Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2290: Season Preview Series: Diamondbacks and Nationals

Episode Date: March 1, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the balletic strikeout celebrations of Rockies reliever Jefry Yan, Terry Francona’s selective opposition to ABS this spring, how frequently potential game-ending strikeouts will get challenged, and baseball in Season 2 of Poker Face. Then they preview the 2025 Arizona Diamondbacks (36:00) with The Arizona Republic’s Nick Piecoro, and […]

🎵Effectively Wild!🎵 Hello and welcome to episode 2290 of Effectively Wild, the FanGraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters, our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rylee of FanGraphs and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? There are Patreon supporters because they pay us and also there are patrons. Patrons, mmm. We appreciate them very much.

I'm doing well. Doing well because of our Patreon supporters. I'm not doing quite as well as Rocky's reliever, Jeffrey Yan. Have you familiarized yourself with the strikeout celebration stylings of Jeffrey Yan? I have not. Well, I have learned about him this week, and I think much of the baseball-loving internet has. I'll send you a couple links. I think he played winter ball, so maybe you saw him at some point. Though if you had seen this,

you probably would not have forgotten it because you may not have known the name, but if you've seen an extremely effusive, demonstrative, acrobatic strikeout celebration. I know this cat, yeah, yeah. That's Jeffrey Yan. Jeffrey Yan, oh yeah, yeah. That's Jefferyon. Jefferyon, oh boy, yeah. Jefferyon, he's a 28-year-old reliever.

He is in Rocky's camp. He's an athlete. Yeah, he has struck out three in two innings, and thus he has had at least three very flamboyant strikeout celebrations. So he has not been in the big leagues. He's been in affiliated ball leagues. He's been in affiliated ball before. He was with the Marlins a couple of years ago. He was with the angels in the Dominican

summer league years and years ago. And he's kind of been everywhere else in between. He played in Japan last season and now he's in Rocky's camp and probably anyone in Rockies camp has a decent chance to make the Rockies. And so that means we might be seeing some Jeffrey Yan strikeout celebrations on a big league mound. I hope we do if there's strikeouts and the celebrations keep coming this spring, then that ups the odds of our seeing it at some point this season. It looks like an injury risk. He is fully off the ground. He is airborne. He is airborne.

Man, those pants are, are sure sheer. Um, there's just such sheer pants, Ben. Um, that's not the point of this segment. I think that, look, Jeffrey Yan, you noted that he pitches a winner ball. I have, I love that the highlight in the MLB.com piece that you sent me is immediately followed by a challenge. Like that is beautiful. It was a strike. He did it. He did it. Yeah. Jeffrey Yon mentioned will be immediately followed by something about challenges. So

that's appropriate. But yes, that didn't stop him from celebrating though. But what I was going to say was clearly this celebration, it's not location dependent, right? Like he's going to do it in Winter Ball. He's going to do it in Rockies camp. He's a celebrator. He's a leaper. He's a spin around guy. You know, that's who he is as a person. But if I'm the Colorado Rockies, I would look at what Jeffrey Yan is doing and say to myself, that looks like a guy who's excited to be here and he's a pitcher. And those, those two things don't always sit with each other when it comes to our organization. So I'd put him on, I'd put him on the 26 man roster. I'd do it today. I'd be like, guess

what? Good enough. Here we go, Jeffrey. Will he be as happy pitching in course? I don't know, but he'll get some strikeouts there at least. It seems like he is not dialing this down one bit. I can't really tell if the effusiveness of the celebration is dependent on the situation very much. It seems like it varies a little bit. Like sometimes it seems sort of pro forma.

He's just going through the motions, but he seems to do it every time as far as I can tell. My only critique of this would be, well, are there diminishing returns to the celebration? If you're doing the same sort of celebration, if you're constantly dialed up to a 10 and it's not really dependent on how big a punch out that was. Like is this a high leverage moment? So, you know, if you're a guy who's trying to make the majors for the first time in spring training, every moment is high leverage when it comes to your career. So understand that, but I just, it doesn't seem like it's reserved for only certain situations. So if it just becomes kind of a dutiful, well, I'm the guy who celebrates like this, so I

got to do one because I struck someone out, that'd be a little less entertaining. I don't know whether he buries it at all, but it seems like sometimes he's ratching it up or down slightly, but it's always up. Like he's doing a near split in the air, like his shoe is touching his glove on the end of his arm.

And then he lands, like with his legs splayed and his foot, like his ankle on its side. That's the part that looks to me like, oh, how does he not hurt himself like this? Looks like he twists his ankle or something, but clearly not. And then he, yeah, I guess. And he's got the mechanics down

and then he does like a fist pump and you know, he'll do other things on his way off the mound. It's extremely like he is fully getting into it. It's one step short of the old of Roldis Chapman somersault. Like it's it's short of that, but it's somewhere between that and basically every other major league mount celebration you've ever seen. So I've seen a little bit of, are people gonna get mad about this conversation? And Jan, who's, you know, he's on a minor league contract, he's a non-roster invitee, he said,

that's my style of play, I'm electric, I like to have fun, I enjoy baseball, clearly. Yeah, and I approve of that. And he said, it's been something I've been doing ever since I was a kid. It's nothing I do to offend the other team. Every time I celebrate, I always look in my corner. I look at my guys, my catcher and my side.

I will always wanna celebrate every out that I get. I'm just happy to do my job. I'm happy to get outs. It's something I do to enjoy the game. And that's where I wonder, well, if it's just routine, is the enjoyment there? But it seems like it is. Like it seems pretty sincere.

He seems like he's having a great time. Yeah, he's really enjoying himself. Oh yeah. And why not? Why not? He's playing a kid's game out there, you know? Why not? He's wearing pajamas to work.

Yeah. Transparent, partly transparent pajamas. They're so sheer still. Oh my God. And he acknowledged, he said, obviously here in the United States, baseball is a little complicated. Sometimes opponents will get offended, obviously,

with this kind of celebration. But when they hit a home run against me, they're going to celebrate, they're going to have their fun. That's something I don't get offended by because they're enjoying the game just like I will. More than anything, I'm just going to continue to enjoy my celebration, continue having fun when I am out there.

And that's nice, you know? As long as he doesn't get offended when people do the same thing to him, because sometimes you see that, you know, a pitcher who's very demonstrative when things go his way, not so happy when things don't go his way and the hitter celebrates. But as long as he's equal opportunity, celebrator and he accepts all celebrations,

then I say leap, leap for the skies. Yeah, I feel like he has it dialed in perfectly. He is conscious of the fact that he wants to celebrate, but he doesn't want it to be about sticking it to his opponent, but a joyful recognition of his own success. Sounds like a young man who appreciates how fleeting this whole thing can be, which seems like a good perspective to have generally and, you know, one that makes a ton of sense for

a guy like him who has not been, like, you know, permanently entrenched in a big league roster or anything like that. He's not going to get fussy when guys get him back in turn. I'm here for it. I think that his perspective on the whole thing is dialed in quite well and I hope that he gets a big league opportunity. And look, if he does end up breaking camp with the Rockies, your concern about it happening too frequently and perhaps diminishing the returns on any given celebration. I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, but that might be a problem that takes care of itself. You know, just cause like, it's hard to pitch up there, man. Like it doesn't always go great and it's not like he's, you know, a sure out at sea level. So I want him to get his shot.

I want Jeffrey Yan to get a shot. I can't believe that I did not commit his name to memory because I didn't witness him live necessarily during Winter Ball, though I did watch a fair amount of Winter Ball. But what a time. CB I wonder whether he keeps that up if he's struggling in the outing or in the season. Oh, like to kind of work his way out of the funk potentially? Yeah, or I just wonder like if he feels obligated to do it, if he's getting knocked around that day, but then he gets a strikeout, does he still do the celebration or is it muted because he's getting

tattooed otherwise? I don't know. Jacob Stallings, who's a Rockies catcher now and was with Jan with the Marowinds, he said, it is pretty well documented that he's going to get excited, so nobody is going to get surprised by it. He loves playing ball, he's a good dude. And I think that's a good point in that if he does it every time,

then as long as you're familiar with that, and maybe you're seeing him for the first time and you don't know that he always does this, but if he always does it, then it's clear that it's nothing personal. It's not directed at you. So it's just, you know, okay, this is something he does. So that might be a protective mechanism.

Yes, it seems like it would take kind of the teeth out of it and it would be much harder for you to go, oh my God, he's coming at me. It's like, no, he's doing his thing, you know? Like I draw in the dirt before I step into the box and he does this after he strikes me out. Like this is part of the deal. I love this quote from him in here.

Sometimes I want to celebrate inside, but the emotions win. He's my new favorite baseball player. It's him and Brebbia, like let's go. Let's build an entire team out of these guys. He's not displacing baseball player. It's him and Brebia. Let's go. Let's build an entire team out of these guys. He's not displacing Brebia in my heart, but he's up there. Yeah. And I love the quote in this mlb.com story from his manager, Bud Black, quote, the flamboyance of what he does after a strikeout, ellipsis, that's who he is. I can't tell if that's the positive or not. The tone doesn't translate there. So I can't tell if he's the positive or not, like the tone doesn't translate there. So I can't tell if he's enthusiastically saying that or it's just like, well, that's who he

is. I don't know. But I guess it's not an endorsement of this tactic. So yeah, I like it because obviously at an earlier era and not that much earlier, a guy like this- Three years ago. Yeah. Like he would have gotten the talking to and I mean, you know, he doesn't have to hit.

He's a reliever. He's not going to get beaned or something, but there's going to be bad blood. And probably people in his own clubhouse or his own manager are going to shut that down and like, hey, you know, this flies in the DR, but not here. We're all business. This is not how we play the game. That's not the right way. So far at least seems like he's getting away with it. Seems like nobody's too upset. So we'll see. If he makes the majors, I hope he does.

If he keeps this up all season, I would bet that at some point someone will take a fence and shoot him a dirty look, glower at him, perhaps jaw a little on the way back to the dugout. But I hope not. I hope that everyone just accepts that this is who he is. This is how he expresses himself and would that we were all so uninhibited and joyous. LS. I mean, would that we were all so flexible. I mean, yeah, like again, they're all athletes,

but some of them are like, wow, that guy's an athlete. That guy's an athlete. Look what he's able to do. I couldn't do that. Jared Ranere I fear for his meniscus, his menisci, menisci, his ankles, all sorts of... Beth Dombkowski Definitely not menisci. It's definitely, you're like a Chicago land dad being like, I got a bad menisci, you know? I'm not doing the voice, but I'm like invoking the voice.

I have to, it would take too many, it would take too long for me to get warmed up to locate that exactly right. But everyone knows what I'm trying to do. So yeah. Stay limber. And I wonder whether he'll keep this up like into his 30s or will there start to be some soreness here?

He's 28. He's not feeling anything at this point. I assume he has never suffered a serious injury doing this because probably he would not have continued it, but there's a long line of celebration injuries. Whether it's, you know, the famous one, I guess, Kendris Morales would be the most famous, but then, you know, Kendris Morales would be the most famous, but then Edwin Diaz and others. And this is, if he were to get hurt,

then that would be a good excuse for his team to be like, all right, let's dial this down a bit. Maybe he would think that too. But yeah, thus far he's managed to survive. All right, so just a couple other things. I mentioned challenges and one point about this, thus far, he's managed to survive. All right, so just a couple other things. I mentioned challenges and one point about this, there was one other party, I guess,

that was kind of shutting down the enthusiasm about challenges, not in a grumpy way, but Terry Francona, he asked Red's veterans not to use the challenge system this spring. Oh, I heard about this on the Dodgers broadcast. Am I allowed to say that I think that's kind of doofy? You can. Yeah, sure. I think that's kind of doofy.

His rationale was, I'm OK with seeing our younger kids do it because they've done it. It's not a strategy for, in brackets, the MLB teams. So why work on it? I don't want to make a farce of anything, but we're here getting ready for a season and that's not helping us get ready. So he's just saying, you know, it's not being used in MLB in 2025. So why should we practice it now unless you're going to be playing under these conditions in 2025, but still. Yeah. So here's, here's why I think it's Stufi Stuffy. They're big leaguers, you know?

They're experienced. It's not like they're going to get up their own opening day and be like, pet, pet, pet, pet, oh, I can't challenge, oh no. And also, even if they did, there would be no consequence to that other than them looking kind of silly. But what you're denying your guys the ability to do is practice for the, at this point, seeming inevitability that is the challenge system at the major league level. So why not get some reps in?

I mean, maybe he thinks, oh, why would that matter? You know, there's just going to be another spring training where we go through this whole rigmarole again. And okay, fine. But like, what harm does it do? Again, there's no, it's not like they're going to get up there. And then, you know, the home plate umpire is going to be like, I object and I eject you. Like, that's not going to happen. He might be like, no, we don't have that up here. I guess there could be like a pitch clock violation because you're waiting for the challenge or something. But it's far-fetched.

Far-fetched. I don't think it's a big deal. I'm not trying to overstate the case here. I want to make that clear, but I do think it's doofy. I think it can be safely categorized as doofy. Any chance to practice a new skill seems like a chance worth taking, and it's common for you Tito. It's common for you. You're not getting out of the challenge system. You're sick. People like this. I don't know how much this is grumpy, get off my lawn. Like Terry Francona-

I think it's grumpy, I just think it's short-sighted. Yeah, he's been in the game a long time. Max Scherzer, like, you know, certain guys were like hall of fame level people. They're entitled to grump about things from time to time if they want. And also, you know, they've seen a lot of change in their day. Baseball's changing quite rapidly by baseball standards. And maybe some of that, you feel unmoored. I don't recognize this game that I love. I don't know. I really don't know whether Terry Francona objects to the challenge system on a philosophical level or whether he

really thinks that it's better just to practice under consistent conditions, which I get what he means. Like you're playing a certain way during the regular season. That's how you want to train during spring training. It makes a certain amount of sense, but I would think that if anything, you want people to be like conscious of the strike zone and pitch locations and you want people to be thinking of that. I don't know whether there's a performance enhancing effect to watching pitches carefully.

I guess you might say, oh, it could be distracting. Like I find myself watching pitches more. I'm not instinctive up there. I'm not see the ball, hit the ball. Maybe you're overthinking it and you just kind of want to keep your mind blank, some hitters hit that way and I could see it potentially being a distraction. But for others, I could imagine that being conscious of that might actually help. Maybe it makes you more conscious of pitch location and what you're swinging at. So yeah, it doesn't seem like it would obviously

impair anyone's performance. I also think it's silly because like there's so much about spring training that is just different than the regular season. You don't play extra innings in spring either. Sometimes, sometimes Ben, the home team will be ahead and they play the bottom of the ninth anyway. Yeah, they did in the early days of baseball. Yeah. Right. Because they want to get, they have a couple arms that they want to get into the game and they want to have them throw and they just do it anyway, even though they wouldn't do that under normal conditions. They've rolled innings, you know, you've got guys who like, will go out, they step back in even, that has happened in spring. Like, you're already playing under some degree of artifice

and this is an opportunity to get familiar with game circumstances that, again, you're going to see at some point in the majors and probably sooner rather than later. So it just strikes me as, well, doofy, you know? I don't know that it indicates any particular strong feeling that Frank Kona has about like the validity of the challenge system, the usefulness of the challenge system, but it just seems like it's goofy. So I'm going to say that because that's what I think. I haven't checked to see if the Reds have actually abided by this prohibition, but I do wonder about the clubhouse dynamics of who considers themselves bound by this ban.

If he says, if you, you know, maybe someone's like, oh, Terry said the guys who were going to be in the big leagues this year can't challenge, then do some players have delusions of grandeur? They have inflated expectations for themselves and really they're ticketed for AAA or somewhere and they're like, well, I would challenge, but I'm going to be a big leaguer. Is that an attitude that player development people would like to see? Like, ooh, he's big leaguing everyone in a good way. He thinks he's major league material and so he's refusing to challenge. If you challenge, are you confirming that you don't see yourself as big league caliber? Are you Bush league by challenging now that that Terry Francona has

drawn this distinction? Did he assign? Did he distinguish? Did he say you, you and you, you can challenge and you guys can't or are players deciding that for themselves and players who are on the bubble are like, huh, am I gonna hurt my chances? It's like, you know, dress for the job you want, that idea, like challenge or don't challenge for the job you want. Yeah, man, psychology is so complicated. Last bit about challenges and psychology.

So we got a question a while back. This was from Peter and this, we may have bantered about this before, but Peter says, I've been eagerly anticipating the arrival of the ABS challenge system in the major leagues. By the way, once we get the challenge system fully implemented, do you think we're going to call it ABS forever? I feel like we'll just call it challenge system because we are, we were callingo-Lumps from the start, but it's always, ABS is always in the article and maybe we can just drop that at a certain

point. I do think that perhaps the reason, I don't know if I find this to be necessary, I haven't considered the question in any great depth, but I do wonder if the reason that people are saying ABS challenge system like as a full name is so that people who are not familiar with the challenge system don't confuse it with replay. So maybe, maybe they think that like that's going to cause some amount of confusion. Cause like in other sports, like in football, you throw a challenge flag to initiate a replay review. And so I wonder if there are people like have that wire crossed mentally and people are

trying to draw that distinction, but not us. We can, we can track Ben. And then there's the full ABS versus challenge ABS distinction, which also must be drawn sometimes anyway. Peter says he's eagerly anticipating its arrival and got to witness it in real time for the first time today with the Padres versus Mariners spring training game. The game ended with a called strike three.

I don't know whether you were watching this Mariners game for the final out in the top of the ninth, at which point the Padres players ran onto the field to celebrate the win. So this is again, a celebration followed by a challenge, Jeffrey Yan style. But there was a hesitation in their joyous hooting and hollering as the Mariners batter had tapped his helmet to initiate a challenge. The result never felt in doubt to me as a viewer, it was pretty clear strike.

But even so, everyone on the field had to sort of awkwardly pause to look at the screen confirming the call. And after about 15 seconds, the celebration continued. Now I'm not necessarily against this. And if this is the only price to pay for the ABS challenge system, I think the pros far outweigh the cons. But I'm wondering how often I should be expecting

this type of awkwardness. I think the game ending component of it has a chance to really increase the level of pointless challenges. Since it's essentially a zero risk move. I can already hear the chance of delay BS if it happens all the time or maybe something snappier, I don't know.

Delay BS is pretty good. Yeah, it's got BS in it, it rhymes with ABS, I like it. Snappy. Not sure if this is worthy of a stop-loss but I'm trying to figure out how often this scenario happened in the minor leagues for batting teams with a remaining ABS challenge out of how many instances of a called strike three to end the game presumably in a loss for the batting team

was a challenge immediately initiated. How many times did the challenge overturn the call? I wonder if this will be the new normal and end up just being a formality that the other team will always do this or if there is actual judgment used as to whether it seemed like a borderline call. If it truly is a very close call with game ending implications, then I absolutely want to be 100% sure it's correct, but I just don't want to be regularly subjected to a half-hearted, relatively pointless delay of game puncturing the moment of victory defeat. This is kind of what we were talking about last time with teams seemingly not utilizing as many challenges as they could or potentially should, analytically speaking and how they kind of hoard them early and then they splurge their leftover

challenges they tend to later in the game and at high leverage moments. And this could be a high leverage moment. It's either you lost or the game goes on. And so, you know, unless it's a blowout where it's really not going to accomplish much to get that strike corrected because you're going to lose anyway, then there's something at stake. From my experience, he continues, this is barely an issue with the existing major league challenge system. And even if a team has a challenge left, it is only used if there is reasonable doubt. Nobody's challenging a routine

fly ball. But I can see the argument that a ball strike call is a little more obscure and might draw out more challenges. Again, we talked about this last time, like the thought, the fear that there were going to be too many replay reviews because why not use them or lose them? And that hasn't really happened because people don't want to challenge kind of, you know, for no reason and waste everyone's time and look sort of silly. And also you get a good sense on the replay review before you initiate the challenge, but some of those things don't apply perfectly to this challenge system. Also, Peter says since it's a batter initiating the challenge and not a manager,

might we see challenges being used more or less aggressively in that scenario? As a sidebar, I was excited to see which batters or catchers challenge the most often and how often they are correct, and we can truly measure a player's confidence or ego against how good their plate fishing is. So I think I have an answer to this, which was provided by the folks whose research I cited last time comes from Maxfield Lane of oyster analytics, who wrote something great for the down on the farm sub stack about challenges and data from AAA.

And so I sent this question to them and they were able to comb through their data to look at these situations and see how often this happened. So Max says, there were 90 situations with games that appeared to end on called strike threes. This is in AAA last year in games with the challenge system in place. Out of those 90, 25 were challenged for a 27.8% challenge frequency rate.

Nine, so 10% of the total were successful and extended the game. And one, 1.1% was successful with that team later winning the game and one, 1.1% was successful with that team later winning the game. So very clutch challenge. It preserved extended the game and they came back to win. Additionally, nine pitches appeared to not end the game, but pitchers won challenges for the game ending strike three. So it could go that way too.

And then Maxfield followed up to say, digging a bit deeper, the hitting team had no remaining challenges in 19 of those 90 situations. That's 21.1%. So in reality, 25 out of 71 challengeable game ending strikes were challenged for a 35.2% challenge frequency rate.

Nine, so 12.7% challenge frequency rate, nine, so 12.7% of the total were successful and one, 1.4% was successful with that team later winning the game. So a little more than a third of those situations, game ending strike three and the losing or would be losing team had a challenge remaining, they challenged 35.2%. So a little more than one in three. So that could be a guide to how often we will see this potentially.

I think it'll be okay. I find myself having the most sympathy for this concern as like an aesthetic argument against the challenge system, right? That it'll take the air out of the balloon in like a decisive moment and that it kind of puts a damper on it, right? It's like putting one of those, what do you put over a trumpet, you know, when you're playing a trumpet and it's really loud and you put a mute. It looks like a plunger, you know? It looks like the end of a plunger. Anyway, you know how I don't play the trumpet. I get that piece of it, but I think like the numbers you're citing sound quite livable to me. And also I would just invite people who are like really worried about this to consider

two things. First, like there is a little delay in the full ABS. So when you have a game called by full ABS, like there's a little, like a little skip, you know, before the call comes down to the Empire. So it isn't as if the choice that we are making is one of delay versus no delay. It's no delay with the potential of it being wrong and you have to live with that. That's the current system that we live under. It's no delay with the potential for a delay in the service of getting the call, right? Which is a challenge system. And then there's delay every time, you know? And it's a small delay. I don't want to overstate the case, but like there's a

little like, every time. And then there's also just like the incandescent rage that people experience when a game is decided on a very bad missed call and a particular kind of very bad missed call, right? Because you can have a game decided on a very bad missed call and it's back in the fourth inning, right? It doesn't have to be the final at bat of the game. But like, you know, that one where like there's a blown call and you're down to your last out, it makes people want to flip over cars, you know? It just really gets them. And so I think avoiding that feeling is important because it does diminish, not only does it diminish our enjoyment, but it puts a dent in the legitimacy of the entire enterprise. So I want to be clear, like, I don't want to be one of those people then, who, because

I like something very much, cannot recognize the disparate aesthetic preferences of other people. Like you cannot like the challenge system. And I don't think that makes you a fuddy-duddy, you know? I don't think that you're being like old fashioned. I think you can have legitimate aesthetic concerns about the incursion of ABS into the game and that doesn't make you grumpy. Just like, I don't think Terry Francona is being grumpy necessarily. I mean, grumpiness might be motivating his take on all of this, I'm not sure,

but I think he's being doofy, not grumpy. Important distinction. So anyway, that's what I have to say about that. Yeah, I think some of these will be cases where the outcome will be pretty clear, as Peter said. Like maybe they'll challenge, but it won't really be in doubt. But you'll know that it's not gonna get changed

until you can continue to celebrate. 35%, it's a little higher than I'd like, I suppose, but some of those times I probably won't even notice unless the call is changed and then it'll be like, oh, but I thought it was over. And then it'll probably be over a minute after that. I didn't ask them for this, but I, Oh, I thought it was over. And then it'll probably be over a minute after that. I didn't ask them for this, but I would imagine that probably the cases where it's not challenged or like lopsided scores, you know, it's kind of low leverage, you're not going to come back anyway, so the player might have something

at stake, but the team, not so much. So that implies probably that in close games, it's going to be an even higher rate, which I guess is kind of a bummer because like, even though we're talking about a small subset of games that end that way, those are going to be the biggest celebrations when there's actual suspense, the game is in doubt, and it's coming down to the last pitch and you're glued to that. And then you get the release of, ah, yes, we got the K, but then probably if the overall rate is 35.2%, it's probably gonna be a lot higher in that kind of case.

And so we might need to just get used to if it's a close game and a close call, then yeah, we're gonna have to wait to see if that stands. But it is probably better than people being super pissed off, I guess, about a game ending pitch potentially. We'll roll with it. The one time when a challenge really paid off, it extended the game and then led to a win, was July 9th of last year, a game between the Gwinnett Stripers and the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp. Gwinnett challenged a full count pitch with runners on first and second,

down one in the 10th inning, and got the strikeout reversed to a walk. And then the next player, who happened to be Uli Guriel, hit a walk-off single to win it. So that's pretty exciting. If you win that way, that would psych me up. So maybe that's worth it. The occasional, you know, stay of execution kind of, oh, we thought it was over and we, we came back from the dead somehow. We were on the brink and we won. That'll be

a thrill, the rare time that that happens. I will be. We'll go, oh my god. Finally I want to give you credit for calling something or recommending something. As you noted to me, there was an announcement of the timing for season two of Poker Face, a series that we enjoyed very much. The Rian Johnson led Howe done it on Peacock. It's coming back this spring. And we talked about this on a Patreon bonus pod, I believe, and what you pitched, that a baseball team would be a good premise for an episode? Yes, I thought that a murder that takes place within the context of like a minor league team

would make for good TV. And they're doing it, Ben. They're doing it. Yeah, we don't know exactly the details of the story, but they put out some images and Natasha Lyonne is there, Charlie Kail in a baseball outfit. Looks like maybe she's like a ball girl, like someone who's on the sidelines catching fouls.

And yeah, it's gonna be a baseball episode of a baseball show. So we already loved the show and this character, but now we're getting a baseball episode. So, yeah, maybe someone was listening to that Patreon bonus episode, or maybe multiple people can independently have a good idea, but you certainly had it.

LSF I'm not, I want to be clear. I'm not suggesting that like this idea was yoinked from our Patreon. I think that it's like- CB Yeah, must credit Effectively Wild Patreon episode. LSF Yeah, no, I'm not suggesting that at all. Although I will admit that I had the thought, I was like, man, it would be cool if she was like driving her car to the ballpark and like Effectively Wild was like, man, it would be cool if she was driving her car to the ballpark and Effectively Wild was on the radio. We would know because they'd have to ask us, I imagine. That's not going to happen. It would be so cool though. It's not too late. You could dub that in there.

It's not too late. You could dub it in so easy. Oh yeah. What conversation would we want fictional character Charlie Kale to be listening to? Interesting. I'm going to contemplate that question. Probably one of the weirder ones. Yeah. Maybe where would you put the third arm? That'd be a good one. Yeah. Oh yeah. I would definitely, I would want her to be obsessed with the notion of whether it's arm hair or head hair. Because I, you know, I still don't think we have an answer, Ben, you know, to the defining question of our time, potentially.

Head hair or arm hair, I don't know. It is called a mute, by the way, the thing you do to silence a trumpet. But it goes by a number of names, including plunger. There is a plunger mute that gives you like a wah-wah sound. Like a yeah, more of an explosive sort of sound. And it's, I guess it's used in New Orleans jazz often, but it's yeah. And it's, it's like made of a plunger. It's like a plunger. Literally. It's a plunger. And they just take the stick out, it's not a stick, pole, whatever. I don't

know, man. The more you know. All right. The more you know. Let's take a quick break and we will proceed with our previews. We are talking to Andrew Golden of the Washington Post later in the episode about the Washington Nationals, but leading off, we've got Nick Pecorro of the Arizona Republic and Easy Central Sports

to tell us about the Diamond We are joined for the umpteenth time by Nick Bacoro, who covers the Diamondbacks for the Arizona Republic and AZ Central Sports, and also for us on Effectively Wild Season Preview. So Nick is back, as are the birds in his backyard? Front yard? Backyard this time. Going strong. Yeah, yeah. They're beautiful. Yeah, this is one of those cases where sometimes you try to cut out the background sound, but not when it's just beautiful bird song. No. Yeah, this is so soothing. So the Diamondbacks, when we did our Rangers preview, we devoted a lot of that to talking

about what went wrong. Why didn't the Rangers get back to the playoffs after winning a pennant, winning a world championship? And on one level, we could have the same conversation about the Diamondbacks after winning a pennant, winning a world championship. And on one level, we could have the same conversation about the Diamondbacks who won a pennant, faced the Rangers, and then failed to make the playoffs. But it's also a different conversation because the Diamondbacks were a better team in 2024. They won more games than they had the previous season.

They were better by the underlying metrics, and yet they missed the playoffs. So some things went wrong, but I guess it was largely things that were outside of their control. The rest of the playoff picture did not go as well for them. The Mets and the Braves split their last day doubleheader instead of one of them sweeping, and that barred the Diamondbacks from the playoffs because of the tiebreakers, even though they had identical records to those two teams. And in a just insane world, we would have had actual tiebreaker games instead

of everything being decided by tiebreakers, but that's not the world we live in. So we can't really say what went wrong for the Diamondbacks, but I guess we could say what could have gone better or what failed to go right or perfectly for them because if one loss had been a win, then they would have been back in October. Jared Sussman Yeah, I guess the first thing you point to is the pitching. They had trouble both staying healthy and just getting the type of results they were expecting out of a lot of guys. Zach Gallen missed a little bit of time. Meryl Kelly missed a lot of time.

And Eduardo Rodriguez didn't pitch until August. Jordan Montgomery, who they signed at the last second, was really, really bad. You know, there were other problems too. You know, Paul Seawald wasn't the same lockdown closer that he was for, you know, after they acquired him in the trade in 23. And it sort of felt like the bullpen just sort of

wasn't the same without that established guy in the ninth and some other roles being juggled. Not that there's really anyone that you would point to that say that guy was bad because he was pitched in the ninth or whatever. It just didn't really line up. You know, offensively they were incredible. They scored the most runs in the ninth or whatever. It just didn't really line up. Offensively, they were incredible. They scored the most runs in the league.

I guess you could say Corbin Carroll wasn't the same, and maybe if he were his old self, they win another game or two. Gabby Moreno, little bit of a disappointment, just not quite taking that step forward. But there were a lot of other things that went really well offensively for this team. You gotta point to the pitching staff if you're going to isolate one thing as to

why they couldn't get over the hump. Well, maybe we can start with that pitching staff as a way of understanding what their fortunes might be in 2025, because I don't know that if I had been a betting person, I would have put Corbin Burns coming to the D-backs on my dance card for this off season and yet come to the D-backs, he did. So how did this deal come together? I know that Corbin seems like he wants to live in Arizona, so he's got that going for him, or at least the team does. But how did this deal come together? And then talk to us about how the rest of the rotation sort of stacks up behind him.

Yeah, I mean, it shocked everybody. It seemed like it came out of nowhere. There were really no rumors about it. I don't think the Diamondbacks were actively pursuing him until they got a call from Scott Boris saying, hey, is there anything we can do? Corbin really wants to be here. Ken Kendrick said, I'll think about it,

and got back to him and decided he could make it work. You know, it was pretty shocking because they already had and still have those same other six starting pitchers. So it already felt like an area of surplus, but I think it was just too good of a pitcher to turn down the opportunity to sign, you know, six and 210. It's not like they got a major hometown discount.

I, you know, they were saying that, that he left some money on the table, both total value, higher AAV. I don't know the specifics of who or exactly how much, but obviously you can add Corbin Burns, put him at the top of your rotation, you're a much better team. I don't know what's gonna happen after that. You obviously Zach Gallin and Merrill Kelly and I think Eduardo

Rodriguez are locked in on on rotation spots which leaves Fahd Nelson and Montgomery for one more spot you know you could always I guess send Nelson and or Fahd down it just seems like it would be a tough, especially coming off the season where you miss the playoffs by one game. And Jordan Montgomery is coming off the year he's coming off of. I think there's a lot of optimism that he will be better. Maybe we can talk more about him specifically in a little bit. But I think it's just be hard to like plug him right into the rotation at this point in time as we sit here today.

Now maybe that changes as the spring rolls along and we see how he looks. He does have, you know, the longer, better track record, but like, Fatt's been really good. I know his numbers weren't great last year. I think there was an element of bad luck and Nelson was their best starter over the last couple months of the season.

I'm curious, just as everyone else, to see how exactly they handle it. Whether there's a trade coming, we'll see. Or if they just have to have one guy go to the bullpen, one guy go down to the miners and say, sorry, this is the situation. Yeah, I wanted to ask about Montgomery. I think it's worth digging in because this was an instance where, in addition to his underperformance last year, we obviously had the drama surrounding Ken Kendrick's comments about him. What has the sort of vibe around him been in camp?

How is he responding to that? And do you think that there's sort of any kind of breach between him and the organization or is this, you know, he's determined to pitch better and kind of go from there? Yeah, I mean, I guess first of all, he looks really good. He's lost a lot of weight. him and the organization or is this you know he's determined to pitch better and kind of go from there? Yeah I mean I guess first of all he looks he looks really good he's lost a lot of weight um you can just tell he's just way slimmer and way better shape and you know he feels like he's just moving more freely and I don't know we'll see we'll see he he's got off to a bit of a slow start because he did something with one of his fingers and just had to have I think it was six days without throwing but they say he still has time to build up and be ready.

You know, I'm not sure exactly what happened last year. I guess you gotta chalk it up to the lack of a spring training and just kind of all of the complications that we've seen over the years with a lot of guys having issues with that. And then, you know, the Kendrick stuff, you know, Kendrick said that he was basically trying to defend his GM.

He felt like the question was a little bit, the question he got asked in this radio interview was a little bit like pointing the finger at a bad signing by Mike Hazen. But as Kendrick often does, he just kind of kept going and wound up, you know, making it sound a little worse than he had intended. Montgomery, you know, we asked him about it. He just sort of shrugged. It was a bit of an awkward first day interview with him, but I mean, being around him now the last couple of weeks,

he seems fine. I think he's in good spirits. I don't think he has like, I don't think he's like holding a grudge against anybody with the team. I think he understands that, you know, Kendrick, you know, paid him a lot of money last year and he pitched real bad.

So I think he gets that. I don't think he's upset with like Mike Hazen or Tori Lavello or anybody like that as a result. To go back to Burns for a second, was it purely location, location, location, or was there something else that the Diamondbacks did to win his hand? I know he talked a bit about the support for his family and his wife and his kids, but did it largely just come down to not wanting to go far from home, which is very relatable for me? Yeah, I think so.

I think that was really mostly it. I mean, this is a guy that I think just had twins last year right around the All-Star break. He has another child, so they've got a full house. He's a really like routine oriented person, very much wants to just stick to certain processes. And I think it's just easier for him to do that when he's at home and he just has everything kind of, you know, laid out the way he wants it

right there in front of him. I mean, he also pitched real well last year in Baltimore. So I mean, I'm not sure that it's like the end all be all, but you know, that's just, I think the way he's wired and I think he prefers it this way. I'm curious what changes if any you have seen in camp so far on the coaching side, because obviously Brentstrom is not returning as the Dbacks pitching coach. They brought in Brian Kaplan. How much of that change do you think was the results of there being an actual sort of coaching and strategic issue on the pitching side and how much of it was, we had a real bad year pitching wise and a lot of injured

guys and we kind of just need to go in a new direction to go in a new direction. I can't say I've, I can give you a very good answer yet on what I've noticed in camp. It's just, it's tough to get time with coaches this time of year. So I kind of got to punt that part of the question as it pertains to Strom. I talked about this with him after he got let go. It just felt like he lost touch with some of the veteran guys on the staff. And I think that the organization just didn't want to go into this year, which kind of is looking like a big year for them with a

lot of guys, you know, approaching free agency, unsure if those relationships were going to be able to be repaired and if they were really going to be getting the most out of, you know, the pitching coach starting pitcher bullpen arm, whoever it might be dynamic. They just wanted to go in a different direction. Kind of felt like some of the other guys that got let go were were just sort of I don't want to say innocent Bystanders, but like kind of caught in the crossfire so to speak but yeah, we'll see I mean Brian Kaplan comes with a great reputation You know the the pitchers in camp now have been speaking very highly about him and the way that he's able to communicate

And you know just the touch he has I don't know. We'll see how it turns out. With Montgomery, do you think the slow start or the late start had to do with the slow start? We saw the same thing happen with Blake Snell, where he struggled at first and had an injury. Then of course, he came back and pitched as well as he ever has. Montgomery didn't do that, but was it the late signing and late ramp up that you think

contributed to how poorly he pitched last year? Probably. I mean, he did throw pretty well in his first couple of outings in the big leagues, but you know, he was, I do remember him making mention of the fact that his velocity was down. And then he started trying to kind of chase that. And when he started doing things mechanically to try to get a little bit more out of his fastball he wound up I think getting himself into some other bad habits and I don't know I don't know that that's entirely it I think it's just one of those things sometimes years just snowball on guys and they can't get themselves out of it and I think he just he just went went down the wrong road and couldn't find his way back.

You know, it's one of those weird things, I don't know, I can't explain it. I've seen it over the years where the Dimebaks, I remember the Dimebaks acquiring Aaron Hill at the trade deadline many years ago and he was having an absolutely terrible year in Toronto and he comes over here and all of a sudden he just rakes. Like he didn't change anything, he just started hitting.

It just sort of freed him up. I think probably Montgomery was putting a lot of pressure on himself with as much money as he was making. And, you know, knowing that he had a chance to get back to free agency again, and I just think things spiraled on him. You know, we'll see maybe a fresh start to the year, maybe being settled in spring training,

maybe all that will help him, you know him just get back to his old self. It's weird. I mean, I'm expecting him to be better because it just kind of came out of nowhere. I mean, it feels like in his career when he's been healthy, you know, I guess there was maybe a season when he was coming back from TJ or maybe his numbers leading into the surgery. But generally those years were a little down, but generally he's been a really good starting pitcher in the big leagues when healthy. So I expect he'll be fine and turn it around.

Yeah, it wasn't quite as surprising to me as the Rangers offense cratering the way it did last year, but I was really expecting the Diamondbacks pitching to progress because the rotation was they were trying to piece things together late in the year in 2023 in the playoffs and then they made all those upgrades and with thought around it just seemed like, okay, this is going to be a strength. And instead they went from 14th in fan graphs starting pitcher war to 21st. And as you said, Eduardo Rodriguez's absence and then underperformance was part of that.

So he didn't make his season debut until August. He had the shoulder strain and then came back from that and it was rough going from that point forward. So was that again just late start to the season injury after effects? How has he looked so far? What's the outlook for 2025? Yeah, he hasn't pitched yet in in a Cactus League game. So I don't know. I mean, when he when he hurt himself last spring, he seemed to think it was a minor thing and like was going to be back in a matter of weeks. And then he tried to ramp back up and hurt it more. It was a shoulder thing or a scab thing and he wound up missing four months. It was it was crazy you know not what you're looking for

when you invest a lot of money in the guy to kind of you know nail down that spot. Obviously they they took a little bit of a risk right I mean he has a bit of a spotty health track record but you know he seems to be feeling fine. You know we'll see again another guy that like generally when he's when he's been healthy he's been a good pitcher. The question has always just been you know getting him out there on the mound and he wasn't bad when he pitched last year. I feel like maybe the numbers don't look great but it was a pretty small sample and you know maybe an inning or two here and there would have changed the look of his numbers. But he obviously wasn't lights out

either. He wasn't the guy that he was for the second half in Detroit the year before. So we'll see how that goes. You mentioned that Seawald struggled in the bullpen last year and you know, obviously some of these guys are returning, but there's also been some shifting around. The Diamondbacks traded for AJ Puck. He was great for them after the trade. They have Justin Martinez, who brings that, you know, big fastball, which, you know, Seawald certainly didn't have. They brought in Kendall Graveman this offseason. So is there a set determined closer in this group? And if not, how are they thinking about piecing together their bullpen? I think they want to have a set closer but they haven't told us who it's going to be yet.

I guess I could see an argument for if you wanted to give Martinez the crack in order to keep puck available for matchups earlier in the game but to me it just sort of feels like the way puck pitched over the last four months of the season, he's just sort of, I mean, I think he's got to have that job. It's the, you know, the most important job in the bullpen and he pitched the best. I would give it to him without thinking too hard about it, without overthinking it, you know. They're hoping that Graveman can get back to the form he showed a couple years ago. He's coming off a shoulder surgery,

so we'll see, his velocity's been good. I think it's been in the mid-90s. They saw him up to 96 before they signed him, but we'll see how he bounces back. We'll see if it still has the same life on his pitches and all that. I don't think they wanna just plug him into the ninth inning, you know, right away.

But yeah, Torrie Lavello has kind of talked in the past about wanting to be more open minded about, you know, playing matchups and having a little bit more of a versatile group down there. But I think I think at his core, he just likes having roles. I think he I think the pitchers like having roles, too, which is a big part of it. I think he wants to keep those guys happy. And if those guys know what to expect and when to be ready, that makes her a happier group. And I think that just works better for Tori. Did they attribute Puck's big sort of surge in performance to anything in particular after the trade? Or is this like you were talking about just the guy who benefited from a change of

scenery? Particular after the trade or is this like you were talking about just a guy who benefited from a change of scenery Well, it was happening before the trade. He had I think ditched his sweeper and gone back to his slider and That pitch was unbelievable for him I don't I can try to find the numbers here while we're talking but he was he it was fantastic with rate And I mean he was missing a ton of bats with his fastball too But when when that pitch got reintroduced I think everything changed for him and he got that much better. It was a 47.8%

whiff rate on his slider and a 31.7% whiff rate on his heater. He was just unhittable. It was unbelievable. He was so dominant. I'm sure you saw plenty of games. He was just fantastic. The Diamondbacks weren't that busy this off season. They didn't make that many moves. I think they signed two free agents, two major league contracts, but one of them was Corbin Burns. So that's kind of a win when one of them is that guy who Graveman was the other. I wanted to ask about a guy who is slated to be a free agent at the end of this season,

and that's Zach Galin, who I feel bad we haven't really dwelt on thus far, but he's Zach Galin. He's really good. We know that, but he is going to hit the open market unless there's some deal signed between now and then. So was the burn signing seen partly as gallon departure insurance? Is there any chance that they might try to sign him or be able to sign him before he hits the open market? Do they think they would have the inside track

on keeping him around? I don't know any of those answers, to be honest. Yeah, I mean, I think they would love to keep him around. He's also a Scott Boris client. So I mean, it's probably not gonna come at a steep hometown discount, but man, since the 23 run, Gallin has just sounded more and more in love with Arizona and just wanting to be here long-term.

So I guess I wouldn't rule out the idea of him taking a little less to stay here. I guess when you start looking at the roster, you know, and the payroll, they're around 200 million right now, which is higher than I would have ever imagined. And they've got, you know, guys making money include Jordan Montgomery,

Eugenio Suarez, Josh Naylor, Gallin, Merrill Kelly, and all those guys are hitting free agency. I don't know if Pavin Smith emerges further and looks like he can step in at first base for for Josh Naylor when he departs that solves one hole. If Jordan Lawler looks really good this year that's a league minimum third basement potentially. If Yilber Diaz or whoever steps up and looks like a viable rotation option, maybe they could think of letting Merrill Kelly go or one of those two go and bring the other back.

So I mean, there's ways you can sort of, you know, make it work financially. Does it make sense for them? Are they gonna be carrying a $200 million payroll going forward? If so, do they wanna, or is it gonna be more like 170 going forward? And are they gonna wanna devote,

you know, 60 something million dollars to two pitchers? It would be risky. Those two, you know, I'm thinking burns and gallon, would be really awesome to pair a top-year rotation long-term. So I don't know. These are interesting questions. I think we just have to see how a lot of things play out this year.

Hosted by Dr. Chris Hedges Well, one free agent they didn't bring back was Christian Walker. And I want to talk about the sort of infield as it is currently constituted, but I'm curious if there was ever any thought that they would be able to retain Walker. And then what effects do you anticipate his absence having on that infield defense? Because Ben and I have talked about this on a number of episodes. Tell Marte at second is he's fine and Perdomo did fine at short and Eohenio is fine at third. Those guys can be good on good days.

But it did feel to me like Walker may be papered over some deficiencies on the rest of that infield by being so good at first. So what do you anticipate his absence meaning for this team going forward? This is a tough one to answer the first part of the question because I think we all expected them to not have the money to sign him. And that the first base market had to really crater and he just had to get kind of squeezed out and come back to them late in the winter. But as it turned out, like, you know, five days after he signed in Houston, they signed

Corbin Burns. So, you know, Kendrick decided that that money was there. I don't think he had really told his baseball operations group, yeah, we're going to be running a payroll of 195 to 200 this year. So if that had been the case, would they have been more open-minded to paying market rate for Christian Walker? I don't know. Like you said, the defensive impact is real. I think they've always liked the quality of his at bats, just the kind of consistency in production these last couple of years where I don't know exactly but I feel like if you go look at his month-by-month splits there is not massive variance it's just a guy who is gonna give you an eight-something OPS

or somewhere in that neighborhood every couple of weeks you can just bank on that's what he's gonna that's what he's gonna give you. It's a fascinating question. We'll see how it plays out. Naylor doesn't have the greatest defensive reputation. I know he's worked to get better. And this is a team that takes it like really seriously. So, you know, whatever they can get out of him defensively, I'm guessing that Torre Lave and his coaches are going to be on him

and encouraging him to work super hard to get as good as he can be. You know, Lovello just doesn't suffer that sort of thing. He's he's moved guys out of starting roles pretty quickly when it hasn't looked the way he's wanted it to look defensively. I haven't seen much of Josh Naylor, to be honest, over the last few years. So I'm curious to see just how it looks myself. Well, we have just switched recording platforms.

I don't know whether Nick will sound any different, but FYI, because Nick's computer overheated, because apparently Ha Sung Kim killed your computer. Yeah, it took a foul ball two years ago. I had to get the screen replaced and it's just been like straight downhill ever since. So it just got a little overcooked right there and can't seem to keep up. So I'm on my phone where we should, we should be good for the, for the rest of this. Sorry about that guys.

That's okay. Hassan Kim should maybe cut you a check, you know, from his new, his new raise deal to get you that new computer. It's on me, man. I saw it come in. I got a bad read on it, I thought it was fine and then boom. Like it's not his fault, it's my fault. Yeah, you assume the risk, I suppose,

when you're up there in the press box. All right, so proceeding with our preview. Corbin Carroll, you referenced earlier his decline, but really it was a decline and then a resurgence. It was a tale of two seasons for him. Maybe he just didn't realize that the season started in March instead of June, July, whenever he really caught fire.

He mostly made up for lost time at that point, but he did lose a lot of time. He was so good late in the year and so bad early in the year that people sort of assumed that he was hurt So was he or if not what else was going on and how did things finally click for him? I don't think he was hurt I mean he could have been hurt and just not told anybody he did have that shoulder thing that popped up in 23 But you know, he was hitting balls hard still even after that in in 23 and in the playoffs Just wasn't hitting for his many home runs or as much power.

No, I think it was that, you know, what he said was he was making some adjustments in the off season, trying to handle certain pitches. I think it was like cutters up and in. And he started doing some things to his swing to be able to get to those. And inadvertently kind of got himself into some really bad habits.

You know, he did so much work as the year went on trying to redo his swing on the fly, which you know, as you guys know, it's just really hard for guys to do. Interestingly, he, he got invited to hit with jock Peterson and he had been using Marlon Byrd as his private hitting instructor and jocks like, Hey man, you want to come, you want to get another set of eyes, just different opinion. And he came out one day and something clicked and he wound up hitting a walkoff homer against Kyle Finnegan right before the trade deadline and kind of ruining Kyle Finnegan's trade value probably.

And it felt like it was, it was, you know, straight up from there. He, he just took off. I think he hit like 17 home runs in the second half. He's talked again about having made some adjustments, but these are a little bit more like focused on just being a good hitter rather than focused on hitting a specific pitch. His hands are a little bit higher. He's holding his bat a little bit straighter. You might notice it. It's not like a massive difference, but it's noticeable. He's already hit a couple of home runs this spring. He seems to be in really good spirits. Last spring, you could tell it was wearing on him from the get-go. I mean, he was going

back on the backfields, getting tons of the bats every day in spring training because he knew something wasn't right. And he was trying to fix it as desperately as he could and just wasn't able to do it until mid-summer. So I think there's a lot of optimism that Corbin's going to get back to being the guy he was in 2023. And that would be huge for this offense. Jock Peterson's gone, Christian Walker's gone. If they're going to remain a top five offense in the league, they're probably going to need

more out of Corbin Carroll than he gave them last year. Well, on the subject of second half turnarounds, we should probably discuss Eugenio Suarez for a second because his was even more pronounced, even more extreme than Carroll's and he was so blistering, so torrid down the stretch that he pretty much ended up where you might have hoped he would realistically, but it was ice cold to red hot for him. And I guess the switch sort of flipped right around the same time. So was there an origin story for his second half surge? I mean, the origin story doesn't totally fit in the same, like it doesn't make as much sense in my mind. He started practicing a little bit faster. It was sort of like, okay, I'm going

to put a little bit more effort into pregame. I'm going to take some live at bats off the trajectory. I'm just going to get myself a little bit more ready. But like, I mean, he was one of the best hitters in baseball for the last several months of the season. He was unbelievably good. He was just on everything. It's quite a story too, because I mean, these guys, they really made no secret about the fact that they were close to turning the page on him and cutting him loose. I think that Jordan Lawler's injury, he came back from a thumb and then was playing in Reno for a week and looked really good and then blew out his hammy.

And I think that if the hamstring injury hadn't happened, there's a decent chance that Suarez would have got DFA'd at some point. They just picked up his contract option over the winter. It's the same contract that the Reds dumped to the Mariners. And I think the Mariners were acquiring Suarez thinking, you know, there's, there's going to come a day where we're going to have to DFA him. And, and here he is like making 15 million bucks this year on that same contract. It's just crazy how this, how this game can, can flip on you, you know, within a season or how this game can, can, you know, flip on you, you know, within a season or how a trade can be viewed one way or an acquisition can be viewed

one way or another, or go back and forth over several years. It's part of the fun of, of this is just so unpredictable. And I can't explain really why Suarez was so awesome, but man, he still looks great this spring. It's just, I don't know if something's just clicked with him, you know, he's just sort of figured something out, but he just seems like it's not like he's only hitting fastballs to the pole side. He's on everything. He's crushing everything. And we'll see if he can do it again. Kaitlin Luna speaking of Jordan Lawler, Geraldo Perdomo got extended this offseason, four years and $45 million. I'm curious about the extension and sort of what

they like so much about Perdomo, who is a perfectly good player, league average hitter, fine defender, and then what the implications are for Lawler, who is one of their top prospects, but as you just noted in your answer about Suarez, has really struggled to stay healthy as a pro. Okay. Well, I guess what do they like about Perdomo? They love the quality of the at-bat at the bottom of the lineup. Guys in the organization are constantly referencing just what he brings to the offense. Maybe it's not the most obvious statistical ways, but he seems to be in the middle of rallies all the time.

He's turning it over for Cattell and Corbin Carroll. You look at when he was out early last year with a, I think it was a meniscus thing. He came back. That's when the offense got going. That's what they like offensively. Defensively, it's really steady. It's not super flashy, but it's like really consistent throws, really good hands, really good actions, just a classic good smug shortstop. That's obviously really valuable. And in the clubhouse, he's just a guy who will say whatever to anybody that needs to be said. And he's kind of been like that, even going back to 2022, when he was a rookie and he was filling in for an injured Nick Ahmed and he hit a buck 95, he still just had this way about him. He just carries himself. He just

walks the way he walks around the infield. It's just a guy that just has so much confidence in himself. It's funny to watch and it was funny to watch even back then when he was sitting as bad as he was sitting, but you wouldn't ever know it from looking at him. You know, they go to him when, you know, something needs to be said to somebody even like prospects. Like one of their front office guys told me that he asked Perdomo, like, hey, we got to get your boy going down there in the minor. You know, Perdomo makes a call. You know, that's the guy. Got to get him working harder down there. That sort of stuff. So he's taken on a real leadership role in that room.

He's not a very old guy, I think he's 25, but that's what he is to them. I don't know that it changes a whole lot for Lawler. Like I mentioned, Suarez is going to be a free agent. Cattell is getting older and is going to need more days off and is going to need more time at DH. And maybe sometime in the near future, maybe he's the answer at first base. I don't know.

I mean, he certainly hits enough to do it. I don't think he views himself that way now, but look, that day could be coming. And Lawler is such a great athlete. I don't think anybody really has any questions as to whether he could go out in the outfield, even in center field and be a really good defender out there. The whole field is really a possibility for Lawler. The thing about it for this year is they just need to see him out there playing every day before they can really feel comfortable bringing him up.

I think in a perfect world, he does force his way here to the big leagues and start to kind of establish himself in, in some sense. And then they can work them into their plans a little bit more comfortably next year. Also 25 years old, also a slow starter last season, Gabriel Moreno, as you mentioned, now he was cold too to start the season. I don't know what was going on in Arizona. It was just a really, really extreme. Famous for being cold.

Yeah, famous for being cold. I know, really. But he started slow and then he turned it on at mid-season too and his surge was kind of curtailed by injury, so he missed most of August and part of September too. If he had been healthy the whole way down the stretch, then maybe his full season numbers would have looked like you would have expected at the end. But hopes are still very high. I'm still pretty bullish on Moreno.

So what is the outlook for him? Yeah, it's kind of a different opinions on exactly what happened early last season. I mentioned this in a story the other day. They did talk about a contract extension with him last spring. There's some belief that perhaps that got into his head at the beginning of last year and he started trying to you know maybe put up

bigger numbers than you know just sort of manufacture them a little bit and maybe that was the reason for his slow start. He thinks that actually he was being more passive than he should have been and letting hittable pitches go by who can say but but, you know, he did turn it on late in the year and looked great. And like you said, the injury bug got him and it's gotten him a lot. And that's kind of, that's kind of, you know, the focus of his year. If you talk to him, he, he's had little things here and there. He had a shoulder that costs him a month or so in, in 2023, he's had

some other things in his minor league career. Like you look at his games played total. I mean, some of them may be pandemic related, but it's not big numbers. Um, and obviously he's a catcher too, but he's just missed a lot of time with little things. Um, he wants to stay on the field. He's talking about how he's, he's kind of matured from the perspective of like knowing all the work that goes into, you know, doing that, like just because my shoulder feels good now doesn't mean I can kind of neglect it in the, in the training room, you know, that sort of stuff. So that's his goal for this year. And you look at the numbers when, when he plays, they're a much better team. I mean, he's, he's just a game changer on

both sides of the ball. You know, he, he puts the ball and plays the guy you wanted to plate in a big situation. And defensively, he just shuts down opposing running games as well as anybody in baseball. He's really good. They need him out there. Speaking of running games, this is a team that has a lot of fast guys, but they were sort of middle of the pack when it comes to stolen base totals last year. Some of that, I think we can chalk up to injury, but how did the Diamondbacks think about speed and the base paths as a potential competitive advantage for them? Because you got Corbin Carroll, you got Jake McCarthy, you got Alec Thomas, you have Blaise Alexander, who sounds like he should be fast, but you know, not so much. So do they want that to be a part of their game? Do they want to be vroom vroom guys?

Like they were sort of in the first part of 2023 Yeah, they would like to be aggressive on the bases But I mean, I think I think the reality is you look across the diamond There's you know, Katel is not gonna run a whole lot Josh. Naylor's not very fast Burdomo can steal a base here and there but he's's not a burner. Suarez not really. They do have some of these guys, but I don't feel like the reality lives up to the reputation. I think Corbin and Jake really pushed the envelope and Moreno can steal a base here and there too. But those two fuel the create chaos thing that they were... That was a little hashtag for their

team a couple of years ago. Dave McKay is the first base coach and one of the best in the business and kind of controls the running game. But, you know, even he will admit that like, you know, we have to, we have to be careful with the personnel that we have. We do want to seal bases, but we're not giving away outs. So I don't, you know, it's not a, it's, it's, it's no, it's not like a novel approach to it. They're, they're going to be aggressive, but they're not going to be, they're not going to be silly about it. I'm curious to see how it works out. I mean, if, if McCarthy is the everyday center fielder this year and Carol, you know, is playing everyday in right field,

those two could easily combine for a hundred plus steals. We'll, we'll see where, where Alec Thomas fits into the mix. There could be days when all three of those guys are out there and Gurriel, another guy who's not really a runner, is DHing. So there's going to be some opportunities for them to run and be that kind of team again. I'm not sure that they're going to get back to where they were when they had Varsho out there as well. How would you classify this farm system? Because some of the rankings have them very low.

I think Kylin McDaniel had them 25th, Baseball America had them 22nd. Keith Law stuffed him. And in scouting parlance, that's a good thing. They were fourth on his list. So we talked about Lawler, but what else is there? Would you say split the difference somewhere in the middle, which is often the right answer, I guess? But which of those rankings would you say reflects the consensus or your understanding?

I don't know. It's hard to say. I don't have a great view of the other 29. I think it's a system that has a lot of interesting players, but a lot of guys that have a lot of questions to answer. I guess that's probably the case with most systems outside of the top five to seven guys. But even at the top of the D-backs list, there's guys like, I did the baseball America list and Drew Jones, I had pretty high just because I think that if it comes together, it's the

clearest pass to a five win player that they have in this organization outside of Jordan Lawler. to like a five win player that they have in this organization outside of Jordan Waller. Who knows if it's going to come together? There's serious questions there. Hansel-Louise is an interesting player, but swings at 40% of things outside the zone. There's Gino Gruber, where is he going to play positionally? You know, Jimiccio Casantes is a very interesting prospect. I'm sorry, I'm just like throwing out names nonstop. But like, I think, I think there's a lot of, there's a lot of guys that we could look up in a year and say like, Oh wow.

Okay. Christopher Turing or JD Dicks or Drew Jones or Slade Caldwell are a legit up the middle everyday position player prospects in the big leagues. And those are super, super valuable. But they all have to sort of go out and prove it either for the first time at a professional level or at higher levels in the minors. So I see the reason for optimism. If you're really high on some of those guys, like you can really see it coming together and this being a system that's going to be teaming. If you have more serious concerns about some of them,

I can also see why they'd be ranked 25th or so, I guess. Just wanted to say Ketel Marte at some point during this preview. I was about to do the same thing. I don't really have a question because he kind of answered all the questions. He's Ketel Marte. He's great. But yeah, he tends to get forgotten a little bit and overshadowed by bigger stars maybe, but he is fantastic year in and year out. So he's kind of the centerpiece, the anchor here. We're talking about all these other guys and can they get better and they're up and down and hot and cold and he's just, he's Cattell. He's just great.

I feel like if there's a thing to say about Cattell, it's the, the, kind of like what I was saying with Marino, I think Cattell has really learned how to keep himself healthy over the last three to four years. I think he understands the work that he has to put in every day to do that. You know, he just has a really good routine down. The biggest surprise to me about Cattell over the last few years has been what's happened to him defensively. I'm trying to think if it was 21 or 22, there was a point where you're like, wow, this guy's not an infielder anymore.

Like this guy can't play in the middle of the diamond. And last year, he was fantastic. And in the playoffs too, in 23, he was awesome. He's just, he's gotten his body back in the kind of shape to be a, you know, really explosive. I don't want to say like super rangey, but plenty rangey. And he'd always had good hands and strong arm and good actions and stuff out there. He's a good defender. And if he had stayed healthy and hadn't needed to go on the injured list with that ankle, I don't know that he would have beat out a tiny, but he would have made it a whole lot

more interesting in the MVP voting. Yeah, he's awesome. He's really good. Mike Hazen has called him a superstar for a long time now, and he's not wrong. Katela is a really good player. Is there anyone else we haven't talked about who could take a step forward? Like, Pavin Smith I've seen on some breakout lists and he was very good in 60 games last year, or Jake McCarthy was perhaps surprisingly productive last year. There's Lourdes Gurriel Jr., another holdover here. So is there anyone we haven't talked about who might take some step forward or there might be more in them? Or one of the bench guys?

Yeah, I think Aidan's a really good name. I don't know if you've looked at, at his minor league data or his big league data from last year, aside from just the numbers, but he was crushing balls at, at both levels. You know, maybe you could say, well, that's Reno, but like, then he comes up and hits three home runs in a game and on Sunday night, pace Paul, two of them off of a lander. And I mean, it seems like he's figured some things out at the plate. I think in the past he would get into funks and start making like, and I say funks, like he'd go, he'd go hit list in a couple of games and the coaches would talk about how he's looking to make, you know, adjustments and tweaks to his swing, just like constantly searching even after just a couple of bad games.

And I think he's kind of realized like, I don't need to do this. You know, I think he's just realized there's more to life than, than baseball. And it's allowed him to just kind of relax. And he seems, uh, he seems to be in a really good place. They're going to give him an opportunity to take those at bats that, uh, jock was getting last year and be the versus right half of the platoon with a Gritchick at, in the DH spot. So this could be the year.

I mean, Pavin's been a guy that he was the seventh overall pick in the 2017 draft. He's been in this organization seemingly forever. I think there were multiple points where I was like, wow, we, we might have just, you know, when you get sent down or whatever, we might've just seen Pavin play the last game with the diamond backs. Cause like there's been so many other outfielders and you know, he's blocked at first base. Like there's just no path to playing time for him and the D-backs have held strong and it kind of looks like that's paying off for them. We'll see if he can keep the momentum he seemed to build last year.

Is there any path to playing time for Trey Mancini? Room for that guy. But tough uphill battle, I'm sure. I think he's going to be, he's going to have to be open. I mean, unless there's an injury to going down to Reno, it's a good place to try to reestablish your value. I guess he's probably got an opt out too at the end of spring. So if he, if he hits well and isn't going to make the club and there's opportunities elsewhere, but we'll, we'll see how the spring goes. But I think if he's going to stay here and

everything's, everyone's healthy, he's probably going to have to go down. Before our final question, just an update on ballpark repair. Just this week, a bill was passed by the Arizona State House of Representatives. And Meg and I talked about this. We kind of took the team to task and some of the politicians for framing it as no new taxes, which technically is kind of correct, but really it's repurposing an existing tax and putting it towards repair of Chase Field, but didn't dispute that repairs are needed. So this will go to the state Senate now, is it assumed that this will proceed smoothly and what will the effect of these repairs be?

Yeah, that is what some of our people that cover the state think that this is going to pass. Yeah, and it will provide them some clarity that they've lacked for a really long time. They want to redo a lot of things. They wanna redo the club houses. They wanna redo the club level right behind home plate. I've heard them talk about maybe changing around what's going on outside the ballpark, like maybe a hotel or other mixed use type of stuff that we see so often nowadays.

The HVAC system, I don't know if you've, Meg, if you've had the pleasure of sweating your butt off. Dear God. I, I, I'm not the first to say it, but I have wondered, I'm like, I had a lot of hammy injuries on this team is cause it's too hot in here. I mean, you wonder where I have. Yeah, it's, it's been bad. I mean, Meryl Kelly has, has kind of blamed it for some cramping issues that he's had multiple times of late and starts. Um, it luckily it's,

it doesn't seem to pop up for him until the 90 something pitch mark, but like he's always thought like I had another inning or another, however many batters in me and I had to come out. It is uncomfortable sometimes when there's a lot of bodies in the building, especially those five o'clock start times on Saturdays. Those are rough. Like Saturday, a Saturday against the Dodgers, there was this, I think it was a Saturday against the Phillies that was especially bad last year.

They've talked about putting two to $300 million of their own money into it. I think probably Kendrick and some of the other minority partners will sell some of their shares in the club to raise that money. It's gonna take several years I think for them to implement. They'll do it in phases you know like like we've seen with Dodger Stadium and Wrigley and those other places. So I don't know that I like I feel like it's desperately needed. I still think it's a pretty nice place to go watch a baseball game but it could use it could use a little bit of the face left. All right so when people go watch games there, what will they see?

What would constitute success for the Diamondbacks this season? What do they have to achieve as an organization to satisfy themselves and satisfy the fans? Yeah, I guess I think I probably would have said the same thing I'm going to say now last year, which is get back to the playoffs, but I don't even feel like having missed the playoffs by a game that they really didn't have a successful season. At least, it feels like there's a lot of momentum still locally. Picket sales have been really strong. They're projecting revenue numbers to be high, which is why the payroll is up around $200. I think getting back to the playoffs would be the expectation here. Especially as I mentioned, there's a lot of guys that are going to be hitting free agency. So this could be the best roster

that they have over the next however many years, their most legitimate chance to go out and win a championship or at least play deep into October again. So yeah, I guess just getting back there, they're a little bit behind the eight ball, right? When you play in the NL West, there's one spot, one path to the playoffs that is immediately not really available, most likely. So they're going to have to outplay two or three clubs in the NL East and a couple more in the Central and then the Padres and the Giants. So they got to make sure they're one game better than those guys unlike last year. Yeah, if they just start hitting on opening day this year instead of in July.

I'll suggest that. Yeah, even May 1st would really do it. Sure, that would work. Yeah, even June would be an improvement. Again, they scored the most runs, so it's not like it was a total offensive outage, but imagine how great it could have been if they had been going gangbusters from the start. So for the sake of their hitters and Diamondbacks fans, maybe they will start as hot as Nick Pecorro's computer, which is overheated thanks to Ha Sung Kim.

You can read Nick's coverage of the Diamondbacks all season at the Arizona Republic and AZ Central Sports. Always a pleasure. Nick, goodbye to you and goodbye to the birds. Thanks guys, see you later. Well, after we recorded that segment, it was announced that Blaze Alexander will miss several weeks with an oblique strain.

Also, right after we recorded the upcoming national segment, it was announced that Stone Garrett, former effectively wild meta major leaguer subject, was the guy who got designated for assignment to make room for Kyle Finnegan. Not the most major developments, but just so as you know, we'll be back in a second with Andrew Golden to talk about the Nets. The wacky hypotheticals are perfectively styled And the stat blast queries are detectively compiled

The non-Agerian baseball legend selectively dialed But their spiciest takes are still respectfully mild More than two thousand episodes retrospectively filed And at each new one, we still collectively smile. That's effectively wild. That's effectively wild. Well, we're joined now by Andrew Golden, who covers the Washington Nationals

for the Washington Post. Hello, Andrew, welcome back. Hey, what's going on, guys? How we doing? Doing okay. Doing better than the Nationals have over the past several seasons, which has not been so great. They have lost the most games of any major league team

in the five seasons since they won the 2019 World Series. To be fair, they have also played one more game than the Rockies. And so the records are 288 and 420 and 288 and 419. And so I do believe, I believe in the Rockies. And so the records are 288 and 420 and 288 and 419. And so I do believe, I believe in the Rockies. If they had played one more game, I think they could have lost that extra one. They could have gotten to 422 and they could have tied the Nationals. But let's say no team has lost more games than the Nationals at least. And so a lot of attention was paid to some quotes that Nationals owner Mark Lerner gave

to your colleague Barry Sviruliga recently because Barry was talking to Lerner about the team's recent struggles and when they might invest in the roster. And Lerner said, when Mike, Mike Rizzo, calls me in and says, we really need to think about it for next winter, we'll talk about it. Right now, he doesn't think, and I agree with him. There's no point in getting a superstar and paying him hundreds of millions of dollars to win two or three more games. You've got to wait until, like Jason, Jason Worth that is, Jason was right on the cusp of the team being really good and it took us to the next level. That's the ideal situation. It's always on our mind. And then probably the money quote,

the one that circulated the most, you could get nauseous thinking about it, he said, laughing. Now, my mom always says that nauseous means things that make you feel nauseated and that nauseated is what you should say when you actually feel sick to your stomach, but I don't think that's the part that upset Nationals fans about this. So given that the Learners were talking about selling

the team not so long ago and that Mark Learner clearly uncomfortable with the idea of shelling out a lot of cash here, is this something Nationals fans should be concerned about if and when the team actually does get to the point that it should be spending money and I guess you could argue and some have argued that it is already at that point. Yeah I think that's kind of been the big question all season like if I had a dollar for every tweet or DM I got about what they should spend it on I think I'd have enough to

probably buy the team honestly I think. Honestly been a lot of talk about that. I think it's kind of like a good question. And I think there's kind of been a lot of patience from the fan base in terms of waiting for the right time for them to spend. I think there's a handful of fans who thought that that'll be this off season, given the progression

of James Wood, Dylan Cruz getting into the majors last year, and you saw steps four from some of the young rotation. I think there's still some question marks about how good they'll be. And maybe you wait and see how the season goes and make sure that they're what you think they are before you invest. I think there's definitely that argument, but also there's that argument that when they signed Jason Worth, I still don't think they were ahead of winning record that season after they signed Jason Worth. I mean, it was only in

the following season that they started to kind of have some success. You can also make the argument that you can make that investment now and hope for the best in the long term. So I think there's kind of the two sides and the two veins of thought. There's definitely kind of the main, one of the main talking points from the fan base of is, was this the time to spend this past off season or is it okay to wait just to see how some of these guys play this year and are a little more proven? Yeah, I guess part of the rationale for signing Worth was let's send the signal that we're ready to contend or that we're ready to attract other free agents. And you're right, the Nationals were 80 and 81 in their first season with Worth and then they got good the following season. But they said,

I think, or it was justified as let's show that we're the kind of team that could hand out this sort of contract. And granted, I guess they've done that already with Wirth and Scherzer and Strasburg and others in the past, so maybe they don't need to send that signal. But after five down years like this, maybe they need to resend that signal at some point. Yeah, for sure. I think the last time that they really, you know, they spent money was on Strasburg right after the World Series. And I think they signed Will Harris to a three-year deal that off-season and they haven't spent, you know, they haven't given out a contract

of more than two years since, if I remember correctly. And so I think there is some question of like, even though they've shown that in the past, like obviously when the ownership says they're gonna sell the team, they back off. Like, are they willing to really reinvest, you know, to commit to that in the future? I think it's definitely a big question

and one that we'll continue to see how the ball plays out. But I thought the comments to Barry were definitely super interesting. Yeah, it's been a big question and one that we'll continue to see how it all plays out. But I thought the comments to Barry were definitely super interesting. Yeah, it's been a real land of contrast for the Nationals when it comes to big free agent deals because I think it would be hard to argue that there's one that has maybe ever gone better than Scherzer with the Nationals. And then, you know, we of course know what happened with some of their other big pitching signings. Maybe we can start with that exciting young course so that Nationals fans feel like they have something to look forward to. You mentioned

Cruz and Wood having made their debuts. Let's start with those guys. How do the Nationals feel that those debuts went and what are they hoping that those two guys will do to sort of take the next step forward and really establish themselves as young stars in the league. Yeah, I think the Nationals think that the debuts went pretty well when you look at how they performed. Last year for James, you know, ending the year, I think after the All-Star break, he led the team in most statistical categories offensively. He was patient and kind of showed that he was willing to take his walk, which is a thing in the minor leagues, like how would he take his walks? And obviously the big leagues is a different story, but he did a really good job of that.

I think he also was playing left field for the first time, so I think there were definitely some growing pains there, but I think I saw some improvements as the season went on. And then Dylan came up in the end of August in the Yankee series in August, and he performed well, I think overall. I think Dylan was kind of getting adjusted to big league pitching. I think he struggled with breaking balls. I think it's obviously something that's going to be a thing to watch the spring training. I think he's already shown kind of some abilities to adjust there.

But defensively is where he probably looked the best. Like defensively, he looks like exactly what we expected and he looked really good. If you look at both of their years, they had good starts and I think there's obviously a lot to build on. But I think they're pretty promising for both those guys in different ways. Very common breakout candidates, as we have discussed with some skepticism,

just because they were very recently the top prospects in baseball, and also were fine last year. And so I have questioned whether they qualify as breakouts or not, but I do not question that they could be significantly better than they were. So, what about CJ Abrams, who was a bright spot at the end of 2023 and not so much at the end of last season?

Can you tell us what went wrong for him on the field and then also pretty importantly off of it? I think the key for CJ is just find that consistency this year. I think his first full season 2023, he had like a, he had a month of like August, like the first half of the year was really a struggle and the days moving to the leadoff spot and beginning of 2020, right before the all-star break in 2023. And CJ like took off like a month and a half and you were like, oh, this, like, this is what he can be. And then he comes out last year in the first half and just like continues to do that.

He had a really, really good April. Then May, he really struggled. Then June, he was even better than he was in April. And then he was an All-Star. And it was like, OK, this is CJ becoming the player that we all know he can be. And then the second half, he just struggled. I think he was chasing a lot more.

I just think he wasn't consistent with his mechanics. The things got a little bit out of whack. And then obviously everything happened in September where he was out at the casino and obviously he got demoted. And so that was obviously a tough ending for him. But we talked to him this spring and he was like, I'm just ready to move past it. And the team keeps saying they're ready to move past it. And so it seems like water under the bridge. You never really know how much those relationships are affected as the season goes on. But at least publicly they've expressed that there are no lingering issues.

He's come to spring training, he looks stronger. And obviously another thing for him is defensively, improving defensively. It seems like he's taken some steps there too. And so we'll all see how it plays out. But I think the nationals believe that he's going to put it all together for a full season versus a couple of months like he's shown the past couple of years. Yeah. And just to clarify for anyone who's looking at the full season stat lines from the last couple of years and saying, well, why was last year worse than the first? Because

last year he actually hit better on the hole than he did in 2023 and was roughly equally valuable. But yeah, it was just the timing of it and the way that he ended 2023 and it seemed like, oh, sky's the limit. And you're right, he's getting on base and he stole the most bases in the majors after he was moved to the lead off spot. And so it seemed like the quote unquote breakout was really coming and then it didn't so much. And then yeah, the casino stuff also. I think he's due for a good year this year.

I am interested to see if he steals more bases because honestly it was something where I thought he was a little bit timid at times to not steal bases as much. Seemed a little bit jumpy. There was a kind of stretch right before the All-Star break last year where he kind of like got caught stealing a couple times and I think he got kind of maybe a little gun shy. And so I'm interested to see this year kind of how he works to adjust in that way too. A guy who would have taken any good stretch last year is Kieber Ruiz. That's such a mean transition, but I couldn't think of a better one. You know, we've talked about Ruiz for years now. He was a top prospect.

And I guess the way I'd like to put this question is, do we know who Ruiz is as a player now? Or is there another gear or adjustment that could be made because it's not going great defensively and it's arguably going worse at the plate. And this after a full season debut that was at least bolstered by good defense, even if he was a below average hitter. So what do we expect from Ruiz this year and what are the Nationals' plans at that position if he continues to falter? I think with Ruiz, I think when I look at him as a player this past year or last year, he had the flu and early on in the season. I think the thing with K-Bear is he is so

pressed on, I want to start the season now strong, I want to prove that I belong, that sort of thing. And I think almost because of that, he maybe gets in His head and then has these really bad starts to the year and then the second half He seems to figure it out at the plate because in the second half if you look at his splits first half second half I don't have the moment at the moment, but it feels like he's so much better in the second half in the first I think he just put so much pressure on himself to like prove himself at the jump And so I'm interested to see this year like how he kind of learns to like Try to calm down and not press so much in terms of his catching like I think last year he was, in 2023, he was one of the worst catchers in baseball.

I think it might have been just the worst. I don't even know if it was one of the worst. I think he was just the worst. But last year, he was kind of back to being average. And so I think if he can just be an average or a bit below average, I think the Nats will take that. But I think Kaber, the main thing for him was his power and hitting for power. And so I'm interested to see how he can do that.

I think his bat speed is a little bit slower than the league average. And so I think that's definitely concerning, but something that he has to improve for sure. And just making better contact. And I think one of the things about K-Bear is he's so good at making contact. It comes to the fault where like he chases so much out of the zone that he puts stuff in play that he shouldn't put in play. So I think it's about refining his pitch and being more selective. And then long-term, like I think if like, if this year doesn't go well, I think you do it to think about,

okay, he has signed an eight-year deal and he's in year three of it. And so you can't necessarily get rid of him per se, but could you find a guy where you could platoon with him so that way you're not playing him every single day? And obviously the Nationals have a lot more catching depth in their system now. They drafted Caleb Lomavita last year, and Kevin Basel, Sir Jameson Jones. They drafted three catchers last year, and so I definitely think that like,

they're definitely a ways away, I think, those guys, but I think catching and trying to find a guy that kind of complement Kaber would be good if he continues to struggle this year. The Nets have gotten next to nothing out of third base since Anthony Rendon departed. Over those five seasons during which the team has struggled. Their third baseman have been the worst in baseball by Fancraft's war.

2.1 war from their third baseman over those five seasons. That's not so hot. Of course, Rendon has not been so great either, as we well know. The angels are 26th in third base war over that period. And hey, now they're trying Carter Keyboom. So we'll see if that goes better for them than it did for the Nats. Everything comes full circle. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That would probably be frustrating for Nats fans if Keeboom proved himself to be the successor to Rendon in Anaheim and not in DC. But the successor

at third base now seems to be Jose Tena, who was acquired in the deadline deal for Lane Thomas last year. So what are the Nats hoping for out of him and is he fully solidified at the hot corner? I think actually when you look at third base, I actually think Paul DeYoung, I think probably has more of an inside track, I think in my opinion, I think to play more than Jose Tena. I think they signed him to a one year deal. And also like when you look at Paul DeYoung, he was a career like middle infielder, played shortstop, played second base, and he went to third last year, I think, with the Royals. And he had like six outs above average, I think, playing third base, which is pretty

impressive for a guy who only played 40 games over there. And so he seemed pretty smooth over there. And I think the Nationals obviously lack power and need more of it. And so I think that DeYoung is a guy that I would expect to play a little bit more than Tenna. DeYoung is a good stop gap and also Tenna is a good stop gap. Because I think when you look at third base, there's a question of this off season, like could you have spent money on a third baseman versus like, okay, we know that we have Brady House behind and who's in triple A. There's Kayden Wallace, who they acquired last year at the deadline for Hunter Harvey, who's a promising player.

You have Johan Morales too, who is their second round pick in 2023. And so they have some options over there. And so I think you could see Paul DeYoung and Jose Tena, they're temporarily been in the long term. I think any of those guys could be future third baseman. And Mike Rizzo even said that at the beginning of spring training. He's like, we think we have three third baseman who could be everyday third baseman. It's a matter of figuring out which one that is. Maybe we can stick with the trade acquisitions for a second. What did they see in Nathaniel Lowe that made them excited to acquire him from the Rangers this off season? I think two things. I think first, the power that I just mentioned, like the Nationals have really struggled to hit for home runs and hit for power. I think that Lowe has shown that. I think he's

only had one season where he's hit about 20 homers, but I think even for the Nassos, they just haven't gotten a lot of production out of first base. So I think that he will be an upgrade for them from what they've had. Joey Manessas in 2023 and parts 2024, and they have Juan Diep as over there. They had Dom Smith at some point. So they had a bunch of kind of rotating pieces over there and no one's able to hit for power. And so I think Low just automatically brings that. How many homers will hit just remains to be seen, but I think you're already kind of getting above what you've gotten before just in acquiring him.

And I think also defense, like he was a gold glover the year they won the World Series. And I think the Nassos have some young infielders who would benefit from some help over there. And so I think that he kind of is a sure fire guy at first base who could help out CJ Abrams and Luis Garcia Jr. and also whoever's at third base, either Paul DeYoung or Tenna.

We've talked about some of the young guys in this lineup. It is a very young lineup, other than Lowe and Josh Bell. It's all guys who are in their early to mid-20s. Jacob Young is another one. He has played in parts of two seasons for the Nats now and has been a below average hitter and didn't really make much offensive progress last year in his first full season. So what are they hoping for out of him? He's clearly a low power speed kind of guy and you hope that you're getting great defense from him. And I guess the Nats have gone that route with Victor Robles who broke out I, I think we can say, after he left DC. I don't know whether the Nats have reflected on that at all, but what are they hoping for

out of Young? I think one of the things about a major league lineup is not every guy's going to hit 20 homers, even this era of hitting for power. Not every guy's going to hit 20 homers. I think they just want Jacob Young to be a guy who just gets on base as much as possible, works his walks, and kind of hits doubles from gap to gap. And I have a story coming out about Jacob Young soon,

so pay attention for that. That kind of breaks some of this down, but I think for Jacob, the key is just for him to be a really, really good defender, steal bases, and be in that nine hole and just kind of get on base, get some butt singles here and there, and hit the ball from gap to gap. If he runs into the power, that's great,

but I don't think they're expecting him to be, you know, some like 20-hole run guy. I think the key is just like get on base, steal bases and kind of wreak havoc. And then turn the lap over to CJ Abrams at the top of the order. Well, I was about to say one guy you can't call young, but that's such a terrible way to introduce Josh Bell. He's not new to the Nationals. Let's put it that way. way to introduce Josh Bell. He's not new to the Nationals, let's put it that way. Returning on a free agent deal is Bell and he and we mentioned DeYoung and Ahmed Rezara sort of made up their trio of veteran free agent signing. So if they're not doing big deals to advance the team, we could maybe say that they're at least bringing in the complimentary veterans, role players. What are they expecting out of Bell and also Rosario?

Yeah, Bell I think is gonna be, you know, their everyday designated hitter. I think he's excited about the opportunity to not just play defense and just focus on hitting. And I think Josh can be a very streaky hitter, but I really think he believes that he's made the necessary changes and changes with his posture and change with his swing to be more consistent, to kind of

hit for more power. I think he feels like he can... Same with Low. I think the two of them both think that being bigger guys, they can probably hit for more power and they haven't in the way they wanted to, but they both think it's in there. And so I think that's what the Nassers are hoping for. And then as for Ahmed Rosario, I think the key is just to be a guy who can kind of play everywhere. You can play some second base, you can play some short, you can play some thirds. I think his goal is going to be kind of the equivalent of what Ildemar Vargas was for them

last year. A guy can kind of play everywhere and fill in. He can even play some outfield every once in a while, although I don't think he'll play a ton given who they currently have in the outfield. But I think he's just kind of like a utility guy that can kind of use everywhere, who has some experience and maybe has a little bit more of a higher ceiling, even maybe a higher floor than Ildemar Vargas. Realizing that when I was asking about Jacob Young, I said it was a young lineup and that was not an attempt at wordplay. I thought you were doing a joke.

I wasn't. I didn't mean to. It's just completely unintentional, but it dawned on me after I asked the question. The Nationals have a good second baseman, seemingly in Luis Garcia Jr. I know there have been a lot of Luis Garcia's, Luis's Garcia in the majors lately, but this is Jr. and also probably the best of them.

And he had himself kind of quietly, I guess you could say a low grade breakout season last year. So what was the key to his progress and can it be sustained? Yeah, I think the key, I think for him, like he probably was the nationals most consistent hitter last year, man. I know CJ Abrams was probably their best, but I would say in terms of who was the most consistent, I think it was Louis. With Louis, I think for him, the key was just having another year of big league experience under his belt. I think last year

as a matter of like learning who he was as a hitter, trying to stay in the middle of the field, not trying to pull off as much. I think just focusing on having a better routine and being in better shape. He looked really, really good last year just shape-wise. I think you could see it in his defensive numbers. Also hitting-wise, I think the Nass was always knew that he had the power potential, but I think it was a matter of just being more consistent with his routine as well as being able to do that. Kaitlin Luna You mentioned Brady House. Who are some of the position players floating around the upper minors who you think might

see time in the majors this year if we have underperformance or injury from any of the guys in the established lineup? Brandon Fries Yeah, one of the guys who I think about. This will be a little bit difficult because obviously their outfield is pretty set. But I'm still a believer in Robert Hassel. I think that he's a guy where obviously he was acquired in the Soto trade and every year it seemed like he has a really, really strong spring training

and then he gets injured and it's typically a wrist injury or a hand injury and then he kind of underperforms during the season and then goes to the Arizona Fall League and tears it up and then we get the spring training, he does it great again, it kind of seemsperforms during the season and then goes to the Arizona Fall League and tears it up. And then we get the spring training, he does great again. It kind of seems like a repetitive cycle, but I'm still really high on him. I think he's potentially a really good player. He really has the ability to kind of go gap to gap and hit line drives everywhere.

And so I think if there is somehow an injury in the outfield, I think that if he has a really strong start to the year, I can easily see him being a player who could come up and make an impact immediately. The other minor leaguers behind them, I think that outfield wise, they have a couple of good other guys too, Andrew Pinkney and Dale and Lyle, who are both in a major league camp. And I think that the two of them are pretty good too. And so I think they have some options there in the outfield. And those are kind of the guys that stand out to me, just Hassel, Pinkney and Lyle, in addition to Brady House. Well, I guess we can switch over to pitching. And Patrick Corbin is no longer on this team.

Neither is Tanner Rainey, so I guess that all the last links to the 2019 title team are gone now. Yeah, pretty quick turnover. Luis Garcia, I think, is the longest-tenured national, which is kind of a crazy thing to think about, but he really is, he is. The Corbin experience probably caused Nationals fans some angst over the past few years because he was durable, you could say that. He took the ball, they kept giving him the ball. He did not pitch well and he lost a lot of games, which was partly the fact that the Nationals

lost a lot of games, but also partly Patrick Corbin. So was there any consideration to yanking him from the rotation at some point or was it just like, well, we need bulk and he's making money and he won a World Series with us and we'll just kind of keep running him out there. I think part of it is the fact that their minor league system didn't have the depth that it does now. And so I think part of it is the fact that their minor league system didn't have the the depth that it does now and so I think part of it was like there weren't a ton of guys who were pushing Corbin to be out of the rotation the first couple in 2022 and 2023 at least. Last year I thought there were some times when DJ Herz and Mitchell Parker were performing well that potentially maybe this Patrick Corbin would be at the end. It seemed like every time last year that

like maybe this would be the end for him like somebody got hurt and then he was kind of like, it keeps staying in the rotation. But I also know Davey, he was probably one of the most respected people in the clubhouse and the guys really enjoyed him. And so I think Davey really honors that and respects that. So I don't really know how that would have turned out, but I think part of it was just the fact that there weren't a ton of guys in the minor league system who were top prospects who could have replaced Corbin. So he was just kind of the guy who could throw every fifth day because there weren't a ton of guys who were in his place, if that makes sense. So talk to us about the rotation as it stands now because they have Mackenzie Gore, Jake

Irvin, Mitchell Parker. They brought Soroka in this off season. Trevor Williams is still there. Talk to us about how those guys sort of line up and then what depth there is behind them if there's an injury, which there will be because it's pitching. Talk to us about how those guys sort of line up and then what depth there is behind them if there's an injury, which there will be because it's pitching. I think when you look at the rotation, to me, Mackenzie Gore and Jake Irvin are kind of the top two guys in the rotation. And then after that, I think you have Michael Soroka, who they signed to a $9 million deal this off season.

And so he's the most expensive pitcher on the roster. And so that to me signals that he's going to be in the rotation too. And then those last spots, they kind of come down to at the moment, Trevor Williams, Mitchell Parker, DJ hers, and then she, she, Nisuke, that's a war. Uh, they, they call she knows who they signed from Japan this off season. Um, so for me, when I look at it, I see Trevor Williams as being in the rotation, just given that they re-signed him this off season, um, to a two year deal. And like, like they, they want to give him a chance

to start the rotation again, because he had success last year, and I think he's earned that right. I think that last spot, to me, comes down to Mitchell Parker and DJ Hers. I think Shino might need some more time to get adjusted to the routine of pitching every fifth day and those sort of things,

but I think it comes down to DJ and Mitchell, who both perform well. They kind of had reverse years last year, so DJ was really kind of struggling when he came up at first, but then was arguably one of their best pitchers in the second half. And on the flip you had Mitchell Parker who was really, really strong to start, but then maybe struggled down the stretch. And so I think you kind of have these two guys who kind of had different, different years. I think it kind of comes down to the two of them when I look at it. I think DJ probably has better stuff, but Mitchell's probably a little

bit more polished. And so I think that when you look at those two, I think that's where it comes down to. If it was up to me, I don't know. I'd probably give the inside track to DJ maybe, but I can change my mind maybe today. I don't even know. So I think it's between those two. You wrote about Michael Soroka recently, and he was last healthy and good when the Nationals were last good.

So it's been a while. So tell us about what he has persevered through and what kind of shape he is in now and what kind of pitcher he is. I think he's rediscovered himself. I think he's made some changes. Obviously, we know in 2019, he was really, really good. The sinker was kind of his calling card. And I think that he had two Achilles injuries, right towards tore his Achilles in back-to-back years. He was telling me when he returned, he had to make some changes to his mechanics in order to be durable and sustain himself in his career for a longer time.

As a result of that, his sinker didn't move the way that it used to because his delivery changed. When he was at the White Sox early last year, he was still throwing that sinker, wasn't having the success. And then he moves to the bullpen and is like, okay, I'm just going to attack my four-seam fastball because it's really, really good. And like the things that may be good in Atlanta weren't necessarily the sinker, but it was my slider and it was my all-speed.

And so he started throwing his fastball up in the zone and started using his slider a lot more. And then he had a lot of success. And so I think he's going to try to translate that now to being a starter. And I actually am pretty high on him. I think he could have a really good year. And I think what he did in the bullpen is translatable to the starting rotation. And I think he still has the sinker, but just not using it as much and kind of figuring out ways to attack in a different way than he did before. So I think he did a lot of self-reflection and kind of rediscovered himself a little bit. Hosted by Dr. Michael B. Bollinger, the National's bullpen, they will be retaining the services

of Kyle Finnegan. Talk to us a little bit about the sequence here because Finnegan was an all-star, then he was non-tendered, then he was a free agent who was not able to find another contract. He did get a raise relative to his salary last year, but not as much of a raise as he was projected to get in arbitration. So what did they see that they liked enough at least to bring him in at a slightly lower price point than he maybe hoped he'd get on the free agent market? And then how do the guys behind him stack up? Yeah, I think when you look at Finnegan, he was, I think right before the All-Star break,

his ERA was a sub two and he was like second or third in the league in saves and had a really good year and earned an All-Star appearance as a result of that. But in the second half, you definitely just saw some struggles and he wasn't able to kind of sustain it. If you go on baseball, Savant, look at his baseball, Savant, Page, equivalent, whatever, his hard hit percentage is pretty low compared to most big league pitchers. And some of those things suggested maybe he's declining. I want to say in his first full season, his hard hit percentage was like 90% and I think last year was like four. I think it's kind of a sign

of some decline. I don't think the Nassos are willing to give in his final year of arbitration, say $8 or $9 million, whatever increase he would probably get. But I guess in this case, they weren't comfortable giving him a deal, just a little bit less than that. And so I think for $6 million, I think it's a really good deal to have your closer back. And I think the Nassau's just weren't comfortable giving him that bigger deal. And so when you look at the bullpen, I think the bullpen was the biggest question entering the spring, but I think now they're a lot more solidified with Finnegan as the closer. I think you have Jose Ferrer and Jorge Lopez's set up men, the seventh and the closer. I think you have Jose Ferrer and Jorge Lopez's set up men, the seventh and eighth inning. I think you can mix Derek Law in there through,

I want to say, 98-ings last year. And then you also have Lucas Sims. So I think there are some veterans in there. I think they're kind of some, I think you have Evan Reifer, who is a rule five pick. So they kind of have, their bullpen is starting to come together more than it was when spring training started. They also have Colin Poche who they got in a minor league deal. I expect him to kind of be in the mix because he's a lefty. So I think they have some good pieces in their bullpen right now. Yeah. I could imagine that there might be hard feelings in some situations like that.

You non tender a guy who's been with you for a while and maybe the other offers weren't out there though on the market, I guess, right? He got to see how teams valued him and maybe they didn't value him any higher than the Nationals did. And then it was more comfortable for him to stay in familiar surroundings. But yeah, interesting sequence of events there.

I wanted to ask you about Cade Cavalli, who you also wrote about recently. I like your spring training approach to writing about the team. It's less horse race position battles and more features and profiles of players which I think is the right way to go about it. So you wrote about Cavalli and his comeback or attempted comeback from Tommy John surgery and his interesting approach to the rehab process. So this was a, this was a guy who was a top prospect

in baseball before he got hurt. So what are the hopes for him and how has he evolved? Yeah, I think that, you know, obviously I was talking about the starting pitchers, like, you know, even though Cake and Volu might not begin the year at the team, like I think that he's still, they view him as a big part of their future. So I think they're going to really be careful

with him this year and make sure they take their time and getting him back from the rotation. I just think he's gone through a handful of just setbacks over the past couple of seasons. Obviously he had the Tommy John surgery and then last year he had the dead arm when he was rehabbing. And so I think he's kind of gone through a lot to kind of get back. But I still think the Nasos are very high on him. I think they're going to try to manage his innings.

And I think the key is for him to pitch in the big leagues at the end of the season and end the season the big leagues versus like, you know, shutting him down in August because he's reached his innings limit. So they're going to be very careful with him and he won't break with the team in spring, but I think he'll make rehab appearances throughout the beginning of the year. And I think when the time is right, I think we'll be back in the rotation. But I think the key for him has been focusing on his lower half and I'm trying to be more efficient to take pressure off his arm. And so we'll see how that all turns out. Speaking of Tommy John guys, Josiah Gray

had internal brace repair last July and Mason Thompson had TJ in March. Are they expecting to see anything out of either of those guys this year? Josiah, I think the goal is for me to get back at some point this year, but I think the time is a matter of when. And then Mason Thompson, I think he's a little bit farther ahead on his rehab.

And so I think the hope is that he'd be back at some point this year too, but I wouldn't expect him to kind of be with the team on opening day, if that makes sense. Last year you tweeted a photo from camp of the bullpen. Sorry, I didn't mean to laugh before you said it. It had signs posted, I don't care how fast you throw ball for this, of course, led to all kinds of consternation. Davey Andrews wrote a piece about this for us at Fangrass. I am curious sort of how you assess the state of pitching development and maybe player development

more broadly with the Nationals, because I think there's been a perception that the team is Behind when it comes to their approach to analytics and potentially to player dev How do you view them now sort of where would you rate them in terms of? How they stack up to the rest of the league and sort of what the size of the investment in that part of the Organization is yeah, I think there's been more investment for sure in the past couple of seasons. I think that there, I think that I guess when you look at the positive developments, I guess you can look at the homegrown players, the Mitchell Parkers,

the Jacob Youngs, the guys that have made to the big leagues. Jake Irvin is another example. I think it's a question like how much of that is on them? How much of that is on player development? But I think there has to be something given to player development for, you know, being those guys, the big league, those homegrown guys. And I think that some of it has to also be with given the player development for you know being those guys the big league was homegrown guys And I think that something has to also be with given the work that they do once they're in the big leagues

Obviously when you're looking at the progress of Jake Irvin and Mitchell Parker and DJ hers I think some that's do with Sean Doolittle and Jim Hickey with what that staff is doing too And so I think they've may strive for just given like I said the homegrown players that have been there but I think obviously there's still a lot more work that can be done to kind of make those guys more consistent and turn those guys into like the legitimate star players who can make impacts. But I think they've done a good job so far. I think they've done a better job than maybe the previous season, maybe before I started on the beat.

But I know at least like from what I've seen, I think the fact that even looking at this major league camp right now, like there are legitimate guys in camp who have kind of come through a system versus guys they signed in minor league free agent signings just to fill gaps. I think there are legitimate guys in the system who have made steps forward, which I think is a testament to so much the progress they've made in player development. But I still think there's work to be done. Yeah, ironically at the big league level, the Nationals had the fifth highest average four seam fastball velocity of any team, but the stuff metrics still didn't like him very much. Just wanted to ask a little bit more about Mackenzie Gore,

who had a strong season, I guess under the hood, you could say that it wasn't that great a leap. If you look at say the decline in his home run per fly ball rate, and maybe it was, you know, bad luck regressing more so than major strides, but you could also look at it more charitably and say he also had a 340 babbitt last year and he was still quite valuable. So are they thinking that there's even more that he could do? Is that the kind of guy he is? Are they back to looking at him as really a potential top of the rotation type? Yeah, I think they look at him as a top of the rotation type. I think he has the stuff to be

the top of the rotation type player. I think last year in July and August, he just went through like an eight or nine game stretch where he just couldn't figure it out. And it feels like this seems to be the problem. It's almost like he and CJ Abrams are very similar in that they show flashes for stretches of time and then go for these big drop-offs. And so I think for him that came in July and August and I think for him is just learning kind of how to navigate those struggles and limiting those. So it doesn't span for two months, but it spans for like two starts. And so I think, I think that's kind of the key for McKenzie, but I still think they view him as a top of the rotation guy because he has, he has the stuff to, he has the stuff to be a top of the rotation guy. And he, you know,

he has the games where he strikes out 10 or 11 guys. And you're like, okay, this is the guy, right? Where it's like, I remember last year in, I want to say Oakland, it was like five innings, he struck out 11. And I was like, this dude is just unbelievable. And so I think that he has that in there. I just think it's a matter of trying to figure out

how to get that consistently. Very similar to how CJ Abrams is. I thought I was done asking about the Massen dispute in these preview segments, but maybe one more time because there was an update early this year because the Nationals filed a petition with the Supreme Court of New York requesting that the court confirm a previous decision from MLP's Revenue Sharing Definitions Committee, which had found that the Orioles and Massen owed the Nationals a few hundred million dollars in TV rights fees for the 2022 to 26 season. So that's a lot of money, especially considering the Mark

Lerner comments that we started with and the Nats having a bottom 10 payroll currently. So is there any update there? Is there any uncertainty there? Is it just a matter of time with those payouts? And will that change the equation for the learners when it comes to spending on the team? Yeah, I think that definitely is a factor and the spending is waiting to hear, is waiting to see whether we're able to get that money. I think my colleague Barry kind of wrote in a column, like this was at the end of January, is that those fees that they're expected to kind of get back, they're a little bit lower than they originally expected.

And so that was kind of an update that he had, but I think you kind of laid out kind of what the details are. It's just, you know, the money's not on hand and it's a matter of when will they get that and how will this be resolved? I think we're all kind of just waiting on the resolution. Well, the resolution to this episode will come as soon as you answer one last question,

which is our standard closing one, about what would constitute success for this team this season coming off back to back 71 win years. What is a realistic outlook and how should fans in the organization judge whether this season went well? Yeah, for me, like I think I'm at the point where I think a winning record would be, would be a sign of progress. I think that'd be a successful season for them. Like, does that mean they make the playoffs or not?

I don't know, but like, I think you had to build off of 71 wins. And I think that you like, you have to see some, I think you have to see some more progress in the, in the win column. I think when I look at last year, I feel like last year was a better season than 2023, but like at the end of the day, you finished the same record. And so I think seeing those young guys take a step forward result, I think of them being better. And I think that, again, I think the additions they've made, Nathaniel Lowe, Josh Bell, DeYoung, I think there are some opportunities for them to have some success this year in the National League, if they're able to get what

they're hoping for from their young guys. Not every young guy is going to progress in the right direction. Like obviously that's just not how like development works, but I think if everything went well, I think a successful season for them would be like a winning record. For me, I would think that would be a good goal for them this year. All right. We'll see if they get there. And one way or another, Andrew will be chronicling them throughout the year at the Washington Post. Thank you once again, Andrew. Thanks for having me on. Appreciate it. All right. That will do it, Andrew. Thanks for having me on, I appreciate it.

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