Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2288: Season Preview Series: Red Sox and Athletics

Episode Date: February 26, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether certain injuries can improve players, old-but-good guys not getting gigs, the offensive disparity between the Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues, and Bryce Harper’s Phanatic tattoo. Then they preview the 2025 Boston Red Sox (31:16) with The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier, and the 2025 Sacramento Athletics (1:25:13) with Jason […]

Take me to the diamond Lead me through the turnstile Shower me with data That I never thought to compile Now I'm freely now a scorecard With a crackin' shot of smile Effectively wild Hello and welcome to episode 2288 of Effectively Wild, a FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of FanGraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? Happy to be potting with you as always.

Happy to be previewing. We got a couple of good preview segments lined up. We will be talking to Alex Spear of the Boston Globe about the Boston Red Sox, followed by Jason Burke of Inside the A's about the athletics. And by the way, Guardians fans, don't freak out. We have not forgotten the Guardians. And I know that the projections for the Guardians are perhaps not what you would want them to be,

but they're not worse than the A's projections. We just had to do a little rearranging here. We would rather get you the best possible combination of guest and segment, even if it means that we have to rearrange a bit and delay certain segments. So we will probably get to the Guardians next week. Don't read anything else into it. It's just a logistical issues, just a scheduling complications, but a couple of great previews to get to today and just a bit of banter before we do.

Here are a few things that I have noted. One of my favorite things is when a player gets hurt and says that it improved him somehow. Now, I couldn't end that sentence after one of my favorite things is when a player gets hurt. No, I generally don't like that. And in addition to being bad because it makes you unable to play when you are hurt. No, I generally don't like that. And in addition to being bad because it makes you unable to play when you were hurt. Also, sometimes it has a cascading effect where you change something mechanically to compensate for the injury and then that screws you up

somehow and the proverbial bad habits. But every now and then there's a player who says the opposite, that getting hurt and compensating for that injury somehow actually helped them play better, at least in some way. And the latest example of that comes from Twins prospect, Luke Keishel, rated number 56 prospect in baseball, according to Eric Long and Hagan last week. He was the Twins minor league player of the year last season, despite playing the entirety of the season with a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. So he had Tommy John surgery in August to correct that. Clearly did not decide that

this was actually performance enhancing that he would rather play with a torn UCL because he did opt to have the surgery. However, he said, looking on the bright side, it made me swing at better pitches. Swinging at bad pitches hurt a little bit. As long as I swung at good pitches, it didn't hurt too much. So I guess if he was chasing, if he had to reach for a pitch that he probably shouldn't have been swinging at at all, then that would hurt. And so he had got the immediate negative feedback that he probably shouldn't have been swinging at at all, then that would hurt. And so he had got the immediate negative feedback. Ooh, don't swing at that.

Cause that hurts. Not just the negative feedback of whiffing or hitting a weak ground ball or something, but also physical pain. I'm not endorsing physical pain as a player development tactic, nor am I endorsing Tommy John surgeries for position players. But I do find it kind of charming when a player takes the glass half full view and says, you know what, I was hurt, but I learned from this.

This actually made me better in some respect. And you certainly couldn't tell from his offensive line, he really raked and he did draw a lot of walks. And not that he didn't do that prior to last season, but yeah, he was good. Maybe it made him better. Maybe the lessons he learned when it comes to plate discipline will stick with him even with his surgically repaired elbow. to draw something positive from that experience, it's good. We often see injury serve as sort of, assuming one is able to regain one's prior efficacy, a trampoline, right, for guys. You see pitchers remake their bodies while they're coming back from Tommy John. Sometimes they come out of it having reconditioned themselves and it ends up paying dividends for them down

the road once they've regained their stuff and honed their command again. So it does seem like an opportunity potentially, but it would be nice if they could just not get hurt. I know you're not saying, but contrary, Ben, you're not advocating for injury. Don't anyone get it twisted? Ben Lindbergh not calling for any springing. Absolutely not. No, there's plenty of springing as there is. There's an excess of springing. And be careful when you use the word trampoline in the context of entries, because somewhere Jeff Sullivan just shuddered. Yeah, he's like, I don't know why I'm nervous, but suddenly I am again.

Yeah. Definitely not because he's listening to the podcast. Not that, but yeah, his ears are burning somewhere. So yes. Uh, congrats to Keishel on making the best of a bad situation. And no, every now and then we get a question about like, should pitchers just have preemptive Tommy John surgery? No, they should not, which is something that actual surgeons get asked about by over eager parents.

It's just like, let's get it out of the way. But no, because it's not like you have the surgery and then you never have to have it again or you can't get injured again. You can just get it again and then your odds of coming back are worse than they would have been if it were the first time around. And it doesn't actually make you better.

It doesn't make you throw harder. Sometimes it might look that way just because if you were pitching hurt, if you were pitching with a worn out ligament, then maybe you could be losing some stuff and it'll come back hopefully when it's repaired, though that's not a guarantee either. Not everyone returns to play or returns to play at the same level. So in addition to all of the actual suffering that comes with surgery and the rehab process. Absolutely not suggesting preemptive surgeries or that it helps players be better on the whole. But every now and then you do hear someone say,

yeah, I couldn't make that movement and it just made me do something differently and that actually helped me. Now, I don't think it helped his throwing, however. So the throwing aspect of things also pretty important for a player who plays a defensive position. So that should be much improved this season after the surgical repair. And he will be coming along and he will probably establish himself on a big league roster

in the not too distant future, which leads me to another point I wanted to make. And this will come up actually during our Red Sox conversation, but life is hard out here in the majors these days for older players. And we know that the aging curve has shifted, not even just relative to the PED era when players were perhaps unnaturally prolonging their careers in some cases, but even compared to historical standards. And part of that is that player development, player evaluation have improved. So players are coming up when they're really

ready. And the aging curves now show less of the traditional debut down here and then go up to your peak, maybe in your late twenties or so. And then you start your slow decline. It's not always like that. Now there's a little less of a bump that comes when you make the majors or after that, because you might be closer to a finished product, given how good player development is at the amateur level, let alone the minors, and then guys tend to age out more quickly these days. And maybe it is because younger players are coming along, being better than ever and forcing the

veterans out of jobs. Maybe it has something to do with velocity and reaction time. You'd think conditioning, nutrition, all of that has improved and that maybe that might help guys hang on longer. But then again, young players get to benefit from those advances too. However, it seems to me that in some cases, maybe it's been taken too far when we're talking about guys who are looking for say one year deals and not getting them, even though maybe they're in their mid thirties and they're still productive is the thing. And even if on the whole, there are fewer players

at those ages who are still good. And even if yeah, we know what aging curves say about long-term contracts for guys at those ages, but someone like Brandon Belt last year, who was coming off such a strong 2023 offensively and then just didn't play last year. And he seemed to be flummoxed by that. He said at some point last spring, I honestly haven't had hardly any calls at all that have gone past the point of team saying, Hey, we're interested.

We're just checking in. I wish I had an answer for you. I just don't. Evidently those calls didn't come because he sat out the season. He's just done, I guess, even though he was really productive his last year. And I was thinking Mark Kanna just signed with the Brewers, went back to the Brewers on a minor league deal. And I was thinking, man, is Mark Kanna really a minor league deal guy? I know that he's 36, he just turned 36 and he's coming off a year where he was basically a league average hitter, but that's not so bad. And he's been better than that fairly recently. And okay, granted he projects to be just a league average guy again, but there's some value in that potentially,

apart from his value as a clubhouse guy, who seems like a standup character and well-liked. And so it surprised me that he had to settle for a minor league deal. There are a lot of terrible teams out there that don't really have someone at every position who's as good as Mark Hanna. And then Jose Iglesias is still a free

agent coming off a very strong season, both as a recording artist and as a baseball player. And this came up because Nick Madrigal, who is one of the, I think, 68 players in Mets camp, he suffered a fracture in his left shoulder. He'll be out for quite a while. The Mets need a utility player. And the reporting says that that's probably not gonna be Jose Iglesias, that they're not really interested in that. David Stearns has downplayed the possibility. And so Jose Iglesias is out here looking for a job, coming off a season when Nick Castellanos declared him

National League MVP. And he was not that good, but he was very good. And I know he's been up and down and maybe that was an outlier offensively, but he still gives you some good production in addition to giving you a theme song in a home run celebration. So, you know, he's 35, but really no home for Jose Iglesias.

So it just seems to me that in certain individual cases, at least, there are some guys who are out there in the cold who could still probably help a team. Yeah. And for some of these guys, I think I saw that part of why Iglesias hasn't signed is that his preference would be returning to the Mets, right? And that that specific offer hasn't been forthcoming. But yeah, it does feel like there should be a longer stretch of like complimentary role player time for some of these guys, right?

Like they're not maybe first division regulars anymore and that's fine, but they're your glue, you know? They're the, I keep coming back to the potted plant analogy. Maybe it's cause I have a monstera I need to repot, but it's like, you know, you're the stuff you got to, you fill in a planting and it makes it look so full, you know, and it lets the, didn't Boris use this analogy? I don't think Boris gardens. I don't know if he's a gardener, but it might be nice. Gardening is so mellow, you know, it helps you mellow out.

I'm sure he has used gardening analogies when it comes to free agents and planting seeds and bearing fruit and yeah. You got your big, you know, your showstoppers, the plants where you go, look at this plant, but they, you gotta fill in around them sometimes, but you know, I'm given to understand you gotta fill in around them. Sometimes it's a little shop of horrors

and you wanna avoid that too. You generally want to avoid like the murderous plants. I think that should be a goal for everyone, but it's going to be okay because that plant wasn't real, Ben. I'm here to tell you that plant was fictional. Good show though. Anyway, yeah, I share your consternation about this and some of it will resolve itself as we get deeper into spring training and guys start to get hurt, you know

That's the unfortunate thing. You're not rooting for the sproing You don't want the sproing but the sproing does make way for other players to get opportunities on occasion It's like, yeah. Well now he's sproing didn't has to go on the 60-day. So what are you gonna do? Yeah, gosh now that you've mentioned it or we both mentioned it, I'm remembering my watching Little Shop of Horrors, the Rick Moranis movie when I was a kid and how that may have scarred me psychologically. Like I enjoyed it. It's a great show.

Definitely some indelible images from the death film. Kind of like the witches, you know, where you watch it when you're a kid and you're like, gosh, this is a kid's movie technically, but it's really probably shouldn't be. So yeah, Little Shop of Hours came out the same year we did. In fact, I guess it came out. That's such a way to say that. That's such a way to have said that. Wow. Wow. Yeah. It debuted a week before I was born, it looks like. And I definitely saw that in my youth and some of those images,

they stayed with me. it looks like. And I definitely saw that in my youth and some of those images, they stayed with me. Look, I think that everyone should develop an appreciation for Rick Moranis, Steve Martin, the various members of the, like the Gal Who Played Ronette. It's a great show. And then you watch The Witches and you're like, now I understand Angelica Huston. And that's important because she's a treasure. So I think it's good for kids to be terrified a little bit when they're young, you know, like in a...

Jared Ranere In a safe way. Yeah. Lauren Ruffin In a safe way. I think it's good to... Every kid needs a movie they saw a little too early and it does leave an indelible mark, but then you grow up appreciating things, you know, you're like, I don't remember that first bit of like something subversive where you're like, I don't remember that first bit of like something subversive where you're like, I am too young to be watching Jaws.

I'm going to pretend I'm not afraid because I want to. Yeah, that's important. I've read about that, the psychology of why we like to be scared, which is not so much the case for me, but for a lot of people. And, and kids often test that too. And my daughter's doing that. You know, she wants to be chased. She, she hides when you find her. You know, she wants to be chased.

She hides. When you find her, she screams. She runs away. You pretend to be some sort of monster. And yeah, it's like some sort of evolutionary advantage there. It's just like testing a crisis without actually being in a crisis, but sort of preparing for how you would act in that situation

and how you would feel. So we're gonna talk about some Tommy John surgery guys in the Red Sox segment. I will talk about one just briefly now, Justin Verlander, who is not among the veterans who have had a hard time getting a roster spot. He is with the Giants and he made his spring debut. And he said something interesting

that I hadn't really thought about. He was talking about how he hung a slider and it went a long way, longer than he had expected. And I'll just quote from this MLB.com piece, Verlander42 said, one of the challenges for him this spring will be to try not to fixate too much on the results because he knows some of his pitches might not break as they normally would due to the desert climate. And it cites Logan Webb, who really struggled in spring training last year and then was perfectly fine on opening day. Webby was very helpful with me

talking about his spring training last year and what he was dealing with, how he was seeing the results not be great at all. And then he comes into the season and it's like right where he wanted it. So I hadn't really thought about the fact that with that hot dry air, with the elevation in Arizona, Verlander said, I was

told not to over-concern yourself with pitch shapes here and the movement of the ball because it's tough. It's my first spring training in Arizona. He's been around forever, but he hasn't had spring training in Arizona. So everyone was like, hey man, it's a little different out here. I've heard it from everyone, but I think you still need to be honest with yourself. And it's true, it's a little hard to look at the numbers because even the sites that have spring training data,

like FanGraphs, like Baseball Savant, don't tend to classify things by league, don't tend to break it down by Grapefruit League versus Cactus League, because they're not really leagues. They're not, there's no stakes. I mean, there's no trophy for winning one of the leagues. I think there should be. That would be funny actually, if there were. Actually, I think there should be like a spring training World Series matchup, just a single

game, you know, not like a whole playoffs. There's no time for that, but old school, like before there were playoffs other than the World Series, it was just best team versus best team, best record versus best record. I think we should have Grapefruit League champion versus Cactus League champion for none of the marbles, for no stakes whatsoever. For none of the marbles. Purely for the whimsy of that event. I know logistically it could be difficult, the season starting and travel and who knows, but if you could arrange it, I think a spring training single game championship, you know, that would, that would give it the weight that it deserves,

which is not very much, but that would be funny in my mind. We know we'd have players talking about you just, you want to get the W here, you know, how much it matters, like the playoff environment, you know, you want to hang that banner, fly the flag in your spring training park. I'd enjoy the spectacle of that. Anyway, that's a tangent. I was interested in the different offensive environments in the different spring training leagues. So you kind of have to go team by team and sort things here. Cause again, there's no easy split. However, so if you look at spring training offensive environment, it is a higher scoring environment than the regular season.

So last year, regular season weighted on base average, which is on the OBP scale, but as a holistic all-in-one offensive measure, 310 league wide during the regular season, 325 during spring training. However, there is a big split there. If you look at grapefruit league versus cactus league, and there is an even split it's 15 and 15, half the teams in Arizona,

half the teams in Florida. Now same for our previews today, one Arizona team, one Florida team. But if you look at the offense, there is a disparity. So last year, the league wide Woba in spring training for the Florida teams, for the Grapefruit League was 320, and for the Arizona teams, Cactus League was 330. And yeah, similar nine or 10 point disparity in 2023. So it seems pretty consistent.

And that's significant over a full season, a 10 point gap in Woba. That's meaningful, that's measurable. And it season, a 10 point gap in Woba. That's meaningful, that's measurable. And it wasn't, I thought, well, could it just be the concentration of the teams? Because it breaks down loosely along geographic lines. So you know, you look at how the teams are distributed in spring training, they tend to want to be closer to where their location is for the regular season. And so the Grapefruit League, you know,

you see a lot of like all the East teams are in the Grapefruit League and just about all the West teams with, I guess, the exception of the Astros are in Arizona. And so, you know, you might think like, oh, there's more East, more West, more Central and in certain places, maybe they were just better or worse offensive teams, but no, more Central, and in certain places, maybe they were just better or worse offensive teams,

but no, that wasn't it. Cause if you look at the Grapefruit League teams, their regular season, WOBA collectively was 312, and the Cactus League teams collectively was 309. So actually during the regular season, the teams that trained in Florida were the better hitting teams, but they were worse in spring training.

So it does seem to be the offensive environment in Arizona. And I don't think it's temperature so much. I think the temperatures are pretty comparable, at least during the day in March in Arizona and Florida. I don't even think it's so much. It's a different kind of heat though. It is a different kind of heat. It's a different kind of heat.

Yeah, but I don't know that that makes the difference because kind of counter-intuitively in my mind, at least, humidity makes the air less dense. Like I would think, you know, it's more humid. It's like there's more water, you know? Like you gotta force your way through all that dampness. But no, humidity makes the air less dense and the ball actually travels farther,

all else being equal on a humid day than a dry day. No, humidity makes the air less dense and the ball actually travels farther all else being equal on a humid day than a dry day. So that's not your like experience of it though, right? Oh no, certainly in terms of how it feels. Yeah, it's more draining. I was gonna have to be like, so hey Ben, you do need to go outside more than you appear to. I have experienced humidity and lack of humidity and I far prefer the dry heat as they say.

I prefer no heat at all. So I assume it's largely elevation related. Florida is sea level essentially and Arizona is not. I guess Phoenix, it's only like what, a thousand feet above sea level I think, but parts of Arizona are much higher. So that's probably part of it. Sure. It's the second highest elevation, like Chase Field has the second highest elevation of any

big league park behind just Colorado, obviously. So I think that's part of it. And yeah, that can affect the air density and the movement and everything. So maybe it is just pitch movement, partly. The pitches don't have the same bite and they get hit harder and then they travel farther when they're in the air. So I hadn't really considered that there was that wide a disparity, but there is. And I guess that would affect your mindset. I don't know if it's better or worse or whether it really makes any difference at all in terms of like, you know, making players feel better or worse about themselves based on their spring

performance. We know that only the extreme spring training performances are really predictive in any sense, just cause the samples are small and it's just, it's not a major league environment. And another reason why the offensive environment across the board is higher is just while pitchers are ramping up, they're not going max effort or their max effort isn't what it will be later. And then, you know, lots of scrubs and I guess that could work either way or both ways, pitcher

scrubs and hitter scrubs, but no one's going full intensity and, you know, starters aren't playing full games and all sorts of other factors that increases the offensive level, but much more in Arizona than Florida. So I guess that's something to take into account if you are studying spring training stats responsibly. And if you're a player like Verlander and you're switching from one to the other, then maybe you do have to take that into account and maybe that affects how you approach your training. So maybe, I don't know, maybe that's obvious, but I just hadn't really focused on it so much until

Verlinder made that comment. And then I looked up some stats. Maybe the difference is that in Arizona, you're only like a 40 minute bus ride from things and in Florida, you have to get on the bus for longer. Maybe that has an effect on you. It could be part of it. But matters for potentially evaluation or just, yeah, how excited do you get by your performance or what do you work on? People are working on pitches and spring training. Well, maybe you're not getting the full effect of those pitches.

I don't even, do they use humidor's in spring training with the ball? I don't even recall, but you'd think they probably would want to, to ensure more consistent conditions across spring training and the regular season. But yeah, lots of stuff is different. And so it makes sense to try to take that into account at times. And lastly, I think we would be remiss not to note that Bryce Harper has pandered once more, though I think he's really past pandering at this point. It's just sincere, but he has obtained a tattoo of the Philly Fanatic.

He now has the Philly Fanatic engraved, not exactly engraved, that's not how tattoos work, but it's on his person. It's pretty painful, but I guess it is kind of engraving. It's not a very deep engraving, it's hopefully reversible, but sort of. So he has a tattoo of the fanatic now. So his desire to reach out to Philly's fans, to be one of them, to be embraced, it knows no bounds. And now there's a new physical manifestation. It's not just what he's wearing, but what is actually

on his skin. So, you know, just kudos to him, hats off to Harper. He will stop short of nothing to be loved. And he is loved, and he should be loved by Philly's fans. Yeah. The only thing that will stand between him and further pandering to Philly's fans might be pasteurization. Yeah. Well, we should actually ask about that when we get to our Philly's preview. We should ask about that. Are there medical concerns about the Philly's and their approach to health and

nutrition? Yeah, we'll, we'll definitely. You should just be excited about pasteurization, folks. Does good stuff for you. You ever been around a cow? You do go, oh, we should be doing some intervention here. Bryce Harper was ill recently. Did that have anything to do with that?

Who knows, but we'll get to that. Some weird IL placements on that team is all I'm saying. If you're wondering where the placement of his tattoo was, well, that's, that's private. You don't pry the fanatic. No, it's not somewhere private. It is his, uh, he, he pulled up his right sleeve to do the big fanatic reveal. So it's on his right forearm. It's the fanatic riding his ATV. So he has already sent the signal that he wants to be a Philly for life, but now he has put it on his arm. And at this point, like, you know, he's rocked all sorts of fanatic gear.

Like he clearly has a deep seated affection for the fanatic, which he was a fanatic fan, I believe, before he was even a Philly. So this, this runs deep for him and he's passed the point of needing to ingratiate himself. You know, he he said I don't know I just love Philly. I love the fanatic. It's just fun And you know when he first showed up on the Phillies and he was broadcasting this very pro Phillies pro Philly message it read a little bit like okay What can he do to make people love him? But his play on the field has done

that. He has fully delivered in the regular season, in the postseason. There's no reason for Philly's fans not to love Bryce Harper. So he's passed the point of needing to get a tattoo to demonstrate his loyalty for this team. So he's doing it because he means it. He's genuine, I think, in his fanatic affection. AMT – I think that that's right. I mean, I think that we have maybe undersold the cultural impact of the fanatic. I've watched a lot more like NBA basketball this year than prior years, and everyone's trying to be the fanatic. All of these mascots are trying to be the fanatic, you know, they're doing variations on the fanatic theme. They're, you know, a goofier version of the fanatic. They're a weirdly fleshier version of the fanatic in the case of the Braves mascot. I'm all right

about this and I'm going to just keep saying it because that's a weird, it's not good. You know, I'm sure somewhere out there, there's like a hornier version of the fanatic. Maybe that's just how we understand gritty, you know? So it's just, everyone's trying to be the fanatic. And if you play for the team that gets to claim the fanatic as your own, you should lean into that because everyone loves the fanatic. You know, that, that pandering is about Philly's fans and about the city of Philly and the mascot of his team. But I would also just say that there's a pride

of getting to claim the OG fanatic as your own, right? To say like, no, all other attempts are but mere imitation, you know, variations on the theme. We get to claim the fanatic. We get this perfect version of the weirdo. And you know, the other ones aren't as successful. You know, I'm setting Gritty aside. Gritty's his own thing. And you know, like, good for you, Philly. You got it right twice. How's that work? That's amazing

That's fantastic. We could go down a digression into mascots, which we generally do whenever we generally people enjoy that But we can get to yeah. Yeah, yeah can move on but um, I I would just like to say that I Wholeheartedly approve of Harper's I would just like to say that I wholeheartedly approve of Harper's placation of his fan base. I think that there is a sincerity. He understands his role. He's trying to do the thing. But also I would invite him to embrace pasteurization with a similar fervor because I think that that's important also. General warmth, by the way, another factor behind offense in spring training, just being higher, even though it's March and February, it's still Florida and

Arizona. So there's that. I want spring training trophies also. While we're going full whimsy, give me a spring training MVP awards. Give me spring training Cy Young. I don't want to put pressure on players or teams to try too hard, but I don't think anyone would try too hard to win those things because they wouldn't carry any cache. They would just be for fun and players are, you know, they're doing their prep and they're trying to make the roster in some cases. And it's a time to experiment and it's a time not to be max efforts.

However, I think spring training awards would be fun because they would reward the most random guys who excelled. And then we can all remember, remember when that guy was spring training MVP. And we do sometimes remember those spring outbursts, which sometimes carry over to the regular season, but often don't. And it'd be nice if someone had the hardware to recognize that somewhere deep in their trophy case or their trophy room. Yeah. You know what else, um, he plays an important role in what?

Pasturization. Oh yes. Excellent point. With that, let's take a quick break and we'll be back with Alex to talk about the Red Sox followed by Jason on the A's. Baseball is a simulation, it's all just one big math equation You're all about these stats we've compiled Cause you're listening to Effectively Wild With Ben Lindberg and Meg Rowley

Come for the ball, the banter's free Baseball is a simulation, it's all just one big conversation Well, we would not name favorites among our annual season preview guests. They are all precious to us. They are all generous with their time, they all offer us a wealth of information. But if the sodium pentothal were administered and if it worked, which as I understand it, it doesn't always, and I were forced to divulge my true feelings about our roster of preview guests, I just say that when we look ahead at our gauntlet of 30 interviews that we have to do, one bright spot is always

that we can anticipate a conversation with Alex Speer, statmasterson himself of the Boston Globe who is an annual highlight of this series. Welcome back, Alex. I am honored to be one of the 30 highlights. And you're coming to us from a ballpark in Florida, though not the one that the Red Sox are currently playing at, which is good for audio purposes. And you were on vacation when all of the positional drama went down last week, but I'm sure you are up to speed and can inform us about where all of that stands.

But I guess we could talk about the offseason that was the prelude to that drama that set the stage for it because the Red Sox had themselves an eventful winter. They went and got a top free agent on the position player side, they got maybe the best pitcher available on the pitching market. So are their fans satisfied to the extent that a fan of a team like the Red Sox can ever be satisfied? Did they do enough because of course this organization has ratcheted back spending somewhat relative to where it was earlier in John Henry's ownership of the club. Were they active enough? Did they go all in enough to please their faithful? I think the Bregman signing was a pretty big deal in terms of reestablishing their credibility in the market.

Even with the trade acquisition of Garrett Crochet, there was kind of a, right, so what's exactly happening with the lineup and why aren't you paying the market value of players? Why are you just acquiring this guy who is, you know, going to be playing on a well below market deal because of his upbringing as a reliever? The signing of Bregman represented a kind of landmark for them, even though they spent 90 million bucks on Yoshida a few years ago,

but that wasn't an offseason where they lost Zander Bogarts, right? They had also signed Devers to an extension in that same offseason, still they have lost someone else so the fan response is generally that yes the team is once again in the business of not merely articulating a desire to be to be competing for playoff spots and to be competing for the AL East but actually behaving accordingly. There was this kind of atmosphere of excitement that existed with the Red Sox managing to somehow break past the long-idle New England Patriots as a sports radio talking point for a couple of days. And then they really broke past the Patriots as a talking point when there was the drama to which you alluded related to who's going to play where and how's that exactly going to come together. But at a baseline, I do think that there's a sense that the Red Sox, after what was really a, you know, functionally a five-year rebuild from the time of the Mookie trade, just prior to the start of the 2020 season through the end of the 2024 season, have now entered a phase where they're no longer

building but instead kind of competing. And there was also their pursuit of Juan Soto, And maybe they were never going to get Juan Soto going up against the two New York teams, but they did make a run at him. How legitimate was that? Was that just a case of we tried or was that really an authentic desire to get him and thought that maybe they could persuade him to come to Boston and even if they were a Third or a distant third what sort of offer did they have out there? My so I guess I'll start with the offer my understanding or at least as I've reported it Is that they were willing to go almost to 700 million dollars that the final offer that they actually made was in the

What had been the kind of high 600 millions, but it included deferrals. I think that there was kind of a signaled willingness to go maybe to 700 million, but once there were no deferrals that were associated with that, I think it was pretty clear that he was not going to be with the Boston Red Sox, particularly because they had tried to push the process along. They had thought that there was like legitimate interest on Soto's part and legitimate intrigue on his part in terms of being like the face of the franchise and the star of the team. And, you know, they're upping their offers.

And then they, you know, said, well, will you give us a dollar figure that would get a deal done? And then Scott Borris said, no, we will not give you that dollar figure that would get a deal done. And then Scott Boris said, no, we will not give you that dollar figure. You can continue to engage in a kind of blind bidding process just like everyone else's. And so when that happened, I think that they started to become a little bit discouraged on that final weekend of the Soto decision. But to your question of how legitimate was it, I guess that's eye of the beholder. And Juan Soto is probably

the person who's best positioned to answer that. The Red Sox thought that they were putting a legitimate effort into it. There may have been a point early in the bidding process where they might have been more aggressive than other teams. Some people who are familiar with the bidding process thought that might have been the case. But obviously, that doesn't matter when,

at the end, you're not that team. So, yes, but it did signal a different level of intent. At least if you buy the idea that it's legitimate. Some fans were very skeptical of the legitimacy of the Red Sox intentions. Like, I don't, you know, I'm not sure that I am. When you're actually putting forth a formal offer that, you know, is in the 500 millions and then the 600 millions, you know, that's a lot of money to be putting out on the table. So Soto won't be the face of the franchise.

We could say that that mantle will remain with Raphael Devers, but we've alluded to the positional drama. Let's talk about the positional drama because Devers has expressed a strong preference to stay at third, which is famously Alex Bregman's position, although not anymore. He'll be playing second base. I want to ask first- Maybe, maybe. Let's, you know, yeah.

Maybe. Well, so this is going to be one of my questions, but first I want to ask, is it fair to describe it as drama? Is there actual conflict around this question? And regardless of the degree of conflict, how do you think this infield is going to shake out positionally? Because Devers is a fantastic bat. He's a great hitter.

I don't think that anyone is super excited about his defense. So how much of this is really drama versus just it's the start of camp? This is a question to ask. This is a preference to state. And then how do you think this infield is gonna shake out? Yeah, I hadn't really thought about it in terms of like, how far up has the drama meter been turned? The drama meter dial been turned? I think that the comments obviously

captured a lot of attention, right? When Devere said, no, I will not play a position that's not third base. But I also think that that was because there was a freshness to the whole idea. And there are probably opportunities to revisit that question. In fact, let me step back and give like and give a broader context to it. Devers, from the moment he entered Pro Ball, there were many people who were skeptical about his ability to be a third baseman. He worked really, really hard to fight against that perception.

The way that he fought against it was by being really stubborn and really hard headed. You know, I've been watching him take tons of ground balls. I got to see it many times unfolding at three in the afternoon, him being out there for early work with other third basemen just ground ball, ground ball, you know, he loved the work of being a third baseman. It meant a lot to him to prove that he could stick at that position. To stick at that position, he had to not allow in the possibility of not being at that position. So there's a long time psychology surrounding how he's approached his defense. And he's never trained to play at another position

and he doesn't particularly want to, right? Like he wants to be the best possible third baseman he can be and the way that he can be the best possible third baseman he can be is by focusing on being a third baseman. So to me, that's the context for the pushback. So I asked him today, is there drama? And he said, there's no beef with the team.

That was the precise translated statement. I would probably need to listen back. I just had this conversation literally an hour ago with him. So yes, I wonder if he used the word beef in Spanish. But yeah, so he says there's no beef, he loves playing with Bregman, really impressed by him. I asked him whether or not, you know, if Alex Cora approached him and said, we're a better team, if you're in a position other than third, how will you handle it? And he said, well, I don't really like to deal with hypotheticals. I like to deal with what's in front of me. And right now all we're talking about is me playing third base.

So that's what I'm focused on. You know, if like I have a great relationship with Cora, so, you know, so if he wants to have a different conversation with me, like then we can. So I think that there was a drama to the statements that he made last week. The drama meter was dialed up pretty high in terms of just how sound bites work. The actual dynamics of the situation

are a bit more chill than that. And as for the actual signing of Bregman, a lot of people have pointed out, seems like a great fit for Fenway and the Monster. Is that what made him so appealing to the team? Is it the attitude? Is it the positional fit as potentially awkward as it could be, interpersonally speaking?

Why did they want to sign Bregman? And as for the structure of this contract, why is it structured the way it is? And how long do you think Bregman will actually be in Boston? Oh, man, you went three-parter on me, Ben. You're just unloading here. I truly respect and like game recognizing game with the multifaceted, multifarious questions

that are only going to get fractionally answered as I forget what are the other parts. I'll try to remember the different components. So in terms of the fit of Bregman, everything, right? Like everything that you mentioned. When he hits the ball in the air, he pulls it. That's a great fit for Fenway Park. There's a track record there.

He has the highest OPS in the history of Fenway Park among players with at least 75 plate appearances there. I think it's like 1240. He has seven homers and 21 games there. And some of those are homers that aren't homers anywhere except Fenway and maybe in whatever Houston is now being called. Let's just stay with Minute Maid

because it's, you know, the juice box. Like how can they give up the whole juice box iconography? Anyway, yeah, so he's, so the bat plays really well there. He's a guy who puts the ball in play a lot, which is something they really struggled with. The low strikeout rate is something that they hope has influence over other players, other young players who see the Bregman style at bat and think that they might be able to feed off of it. You know, he's the proverbial baseball rat who's kind of obsessed, you know, with thinking about the game and, you know,

and thinking about the work that he puts into being ready for the game. And that can have positive externalities as well. Defensively, Gold Glove third baseman, who's also capable of being a second baseman. So it gives them like, you know, to me, wherever they decide to play Bregman, whether they decide out of the shoot, it's going to be second base or out of the shoot, it's going to be second base or out of the shoot, it's going to be third base. They're very well positioned in terms of their overall depth in the infield, which is something that wrecks them over the last two years. They were in a terrible spot in both 2023 and 2024 once Trevor Story was unavailable and they did not have answers at multiple infield positions.

And it was just, you know, that's a big part of the reason why they weren't very good teams over the last couple of years. So now there's redundancy at virtually every infield position, save right now for first base. And maybe if you slide, if you get Devers prepared to play first base, then you have redundancy there as well.

That would be pretty impressive should anything happen there. Cora believes that he's a difference maker culturally, so that's good. He has a reputation as a winner. He's comfortable being a public facing member of the organization, so they like that. Everything that you brought up and more. Then in terms of the structure of the contract, three years, $120 million. That works out really well for them as they have a number of players who are going to be impactful, but low cost in the next few years.

So Christian Campbell, Roman Anthony, Marcelo Meyer, all generically top 25 prospects, any like arguably at different points in the last calendar year, they've all made, you know, top five lists. And so you're looking at guys who are going to be zero to three service time guys. So they're super cheap. And so having a guy who's commending 40 million dollars a year, but for AAV slash CBT slash acronym salad purposes, he's something like 31 to 32 million bucks. That works out well for them, right? For the next few years, that's easy to absorb

before those guys become arbitration eligible. It works with the current roster structure for them. It's on a shorter term, so they aren't paying for what could be decline years. And it is pretty interesting to look across the game right now and see how few players remain productive into their mid thirties. Like I did a very cursory look at this.

Like, I do feel like that pool is becoming shallower in this insane velocity era. So avoiding paying for particularly ages 35, 36, like, that puts a team in a good bang for the buck proposition. How long will Bregman stick around for? That's going to be an interesting one. I guess it's all dependent on whether or not he has a really good year or whether or not he has a crappy year, but I take it for granted only that he's a member of the Boston Red Sox for 2025 and, you know, that he'll certainly be thinking

long and hard about retesting the market without a qualifying offer attached to him and in his hope, not coming off of what is for him a down year following the 2025 season. Wow. I think you answered it all. All the parts. Yes. Yes. You did it. I'm trying to decide if I want to go in a slightly negative direction and ask you about some of the hurt guys from last year or a positive direction and ask you about some of the prospects you just named.

Let's let's touch on some of the injured guys from last year or a positive direction and ask you about some of the prospects you just named. Let's touch on some of the injured guys from last year. Go multi-part. Do it all. Do it all, Meg. No, this one- All remaining questions for this segment will be in a single question. Yes. I mean, this will include two players. How about that? We'll do that as a way to multi-part it. But talk to us about both Trevor Story and Tristan Casas, because neither of these guys have been super available. I did not know one could strain a rib in Casas' case, although obviously he came back toward the end of the year. One might say that the trajectories of these two

players are going in different directions, but perhaps that's unfair to Trevor Story. So let's start with Story. How is Trevor Story? What do you expect from Trevor Story in 2025? And then talk to us about Casas and sort of what his next developmental step is. Yeah, I have no idea what to expect from Trevor Story in 2025.

I guess the one thing that we can take as likely is that he'll be a very, very good defensive shortstop. Like, he's been nothing but excellent to that position in the brief glimpses that he's been able to offer in both 2023 and 2024. You know, there's a baseline there, like, the arm strength bounced back following his internal brace elbow procedure. That surgery was in 2023. Arm strength is fine, like, and range is outstanding. Anticipation, baseball field. So defensively, they're a much better team

when Trevor Story is on the field. How long can he be on the field for? I don't know. Like last year was a very fluke-ish injury when you're talking about shoulders subluxation as well as a glenoid rim fracture that results from just diving awkwardly. Like it's that's that one's a little bit random and it's not like that's you can't say that he's

injury prone based on a traumatic injury. Right. But but nonetheless, like there's been a succession of non-traumatic injuries that have been cumulative wear and tear. And what that does to a player's career arc is really hard to say, right? Like he's played so little over the last three years. I think he's at 163 career games with the Red Sox in three years. So how much that affects, you know,

your overall timing and feel of the plate and how that corresponds with no longer being a guy in your late 20s, but now in your early 30s. Like, I don't know what to expect from him offensively. I saw one great month from him as a member of the Red Sox in May of 2022, and he hasn't been on the field long enough or in a healthy enough fashion to know A, whether or not he can stay healthy and B, whether or not, you know, he can be some facsimile of Rocky's Trevor story in the coming year.

No idea. But he's healthy and he's encouraged by how he feels physically and he works really hard. So those are reasons for the Red Sox to have hope. But it is hope rather than certainty. Sure. With Kausas, super weird injury. Like he said that it's like it was, you know, it's basically an injury that happens to football players when they're hit really hard,

but his happened because he was swinging. And that's not great because you do a lot of swinging in baseball. Yeah. But he says that that is a non-factor at this point when he swings. But yeah, and he says that he's been assured that it should not be a repetitive stress injury, but because it's a unique thing, I don't know how you could say with certainty that you know that it's not going to be a recurring thing. But if he's healthy, then you're looking at a guy who has like legit middle of the order patience and power with a lot to build on.

And if something were to happen to story again, which let's hope that it doesn't, but there's a precedent there, then how would they piece things together at short? I mean, I guess now there's a surplus of infielders at some positions, but how did it go last year? Talk to us about Sedon Raffaella, who hopefully will be able to focus on centerfield this season, but everyone they mixed and matched with last year, did they sort out who will actually be a part of this Red Sox roster, even if Story is healthy? I think it's, it's a little bit fluid there because right now, they do want Rafaela to focus on centerfield. That's their ideal outcome. The extent to which he's going to be an option at shortstop, I'm intrigued to see how that plays out in spring

training and then into the season at times when Rafaela isn't playing. But obviously on the near-term horizon, you have Marcelo Meyer, who's going to be, you know, who I think in their ideal scenario would be ticketed for AAA to start the year. He might have been on the cusp of the big leagues. If he had stayed healthy last year, he didn't. So there's another health issue on the prospect front. But Meyer, they would be comfortable with him as a big league shortstop option. Raffaella provides coverage and depending on how, on the degree to which you feel like you need him in the outfield and you want to view the glove is so compelling in centerfield that you're willing to live through the growing pains

offensively. Christian Campbell has been focusing solely on second base thus far, but at the end of last year in the minors, he did get some exposure at shortstop. He didn't exactly look like a fluid natural shortstop, but he converted plays at a pretty high rate. So that's at least a consideration for them. They also have David Hamilton as a possibility to provide some roster coverage. Hamilton is a guy who, like from a metric standpoint, Graves is having tremendous range at both second base and at shortstop because he's super fast.

But his ability to convert plays, you know, to convert range into like outs was somewhat limited. So he's a little bit of a polarizing figure from a data versus like scout standpoint. But he would probably also be in the mix of the Trevor Story glass breaking, right? Like, and I mean, that's not it to suggest that Trevor Story is glass, but you know, in case of emergency break glass, but Trevor Story has been broken a few times, too many to make that at all comical. My apologies to you, Trevor Story and all listeners. make that at all comical. My apologies to you, Trevor Story and all listeners.

Well, speaking of another infielder who seems to be ticketed for AAA, Von Grissom, I just wanted to revisit the Grissom trade, perhaps better known as the Chris Sale trade, because that was a disaster in terms of 2024 results in that Chris Sale goes on to have a complete resurgence with Atlanta, wins his first career Cy Young award. Meanwhile, Grissom doesn't hit in the majors. He spends time in the minors. He gets hurt. So do they look at that as a failure and cry over that

spilt milk or spilt sale? Or do they say this is kind of a classic change of scenery candidate and it just wasn't going to happen here for sale? I don't know that sale was a classic change of scenery guy. He was certainly brittle. At the time of that deal, you even had Alex Anthopoulos talking about it from the standpoint of we're trading because this is a guy who can start playoff games for us and we kind of feel pretty good about the rest of the equation and the irony being that Chris Sale is the one whose regular season durability pushed Atlanta into the postseason but yet was absent from the playoffs as they got evicted instantly. So there's, yeah, strange how things work out. Cacatum non est pictum, if we have any Latin enthusiasts out there. But that's a phrase that I believe means sh**ing isn't painting,

but yeah, that I learned from the German poet Heimer Kainer. This is why you're our favorite guest. Not that we picked favorites. What other preview guests are going to be dropping Latin phrases and citing German poets? Profane Latin phrases. That's the important thing. Those are the best kind. But yeah, so do they view it as a, you know, and Grissom delivered nothing.

In Set in Motion, this turnstile at second base last year contributed to the fact that the Red Sox had the least productive second base position in all of baseball and it was one of the worst positions from a production standpoint in all of baseball. Like separating out just second base just anywhere, right? That was really bad for them. They probably think that there's more that Grissom can offer. He is clearly stronger this year. He had been injured last offseason while playing in Puerto Rican

winter ball. He came to spring training looking kind of undersized and then struggled with hamstring stuff and health overall and it just went very, very badly and never got any better and he really struggled to hit the ball with any, with like legitimate big league impact at any point until the very, very end of last year. He's clearly stronger this year. He looks to be in better physical condition. So I think that you're right that he's probably ticketed for AAA to start the year.

Like I think that he's now behind Christian Campbell on their depth chart, which is wild because Campbell is nowhere near their future big league projections at the beginning of last year. But he's had this unique rise to prospect fame and yeah so probably their hope is that Grissom early in the season provides depth and then he's probably blocked because you're going to have Campbell and you're going to have Meyer and you're probably looking at some point once you feel comfortable with your big league depth setup you're probably looking to deal Vaughn Grissom and you hope that you hope that you're probably looking at some point, once you feel comfortable with your big league depth setup, you're probably looking to deal Vaughn Grissman. You hope that you're not dealing him when his value is at its nadir. When Eric Longinhagen wrote Christian Campbell's prospect blurb,

he comped the change in Campbell's swing to something akin to what Jaron Duran went through when he came into the Red Sox organization where they were able to retool his offensive approach and unlock something. And Duran had an interesting 2024. It was an incredibly productive season for him as a player. There was obviously the two game suspension related to the slur. I want to talk more about sort of how this outfield is piecing together and then use that as an opportunity for you to talk about Roman Anthony because we kind of got to talk

about Roman Anthony. But talk to us about the outfield as it is meant to be played on opening day and then are there circumstances under which we might see Anthony in a big league uniform in 2025? So circumstances, I would be shocked if Roman Anthony isn't in the big leagues at some point in 2025. Like he is, you know, he dominated in AAA in a brief exposure, although, you know, it's really hard to assess performance relative to level. I'm sure you, you know, we all know that the minor leagues are a mess.

But you know, within that messiness, Roman Anthony was basically the best player on the field just about any time he stepped on the field in triple A in the last month and a half of last season. So based on that, absolutely think that he's going to be in the big leagues at some point in 2025. I think that if the other members of the Red Sox outfield are healthy, That's probably not at the beginning of 2025. And instead, you're looking at, you know, Duran being an anchor in the outfield, obviously, Willier Obreu, who was a gold glover in right field and who had a very nice run of being a productive hitter,

you know, good OVPs, you know, more doubles power than than than true like plus power. But I think that like based on ISO, you're probably looking at a 45 to 50 grade power profile along with above average OVP ability and well above average defense. That's a good outfield, or whether it's in a platoon role as the left-handed hitter against right-handed pitchers or if he proves that he can earn some playing time against left-handed pitchers, that's TBD. But he's clearly and firmly in the mix.

Raffaella clearly and firmly in the mix, although, you know, I think that his spot is, even though they signed him to a long-term deal last spring, you know, I think that he still has to kind of earn his role to some degree, and that's going to require him to be a more selective hitter than he was throughout last year, because even though Fenway masked some of his deficiencies, right, he was able to lift the ball in the air to left field

at Fenway enough that it made some of his overall numbers look okay, like the quality of at bats, this is someone who's who is not yet an established major league hitter. But he's a spectacular major league defender who is a game changer in that role. But he's part of the mix for for opening day pretty clearly. Rob Refsnyder is part of the right-handed hitting equation who will be able to spell a Breyew whenever he needs to blow. At some point, I do expect Christian Campbell whenever he's in the big leagues, and that could be on opening day.

His primary position, if he is in the big leagues, would probably be second base, but he would also be a consideration for left field. So yeah, they have an array of options that they feel relatively good about. But I think that the addition of Roman Anthony, it's somewhere on the horizon and probably on the not too distant horizon. Don't worry about those occasional door opens and door closes, by the way, because after our Mariner segment last week,

we're conditioned to that. We're used to it. Continuing to take flack. We should actually pause each time to think metaphorically, whether or not like, you know, or to guess whether or not it is a door opening or a door closing and what that means in that moment.

There's probably some German poetry about that. So this might be another multi-parter, but given the strength of the Red Sox system, they're toward the top of the organizational rankings, regardless of the source and those top prospects you mentioned. Has there been any firer's remorse about Heim Blum, who's been brought in by the Cardinals to revamp their player development and then take over their baseball ops next year?

Which is not to say anything negative about their current regime, but given that some of his work has come to fruition or is about to when it comes to the young players, is there a sense that, hey, they cut bait too soon? And I guess what changes have you seen since he has been let go when it comes to the pitching pipeline, let's say specifically? I think most of the, like most of the, why exactly did Chaim get let go? Like most of those types of questions come from outside the organization. You know, you like, you'll hear a number of executives from other teams saying, like, so he did exactly what he was supposed to do and he still got fired for it. That's a fair critique.

I think that the Red Sox decision makers who decided to fire Hyam Bloom, I think that there has not been that sense of firers remorse. Nicely done, Ben. Say it in German now. I think that as they were going to be transitioning from the build phase into the compete phase, there were concerns at different levels with the organization about about whether or not bloom was going to be decisive enough in terms of the types of transactions that they were going to want to make to really turbocharge the the quote-unquote wind cycle whether that's fair or not like I'm not sure like none of us do because high and bloom

never really had that like you know that clear lane on the win cycle. It was always balance present and future or aim for future wins rather than present wins. But I don't think that there's regret. I think that at an ownership level, they feel very happy about the approach in the tone that's being struck by Breslow, where last offseason, he was very transparent in saying, you know, we are not going to sacrifice future wins for now wins. That would be a mistake on their part.

Then he shifted on that by the trade deadline and said, OK, it's time for us to shift a little bit in pursuit of more now wins, even though those moves didn't end up going particularly well for them at the deadline. And then this offseason, he was very clear alongside ownership in saying it is like the Red Sox fan base and the Red Sox have waited long enough to make winning in the season to come their clear priority. So I think that there's comfort at the ownership level with regards to the tone that he's striking. In terms of the differences organizationally that have happened, there are a lot that have happened beneath the hood.

There was a pretty major restructure that happened to some elements of the front office that was in the wake of an audit that was conducted throughout last season. They kind of restructured who's reporting where. There were some layoffs that happened. So there's a lot of beneath the hood stuff that did occur. On top of that, like you asked specifically about the pitching stuff, that was kind of Breslow's first priority. He got, you know, elbows deep in terms of thinking about what is it that the Red Sox

are trying to develop? How is it that they are going about that development process? They hired a director, a pitcher, Justin Willard, who had been with the Twins. They're just building out stuff really aggressively and more specifically building out stuff in a way that they're trying to reach conclusions about whether or not players are developing tools that will play in the big leagues or not. And so they'll have very direct conversations with a player about like, this is what your slider looks like right now. And if that's your slider, then you're probably not going to be a big league contributor

with the Red Sox. And so we need to be able to tweak the dials, whether it's like V-Low or whether it's like, you know, whether this shape or something along those lines. They'll just have a lot of very direct conversations about like, if you want to be, you know, like for us to be able to develop you as a pitcher, this is what has to happen.

It's all kind of like a problem solving paradigm where they'll say like, this is what we have to fix in order to make you a valuable contributor. And then they're going after it. But there's been, you know, huge increases in the minors as was very evident in the big leagues in terms of the use of non-fastballs

and the development of non-fastballs. There's also been a huge emphasis on the type of training that is meant to maximize stuff and to push the upper ranges of players, velocities and all that good stuff. I'm not sure if last year was the first year that they started awarding t-shirts that said, I throw fuego to every pitcher who throws a hundred. Or if that was the previous year, I think it was last year. So that's cool too. Apparel is a difference. 05 Well, as we know, encouraging everyone to throw, Max effort constantly couldn't

possibly backfire in any way. So- 05 What could go wrong? 05 To go back to Bloom for a second, I guess it's not unlike when Ben Charrington was cut loose and then his work continued to pay dividends for the Red Sox for years to come, including a championship that just happens sometimes. And also if you wanted to critique him, some of the big swings he did take, even if you don't blame him for the Mookie trade, which he was ordered to do, but things like the story signing or the Yoshida signing have not worked out so swimmingly. So there are critiques one can make.

Yeah, the Bloom-Cherrington analogy is a very fair one, particularly given the similarities of the terms of both of those guys. Most of their major deals didn't work out terrifically well for them, at least not during the time when they were with the team. That did contribute to their dismissals. But you mentioned the changes in pitch usage that the Red Sox made last year and that worked out really well, at least early in the year at the big league level. And then maybe it didn't work so well down the stretch and whether that was because the tactics stopped working or just because

the personnel wasn't really there, that there were a bunch of converted starters who'd been in the bullpen previously and maybe they just ran out of gas. But how much mileage can they continue to get out of tweaking pitch selection at that level? And not all of the guys who were there in that rotation last year are still in the rotation this year, but can they continue to get good work out of Tanner Hauck types guys who paid off for them in unanticipated ways last season? Yeah, I guess, you know, unknowable as to like whether or not it is repeatable, but

it was super interesting watching them through the first couple of months of the season where literally everyone on their staff was outperforming their career tracks. So things started out terrifically well for them with regards to the proverbial low-hanging fruit of pitch usage changes. And then the low-hanging fruit turned out to be lemons with finite amounts of juice, right? So they juice them and, uh, and. Alex Spear says red Sox are juicing. That will be the takeaway from this segment. To the drama. In cactum non est pictum.

Yes. Yes. The drama meter has been turned up again. It happened. Um, yeah. So I think, uh, they, they actually recognize that and we're kind of open about it, both Breslow and pitching coach Andrew Bailey acknowledged late in the season that they had probably tried to push it too far

to the point of becoming more predictable. So they were going to have to be kind of proceed more thoughtfully with regards to how, how mixing and matching happens moving forward. You would think that there are like, there's an optimum usage for pitchers, right? Like there is, there's a best way for pitchers to deploy their pitches

and the frequency with which a team is capable of tapping into that? Dunno. I think that it is something that can be repeated, that can be identified and repeated like at a league average level or above average level, but we'll see. At a certain point, you're probably also making poor decisions for an individual pitcher. But in trying to think whether or not there can be more Tanner Houks moving forward, the one thing that we did see was them creating a lot of avenues for pitchers to have Tanner Houk-like seasons, right? They were fully committed for a full season to Houk in the rotation, to Cutter Crawford in the rotation, and to Brian Bayo in the rotation.

And they were in a sense rewarded, rewarded by all of them being able to stay on the mound for full seasons and experiencing development. So I think that they're going to continue to try to keep lanes open for young starting pitchers to develop, but they don't have any of those guys in the immediate future. Right now, you have Richard Fitz, you have Quinn Priestor, and you have Hunter Dobbins as kind of younger, not yet established starting pitchers. But they're right now like pushed more as depth guys rather than guys with clear lanes into the rotation. That could change. The Red Sox have actually had a decent number of injuries at the start of spring training.

Baio has been a little bit behind. He may be on injuries at the start of spring training. Bayo has Bayo has been a little bit behind. He may be on time for the start of the season. Cutter Crawford is already already looks like he's going to open the year on the injured list due to a knee injury that he was pitching through last year. So we'll see. I think that their their view is that the guys with higher ceiling are a little bit further down the road, the ones for whom they will be actively trying to open up those opportunities. But I do think that in general, they are trying to,

they're very mindful of trying to create a renewable pitching pipeline. So just from the standpoint of opportunity, I think that it will happen again, but I don't know the timetable on which it'll happen. And some of the guys who they are going to lean on in the rotation who are currently healthy haven't always been healthy or have been recently healthy but still clearly working back from prior injury. This is all a way of me asking, what did they see from Walker Buehler in the postseason to make them think he was one of their guys for 2025? Good stuff, good performance, good mechanics.

Buehler had been kind of all over the place in his mechanics coming back from TJ, from that second TJ last year. Teams react now to three and four start cycles. The first example of that was Rich Hill when he came to the Red Sox as a starting pitcher out of Indie Ball at the end of 2015. And he made four really exceptional starts at the end of the year. And boom, the A's paid him six million bucks and that was an incredible bargain.

That was for me kind of the start of teams being willing to view four starts or so as a three, four starts as being a pretty intriguing sample size. And so the fact that Bueller was his first start of the playoffs had a bad line, but he actually pitched very well. The stuff was very good. And he managed that game well, despite the fact that he had a really bad first inning based on kind of bad luck outcomes with some batted balls, blah, blah, blah. He was good. And then he was tremendous in the next two starts and then obviously looked great at the looks great in that final inning of work in Yankee Stadium. So I think that they saw enough of Walker Bueller like having a full array of weapons

to think that he has a chance to be, let's say a mid rotation starter for them and someone who again has kind of positive externalities when it comes to bringing a little bit of established like swagger to, you know, I mean his name is Walker, right? So that kind of gives you a leg up in terms of the proverbial cowboy mentality. So I think that they viewed him as being a potential, based on what they saw at the end of last year, potential mid-rotation contributor who has a presence that can help other younger pitchers on the staff. I like you leaning into the cowboy iconography than the very obvious, he's a pitcher whose

name is Walker and that could be some negative, non-native determinism. And speaking of formerly injured guys, the Red Sox are also relying on a bunch of other people who have had Tommy John surgery or internal brace repair and are returning from that. Liam Hendricks, Garrett Whitlock, Patrick Sandoval. Tell us how's the... Don't forget Lucas Gialito who was throwing live batting. Lucas Gialito, of course. Yes. I saw him throw a live batting practice session today the first time he faced hitters in almost exactly a year. Just under. Okay. Yeah. So tell us about that quartet, I guess, rounding out the rotation potentially and then the

back end of the bullpen. Yeah. I think, you know, thus far, Gialito is featuring pretty solid velocity. He was sitting 94, 95 today in that first session against hitters. So that's a good baseline. But he's going to be working his way back to feel for his full arsenal in those competitive situations. But he felt good about the time that he has to do that.

And Lucas Gialito was signed last year to be a mid-rotation starter. This year, he's like a number five starter for them, right? Like, expectations are, the needs for him are somewhat measured because they have a gar crochet. Oh, that's not a door closing. We have a dog opening its mouth. So, you know, so yeah, but G Alito appears healthy. Whitlock, the reviews are very, very positive

and encouraged about what he's going to be able to bring to the bullpen as kind of a multi-innings weapon in a role akin to what he offered in 2021. Again, with him, there's a long injury history over the last three years. So there's a kind of prove it element to it, but from a stuff standpoint, he has a lot of stuff that can get swings and misses

and make him a very valuable, very well-leveraged pitcher. Hendricks, I have no idea, haven't seen him against hitters, and it's been a long time, and he's not young at this point. I think that they feel good about where he's at from a health standpoint. If he's anything like what he was a few years ago, pre-cancer, then that's a great addition for them. But I think that we shouldn't take for granted

any of the things that Liam Hendrix has been going through over the last few years. So to just say, oh, he'll be performing as he did from 19 to 21 as one of the truly elite late innings relievers. There's a lot of assumption there. So I think that you have to kind of hedge your bets as they did by signing guys like Chapman and trying to give themselves more options with more late innings options, depending on how things shake out. And Sandoval, I think a best case scenario with him would be available, you know, in the last couple of months of the season, but surgery is more recent for him than for the other guys.

And so I think that was a contract that was signed primarily for its 2026 impact. You mentioned Chapman. They also brought in Justin Wilson this offseason. Talk to us about how that bullpen is going to sort of fit together and how they're going to bridge to the guys like Hendrix and Chapman. You know, it's interesting that we

identify Hendrix and Chapman as obviously Dennings candidates. There's there's a lot of formlessness right now to to how it's all going to be put together because there's there is a lot that needs to be proven in terms of stuff and how guys bounce back and what they're capable of doing.

I think, honestly, there are two people who have very clear pathways to late innings roles, and that's Chapman, who was signed with that in mind, right? Like last year, he pitched anywhere from the seventh through the ninth inning and innings, and I think that that's probably the case again with the Red Sox this year and then the other guy who is who they clearly I as being kind of a Late-innings monster is Justin Slayton who was a rule five pick a year ago good power stuff

Kind of 97 ish 98 ish Fastball with a nasty cutter good slider 97-ish, 98-ish, fastball with a nasty cutter, good slider. Like he's someone who profiles into the back end for them. And then they had a really nice flash of a debut from Luis Guerrero last year, who's a pretty interesting story as a guy who due to a childhood surgery has stiffness, lifelong stiffness in his right knee

and has overcome that to nonetheless be able to throw in the upper 90s with a very good slider and a good splitter. And he doesn't have a pedigree but he has potential late inning stuff. They have a whole bunch of guys who have a lot of stuff and how that all gets put together is going to be a really interesting work in progress throughout the spring. Whitlock among them, Whitlock would be very important for them. I think that they view it as very important, especially because they would like to have a six man

rotation at various points. Having multiple multi-inning relievers is going to be significant for them. So Whitlock and Josh Winkowski are going to be significant potential contributors in those roles. Well, nobody has better stuff than Garrett Crochet. We talked about that acquisition. Maybe we can briefly consider the possibility of an extension. It is after all extension season. Will he make it to free agency or will the Red Sox sign him long term?

There's a pretty decent incentive on both sides here, right? Like Crochet is making what, like three million bucks this year. He's made some money in his career. He was a first round pick and so he had a legit signing bonus coming out of college. But there is an opportunity for him to establish, you know, true, like, you know, to establish enormous wealth that he might not take for granted by virtue of the fact that he has come through Tommy John and he has one full year as a starter. On the other hand, he's also very aware that what his position would be in the market

is very different if he has another great season in which he shows stuff that compares to literally anyone in the big leagues in terms of, well, I guess maybe Skeens is in kind of a class of his own, but anyone else in the big leagues in terms of, well, I guess maybe Skeens is in kind of a class of his own, but you know, anyone else in the big leagues. Will there be an extension? Like my guess is yes. I think that the Red Sox are going to be pretty aggressive in exploring extensions for a number of players, whether it's Crochet or whether it's some of the young guys, those would represent

the top targets right now. But my presumption is that yes, there will be an extension, but do I take that for granted by no means. Okay, last thing I wanna ask you before our final, final question. The Red Sox have been big on Netflix lately. So on the heels of the comeback, the 2004 Boston Red Sox docu-series from last year,

we are going to get the clubhouse, a year with the Red Sox comingu-series from last year. We are going to get The Clubhouse, a year with The Red Sox, coming in early April. And I was excited by this project. As I think I said at the time, The Red Sox seemed like among the more boring teams that one could choose to follow throughout the entirety of the 2024 season. And despite some excitement, I think that was kind of born out. In fact, Alex Cora himself said that he joked to the director, Greg Whiteley, bro, how are you going to make this look good? We played 500 baseball, which was what they were expected to play.

So exceeded for some of us. Yeah. Yeah. Right. So is there excitement among fans, the organization? Are people wary of this? Are they thinking there's going to be some Red Sox Netflix bump coming here that people will really be following this? I think it's nice that they didn't choose one of the more exciting teams last season just because

it goes to show that, or it could go to show that you could craft an interesting documentary about any team if you have that sort of access. So is the Red Sox organization happy that they decided to do that, I guess, or is it too soon to say? I think right now they feel good about that decision. I think that it'll be interesting to see whether or not there are parts of the documentary that flip over a couple of rocks that make them less enthusiastic about it. But I hope so. I hope that there are some, you know, like, right, it's not going to be an interesting documentary if there aren't things that make it kind of unexpected

and compelling. There were some clips that were previewed at a winter fan fest at Fenway in January. And it gave little windows into some of the access that the documentary had. And I found it totally fascinating because it was like behind the scenes. Some of it was like mic'd up behind the scenes,

in game stuff that you don't get to see. That I, as a reporter, do not have access to these kind of, you know, like how Brian Baio talks himself through an outing between innings was like super interesting to me. Like watching him like, you know, players like both beat themselves up and how they engage in self-talk in order to kind of position themselves to, uh, to have

success on the field and getting into some of the nuts and bolts, like, like it's almost misleading that it's the clubhouse, right? Like, you know, let's, let's move away from defend, from definite articles. Let's go with indefinite articles. Like it is a clubhouse and it exposes, like to me, the little bit that we saw, it was about a 20 minute reel that had been edited by the aforementioned Greg Whiteley.

And it just offered a very humanized perspective of what this really weird workplace is. And so I'm looking forward to it. I do feel like there are going to be some uncomfortable things that get brought to light by the documentary, but I also think that those will be illuminating. And yeah, I think that to this point,

I think that most people on the Red Sox are primarily excited about what comes of it, in part because I think the Netflix crew really did handle themselves in pretty impressive fashion in being around the team. They did a good job of earning the trust of basically everyone they were around, and whether or not they betray that quote unquote,

betray that trust, or whether or not, it'll be really interesting to see the product that they got, but I think that everyone understood the intent that went into, but I think that everyone understood the intent that was, that went into, the intent and effort that went into their work. And they've, that's a crew that's done other great work. So it'll be interesting to see. Well, aside from avoiding controversy when that documentary comes out, what else- Oh, we'll be turning the drama dial. What else would constitute a successful season

for the Red Sox in 2025? What should the goals for the organization and for fans be? I think not only being a team that looks legitimately positioned for 90 plus wins and being a factor in the American League East, not just being a kind of, not just taking the circuitous, we're going to clinch, you know, we have 86 wins and we're going to clinch with like three days to go.

I think behaving and competing like a team that's playing for seven months throughout the season is, that's the standard that they set. At the beginning of the day after the season ended, Craig Breslow and Sam Kennedy said that, basically readjusted the goalpost to say that it's time for the Red Sox to be competing for the AL East and not just to be trying to get

back into the playoffs with 85 wins. They have now behaved like that over the course of an off season in which they've made multiple aggressive moves to bolster the roster. And so I think that, you know, success is going to be judged primarily on that bottom line of whether or not they are a strong playoff, you know, positioning themselves comfortably in the playoff picture.

And then I think secondarily to that is the question of development and the degree to which Christian Campbell, Roman Anthony and Marcel Meyer look like they are helping to advance the longer term vision of the organization to where it's not even a surprise that they're competing for the ALEs,

but that is a year overover-year perennial expectation. I guess Tom Werner's full-throttle quote was just an off-season early, that's all. We are untimely meditations. Oh man, I know the German title of that too. Well, this has probably been our longest preview segment in this series, but that's because we just can't get enough of Alex Speer, but we will have to let him go so that he can write up Raphael Devers' comments and perhaps ratchet down the drama meter for the moment. Alex, thank you very much. You can read him and you should at the Boston Globe. And his book, Homegrown, I guess it's

coming around again. The Red Sox are getting more homegrown after getting less homegrown, so it'll be relevant once more. And yet I will, I will, I will intrude with that, that it is like, it like that book is an anachronism, both because of every player except for Devers, who, whose, whose path to the big league, whose profile is gone. And because the means of getting this next generation of prospects to the big leagues has been so radically divorced from the ones from what I observed watching that group come up. So yeah, it would be, yeah, I don't know, home manufacturer. I don't know. We'll see. Well, right after we finished recording, Alex expressed that talking to us on these previews is one of the highlights of his Spring 2.

I swear, he said it. We didn't get it on tape. But I promise I'm not making it up. The affection is mutual, not unrequited. Now let's take one more quick break and we'll be back with Jason Burke to talk about the Sacramento athletics. It's the zombie runner Bobby Shands, Bobby Shands, Bobby Shands, effectively wild. It's the zombie runner Bobby Shands, Bobby Shands, Bobby Shands, effectively wild. Joey Meneses, walk off three run digger.

Stop it. Walk off three run shot. Oh my God. Meg, he's the best player in baseball. Effectively wild. All right, it is time to preview the first season in Sacramento for the athletics. And we are joined now by Jason Burke,

who covers the A's for Inside the A's at Sports Illustrated. Jason, welcome. Thank you guys so much for having me. I've been a long time listener and it's kind of surreal being here now. Well, thank you. I want to talk about Sacramento and that seems like a good place to lead off. It's interesting because usually you think we'll learn a lot about this team and the

big questions about this team in spring training, but you don't really learn that much about how the A's will adapt to Sacramento when they are at spring training in Mesa. So what do you think are the biggest questions surrounding Sacramento, whether it's attendance, whether it's the facilities, what have A's players said about their expectations, how the park will play, the conditions, etc.? I mean, it seems like they're expecting sellouts for nearly every game, if not every game. It holds 14,000 people, so it's not too many, and that's including grass seats. So selling out shouldn't be too big of an issue here with a team on the rise in a brand new city, with a city that wants to try and either keep the A's or get a team of their own.

So, attendance wise, I think that they're probably feeling okay. But in terms of the amenities and all that stuff, that's what the players were really talking about last year was the amenities. And basically, the one hang up seemed to be getting to the clubhouse. The clubhouse is going to be in left field and there's going to be no tunnel that connects the two. So they have to just walk through the outfield to go get to the clubhouse, which is going to be a little interesting because we heard Paul Blackburn and a number of other guys

throughout the season talk about how in the middle of a game they want to go grab their water or go grab something from the clubhouse. Now it's going to be a little trickier to do that. In terms of how the park's going to play, I've definitely asked ASGM David Forrest about that a few times. He's basically like, I mean we don't know yet because we know how it has played and it's played more pitcher friendly for the PCL, but in terms of throwing major league hitters in there and seeing what they can do,

you know, your average AAA hitter is not Aaron Judge. So we'll see how it plays from there. The A's have added some ground ball guys as perhaps a way to get around the extra home runs that may happen. So we'll see how that all works out. Yeah, maybe we can start with some of their pitching additions because the lineup is, I think, fairly exciting. We'll talk about some of their young hitters in a second. But what about Luis Severino and Jeffrey Springs who were signed and traded for? What appealed to the athletics about those two guys? And how were they able to sell Sacramento

to Luis Severino? Severino said that it was actually his buddy and old Yankee teammate Miguel Andujar that actually sold him on the clubhouse and all that stuff. And then I think that the A's sold him on giving him the most expensive deal in franchise history. So he's a veteran presence. He's a known name. So that grabbed the headlines, which is what I think they were mostly after. And then he's also an innings, he can go out there and get you some innings as he showed last year. And then with

Jeffrey Springs, he's a guy that has shown some top of the rotation stuff. How healthy he's going to be is going to be the big question. Forrest, when they acquired him, said that if he hadn't been injured, this is not a guy that they would have been able to go get. So they're excited about the potential there with Springs and they're hoping for just innings and stability at the top of the rotation from both those guys. And they actually spent the eighth most money this offseason that counts free agents and say extensions for our buddy Brent Rooker. And they were just outside of the top 10 in free agent spending exclusively. But still to be in the top 10 for spending heading into Sacramento.

And there were some guys who seemingly balked it going there. There was Mark Katze commenting on Walker Bueller rejecting Sacramento and then maybe walking back whether that was actually so explicit. But was it largely motivated or entirely motivated as some reporting suggested by a desire to avoid a grievance, getting revenue sharing, you got to spend a certain amount to avoid the ire of the players association. Was it about making a more positive first impression in Sacramento? Was it about, hey, this roster is seemingly right around the point where it could contend given that this was a 500-ish team for at least half of last season? 06. I think that entering this off season, they had to change the narrative about spending.

The big question is going to be whether or not that continues for the next two, three, four seasons. Brent Rucker's contract is still heavily backloaded. So if things don't go right and Vegas falls apart or something like that happens, then they can still trade them without having to spend too much money upfront there. Yeah, there's a lot of weird stuff going on there. I tend to agree with Evan Jerelek who first reported that they needed to avoid the grievance and what are they at? Like 107 right now? It's not much above the 105 threshold that they needed to reach there.

So it's not like they've spent a huge amount of money and according to Evan, you know, 70 million of that is in revenue sharing. So really how much are they spending on the payroll there? And then they have a big TV deal and stuff. So sure, they're spending. But if you're paying attention to like the nitty gritty there, it's like, yeah, sure, they spent some money. They should have been doing this the whole time, right? Yeah, they're 29th in payroll to be clear.

So they're spending more than the Marlins who are like, you know, come at us, grievance. File away. You mentioned, you know, if Vegas falls apart and I swear we are going to talk more about the team itself because there's this weird split where you have to talk about the state of the franchise, but also like the roster they've put together isn't, well, it's not going to probably challenge to win the ALS, but it's not unexciting. But we have to talk about the franchise piece of it.

Where do things stand in terms of the ballpark in Vegas, and how likely do you find it that they will eventually break ground and play there? I mean, looking at the pieces in place, it's hard to see it happening on the timeline that they're giving us, which is, you know, June is when they're supposed to break ground by the end of June. And you're like, all right, well, there's a lot that still needs to happen here. And they just submitted a proposal, the land use permit with the county and that was missing 5,000 parking spots. So they came up with like a third of the parking spots that the county requires. And so that seems very familiar for people in Oakland where

they're like, yeah, no, that's what they did. They just kept moving goal posts and then they just, oh, we ran out of time. We didn't get to get it done. The overarching thing is that John Fisher and his family are gonna have to put in 1.1 billion dollars at the very least of their own money and given Everything that we've seen from Fisher in the past It's just hard to imagine that happening it very well could and there are big money players in Vegas They could definitely get this across the finish line for him But I mean he's been looking for a partner in Vegas for this entire time

He hired a firm to go find him a partner and he hasn't been able to to get one of those yet so it looks like he's gonna be on the hook for the whole thing and whether or not that changes things in addition to you know you know services and custom goods also rising as well maybe it's not gonna be as feasible to do this as he had planned just a couple of years ago. You've been covering the A's for a while. What's your sense of the current makeup of their fan base? What percentage of A's fans right now are people who've been A's fans forever as opposed to people who are just jumping on board because they're in the Sacramento area or they're Las Vegas residents or something? And what percentage of the existing Oakland

fan base is still following the A's, is still rooting for the A's. It's hard to tell immediately because the Vegas people are, you know, so far in the future that who knows if when they'll latch on. Sacramento seems to be getting a little bit more excited about the team getting there. They did some like a little not a press tour but they sent over like Rooker and Lawrence Butler, JP Sears and JJ Bladay to Sacramento to watch a Kings game and they did some community outreach and stuff and that seemed to kind of inspire the people but in general I think that it's kind of they're looking for fans right now. I don't know who the A's fans are currently which is tricky. I think that it's kind of, they're looking for fans right now. I don't know who the A's fans are currently, which is tricky.

I know that there's still some people that have followed them forever and they're like, you know, whatever. They're still my team. They're not that far away yet. And maybe they're just pushing that off until they go to Vegas. Because that's a little bit harder of a drive to get to for one game without having to stay overnight. We're Sacramento's an hour and a half up north. There's just a lot of feelings around it because, you know, as a lot of people wrote

about, myself included, baseball in general, just a sport that you go to with your family. And there's just those family memories there. And it's hard to just toss those away immediately. So it's a grieving process and people are doing it in their own time and in their own ways right now Well, maybe we can talk a little bit about the team that Sacramento wins Sacramento and Sacramentoites. How does one refer to a resident of Sacramento? I think it's just Sacramento's Sacramento's that Sacramento's will be rooting for so we we talked about Severino and Springs a little bit.

Talk to us about the rotation after those guys and then the depth that, I keep wanting to say Oakland and that remains wrong, that the A's have behind those guys if there is any injury or underperformance. Well, I mean, I think the roster resource pretty much nailed it according to how everybody's been lined up in

spring training. You got Severino in springs, one, two, and then it looks like they got Osvaldo Bito in the third spot there and he's a guy that could break out this season. We'll see. He had a nice little run last year that I was excited about and then he was injured to end of the year, but he's an interesting guy for sure. Then you got JP Sears probably slotting in fourth and then he was injured to end of the year but he's an interesting guy for sure. Then you got JP Sears probably slotting in fourth and then Mitch Spence fifth. Sears has been a league average pitcher who can make all of his starts the last two years and so that's something that a team like the A's could definitely use just as they keep trying to get to that next level.

And then Mitch Spence was a rule five pick last year. He was solid. He ate innings. He hit a spot. He was pretty good. And then they got Ken Waldechuk hurt right now. He's not on the 60 man yet, but he will be eventually. I think they're hoping for him around the all-star break, if not a little bit later. And then beyond that, you got a slew of guys. You got Jacob Lopez, who they also got in the Springs deal, who looked good in his first outing of spring, two scoreless innings. Joey Estes is one guy that's seemingly on the outside looking in. He's a bulldog though.

He was, he was very inspiring to watch a few times last year. He had the, the Maddox that he threw against the angels. The one question mark with him going into Sacramento Is that his ground ball rate was like 25%? It was one of the worst in the majors and Going into Sacramento where you don't necessarily know how the ball is gonna play that could be an issue and could have him start In triple-a just while he's figuring things out there. Hope and Harris had a good year last year He's a lefty the numbers were solid. he had like a 2-9 ERA, but his FIP was over four, so I think that he outperformed

some of the metrics a little bit there. But he was solid, he was basically, he told me, I believe it might have been the last game in Oakland, that he figured out that he sees guys pop balls up during batting practice, and he's like, so if they can do that during BP, then I can just throw it down the middle. It's fine. I don't need to be hitting dotting corners all the time.

It seems like he may have unlocked something mentally there. Then there's Brady Basso and JT Gann are also down in that mix as well. They've got a lot of guys, whether or not they're all guys that will get them to the 500 mark, which is where they're hoping to be, remains to be seen. But they've got a lot of young inexperienced guys that I think they're hoping to have take a step forward in 2025. While we're talking pitching, I guess we can talk about the bullpen. This is exciting. Usually we start hitters and then go pitchers.

So we're switching things up today, keeping people guessing. But why do you think the A's have held on to Mason Miller, despite all the trade rumors over the past year? And how do you think the rest of the bullpen hierarchy shakes out behind him? The way that I saw it was if they didn't trade Mason Miller last trade deadline, then they kind of have to hold on to him. Just because if you trade Mason Miller, who is arguably, I mean, him and Brent Rooker are two of the most well-known players on that team. But if you trade him away, then it's like, oh, it's the same old days, no matter what else they do.

So you have to hold on to him for that specific reason. And he was really solid. I talked to him at the end of the year and he said that, you know, if he performed well, he knew that he'd be sticking in the bullpen just because that's how that goes. So he's definitely going to be the closer. They added Jose Leclerc, who helped pitch the Texas Rangers to a World Series. So that kind of experience, I think, is going to be helpful for this still very young group. Behind them, you got Tyler Ferguson and Michael O'Tonyes.

They made their debuts last year. They pitched pretty well O'Tonyes was a guy that they kind of tend to go after where they have high walk rates but high strikeout rates and then you just kind of hope that you can lower the the walk rate a little bit and then See what he does and he was pretty solid. So that's their their late inning mix right there You got Miller and Leclerc, those are eight, nine, and then you got Ferguson and Netanje, who could be seven or eight, depending on the day. They also re-signed TJ McFarland,

who had a really, really high ground ball rate. That was their first signing of the off season. Really broke the bank on that one. And he's been solid for the A's. He liked being in that clubhouse and he wanted to stick with them. So yeah, they've got a lot of interesting guys, including rule five pick Noah Murdock, who we'll see if he sticks with the team generally with the A's unless somebody is just real bad. They stick with the team to start the season.

So I'm imagining that he'll be there for opening day and we'll see how he does from there. Hosted by Ben, we can talk about the hitters now. We can move to the hitters if it would make you feel better. And it would seem silly to start anywhere, but with friend of the podcast, Brent Rooker, who despite his promises did not announce on the pod his extension. Five years, $60 million. Rookers 2024 obviously went tremendously well despite some injury stuff and really just DHing.

He was a five-win player for the athletics, 164 WRC+. His babbit suggests there might be a bit of regression there, but obviously an incredible hitter, great story. So what went into the extension? How did the athletics decide they wanted to be in the prolonged Brent Rooker business? And how do you think they got this done with Brent? I mean, he's one of those guys where I think his age kind of played a factor in that where he's 30 years old now, and they could give him that extension, but not have to go too far beyond what they would already have him for and another PR move to it to a degree

you know also he's a really good hitter and he's a good guy to have in the clubhouse he's a solid veteran he's you know as I think he's told you guys before he has had all of those different roles on a team he's been the guy that's just bussing between AAA and the majors. He's been a bench guy. He's now been an all-star and should have been a two-time all-star, if we're being honest. He's really solid. And I did follow up with him at the beginning of the season and asked him if he watched the Haunted Pool movie. And he said that he had not.

And I think that you guys also asked him that recently. CB And still came back on the pod, shockingly. BF Yeah. So let's talk about the other big bopper in that lineup who paired with him as just a pretty devastating combo down the stretch. Lawrence Butler, who many people have been picking as a breakout candidate, and as both we and Brent Rooker agree, is not one because he already broke out last year, and it was really just a fascinating season for him, struggling early on, getting demoted to the minors, coming back, and being one of the best hitters in baseball

from that day forward. So what changed with him, and can he keep that up? It was fairly simple actually. The coaches just told him to keep his head still and he did that. And then he went on to hit 300 with a 345 OBP in the second half, a 155 WRC+. He was a top 10 hitter in baseball because he kept his head still. So easy.... Easy. I could do that. Pretty simple fix. Yeah. Zach Galoff has not had the same luck.

His fixes were a little bit more in depth, I think. So that's why he's been struggling a little bit. But I mean, Lawrence Butler and Brent Rucker formed one of the best duos in baseball. I think the only one that beat him last year was Judgen Soto. So we'll see if they can contend with being the top duo over the course of a full season and see how that goes.

And his season might not have been quite as superlative as either butlers or rookers, but I want to talk about JJ Bladay because I had given up on JJ Bladay. I was convinced that we knew who JJ Bladay was as a player and he had a fantastic 2024. He played almost every game. He had a 120 WRC plus. You know, the defense is what it is. But what changed for Bladay and what are you expecting from him in 2025? He said that he just started going with the pitches.

You know, he was using the whole field a little bit more. He was trying to go to the opposite field a little bit. And you saw that with his approach and just being able to collect hits much more frequently. And that kind of just unlocked a different version of him because he was below the Mendoza line coming into last season and then, you know, he had 243. So there's still some, some progression that could happen there. He said that he would like to hit 40 home runs. How feasible that is, I'm not sure,

but that seems like a goal. Yeah, there's still some room for him to improve both offensively and most importantly defensively, I think. He was solid in center, but I mean, as you guys had with your fun fact, he was slower than catcher Shay Langelier's, but he does have Mark Kotze as his manager. Kotze is a former center fielder, so they work together a decent amount and he's been

getting better with his reads and his first step and all that stuff. It's a process, is really what it is. I think they're hoping for big things from JJ moving forward. You're really proving you're effectively Wild Listener bona fides during this segment, citing multiple previous podcasts. And, and by the way, of all the background sounds that we have from ourselves or podcast guests, the one that we just heard is my favorite. The dog collar shake is my favorite of all background sounds on podcasts. I was like, I need to close all the doors and make this as quiet as

possible after a recent episode. on podcasts. I was like, I need to close all the doors and make this as quiet as possible after a recent episode. Yeah, no, this is a sound that I welcome because then I get to think, oh, there's a doggy there. That's nice. Zach Gelof, you mentioned him. He had a fantastic debut in 2023. He was one of the best players in baseball

from the day he debuted on a very nice 69 games for him in 2023. And last year, not so nice. 82 WRC plus, he was okay. He gave a decent defense and everything, but below average hitter didn't build on the offensive success. In fact, he hit barely more home runs in 547 played appearances last year than he had in 300 played appearances in 2023. So what went wrong or failed to go right for him last year? He had an oblique injury early in the season, then he kind of learned some bad habits that they were trying to get out of them throughout the course of the season. But I mean,

they kept playing them. So there is definitely a confidence in his ability to have success at the big league level, but I mean his strikeout rate went up to 34.4%. So that's not the best. That was actually the worst. It's gonna be interesting to see how the A's approach him this season with higher goals for themselves in 2025. Because if he's again striking out almost 35% of the time and not really... he has the defense but They got a lot of other guys now they can play second base and probably do a little bit better overall so How he fits into the team long term is going to be determined by what he does on the field in the first few Months here I would imagine in his first two games in spring as we're recording this on Tuesday

He has struck out five times and six had bats. So it's not a great start. This is speculation on my part, but I'd be worried about that just snowballing after the season that he had, because baseball is a cerebral game and you want to get off to as good of a start as possible. But again, there's five weeks until opening day, so this could just be a tiny blip and then he figures it out and goes on to have an all-star season too. So we don't

really know what we're going to be getting from Getloff this season, if we're being us. Maybe we can just stick on the infield here and run through some of these other guys because, you know, there have been a number of A's young hitters who have either graduated from prospect eligibility or are about to graduate from prospect eligibility and are forming the basis of this new corps, but they are joined by some veterans. So talk to us about Jacob Wilson, Tyler Soderstrom, and then Gio Arcella, who was an addition this past off season. Jacob Wilson, as you guys know, he just makes contact. He's had the comp to Louisa Rice. He's really good. I mean, he had over 400 in the minor leagues and they were like, well, what else are we going to do?

We can't really wait for him to struggle and then get through that. We just need to bring it up here. So that's what they did. First game out of the All-Star break and then he injured his hamstring going around third. So he missed about a month there. So he missed a couple of months last year between the minors and his big league stint. He hasn't had a lot of time in the big leagues yet, but he's an exciting guy. And I think Fangraphs actually has him projected to be the best player on the A's according to war. So that's something if he hits that, then I think that the A's will be very happy with his development and all that He's bulked up a little bit this offseason, which is something that he definitely wanted to do

He was a he was a skinny guy before and now he's got an extra 15 20 pounds of muscle So hopefully he can unlock a little bit more of his power and all of that with Soderstrom and the goodbye press conference for the season with David Forst He said that they they had told Soderstrom not to put away the catcher's gear just yet. And looking at the backup catcher position, it's an open question of whether or not Soderstrom could be the ace backup catcher, as well as their starting first baseman. Because it's not like the backup was getting a lot of playing time in general, like 150 plate

appearances or so. They could work that and then just have a better offense overall. He's solid. He dealt with some injuries last year, but he had some moments there where it looked like it was really starting to click for him. So I think that the A's are hoping that he can find that again and then just take that into 2025 and beyond. With Gio Richella, he's a veteran and they needed somebody to lock down third base.

Whether or not he's going to be playing every day, I'm not sure because against lefties he was not great. He had a 29 WRC plus, but against righties he had a 97 so he's roughly league average. If they can get league average production out of third base, that would be a huge upgrade. He's also a bit better defender than they had last year with a rotating cast of guys so that's something that they can work with as well. I imagine that they're going to platoon at third base but their other new addition Luis Urias, he also has the same splits so it could be somebody like Darrell Harnes.

There are options there or they could just go with Max Schumann, who's solid as well, if there's enough roster space. So that's going to be how they configure the roster is going to be the interesting question when it comes to third base in particular, but Gio Rochello is going to be there more often than not. I wanted to ask you about Estiore Ruiz because the A's, Braves trade involving Ruiz and Murphy has worked out well for Milwaukee, but not quite as anticipated for either the A's or Atlanta. Of course, William Contreras went to Milwaukee, but Ruiz was hurt for most of last year and he was demoted, then he was recalled, and then the wrist signed- lined him for a long time.

So are they still hopeful that they're going to get the kind of player that they were envisioning here? What will his role even be? I mean, maybe fifth outfielder if he makes the team. He's got the speed, which he definitely showcased with their record 67 stolen bases by a rookie, but they wanted him to tap into his power a little bit more. So you saw a little bit more swing and miss in his game in the spring training and also in his brief time in the big leagues last year. And he also had a couple of home runs late in the season in 2023. So he was getting to his power a little bit, but he just doesn't have enough time on the

field to showcase what he's been working on and what he can do now. I mean, unless he turns things around, these have so many outfield options, especially with Rooker having his surgery and then being okay to go into the outfield if they need him to. Just so many options right now that it's hard to see Ruiz making the team out of camp. But if there's another injury, then maybe he could be there. They also have a lot of guys in the minors that are, you know, chomping at the bit to get to the big leagues. They have some issues of their own, like Colby Thomas strikes out a bit and Denzel Clark is solid, but needs

some more upper level experience. But how he fits long term, I'm not sure what the situation's going to be there for Ruiz at this point in time. 05.00 How's his head stillness? Maybe if he could just keep that thing still, maybe that would help. 05.00 I mean, his helmet did fly off all the time.

So maybe... 06.00 When you can't displace Seth Brown, it's like, this is perhaps not going great. I wanted to ask you about some of that upper level depth that they have in the minors, particularly Clark. Who do you see as the guys who, you know, if Seth Brown continues to post a 91 WRC plus, if they have injuries at the big league level, who are some of the upper level guys who we might see this year? Yeah, I think Clark is one of those guys. He's already on the 40 man. So that's a point in his favor for sure Colby Thomas had some some great power last year. He does still strike out quite a bit though. So that's a little bit

Discouraging they're gonna want him to fix that before he makes it to the big leagues down the depth turn a little bit But Henry Bolte He's been Really solid again. He strikes out a lot, but he has a nice power-speed combo. They've got some guys in the outfield that are going to be chomping at the bit before too long, so they're going to have to figure out what they're doing in the short term. And then their long-term plans are those three guys right there. Not necessarily all three of them, because you still got Bladay and you still got Butler, but in left field, it's going to be one of those three guys for the longer term future

of the A's. Right now it's Andujar and Seth Brown, and we'll see how that works out as a likely platoon. The A's just signed Mark Katze to a three-year extension through 2028, which I guess in theory should get him to Vegas, we will see. But they clearly like Kaze, it seems from afar as if he's done a decent job clubhouse wise. These teams haven't really been expected to win, but at some point during this three year period, the A's will be expected to. And so it seems as if the organization is confident in him, not just stewarding the rebuild and the bottoming out and bringing along young players, but then also potentially

taking the team over the hump when it's really contending. So what have you seen from Katze? Why did the A's want to keep him around? There was already talks going into the offseason with this being his final year on his contract, there was mutual interest on both sides that they wanted to get something done and they eventually did. The day before they announced that I was like, are they going to wait for just a minute just to make sure that he can lead this team when there are expectations? And then they signed him anyway, so it was great.

It's one of those, do you want him to prove it or do you want to reward the loyalty? Because he's had to deal with a whole lot, like more than other major league managers with the whole relocation. He's been the only person that the media is really allowed to talk to about relocation and he's handled it with grace and he's done a great job. The clubhouse loves him because he keeps everybody together. They say that he's like a player himself with his energy and his desire to win and he's a player's manager for sure. Some of the veteran guys that have been there for both Melvin and Katze are like, they have their strong suits but I think I might like Katze just a touch more. Just because of that energy that he brings to the

clubhouse. He's been a solid guy. I know that his record isn't there, but there's a reason there was interest with the Mets and I believe one other team last offseason. He didn't get that job and then the A's just picked up his option. So there's a reason for that and it's because he's well respected and he's doing a pretty good job. So we'll see how it goes moving forward. The team knows the expectations that he has for them this year and I think that he just is a great communicator and they're happy to have him back for a few more years. I am curious about sort of the vibe within the organization, unless the on-field guys, because they seem to have coherared in a way that was obvious

last year and seems like it will continue into this year, but you have the literal relocation. You've had years where what was once a cutting edge player dev organization seems like it's now behind. So what is the general feeling within the front office of the athletics? Do you think that they are moving forward altogether or do you imagine there will be transition there as they transition to Sacramento and then ideally to Vegas? A large portion that I've spoken with, they're sticking with the franchise. I mean, there's only so many of these jobs and they all grew up, not all of them grew up rooting for the

team, but you know, but there's a connection to the team and to the people with the organization. And so they don't want to just give that up just because. And it's rough because you've got to follow the team. I mean, we're thinking about moving up to Sacramento too. So yeah, it's just tricky when it comes to both your friendships with other people and your job. It's not an easy decision to make. I know that they let go of a decent amount of people, but they've held on to the people that

I interact with the most, the media relations people and the broadcast team and all those guys. So there's going to be some transition for sure. It's going to be a tricky situation for everybody just moving forward and finding that new balance in a new city. But I think that they're ready for it and ready for all the obstacles moving forward. We've talked before about how the A's have kind of cut back dramatically when it comes to front office resources or staff or analytics, R&D, or maybe it's less that they've cut back than that everyone else has invested more, whereas they have retained a pretty small group there. And there's a perception that the moneyball team, the team that was ahead of the game has fallen behind the game when it comes to that sort of evaluation power or development power. On the other hand, they do keep finding guys

in that classic A's way, where they will do some dumpster diving and they will look for guys who've been cast loose by other organizations and they will come up with Bledays and Rookers. And I don't know whether that represents the fact that they are really good at evaluating those guys or whether they've just taken more

swings like that because of the way their roster is constructed and their payroll etc that they just take more flyers on guys and so even if their hit rate isn't higher they hold on to the guys that they hit on or they just have more opportunity to give guys like that a chance. So what is your perception of where they stand relative to the league when it comes to analytics and just the ability to bring those resources to bear? I think that they'd probably be a bit below league average in that regard. I think that where they excel is identifying guys that, you know, might be interesting, you know, with the high walk rates and the high strikeout rates and all that that seems to be like a bread-and-butter kind of thing for them and they're like well if we can get the

walk rate down just a little bit then he's gonna be effective but the thing that they really excel with is just they have opportunity so they can let guys go out there and have a little bit of failure in order to get to the success and their coaching staff does a tremendous job of trying to communicate their ideas for how to make each and every player just a little bit better and get to that next level. And obviously you have to have a receptive player as well for that, but they do a good job and I think it's just communication and opportunities, mostly what they do well. Yeah, I think we talked to Riker about that once, just whether there is such a thing as a

quadruple A player and how long you need to tell whether someone is that. I think maybe it exists, but also sometimes you can come to that conclusion too quickly because major league playing time is limited and roster spots are limited. So if the A's have more of both to go around, at least when they're down in their competitive cycle, then no wonder they're able to discover some hidden gems. So we have to end with our question about what would constitute success for this team this season. We have established that they will literally be coming

out of left field this season in Sacramento because the clubhouse is located there, but will a contending A's team come out of left field this season in Sacramento because the clubhouse is located there, but will a contending A's team come out of left field or would it even be out of left field? Should we expect them? They're kind of mentioned as a dark horse candidate. So what do they have to accomplish on and off the field, frankly, because the latter is also always a question

with this organization this year. I mean, we'll see where everything ends up. I know that their goal is to be a 500 team and to be playing meaningful games deep into September. That's the goal that would be a winning season for them. But I mean, looking at the roster, they've made some nice additions, and if a few of their key young guys take a step forward,

you could squint and see maybe 83, maybe 84 wins if you're putting on some nice rose colored glasses there. And would that be enough to contend in the AL West, which has taken a little bit of a step back with the Astros trading away Tucker and losing Brakeman in a free agency? I'm sorry Meg, but the Mariners haven't done a whole bunch. But I mean, that pitching staff is just so good. And I don't know that the A's have the hitters to necessarily deal with that. So the Mariners will probably still just have their way with the A's. But I mean, that opening series could be a bit telling for the A's season. It's going to

be the first series of a very long season, but it's against a team that the A's season. It's going to be the first series of a very long season, but it's against a team that the A's will want to measure themselves against. And so a good showing there will certainly mean something to them moving forward, maybe give them some confidence going into the rest of April. But yeah, the teams will see. I think that the ballpark could play a factor there. If it's just a launching pad, then I don't know that they're going to have the arms necessary to deal with that because they've got some ground ball guys. They've got some strikeout guys. But you want more swing and miss if a 90 mile an hour exit VELO is going to be landed over

left field there. So yeah, we'll see what happens there. I think the ballpark could play a big factor, especially in the summer as it gets warmer, but you can squint and see a pretty decent club here. They're probably like a 76-win team, maybe 78-win team, but their goal is 81, so we'll see if they can reach that goal. Yeah, if they got to that, that would continue what people have said about the money ball is the

bean forced era, which is that they've been pretty consistent competitors. And when they haven't, when things have gone south, the down cycles haven't lasted that long. And they maybe haven't been quite as deep. 2023 was a pretty deep down, but still, if they were good this year, then it would only be, say, three seasons that they've been a losing team since the, if they were good this year, then it would only be, say, three seasons that they've been a losing team since the last time they were contending and winning teams. So that would kind of continue that trend of not totally tanking and rebuilding fairly quickly as these things go. And then I guess also you want to see ground being broken at some point this year I guess

would that be something that you would measure success by? I mean as an Oakland A's fan no. Well sure. But you know for the franchise sure yeah I guess. That is definitely something that they would like to see happen otherwise they're gonna have to push it to 2029 and if it keeps getting if they get one delay, then what's the stop another delay and it's a whole slippery slope there if they get that one delay. But you know, Rob Maddenford says that they're on schedule. So they're on schedule. Yeah, I guess if you're an Oakland A's fan, and you're not just completely burned, by

the way that this organization has spurned the city that you're rooting for everything in Vegas to fall apart because if it were to, then who knows, maybe an Oakland reunion is more likely than staying in Sacramento long-term. But I don't want to give anyone false hope. Or if you've made a clean break with the A's at this point, I certainly can't blame you. And maybe it's more healthy to move on. And if something falls into your lap with a Fisher free organization at some point in the future, then that would be great. What is also great is following Jason's coverage of the A's. There's not that much A's coverage out there, at least of the team on the field.

Not exactly a big A's contingent on the beat. So you will want to follow Jason and read his work at Inside the A's, which you can find at Sports Illustrated. Jason, thank you very much. Thank you so much for having me, you guys. That'll do it for today. Thanks as always for listening. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon

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