Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2304: You Say Suspension, I Say Extension

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about several oddities of the early season, including pitcher Ryne Nelson’s single and a drone encounter with an A’s bat boy, then discuss Jurickson Profar’s PED suspension, Garrett Crochet’s extension, and Jonathan Lucroy‘s reaction to Roki Sasaki’s apparent post-start tears, before bantering about whether full ABS would encourage even […]

Hello and welcome to episode 2304 of Effectively Wild, a fan-graphic baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Reilly of Fan Graphs and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of The Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm a little overwhelmed by how much baseball news there has been over the past several days. Oh. Is it me?

Is it that I forgot how much news is normal during a baseball season? Because we didn't have one for several months. It just feels like a lot. We said that one of the nice things about baseball coming back is that you're just inundated in baseball. You're just awash with baseball. But boy, just feels like there have been a lot of headlines. Joshian's most recent newsletter started with, I would appreciate it if the 2025 Major league baseball season, all of five days old would calm down. That's kind of, I don't want it to come down.

I kind of embrace the chaos, but it does feel a little like more than usual. I can't decide. I can't decide, Ben, cause I, it's a lot of the same kind of news, right? And so maybe that has helped me to keep my wits about me, my head on straight. Yeah, there's been a bunch of weirdness happening in games,

which is not abnormal. There's always a lot of weirdness happening in games, but it does seem concentrated. It's not just the big headlines and the bats and the news that we'll talk about this time, profile or crochet, but it's also just the big headlines and the bats and the news that we'll talk about this time, pro far crochet, but it's also just the weirdness like the bat tape eating or the lighter nut shot

or the white socks staff having the best ERA in baseball through four games, a 0.75 ERA or the pirates, their first three losses of the season coming via walk-offs, which was the first time that had happened since a previous Pirates team did it. I enjoyed that. I think it was Alex Stumpf, their beat reporter said, per the Alaya Sports Bureau, the Pirates are the first team to be walked off for their first three losses in the season since the

1924 Pirates. So the Pirates, the Pirates give or take a century. But yeah, it's just like the Brewers allowing the most earned runs through the first four games ever. There's just been a lot of stats in that genre. Maybe there always are. Maybe I've just forgotten at the start of a season, you just get a whole lot of most ever through X games like Devers,

which we talked about last time, the Brewers being connected to the Yankees and their big bats, though seemingly it's not just that, that's the Brewers problem. And then a drone tried to carry away an A's bat boy. There's just a lot of weird stuff happening. So again, I think a lot of this is like, can be categorized to maybe help you deal with it. There's like the extension news. We had a bunch of extensions.

There's the, oh no, what does it mean under performance genre? There's the, oh boy, that's not going to last genre, right? And then, you know, then there's the like, yeah, that guy's still really good genre, which we're not spending any time on. And then, of course, there's the new pitch genre. Let's not forget the new pitch. Let us pay respect to Brady Singer, right?

Let us wonder if things have finally clicked for Mackenzie Gore. Is Chris Bubich going gonna be this good? Watch a hundred and some of our games, mortified out. You know, so there's that piece of it. I don't know what voice that was. I don't know. Maybe I am, maybe it is overwhelming. Maybe I've been overwhelmed.

It was like you started with a base of your Jimmy Stewart impression and then- That's always there. That's my, that's always the base, you know? That's like. That's home for you. That's just, everything else is an outgrowth of that. It's like butter in one of the mother sauces.

You're just like, yeah, you gotta have some butter in there probably. Also, a pitcher got a hit. I'm just saying, just things, weird things have been happening. I mean, only weird lately, you know? I mean, like, also weird historically, which was like kind of the problem.

We didn't talk about this last time because I was busy being grumpy about torpedoes or something. Look, I don't know Ryan Nelson personally, and I'm not a beat writer. I don't cover the team. We'd have to ask Nick Pecorro his take on this, but I've watched a lot of Diamondbacks

baseball in recent years and I have never seen this man smile even one time. Like I haven't seen him smile when it's gone well. Definitely not seen him smile when it's gone badly. I haven't seen it, you know? This is not a man who I think smiles very much. Yeah, he's smiling on the inside maybe, like he and Paul Skeen's. Right, I don't want to say that he is without human feeling. I simply don't think that it is, that isn't translating to his face. But on Sunday, when you are a pitcher

and you are called upon to hit in a game where your team is mounting an incredibly dramatic comeback, I think they scored, the Diamondbacks scored eight runs in that inning. And your team has lost the designated hitter earlier in the game and there is no one left. Your manager might turn to you and then you might have an RBI knock and the smile.

There was like multiple versions of the smile. There was the tongue out like nah, rock concert version. There was just like him in the dugout after looking at video of him hitting, which was great. He was just saving up his smile for years maybe. Right. You know, maybe, maybe this whole time. And I know no less a luminary than Craig Goldstein said that he was disappointed by this,

like that he has been waiting for a pitcher to hit successfully and he thought that the knock was underwhelming and like for what it was, okay, okay, sure, Craig, okay, sure. It's a bouncer, infield, sort of through the infields. But yeah, it wasn't quite what Nelson had promised Tori Lovello because apparently he had been saying for the better part of two years that he would get a hit

if they ever needed him. And I'm sure that Tori was probably like, yeah, sure bud. I mean, I know he was a shortstop in college at Oregon, but not a good hitter even then. So I don't know what gave him the confidence that he would hit a missile somewhere after not having hit for a long time. So he didn't hit a missile.

He said he was gonna hit a missile somewhere, but he said, we'll take it. He did not hit a missile. His single, RBI single off of Eli Morgan, 89.8 miles per hour off the bat. It had a negative 17 degree launch angle. It went 13 feet, Ben. This is not like a big, big hit or anything,

but it was a big, big hit or anything. And so it was such a dramatic moment that Eohanio Sorre is getting thrown out at the plate on a really nice throw from Pete Crowe Armstrong Kind of didn't register for me for a second And then there was Nelson and his big smile and to your point like it was great to see the broadcast Setting this up because someone someone else In a way broadcast for instance might say why is the picture of the guy who has to come in here?

Like why is this your only option? Have you really emptied out your bench that way? Why? Why don't you have your designated hitter anymore? What's going on? You know, a different broadcast might have asked that. But the Diamondbacks broadcast was just busy telling us about how Ryan Nelson had been a shortstop in college. And was such a good hitter that he converted to pitching. Right, yeah. Which is, you know, what you do when you're really good at something, but also very fair-minded, you know?

You wanna give it a try. Try everything before you settle on any one occupation. And give the other team a chance, right? And so, yes, the Diamondbacks emerged triumphant 10-6 win over the Cubs. And that was that. But yeah, Ryan Nelson got a smile, got a smile out of him. There you go. Yeah, if that's what it takes, I don't know what he'll have to do to top that.

But yeah, I mean, I guess Tori had the confidence to lose the DH knowing that he had Ryan Nelson in reserve because Nelson had promised him a missile. And so I don't know if that was one of those funny tongue and cheek baseball player predictions that we've talked about so much, I'm sure. But yeah, wouldn't have guessed, I guess, Ryan Nelson would be the first non-Otani pitcher with a hit since Zach Crenke in the 2021 World Series.

And I guess Logan Webb and Daniel Bard, the last regular season occurrence in October, 2021. But I suppose if anyone was gonna do it, it'd probably be just someone random. Yeah, it's not like there's any other pitcher than Otani who's good enough to, you would want him to hit. So it has to be some strange situation.

And that's what this was, but it was fun. And this, look, I hope that this does occasionally happen. I'm an opponent of pitcher hitting. I was pro universal DH and I was anti everyone who said, oh yeah, but it's so much fun when a pitcher does get a hit because it's rare and it's improbable. And yeah, I get that, but it wasn't worth the amount of pitcher hitting

that we still had, even in an era where pitchers weren't getting to go deep into games. But this every few years, by all means, gives me the silly, pressed into service in some sort of extreme situation where the pitcher comes through. That is extremely fun.

Yeah, you get to enjoy the rarity of the thing. It's like when a position player goes up there to pitch and throws 95, you're like, oh my God, where's that? Where's that been all this time? You know, we do benefit from novelty, I think. Well, we started with something fun before we transitioned to something less fun, which is Jurkson Profar's extend, not extend,

Jurkson Profar's, mixed up my stories. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend. Extend and stay on the inactive list. Yeah, saved it, yeah. Extension sounds sort of like suspension.

It's kind of the opposite, if anything. Yeah, mixed up my top stories on this podcast. We'll get to an extension shortly, but first the suspension. So Braves will be without Profar for 80 games and also the postseason, potentially, because he is ineligible for that. He has been suspended after testing positive for human chorionic gonadotrophin, which I hope

I have pronounced correctly and I don't know. You pronounced the important part of it correctly. Yes. There's gonad in it. And yeah, I could have just said HCG because you all know that the G stands for gonadotropin. But this is a fertility drug. And in a man in Dirksen Profar, either he consumes some sort of tainted substance, which can never be entirely ruled out, or he was taking this, this is often used by someone who has been on a steroid cycle, who has taken testosterone, let's say,

and wants to sort of restart their system, because if you're on externally produced test, then your body says, oh, okay, I don't need to take this anymore. Look at you, dropping test. then your body says, oh, okay, I don't need to take this anymore. Look at you, dropping test. You know I'm in the natty or not community. I know you're, I just, it's always fascinating

to learn how far the map goes, you know? Yeah. What is the outer bound of the map? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty deep, pretty deep rabbit hole, but this is something you might take to sort of restart your endocrine system to signal to your body,

you need to produce these hormones again. Right, exactly. So testicles don't shrivel up permanently, right? So that is a possible use of this thing. And I guess I will read his statement here. Well, the Braves said, we were surprised and extremely disappointed that he tested positive.

Profar himself said, and he addressed this to Braves fans, today is the most difficult day of my baseball career. I'm devastated to announce that I've been suspended for 80 games by MLB and the commissioner's office for testing positive for a banned substance this offseason. This is especially painful for me because anyone who knows me and has seen me play knows I am deeply passionate about the game. There's nothing I love more than competing with my teammates and being a fan favorite. Well, the days of being a fan favorite may be over for now at least.

What a specific weird little thing to throw in there. Yeah, yeah. There's nothing I love more than being a fan favorite. I love it. Love to be a fave. Yeah. I want to apologize to the entire Braves organization, my teammates and the fans who had considered him their favorite for a while, but no longer.

It is because of my deep love and respect for this game that I would never knowingly do anything to cheat it I have been tested my entire career including eight times last season alone and have never tested positive I would never willingly take a banned substance, but I take full responsibility and accept MLB's decision I'm devastated that I won't be on the field with my teammates for the next 80 games I look forward to competing again at the highest level this season upon my return. So this stinks, it stinks for the Braves. Obviously a lot of things have stunk for them thus far,

including their results starting the season 0 and 5, and then also losing their one big high profile signing of this passed off season. And then also Reynaldo Lopez going on the IL. It's just one thing after another with them, but this is maybe the worst of the things. And it stinks just in a larger sense. I wouldn't say that he was my favorite,

but I enjoyed Jerks and Profar. And I also quite enjoyed his breakout last year. And yes, I am comfortable calling it a breakout. And look, obviously I am not naive. I'm not gonna say that there's no way that that was responsible for the breakout. I think it's unfortunate because he was such a noteworthy case of a player reaching a new level,

even if for him it was a level that had been forecasted for him long before, but very long before, to the point that no one was forecasting that still. And then he did it and it looked like, oh, finally his potential came to fruition and this is the good jerks and profar that we were promised and hope to see someday. And so the upshot of it is that A,

no one will ever believe that that was legitimate. And maybe it wasn't. There's quite possible that it wasn't in fact, but if it was, he's never beating the allegations, obviously. And then beyond that, it colors every other subsequent breakout in a way that where we were talking about that last time with all the conspiracy minded thinking and everyone just jumping to cheating

initially and this may be banging scheme related. It may be larger culture related. It may be the balls not juiced. Actually the ball is juiced related. It may steroid era related, or maybe it's just always been in the air because there's always been cheating and there have always been conspiracies and there's always been people being suspicious about things. And occasionally some conspiracy turns out to actually have been fact. But for the longest time, every time someone is doing something out of line with their previous results, it's must be juicing. And I don't like that oversimplified way of looking at things. And thus I'm unhappy when it is proved to be true

or at least perhaps corroborated in this case, because that just fans the flames further the next time. I don't believe that every breakout is a result of cheating is what I'm saying. So I don't wanna be like, I don't think Santa's still real, spoilers. I enjoyed when I did think he was for a while, but I just, I wanna think that there is some magic

in the baseball world. And I wanna think that players actually can unlock new abilities. And we know that there are times when they can, they change their swing, they add a new pitch as you were just saying, whatever it is, like there are clearly times where there's something that a player's doing differently

that is producing different results. But I just, I don't like the knee jerk skepticism of every person raising their performance because I want to live in a world where we can do that, where that's conceivable. And I hate that maybe the most obvious case of like, oh, this seems sort of suspicious. It seems like maybe there was, you know, not just more grist for the mill, but also, yeah, maybe this one was suspicious. Yeah, I think that's one of the things about any kind of, um, PAD use like this, that is so frustrating and sort of discombobulating because I think it's overly simplistic to say, Oh, well we know now exactly what was responsible for pro farce performance in 2024.

I know there was a lot of, oh, well, that explains his bad speed being three miles an hour faster. And to your point, it may well explain some of it. It may explain all of it. I don't know. I think that we don't know, but not having confidence that the performances that we're seeing on the field are the results of training and strategy and hard work and determination and improvement and sort of well-earned improvement at that is, you know, it does cause these little fissures in our confidence in the game. And that's, you know, it's damaging to our ability to enjoy the game the way we want to, both as you're noting with the players in front of us and for future players where we just, you know, we have to

have some amount of skepticism. And I think that, you know, some amount of that is fine. And probably, you know, important to us sort of guarding our peace for future disappointment, right? Yeah. But you don't want to be, you want to occupy a space between cynic and Pollyanna, right? Like there needs to be a middle lane and I think that middle lane needs to be pretty wide for us to enjoy the sport. So I wish I could say, well, you know, he, he said he was tested eight times last year.

So clearly that performance was completely legitimate. I don't know. I don't know how much of it was legitimate and how much of it might've been ill gotten. But you know, that's the problem is that, is that we can't know now. And the problem for the Braids is like, now we have to watch a lot more Alex Verdugo, I guess, you know, eventually. Yeah. Or Kellnick or Dela Cruz. It's yeah, it's not a great situation for them out there. Load bearing Kellnick. And like, to be clear, that guy looks like he could squat

a lot of a load, you know? Mm-hmm, that's true. But you don't want, you want him bearing a literal load, not a metaphorical one, you know? Yes. Yeah, I think in Profar's case, there was not much skepticism that he could repeat the performance potentially

just because the underlying numbers were there. So it wasn't flukey in the sense that it was just pure luck. It wasn't just a babbitt boost or something. So in that sense, it gave you more confidence that he could sustain it and that it was a real change. But there also wasn't an obvious explanation for how he got better because he made

some marginal improvements when it came to plate discipline and chasing and making contact and that kind of thing. But the big difference, I don't even think it was bad speed so much. It was just what happened after he made contact. He hit the ball harder. It was just a exit speed gain kind of across the board. And there wasn't a clear narrative for why or how his exit speed jumped. Like did he do something to get stronger? It just

wasn't really clear. The athletic story about it says, some red flags were raised around baseball, albeit whispers rather than public accusations after Profar had a career best season for the Padres in 2024, but the Braves attributed his power and overall offensive gains to adjustments. Profar made with his lower body in his batting stance, and this sentence reads differently now,

after working out with Fernando Tatis Jr. and his dad the previous winter. So I don't know if that raises fewer red flags given Tatis's own history. Again, I know that tainted supplements, that is a real problem. You're still responsible for ingesting those things and not making sure that you don't have a tainted substance. But I'm just saying it is possible

that he could have not been cheating last year and then ingested something unknowingly this off season that wasn't responsible for his breakout. It's just given the sequence of events here, he will never convince anyone of that ever. And yeah, I don't wanna be naive about that potential too. The thing is though, like, you know, he didn't like suddenly stop hitting grounders

or something, you know? It's like when something like that happens and you say, oh, he was always hitting the ball hard. It's just that now he's hitting the ball in the air and he has more loft in his swing. Something like that, you can easily explain the performance change. In his case, it was just, well, something like that, you can easily explain the performance change. In his case, it was just, well, at that age,

did he just suddenly get stronger? I don't know, but it stinks. And it also stinks because it actually makes me less confident in the testing program. Usually when someone gets popped, you think, okay, at least it's a sign that the system is working. And that if you cheat, you will get caught. But given what he took here,

if it wasn't just a tainted something he ingested, but it was actually something that you take after a cycle, well, that means he didn't get caught when he was cycling. When he was doing the thing that may have led to that performance improvement. And then the fact that he says he was tested eight times, which I assume he's telling the truth about, or he wouldn't put that in a public statement

through the MLBPA. But if that's true, and I don't know how you get away with that, because if it's random testing as it's supposed to be then you can't Plan it such that you don't have that detectable stuff in your system anymore necessarily So that makes me think is it some sort of like sophisticated? microdosing regimen or is there a masking agent that just works so Effectively that you can actually get away with it and that he didn't get caught until he was doing this thing after he was off that cycle.

So that kind of worries me even more about, okay, then well, who else is doing this thing? This is something that Manny Ramirez was caught for and suspended for the same substance. And there were many jokes made at his expense. But yeah, this is kind of the rare case of the testing working quote-unquote and also making me a little less confident that it is actually working in a larger sense. Yeah it's it's not it's not great I mean you want there to be some number of positives every year to your point just to feel like you have confidence that they're actually doing a good job with the testing because they have to, I mean, guys, this is the thing, they're going to try.

The fact that it is not a bigger problem is candidly amazing because the incentives are profound. And my sense is that the folks who are sort of tasked with designing anabolic series, what do they call them in the Natty or not community? Is there like a name for it? Is there a name for cycling? Like, do you have a, what's the vernacular here, Ben? You talk about being on gear. On gear?

On gear. Oh Ruffin On gear? Ben Knoll On gear. Lauren Ruffin Oh, God. Ben Knoll I all need to read more. On gear? Ben Knoll There's so much lingo. This is why I like this subculture because there's so much language that's specific to it. Yeah, so on gear, you talk about your stack, that's your assortment of substances that you're taking. Oh boy. Boy, boy, boy, boy, boy, boy.

Boy. On gear, wow. I wish I didn't know that now. I regret my question. Might be blasting something. What, you wait, you do what? You blast something. You blast it? Yeah.

You blast your gear? Can you combine them like that? Yeah, I guess so. I don't know. It might sound a little strange, but yeah, you can probably say that. Oh yeah, that, put them together and that's weird, you know, it doesn't sound right at all.

Oh God. Anyway, so I couldn't remotely tell you what kind of point I was gonna try to make. I'm so distracted by on gear. Sounds like a climbing term. It sounds like the vocabulary of someone who climbs in the morning and then works at a brewery at night, you know?

Like I'm on gear, you know? What? Sure. On gear? On gear. Do you blast other things or do you get blast? I think you blast, yeah. You blast, okay. Yes, something, the substance that you're taking is the object of the blasting.

Right, yeah, yeah, sure, of course. Like, Meg, what a dumb, stupid question you asked, lady. Wow, okay, well, I might return to a point if I can possibly remember it later, but I'm so distracted, I can't guarantee that I will. Where you say just given the profusion of these substances and the yeah, it's everywhere. I mean, it's in the fitness world, it's influencers, it's actors, it's obviously bodybuilders.

It's just, it's become kind of normalized. And a lot of those worlds, you don't have testing or public testing, and there are in many cases, no consequences other than possibly bad PR. So- Or like, you know, like I know that there's been a lot of speculation about the various members of like the Marvel cinematic universe who are juicing

as a way of getting into that kind of shape as they just are participants in this interminable franchise of films. And then it's like, Hey, you got cast when you were 20, but now you're 49 and you're expected to still look like that. And that age shouldn't be this vascular. It's anyway, so there's a lot of incentive and I do think that, you know, players, first of all, I think most players do want to like play good baseball of their own volition. I don't want to impugn sort of the general integrity here. And I also think that like not being able to participate in the postseason is a powerful disincentive knowing that you are in all likelihood not going to be, um, Cooper's town bound if you're caught using PEDs. I think is a disincentive. Now, if you're a guy like profile and you're,

I would imagine kind of realistic about your hall of fame chances to begin with, like maybe, you know, the calculus is a little bit different and you think to yourself, well, it's not great, but like I might not get caught and then it'll be fine and then people won't make gonad jokes and Meg won't learn about blasting your gear. And look at the payoff for him. If in fact his performance improvement was a product

of what he was taking. He went from signing a one-year, one-million-dollar deal to signing a 42-million-dollar deal. So despite the reputational hit, he might be thinking to himself, ultimately worth it. I mean, it stinks. And if he comes back and is still good for a long time, that might help, as it has with some other players, such as Nelson Cruz, let's say, where it kind of, you play long enough

and you play well enough, it kind of... And your sweetheart, that helps too. And people like you for other reasons, yes. Or yes, they're predisposed to like you because, well, who knows whyisposed to like you because, well, who knows why? There could be many reasons, or you actually are just someone people like.

But I think in that case, you come back and you don't get caught again, it makes it easier to make the case that, oh, okay, it was legitimate, and he's still able to do it post-testing positive, assuming, of course, he didn't just go back to whatever previous regimen he was on where he didn't just go back to whatever previous regimen he was on where he didn't get caught when he was taking it. And a lot of these

substances can have long lasting effects even after you stop taking them. There could be strength gains even if you're natural at that point. So it's hard to say that stigma will stick with you. And I have historically been something of a skeptic when it comes to P.D.'s improving baseball performance specifically. I think if it's just purely about strength or speed or whatever, I can see the case more clearly. But if it's baseball, I know that some things can maybe improve your eyesight, but often so much of it is just down to your pitch recognition or your reflexes and less just purely about strength,

but I guess if there was going to be purely a strength-related breakout, it would kind of look like Profars did, where it wasn't drastic change in approach. It was more just, Hey, I hit the ball harder now. That could be because I'm stronger, which could be because I'm taking something. Yeah, I think that that's right. I think that, you know, there's going to be variation guy to guy. I think that do I think that if you take steroids, you're going to like wake up

the next day and be a gold glove fielder? No, I don't think that. you take steroids, you're going to like wake up the next day and be a gold glove fielder. No, I don't think that. I don't know that your like pitch recognition is going to be better, that your plate discipline will be better. I do think that to the extent that PEDs are an aid just in general recovery, you might see gains in those areas just because you're not exhausted, right? But yeah, I think that there's an important strength

versus skill distinction to make. And there's a reason that the guys who are most famous for being participants in the steroid era are the guys who hit a bunch of home runs, right? But the reason that they were able to do that wasn't just the strength, it was also that they were good home run hitters. It's just that suddenly they were like,

stuffed sausages up there. So it's a bummer, don't do rights. You made a mistake earlier, Ben, they call it being natty. Oh, I know that. Yeah, they call it being natty when you're not on gear, when you haven't blasted. Yes, that is true. I'm sure I've used that term on this podcast or on our bonus Patreon ones, because I throw you for a loop every time. How about you?

Yeah, it's really, you know, I tend to be the oversharer between the two of us, and then you will just surprise people, and it really is something, Ben. You know, really, it really is something Ben, really, really is. I'm gonna link to a Ringer thing that I wrote a few years ago,

cause every year at the end of the year, we do these like, what are you actually watching group posts type things where it's not like whatever prestige show you liked, but what are you kind of wasting your time on that you're quote unquote guilty pleasure, though I tend to believe you don't need to feel guilty if it's a pleasure in most cases.

Yeah, so I wrote about how I fell into the natty or not rabbit hole back in 2022. And I put as much of the lingo into this short entry as I could. So I'll share that for everyone's elucidation a little longer. But you could say that it's another term I enjoy is newbie gains, which is newbie gains, which that's like when you just start working out.

And so if you've been like a lifelong lifter, then you plateau and you know, you can't gain as fast naturally. But if you just started hitting the gym, then newbie gains, you know? Suddenly it's your body responds, it's like, what is this? This weight that I'm lifting, this stress that I've never been subjected to. And so, yeah, maybe if he was a lifetime natty

until last year, and then suddenly starts taking the sauce. That's another one you could use. Sauce. That's a good one. Even I know that, Ben. I'm not a newbie. No. Then you'd be getting your newbie gains. Anyway, I'm sorry not to see Pro-Far for half the season and potentially the post season, which the Braves will probably still make even though all indications are to the contrary thus far. Yeah, it'll probably be okay. The final thing I'll say about Profar

and then we can move on is that it is always a tricky thing as like a journalist or an analyst of any kind, because like, you know, you want to be responsible. It's a heavy accusation to level. You don't want to just be casually like you'd probably doing roids though, you know, not Maddie, you know, you don't want to, we all have guys, we have some suspicions about, but you have to be a pro and not name them. And so you end up in this weird thing where it's like, you know, I, I don't say that like I was sitting there thinking to myself, I've got Jers and provar is on steroids.

That was actually, I didn't think that that was true. That was not my, my instinct with him. But even if I had, I wouldn't have wanted to say it because I'm like, you know, I'm in the BBWAA. Like I can't be, you know what I mean? Like we can't be just throwing that around. So I will make up conspiracies about Otani's dog, but that's not serious. You know what I mean? So it's a tricky, it's a tricky spot to be in as a person working in the industry because you want to be mindful of how heavy and when we know life altering career altering that accusation is. So yeah, I can't be going on TV and throwing nonsense around. If you do that, you make millions.

Yeah, that's why I wanted you to be my podcast cohost and not Pat McCaffey, but- McCaffey? What are you- No, it's McAfee. I made this mistake on- McCaffey? No, you're living this in.

That's delightful, thank you. I made that same mistake on- McAfee? No, you're leaving this in. I did this. That's delightful, thank you. I made that same mistake on Hang Up and Listen because I had this name in my head as McAfee just from the antivirus, I guess, and then I was like, no, McPhee, McPhee. And then I psyched myself out, like, which one is it? Because look, I don't watch a whole lot of a Pat McPhee show. Not surprising anyone there.

If you're surprised by my Natty or not obsession, then it would have been a double whammy if I suddenly outed myself as a Pat McAfee fan. But- Do you think there's overlap in those communities? Probably some correlation. Yeah, almost certainly. Yeah, anyway, there you go.

So we have different journalistic standards though. Right, we have some. Just as much silliness here at Effectively Wild, but it manifests itself, I hope, in healthier ways anyway. So from the suspension to the extension, Garrett Crochet and the Red Sox, they have brokered a deal. They have come to a long-term agreement to keep Crochet in Red Sox and also on this team.

It's a six-year extension and it's for $170 million. And gotta read out the boring boilerplate fine print here. I always feel like the person at the end of the pharmaceutical ad when I'm just like reading all the side effects. Are you going to say the word perineum? No, I wasn't planning on it. You just said it. Perineum on Sunday football these days might lead to business with your perineum.

I'm like, oh God, when you're saying that on TV, we're saying that on TV now on the podcast. It's no deferrals. So it's not among the more complicated long-term deals. $4 million signing bonus. So 24 million next year, then 28 million annually from 2027 through 2030, and then 30 million in 2031. And there's a conditional club option for 2032

if he misses 120 days due to a significant arm injury. So always heartening to have one of those in there. That's always speaks well of a player's injury track record when you have the if you miss a lot of time, we get an extra cheap season tacked on. And there's an opt out after 2030, which would be void if that absence occurs before then. But the main takeaway is that he's going to be on Boston for quite a while here. And I guess there are some escalators and bonuses and things such that can be triggered here. But it was interesting to me that they signed this because I thought we had passed the point of no return with the extension season. So this is a case of someone setting a limit, a deadline, and then saying,

eh, actually, we'll just get the deal done anyway. It had been reported that he was not going to sign one, probably, and then he did. So there were kind of amusing back-to-back crochet related headlines at MLB Trade Rumors. Red Sox Garrett Crochet expected to table extension talks followed by Red Sox Sign Garrett Crochet two six-year extension. So he had sort of set that self-imposed opening day cutoff. And he said that the discussions went down to the wire and that they were pretty close

and that they could pick up again someday and maybe get it across the finish line. So there was some optimism, but not that it would happen within the next few days. And Craig Breslow had said not to expect it. Anyway, it got done. I guess they figured, eh, we're almost there. Why not just finalize this thing

and not have it hanging over us all season? He was two seasons away from free agency this season and next season, but there was a lot of speculation. It was just very clear that they wanted to keep him and that it made sense for them to try to keep him with all these young guys coming along and more position players in the system than pitchers and up and coming team and no one quite of the caliber

of crochet on the major league staff. Why wouldn't they want to keep crochet? And they did. And reportedly they are in deep talks with Christian Campbell about an extension as well. I like this for both sides very much. I think that Garret Crochet, especially given his injury history, did very well for himself here. I think that the Red Sox sort of protected some of their downside risk, just to sound like a beep boop bop financial analyst for a second with that sort of avoidable option. He did better from a pure dollars perspective than I was expecting him to just given the injury history. But it seemed clear that like part of the rationale for the trade was to have the opportunity to get something like this done. Right. Um, I wouldn't say that

like they got fleeced in that deal or anything like that, but, um, they gave up meaningful prospects to the white socksx to get crochet. By getting this done, I think it's sort of not that the trade would have been bad on its own because like that team is going to be good this year and a lot of that is going to come down to crochet and you know, especially with the rest of their rotation kind of dinged. And as you noted, a lot of position players coming up through the farm system, like having him around is incredibly useful just from a baseball perspective, but it does make that trade feel, um,

even more productive than it initially did from Boston side. And you know, now Gary crochet gets to be $160 million man. So, um, good for him. That's great. Uh, I feel like it worked out well all around. And now he can go back to concentrating on what really matters, which is laughing at Jack Leiter when he gets knocked in the beans by baseball. Yeah, I had whiplash reading a couple different reactions to this extension because Joshian just went in on

the terms of this and called it utterly ridiculous and also one of the craziest sports contracts I have ever seen. Yeah. And then I read Dan Simborski's reaction at FanCrafts, the subhead of which is relatively affordable rates. And Dan said, yeah, the Zips was roughly in line. I guess the Zips had said seven years, 175 million. So fewer years higher AAV. And Crochet had a fantastic spring and a decent first start. So I guess it's purely because Dan, as the projections guy is focusing on

what crochet is going to do, and Joe is focusing on what he has done. Not that Joe is not also interested in what he will do, but that was the thrust of Joe's piece was just, this guy has not pitched very much, which is fair. I mean, he's pitched basically a full season this guy has not pitched very much, which is fair. I mean, he's pitched basically a full season or what used to be a full starting pitcher season

in the major leagues. And there have been injuries. And of course he was a reliever. And then he had a fantastic most of a season last year before they kind of did a soft shutdown, didn't completely shut him down, but just really limited his workload. And he even said at the time that he wasn't interested in pitching in the postseason,

unless he received an extension after a potential trade. And so he didn't get the trade, but it's 224 innings. And it's like a full season. It's like a six win season, so he's been excellent in those innings, but it's just very few, especially for a guy who is almost 26 and now you're signing him long-term.

So I do understand that perspective, just signing a guy for several years who hasn't really pitched a single full season and trusting that he will at some point and you hope multiple points. And then I also understand the perspective of, yeah, but look at his stuff and look at how good he is clearly.

And he was certainly among the best, if not the best pitcher in baseball last year on a per inning basis. And it is an open question, how many innings will he deliver? I mean, until you've seen him do it. And I know that the bar for a starting pitcher, innings wise, is a lot lower than it used to be.

And the Red Sox would probably be happy if he just repeated last season several times. If he just threw 146 excellent innings and gave them a bunch of four, five war years, whatever that was, they would sign up for that, I think. But I guess there's question about whether he could even do that consistently. So it does kind of speak to how teams are evaluating and paying players these days, which is much more about your stuff and how nasty you are than about

your track record of health or durability because the expectations are so low in that department for pitchers these days. Yeah, I think, um, assuming a relative baseline of health, which, you know, Ben, with pitchers, but I think that when you are a guy who has demonstrated that you can pitch at a level where you could be the one or two in a playoff rotation, you start operating in a different band of potential free agent deal and being able to sort of lock that in and have a secure piece. Even knowing that you might lose a season or two or whatever to injury, it just has a tremendous amount of value. I do think that his usage in the

back half of the year last year has to be put in the context of wanting to get off the white socks, not wanting to goof his elbow or his shoulder before he was able to do that and exercising like the limited power he had to be like, hey, you know, there's going to be some rules. So you have to keep that stuff in mind. And you know, I think that our opinion of this deal will be even more favorable if a year from now he's pitched a full healthy season, which is like on the one hand, a very obvious thing to say, but particularly for a guy with some sort of injury history, you're like, oh, he managed to do it. Look, that's a full complement of innings. Yeah, I guess part of Joe's point is that they didn't have to sign him now because you do still have two seasons to play with. And it's not as if they got a clear discount here, even according to the projections. Yeah, and so if you're signing someone to an extension two years before your control runs out,

then especially with a guy who has had injury issues, then you'd like to see some sort of discount there, right? And I don't know how different this is from what he would have gotten as a free agent. I guess he would have gotten more as a free agent, but not that much more probably. So maybe he would have just because of his youth, look how much Yamamoto got, but Yamamoto had 900 innings in NPB before then. And even de Grahm, who was the previous record holder for the largest extension signed by a pitcher with between four and five years of service,

his was 137 million, DeGrom had 900 MLB innings before then too. In that sense, I think, yeah, maybe you'd like to see a little bit more of a discount because by the time he actually would have reached free agency two years from now, now maybe he would have been healthy and dominant those two years and would have made even more money, but the downside clearly a lot lower, I think, than the upside probably

would have been. I think it's heartening maybe just that the Red Sox specifically would sign someone to this sort of deal because they have been balking at longer term contracts, particularly for pitchers. They've been one of the teams that have kind of drawn the line there and maybe six years is the outer range of where they would go with someone. But they have not spent as much in recent years as they did during the early years of John Henry's tenure. And obviously they've taken a lot of flack for that. So I don't know whether this is a change in philosophy

or whether it's more of an acknowledgement that they're actually going to be pretty cheap because of the young core that they have now, which was left over in a lot of cases by Heim Blum. They should in theory be getting a lot of production from pre-arb players over the next several years, or at least pre-free agency players. And so if they are getting however many wins

at a discount from the top prospects in that system and the young guys who are already on their roster, then they absolutely can afford to splurge a little bit on the thing that their system hasn't produced, which is a top tier pitching to this point. Yeah. I think that, you know, we talked about a version of this with Seattle when they signed Calralli to an extension and like we could talk about the advisability of doing that with position players versus with pitchers and maybe you like one more than the other, although like

catchers get beat to hell, so maybe it doesn't matter. But you know, I think one way to deploy financial resources in a way that can still satisfy this desire for like hyper efficiency is to spend money on the guys who are going to reach free agency to keep them in house knowing that you're going to have a couple of years where Christian Campbell's really cheap and Roman Anthony hasn't even debuted yet. And you know, will Abreu keep hitting like this? I mean, probably not Ben because it's like Ben quite something, but you know, he's very good.

You know, you have all of these young guys who are going to do something. I think that in some ways, like it's a real thumb in the eye of the Orioles, right? Because they have a lot of really exciting young position players. They haven't gotten any of the pitching figured out and they haven't even extended the position players. So I think some of this too, even if it's not like a nana nana kind of thing like that is also just an acknowledgement of where they are in the division.

Boston should spend money, the Red Sox should spend money. They have money to spend whatever John Henry says, but if they are going to like be a little more cost conscious, this seems like a good way to try to have their cake and eat it too, at least until the position players either in Campbell's case maybe agree to extensions themselves, although if I'm him, I would just maybe wait a little bit. Or they start to break into the majors, do really well, and then get meaningful raises in arbitration, which can, you know, get expensive quote unquote fairly quickly. But yeah, it's good.

It's good, Ben. You know, it's good. Ben Shephard Yeah. Okay. quote unquote, fairly quickly. But yeah, it's good. It's good, Ben. You know, it. Oh. I feel like I'm about to get whacked. Yeah, I'm setting you up here to take the blame. No, there's been this debate, this conversation that David Laurella has reported on in his excellent Sunday notes for FanGraphs about whether there will be an unintended consequence of...

I guess it's more about full ABS, but I guess to some extent the challenge system too, about whether it would increase certain types of pitcher profiles. Because David wrote, this was late March, according to a coordinator I spoke to, one effect could be a further increase in the number of power arms who can get away with attacking the middle area of the zone. Right. Conversely, crafty finesse types will become even less common as getting calls just off the corners will no longer be possible. And then Lorela quoted Chris Bassett of the Blue Jays who said if you go to a full ABS system,

which I know you are not advocating for, you're going to develop more throwers and the injury rates are going to spike, then you'll have to go back to pitching. The only way to stay healthy is to pitch. I don't love the pitching versus throwing kind of distinction. I think it's pitching also. You think it's unnecessarily derogatory? Yeah, yeah.

I don't think it's, you're pitching. If you're just a flame thrower who's just letting it eat, you're still pitching. I think that's pitching. You're a pitcher. It's different approaches to pitching. It's still pitching. It's a little too derogatory for me, I think.

But Chris Bassett, he's saying, yeah, like you're just gonna have more guys just airing it out if you have full ABS because you won't be able to expand the zone basically. You won't be able to get those calls just off the corners off the edge of the plate and so you'll just you'll have to prioritize winning in the zone by just throwing as hard as you possibly can and it will further rid the game of the finesse types. And then Trent Blank, Seattle Mariners pitching strategist coordinator, pitching strategist coordinator,

that sounds like multiple titles conflated, but Laurela quoted him too to say, there is a talk of different parts of the zone disappearing. So maybe there's a type of pitcher who gets phased out a little bit, but I think we'll eventually find a way to phase them back in. And then Blank said,

the same things that play well with ABS are the same things that play well with a pitcher in general, but I imagine there will be a little bit of a learning curve for all types of pitchers. And then George Kirby, of the Pinpoint Control, says that a full ABS system might mean you may not get a call on the corner like you're used to, but I don't think the ABS is going to make much of a difference.

You shouldn't worry about it. You should just keep throwing and worry about getting people out. And then this came up subsequently in Laura's next installment. He followed up on this and asked Jameson Tyone about this and asked how might full ABS impact pitching. And Tyone said, you have to be able to get swings and misses in the zone. I think that's important no matter what. I faced some minor league guys this spring when you used to throw on backfields. All they do is hack.

Now they're coming up through the minors with ABS and are a little more aware of the strike zone. To get swings and misses, you have to be able to tunnel your pitches and be a little more deceptive in the strike zone. So that's an interesting kind of hybrid of the two, where he's saying, yeah, you have to get swings and misses in the zone, but not necessarily just by having

the nastiest pure stuff ever and by throwing as hard as you possibly can, but maybe by tunneling, by being deceptive somehow. So maybe there would still be a place for a softer tosser as long as they're kind of camouflaging their pitches more. So what do you think? I guess this is more about an ABS world that it doesn't seem like we're going to be entering anytime soon, if ever.

But do you think that this is yet another thing to add to your list of reasons why we should prefer Challenge System to ABS or? Yes. Okay. Yes. I was going to say, or is this overblown and it wouldn't actually make that much of a difference?

I think that I, no, I think that it is definitely a reason. Indeed, I think it is a reason that we have perhaps discussed previously. This is part of what I mean when I talk about fans thinking that they are going to like the zone that gets called with full ABS more and that they are very wrong about that in part because it is going to, it would make harder the job of guys who have demonstrated an ability to really expertly execute on the corners of the zone to like nail and pinch just so. So a guy doesn't think he can do anything with it. Full ABS is part of why I think that this is at play and part of why full ABS games have tended to go longer in the minor leagues, which is part of why players and managers and fans have enjoyed the challenge system more because when you have that precision you end up getting more walks and

that lengthens games. So I think that you just, you want a challenge system. It's better, right? Like we've talked about how it's gonna add a new sort of tool to the catcher toolkit I think this point about hitters who have come up through the miners with some version of ABS being Maybe more tuned to the strike zone is interesting. I hadn't really thought about that as sort of like an inadvertent developmental tool potentially So that piece of it is interesting but yeah, I think that like if what you need to do is get a strike by the minuscule differences that the zone can have when it's ABS, you are incentivized to really try to throw as hard as you can, even more than you already are.

Now, pitchers are still sort of incentivized to come with their best stuff, throw big fastballs, really go at guys. And we've still seen the share of pitches that are fastballs decline over time, right? There are reasons you throw other things. And some of them are maybe you have a really nasty breaking pitch that like clips the zone or comes really close, but maybe you also want to vary your arsenal such that you're not predictable Maybe you have fastball that like is fast, but doesn't move very much. That's not good So like there are a lot of things that go into sort of selecting your repertoire and deciding what to throw But yeah, it seems like there would be an obvious incentive here to lean more heavy fastball

Than there would be with just a challenge system because they guys aren't gonna challenge every single pitch There's an they're not gonna do that. Like we that's not what we've seen and we're still gonna have room for craft and I like that because I think that you know Executing a pitch on the edge is a skill and I think it should be a rewarded skill. And it's a skill we all like watching. Like, that's a good skill for baseball. You don't want to just be blasting.

I shouldn't have been given this vocabulary. I'm going to misuse it, and I'm going to use it a lot. Those things seem like they should work at cross purposes with each other, but that's not gonna be how this goes, Ben. By the way, I think I should return and explain what I meant by the drone almost carrying away the A's Batboy. It was just so close.

Why was it so close? I briefly alluded to that. Yeah, we've seen drones show up at baseball games before and everywhere else in public life these days and maybe even delay them. But there was an A's game. This was in Sacramento against the Cubs. This is the lead. When a drone suddenly appeared near the left field wall, this is from the AP at Sutter

Health Park on Monday night, veteran athletics bat boy Stuart Thoublom decided to help thwart it. The drone tried to lift him off the grass, but Thoublom used a bat and brought it down, careful not to cut himself with the spinning blades. Once the device had been corralled, Thoublom handed it off to a security guard. So it delayed the game for a few minutes in the seventh inning of a game that the Cubs won 18 to 3 and this bat boy was very prepared. He said, I think for me, I didn't want to cut my fingers off. Well, yeah, for me, for anyone, I think anyone would feel that way. I always see that on the news people hurt themselves when it's hovering or whatever and their hand gets caught in it.

I tried to catch it by the bottom and it was there for me. So I just grabbed it and then I just started whacking the wings of it basically with the bat just to snap them off so it wouldn't fly away from me because I was going to take it behind the wall. We couldn't figure out what to do with it and it was just trying to fly away from me. So good for him to be so prepared. Sixth year bat boy so he's been around. I don't know whether he's had any up close and personal encounters with drones before but certainly sounds as if he was Prepped for the situation and his father is the A's longtime A's visiting clubhouse manager So he's been around the game. He knows what to do when he is confronted by a low-flying drone

But yeah, I don't I don't know what the carrying capacity of this drone was I guess if we're going to get drones delivering packages I guess they have to have some some lifting power but perhaps maybe Batboy is exceeds the the maximum but that that would have been a spectacle Batboy just being flown away by a drone in the middle of a baseball game I'm glad that didn't happen I'm glad that the Bat Boy had the upper hand and the upper bat. I don't know if he was using a torpedo bat, but whatever it was did the job.

I don't think that we thought through the drone thing, like as a culture. We're not hearing about the drones anymore either. You noticed that? In New Jersey, in my area. I don't know about those drones. What's up with that? No, not so much. Someone asked Cody Bellinger, he In my area? I don't know about those drones. What's up with that? No, not so much.

Someone asked Cody Bellinger. He has a theory. I don't know that for sure, but I know that for sure. You know what I mean? Like sometimes you have a gut feeling that you know is correct. I don't think we should let people do the drone stuff so much. I think I, why are we letting people do drones so loosey goosey? You know? Like what's up with, that's a bad idea. Why did we decide to do, we didn't decide is the thing. We made, we didn't make a decision. We were just like, drone go far, need, everyone's not a documentarian, you know?

We're not, what's up? Why did we decide to do that, Ben? I don't know. I guess it's a short step from flying kites to flying drones. I guess it's a short step from flying kites to flying drones. No, it's not a short step because a kite is anger to you on the ground. It is a massively dangerous... It's an important point.

I almost knocked over my water. I got all... One is powered, one is not. Wait, you could just send it somewhere. One doesn't go that high. Yeah. Anyway, I think he should have beaten the shit out of that drone. I think he should have... I guess he of that drum. I think he should have... I guess he tried to.

...pulverized it for real. Once he got it on the ground, he should have just been like, right, right. It got so close to guys. To him, to players. Yeah. What are we doing? I just... I tell you what, Ben. I'm all... I'm all... I'm all worked up about our society. I'm all worked up.

How long has Cory Booker been talking? He's still talking, wow. He's auditioning to be an Effectively Wild co-host. Oh my God, yeah. Oh, is that your dig at me having complained about the length of the episodes a little bit lately? I'm just saying that sometimes they could be shorter. I like talking to you and I like giving our listeners

something to work through on both ends of their commute. Yeah, some people go to work five days a week. We only show up three here on the podcast. They're all heroes. You should all get a little something at the end of the week for that. Because I would- Yeah, a paycheck preferably, but-

I couldn't, I mean, yeah, you should get paid your paycheck, but you should also get like dispensation for having to go into the office. I couldn't, I don't know if I could do it again. I mean, I could figure it out because I'm not like a, you know, I'm not independently wealthy so if I really had to to pay rent, I'd, you know, suck it up, but it sucks, man. So like props to all of you, I guess. Well, you were talking about things in the culture that upset you.

Oh yeah. Would you like me to keep going? It's a long list, yeah. Well, then you could have a Cory Booker length uninterrupted speech if you wanted to. But one is the reaction or at least the isolated reaction to Roki Sasaki's reaction to getting worked up himself, he's had some rough starts to start the year, which is not unexpected.

We knew that he still had some refinements, that the control, the command might not always be there, that he would be tinkering, and that has been very much in in evidence and obviously he is adapting to a new ball and a new continent and a new culture and all the rest of it but he had not a great start his second time out he didn't last long and he was caught on camera in tears there were some tears rolling down the face it was it was poignant it was sad see, and he was up on the top step watching the game. The clip I saw at least came from a Japanese TV broadcast, and also Sasaki denied having cried. It is possible that cheating did not lead to pro farce success last season, it

is also possible that Sasaki wasn't crying. There was undisputably glistening of some sort, but maybe it was sweat, maybe it was water, who knows. It gave the appearance of tears, and given the reaction I'm about to bring up, you could see why he might be incentivized to deny crying even if he was. Another thing that will be relevant is that he tried to go back to the clubhouse after he was pulled. He went down the stairwell and Dave Roberts called him back to the bench and essentially said, you gotta take your lumps. He's certainly upset, disappointed, but you gotta be a pro and get back to work. It's not the first time that a starting pitcher has had two bad outings.

That has been circulated and some people have said, oh, he's passionate. He clearly cares. He was upset that the game didn't go the way that he wanted to. And then there were others who were very much in the kind of toxic masculinity culture of sports, men must not cry, kind of no crying in baseball. Ethos like Jonathan Lucroy, someone whose work behind the plate, I quite enjoyed back in the day, but he quote tweeted a response to this of a video and said, hope a vet pulled him aside and told him to man up.

No one has time for a kid crying on national TV in one of the biggest sports markets in the world. You don't like it, then play better next time. He should be pissed and ready to go bury someone versus whatever this is." And Lucre, he would have been in a position to be delivering that little pep talk, potentially, to a young player who had a similar reaction during his career, which was not that long ago, by the way. Jonathan Lucre's, you know, it's not like Goose Gossage or someone talking about back in his day,

like Jonathan Lucre's day was not long ago. As the catcher, he might very well have been the one to deliver that message. And presumably he's speaking from experience here. And he's saying that a veteran should have pulled him aside and done that because that's what a vet did to me or that's what I would have done when I was Yvette. And so there have been people condemning what Lucre said, and there have been people saying,

attaboy, Lucre. So look, he's just the latest in the long line of back in my day and play the right way and all this nonsense. And that stuff I think is less prevalent than it used to be. There's still a lot of that. There is still hazing that goes on in baseball. We just heard the other day where Jas Chisholm was talking again and more specifically about the treatment that he

encountered as a younger guy in the clubhouse and people piling on him and being mean to him, Miguel Rojas specifically. And so this stuff, you know, it's maybe a little less visible and hopefully a little less common than it used to be. But I would rather that Roki Sasaki let that out. Now I would hope that he starts pitching in such a way that he will not be moved to tears in a bad way.

But you know, people have also been connecting this to when his agent over the offseason suggested that he might prefer a smaller market. When Joel Wolf said, I think there's an argument to be made that a smaller mid-market team might be more beneficial for him as a soft landing, coming from Japan and what he's been through and not having an enjoyable experience with the media, it might be. And then of course, when he signed with the Dodgers,

everyone said, oh sure, Joel, yeah, totally. He was gonna sign with a small market team. That quote kinda did give people what turned out to be false hope in the end. Even though Wolf, I think at the time, kind of caveated that with like, this is just my opinion. It's not what he said to me, although that would be kind of a weird thing to just volunteer

if your client didn't communicate that to you in some way. But anyway, it's not a common sight, I guess, to see a Major League Baseball player in tears right in front of the cameras like that. And I think we should normalize when it does happen and also hope that the guy is not going through other things or that it's more of a transitory, I had a bad game and I feel bad about it than a deeper underlying issue. But he is ultimately

23 years old and a rookie in this league and didn't have that much experience even in NPB and it's a big transition. We don't know what these guys are going through a lot of the time. Sometimes you don't know what they're going through as it pertains to their like physical wellness, um, in a way that might impact their performance. Sometimes you don't know what they're going through in terms of, you know, they have a sick kid, they had a fight with their partner that morning. They have to figure out how to get their parent into assisted living, whatever, right? Like they're people in addition to being athletes. And so in much the same way that like, it would be naive for me to think that the state of the world didn't weigh on my experience of

like editing the positional power rankings. I would imagine that if you have stuff going on that is troublesome or stressful in your personal life. There may just be an outer bound to how much you can push that aside when you're playing and it might feel particularly burdensome if your on-field performance isn't going the way you want it to and the mound isn't a refuge for you. It's its own set of trials and tribulations.

We don't know what these guys are going through, and I think that we should be mindful of that information imbalance when we are reacting to the way they react to things on the field. But I hesitate to say it quite that way because even if all Roki Sasaki were reacting to was, he's this phenom, his free agency was super hyped, he is supposed to help lead the Dodgers back to the World Series, and it's just not going well right at the start. Even if that were all he were reacting to,

like he still gets to react to that as a person. I just think that we have a lot of cultural work still to do to emphasize that having that be upsetting and having that feeling of being upset manifest in a way that is visible to other people does not indicate a lack of strength, a lack of care, whatever it is, you know, the like, it's such an interesting quote from Lucroy, because it's like, on some level, doesn't this indicate to you that this matters a lot to him? That he cares a lot? Isn't that a good thing for him to be that invested? You know, I spend a lot of time watching the way

ballplayers react to good stuff that happens on the field and the way that their emoting tends to manifest itself. And it's often, you know, we can all, you can all like imagine the face I'm making as I make that sound, you know, the like roaring macho fist pounding, let's go. And like, there's a place for that too. That's the way that some of these guys are going to, or a lot of these guys are going to express themselves. And I'm not particularly interested in like litigating that as an expression in and of itself, but I do think that we should make sure there's room for sort of a full spectrum of human emotion. sure there's room for sort of a full spectrum of human emotion. You know, people are going to react to the guy crying in the dugout. And I hope that the reaction they had is,

man, he's having a hard day. I hope his day tomorrow is better. Like, I just don't know that you're going to, apart from anything else, even if like you're completely indifferent to the fact that this is like a human being with feelings standing in front of you, just strategically, I don't know that it is like the best idea to be like, suck it up. Like, when has that ever made anyone go, oh yeah, okay. And then, and then they go out and they do well. Like if you don't do feelings, they come out sideways. You're going to have them, you know, I know that we joke about them getting stuffed down until they die. Like there's that Malaney bit about the Irish, but like you do experience feelings and you can try to figure out a way to experience them in a way that isn't damaging to you and

others. That's a good thing to do. If the guidance you want to give to this young man is, let's try to arm you with some tools to put what you're experiencing in perspective so that you're not undone by a bad start. Well, that's, that, that's useful, right? Because I do think that part of this job for these guys is having resilience because you just have to go out there and get your teeth kicked in so much of the time. And so developing tools for putting that in perspective, I think is really helpful, but that's a fundamentally different project

than suck it up with that pussy shit, right? Like just like be done. There's no, you know, stop. Yeah, yeah. We don't have to live like this. We we don't have to live like this. We just don't have to live like this. Someone replied to him to say that he was showing passion. And then he responded to that and said,

passion is a great word. And I agree. But because of the context here, national TV, top step of the dugout, looking into the camera, it's a bad look. I mean, I kind of- Why? The fact that he's on the top stepout looking into the camera, it's a bad look. I mean, I kind of- Why? The fact that he's on the top step

and looking into the camera, I kind of appreciate that. It's not like, oh, I must hide because I feel bad right now. He had a bad day and he feels bad about it. And on some levels, I might appreciate that as a fan. Like, huh, I feel bad about how badly you just pitched too. And clearly you also feel bad. I don't want you to suffer,

but I mean, I'm glad that you care, right? And Lucre says, I played with many great players, Hall of Famers as well. And I will tell you that showing this kind of emotion on the field is unacceptable, with exception to something really amazing happening, special moment, et cetera. Yes, I believe he cares. Yes,

it seems that he wants to win. However, if you are upset with yourself because you gave up the goose in your start, then take yourself downstairs behind the dugout out of camera view and do what you got to do. It's still a bad look in front of your teammates. You never want to seem soft. However, at least it's not in the public eye. This is how we end up with so many guys punching the wall and breaking their hands, I think, because it's the only acceptable expression of emotion in this culture, in this subculture. You can't cry. You can only show how pissed off you are at being bad. And if you punch a wall, even better, because you're're showing passion but you're still tough.

So it's really frustrating. And yeah, you were just touching on this. He has a point in the sense that you can't let every bad game get you down too far because you're going to have some and Roki Sasaki hasn't had that many and that could be part of this adjustment for him. And people have different thresholds for crying. Some people cry only if a family member dies and some people cry, you know, it's not a big deal. Yeah. It's just, yeah. And it can be cathartic and it's, it's not that big a, it's not necessarily

reflective of like some deep seated emotional problem. It's just a passing mood and then you get it out of your system. That's so generous of you. I mean, I said maybe, I said it could be, it depends on the person. So I don't know how Roki Sasaki is wired in that respect. Obviously if he's deeply devastated and this is a manifestation of that,

then you would want him to develop the perspective to say this is a manifestation of that, then you would want him to develop the perspective to say, this is one game, and I've had many good ones, and I will probably have many more, and you don't want it to get to a point where it impairs your ability to move on and to continue to pitch well, because you're just in such a funk psychologically that it starts to affect your performance on the field.

So yeah, there absolutely is something. I mean, pitchers always talk about it. Closers always talk about it. Yeah, short memory, right? You have a bad game, you take the ball the next day or the next turn through your rotation, and you somehow forget about that. And that is a skill.

And it's a skill that many professional athletes have, and it's one of the things that separates them from the rest of us. It's not the only thing. They also have to have the talent to be able to... Yeah, it's purely that. It's just that we hold on to our past struggles so much. Otherwise, we'd be out there taking Roki Sasaki's rotation spot. Yeah, you have to have both the physical skills to be that good at baseball and the mental skills to be able to put some setbacks behind you and move forward. And that's something you have to learn.

And if it's indicative of the fact that Roki Sasaki could do more learning in that area, then yeah, absolutely. It's a case to maybe send someone to talk to him to just say, hey, are you okay? Or can we help you out here or try to put into perspective for him that this is not the end of the world and we believe in you and all that stuff there. Absolutely. It's a teaching moment, maybe, and there are lessons to impart here, but not just the knee jerk man up. There's no crying in baseball, or at least don't do it on camera. It's because it's so shameful that you have to hide any display of emotion.

It's so his comments are so interesting because it's like there is an understanding in there that you are going to experience the feeling. And what is objectionable to him is letting other people see you be quote unquote soft, right? To have sort of a categorization, a taxonomy of emotion. And some of them are acceptable for people to see you experience and others aren't. So like you could cry a glistening tear if you threw a perfect game, but if you blow one in the World Series, like you just gotta be stoic and take it like a man and I don't think it's a realistic thing. You know, you got a bunch of hyper competitive Goal-oriented guys. They've been working for all of this stuff their entire lives. They're gonna have the feeling

So what you need to do not if you're Jonathan Lucroy, he's sitting at home But like if you're the Dodgers to your point what you need to be able to do is help your guys channel feelings in a productive way. Don't end up breaking your hand on the dugout wall. Have sort of the ability to move on rather than ruminate and fixate on things so that you can focus on the next start and be as talented as we know he is and have those sort of talents match the results on the field. Like, I get that there is a sports psychology question at play here, but just in terms of

like how his teammates, his audience interacts with him displaying emotion, like I think it's good to let there be a full spectrum. And again, not every person is going to access all of that stuff in the same way. They're not going to manifest or express disappointment or frustration or sadness publicly the same way. And like, that's fine. I don't think that the stoic among us are doing something that's psychologically damaging to them just because they don't,

you know, they're not super emotive. Just like the fact that I cried at the make a wish kid on opening day, but during the Mariners pregame doesn't mean I'm weird either. Right? Like human beings experience feelings in a lot of different ways, but he's acknowledging the feeling is in there. Right? Like they're part we all agree on so like we need to leave some room for for it to Let itself out, you know, like you got to cast this and then move on from it vent the spleen There's a lot that changes over time I do think that our cultural understanding of this stuff is imperfect and one could argue there's been some backsliding

but I do think that the conversation in public has changed. It had been changing in the course of Jonathan Lujer's career. He was a big leaguer in 2021. It wasn't that long ago. But guys being able to talk about their feelings and often in, in the sporting context, when we have like given people props for being transparent about how they're doing, we are talking about them in a state of more acute mental distress, right? Like we're talking about guys who need to take time away from the game for anxiety reasons or who are dealing with other mental health concerns. But this is, you know, this is all part of that continuum of human emotional experience. And I do think

that there's real value. I think that it's good for men and boys to see athletes have feelings because athletes are heroes to a lot of men and boys. And you want to build a permission structure to like have feelings And you wanna build a permission structure to like have feelings, you know, for the sake of being able to move on, to throw your next start well, and for you at home to have a better relationship with your father, I don't know, man.

Like, we'll just all be doing stuff. Yeah, just the expression, man up, that that means that you would not show emotion in that way. It's just baked into the whole cultural role and that causes all sorts of problems. And I say this as not a crier particularly either. I'm a big crier. And like, you know, Luke,

we talked to Matt Martell for his Bob Euker voicemail piece. He experiences human feelings. He was very- Yeah, that's why I'm quoting him here. He's not like an Aubrey Huff, at least to my knowledge. Like if he were that kind of grifter type, like, you know, just saying the most angry, trollish, reactionary things,

then I wouldn't even, I wouldn't even deign to, to say what he said. I'm just saying that because as far as I know, he's just kind of a representative baseball player who was recently in the game and whose play I enjoyed when he was there. So if he's giving voice to this, then I assume he's not alone in thinking those things and saying those things. I think here, allow me to extend generosity to Jonathan Lucroi, although he did reply multiple times,

so I might be undermined in my theory. I also think that this can be an area of human experience where people just don't think about it that much, which is funny, because we're all feeling feelings all day every day, some of us in a more expressive way than others, apparently. Sometimes these things don't get interrogated very closely until, unfortunately, sometimes until you have like a precipitating incident or experience where you

like kind of have to grapple with how you're muscling through stuff that you maybe would benefit from given expression to. And I don't know Jonathan Lukor, so I don't know that that's the case for him. But I do think that like't we don't necessarily think about this stuff as carefully as we should so let us Take this as an opportunity to forge a different path You know well if he reflects on this and realizes that he didn't have a good day on Twitter I hope he feels free to let a couple tears roll down his face And you know if he feels bad about that at any point, I think that would be healthy for him.

Lastly, I'll just wish happy trails to another guy who's about to become an ex-baseball player and who is less than a year younger than Jonathan Lucroi, and that's Lance Lynn. It's just, it's the end of an era. And I know our thoughts are all with Michael Bauman at this difficult time. And I did message him to ask how he was dealing with the end of the career of his favorite player, Lance Lin. And he's processing, he's coming to terms. And I think there was a little life left in Lynn. I think that he

you know he was pretty productive last year and I think he could have continued to be a big league pitcher. Bowman did of course listen to some of Lynn's wife's podcast which is where Lynn chose to make this announcement. He gave the exclusive to his wife. I did not know that. Yeah, Diamond, Diamond Lynn, D-Y-M-I-N. And her podcast is? Diamond in the Rough. Yeah.

I am weak. She got the exclusive from her hubby that he was hanging it up, calling it a career. It would have been so funny if he had given that to some other podcast. Yeah, just go on foul territory. Yeah. Just, yeah, I'll go on your pods eventually, honey.

Just, you know, I can't make the announcement there. But he said on the podcast, Per Bammond, that he did get offers, but the money wasn't what he wanted. And he liked how he went out last year. He had a solid season. And the longer he waited, the more he realized that not having to go to work was pretty nice,

which is relatable. So I'm sort of sad, no more Lance Lin. Sort of sad that we never got to see Lance Lin in his incarnation as a closer, which remember back in January, Rosenthal wrote a column, headlined, long time MLB starter, Lance Lin draws interest as a potential closer.

And I wondered and Bauman wondered, how is that gonna work exactly? I don't know that it would have, but I wish we had seen it. Bauman said that he could have been like the white Kenley Janssen, just sort of spamming a well-located cutter. Maybe, maybe that would have worked.

Anyway, I asked Bauman who, if anyone, can fill his jersey figuratively and literally, like is Bauman gonna become a big tugboat Wilkinson guy or like who's the heir to Lance Lynn? And Bauman says, that's the question I'm currently mulling over. Who is going to be my favorite active player? So if and when he comes to some conclusion there,

I'll deliver an update or maybe he will, but quite a career. Happy Trails, Lance Lynn. Yeah, Lance. I can't believe Lance Lynn's younger than me. I don't know about that. That feels like it should be against the law. Stay off Twitter.

Don't become the main character like Jonathan Lucret and Lance Lynn. Oh, I thought you were talking to me and I was like, oh brother, I haven't been on there. You already have. Yeah, just confine your comments to Diamond in the Rough. Diamond in the Rough. Diamond in the Rough. Diamond, not diamonds.

Not diamonds. No, diamond. Diamond. Yeah, but like- Not a name I was familiar with before. It's definitely a name that you're meant to say like Diamond. Yeah, I guess it is kind of a tragedy name, but- Yes. I don't know.

Yeah, I guess it is. Yeah, well. I don't know, man. Anyway, our moment of Zen at the end of this episode since I brought up Bauman, just a college baseball moment when my conversation with Bauman actually began with me asking him to provide the context for this clip that was well-circulated that I obviously did not know exactly what I was watching.

I mean, I knew, but not know exactly what I was watching. I mean, I knew, but I didn't know who was involved. But there is just a great highlight here of a right fielder just absolutely airmailing a throw, maybe more than I've ever seen someone airmail a throw. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Oh, yes. And as Balman explained to me, this was Southern Miss versus South Alabama, and the player, the right fielder,

I believe was Ethan Melton, who is 0-4-15 this season, and I think batted 2-30 last year, which I said to Bauman, like, have they had him pitch? Like, have they put him on the mound? Because this arm, I mean, it doesn't seem like the hitting is going great,

so maybe he'll be the next Ryan Nelson, I don't know. But this throw, this is just one of the funniest clips I can recall. I've watched it a zillion times because it's like a walk-off sack fly. I guess this game was broadcast on ESPN+, and so there's this fly ball out to- Most of college baseball is on ESPN Plus.

It's most of it. Is that right? Yeah. It's there for you buddy. No, I didn't know that there was college, but I knew it was on there, but yeah. It's there for you. So it was, there's a guy on third

and it's a walk off situation. And it looks to me like this ball very well may have dropped foul. It's kind of tough to tell with the angle, but it looks like it, yeah, it may very well have gone foul, which makes it even more of a like Leroy Jenkins type highlight to me. Cause it's like, he didn't have to do anything.

He could have just let it drop or he could have just made a throw that was anywhere in the vicinity of the plate. Instead, this throw, it's funny, because Bauman said, you know, when I said, gosh, has they tried pitching this guy? Because clearly he has the arm strength. Yeah, and then Bauman said that overthrowing his target

by 45 feet does not strike me as an indicator that he'd be a good pitcher, which true, missed that much from the mound, someone's gonna get hurt. I mean, this is like a Steve Dalkowski to the max, maybe. And I said, 45 feet seems conservative. And then Bauman said, I meant vertically. And then Bauman said, I meant vertically. Because yeah, like in terms of length,

we'll never know where this ball dropped. It's, I mentioned this before, but it's like the Jesse Arasco glove throw or the Prince guitar toss, where you just never see where it came down. And so you can just imagine that it never did. This ball, it barely even seems to be on the downward part of its trajectory

when it exits the field of view and the field of play for that matter. And it's like, I guess it's kind of on a line is the funny thing also. Again, it's tough to tell what the parallax effect and everything with where the camera is, but it seems like it maybe was on a line, but so far beyond the plate that,

like it could have been in the upper deck or something, I guess, if there was an upper deck. It's, and the body language of the catcher is very amusing because the catcher sees, he's like set up to catch this thing and then doesn't even turn around. It's like when an outfielder doesn't turn around and move when a ball is hit so far over the fence, that it's like, well, I can't catch that.

It's very much like that. It's like, well, why even make an effort? I can't hop and get this thing. And the right fielder fell, he put his whole body into it, which maybe was part of why it was so wild, but I don't know, maybe it's just like, if the throw had been accurate, then there really could have been a play at the plate, probably, like it looks like he could have really had

a chance at him given where the runner was. And maybe the runner slowed down a bit when he saw where the throw was going. But man, just absolutely wild and yet combination of unimpressive and impressive because I looked at that and I was like, damn, that kid can throw. He can't throw anywhere close to where he was throwing,

but that's some arm strength. Yes, for sure. It's a very strange blend of stuff. And see, Ben, this is what you could have all the time if you would just watch college baseball. If you would just watch college baseball, if you were just willing to watch, you get it. That's sort of what Bauman said to me, because you see major leaguers miss the cutoff man,

but you don't usually see them. No, not missed by that much. So yeah, I wanna know more about this player and his arm and whether he often throws like this or whether he has tried pitching. Have they clocked this guy on a radar gun somewhere? But I greatly enjoyed this. I enjoy seeing the odd college baseball blooper slash highlight.

That's nice. You know, just curate the weird stuff that happens for me and show me a video. And I don't have to watch the whole thing maybe. You gotta work for it a little bit, you know? You gotta work for it a little bit, not all the time. And look, it's not like I'm watching college ball every day. I don't wanna overstate the case for myself here either, but like this wasn't the first time I had seen this put it that

way. You know, got to get in the flow. Oh, right. On the subject of extensions, by the way, I meant to say that when we talked about Vlad and the Blue Jays not getting a deal done by his self-imposed deadline, which was what the first day of spring training or the first day there was a game. I asked the audience if they could think of an example of a player who previously had set some sort of negotiation deadline and it said either we come to a deal by X day or we'll table these talks until the end of the season and then went back on that and actually did agree to a deal in season and no one wrote in to cite an example of that having happened. To the extent that it did happen with Crochet,

I guess that could be because he is not in his walk year, he's not an impending free agent, and so the time pressures weren't quite the same. Then again, I guess you could say that would be all the more reason to table the talks until the fall. We got time to work this out, but I did say with Vlad that,

well, there must be some number that would get him to go back on that. If they just totally blew him away, I doubt he would say, well, that's exactly what I asked for, but you didn't quite make my somewhat arbitrary deadline, so no, I'm going to free agency. And there have been subsequent reports that the Blue Jays have continued to make entreaties to Vlad that they have made an additional offer after his deadline passed. So maybe Vlad himself will be an example of a player who set what turned out to be a fake deadline,

a not actually do or die drop dead date. And in fact, Mark Shapiro, the Blue Jays president and CEO, he said in March, I think we're going to sign him. I think we're going to extend him. Which was based on the fact that, as he said, we have such a clear alignment on the desired outcome. I did do a bit of a double-take though when I saw Shapiro put that in print, because A, if you've kind of committed yourself,

if you've given your fans that reason to hope that you're going to sign him, well, that might give Vlad a little more leverage, because Shapiro might look bad if he says, I think we're gonna extend him, and then they don't. And then also what degree of confidence do you need to issue such a statement on the record?

I would think that if they were going to say that they would be at the point of dotting the I's crossing the T's and it doesn't seem like they were quite there. There's a lot of new age front office speak business speak that you hear from the Blue Jays front office. So I was a bit taken aback by that. And also on the extension front we didn't talk about the Diamondbacks extending Brendan Font but they did five-year extension runs through 2030 with a club option for 2031 45 million dollars guaranteed. That seems like maybe another example of a type of extension that might not have been signed in the past both because it's not for a star player, the Diamondbacks extended Justin Martinez too,

but also because he has a career five plus ERA. And in the past, maybe some teams might've said, forget extending this guy long-term, I don't know if he's good enough to pitch for us now, he has a career 85 ERA plus, but a lot of his peripherals are far rosier than that. His FIP, his ex-FIP were more than a full run lower than his ERA last year.

By baseball reference war, he was roughly a replacement level pitcher last year. But by fan graphs war, he was a three-win pitcher. And I think the FIP being more predictive and also just more indicative of the pitcher's individual performance, that tends to be more in line with what the front offices are looking at.

And the projections are pretty good. And so that's why that deal gets done. Teams are paying for future performance, as Pete Alonso found out to his detriment. It's not even what have you done for me lately, so much as what will you do for me next? And I hope that you'll do something for us. Support us on Patreon if you're not already. The following five listeners already are. They have gone to Patreon.com slash Effectwild and signed up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help

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