it doesn't matter where you play. You get to be Tyler Soderstrom. There are other big league examples, no doubt, who are just not coming to mind for me right now, probably at first base. So Eric's going to look right now. Carlos Santana was a good pull right off the top of my head. But there are a bunch of these guys who are catchers and then end up doing something else.

On this year's list, Teiron Larranzo, who came from the Dodgers to the Tigers in the Jack Flaherty trade. He's one of those guys. Samuel Besayo with the Orioles, there's a chance that he's one of these guys where Adrian Del Castillo, no Christian Walker in Arizona anymore. Gabriel Moreno is pretty good. Could Adrian Del Castillo catch twice a week and DH three or four times a week? Yeah, that would sound pretty good to me like the twins do with Ryan Jeffers, except Del Castillo hits left-handed. Augustin Ramirez, the Marlins, got him in a trade from the Yankees. Like this is another guy where would it surprise me if he's

just an everyday first baseman at some point? No So there's 16 catchers on here, but the number of them who are like locks to be catchers, no doubt. It's probably more like 10 guys so I think that's sort of what's it's an optimism about the long-term prospects that any of these guys has at those position especially when they're as big as a Larran when you're like 6'5", 2'30", and you look like you can withstand the beating of catching 100 games, then you're the type of guy who I want to bet on being that long-term, even if you're kind of rough there right now. Jared Ranere I saw Jason Dominguez ranked 16th on your list and I thought,

ah, there he is again. Good old Jason on the top 100, which like he's been there in living memories as long as I can recall. I don't know how many times you have personally ranked him, but he has been ranked at least six times by various- 100 Harvey. Various sources. Okay. Yeah.

Yeah. The guy who came to my mind like most times on a top prospect list was Jorge Alfaro, AKA the legend as Jason Parks dubbed him and, uh, baseball prospectus ranked him on their top one to one seven total times. So, I mean, I wonder if you looked at all the guys who've been on a list like this that many times, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing. Like it's, it's a good thing in the sense that obviously, you know, they

were signed and distinguished themselves really young and early. That's the only way it's going to happen. I guess it's a bad thing in the sense that you didn't graduate before you were on the sixth time. And the thing about Dominguez, and I don't know exactly where you've had him every year, but he's kind of been like roughly in the same place every year, at least according to the other sources. He hasn't been like at the very top or the very bottom. He's just kind of been bouncing around, I guess, based on what sort of season he had or how good the overall list was. But yeah, do you think there's like a staleness, like an expiration date,

you know, like you've been on here six times already, like you got to graduate now and he probably will this year, but yeah, I wonder whether that's a positive indicator or a negative indicator, like controlling for where you appear on those lists, you know, the more times the better or the more times the worse. on those lists, you know, the more times the better or the more times the worse. I have to interrupt before Eric answers to give our listeners a tip on a feature of the board, since it's relevant to your question. If you click on a guy's future value on the board, it will give you a history of his future values and also his top 100 ranking by report. Well, fun fact. So we've had Dominguez 16th, 25th, 58th. This includes updates in season updates.

So that's why guys move around. 16, 25, 58, 32, 54, 46, 46, 64, 83, 92, and 49. Boom. Wow. Okay. Yeah. That's a lot of different rankings, but yeah, that includes mid season as you said. Yes.

Right. And so much of that, the mid season is just like who graduated in front of you, such that you move up. But yeah, with Dominguez, it goes back to the hurricane analogy where at a certain point, Jason Dominguez was a guy who teams had seen work out and was offered $5 million to sign. During that time, he was like, wow, look at this guy's switch hitting power

and plus plus speed. And also you have no idea how this guy's body is going to develop. He's already so muscular. It creates volatility that is sort of unknown to us. It's why I make the Zion Williamson comp in the blurb. And then with Dominguez, as you start to learn what he really him as a baseball player who's ready to play Major League Baseball, which he is, some of that stuff shifts. But the grade which encompasses his value initially and then transitions to a number that says what kind of baseball player he is, it just stays the same kind of. The fact that Jason Dominguez wasn't Vladdy Guerrero and up at 19 or 20 is

not that much of a scary bummer because this guy had a Tommy John and he was, he was basically like there at a precocious age. So, you know, you can get fatigued with any of these guys and end up under ranking them because you're frustrated that they haven't had some sort of meteoric superstar. Oh, he's not the next Mickey Mantle. I shouldn't have spent 10 grand on his, his Bowman card. Like, no, dude, you should not have. It comes down to each player's individual case. And Dominguez, he's basically been tracking in the same way. The thing that we learned about him in pro ball that is most relevant is he can't play centerfield. He's not a good defensive outfielder. He needs to play left field. And does that ding his overall value? Yeah, like he'd probably just be a 60 if he could play center field.

I do think there were some better mints to his back control in 2024. I was surprised to put on the tape and see how well he was moving the barrel around from the left side of the plate was not really a strength of his initially. I thought this was just gonna be a power over hit left fielder for a while.

He got meaningfully better, I thought, in 2024 as a hitter. And maybe some of that was just like coming off the TJ, experiencing upper level pitching for a longer period of time. He's 22. So I still really like him. And the guys who start on the list and then move off are the ones that are the real problem. They're the ones who you have to ask yourself, why did I decide at a certain point, like what had Turmar Johnson really done to make us go, he's 30th? You know, like the fact that he was drafted high on its own, and I liked Turmar in high school, right? But like, why did I like this guy more than whatever guy was performing at double and triple A? What about it was I wrong about that made me think, oh, he'll get to this power.

This is good. How is it that Pro Ball has made this not good anymore? And again, it's just like case by case and you try to watch out for those issues as you move on to guys in the future. But the Hunter Harvey has to be the guy who has been on a fan grass list the most times. He has to be. It was basically every year from 2016 until 2024. I'm pretty sure. I think he graduated last year or was he 23? It was one of those two, but it was just like, this guy's awesome. Every time he's healthy, he looks awesome. And he's just been hurt so much.

Every time he's healthy, he looks awesome. And he's just been hurt so much. I think it was 2023 when Harvey graduated. Yeah. He still is a good pitcher. So what do you do? Like not put him on there? So some of the teams that have the greatest concentration of prospects on the 100 are the teams that we all might expect because they've been noted over the years for their talent from a player dev perspective. So Cleveland leads the list this year with seven top 100 guys. The Rays and the Dodgers each have six. But I'm curious if there are any clubs that as you were going through your process for this year's 100 and maybe your process over this list cycle more broadly, where you've noted, hey, this team seems to

have figured something out from a player dev perspective overall, or maybe they're suddenly good at developing pitchers or wow, they're helping guys affect meaningful swing changes. Have any teams sort of altered your basic kind of perception of them as a player dev organization? Yeah, Boston, Boston really it's been going on for a while. And the last couple of years is when I've become more sensitive to it. Some of it was starting with Jaren Duran, who was a contact oriented second baseman with speed and now is hitting for power in the big leagues. Christian Campbell, contact oriented second baseman with speed, couldn't play defense, same as Duran.

Let's try him at different positions, try to change his approach, swing harder. Swing harder, you have good feel for contact, swing harder. And you trade some of it off for the power, but the balance is still such that you're more valuable. And some of the stuff with pitchers, like as I worked on Boston last list cycle, your stride direction is different. The horizontal angle of this guy's

pitches are now much different. Why? What's making them decide to move your position on the rubber, change your stride direction? That's going on in Boston. And I think it's really interesting. There's so many guys further down the list you know Jojo Ingratia's numbers are nuts and you pick a college pitcher from Small school junior college, whatever it is and know beforehand you send your scouts out there looking for these guys Knowing beforehand how you're gonna change them Boston's good at that. The Yankees are good at that Know beforehand how you're going to change them. Boston's good at that.

The Yankees are good at that. Atlanta's good at that. Atlanta takes a lot of small school junior college guys. It makes them relevant. Nacho Alvarez is not on the top 100, but to take that guy from a junior college and turn him into what looks like a second division regular at third base, he's a good player. That's a good pick. That's a good process.

Alan Rodin, I mentioned, I think, Toronto, his swing changed noticeably in 2024 as well. He's performed the whole time. He looked like Craig Council at one point, his batting stance. And then last year they tweaked him. It was different enough to notice. And the only reason he's not on the 100 is because I think that he's going to have an early decline because of the way he's built. That's it. And the situation in Toronto is very crowded with outfielders like Rodin's not on the 40 man. You got to figure out what Barger and Lucas, you know, you got to figure out what those guys are first before Alan Rodin. And so like the window for Rodin is going to start when he's 26. So like I didn't put him on there, but he's good. Cleveland pitching dev, it's nuts.

Part of the reason there are so many guys on the hundred for them is because they like the up the middle type guys who I do too. And so I'm going to have the Angel Janauz and the Bazanas and the Welbon Francisca's like those are my guys, Cooper Engel. I like those guys and they seem to as well, but Cleveland's ability to develop pitching means look out for Parker Messick, look out for Matt Wilkinson, look out for Austin Peterson.

These are guys who don't throw hard, but they get results because they have characteristics that Cleveland cares about. And then sometimes Cleveland does get them to throw hard and you have a Tanner Bybee, you have a Shane Bieber. Cleveland's great at that. I really think Detroit and Texas are other teams who have leveled up recently in doing searches like wide swaths of spreadsheet searches

for characteristics I care about. Extension, induce vertical break and release height, you know, looking next to one another so you can adjust for what the height is Spin axis guys who also have like big end zone swing and miss on their fastball Stuff I'm querying, you know, basically Texas man. They've got a lot of these guys Detroit's got a lot of these guys Milwaukee Milwaukee loves a junior college player who they can tweak

The pitching dev stuff is definitely spread where there are a lot of player who they can tweak. The pitching dev stuff has definitely spread where there are a lot of teams who are good at making pitchers better. But I think those are the ones who said anything. The Dodgers are great at it. The Dodgers, Alex Freeland, the Dodgers shortstop prospect. I would not be surprised if he breaks campus or everyday shortstop. Part of that is because I just don't think anybody on their current roster can play shortstop. High Sun Kim might be able to. I think High Sun Kim is an unbelievable athlete and the Dodgers tend to make these guys better like they did with Dalton Rushing, like they did with Alex Friedland.

But the Alex Friedland changes are you had a 63% contact rate last year and now it's like 75%. How'd you do that? I can watch his swing and say what's different, but why did these changes, how do they know to do it? Whether they just feeling around and found something that worked? It could be as simple as that. Or do they know, hey, that leg kick, this like little, you know, slower, medium-sized leg kick that's going on, we're done with that. Now you're gonna have like a toe tap,

like a little Sammy Sosa kinda, it's not quite as in and out as Sosa's was, but you know, it's just like, this is what it is now and try that. And now you've gone from being like an unplayably bad contact hitter, basically like an extra infielder type guy to everyday shortstop because there's just more content. Like that's the sort of magic dust that the teams don't all have where the hitters are

getting better. It's one like at hitting. It's one thing to do the Red Sox version or the Rays version kind of with like Chandler Simpson, where you take the super contact guy and then make him strong. Here's a pro weight room guy coming out of Coastal Carolina. Whatever it is, but take the contact skill, which maybe is an eight and now layer on pro strength and conditioning. That's the Red Sox version, but this is different. This is how did you make this guy a better contact hitter? How the hell did you do that? Because I would love for you to do that for, find me a time machine and do it for, I can name you so many guys. Please make Monte Harrison able to hit. Please. Some of these guys make this happen for them.

That's the one thing where it's just like, I don't know. I don't know how you did that. That magic trick that you did that I'm sure every team would love to know how you made Robbie got Robbie Grossman and then made him an average hitter from the other side of the plate for a while. How did that happen? Atlanta. What are you doing over there? So some of it I think is biomechanical analysis and like sequencing the

kinetic chain as a hitter. And maybe it's just like, here, we've invested in this technology that allows you to take limitless visual reps against Jacob deGrom, even though there's not a pitcher out there or whatever it is. Maybe it's underappreciating how technology is starting to shape how hitters are developed. That's the magic stuff. And then I guess lastly, you alluded to this, you're going to have your picks to click. So guys who didn't make the top 100 this year for whatever reason, but who you think stand a good chance of doing so next year, I won't make you spoil that entire piece, but can you, can you tell us

about one pick that you expect to click? One. Just one. Because I know that you also have to go do another podcast. Eric, name a single player challenge. Yeah. But not more than one. Not more than one. Just one. Oh my god.

This is the hardest thing we've ever asked you to do. Right, because if I were that convicted about somebody, they would maybe just be on there already. Be on the 100. So, okay, fine. All right, so there's a guy in the Red Sox system, they put him on the 40 man, his name is Yost Nixon Garcia.

If they can make him more selective, he's gonna explode. That is one of those guys where I worry that he will do the Lawrence Butler thing, where he's so obviously, he's a physical outlier of sorts in terms of power and speed. And there's this approach selectivity thing that is a real problem where again, we're talking about like close to two standard deviations worse than average But he's on the 40 man

And if he graduates this year like accidentally because he's on the 40 man They just need somebody to play the outfield this year for whatever reason like guys get hurt and they don't want to you know Put Anthony or Campbell on the 40, whatever it is. This guy might graduate this year and like never be on the hundred and be amazing like Lawrence Butler. And so I worry that that's going to happen there. It's just like, can you get this guy to be more selective? And if so, then yeah, that guy could really explode.

And so that's who I'll say out loud on this podcast. There are so many guys I'm excited about. Denzel Clark is another version of this. And the ace is- Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha stage. Yeah. My like old press cap comes off my head as I get yoinked off the thing. Tired of naming the names. I hope, I hope. Yeah. Jost Nixon, Jost Nixon with the J.H. Garcia. Yes. I hope he makes it because we need nicknames as good as the password in the majors. That's just excellent. Yeah. That's very good. All right. Thank you so much, Eric. I know you have been worked hard these last couple of weeks, not just prospect

week, but prospect weeks. Prospect Fortnite. We thought that would have weird SEO though. Like prospect Fortnite. What is that about? Are you playing prospect PUBG? Who would be the best? Cause that's what it is. I've learned. It's just, it's just PUBG, right? Oh, it's so many other things too. It's everything. Oh, rest in peace, my GameCube, by the way, speaking of video games. Oh no, your GameCube.

The GameCube. What should I do about that? Do you know what, is there like, can, anyway, someone help me with that. If you're listening to this, do you have a Lazarus pit for my GameCube? Great system. I think I still have MindStash somewhere,

but yeah, you could get a newer one, I guess. Maybe it's a bad time. Anyway, thank you as always, Eric. Thank you guys. That'll do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. We should have Mariners and Reds previews for you next time. In the meantime, you can support Effectively Wild

on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get themselves access to some perks. Derek Knowles, Casey Pitcher, Victoria, Dan Thomas and many Diaz, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes,

playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, discounts on merch, and ad-free Fangrass memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group

at facebook.com slash groups slash Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild sub-edit at r slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the Facebook group at Facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at r slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show page at Fangrass or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back a little later this week. Talk to you then. Just a couple of baseball nerds

It could be Sam, or Jeff, or Sam, or Mac, and Ben Unless he goes on paternity leave again In which case Peg will find someone great to fill in In which case Peg will find someone great to fill in But whoever it is, they'll still be just a couple of baseball nerds