Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2295: Only the Best Breakout Picks

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Jacob deGrom dialing down the velo, the Cardinals signing their first free agent of the offseason, David Robertson still being available, the underrated career of Yasmani Grandal, the latest New Era cap confusion, follow-ups on several recent topics, and the newly jacked Mr. Met. Then (57:22) they talk […]

Well, it's moments like these that make you ask, How can you not be horny about baseball? Every take, hot and hotter, entwining and abutting, Watch him climb, dig, and mountin' The thing's about nothing, every stitch, wet with sweat, Breaking balls back, dormy on effectively, Wow, that can you not be horny? When it comes to podcasts, how can you not be horny?

When it comes to podcasts, how can you not be horny? Hello and welcome to episode 2295 of Effectively Wild baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Meg, today we're Rowley of Van Graaff's. Hello, Meg. Hello. Meg, today we're talking about breakouts. Everyone groans. Yeah, we, we have covered that topic fairly thoroughly this winter.

I am well aware, but this time we're talking about it in a different way. We're not just going to complain about other people's breakout picks. This time, as promised, we are going to highlight some good breakout picks. We've been voices crying in the wilderness about people picking two obvious candidates. And today we're going to not single out, but double out two writers who have done it the way that we wanna see it done. Who have had strict standards for what constitutes a breakout and have dug deep and have come up with some more obscure players who if they break out,

it would actually be surprising. And I would have no qualms whatsoever about saying that they were breakout players. So RJ Anderson of CBS Sports will be here, the perennial breakout picker, the best in the biz in my mind, and Thomas Nestico who joined the fray this year of TJ stats on Substack.

Each of them did a list of one breakout candidate for each team and they limited themselves to the tough ones, the high degree of difficulty, and they will be here to tell us about their breakout picking philosophy and their actual breakout picks. So this is healing for me personally. I'm so glad because I mentioned this off mic as we were done recording our great segment with them.

You know, you're a measured guy, Ben. You're a pretty steady, eddy dude. A nice contrast to your co-host who is prone to yelling and being frustrated and sounding like Jimmy Stewart at inopportune times. But you're a measured guy. And so when you get exercised about something, it makes me perk up. You know, I find myself looking to your frustration to say, there must be something here. And you have a lot to say about the breakout stuff. And I know we've said a lot about the breakout stuff, but I think that having definitions should mean something. We should have clear understandings of what these things are. We

should not name Julio and Corbin Carroll as breakouts, we simply should not, we should resist. And so we should dedicate some time to it and then probably bring it up less often than we have. Although I want to offer something because at one point in that segment, I exclaimed in potential frustration about, isn't build specifically as a breakout list, but sort of a similar notion for the spring breakout games, which are not about young men in search of Accutane, but instead prospects playing against one another in a showcase environment. This is the second year the league has done this. And I got prepared to get worked up. And then I looked at the list and I want to say,

and I don't say it in the segment, but I'm saying it here, list is fine. The list is fine. The list is fine, Ben. It's not, there's no obvious problems with it. So I didn't take time to clarify. So when you hear it later, you can say, don't worry Meg, you're going to be satisfied.

And you can just file that away. Yeah, it's a Pavlovian response at this point. Someone sends me a breakout list and I get angry before I even click, but I haven't brought up every single breakout list because some of them are okay. Some of them are fine. They're not RJ and Thomas quality necessarily, but they don't make me mad enough to bring up on the show. So today, look, we've done enough tearing down of Breakout Canada, so today we're building Breakouts up. Yes, we're putting a positive example out there in the world, be the change you wanna see.

That's what we're doing here. And to the one person who emailed to say, enough Breakout Panther already, A, fair, but also to quote Kiki Palmer, sorry to this man, but we're doing one more Breakout show, but it's gonna be different this time, but it's going to be, it's going to be different this time. So before we get to that, one other thing that I have gotten exercised about in recent years is Jacob deGrom's pitch speeds.

You have been very upset. Yes. I have been adamant that he should throw slower. Yes. Yes. Advising, imploring, pleading, and he has finally gotten the message, not from me, but from his own elbow breaking again. And Jeff Passon wrote an excellent story the other day for ESPN where he talked to DeGrom

and DeGrom has finally taken the hint that he is mortal and he can self-destruct if he throws at Max's effort constantly, and he is now determined not to. So here's the lead for this story. When Jacob de Grom stepped on the mound for his first live batting practice this spring, a voice in his head told him, all right, I want to strike everybody out. That instinct had guided de Gragram to unimaginable heights with awards and money and acclaim. It is also who he can no longer be.

So Dagram took a breath and reminded himself, let's not do that. And I think unimaginable heights, that's perfect because I have comped him to Icarus in the past. Maybe that's too obvious, but it seemed fitting. And I have my doubts about whether this will stick because it's one thing to be in spring training, doing a live batting practice and to say,

hey, let's take a little off here. And it's another to be in a major league game that actually counts. So we'll see if he sticks to it, but he has finally resolved not to throw as hard as he possibly can. And he has taken away the exact message that I was trying to send him, which is I look at the best 18,

that's 2018, his first Cy Young season. There were times when I hit 100 or close to it, but I think I sat around 96. And he did. that was his average velocity for his four seam fastball. And then it kept going up and up to 97 and then 98.6 and then 99.2 and even in 2022, he was still sitting 99. And so he says in this piece, I have to look at it like,

hey, I can pitch at that velocity from 2018. It is less stress on your body. You get out there and you're throwing pitches at a hundred miles an hour for however many pitches it is, it's a lot of stress. It's something that I'm going to look into, using it when I need it, backing off and just trusting that I can locate the ball.

That's what I've been saying, that this should have been an easier sell to Jacob deGrom because he won a Cy Young Award throwing 96 and he was totally dominant. And so it wasn't as if it was hypothetical, like, hey, you could take something off and still be good. He did that, he threw at that speed and he was still dominant.

So it seemed to me like you should just keep doing that. But I get that it's just hard to convince an athlete of that. It's just, they're wired to always go all out, always go max effort, especially in this era where they're not expected to go deep into games and the short-term immediate incentives are to just throw as hard as you can. I get it.

And it's hard, I guess, to take that message from someone until you're forced to take it because you had to go under the knife again. I also just think like, it would be so cool, Ben, you know? Like it would just be so cool to be able to do it. I think it would be hard as like a human to resist that instinct, you know, to be like, but I am capable of this, this thing that other people wish they could do with every ounce of themselves. I can just do and not, and not in a scattershot terrifying, oh God, he doesn't know where it's going way.

Like a, like a, I'm gonna swear, like a surgeon, you know, like an going way like a like a I'm gonna swear like a surgeon you know like an assassin like a doctor who kills people like you could I can't imagine what it would feel like to be able to do that and then to be told that no you have to ratchet it back it would be really challenging to resist the instincts and not just be like but I I could be so f***ing cool, man. Like, I don't think Jacob Figueroa talks like that, clearly, but that would be how I would talk about it. So I get it. I mean, like, apart from the effectiveness,

apart from needing to extend your career, wanting to extend your career, being in a position where you want to be like the guy for this team and really help them rebound from their post-World Series swoon and do something. Like there are all of those reasons that are like about your teammates and other people and some of them about yourself, but some of it would be resisting, I don't know, vanity is quite the right word, but the instinct to be a resisting, I don't know, vanity is quite the right word, but the instinct to be a legend. I would struggle with that. You know, sometimes I read other writers and I'm like, if I could do that, I would tell people about it every day. I

would be the worst, you know? But luckily, other writers tend to be better than me and I don't have time to do it anyway, so works out fine. Yeah, it's gotta be tough even if you're as elite as he was throwing 96, if you suddenly can access 99, then to talk yourself out of doing it. And I'm not gonna say that there's no performance difference on an inning-perning basis. Sure, he's probably better throwing 99 than he is throwing 96.

Like he was never better on a perning basis than in 2021, I guess, when he's throwing 99, he's even better than he was in 2018 throwing 96 and having a mere 1.99 FIP instead of a 1.24. But the difference there isn't that great, especially when you factor in the durability, because okay, the difference between a low ones FIP and a high ones FIP, which is not a choice that any other pitcher can make. But,

but when it comes to, okay, I could be even better, but I'm just not going to make that many starts. I'm going to be unavailable half the time, if not more so when I have some serious surgery, then ultimately you're hurting yourself, I mean literally, but also figuratively, and hurting the team because you can't make starts. So he says his goal for this year

is to make as many starts as I can. And again, I'm reserving judgment on whether he will stick to this because his spring debut start, he's making a spring start against the Royals and he's still sitting 97. Yeah. So it's not like he's a soft tosser suddenly.

And again, will he maintain this attitude? The first time he has a less than elite start, will he say, okay, I'm putting my foot down on the pedal again? I don't know. And he has a quote in here, it's relatable. As you're saying, he said, it's always a thing of trusting your stuff. It's one of the hardest things to do in this game.

And part of it's the fear of failure. You throw a pitch at 93, when you could have thrown it at 98 and it's a homer, you're like, why did I do that? So that's the part that gets tough. You still have to go out there and trust your stuff, know that you can locate and change speeds and still get outs not full tilt the whole time. So still have to go out there and trust your stuff, know that you can locate and change speeds and still get outs not full tilt the whole time.

So you have to think long-term and that's tough to do, especially if you're a young athlete. Now, you know, he's well into his mid thirties. Like I get if you're some flame thrower who's 21 or something and you know, you're still trying to earn your place and earn your money. He's earned his money and he's accomplished a lot. And maybe by your mid 30s, you're a little more looking long-term and thinking of your

health and not just looking at the pitch in front of you. So I would hope that maybe that's part of the mindset change. But yeah, I'm sure that is frustrating. At some point, if he gives up a hit this year on a 96 mile per hour fastball that he knows, assuming that he still has that club in his bag, he can still dial it up to triple digits whenever he wants post-second surgery here and at his current age, then yeah,

that's probably frustrating. You could say, hey, if that had been a few miles per hour faster, could have beaten that guy. But you might also beat yourself long- because you'll be out of commission. And that's what the studies say. Like, yeah, it's harmful to throw hard and he's always going to throw hard, but the really damaging thing is to just throw toward the top of your range, whatever your range is, whether you top out at 100 or you top out at 93, just constantly maxing out your personal velocity, that's the thing that really takes its toll. So

if he can get away from that, I wish him the best. You know, like I don't know whether he could have avoided the surgery, maybe it would have happened anyway if he had this epiphany five years ago, who knows, right? But yeah, better late than ever, I guess. And we all want to see him be healthy. Yes, we do. I mean, like the Rangers need him to be, we all want to be able to watch it. And you're right. Like, it's always easy for us to say that the the Velo was the only thing we've talked about the ways in which the Velo isn't the only thing. We've talked about the ways in which the VELO isn't always the thing. It is often the thing.

But it isn't always the thing, right? And pitchers break for other reasons all the time, but your average enjoyment of baseball's starting pitchers is gonna be higher if de Grom is healthy and effective. So here's hoping. All right, I have just a few follow-ups to relate here. I guess we don't need to talk about the raise again, because we covered that last time.

They have actually put out a statement now to say that they are out of the ballpark deal. And who knows what that means for their future beyond the short term. But we talked about that last time when it was somewhat speculative, but certainly seemed to be heading that way. Now they have confirmed it.

So yeah, their acting so squirrely all winter was in fact a sign of things to come. Also the Cardinals signed a major league free agent. Just under the wire. Phil Maitan, come on down. Every team now is on the board. All 30 teams have signed a major league free agent this off season. They waited until the end of spring training, but it counts. So congrats to the Cardinals for participating in free agency this winter.

Congrats to Cardinals fans. Uh, your team went out and got Phil Maton. So I'm sure you all super psyched about that. Hey, look, Phil Maton. So I'm sure you're all super psyched about that. Hey, look, Phil Maton is a useful guy to have around. And I just want everyone to like reckon with the fact that his face just looks like that, you know? It doesn't mean he's a bad picture. I'm not saying he's an unattractive guy.

I'm not opining on his attractiveness one way or the other. I will say that he has some of the most consistently dour roster photos I've ever seen a human being to have. He looks like his dog just died. I hope his dog, if he has one, is alive and well. But like, Phil, you look very sad in your photos, sir. You should be happy instead. What if you... I'm telling him to smile. Charming. What a nice thing to say to another person. Yeah. When is someone going to sign my man, David Robertson? I don't know.

What's going on? Let's get D. Rob a job here. I know that he represents himself. He is an agent unto himself, which is rare, but I guess he can sign whenever he wants to. He's the one who's getting the offers. I just Googled David Robertson in the top stories. This is all within the last day as we're recording this

from various sites and blogs. Red Sox, eyeing former All-Star David Robertson for closer roll. Tigers could get creative with trade if they revisit interest in David Robertson. One big move the Braves really need to make before opening day, and there's a picture of David Robertson so I'm assuming that's the big move.

And then there's another Red Sox one, so I guess he's being linked to the Red Sox and to various other teams. The point is, just about every team could use David Robertson. Who, despite his advanced age by baseball standards, still quite effective. Just one of the best relievers of his era.

I've praised him before. I just, I love David Robertson. I love him as a pitcher. And when it's all said and done, he will have had one of the best non-closer, for the most part, reliever careers, really that anyone has had. Like he's that good.

He's just an elite pitcher. So I hope that he can keep doing it somewhere. I'm sure the ball is in his court to some extent because he must have some sort of offers. Right? It has to, yeah, there's gotta be something. All right, we got a follow-up on the Barry Bonds talking about Shohei Otani conversation

where Barry Bonds kind of came out and said, in some respects at least least it would have been harder to do what Otani is doing in Bonds' day. Because evidently if you stole a base, they beaned you back then. Or they, no, they kneecapped you if you stole a base and if you hit a home run, they beaned you. Right. So, you know, everyone was, was tougher back then, I guess. It's funny, cause like people in Barry Bonds' era

would call him a prima donna and would say, oh, back in the day, like he wouldn't have gotten away with this and now he's just perpetuating the cycle. But Patreon supporter, Michael Eisen wrote in to say, let me get this straight. Barry Bonds thinks that Shohei's accomplishments should get some kind of asterisk because if Shohei were playing in his time, he would have been plonked at the plate and abused plonked. Is that a thing we're saying now? Plonked? Plonked? Plonked? Plonked?

Is plonked morphing into plonked? I mean, I don't know. Plonked? I wonder if that's just a typo. That might be it. Maybe it's just a typo. Maybe it's meant to be plonked. Plonked. Plonked was when Travis Hafner got hit by a pitch. He would have been plunked slash plonked at the plate and abused on the base pass. Is he forgetting that Shohei uniquely among great sluggers and base dealers of the time also would have pitched

and been in the possession of a pretty painful fastball. This almost certainly would have made any pitcher who would have come up to the plate against him or any scrawny middle infielder who might try to pull shenanigans to think twice. So I would figure Otani actually would be at a greater advantage relative to other batters and baserunners in Banz's era than he is today.

So yeah, I tend to think that the dissuasion, the just warding off of that sort of thing, like the reprisals, the vengeance. I think a lot of that is overblown a little bit and the numbers have shown that, but it's true. Shohei Otani, I think empowered as he is with a blazing fastball, people wouldn't just plunk him with impunity

because he could always plunk him back. I mean, he doesn't seem like the headhunting type, but in theory he could. Right. Like the option exists. I just don't think, I don't know that he'd do it, you know, but there are a lot of ways to address that if one is into that sort of like retributive justice, because he doesn't have to be the one to do it. He could, he could ask someone else to do it and I bet someone else would do it. But here's the thing, don't do that. Yeah, no, these things that we think will be deterrents often aren't, I mean, everything from hit by pitches to the death penalty. It's just it doesn't work that way often. So,

but yeah, Otani, he is unique and perhaps exempt even from what Bonds was saying. I also just want to return to the topic of like old guys who still got it kind of, but have had to look for a job or, or settle for a minor league deal or something. Maybe David Robertson is in that category. I don't, I don't know. Maybe he's getting offers and he just hasn't had one to his liking. But Mark Kana and Jose Iglesias and Brandon Belt last year, guys who, yeah, they're at the part of the aging curve where you might expect a sudden drop-off, but they've still been productive. And the fact that players are aging earlier these days

doesn't mean that I wouldn't give them a shot. It surprises me that some of these guys have had to settle for minor league deals, if that. And I was thinking, Yasmini Grandal maybe fits into this too, cause there was an MLB trade rumors story about him this week that the Braves made him an offer about a month ago and he turned it down and the report did not include the terms. So maybe they lowballed him or maybe that was an early deal or something too.

But, Yasmany Grondal is still pretty productive. And when I went to see what sort of season he had last year, which was pretty good, he played 72 games, 243 plate appearances, but was close to a league average hitter. You know, it's fine. It's fine for a backup catcher at least. Jasmini Grundal, just off the dome, what would you guess his career war is at your site, fangraphs.com? Oh gosh, oh, oh.

You're not obligated to know as the managing editor of FanGraphs what everyone's FanGraphs war total is. So, you know, it's okay if you don't. Editor-in-chief now, Ben, I just wanna know. No, no, editor in chief. Were you not managing editor previously? I was.

Did you get a promotion, new title? Hey, congrats. I didn't know that. Thanks, yeah. I guess you went from being the top editor to still being the top editor, but with a fancier title, that's good. Yeah, and now I like bug Paul about stuff on the fantasy side sometimes. Anyway, this is a great way for me to buy time to try to guess. Has Monogram Dolls been in the majors for how long?

Quite a while. The man is 36 years old. 13 years. 13 years. Okay. Okay. I'm gonna, oh God, he'll... 17. You know, you'd think that might be about where Yosemite Grandal is. And the reason why I brought this up is because that is not where he is, according to Fangrass, he is at 40 war. Yosemite Grandal is a 40 war guy. Yeah.

Wow. He is at 40 war. Yasmani Gandal is a 40 war guy. Yeah. Wow. Okay. So I am both complimenting and insulting Yasmani Gandal with my answer because on the one hand, I thought, hey, his offense is really bad, except for like those tears, which I think is unfair. I think that I'm like, I'm having recency bias about that because he was a fine hitter for longer than I clearly have been allowing,

but I was like, oh, but he's a really good framer. Yes. Sorry slash you're welcome, Yasmine. Yeah, that's gotta be one of the quietest 40 war careers, at least contemporary careers. Now, if I had asked you about his baseball reference war, you would have been dead on. Yeah, much slower. Because he's at about 20 careers. Now, if I had asked you about his baseball reference, where you would have been dead on. Yeah, much slower.

He's at about 20 baseball reference, so double at FanGraphs, and that is because he's a great framer. He has been at least. He's a great framer. Yeah, I think he got a little less credit for that. Like, you know, the Jose Molina and Jonathan Lucroy, like he came along a little after maybe the peak of like everyone,

the framing frenzy where it was just the coolest thing and we were all focusing on it. So I was certainly well aware that he was an excellent framer and some years he was a very good hitter too, especially for a catcher. And it's not like he got no accolades. He's a two time all star. He got some MVP votes twice, but like 15th and 22nd. So most people I think would be shocked to learn that Yasmin Agardal has 40 war. And especially people who probably don't really pay attention

to war or fan graphs, war or framing would be especially taken aback by that. But I'm not saying it's unmerited or anything. Like he's had a very good career, but yeah, the number of like five and six war seasons that he had at his peak with the Dodgers and maybe Milwaukee too, like he was just fantastic player back then.

Yeah, like really great. And honestly, even though I knew he was a very good framer, like looking at our numbers, I maybe even lowballed him just based on my recency bias at the plate. He has been a bad hitter for like a little while now. But also those Dodger years, man, what a time, what a time for him. I guess he had that one season at the plate where he was like, kind of not the best. Although he still had 22 home runs in 2017. Look at that. Wow. What a time. Yeah. Well, this has been, let's appreciate Yasmani Grandal. We've remembered a guy who maybe is not gone. We'll see if he signs somewhere, but yeah, don't sleep on Yasmani. Also, on Reddit, username Epic Technically noted this in response to the

banter about Mo'Van that led off the last episode. After listening to the intro of this episode, I'm left feeling as if I needed to sneeze but couldn't. Ben, the pun was right there for you about two minutes into the episode. I was sure you were teeing it up for us. I can't believe it was missed. And I implore you to rerecord and make things right. So when I said, now we know, we're talking about the fact that Mo von Kopp to his HGH usage in the early 2000s ish.

And I was saying, now that we know, hopefully as a country, we can put it behind us, we can move on. I should have said, we can move on. We can move on. We can move on. You're right, epinecically, I should have said that, and I hate to miss a pun, and I regret it, and now I've corrected the records, at least by saying that I should have said

it. That was a good one, that just didn't occur to me in the moment. It really should have. I might have thought of it myself, but I was so busy delighting in the fact that Moe Vaughn and the fictional character of Moe Green are different people that I was distracted. Yeah, I was springing the whole, there's Moe Vaughn's in the news, that was news to you, so you had a lot to catch up on in that segment. Also, we got a response to our discussion

of the scene in the pit with the 12 to six slider thrown by the young high school phenom. And we were trying to craft some way in which that might make sense as we were talking. Like, could you have such a thing as a 12 to six? Is that even possible conceptually? Would that be good or bad? And Mac says, listening to the last episode

in the reference to the 12 to six slider line, maybe others have already pointed this out. No, not in this case. But does Ian Hamilton, Yankees reliever, Ian Hamilton's slambio, is this, would you call it a slambio? Like, combio? Combio slambio, is this, would you call it a slombio? Like, combio? Combio, slombio, probably, I guess.

Oh, yeah, that's a tricky pronunciation one for me. When I see S-L-A-M, I want to say slam, but if it's a play on combio, change up. The Spanish pronunciation. I'll say slombio, I don't know how he says it, but does Ian Hamilton's slombio not match that description? Slight cut on the pitch to the tune of about

one inch per stat cast, but visually, I think it looks 1230 to 630 at most, and it's been an effective pitch. What with the trend of modern relievers relying on outlier pitches that deviate from hitters expectations. Maybe the dad on this show I haven't watched just had a highly sophisticated understanding

of spin-based versus observed movement on pitches. So Ian Hamilton's Slambio kind of, sort of maybe a 12 to six-ish slider, except that it's not really a slider. I guess it's a Slambio. It's a Slambio. And I, you know, you shared this thought with Slombio. And I, you know, you shared this thought with a friend of the pod and friend of ours, Zachary Buchanan. And he and I made the same point at the same time, which was basically a writer who is aware of what Ian Hamilton throws and its movement does not make this mistake, right? That's the thing of it. Because if you're that in the weeds that you are up on Slombios, you're not calling something a 12 to 6 slider. You're just not. You're not doing it. Like if you want to be, you know, if you want to leave a reference

in there for the sickos, you make that reference. You make a specific reference so that people like us look around and go, oh my God, this show was written with us in mind. We are the target audience. I mean, I don't watch the pit, but you know, like Zach would be like, oh my God, Zach is like you. Zach watches a really wide range of shows. He sees a lot of shows.

He'll always be like, do you see the show? And like you, like when I'm talking to you, I'm like, no. And his aren't even all on Apple TV. Yeah, well, I watch other channels occasionally between Apple sci-fi shows, but yeah, it doesn't leave a lot of time. We also got a response from Andrew M, Patreon supporter, who says, I'm sure this will be raised a million times.

I appreciate when people preface their responses with that, from Andrew M, Patreon supporter, who says, I'm sure this will be raised a million times. I appreciate when people preface their responses with that because I think- And then they send the email anyway. Yeah, but also sometimes not. Sometimes that's not what happens. Yes, that's true. In fact, both of these cases,

Mack on the Slambio and Andrew M here, no one else raised these points at least to us directly. So there are certainly times where we get just bombarded by the same email over and over again, but these times, no, only one person. So Andrew said, I brought up the one and done seasons when Juan Soto signed with the Mets. He will almost certainly be the best one and done

position player outside of Hornsby and take the Yankees title from Bobby Bonds. This is in response to the stat blast I did the other day where we were talking about the best one and done seasons for each franchise, like the best hitter and pitcher who played for only a single season with that franchise and then departed or whatever, they only played one season. And it's true that Juan Soto,

now that he has gone one and done with the Yankees, assuming he doesn't somehow come back Crosstown at some point during his career. This, I guess, will be maybe the second best one and done season that anyone has ever had, because he just had a 8.1 fan graphs war season for the Yankees and then departed. So this won't make any Yankees fans feel better, but it's true. I should have mentioned that, that Bobby Bonds now presumably displaced by one soda. It's one of the all time best one and done seasons, especially factor in that they want a pennant in part thanks to Juan Soto's production. So yeah, I guess

players don't typically leave after a season that successful. So again, I'm not making Yankee Spence feel any better, but yeah, that was quite historic what happened there. Yeah, it's one of those you're welcome, but also I'm sorry. Right, exactly. And then Rob Maynes, our palette baseball prospectus, I love when we can help create content for others like we did the other day when Michael Rosen at Fangrass was in search of a topic and then heard our discussion of pitch movement

in the Cactus League. And the light bulb went off and he got a post out of that. And then we talked about his post and he paid it forward to us. Rob Maynes had the same thing where he heard our conversation about whether we will see a lot of endings of games delayed under the challenge system. Because if you have a game ending pitch call, then why not just challenge it? And we shared some data about the rate at which that has happened in AAA last year. And it is actually fairly common when a game ends that way,

which it typically doesn't, but the subset of games that end that way, it is quite common for teams to challenge that last pitch because might as well. Right? So Rob looked at this at the major league level and tried to see how often games that ended one way would not have ended that way, like a walk-off, would they have ended under the challenge system, assuming the team had challenged. And he looked at like whether it would have been called

a strike or not. And he was wondering about walk-off walks. We were talking more about walk-off strikeouts, but he looked at every walk-off walk since 2005, and then went back to see would those calls have been reversed in a challenge system if the team had challenged. And he found that there were 54 walk-off walks from 2005 to 2024 with full counts on the batter.

And he actually found that he divided it into various categories where it was clearly missed and it was borderline and it was clearly correct. And he found that of those 54, the walk-off was clearly legitimate, the walk-off walk in 44 of the 54, and then kind of a caveat on five of them and then missed only five of them.

So only five of the 54 would it theoretically have been clearly reversed. But if you narrow it down to more recent years, 2011 to 2024, because we know umpires have gotten better, they're conforming more closely to the, the world book zone, then they all were legitimate that none of them would have been overturned probably over that period. So it doesn't seem like we will see a whole lot of those things being overturned and going on and going the other way based on Rob's review of that. So that's heartening, I guess.

That's interesting. Yeah, cause yeah. And I guess if I think he's planning a strikeout-themed followup to this, so we'll see, but glad when someone can get multiple posts out of a banter topic on Effectively Wild. We've done our job in that case. And also want to shout out another BP piece from our pal Patrick Dubuque,

who took a crack at the third base coaches being too conservative problem, which RJ will actually invoke later on this episode. We talked about this because there was a previous study done by the oyster analytics folks for down on the farm. And we had a whole banter about that, about how what can teams do to make third base coaches more aggressive.

And it actually ties into the risk aversion conversation that we had the other day, how I was making the case that teams have kind of caught on and they're not as afraid of risk anymore. This will actually come up in our breakout picking segment as well. But all these examples I cited of cases where teams are doing the sort of statistically correct thing that in the past might have been seen as, oh, if this backfires, then everyone's going to get mad at me. But now there's more of an objective backing to it. And so you kind of have the courage of your convictions. And I could have even thrown the shift into that. I didn't because we don't have

in field shifting the way that we did. But, but that was probably a previous example of that, where teams were more comfortable saying, yeah, we'll just leave an entire half of the infield open. And sometimes we're going to look silly because the ball's just going to roll through there uncontested, but we know that in the long run it will benefit us. But the sending runners, especially on sacrifice flies, that has not gone that way. That's the exception that perhaps proves the rule, but that lends further credence, I guess, to the insistence that they got to figure this thing out. And Patrick, this might've been the most rigorous

investigation of this subject yet. Again, it's like well trodden, trod. How do you even conjugate that one? Yeah. Well trod. Sure. Yeah. Trod well trod. But people have studied this before and he teamed up with Stephen Sutton Brown and they had a whole stat-cast based approach to this problem where they were looking at where the, it's definitely not that treaded, no.

Anyway. Treaded, that's not a thing. That's not. No. Yeah. I think, well, trod, I think that works for me. Yeah, that sounds right. I'm going with that.

I think it's trod. Yeah. See, my risk aversion would be to avoid that word altogether next time. But they really quantified this well and they had like different bands of depth and like where was the runner and where was the fielder and the arm strength and they confirmed, I think beyond basically any doubt that third base coaches are way too conservative and it's just so rare that anyone gets thrown out and that's just bad. So, and like teams are leaving a significant number of runs on the table according to their analysis. As these things go in this day and age

where the low-hanging fruit has been picked and often with these studies we're kind of pointing to incremental advantages. This is pretty big by those standards. So, I mean, I'm sure teams are well aware of this and it just doesn't seem like it should be an insuperable problem that you could just say, we've got your back here. Like, here's what the data says, just be more aggressive. We'll defend you publicly. We won't fire you.

You won't lose your job over this, but it's tough. I know, because like you're going to get booed if you're the third base coach in that situation and you sent that guy. So I get why it's uncomfortable, but I think the juice is worth the squeeze here. Yeah, I think that that's right. And again, like we talked about having other people at the top say, no, we're, we're, you got to give some cover. I think giving cover helps a lot, which we've discussed before. If you say like, no, we told him to do that.

He's just being a good soldier. I think that that would help. And I will just note that, you know, people are freaking out about the latest hats, the latest bad hats. Oh yeah, those are some bad hats, Harry. They are bad hats, but look, it's obviously, it's bait, right? And we've talked about this before. We did an interview about the new era caps. It was a previous round of bad caps.

And our guests talked about how, yeah, first of all, the things that Twitter thinks are bad are not always what the audience thinks are bad. Like there's a market for some of these things and taste is subjective and all of that. And also they put out these things and they go viral for, oh, look how ugly this hat is. Or even the Tata's, the Texas.

Look, they should have left that in production. Who doesn't want a tits hat? Exactly. I mean, they- People like tits? Yeah, those things- All kinds of people, they're into tits. If they even sold any, those things on the secondary market will be big.

But if people haven't seen the hats- I know, I just wanted to say, sort of like some people's tits. But these are wild hat designs where it's just like they have obscured the name of the team by just slapping another letter on top of it. And sometimes it like produces an entirely different word. Yeah. Yeah. I looked at that and I was like, what were they thinking? But, but that's the

thing. Like they've gotten everyone talking about it and sharing it. And probably some people are buying it ironically, and also some people legitimately like it, and there's no accounting for taste. And so this is, I think, an intentional strategy. It's not like they thought these were just the most aesthetically uncontroversial, pleasing to everyone hats, and that everyone would say, what a wonderful design. It's like, you know, it's not a hot take, it's a hat take.

That is what they're doing here. They're trying to get people talking about these things. And it worked once again. And that's okay, because like, I think we all had fun kind of making fun of the hat. So, you know, it's fine. But that's what they wanted, I think, is to provoke that kind of reaction. Here's my take on the hat takes. We might have this already. I want to allow for the possibility that this is precisely the situation we have at this moment. You know, you want to have like two kinds of sensitivity readers for lack of a better

term when it comes to product like this, team-related merchandise. The first one is you've got to have someone whose job it is to look at every piece of merch that comes out and say, hey, did you know that you accidentally have a penis in here somewhere? You've got to have an accidental dick person. The parents who play this for their kids are like, you warned us about those swears, but you didn't warn us about this part. I'm sorry about that.

Okay. Look, you know, we don't have to be bound by the Puritan hangups of our past in this country. We can talk about parts of our anatomy here proudly on this podcast. And also, yeah, apologies to the parents. Yeah, apologies to the parents. So I'm going to keep going though. So like, you know, put in your headphones or put on the earmuffs for the little ones. So I think going to keep going though, so like, you know, put in your headphones or put on the earmuffs for the little ones. So I think you need to have, you need to have an accidental dick reader, you know, who just is like, Hey, you got an accidental dick in here.

And then, you know, this is a sport that has a culturally diverse fan base. And many of the people who play the sport and watch the sport are native Spanish speakers and so like you know for your baseball merchandise it probably does make sense to have someone who's like hey did you know they accidentally like did a little goof here and have the word tits on your hat and again like you might be fine I do draw the line though because like I think you leave the tit hat in production. That's fine. There are birds named tit, you know, you can name sure they're bush tit, right? Like you can name birds. There's some crazy bird names. Yeah. Hashtag free the tatas. Yeah, free the free the

girls do their thing. But, but I do think think the one that looked like it just said anal, that one you probably don't want to. That one I think it's fine to draw the line at, because that's a little much even for someone who likes to lay a dirty joke down every now and again. I think it's fine to not have the anal one go into mass production, but leave the tits alone, you know? This is, well, everybody likes, it's even satisfying to say. It's sad. After hearing some of our breakout candidate conversations,

people probably would say that we should be fitted with anal caps, but that's a different kind, perhaps, than what leapt to people's minds immediately. I think that they would not say that because that sounds like it means something else. I don't know what it means, but it sounds like it means something else. I don't know what it means, but it sounds like it means something else. So I think, yeah, again, you want to have these sensitivity readers in place for lack of a better term.

And then you can make your choices, right? If you're selling merch that has a purposeful penis in it, you know, okay, like you've made a choice. You've made an active decision to leave the dick in. But you don't want an accidental dick. You want a purposeful dick. Just like you don't want, you don't want to, because like this is all fun and games, right?

Like tits aren't offensive, tits are tits. And the term tits isn't even really that offensive. I mean, there are circumstances where deployed in a particular way with certain tone it can be insulting, but like I'm in possession of tits and I'm not offended by the term tits. But I think that, you know, if you're not catching the tits, what else are you not catching? You know, you don't't want to let a slur through accidentally. That would be bad. So you need to have like a,

you should have like a diverse staff so that you can catch the accidental tits. Just like you have someone there to catch the accidental dick. I'm surprised that wasn't caught, assuming that the whole thing wasn't a work and actually they put it out there. Yeah, cause then they immediately pulled out the hat and removed it from the store. And, you know, maybe that was the plan

all along. Did they pull the anal one too? I don't know. Or did they only pull tits? Because again, I think that's misunderstanding what is inappropriate for, you know, a family environment versus not. Yeah. Also, we got an email from Wes from the Netherlands. I talked about how, you know, sometimes we do a preview segment and then there's big news surrounding that team immediately after. And this qualifies, this would have been big news for our Marlins preview segment if it had happened in time, but it didn't. Wes says, going over the Marlins coaching staff after episode 2292, I noticed that their bullpen catcher is Chi Chi Gonzalez. He's a pitcher with almost 300 MLB innings under his belt. He pitched as recently as 2023 in Pro Ball in the Marlins

system. As far as I can find, he wasn't a two-way player during his career. Unusual move. No, maybe an idea for a bullpen catcher interview 2.0. So yes, I think this was just announced the other day. Chi Chi Gonzalez, former pitcher, is the Marlins bullpen catcher, and he's been on both ends of the battery now. I don't think this quite qualifies him as a two-way player, but I like it. You know, yeah, I don't know.

I'm sure there's some precedent probably for this, but I don't know. I don't know if this is unprecedented or not. It's certainly uncommon because your typical bullpen catcher is a former catcher. So fascinating conversion to bullpen catcher by a former major league pitcher. So I wanna know more about that,

but that is quite a curiosity and I am curious. And then maybe final followup, I did a stat blast the other day I want to know more about that, but that is quite a curiosity and I am curious. And then maybe final follow up, I did a stat blast the other day that I think was sent in by Michael Eisen, whom I cited earlier on this episode about the names and the average war values of the various letters associated with Major League players. And I put it to the audience that it'd be nice if someone could come up with a hypothetical name that would have the highest value war wise associated with the letters in that name on average. And Michael Mountain, Patreon supporter, sometime guest, he said on our Discord group, I pulled

the 1000 most popular first and last names for baby boys in the US in 2023 from what to expect.com, which claims to be using social security data, which hopefully still exists. The X's really throw everything out of whack. The first 34 top scoring given names all include an X, Jackson, Onyx, Maddox, Huxley, Axton, Nixon, Daxton, Maximo, Brixton, Maximus, Jackson, Braxton, Lennox, Hendricks. Brace yourself in about 20 years for an influx of many, many X names in the major leagues. The highest average value combination of first and last based on Michael's letter values was Dax Fox.

So if we get a Dax Fox, you want some nominative determinism with your young baby bouncing boy, then name him Dax Fox and maybe he will be the best player ever someday. The lowest value name was Alan Pena, which was, we noted that the NEA's was a small sample and had a low average value. If you limit the options to only using letters with at least 1000 occurrences in the baseball data set, so that excludes ZXQ and the diacritics, then the best name for a ball player is Tyvu, T-Y-V-U, Tyvu, and the worst name is Alan Hanna.

Best name with at least three letters in the given insurname is David Boyd. So his surname is not in the top 1000, Michael notes, but ironically, Hank Aaron is an extremely low scoring name. Henry Aaron ranks higher. So that's a reason to call him that instead. So I think that's all our followups. We've done a followup roundup here,

which is sometimes tough to do when we're in the thick of the team preview series, which we are almost at the end of. Next time, we will preview the Yankees and the White Sox. And that will be that. And I hesitate to bring this up as I'm just about to end this segment, but we did get an email while we were talking

about the fact that Mr. Met is jacked now. Yeah. And look, this could be a whole episode in itself, but Eric wrote in to note, apparently Mr. Met is yoked now, knowing Meg has strong feelings about mascots. I'd love to hear your take. Such strong feelings.

Personally, I find it pretty off-putting in these pictures. I think the definition of his muscles ruins his cartoon aesthetic. However, I think probably pairs better with Mrs. Met, whom as you have noted many times. Yeah, look, okay. I haven't given this a lot of thought, so I reserve the right to do Mr. Met Jacked Now Take 2.0 on our Friday episode, but there was a mismatch here, right? Because Mrs. Mett among the baseball headed Americans has, wow, we just ended up kind of working blue in the open here, but has a tremendous

donk. And, you know, as good of one as you could reasonably put on a mascot without just saying that she is suited to furry conventions and nothing else. So you have this mismatch because like what does he have? Nothing, you know, and I will note, and I apologize to the human person occupying the Mr. Met costume, but lower half not matching the top for this particular situation would say that at this juncture, Mr. Met is still skipping leg day. So get on it, Mr. Met, or at least the poor person who lives in Florida who's being asked to play him at this juncture. Don't know who that is. The thing is, if you're going to do a jacked mascot, one, you need to do something like the Memphis Grizzlies where the Memphis Grizzlies grizzly

bear is uncomfortably jacked, bizarrely jacked if one has ever seen an actual bear, right? But jacked, you know, this has been a subject of much commentary. And then the legs of the grizzly are hairy like a bear's would be. And so you don't end up with this weird mismatch of like jacked man who skips leg day. And I want to be clear, I don't mean to body shame the human person who is playing Mr. Met. Like your physique is fine. It's just that it is a funny visual contrast. Also, does this mean, this must mean I'm just now reckoning with the fact that like the Mrs. Met pants really do have like an insert, you know, they have to have a butt insert in there because probably, I mean, it just looks felty. I feel strange now. I feel like I've transgressed a boundary I didn't even know I had. But I just would

say that like, was the issue with Mr. Met that he wasn't jacked? Who are they trying to draw in with this? Were they just saying, hey, it feels unfair? Yeah. There was kind of like a old school sitcom couple thing going on with these two where it was like the- Old school. I feel like this is the entire CBS lineup is schlubby guy, hot gal and probably live in Queens and have a big house despite being civil servants. Time honored formula. So yeah, the King of Queens. That's the format here. And maybe, yes, it's like, look, if Mrs. Met, I mean, maybe she was just naturally blessed in that area, but

it seemed like, you know, she was, she was, no, but I mean, like, you know, in, in the universe, like, of the mascots in the story, you know, she's like, she's doing her squats seemingly. And Mr. Met did not seem to be, which I mean, that's fine. You know, it's not like each person in a pairing has to have the same sort of physique. Exactly. All kinds of people find each other and find each other attractive. That's lovely. Yeah.

So this looks unnatural, but it also looks, I guess. On the one hand, why would we care that it looks unnatural? They have baseballs for heads. The whole thing is ridiculous. It's an excellent point. But to do this in a single off season, to come in the best shape of his life like this, I just, that's a rapid transformation,

which makes me question whether he's Natty. And also there are a lot of people in these replies here who are suggesting that he got a little worried about some of the implications, I guess people suggesting that Grimace was gonna, you know, steal his girl and maybe so he hit the gym. Well, this is gonna be my next, this was gonna be my next question, which is,

is he responding in universe, right? And by that I mean like in the universe where like the Rocky's mascot was hatched from an egg and the Yankeees mascot was murdered. We don't know what happened to him other than like he had to have been killed, you know, at some point like maybe it was a mob. RIP Dandy. Yeah.

Dandy. Dandy is terrifying. Anyway, that's not the point of this segment. So I wonder So I wonder a couple of things. The first is, is the in-universe Mr. Met reacting with some amount of in-relationship insecurity where he is worried that Mrs. Met and her wonderful doc are going to be wooed away by some other creature? Or is he engaged in sort of a bit of self-comparison between himself and Grimace? And maybe he's not worried about Grimace stealing his gal, but maybe he looks at Grimace and is like, Grimace was so popular, why can't I be popular? I can't be Grimace because I'm not blob shaped, but what is the opposite of a blob shape?

I'm choosing blob shape even though I think Grimace is kind of shaped like something else, but blob shaped because what's the opposite of that? Well, being jacked. But then I got to say, Mr. Met, you got to commit to the bit and you got to do leg day. So I think that's really what I have to say about that. Look, I've gone on a Patreon bonus episode rant about leg day and some people perhaps just not being gifted when it comes to calves specifically. And you know, no matter how much you hit the gym, sometimes those don't grow, but you know, you're not necessarily speaking specifically about calves in this

case. I'm watching the video and the weird thing is it looks like he did nothing but tricep extensions all winter, because if you watch him in motion, he's not really all over Jacked. He has these extremely defined tricep inserts for some reason, and it doesn't really seem to match most of his physique. So the whole thing is kind of uncanny. But look, I guess Mr. Met has broken out. He's breaking out of his tight fitting shirt, which he is wearing to show off his newfound physique. And we will take a quick break and we will be back to talk about breakouts with the only two people in the world other than us who are qualified to have that discussion,

RJ Anderson of CBS Sports and Thomas Nestico of TJ Stats. Did Richard Love Lady have a strike at Taylor T. Godin? Who had more war, Jason Kendall or Russell Martin? What if Shohio Tani's dog was also a good lawyer? What would you do if Mike Trump just showed up in your foyer? Or is it foyer? Find out on Effectively Wild! Find out on Effectively Wild! Find out on Effectively Wild! Well, I know that it's only mid-March, but the best paragraph about baseball that will be written this year has already been published. And here it is.

And I quote, this is not your generic, predictable breakout players piece. You are not going to find players who are slash were considered top prospects. If you want that, check out my top 50 prospect list. You are not going to find former Rookie of the Year award recipients. You are not going to find players who have earned Most Valuable Player or Cy Young award consideration. In my opinion, it would be a waste of your time and mine, as well as an insult to the spirit of the exercise to include those kinds of players. So I don't. And that is why the author of that paragraph

is joining us now, RJ Anderson of CBS Sports, my breakout brother. Hello, RJ. Hello, Ben. And we have another breakout sibling with us today. Thomas Nestico, who wrote about breakouts himself last month and also is in line with the way that we perceive breakouts. He has a newsletter, he has a sub stack, it's called TJ Stats. He's TJ, this is RJ,

you're both here, we're talking about breakouts. Thomas, welcome to you too. Thank you for the warm welcome, Ben. Reading that paragraph in your piece, RJ, almost made me weep just to feel so seen, not in the way that all the other breakout pieces make me weep, which is a different kind of tear. It's a different sort of emotion. This was the one where you just feel like you have lost touch with reality and you can't understand what everyone else is seeing and thinking, and then you find a kindred spirit who sees things the way that you do. And it's just so reassuring, so affirming, so gratifying. And we have had these breakout conversations for years at this point. I think a high percentage of

our G chats would be rants about other people's breakout picks and just commiserating about how right we are about breakouts. And then Thomas comes along and he joins our movement and sees breakouts the same way. And it's just, it's so great to have you all here, just like-minded breakout pickers. This is starting to feel like a cold, Ben. Well, it's growing, I guess, because Thomas is enlisted now too.

So let's talk a little bit about why we perceive breakout so correctly. Now, maybe you can each discuss your definition because the fascinating thing, so you each put out your breakout candidates list. RJ, you've been doing this every year for I don't know how long, and you actually moved me to tweet,

which I don't do often just to praise you for being the one true breakout candidate picker until Thomas joined this year. You each did the same exercise, one breakout candidate for each team, but you approached it with different methodology to the point where you had one overlapping pick. There was only one pick

that you each saw as the breakout candidate from that team. And yet you had very similarly stringent definitions of breakouts. And so I'm fascinated by how you could see things the same way, the correct way, and yet approach the problem in completely different ways and get different results, which we're gonna talk about. So RJ, since you have seniority on this subject,

why don't you talk a little bit about how you came to be a breakout picker and why you define breakout the way that you do and how you define it, I guess, other than what I just read in that beautiful paragraph. Yeah, I was gonna defer to Thomas because I feel like he's the breakout individual here, whereas I'm just the breakdown individual. But yeah, so I keep it simple in terms of how to define a breakout.

It's pretty much, is this player going to establish a new baseline level of performance in any given year? In terms of what I won't include, I think that paragraph kind of sums it up, but I just think that too many publications, because this has become a checklist piece. And what I mean by that is every publication now has a breakout article, right? Every publication has one. And once you find yourself in that category of piece, it kind of becomes, you know, by the numbers. And it just feels like people have conflated this

with top prospects or with here's some really good players who might win an award this season, even though they're already established. And I feel like that's a mistake. I feel like breakout picks should be kind of for the sickos, you know, should be, you know, players who are not on people's maps, players who are, at first blush,

you might think they're not even a real person because you are that unfamiliar with their name and their game. If I've heard of all of your breakout candidates, then you're doing something wrong. Right, had you heard of all of our breakout candidates? No, absolutely not. I mean, in many cases, I knew the name, but I couldn't have told

you anything substantial about them really. So yeah, I mean, and we're, you know, 99th percentile or whatever it is in terms of like having heard of baseball players. And I get, like, I don't want to gatekeep. I want casual fans to have lists of players who will be good that they can get interested in. But I just question whether the kinds of people who are clicking on breakout candidate articles are the kinds of casual followers of baseball who would not have heard of those people.

I mean, if you are that kind of casual fan, that's perfectly fine. But then are you going to be reading a breakout candidate list on some subscription-based sports site or probably not? If you're clicking on that, then you probably have some high baseline level of knowledge. And I know there's the XKCD comic about how subject matter experts, if we could call ourselves that,

they always just overestimate how much other people know. And I'm fully aware, I'm trying to account for the fact that, yeah, there are lots of people who haven't heard of James Wood or Jackson Holliday or Lawrence Butler. And I want to bring those players to their attention, but I just, I question whether they are even seeking out a breakout candidates list. If you're looking for that, you're probably like playing fantasy baseball. You're probably paying attention to the rest of the league. Like you're already, I think, out of the cohort of I just follow my team and I'm aware of some superstars, which is a lot of baseball fans and that's perfectly fine. I just don't know if it's the audience for a breakouts list.

I do wonder, RJ, I think you touched on this in your piece and like your hit rate has been, I don't want to disparage your hit rate, your hit rate has been good for breakouts, but I do wonder if part of the like industry momentum toward, have you heard of this guy who was the rookie of the year two years ago? Is in response to like not wanting to be, because you both picked guys who, I think to Ben's point, a casual fan might not be as familiar with. And maybe that insulates you somewhat because who's going to be the old takes exposed sicko about some reliever who a casual fan doesn't know. But I do wonder if part of it is not wanting to get clapped

back at six months later when a guy who, you know, is on a 40 man and has a path to playing time and then just kind of fizzles in the high minors doesn't really do much. And all of a sudden you have an angry, like, I don't know, fan of some team being like, how dare you were wrong. I would just say that the closest an analyst can get to Nirvana is realizing you're going to be wrong a lot. And that doesn't mean that you want to be wrong, but it does mean you need to get comfortable with being wrong. And I've been wrong about things I felt really confident about. I've

been right about things that I didn't feel confident about. I'll tell you which one I learned more from. And so I don't worry about being wrong so long as I am putting it out there in good faith. And I am and I hope the readers understand that. And if people wanna make fun of me because I missed on this fringe reliever for the Chicago White Sox or whatever, by all means, that's part of the job. But you have to be comfortable with being wrong

and you have to be comfortable with then learning from that and applying it so that you're a little less wrong in the future. Yeah, and yeah, I think there is some risk aversion there, although there shouldn't be because I think going in, there should be an understanding that you're gonna be wrong about most of these guys because that's how I would calibrate a breakout list

because if your hit rate is super high, that means that your picks were pretty obvious and you didn't actually help me that much. So like, can you really take a victory lap if Jackson Holliday or James Wood has a good season this year? I mean, most people thought they were going to have a good season, if not this year, then last year. Whereas if you hit on some long shot, like the type that you guys are predicting, then

you can kind of crow about it with the appropriate humility that you're still going to be wrong often. But that's utility. That is actually hipping someone to a player that they might not know. So Thomas, how did you come to the breakout prediction game and how did you define your terms? Because you actually tried to come up

with a kind of objective method or certain statistical standards or accomplishments, which I think is tough to do. There is an element of, you just know it when you see it. But then again, I think a lot of people see it differently, clearly, so maybe not. But how did you try to actually standardize it somewhat? Yeah, so I think I kind of share your guys' frustrations

with the current landscape of breakout picks. I'm seeing like Garrett Crochet was on one of these lists. Like he was, he could have won the Cy Young last year if he just stayed healthy essentially. But yeah, coming to me, I was like, okay, maybe I'll form a list. I think I have a pretty good grasp and understanding of some maybe not so well-known baseball players

digging through their data a bit more and just to shed some light onto them. And I guess that was more of my methodology. There's a fellow Blue Jay fan, I'm a Toronto Blue Jay fan, his name's at least on Twitter is Nae Nae Takes. So he has a pretty, again, he has this objective standard looking at like no top 100 prospects and their maximum amount of F-war, or just war, I'm not sure what framework he uses, this would be two in their career. So again, like players that have essentially not had kind of, and will be regular or like above average seasons essentially. So I kind of wanted to take that methodology and apply it to my own. And then again, look at all 30 teams and then pick

a player I think from each team would, I guess falls within those constraints and that I think will do well this season or at least have some underlying traits that could again help them break out. And again, my constraints again, similar, no top of injured prospects, no more than two F-war. And then I did a two to one picture to batter ratio. So again, the people know me. Yeah, you're a pitching guy.

I'm a pitching guy mostly. So if I didn't put this constraint, I'd probably just throw a bunch of pictures on this list. But I wanted to at least constrain myself to mix up a few batters. And I do think, again, it's just a fun exercise and it kind of again, pushes myself to things I haven't really looked at before. And also a learning experience, kind of what RJ mentioned. Being wrong, you learn from

making mistakes and whatnot. Every time say a college student comes and asks me a question, kind of how do you break through in the industry and whatnot, I tell them to take risks. It's okay to make mistakes. They're learning experiences. Again, you're going to learn so much more if you again write some piece about something and it's like completely wrong and you can kind of learn and see like where you went wrong or maybe there were aspects of it that were correct. It's just again your foundation or your like some part of it just wasn't kind of correct. So again, I like this exercise. It was a fun exercise and, it helped me learn more about kind of the roster constructions of some teams, because there were some very difficult picks here. Again, for some reasons, the team is just very well rounded from top to bottom, for example, the Yankees, or you have a team like the Rockies, where it's just like, I don't want to pick anyone from this team, but I have to pick somebody.

Right. I guess that's part of it. It's like every team has to have an all-star. Every team has to have a breakout candidate. And some teams just don't really. I mean, they might have one, but it's just they don't have someone who it's easy to predict it will be. And so you kind of have to force it. And that's probably why in some of these exercises, you just default to the obvious one that isn't really helping anyone. So the thing that fascinates me is that you each keyed in on one guy in common on each of your lists. And I don't know whether that means

that he's the highest confidence guy. You did debut a scale this year, RJ, where you included your confidence as well. And this was a high-confidence guy for you, and maybe even higher, knowing that Thomas zeroed in on the same guy. So maybe you can each give me your reason for selecting Nick York of the Pirates, who I guess is the pick to click for both of you guys. So, RJ, what do you see in Nick York?

Yeah. And I believe Thomas and I also mentioned two other players. I believe they were both relievers. So in honorable mentions. Yeah. Yeah. We had three players in common overall out of a 60 total pick. So how about that? Yeah. With Nick York, I mean, I think he's going to hit. He's already demonstrated that he's capable of hitting triple A pitching. You know, he commands the zone. He makes a good amount of contact. He hits the ball hard. Although you know, the spray of his batted balls doesn't necessarily lend itself to a high slugging percentage. He's probably going to be more of a average and on base individual. And in terms of what Thomas was suggesting, like, you know, there are some rosters where

opportunity is going to be very limited. And that's why on these lists, you tend to see a lot of relief pictures because it's easier to, you know, find room for a lever than it is finding room for, you know, a never outflitter. If you have a set outflit in place, well, to Nick York's credit, the Pirates really need bats everywhere, right? Or almost everywhere. So I feel like he's going to get an opportunity at some point, be it at second base, be it in the outfield, wherever they end up throwing him. And mind you, defense is kind of one of the weak spots of his game, but he's going to get an opportunity at some point. So you combine that with the confidence I have in his bat. And I think he was just an obvious

pick for me and clearly for Thomas as well. Yeah. So what did you see, Thomas? Because you approached this in a slightly different way, I guess in a more stat-based way. Not that RJ is not also looking at stats, but that was maybe the primary input for you. So what do you see in Nick York? He really doesn't have much left to prove in AAA. Kind of dominated last season at about a 50% hard hit rate. One of the highest average exit velocities. Just everything across the board seemed pretty good. Good play discipline, good patience, not too aggressive, which again you don't want to be super aggressive, but he was aggressive enough that he could help his power

play. Pointing on one thing I didn't like too much in his profile was that lack of the bat of ball spraying. Doesn't pull the ball a lot, but he does lift it a lot too. So he'll be able to kind of lift it and hit home runs opposite field to center and whatnot. Looking back at his kind of defensive versatility, he can play essentially any of the corner spots. He can play third base, first base, now field as well. And he also has second base. And the Pirates don't have too much depth either. Like Spencer Horowitz, he's hurt to start the season, so maybe Nick York can slot in there. Nick Gonzalez, I'm not super kind of set on him as well. But again, when I was

looking and formulating these breakout picks, it was a lot about opportunity. And I think Nick York on Pittsburgh has many different avenues he could kind of excel in. And I think, again, his offensive groundwork, it just kind of says he'll be productive if he gets the chance, and I think he'll have that chance this season. Yeah. And for anyone who's questioning your sicko credentials and saying, Nick York, he's not obscure enough, it's true. Nick York was a first round pick and he was a top 100 prospect, not toward the top of the top 100, but he was on there,

but that was three years ago. And I think enough time has elapsed since he was a prospect that- He's been traded. Yeah, he's been traded. He made his debut last year, you know, small sample, but he didn't really do anything in it. So it's, yeah, it's faded enough

that I'm comfortable saying it's a breakout. It's not like a Jackson Holiday, James Woods sort of situation. Which of the guys on this list, this is perhaps an unfair question because it's a breakout list. So you're excited at least to some degree about all of them. Even your low confidence guys, RJ,

like you picked him because you had to pick a guy. But of the guys that you selected, which ones are each of you the most sort of bullish on? And RJ, I know you did high confidence. This is sort of a cheating question for you. But like, if you had to pick a guy or two who you feel really confident in where, you know, a couple months from now, you're, you're sure they're going to be doing something. Oh my God, don't sleep on these prospects at spring breakout one from each team. I'm about to be horrified by this. This is a, this is a spring breakout game version of our laundry. Sorry. Answer, answer while I prepare to be annoyed that I haven't heard of someone except that I have. Yeah. So I think for me, I would start with Mason Montgomery, raised lefty. I know Thomas also mentioned him, which we'll keep that synergy going here. But he moved to the bullpen last year and shows off a really good fastball.

It's like mid-90s fastball with life. He throws a slider harder in relief and the results have improved as a result. And he's also got some deception. And I compared him to Alex Kozaya and Eric Sobrowski as examples of this profile really working well in the majors. And I think that he's going to get an opportunity at some point in that raised bullpen. And I fully expect him to develop into a high leverage reliever with them. I'll talk about Ben Kasparis of the Dodgers. I've been kind of enamored by him for quite a few years now. He's really good breaking balls and then this spring he just looks excellent.

The funny thing is he follows me and sometimes messaged me and whatnot asking for his metrics and as well as right after the game he'll send me a message on Twitter and I'll take a look at it. And it always kind of fascinates me. He's always trying to learn and better himself. That's why I always like, I guess, discussing and talking with players and coaches and whatnot. They just want to learn more about the game and how they can improve. Does he not know that he is employed by the Dodgers?

Are they not reputed to be a pretty good pitching development organization? Not to impugn your prowess, but I'm just saying. Trust, but verify. Yeah, I guess. Impartial third party source. He's got a cross reference there. But yeah, so Ben Kaspary is one guy I like a lot, a big fan of him. And then Richard Fitz, he might have a spot in the Red Sox rotation to start the year. And I've also pretty much been banging the drum on him for about a year now, kind of since he got traded from the Yankees, I've liked what I've seen from him a lot. And I think, again, once he gets his chance,

he should excel in the spring. He's kind of showing, he's kind of reaching that next level already. I can't believe that we're letting the young men of Boston interact with the name Richard Fitz and thinking it will go well. How did we let this happen? Of all the fan bases, I think that might be the worst one.

He was a meet a major leaguer guy for us last year, as I recall. I asked each of you to select a pick on the other person's list that you liked or that you approved of or wished that you had selected. Thomas, who did you like on RJ's list that you did not pick? Thomas Lange My pick would be Sawyer Gibson Long from the Tigers. I kind of forgot about him, really. I think a lot of people did after he missed all of last season recovering from, I think it was the internal brace procedure. Jared Larson Perfect. A breakout candidate pick that you have forgotten about. That is perfect.

Yeah. That's exactly how it should be. Making Ben so happy. I forgot he existed. Okay. Looking at his 23-day, there's a lot to like. He has a really good change up and a lead extension. So again, even though it's fastball, isn't the best, it's going to play up just

because he just gets so far down the mound. And he also has a nice starters arsenal. It just seems like he's destined to just be a good major league pitcher. It just we haven't seen him in quite a while and we might not see him until the summer this year. And the Tigers rotation is kind of full. But I do I really like what I saw in 23 from Sawyer Gibson Long. I think the Tigers have a pretty good sense of pitching development. Last year, they were like my breakout team for pitching. I said they were going to be top five in the RA and alas they were. I was pretty happy with that pick. It was like my only breakout pick. I guess my only bold prediction that kind of lined up, but I was pretty happy with it. But again, Sawyer Gibson Long, I guess there's a lot to like about his profile.

And I think it was a great pick by RJ. Yeah. And you also told me Fernando Cruz, which was one of RJ's and that's a good one because that's kind of like a old school just betting on regression sort of thing. Like Fernando Cruz, he's good by some stats already. Like the FIPS are good and the strikeout rates are incredible. And he has just had one of the biggest ERA FIP gaps in baseball over the last couple of years. And I guess that's partly just betting on that correcting itself.

Right. So you, you liked that one. You wish that you had made that one. Yeah. So with Fernando Cruz, it was a boat that I liked his profile. The splitter is ridiculous. Change of Seniors probably will help him a lot, a lot. Get him out of Great American Ballpark.

His home run rate has just been crazy high throughout his whole career. And again, another reason why I wish I picked Fernando Cruz is because my other option for the Yankees, because again, I tried. I picked Clayton Beter and I still like his profile. I just don't think he's gonna have that opportunity this year to really do much, but I think Cruz, he already has that spot in the bullpen.

And again, moving to New York, fresh mines, fresh new ballpark, and hopefully again, we can see that ERA and FIP gap decrease. It's massive. Yeah, and I will say it wasn't just looking at his statistics and thinking there'll be some regression there. Although I think that's perfectly fair and more times than not, you're going to be correct because of that. But it was also

projecting a little bit here. I think that the Yankees are going to see that, you know, Cruz's issue has been his cutter. It's just not an effective pitch and nine of his 15 home runs allowed over the last two seasons were on the cutter. So I think they're going to ditch the cutter or at least reduce it. I think they're going to have him throw his splitter the way they had Tommy Kainley throwing his change up, spanking his change up over and over again. And I think that's going to work wonders for him. Now, will that actually play out like I expect it to? That's part of the fun. but that's why I made that pick

is just not only the regression, but also the progression, if you will. And in terms of time suspect that I really liked, Nacho Alvarez Jr., the Braves infielder, my concern there was just opportunity. Where exactly is he going to fit in on that roster? But there's a lot to like there. He's really young, obviously he's a skilled defender

at third base, you can play him at second base or shortstop and the offensive profile is one that I have had a lot of success with in this column. And he's not necessarily someone who hits the ball with a lot of authority, however, his spray is really good. And we've seen it with Stephen Kwan and Nico Horner and some of these other instances, we're having a low average exit velocity or a low 95 mile per hour plus percentage or however you define that and a high sweet spots percentage or 1030 degree percentage or wherever

again you want to call it. It can really be beneficial to a hitter. And so that's one of those profiles. I tend to throw two or three on a list just because, you know, again, you need someone for every team. That means sometimes you're really picking by profile and playing the odds rather than just picking because of something you like about the individual player, you know, separate from the collective.

So that would be my pick if I were going to choose someone ever than who I actually chose for the Braves which was I am a Swillingham a Waiver claim who has some pretty interesting pitches and you know I'm just deferring to the Braves and their ability to get the most out of arm talent. I love it I'm just the the guy in that sicko meme just going yes. Yes. Yes waiver claims Okay, Thomas. I can't believe that you did Richard Fitz and then Clayton Beter back to back just from a name perspective. Absolutely brutal.

I did want to ask you because we mentioned that, and you mentioned you're a pitching guy, you limited yourself in terms of the ratio because you didn't want to overdo it. I don't mean to say that you are new to analyzing hitters, but I am curious sort of how your process may be varied for that side of things versus the pitching side because you are a pitching guy after all. Pitching is what I typically share, but I make graphics and all sorts of stuff, highly against both hitters and pitchers. So what I essentially did was most of the guys have played on this on the list,

have either played in Major League Baseball or in AAA. So we have a lot of stack test data on them. So I would kind of dig into kind of what I thought are the most important things to look at. Stuff like exit velocities, their launch angles, their chase rates. I think that's also very important. So weighing these

different factors is also important and also combined with their playing time. So again, considering all these different factors, again, do they hit the ball hard and if they're not hitting the ball hard, what else are they doing? Are they walking a lot? Are they not striking out? Are they spraying the ball? Are they lifting the ball? So again, I try and consider all these different aspects of their game and maybe compare them to other major league batters. What RJ did in his profile, like Josh Kesevich, comparing to the kind of like Ernie Clement, they're very similar batters. And I think I had a similar approach to that as well.

I'm kind of seeing if there are any comparable batters to one another. Maybe they mirror each other in some way. And again, building off of that and kind of digging a bit deeper into their data. Because again, I just like digging into the data. I like, I love baseball. I'm sure you guys do as well. I've been kind of working a bit more on trying to analyze hitters. I find it to be a bit trickier to do so. There's just so many different things to look at. And I've just found it again, another fun exercise. And that limitation kind of helped me hunker down and definitely kind of refine

the way I look at batters. And I think it'll help me moving forward. Especially if I say these all blow up, there's no, there's none of these guys do well this season. Maybe my methodology or my approach wasn't correct or I can tweak it here and there. Again, another learning experience for the future. Yeah, I was going to ask about how you gauge whether you did this right because if you hit on too many of your picks, you've probably made it too easy. Maybe you shouldn't do that well on a breakout candidates list. Either you have made it too easy,

you've picked two obvious candidates, or you are absolutely brilliant and perceptive and you should probably be running a major league team or something. So RJ, since you've been doing this for a while, what have you found your hit rate to be? How do you even decide whether it was a hit or not? Because that's going to vary probably by player.

What qualifies as yes, this was a successful breakout. And what are some of the previous picks that you are proudest of? Yeah. So I've been averaging between 10 and 12 correct per year. And it's hard to really say, you know, what the optimal hit rate is. Yeah, so I've been averaging between 10 and 12 correct per year and It's hard to really say, you know what the optimal hit rate is I kind of think of it like being a third base coach where I just know that if I am successful 100% of the time I am not sending enough runners. I'm not taking enough chances. I'm Setting the bar too low. So I can't give you like the idea

I guess if I'm being honest for ego perspective, I would like to hit 50%. I think that would be a cool little achievable goal in terms of you know, just how do you know when you're right? I try to do a public accounting. Like if you look, I mean, I'm sure you can Google it. I did it a public accounting on the site last year where I went pick by pick. I explained my verdict, I explained how I reached that verdict. And in some cases, I said that, you know, I couldn't really make heads or tails of it because of injury or because of sample size or what have you. So, you know, I try to be as public as possible just to show that I'm not playing tricks here.

I'm not doing, you know, accounting tricks to make myself look better. I try to, you know, operate as transparently as possible. Now, unfortunately, at the end of the season, when a piece like that can be written, there are a million other things going on in preparation for the playoffs and all. So you can't always take the time and break down where you were right and wrong and explain all your thought processes that led to those verdicts and whatnot. But I do try to do that as much as possible. I think at minimum, you do it privately, but I think doing it publicly earns the trust of the reader. And it shows that, yeah, you're not trying to be a charlatan.

You're actually doing this for the right reasons and you're being very forthcoming about it. If we're talking about notable hits, in the past I had Spencer Strider on here, I had Kwon, I had Katel Marche. I'm just reading a list off here because I pulled up my list. I had Jeremy Estrada last year. Justin Martinez, Josh, eight Smith, which I was pretty proud of because who had Josh H Smith, who had Josh Smith winning a silver slugger award?

I didn't. But I thought he was going to have a better year. So stuff like that. Like those are the wins where you're like, all right, you know, I believed in this player, but even I didn't believe but I thought he was gonna have a better year. So stuff like that, like those are the wins where you're like, all right, you know, I believed in this player, but even I didn't believe them this much. They're making me look smarter than I actually am. And you know, that's part of the fun, right? Is sometimes you hit on players

in a way that makes you a lot smarter than you actually are. Yeah, I would even be okay with it if the people who were picking the more obvious candidates really went way out on a limb and said something beyond just this guy's going to be good or this guy's going to be better. Like if they really want to risk it and say this guy's going to be the MVP or something, okay, I guess that's risky. Like James Wood, who I think has probably been the most predicted breakout player this

spring, it's either Wood or just Holliday, I guess, right? I've seen almost against my will. I've seen basically every breakout players list. I've brought that on myself because now we get tweets and emails. Every time a list comes out, every time someone gets a notification, I'm informed. They're tormenting you.

Basically, yes. But also it's given us some good content at times. But I think those guys have been the most common. And James Wood, he was a top five prospect in the game when he came out last year. He was a well above average hitter, like 20% better than league average in his first partial season at age 21. And he is projected to be the most valuable Washington national this season.

That's not saying that much. That maybe says more about the nationals roster than it says about James Wood, but I think if you're projected to be the most valuable player on a team, and that's just a projection that is looking at your past performance and is looking at the most likely outcome for you this year, then you're not really risking anything unless you're going to say that James Wood is going to be like the best player in baseball. He's going to win the MVP. He's going to be, I don't know, a five, six win player or something. If you qualify it like that, then maybe I'll give you a little

leeway because otherwise it's just kind of a gimme, it feels like to me. So Thomas, since you don't have the same track record as RJ, you haven't been doing this exercise. You're in and you're out. How are you planning to evaluate your success? Yeah, I haven't really thought about it too much, but I guess RJ brought up accounting. I guess I'll probably write an article later this year,

again, reviewing my picks. Hopefully I get a fair chunk of them right. I do think if they again they're all of them right or most of them right I may have picked two obvious of candidates. But again I think 50% would be just like a nice number to have at least 50% of them hit. But I'm okay if only the say like five or ten of them hit. I didn't really mean to go into this exercise thinking again they were all gonna hit. It's just more guys that I think have that chance this season to kind of excel and kind of take that next step forward. It's a bit tough to say

objectively if I did it correct or not. Again, I did have kind of that objective constraint I put on myself, but I think I'll kind of leave those in the back while I'm reviewing this. I think I'll write an article covering if I think there was a success or not. Like some of these guys might not even play in the majors this year, so like I'm not expecting all of them to hit. But again, I think that accounting being open and transparent about your process helps you learn and also helps other people kind of understand kind of your process and kind of how you operate. And hopefully it encourages them to create a similar list or maybe also kind of bash on people picking Lawrence Butler again or James Wood or Jackson Holliday.

I still cannot believe I saw Garret Crochet on one of these lists. Here's the beauty of it too, Thomas. If you do miss on someone, you can run them back next year and pick them again Exactly. I picked the same people like five. I don't know probably five times a year. Yeah, it's just too early. Yeah I'm stupid enough to do this again. Absolutely I'm gonna ask a question that Ben is gonna find offensive. So Ben I Apologize, but I'm gonna frame it such that it is not in violation of the spirit of this segment or our preferred definition of breakout. So everyone unclench. But if

you were going to pick a guy, an established guy, unknown guy, a well regarded guy to take a step forward this year, not a breakout, just a guy who's going to level up, you know, do better than he did before. Maybe he swooned last year, maybe he breakout, just a guy who's gonna level up, you know, do better than he did before. Maybe he swooned last year, maybe he was injured, maybe he was great and you just think he has another gear in him. Who would each of you pick? Is that okay, Ben? Did I? Yeah, that's okay. I think since you included those caveats. I don't think it's a breakout. We're not, we're not talking about breakouts. We're not talking

about breakouts. We're not talking about breakouts. We're talking about- A bounce back, or it could be a level up. A level up. A career year. A career year. Someone who would violate your principles when it comes to breakout picking, but still might offer some value to someone because you're higher on them than the consensus.

Even though the consensus might already be quite high. Could be very good. But you are a brave individual who thinks he could do even better. He's going to hit the 90th percentile projection or whatever. Maybe he's not going to do, but I'm also buying you guys a little bit of time to think about it. Yes, we're vamping so that we're not putting you on the spot here because we didn't prep you for this in advance.

I did not prep you. I feel like also you're trying to get Ben into a comfortable spot here because I can tell first-time respondent. Yeah, you don't want me to turn you here. Yeah, it's like trying to get him out of the corner. It's like, no, no, come here. I have milk for you. I'll give you a treat.

I think Jonathan India is kind of, I kind of liked him this year. Spring, he's making a lot of contact again. I don't want to read too much into the Spring metrics, but he is leading off for the Royals, again, going from Cincinnati to Kauffman. Again, the parks are kind of, at least on the park factor, pretty similar. I won't expect as many home runs, but again,

he doesn't have that high in power. So I think kind of his ability to just hit the ball, put in the field will help a lot, especially with the big outfield in Kauffman, playing in front of Bobby Wood Jr., Pesco Antino. I think he has a pretty good season lined up for him. He's going to score. If I was going to make a bold prediction, I could say he would lead the league in runs.

Like that would, again, when I wrote my bold predictions thing last year list last year I put like 10 pretty bold predictions again only one hit and I was super excited about that so again if Jonathan India again he's also playing all around the field now so he's not just the second baseman so maybe he'll have better metrics playing left field or third base because again his defense at second hasn't been super great throughout his career. So again, I just think that new home in Kansas City is going to have a lot of playing time leading off and in a great ballpark. So I think overall, I just like him this season. This Clay Holmes count because I feel like he has the chance to be this year's version

of Michael King where you know the stuff is good. And the question is really just durability, and can he go out there and actually start every fifth day? And if he can, and obviously I don't know the answer to that question yet, but if he can, I feel like we're going to see him take a step forward. And Thomas, to his credit, had him on his list. So I'll give him half credit for this answer. All right.

Well, before we let you go, just give us a smattering of more guys. I don't want you to give away your whole list. We will link to them on the show page and we encourage people to go read them. But yeah, give us a little taste. Anyone else that you feel strongly about or you want to plant a flag on on this podcast? There's one guy I just feel really strongly about Ben, and I've been holding him back, hoping you would ask this question. Now I have not pronounced this name before, so bear with me if I get it wrong. I believe it's Paul Skidass.

You know, I don't know. And that's perfect. If you don't know how to say the name of the player, that's a good sign that you've picked wisely. Yeah, he's a pirate's petcher. I don't know, he has a mustache. Yeah, haven't heard of him. Yeah, you want to go first Thomas and I'll figure out who I'm saying. Yeah. I guess I have a few names here.

I think Jack Leiter. He was on my list and I think this spring has kind of shown. Well, I put him on my list because I thought he was going to be a relief pitcher because the Rangers kind of desperately need pitchers out of their bullpen. But he's kind of leveled up this spring. Added to that new sinker, the change up, that kick change up that everyone's raving about. He added one too. So I think Jack Leiter has a pretty good, and also it looks like he's going to have a spot on the rotation this start of the year. The Rangers are hurting both in their bullpen and in their, for starters, Radford's hurt, Mali might be hurt too, I'm not sure on the news on him there. But I really like Jack Leiter. I think his, how do you pronounce this guy's name from the Rockies?

Angel Shavili? That's how you pronounce his name. He's like, again, I was going to pick Seth Alverson for the Rockies, but he just seemed too obvious. Like everyone was putting on this list. Sorry, RJ, I know you put him there too, but you had him in more of the high confidence area. But I love you guys.

Too obvious. Seth Alverson. Yeah. Come on. Be serious. Chiavilli's change up is crazy. His change up is slid, I think they both returned over 50% with us last year, but he had like a 20% strikeout rate. I could not understand it.

It could just be Coors because Coors is stupid. But I really like Angel Chiavilli and I guess another name I'll put on, Pavin Smith. He's been in the league for quite some time now, but it looks like he's going to get a run at least in Arizona through DH, at least the strong side of the platoon there. He had phenomenal metrics in AAA last season, came up to the majors for a bit, incredible batter ball metrics. I think with a nice role in kind of the middle, maybe the middle of the bottom of the diamondbacks rotation, playing mostly against right-handed pitchers, he just kind of has the tools and the opportunitybacks rotation, playing mostly against right-handed pitchers. He just kind of has the tools and the opportunity to kind of break out the season.

Yeah, then for me, two infielders who pull the ball out in the air and are in favorable ball parks for that, the Asher Shea Whitcomb and the Brewers Caleb Durbin. Obviously, the opportunity will make a difference there, but they both pulled the ball in the air and you know Milwaukee and Houston are two great spots to do that and another name I'll throw out Justin Hageman. He is a pitcher now for the Mets He's bounced around between the Dodgers and last year with the Red Sox and I would say generally With the Dodgers Red Sox and now the new Mets front office are taking interest in you, despite being a late 20s reliever with zero MLB appearances to your name, there might

be something there. From what I've seen on video, he's got an extreme release point, crossfire action, low slot, he's got a pretty good slider. I think the Mets gave him a split contract over the winner. So that suggests they see him pitching in the majors at some point this season. And I think if and when he gets that opportunity, he has a chance to do stuff with it and become a valuable member of their bullpen. And then the last one I would throw out, I did not have him in the high confidence range

because I am a coward, but Apadres have not done anything since. That's just a tier so or an alice, I believe is how you pronounce his name, won't get an opportunity. I compared him to what David Peralta gave them last season because, you know, handing out high praise here, but I do think he's a pretty interesting player. And I think he'll get an opportunity to show what he's got at the big league level.

And I think that, again, he has a chance to be a league average or better hitter. Love it. Justin Higginman was on my minor league free agent draft. He was my third round pick, so I'm pulling for him for multiple reasons. Check is in the mail. All right. Well, this segment has just bolstered my spirits.

It has restored my faith in humanity. I just, I hope this starts a movement. I hope that this catches on. I hope that people will learn from your example and feel shame when it's breakout season again and they're picking some top prospect or some guy who was one of the best players in baseball for half of last season. If no one else were doing it the right way, then fine. Maybe you could just go along to get along, get along to go along. How does that go? The first one. But if RJ and Thomas are setting the standard here, then you got to measure

up to it or you're just, you're just not doing it right. And look, I'm not releasing a breakout list. You know, you could get on me for saying, well, you're criticizing other people's breakout picking and you're not putting your money where your mouth is. Where's the Ben Lindbergh breakout list? And you know, I haven't put the work in. I haven't released a breakout list

and I don't think I'm qualified to currently. And yet I'm not gonna half-ass it. I'm not gonna fake it and give you a super obvious candidate. If you don't predict any breakouts, that's perfectly fine. I'm not saying that half-ass it. I'm not going to fake it and give you a super obvious candidate. If you don't predict any breakouts, that's perfectly fine. I'm not saying that anyone should feel obligated to predict breakout picks. It's a hard thing to do, but if you are going to put that breakout list out there, then you gotta, you gotta put the work in. You gotta grind that tape.

You gotta study the stats the way that RJ and Thomas have, and I'm glad that they did. So RJ writes for CBS Sports and Thomas writes for TJ stats, tjstats.substack.com. We will link to both of their outlets and their excellent breakout picks. And guys just keep the faith. We got to stay strong, you know? Let's shut this down. Cause you're sounding too much like Sephiroth at this point. No, there's no villain turn. There's no heel turn coming here. We're the good guys. They're the baddies.

Yeah, so thank you guys for coming on and also for doing it the right way. For just leading by example. All right, by the way, I forgot to say earlier which episode it was when we had talked about New Era hats previously. It was episode 1717. I will link to it on the show page. And to follow up on another previous topic, it sounds like Raphael Devers is resigned to not playing third bass, maybe even to de-aching.

So perhaps that long local nightmare is over. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. As have the following five listeners who have already signed up and pledged some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free, and get themselves access to some perks.

Lee Elderton, Tim McShane, Greg Sells, Paul Hendrickson, and Morgan Gray, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff livestreams, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and ad-free FanCrafts memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email.

Send your questions, comments, intro, and outro themes to podcast at fancrafts.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on iTunes and Spotify and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild sub-edit at r slash effectively wild.

And you can check the show notes at fan graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week, the final preview pod. Talk to you soon. Take me to the diamond Lead me through the turnstile. Shower me with data that I never thought to compile. Now I'm freely now, the scorecard with a cracker

jack of a smile. Effectively wild.