Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2305: How Low Can it Go?

Episode Date: April 5, 2025

In a grab-bag episode, Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the low league BABIP early in the season, the most interesting standings developments so far (with emphases on the Dodgers, Padres, Braves, and AL Central), Atlanta re-re-re-re-re-re-re-re-acquiring Jesse Chavez, early attendance issues for the A’s, (team-friendly?) extensions for Jackson Merrill, Kristian Campbell, and Ketel […]

A baseball podcast, analytics and stats With Ben and Meg, from Fangraphs Effectively wild Effectively wild Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. I have a grab bag of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. I have a grab bag of topics for us today.

Grab bag. A little Friday potpourri. And I'll start here. Do you think this is cause for concern? The league-wide BABIP, Batting Average on Balls and Play, is currently through Thursday's games, 273. That is a low number, games, 273. Oh. That is a low number, Meg. 273. Now I went back and looked at every season since 2002,

because Van Graaf makes it easy to go day by day since 2002. And I looked for every season the equivalent number of games. So we've had 100 games, 200 team games. And so I looked through the date that was closest to that number of team games in each season dating back to 2002. And this is the lowest BABP easily over that span. The average has been 290. There have been some low years before. Last year was 294 through roughly this same point. So that was more than 20 points higher. In 2020, it was 279. And I wrote an article saying, where did all the hits go? And I think the answer was probably

just it was 2020. So there was all sorts of stuff going on and things normalized a bit after that. And then 2022 was also fairly low, 282, but that was post-lockout, shortened spring training. So when it's been abnormally low lately, there's been an obvious explanation for that. 2012 was actually the lowest in this whole sample, 278, but that's still five points higher than where we are now, and that was a while ago. So do you think this means anything? Because Mark Simon messaged me about this the other day. He was wondering what I made of it. Do you think that this is a small sample disregard or could this be somewhat

meaningful? Can I answer your question by asking one of my own? What is the current state of leaguewide scoring? It is roughly in line with last year. It's not that different really. It's a well, 4.22 runs per game in the early going. Last year was 4.39. You would expect it to be a little lower earlier in the season, though it has been unseasonably warm in some places, including New York, when they hit all those homers with the torpedo bats.

So I know people have been talking about, is the ball rejuiced? The home run rate thus far is smack dab in the middle of the past two seasons. And again, I'm sure that's typically lower early on. So it's something to keep an eye on, but 1.17 home runs per game. And last year was 1.12 and the year before was 1.21. It's not wildly out of line with recent seasons.

So it's really just that the batting average has fallen thus far. Yeah. I mean, I would put it in the keep an eye on kind of category. I think most things this time of year fall into that category. It's a big bucket, you know?

And we fill it up without bad jazz stuff. And then we pull things out like a claw, you know, like a mechanical claw. I think that it's definitely something to monitor. The reason I asked about the run scoring environment is that, you know, Ben famously home runs not part of BABIT. And so I wondered like, are we seeing evidence of a juiced ball and a bunch of home runs? But it sounds like we're kind of in line with expectation. But I think we should like keep an eye on it, you know, got to, got to see.

It would be so funny if we had widespread adoption of the Torpedo Bats, which everyone thought were going to be so revelatory and tip the scales. And then they like borked scoring for the entire season. It would just be funny, you know? Yeah, well, this was part of my reaction to the Torpedo Bats the other day was, hey, hitters need the help. So if it does help them a little bit, then that's a good thing. The reason why this could be meaningful maybe is that it has been down last year.

It was 291, which was the lowest in a full season in decades since 1992, which was pre-expansion, pre-new ballparks, pre-ball juicing that happened around that time too. It sounds even worse when you say ball juicing as opposed to juiced balls, but the BAP was low last year and that was even after the shift restrictions and everything. So it has been trending down, which seems to be partly due to improved outfield positioning and defense and maybe also because hitters are swinging for the fences and thus, when they don't get one over the fence, it's just a weak fly ball and it's lower BABIP and it's easier to corral. So it's a number of things working in tandem and who knows, maybe just harder stuff that it's just

tough to hit. So it's a tough environment for hitters and they are also transitioning to more of an all or nothing approach, which I think is partly a response to the numbers saying that that's borne out, that it's good, partly because the balls have been juiced and so it has been good to swing for the fences, partly because it's hard to make contact even if you try at this point. So it's a might as well swing hard in case you hit it kind of approach.

But the fact that after having a decades low BABIP last year, we have started out with a decades low BABIP through the start of the season, far lower than last year even, kind of concerning. So I anticipate more discourse coming about the low batting average now that it's 230 as we speak. It was 243 over the full season last year. These numbers are going to come up. It's just a question of whether they're going to come up all the way to where they were last year or beyond, or whether

this is a sign of further downturn. And I think it's plausible that it is the latter, even though it is a small sample and things are always weird at the start of the season. Comparing like to like, start of season to start of season, it's still an outlier. Yeah. I mean, again, keep an eye, Ben. Keep a weather eye. I try not to overreact to these things either, you know? Yeah. eye. I try not to overreact to these things either. Yeah. Sam and I used to do early season reactions to stat stuff. He would just look at the league average stat lines and say,

oh, there are a lot of triples this year, there are very few doubles or whatever it was, like around this point in each new season. Almost none of it turned out to be meaningful, I don't think, because even if you say, oh yeah, small sample, it's just a smaller sample than you think. It's just such a small sliver of the season that we've seen so far. And it seems so meaningful because it's the only sliver that we've seen, but ultimately it will kind of come out in the wash for the most part, but not so sure about

this BABP thing. So we will see, We'll give you updates. What other early season team or division trend has most intrigued or surprised you? Is it the Dodgers and Padres being unbeaten? Is it the Braves being winless? Is it the AL Central teams being equally win and lossless? I mean, they've just had the same records. They were all two and four the other day, which according to a user Skelly in our Patreon Discord group in the StatBlast channel, where people figure out these things, it was the longest into a season that all five teams in a division had had identical records since the NL East in 2002, where every team then started three and three. It was the longest non-500 record start to a season with identical records.

So that was weird and led to lots of maybe all the AL Central teams are terrible somehow. I think that was kind of a confirmation bias because everyone likes to dump on the Central divisions and maybe especially the AL Central. And there they all were equally flailing early in the season. So of all these early season results for teams and divisions, what has caught your eye the most? I think that it's really just shocking how raw a deal some of these teams are getting

by virtue of playing in the AL East and the NL West. That whole NL West, are the Giants really five and one? Yeah. The f***? I think one of the takeaways that I've had is that I am, I need to watch some different teams than I've been watching. I had some checking in to do. I think the early mediocrity of the AL Central is very interesting to me if only because,

you know, it felt like those clubs had like taken a step forward. Not all of them. Obviously the White Sox are terrible or were terrible last year, but it felt like there might be a new competitive era in the Central with Royals and Tigers team on the rise, a Guardians team that manages to chug along even though the projections think that they're going to be bad every year. A Twins team that would have had it all feel very different if their September hadn't been such a disaster, you know. So I was like, maybe we need to pay

some respect, put a little attention on these here central teams. And I don't know if that's true. I don't want to overreact though, because it's been, you know, at most, what, seven games for any of these clubs. So the unsurprising aspect of that is that it seemed like there wouldn't be a ton of daylight among those top four teams, at least in that division. It was kind of a toss-up. It was just anyone's division as far as anyone could tell. So that much has been born out. It's just that ultimately one of them will presumably have to have a winning record in order to win that division. Presumably. Yeah. Presumably that will be true. So I've been intrigued by that. I find that very interesting. I think that again, like that NL West is just going to be really,

really tricky. Like, you know, this is by virtue of the Dodgers having played one more game at least than any of the other clubs in their division. But it's like to your point that the Padres are, as we're recording this on Friday midday, undefeated and yet still back a game on the Dodgers. I think that that D-backs team is pretty good and they're just going to have a real tough time besting that Dodgers club. Speaking of the Dodgers, I think one of the things that I am most struck by is like, you know, the Dodgers are eight and O and they've had some, some highlights. I still don't feel like this is a fully actualized Dodgers team. You know, like there have been moments where I thought that they were going to

lose. They have had starts that have not been great. They have had, you know, like Moogibets is still down 15 pounds or whatever, and he's like out here hitting home runs. They still don't feel like they are fully, you know, they are not yet a fully operational Death Star. And I imagine that they will be. They haven't even gotten everyone back from injury. So... Although when they do, they'll probably have lost other people by then.

I don't know whether they'll ever be fully available because they're the Dodgers and just look at that pitching stuff, but yeah, I see what you mean though. You know, but it's pretty spectacular what they look like now when you consider what they might look like even just a couple of months from now. So there's that piece of it that I find just like, holy cow, we let this happen. Everyone was right. No, they weren't. But I get it.

Seeing them start, eight, no. I get why people were like, this is too much. We shouldn't have let them do it. Yeah, it's extra frustrating for the Padres because things couldn't have gone better for them and somehow they're still looking up at the Dodgers and it's just like, what do we have to do here? Again, they just need the Dodgers to lose or for them to have a day off and for the Padres to catch up in terms of the number of games they've played. But that's pretty interesting. Yeah, the Padres have probably played

better as you're saying with the Dodgers. They've had close ones. They've had a couple walk-offs. The Padres haven't even been tested that much by the underlying numbers. They've probably been even more effective. But yes, then you have the Dodgers, Roki Sasaki hasn't been good yet. Muki has been good somehow, even though he hasn't hit the ball hard,

which is sort of what we expected, given the weight loss and the illness. And yet somehow he's been great anyway. Yeah. And the Padres, look, I don't know that Gavin Sheets will be one of the best hitters in baseball this year. So they've certainly, I know, they've had things go their way that might not continue to go their way, but then they've also had things go against them. So yeah, it's early obviously, but they've looked quite impressive and quite commanding.

And part of how both of those teams have managed to sort of get out to the start they have brings me to another thing that I am keeping my eye on, which is the performance of the Atlanta Braves. I'm not going to remember who it was. It might have been Michael Bowman. I remember Michael Bowman wrote about the Braves. I get it. I remember that. I know that. But someone on Blue Sky made the point that it's like,

you know, maybe these clubs are really fantastic or maybe we're about to learn. I think it was Bauman who said this, that the Braves are about to go like, you know, have a 20 win season or something like that. But, you know, San Diego 4- oh against Atlanta, the Dodgers three and oh against Atlanta. And I am trying to dial in the amount of additional concern I have about this Braves team than I had at the beginning of the season, because for everyone following along at home, Atlanta was projected to be the second best team in baseball to those Los Angeles Dodgers by our playoff odds preseason. One of only two teams along with the Dodgers that we had cresting the 90 win mark.

And you know, you could look at them and say the early part of the season might be some of their toughest ball because they are still without Strider, they are still without Acuna and then, you know, the dominoes start to fall from there where you have, you know, Renal Will Lopez go on the aisle, you have Profar get suspended, and now here we are Friday at 12, 24 p.m. Arizona time, and they have not yet won a single game, you know, they are winless. Yes. And so I imagine that they will be fine because they're a very talented club and they have other good players. And I think that a lot of those guys are likely to have better seasons just by virtue of positive regression.

But also haven't won yet, Ben. They haven't won even one time. Yeah, I think they'll be better. But will they be fine? They've already entered the territory where I'm not entirely sure about that. We talked about them earlier this week with the loss of Profar, and things haven't gotten better for them since then with the additional losses. And also, Reynaldo Lopez having arthroscopic shoulder surgery. And if you look at the playoff odds, they're down about 22 percentage points just in terms of playoff probability, making the playoffs by any means.

The only other team that's down double digits is the Reds and just barely at 10.2 percentage points, so the Braves more than twice as much of a decline. And if you look at the division odds though, that's where this has really hurt them. So they're down since opening day, 31 percentage points in their odds of winning the NL East. Basically their odds of winning that division have been halved after playing seven games and no other team in baseball has seen its division odds

sink by more than six percentage points. They've lost like five times more division odds than any other team has. And that's a reflection of the fact that the NL East was always going to be competitive. It was always going to be a dogfight, Mets, Phillies, Braves. And you get up to an 0-7 start and you lose your top offseason signing for half the year plus the playoffs, and you lose a starter, and some other guys are struggling.

Suddenly it's kind of hard to come back from that at least to win the division and take on the other two Titans in the East. So it is kind of getting late early out there for Atlanta. Yeah. And you know, the American league is this soup of like mediocrity so far this year. And it was sort of projected to be a super mediocrity coming in, but there are a lot of good clubs in the NL and there are a lot of good clubs in the NL

that have the misfortune of playing in the same division as the Los Angeles Dodgers. So I think that counting on access to a wild card slot is like, you got to go in some baseball games. Now we've seen the Braves storm back, right? We've seen the Braves go on crazy runs in the past, sometimes even win a world series in the process. They've done that in the past without Ronald DeKunin Jr.

This is a club that is capable of playing good baseball. And they survived all sorts of losses and misfortunes last year. So we kept saying it can't be that bad again, and now they're like, watch us, but we'll see. And so I don't want to overreact, but I am keeping an eye on them. It can't feel good to be a team as talented as Atlanta is

and have fewer wins than the Rockies or the White Sox, you know, or the Pirates. That has to feel kind of bad. The good news is that they have re-resigned Jesse Chavez. Oh, so everything's gonna be coming up them. To a minor league deal this time. Just a quick recap of the times that Atlanta has acquired Jesse Chavez over the course of his career.

I know we've done a previous stat blast about the most times that any one team has signed any one player as a free agent and Rich Hill had that record with the Red Sox. And then we also did a stat blast once about Jesse Chavez and how he has pitched better for the Braves than he has pitched overall because his ERA, his FIP, far lower as an Atlanta Brave than anyone else over his 18-year big league career. The man is approaching 42 years old and still it's just the ultimate love affair, except it's hot and cold on and off again. They can't quit each other. They can't stay together. The first time that the Braves acquired Jesse Chavez was way back in 2009.

They acquired him from the Rays for Rafael Soriano. And then in 2010, they traded him to the Royals in a Rick Ankeel, Kyle Farnsworth deal. And that was, yeah, that was a prelude. They didn't reacquire him for another decade after that, more in fact. Right. Think about the names that you just said, you know? I know. Right. This is another era. But then once they got back together, they made up for lost time. I mean, it's like a JLo Affleck kind of situation here. It's like they get back together, they can't stay together, but there's a lot of love there. They just can't quite make it work long-term.

It wasn't until April 2021 that they brought him back. They signed him as a free agent. Then he played out the string with them. He went to the Cubs. Then the Cubs traded him to the Braves in April of 2022 for Sean Newcomb. Then August, the Braves traded him away to the Angels. That was in the Rice-El-Glacius deal. The Angels released him. The Braves selected him off waivers in August of 2022. Then he hit free agency again. He resigned with the Braves in November of 2022. I think when I did that previous stat blast with the Red Sox, it had to be like non-consecutive

terms. It was like the number of times, it had to be like non-consecutive terms. It was like the number of times that you had brought him back or re-signed him. So it wasn't just re-signing him when he was on your team most recently. There had to be an intervening team or something. But November, they signed him as a free agent. Then February of 2024, last year,

he signs with the White Sox. March, he signs with the Braves again. And then he's granted free agency at the end of last season. January of this year, he signs with the Rangers. Then the Rangers released him in March and the Braves signed him as a free agent in later March. And then they cut ties again and now they're back together once again.

So we'll see. Will this time stick? Maybe this will be the happily ever after for Jesse Chavez and the Atlanta Braves. Maybe this is what's going to move the needle for them. You know, they're about to go on a run. Yeah. But yeah, so like there's that, then there are teams that have just looked sort of rudderless at times, sort of feckless, your twins, you know, your Brewers sometimes, your Cincinnati Reds when hitting. So there's that. I've yelled at the Mariners a bunch, but what else is new? Are you as delighted

by the back to back Luisillo's of it all? Yeah, that was fun. Yeah. No, it's not fun. Why is the other Luis Castillo starting for the Seattle Mariners? Well, yeah, I guess you wouldn't want them to start at all, but it is the first time since the Bobby Joneses with the Mets that you've had same names, pitchers for the same teams starting consecutive games. I do enjoy that Luis Castillo, the elder and the better is Rock, right? And the new Luis Castillo is Pebble. Those are their nicknames. So that's kind of fun. That's cute. Yeah, that's cute. So are runs.

Runs would be nice too. They're adorable. They're so cute. Because all the AL teams are so tightly packed together, though it does seem like if you start hot, you start slow, that could actually end up making a difference. It's just none of these teams is that good. And so you could look up in a couple of weeks and the rules will have been reversed and the tables will have turned, and the standings will be inverted. And so, yeah, don't want to make too much of this, but the margins are not going to

be big is what I'm saying at the end of the season. And so we will be able to look back probably at the end and say, oh, well, the difference in the wild card race. Yeah, it was those late March, early April results. We could also say the same about any equivalent length of the season. Exactly. It's just that this is all we've seen thus far. Because it's like you look at the standings as they are today and like, do you have the money

on the Toronto Blue Jays to win the AL East? I bet you do not. I bet you don't think that the Orioles are going to finish last in that division either. I bet you don't think, I mean, the Pirates being last, that tracks Rockies also. But I don't think that the Athletics are going to be the last team in the West. We need to talk about Sutter Health Park though. We need to talk about it, Ben. This is a problem. This is a problem. And look, I love whimsy.

I'm a big fan of like making the best of things. You can have a lot of good like making the best of things. You can have a lot of good times making the best of something. And I understand, I don't want this to be interpreted as a knock on the staff at Sutter Health Park or like individual people associated with Sutter Health Park. But this is not a big league situation, you know? It's just not. The accommodations for players still seem to be somewhat wanting. They've got the media in a little shed, you know, they've got overflow media space and like the suites with little, you know, remember in school and the desk would like fold, it

would like, it would like pivot and fold down on the side. You know those chairs? Yeah. They're like, hey, you know how you're in the BBWA and this is your job? Anyway, use this and then take a blue book afterwards. Like, what are we, it's a problem, you know? And I wanted to come away being like,

this is gonna be fine actually, you know? They've done their best and their best is adequate, but the radio broadcast has been a mess. The facilities, again, they just are not, and they're having a problem where they're in a weird price crunch because there are only so many seats, right? In that ballpark, it's a minor league park, it has limited capacity. And so the prices for tickets to go to these games are quite high relative to what you would typically pay to say, see the River Cats at Sutter Health.

And that's a problem because people are like, well, I'm not gonna spend 90 bucks to go see the athletics. And so they're not selling out because the price too high. Yes, that has been the thing that has surprised me. We kind of had some inkling of the facilities, although, yes, seeing it in practice, it does. It's like, oh, this is worse. It's more jarring, yeah.

But I figured that they would sell pretty well just because of the enthusiasm about having a big league baseball team in a town that hasn't had that before. Of course, the owner of the Kings and the River Cats said last year that the A's games in Sacramento would be the most sought after ticket in America, which was okay, hyperbolic, but I did think that they would sell out often. The Rays have been selling out Steinbrenner Field in Tampa thus far and low capacity, they should be selling it out, but they have.

And the A's have not even in their first full series and they had their hides handed to them by the Cubs in that same series, my goodness. But also, yeah, like the turnout, they were hyping it up and they said they sold out their allotment of season tickets, which is like 6,000 seats or something. And then they were talking up how incredible the single game sales had, but there have been empty seats in these games.

They've been very apparent and they do have $25 tickets to sit on the lawn for the home opener. And even then they were available that day. So the listed capacity is about 14,000 and the A's told reporters that the capacity is more like 13,416 I think was the number and then their additional lawn seats, et cetera. So they had fewer sold in that first game.

They announced a sellout of about $12,000. And then they said the full capacity was like $1,300 more than that, but they had comped those tickets to families and executives and everything, which that seems like a lot of comps on a percentage basis. But then the paid attendance was lower. And then after that, I mean, you're giving away 10% of the capacity for free. And then after that, that was opening day. But the next couple of games, there were obvious vacancies there too. It didn't seem to be close. Even the reported crowds were like 10,000 on Tuesday night and then 9,300 for Wednesday. So the full attendance for the three game series was like 31,500 and you could just see the holes there. So

yeah, maybe it's the pricing, maybe it's the product they're putting on the field, maybe the enthusiasm is less than we suggested because Evan Trelik did some reporting and he was there and talked about some of the ambivalence that we had discussed where the A's hope that they have one foot out the door here and they've got the Sacramento, but they also have the Vegas patch and they have a destination departure date and they aren't using Sacramento in their team name and all the rest. It's just we kind of wondered whether fans would commit and we got emails from people saying, yeah, we kind of know what we're getting into here, but we're still enthusiastic because, hey, it's a big league team. But yeah, the early returns. I'm questioning my bold prediction now

that neither of the teams playing its home games in minor league parks this season would have the lowest average per game attendance. I still believe in the Marlins and the white Sox potentially to come in under that, but if they aren't selling out their first full series, then I don't know. And you might think to yourself, well, you know, it's one series and okay, fine. Like maybe they get some of this stuff sorted, both in terms of the technical difficulties and like they kind of dial in what they want the ticket stuff to be and maybe it rebounds. But like Tampa and I, Ben, it feels miraculous to just get to say Tampa. It just feels so nice because that's where they're playing now in Tampa, in Tampa. I get why people are annoyed, but I also just will say again, take it up with the team,

you know, Tampa, the Rays, they played to start the season. They played the Colorado Rockies and the Pittsburgh Pirates. Now, the Pirates, you know, started skeins in one of those games. So maybe you think, oh, there's a skeins bump. And I would buy that. I would buy that there's a skeins bump. But like, they're at capacity.

That ballpark looks full. And I know that there's always a little bit of wiggle to these numbers, right? Like I'm not naive to the, some of them get given away. Some of them are sold, but those people don't come for whatever reason. Like I know that it's not a completely foolproof number, but like you would turn on the TV and the ballpark looks full and that is not true in Sacramento. So I'm concerned about sort of the viability of this situation because even if they break

ground tomorrow in Vegas, still takes a while to build a ballpark, you know? So I just, I worry that we are going to turn on. Here's how I'll express my worry because they are, as everyone probably recalls, they are not the sole occupants of Sutter Health. The River Cats are still gonna play there, right? But I worry that we will get to a point in this season where you will turn on a game being played in Sutter Health Park, and it will not be immediately

obvious to you which club is at home that night. It's not good and it just makes the whole situation feel even worse than it already did because I know that attendance was low in the later years in Oakland, but it was low as a point was being made. It was low to prove a point. This is low because of a doofus. I guess it was low to prove a point. This is low because of a doofus. I guess it was low to prove a point about a doofus before. So the doofus remains a constant, you know? Same doofus, yeah.

Same doofus, but I just, I think it's a real bad situation because it's like their home opener was like, the series was against the Cubs. Like the Cubs draw well. Yeah, right. And it's going to get hotter. Now I know they'll be playing a lot of night games to compensate for that, but still, and kids will get out of school and everything. Sure, yes. Early season attendance always has to come with a bunch of caveats, even for clubs that draw well over the course of a full season. Again, I don't want to overreact to it, but I am like, I am more alarmed about the situation in Sacramento than I am about the Minnesota twins or even the Atlanta Braves. More concerned.

So we had a trio of extensions since the last time we potted. So many extensions. Look at all these. And every time I read one of these notifications, I just go, big stretch. Like I'm talking to the cat. It's an extension. So it's like they're stretching, Ben. I get it. Yeah. Big stretch.

They trickled into the season. Usually you see a lot of this business get done before the end of spring training, but I guess they still had some clauses to insert into those contracts. They still had some signatures to add. And so the Diamondbacks have re-extended Cattell-Marte, the Red Sox, as we teased last time because it had been anticipated, extended Christian Campbell, and the Padres extended Jackson Merrill. Yeah. A nine-year deal. Campbell's was eight years and Martez, which kind of tore up his previous extension. It's a new seven-year deal that replaced his existing deal.

And so it's sort of like Salvador Perez, Jose Altuve type deal where he had a very team-friendly extension and they made it a little less team-friendly, but still pretty team-friendly, but then also tacked on more years. So clearly he likes being a diamond back because he keeps re-upping with them before testing the open market. So it's a- Beautiful spring tradition every couple of years.

Yeah. $116.5 million guarantee,, which is 64 million in new money. And then Christian Campbell is 60 million over eight years. And of course, he just made his major league debut. So that's a lot of pre-ARB and ARB years. And then Jackson Merrill is 135 million guaranteed. But there are a lot of incentives and escalators and club options that can be converted into player options. And so it could max out at more than $200 million in value, but still fairly light, it seems like.

Yeah. That's kind of been the consensus, I guess, to varying degrees about all three of these deals, where it seems like, well, if they tested the market, if they believed in themselves and they just went year to year and went through arbitration and free agency, that probably they'd make more, perhaps quite a bit more. And yet with extensions, there's only so much you can say with these things because it's like, well, clearly the player likes being on this team and good for them. If it's a young guy, they got transformative money and also it seems like they could have

gotten more money. But if they're happy with it and they want the safety net, then fine. And extensions, it's just the same team and players, so there's not as much to analyze as there is when a player changes teams. But nonetheless, I guess there has been a bit of buzz of like, good for these guys, but also probably leaving some significant amounts of money on the table. I don't know whether Campbell or Merrill, the most money potentially being lost here, but I guess Merrill maybe just because he has established himself as an excellent player already, whereas Campbell certainly

seems like he's going to be one, but he is just a fledgling big leaguer. Yeah, I struggle with these, right? Because I think it's important while we have an arbitration process for very talented players, for some number of very talented players to go through that arbitration process for the precedent that their sort of trip through it sets, right? Because as we've talked about, you know, if you're a really great player, you can make very good money in our, but not market rate money, right? Like Juan Soto is making more now than he did before he was a free agent, but you can

make very good money. And I think, you know, because that system relies so heavily on precedent, having guys go through it so that those numbers are there to sort of, you know, be the rising tide that lifts all boats is important. Having said that, now I'm going to be self-conscious. We had a having said that on our Patreon bonus pods this week, which I pointed out. I compared it to a curb your enthusiasm scene, but yeah. Now having said that, you know, Christian Campbell was super stoked about this when

it happened and he said that it's life changing for him. You know, Jackson Merrill in 2030 is going to be making $21 million a year. So I struggle because I do think that having some amount of solidarity is right, but like feels like it has more judgment in it that I necessarily mean, but I think having them go through the process for precedent is important, but also careers don't always work out. And I understand being Christian Campbell,

and you know, things are going fine for him as they start right now. And he's a very talented player. And I think that most sort of prospect observers are pretty confident that he's going to be really good. And if he, you know, I don't even want to like entertain a hypothetical with a specific injury, but like, let's say he gets a nagging injury and it saps his production and he's like good, but not great. And he has $60 million now, you know? Like, Jackson

Merrill is a hundred millionaire, a hundred million dollars in air. We need a quick, a snappy little for that, but you know what I mean? Like, and for him, I know that we don't necessarily know like every single escalator, but if he's as good as we think he is, he might end up making a good bit more than that, right? Depending on how aggressive the escalators are. So I don't know how to do it with Kitell. I am willing to let him be sort of the arbiter of what he does here because his first two extensions were like so team-friendly and he has become such a good player. And I think this does like appreciably change things for him.

He obviously wants to be a Diamondback. I like Arizona like keeping this continuity. Yeah. They're becoming Braves West these days, the number of extensions they're signing. And not just for Tell Marte, just for their best players, but also Justin Martinez and Brandon Fodd and Geraldo Perdomo. They're just really locking in this core. Yeah.

So I know what you're saying. I will say that it kind of looks like Justin Martinez throw strikes now. And if Justin Martinez throw strikes, then like, look out. But, uh, he could be great. Yeah. I got a weird vibe today. I don't even know how to account for it. I don't feel a particular way.

I just feel like I'm doing more voices than usual. I don't know what's happening. It's Friday show, but yeah. So I guess I would say that I wish that here's a, here's a way for me to tie a little bow on the whole thing. I wish that the broader economic way for me to tie a little bow on the whole thing. I wish that the broader economic system of baseball were different. And so the incentives to take these extensions weren't what they are. But I understand being a young player and you have the opportunity to just like have

$60 million. I say that like he's getting it all at once, he's not, but, or to say, you know, I have $135 million deal. I get that, you know? You know, here's what I'll say, I would take $135 million. Like, I would happily accept that also, but I would say, okay, yeah, it seems like for Merrill, the floor for him is about as high as it gets just because he's so

young and is so good. He hasn't turned 22 yet. He already has a five-win season under his belt, which was his first taste of the majors with a position change on the fly. And he's playing a plus center field. And in that respect, I do get why people are a little antsy because it's not a deep position right now, you know, but like it maybe it'd be deeper by the time you reach free agency. I don't know. But if you can like really place on our field and it looks like you can really place on our field, then you can make a good bit of money.

You can and you're like permanently rosterable even if you can't hit for which he can. So yes, right. And so if he becomes more selective and walks more, then that unlocks a new level, then he's maybe one of the best players in baseball. Even if he doesn't though, if last year's the floor, and I'm not saying it's necessarily the floor, they're players who their first year is their best year ever. And maybe he's Jason Hayward or something, but I think that it's probably not going to go far down from here and it could go up from here. And so he's

not a pitcher. There's a little less injury risk. There's always some risk of a career ending threatening injury with anyone. So you never know. And evidently he's happy there, but I'll read you just a little excerpt from the San Diego Union Tribune's piece on this. It says that he cut through the noise from some corners that was suggesting he not sign such a team-friendly deal. That attempt at persuasion included the MLB Players Association stepping in and attempting to sway Merrill to not sign

the nine-year deal that guarantees him $135 million and will likely end up being worth $165 million or more of the next decade. Merrill signed anyway, professing his love for San Diego, his teammates manager Mike Schilt and president of baseball operations AJ Preller. I don't know that I would sign long-term with a manager and Pobo who's like- In mind. Yeah.

That's a little risky, but okay, San Diego teammates, sure. There is always consternation among agents in the union when a player signs a quote unquote below market deal. It's something of an ebbing tide lowers all ships thing. Among those vexed yesterday was the man who negotiated the first hundred million dollar contract in 1998 and has gotten dozens more to sign since then, et cetera, et cetera. Scott Boris focused more on a provision in the contract

than the numbers and essentially predicted Merrill will eventually be traded. Quote from Boris, if a player signs a contract for team relationship purposes, the key provision is a full no trade. Without it, the likelihood of remaining with one team is highly improbable. As the business of baseball supersedes all player preferences, Merrill has a partial no trade clause that excludes the Padres from sending him to eight teams, all of them in the AL Central and NL Central. You know what, Jackson? Good for you, dude.

That's funny because usually you put the teams on your no trades that you think are most likely to acquire you. It's usually like Dodgers, Yankees, Mets, because you want the most leverage. If you don't have a universal no trade, then you take the big market, big spenders, because they're the ones who are most likely to be trying to deal for you. Apparently, he's just like, no, I just definitely don't want to play at either of the central divisions under any circumstances. And it says, according to two people close to him, he said he did not need full protection.

He wanted to get a deal done. So I don't know, maybe he was a little hasty, a little too accommodating, could have held out for a bit more. I guess, but again, let's play the in the timeline where Jackson Merrill's production makes this a below market deal, even with him having maxed it out. So like he can make up to 165 million with the incentives and everything, right? And so he maxes out at 165. And in order for us to at the end of that contract, think that he has not been paid

enough, he will have to have been very good over the course of that stretch, right? So then he hits free agency and as Bauman noted in his write-up, he'll be 31 and presumably like a plus center fielder. He'll just make more money. Like I, I get why the unions, the unions posture on these deals should just at jump be one of skepticism because they're not wrong that money is being left on the table, that there has to be this trade off between getting a little bit less so that you can bank the certainty. And that means these guys aren't even just in a vacuum

aren't making as much as they necessarily should. They aren't, as I noted, going through the arbitration process, so they're not contributing to the rise in arbitration salaries. And I think that like the more of these that get signed, the more comfortable teams become asking for them from their players, right? Particularly when they're very early in their careers. So I get why the union is nervous about this stuff. And I'm not saying that he couldn't have extracted more, but I just don't know that I agree with the idea that he didn't extract enough such that I feel like it's a bad deal for him as an individual player.

Well, Campbell, I don't know. If I were an agent, my advice to players in this situation would probably be, especially if you're someone like Christian Campbell, who has made his debut. And for all we know, like, maybe there was an understanding between him and the club that, like, he doesn't debut without the extension happening. I don't want to say that that happened because I don't know it to be true, but like, you know. Remember, we answered a listener email about that this offseason, I think, where someone wrote in to say, if you're going to sign someone to an extension, shouldn't you do it right after they debut, not right before the way that, say,

the Brewers did with Jackson Churio? Because if you promote them and they're on your Major League roster opening day, you not right before the way that say the Brewers did with Jackson Churio, because if you promote them and they're on your major league roster opening day before you sign them to the extension, then they are still eligible for the prospect promotion incentives. And so the sequence of events here would seem to make more sense for the Red Sox because they get him signed and also they still have the PPIs in their favor. Yes. But my point was going to be that, you know, if I were an agent and I were

advising a client and it was someone like Campbell who had made his debut, right? And so it was going to be able to just make the case for being on the roster in the majors. I would probably tell that player to wait a year to contemplate this kind of extension when you're Jackson Merrill, not when you're Christian Campbell. But also it seems like kind of obvious that Christian Campbell wanted to be a Red Sox and now he's $60 million.

So I don't know, that one feels like it has the greater potential just because the dollar amount is lower and he signed it so early and we don't yet know if he's going to be able to go supernova in the first season. That one feels to me much more like it has the potential to be somewhere in the like Acuna, Aussie, Albies, although there's daylight between those deals too, right? Like where Albies was just like a crime. I don't even know if that, I think that agent might not be certified by the Indian anymore, but just like really very bad.

Yeah. And then again, Marte, it's just like, I don't know, they just keep doing this. It's like, cicadas are like a summer thing, right? It's not spring. Yeah. But you know, they just do this every couple of years. They're like, eh, it's time to still be in the Cattell-Marte business. And Cattell's like, yeah, that sounds great. Let's do it. Mm-hmm. Yep. And I think Merrill can actually max out at 204 in this deal, but 165 is more of a likely where it will come in. And a couple other little things about these extensions. One, Alex Cora said after the game that Christian Campbell doesn't refer to his teammates as teammates, but instead calls them his friends, which I quite enjoyed.

So no wonder he wanted to stay with his friends. Isn't that cute? He wanted to stay with his friends? Yeah. Shut up. Really? That's awesome. And I don't want to like, aw, because he's a, you know, he has $60 million for one thing

and I sure don't, but he's like a grown person. But also that is so nice. Yes, that is very endearing. And also Hannah Kaiser mentioned this in her new bandwagon substack, which I have subscribed to with Zach Kreiser. They've brought back the bandwagon and Hannah mentioned that she ran into the AP's contract guru, Ron Blum at the ballpark. And Blum pointed out that the Cattell-Martay extension, he's actually in line to get the least amount of money in 2027, which as Hannah wrote, Ron suspects Martay's camp would have

wanted so as to minimize losses if the 2025 season is shortened. Smart. Or lost altogether to a lockout. Yeah, so that's something to watch out for with future contracts too. Cool. Glad we're planning around that. I know, I know. I'm so happy we're planning for that. Yeah. Yeah, so we'll see whether that becomes a trend.

He's set to make $14 million this year, some of it's deferred, and then 15 million next year, and then only 12 in 2027, and then it goes up to 20 million and 22 million thereafter. So yeah, that could be something that other agents and players are thinking about. I'm trying so hard to not just like spiral on the fact that like our reward potentially for surviving all of the tariff bulls**t might just be. Season without baseball. Don't think about that until next year when we will have to constantly. But I'm going to be thinking about it. Not yet. No, Ben, I think about it all the time. I think about it all the time. Yeah.

Okay. Some other rapid fire things. Derek Gould of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch Cardinals reporter, he noted something that is relevant to another of my bold predictions. He said, this is interesting. Cardinals players were told if they touched their helmet to sarcastically suggest they're challenging a pitch call as they did in the spring with ABS, that will get them ejected immediately. No warning, just out. But that hasn't been true. No, it hasn't happened yet. Yeah. William Contreras did this in, I think, just out. But that hasn't been true. No, it hasn't happened yet. William Contreras did this in, I think, the first game, and he was not punished. He was certainly not ejected.

But maybe subsequent to that, the Cardinals were warned. I don't know if all players were warned about this or not, but evidently at least one team has been told that if they do this, zero tolerance, they're done, assuming it's seen, at least one team has been told that if they do this, zero tolerance, they're done, assuming it's seen at least. So I don't know whether that improves my odds of that prediction coming true or hurts them because it improves the odds of punishment if it happens, but it makes it less likely that a player will actually do it. And as I said, with each passing day, I think it gets less likely, not only because there

are fewer games remaining, but because the further removed we are from spring training, I think the less inclined players will to do that kind of habitually as a way of sort of showing up and up. But yeah, evidently someone told at least one team, don't do it or you're out. So that's interesting. A few people wrote in including Jeremy, Patreon supporter, noted that in Wednesday night's game between the Braves and the Dodgers,

there was a mid plate appearance pitching change. And as Jeremy writes, Brian Snitker removed Daysbell Hernandez after he fell behind Will Smith 2-0 in the eighth with a runner on first and the Braves leading by two runs. He went to Ricell Glacius for a five out save. Didn't work out for Snitker and the Braves. No, though, no, it didn't.

What has worked out for them this year? Nothing. Everything's worked out for the Dodgers. So I appreciate people notifying us about this. I would say that when the pitcher is down in the count like that, when it's 2-0, it's more about minimizing the damage than it is about pressing the advantage. Whereas in the traditional strategy mid-plate appearance last year, which was an authentic case of strategy being used for strategic reasons in the situation that I've often talked about. This one, it's not quite the same. This one, it's like you give up a hit, then you fall behind 2-0,

you've got your closer ready, and so you just bring him in instead of waiting. It's something. It happens a little more often, this kind of hook mid-plate appearance than the one that I'm talking about. So it's not fully legitimate. I can't believe that they walked off that game though. I can't, I mean, I can. I totally can.

I think everyone predicted it was about to happen. It's funny because, you know, I got a couple of notifications about this also just individually and my understanding of the timeline compressed because for whatever reason I didn't have that game on, I was watching something else. And I thought that he made this decision and then Otani immediately hit the walk-off

and I was like, oh no. I was like, we're gonna get so many emails, but that was wrong. That was not how it went. Yeah, no, it proceeded fast, but I going to get so many emails, but that was wrong. That was not how it worked. Yeah, no, it preceded that. But I did, obviously I enjoy Shohei Otani hitting a walk-off home run on his Bobbleheads night. How appropriate, but- Bobbleheads night?

Bobble? Bobblehead night. Not Bobbleheads. It wasn't multiple heads. It was just one, as far as I know. You only said- Did I say Bobbleshead? You said bobble something.

Bobbleheads? Bobble? I didn't intend to. I don't know. Did I say bobble's head? You said bobble something, bobble heads, bubble. I didn't intend to. Anyway, whatever I said, he debuted a new celebration as he was crossing a home plate. I don't know whether this will be the new Freddie that the Dodgers have been doing to make fun of Freddie Freeman's dance. But this I like because Otani is mocking himself

because he's been doing all of these endorsement deals and ads and he did one in Japan that's very artsy and dramatic and it's for a skincare product. And he's like voguing, he's like pulling his fingers across his eye in this sort of dramatic, almost seductive way. I do want to note that he is not actually voguing. Not exactly, no.

So like, because that would be great, but not what he's quite doing. No, someone else described it that way. Maybe it was Hannah, I forget, but I borrowed that from somewhere. And so he did this as he was crossing home plate, because I guess Yamamoto had been on social media like watching this ad, and so it's kind of become a thing already, and Otani is now poking fun at himself.

And so this is the new Dodgers celebration, or at least it was in this instance, just pulling the fingers across the eye dramatically as he crossed home plate. That's good stuff. This is a good celly. I like it. Yeah.

Celly. A good celly. I like it too because it hopefully reminds all of the men watching that you should not neglect your skincare. It's important to do your skincare. Take care of your skin, you know, on your face or sunscreen. But, you know, it can be or sunscreen. But you know, it can be soft and supple. It's okay. You can do it.

Thanks for the encouragement from you and Shohei Otani. And yeah, I hope they're still going to do the Freddie, but I guess that's contingent on Freddie just being a bit more careful as he's entering and exiting showers. Do we think he like slipped on his kid's toy or? I think it was like he was using not the shower that he typically uses. Oh. And so he was unprepared for there being a little step up. Step?

Yeah. And so, yeah, a mishap, but hopefully not super serious. We also got a couple of notifications. Listener Andrew, listener Jiahui, wrote in to tell us about an instance of a broadcaster at least describing a 12 to 6 slider. So I will insert a clip here, but people have suggested, hey, maybe HBO's The Pit, which debuted the terminology 12 to 6 slider, which we said was an example of, oh, they tried, but they failed to get the baseball lingo quite down. And now, perhaps, vindication for The Pit, the term 12 to 6 slider actually being mentioned

in an MLB game. So here's what that sounded like. Technically a slider, it's like a 12 to 6 slider. That's what they call a bullet spin slider in today's game. There's three different slider, traditional slider, the sweeping slider, and then the bullet spin slider. The bullet spin slider has the shape of what like you're talking about, just KB just almost straight down, just vertical action. So this was in the bottom of the eighth inning of a Red Sox Orioles game, Garrett Whitlock threw a 85 mile per hour breaking ball that Ryan O'Hern whiffed on,

on a 1-1 count. And this was Kevin Brown, Orioles broadcaster, saying that it was sort of like a 12-6 slider. And then Ben McDonald saying it was a bullet spin slider that's more of a straight down vertical action. So we had talked about maybe some outlier breaking balls and whether they could be regarded technically as a 12 to 6 slider and said, okay, maybe, kind of, but also that's not what the people on the pit were thinking of, and no one really calls it a 12 to 6 lighter either. But in this instance, they actually did call it a 12 to 6 lighter. They did, and I still think that our assessment was accurate though, because it just makes much more sense that this was a goof on the part of either the folks who write

the pit or the actor and the assembled crew didn't notice it in the moment, didn't catch it. And so, you know, that's that. I also just think, I don't know, we got to tighten up on pitch names a little bit, I think. I think we're getting a little loosey goosey as an industry on pitch names, you know? I'm sympathetic. I understand that people, you know, they can be describing any number of things, right? They can be trying to describe something in terms of like what the grip looks like. They can be trying to describe something in terms of how it moves relative to other pitches,

you know, even VLOs in there. So I get that there are multitudes, you know, pitching contains multitudes. But I just think we're getting a little too loose with some of this. And it's like, I know that people want like a catchy name, but I want them to be more descriptive. Like I think that we have sweeper creep. I've advanced this notion on the show before that some of these sweepers are just, they're just sliders, but a sweeper is descriptive, right?

And I can visualize and part of this is cause you know, I don't know if you know this about me Ben, but I watch a lot of baseball. Part of it is that I can like visualize the difference in terms of the horizontal movement between a slider and a sweeper, but it, it helps me to, in my mind's eye distinguish like the pitch that comes up. And so I just want there to be a greater focus on one only really distinguishing pitches that are, I don't know where the bar is. That's gonna be your next question.

Like, what is the bar for it being meaningfully different? Like, how do we distinguish that? I don't know, I haven't thought that through yet. But like, I want, when we're given a new name to a pitch, like, let's really think about whether we need that, or if we're just cluttering things up. This was my, as I thought about it more, my primary objection to the death ball, because I'm like, if

you're describing to a casual fan or fan that doesn't follow a team or a guy throws a death ball and I'm like, oh, he's throwing a death ball now. That doesn't mean anything to that person. They have no idea what that means. They might think that it's like a really hard fast ball.

They might think that it has really like big movement. They might think that it's just like big movement. They might think that it's just a pitch that no one's been able to hit. It doesn't tell you anything about it, right? And I don't like that. Yeah. And you could tell on that broadcast that they understood that they were taking a little liberty there by calling it a 12 to 6 slider. They were sort of saying, it's like that, but you wouldn't normally say that. And so, yeah, it's not like the people who are writing the pit are thinking of these edge cases

where you couldn't technically kind of call it that. Yeah, we probably should. We should be like, hey, did you mean to, excuse my swear, and they will be like, why would we answer this email? Like, well, you know, who are these people? Sometimes people answer my pedantic questions about their screen projects, but I think they're

just kind of tickled that anyone was paying that close attention and cared enough to ask. That would make me so stressed as a screenwriter. I'd be like, oh my God. Yeah. Everyone's scrutinizing our words so closely. Looking at me. Yes. Anyway, it is kind of funny that the term was said on an MLB broadcast not long after

we said that. Yes. totally. Also, I have to get your thoughts on this new look that Pirates pitcher Dennis Santana has debuted this year. He's gone with, I don't even know what to call it. I guess it's high socks technically, but it's really like he's wearing shorts and he's kind of, I don't know whether he's rolled up his pant legs or he's tucked them into, I guess, like these high socks situation, like almost high compression socks or something.

And so he looks like he is wearing shorts out there, just like cut off baseball pants, basically, though I assume that the bottoms of the pants are actually there which greatly perplexed the Rays broadcasters and also perplexed me frankly. Would you consider those baseball pants or shorts? I'm gonna go shorts. They look like shorts to me. That's like that's like almost mid-quad. They do not encumber the knees. Not even close. Somewhere, Bill Vek is smiling. Yes. Looking down at Santana.

Just wish that there was a butterfly collar on the jersey. So what do you make of this look that Santana is showing off here? So I had seen this and I will admit that I was not able to locate in my mental inventory an answer to the question I'm about to put, but I don't, I feel like this is not without precedent. And I'm trying to think if I've definitely seen, okay. So I have absolutely seen NFL players who look like they are the way I would describe this look is he looks like he's wearing bicycle shorts. Yeah.

You know? And so I've definitely seen NFL players who have a look akin to this. And I feel like I've seen baseball players who have done this look. And it's possible that my memory of that is largely about like a college player maybe or something I saw in fall league. When you sent this to me, I was like,

I feel like I've seen that before. It's, look, I mean, I wouldn't do it if I were a position player because it would make me feel vulnerable, though I guess like the high socks always kind of expose you. But like, I don't know, like when I feel more nervous about sliding, I just feel like having your knee exposed like this is potentially bad, but I don't know that I hate it. I mean, like we have, you know, famously shorts, not a great idea for baseball. No. And the broadcast invoked Bill Vak and the White Sox and their short-lived experiment with the shorts, which seems to have gone okay, but it just didn't last very long. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I see what you mean about it. Probably be more problematic for a position player, although I think it just looks even more unnatural for a pitcher for some reason in my mind. So like there are- Well, and he's so spindly, you know? Yeah, right. I'm trying to imagine like O'Neill Cruz,

cause he has higher socks sometimes, but not this high as far as I know, what it would look like on him, because yeah, Dennis Santana, he does have a lot of leg there, and he's showing a lot of leg. I guess he's listed at six too, but he looks taller, I guess, because of his build.

And there are people who get upset and think it looks unnatural and some crime against jerseys when pictures wear high numbers. And I couldn't care less about that. We've talked about how we just we don't look at numbers, we don't remember numbers. I don't remember them very often now. And I'm not even much of a uniform guy and so this is kind of a combination of things that normally I wouldn't care that much about. But there has been some

consternation and I understand the consternation because it did look of a combination of things that normally I wouldn't care that much about. But there has been some consternation and I understand the consternation because it did look unnatural to me. But maybe I like some idiosyncrasy and some character. I don't think I would want this to become the new norm. But I kind of like that one guy is doing it at least. I like that Dennis Santana said, yeah, this is an expression of my personal style. Maybe he's just mad about the pants still being transparent and he's engaged in protest. He's like, I hate all the thin, thin pants.

And so I'm gonna have as little pants as possible. Although it's funny in the example you sent me, they're on the road, so he's wearing the grays. So they're less see-through than the home whites would be. But it is like a noticeable hike up. It just really is a noticeable hike up. Yeah, man. They look like bike shorts.

He looks like he's about to go, you know, hop on an e-bike. Yeah, I sort of like that. He's just like, I'm going to let my fashion flag fly here. This is what I was feeling like doing. Good for him. Express your individuality. However, that manifests itself. And I think it's important because some things are getting more conformist and less heterogeneous. And some people emailed us about another example of that, of the Tigers making a change to Comerica Park, which was the last stadium, the last ballpark that still had the dirt strip between the pitchers mound and home plate, that dirt alley that I was going to call it a landing strip, but that sounds wrong.

Watch out. You know, that strip of dirt that marked the path of the pitch, basically. Again, I don't totally care about this in the abstract, but I like that there's differentiation. I like that you could sort of instantly see that strip and say, oh, that's Detroit, that's Comerica, and now you can't. They got rid of that pathway. And we talk about how much we value the uniqueness of the playing surfaces and dimensions and they are still dissimilar, but they've gotten less dissimilar over time. People have done research about just the wall height and the wall depth and everything. Those things vary less than they used to, especially when you had

just silly looking parks, you know, just more parks that were just crammed into urban centers, like polo ground style. And we still have Fenway that's a relic of that time, but we have a little less of that now. And this was just a cosmetic surface level aesthetic instance of that. And I'm not going to lose any sleep. I'm not going to cry tears over the loss of this dirt strip. But I guess all else being equal, I would have preferred that

they keep it just to have one team preserving this. I don't actually know. I haven't researched how prevalent that once was or what the origins of that are or whether that was the norm at one point or whether it was always in the minority, but I did like that you could kind of instantly identify Detroit by that. So that was nice. I'll miss it. I always wondered why it was there though. I was like, what's that about? Why can you not grow grass there? Because I got a corner of the yard and you just can never grow grass, Ben. The sun doesn't hit it right. It's like in a weird dead zone for the sprinklers. And it's just like, I can't, but I don't think that MLB ground screws have those kinds

of problems. They have like super grass, you know? And like that's their whole job is doing the grass. I guess they'll have that problem in Southern health park, but they're prepared to swap in new turf. But yeah, sometimes you see signs of wear if it's like there was a concert on the field or something and they had to change things around. But yeah, like a particular patch, you see patches where the outfielders stand typically

and there's some signs of wear there, but yeah, probably not that they couldn't grow grass there, I think, as they're showing now because they have grown grass there and now that strip is gone. Anyway, it's just one of those little things like people often lament, oh, we're losing the character and the quirks and it's all the edges are being sanded down. And I don't know that that's true.

I think that it could be to some extent nostalgia speaking because every time we lose something, suddenly Dennis Santana shows up and says, what if I wear my pants like this though? And so there's constantly change, but yeah, have nicknames gotten a little less colorful? Maybe, and maybe in retrospect, we'll look back and these will seem of an age.

Right. Like old timey ones now sound old timey, they didn't sound old timey when it wasn't old times, but still there's less of that or we've talked about the variation in mechanics and batting stances and deliveries and everything. So yeah, certain things they've converged, they've become optimized. And I do miss those sort of vestigial limbs, you know, those like the appendix of baseball, like stuff that's just hanging on for no particular reason,

but it's just, it's kind of nice. It reminds you of baseball. It's like I wrote a whole article, a fond farewell to the fake to third, throw to first type of pickoff move, which was sort of silly because it rarely worked. Occasionally it did, but whenever someone tried it, the announcer would inevitably say, you never see that work. And eventually they were just like,

yeah, let's not bother with this anymore. I don't know. It does kind of give me a warm warm fuzzy feeling to watch an old game and see someone do it. It's just, you know, we were fond of the things that we grew up watching. Yeah, I think that that's fine. I do think that sometimes the nostalgia can get to be a little much, but it's good to have a diverse ecosystem.

To your point, like you want to be able to turn on the TV and be like, oh, I'm watching a game in this place, you know, to have it feel local. This has always been one of my real issues with Yankee Stadium, New Yankee Stadium is that it just feels like anywhere, you know, like that ballpark doesn't feel, and I know that they have Monument Park in there, but I think in part because it's so, it feels so obviously corporate that it doesn't feel like it's anywhere, you know? So it's not good.

It's not good. Yeah. Okay. I had missed this last week. It's kind of an effectively wild tradition to at least briefly discuss. There's always an ESPN start of the season survey of insiders, executives. It used to be Jerry Krasnik before he left and went to work for the Players Association. Right. And Sam was semi-obsessed with it.

He called it the Krasniks. He wrote about it. We talked about it. And then Jesse Rogers took over for Krasnik. And I had missed that the latest installment did come out last year. And I feel like it's a lackluster one. The questions are a little less interesting than usual. It's 18 MLB executives and scouts,

which I think is a lower number than they've had in past years. So it's not the best. So maybe I'll just, I'll quickly go through this. There are nine questions. And again, this was before the season started. I guess I'll just ask you for a snap judgment, maybe of what you think the most common response

would have been to these questions or whatever comes to your mind. So who is most likely to take down the Dodgers? So which team is most likely to beat LA in a head-to-head postseason series? So I guess it's more or less just like, what's the best NL team that isn't the Dodgers? That's more or less the question. I guess one person did answer an AL team forecasting a World Series matchup, but it's more NL specific. And I'm supposed to guess which team they said?

Yeah, what would they have guessed? Um, probably the Braves. Yes, so the Braves with seven responses, they were the most common. And it's funny how some of these things even in a week probably have changed somewhat significantly because I'm guessing that Braves would not have more answers maybe than the Padres or the Phillies or the Diamondbacks and the Red Sox also received votes. So that may have changed already.

And the next question is 2025's breakout team. What's the most common selection for this season's breakout team, whatever that means. Breakout. Oh no, what a quagmire we might find ourselves in with the notion of breakout, breakout. Okay, okay, okay. I would say, well, it's so hard, Ben,

because some of my answers are teams that made the postseason last year. Royals? No, Royals are not here. Reds? Reds did not receive a vote. Actually, they would have been a legitimate choice, but no. Breakout.

But breakout of what? You know what I mean? Like, what is that? Let's not get into that again, but this is on a team level, but you know, I don't know, just get a lot better, I guess, than they were last year. The athletics? They were the second most popular pick.

Four people selected the A's. The nationals? Nationals, got to vote, but no. I hate this, because it's a weird thing to apply to a team. It is. The Pirates? No Pirates. It was not the Reds, but the Red Sox.

Six votes for the Red Sox as the breakout team. As the breakout team? Okay, okay, okay, okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, it's all right. Okay. All right.

Win NLMVP, if not, Otani. So second most likely NLMVP if not, Otani. So second most likely NLMVP winner. Juan Soto. Juan Soto. Yes. You got five votes followed by Mookie and Kyle Tucker and Bryce Harper. Yeah. That's why I'm saying these questions are not the most interesting. Just like who's the best player in the league. All right. Win ALMV MVP. Oh gosh.

Well, that is tricky. It's a more fractured. Yes. Feel, I mean, probably Bobby Witt Jr., right? Bobby Witt Jr.'s tied for first with four. With Aaron Judge? Yeah, Aaron Judge and Witt got four. And then Gunnar Henderson got one

and a bunch of other guys got one. He's back today, Gunnar. He is back, yeah. Okay. This one, I won't make you guess because it's just a little more open-ended, but- Oh, now I want to guess. Become a superstar in 2025. Become a superstar.

This is kind of a breakout player, but with the stipulation that you actually have to be a superstar, not just being better than you were before. Superstar. Superstar. Jackson Merrill? Jackson Merrill got two votes, as did another Jackson, Jackson Trujillo. Okay, Jackson Trujillo was going to... Yeah, they were tied for second. I was going to think about that. Superstar. This is another one that I think, like the first question, the answers might have changed

already. I would say the winning pick might be different already based on what we've seen. Oh, really? Maybe. Tell me, who's the winner? Roki Sasaki got five votes. If people are changing their vote on that already, they need to relax. Like unplug and go to a lake for a month, you know?

Yeah, no, I'm not down on Roki. I'm just saying like Superstar might be an overbid for this season. I mean, he clearly has some work to do. Yeah, no Superstar has ever had two bad starts in a row. That's true. Never, ever. Okay. The pitcher you'd most want to give the ball to in a must win game. Probably Scoobble.

Scoobble got two votes. Okay. Skeens? Skeens got eight votes. That's too many votes. I'm sorry. Far and away winner. Yeah. I think that is too many. I think that's too many. And I, I want to be clear, this is not me talking about friend of the pod, Paul Skeens. Love how we apply friend of the pod now to anyone who's on the podcast once for like

15 minutes in a promotional appearance. Except for the in-venue gal. She's not a friend of the pod. Yeah, maybe not. I wonder how she's doing. That's not the point. Here's the thing. I think that Paul Skeens is incredibly talented. I think that Paul Skeens was very worthy and a rookie of the

year. At the end of this year, I might feel very confident in saying he's the best pitcher in baseball. He has thrown a season of major league baseball. he has looked like this guy for like two years. We just all need to chill a little bit. And not because I think he's gonna be bad, I think he's gonna be great. He is a sub two ERI right now, okay? Like he's doing well, you know?

His FIP is lower than that. He's got a new pitch, Ben, I don't know if you know this. You remember? At least one. At least one new pitch, Ben, I don't know if you know this. You remember? At least one. At least one new pitch. He'd be one of my top answers. Sure, but it shouldn't be that overwhelming just because he's in his sophomore season

and he threw 133 innings last year. And again, he has been this guy for like two years. he has been this guy for like two years. And he's even a different guy now than he was when he was at LSU. His repertoire is more diverse. He's throwing pitches that can actually get big leaguers out. He was able to just, a lot of the time, overwhelm people with velocity in college.

And to his credit, that is not the totality of his game. He has evolved. I think he's incredibly impressive. He should have gotten votes on this, but everyone needs to relax a little bit. I'm just saying. Did you read his GQ profile? I looked at the pictures. I did not read it yet, no, but it was funny to see him attempting to smile, probably being reminded by everyone else, please fall, smile. And sometimes he did, but as we discussed, it's tough sometimes. But yeah, Zach Wheeler was second in this category with three votes. And yeah, it just feels like there shouldn't be as big a separation there because

yeah, it shouldn't be overwhelmingly skewed. Right. Because Zach Wheeler is incredible. Like what are we doing? Yeah, okay. The hitter you'd most want to at the plate with your season on the line. Ohtani. Yeah, Ohtani got 11 votes. No one else got more than two. So that was also clear and convincing.

Jose Ramirez got two, Bryce Harper got two, Mookie Soto and Stephen Kwan got one. Oh, love that. Which, yeah, that's just the confidence of, you know, he's not going to strike out. He's not going to strike out. He's going to give you a good play appearance kind of thing. That's a sneaky good answer, man.

Yeah. All right. Be traded by the deadline. So most likely players to be traded by the deadline. Who's Robert Jr.? Yeah, Robert Jr. was second, actually. Second? Oh, okay. He was second, actually. Second? Oh, okay. He was second. Yes. Think another guy on a probably terrible team who is a pitcher, who is returning from

an injury. Why are you talking like that? I don't know. We're both doing voices today. We're doing voices today. A lot of voice work today. Returning from injury. Just trying to coax the answer out of you. Trying to get me to guess who I'm going to be embarrassed. Sandy Alcantara. Oh, sure.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah, sorry. That's how much I'm thinking about the Marlins. I'm like, I don't know, do they? Sorry. Of course it's Sandy. That makes so much sense. Is he still there?

Has he not already traded? They traded? You look good on that one, you guys. Yeah, Ryan Helsley also receiving a few votes and no one are not oh if they can finally find a taker, I guess. And if he'll approve the trade. Right, exactly.

And then the last one was, most likely guy to use the challenge system the most if it was instituted this regular season, which obviously it isn't, but I guess you could have just said next season. I don't know why. That sentence was a journey. Yeah.

We're very critical of this survey, sorry, Jeff. I guess probably Soto? Yeah, Soto was the answer with five votes. No one else got more than one, which I guess was just about, he knows the strike zone the most. Yeah, he knows it the best. And yeah, there were catchers who got votes. I probably would have, maybe you go with Kal Raleigh. He got a vote. He's perfect at doing this in spring training at least. And catchers challenge a lot, but so do batters. So I guess, yeah, this is a fine answer. And while we have been recording, I just wanted to note that Bryce

Harper was quoted as saying, I was going to bring this up. Yeah. On the Dodgers and how they acquire talent and how they spend money, including their pipeline to Japanese stars. I don't know if people will like this, but I feel like only losers complain about what they're doing. That's right, Bryce. I think they're a great team. They're a great organization. That's right, Bryce.

I don't know if all people will like this, but I know that you will. I do like it. I like it for a couple of reasons. First of all, I think he's right. I wouldn't have used the word loser because that's a little meaner than I would go, but Bryce Harper, that feels like a, not that he's a mean guy, but like that feels like appropriately bricy bravado. I have a hard time saying that word. Bavrado, bravado? Uh-oh.

Bravado. How do you say it? Like start like Bryce. Bravado. Bravado. Bravado. Oh man. You know, it's like I got up on Monday and I was like, I didn't need to take any time off after the positional power rankings. And then by Wednesday, I was like, that was really very stupid of me. Anyway, so I agree with him. And I also, I think that this is

a winning posture for him, Bryce Harper, sort of face of the Phillies at this juncture, because the general vibe of a lot of this hand wringing about the Dodgers is that it does feel like kind of loser energy, you know? And Bryce, I think, knows that you got to get in the mindset of being like, we can take on, I'm going to do a big swear and I think you should leave it in Shane. So put everybody, guard your children's ears. If I'm Bryce, I'd be like, bring on the fucking Dodgers. Like I can, we can take the Dodgers, you know, like go in.

All these guys are always pumping themselves up. And then like half the league's executives are like going on background with reporters this off-season being like, then you just don't care. It's like, hey, be fierce and have confidence, have self-esteem, like believe in the team you built, you know? Yeah. The Phillies are a good baseball team. I know that their fans are very nervous all the time because it seems to be the

like default constitution of Phillies sports fans, but like that's a good club and they have good players and you know, one day they'll have a working out field but they can win a lot of baseball games in the meantime so yeah like yeah if I'm Bryce I'm gone they're awesome because the unsaid thing in this quote is and so are we and I like that yeah and one final follow-up when we talked last time about Drexel and Pro-Far and PEDs and lingo for people taking PEDs. And I revealed to you that being on gear is one way to say that someone is taking steroids. And you said that that sounded like it should mean something else, like that should be climbing

terminology. It does. Yeah. And guess what? You were right. It is. We got a couple of responses, listener Van, listener Dani. Dani wrote in from Canmore, Alberta to say that Meg is actually semi-correct.

Okay, well, you know, better than nothing in her joke about on gear as climbing terminology. Although it is used differently than her suspicion, it isn't used to describe any state of a bearded and flannel wearing brew pub employee, but it is used to describe the rock characteristics themselves. Climbing uses a variety of protection types to catch the falls of its participants. Some of these protection pieces are small pieces of metal that are drilled into the rock and remain permanently in place for any later climbers. These are called bolts. Other types of protection such as cams and nuts are placed in cracks and Weaknesses in the rock and are fully removable after use

Pitches of climbing that are safely climbed without the use of bolts or other fixed protection are often referred to as going on gear Sometimes people even climb bolted stretches of rock without using them and instead using removable protection of varying quality They could then say that they climbed said pitch on gear. So climber A says, how did your new route on the Mount Stephen East face go? Did you have to place many bolts? And climber B says, we brought the drill, but ended finding enough crack systems that it all went totally on gear. So there you go. And we got nuts and cracks.

So it's not just baseball that leads us to be silly about these things. And Van said that he also said the thing about bolts and everything. So you could say, he says, I lead 5.10 on gear or I took a big whip on gear, and your coworkers at the brewery would say, whoa, that's mega. So, yeah. What? Wow. You know, humans suck a lot of the time, but we are cool and fascinating

so much of the rest of the time. Like, just like your own little subculture. We do have a lot of lingo. Yeah, Jessie, my wife climbs indoors, and so she's always talking about sending V3s and flashing that route or whatever. And she has a whole climbing language. So yeah, yeah.

It's cool. All of our subcultures, it's fun. I don't want us to go too long. And so you can tell me that we should put a pin in this. Yeah, we can put a bolt in it right here. A bolt in it. But next episode, we simply must talk about the best article about baseball

I have read in a while. And by that, I mean the one that made me laugh out loud several times. Oh, let me guess, Britt Jiroli's article at the Athletic about baseball players being cheap. Yes. Yeah, okay. I'll link to it.

Everyone do the reading. That's your homework assignment. Let me just give a brief preview from this because the premise of this article is that despite a lot of these guys making good, good money, they have retained some cheapness, what we might call cheapness. I think that frugality is probably a less judgmental way. Some of these quotes are unreal. They are ridiculous. They make me worried for these people and also their wives. But Jake Dieckman's was my favorite because they were talking about sort of like groceries, water, wine. Jake Dieckman said, you have to go to Costco, the number one seller of

wine in the world. I feel like everyone trying to save should go to Costco, grab yourself a hot dog and get some wine. Have a good weekend, everybody. Yeah, please do. And I'll just note, while we were recording, there was a report from Mike Rodriguez, who is the person who initially reported pro-FARs PD suspension, who said, according to my sources, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Toronto Blue Jays are very close to signing an extension agreement of more than $500 million. So it's possible that by the time you are hearing this, that will have happened. It's possible that it will not have, that there's no substance to this, that very close does not mean done.

But there's been a lot of smoke around this. I mean, Mark Shapiro said that he thought they were going to get it done. And there were reports about previous offers. So just to circle back, you know, we talked about extensions earlier and, and some smaller numbers. This would be a big number if it does happen, which wouldn't surprise me if this gets done. Does it get done immediately? I don't know, but just putting it out there in case it does before we post this podcast or before we podcast again. And if it does go official then we will return to that topic and discuss the details at length next time.

Alright, it occurs to me now, what if Spencer Strider came back rocking the Dennis Santana look? I don't think the world is ready for that much quad and thigh. Maybe the tight pants accentuate that more than the short pants. One other not very timely follow-up. A few years ago, back in 2022, episode 1864 and also some others, we went down a rabbit hole about the baseball-themed CarShield commercials. They were just a bunch of low-budget ads for CarShield, just made for many different markets with many different baseball players. Some famous, some less so. Matt Vierling was in one. They didn't have the team name and logo right, so it was generic uniforms and some of the actors were much better than others and some were much worse

than others. And I think one thing we marveled at at the time was that all of these players claimed to be car shield users and had some specific claims about that and we wondered, are they really using this? Well, turns out, maybe not. And I must have missed this last year, I don't remember bringing it up on the podcast at least but someone cited it in our Patreon Discord group on Friday, that last July, here's the headline from FTC.gov, CarShield, nationwide seller of vehicle service contracts to pay $10 million to resolve Federal Trade Commission charges of deceptive advertising.

Defendants also barred from misrepresentations by its celebrity endorsers, including Ice T, maybe also including Matt Vierling. The FTC complaint says to build trust with consumers, many of Car Shield's advertisements feature celebrities or professional athletes, including professional basketball player Allen Iverson, former professional wrestler Ric Rick Flair, and professional baseball players, Walker Bueller, Pete Alonso, and Matt Vierling, who are portrayed or depicted as CarShield customers or even real CarShield customers.

For example, a television advertisement called Out of the Park Los Angeles Walker Bueller, which aired at least 3,600 times, contains the following statements and depictions, among others. Walker Bueller says, "'When it came to protecting myself from expensive car repairs, I called the All-Star team at CarShield.

Other CarShield advertisements claim that CarShield celebrity endorsers are not only customers, but also actual users of their vehicle service contracts. Well, guess what? They got in trouble for this. Don't want to puncture anyone's illusions here, but it turns out that some of those baseball players may not have been authentic CarShield customers. Heartbreaking, I know. Never meet your heroes, folks. Say it ain't so, Alonzo. That'll do it for today and for this week. Thanks as always for listening. You can support

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