Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 231: Revisiting Several Things We’ve Said

Episode Date: June 25, 2013

Ben and Sam revisit some predictions and discussions from prior episodes to see how their thoughts have changed.

Trying to predict the future is a discouraging and hazardous occupation, because the prophet invariably falls between two stools. If his predictions sound at all reasonable, you can be quite sure that in 20 or at most 50 years, the progress of science and technology has made him seem ridiculously conservative. On the other hand, if by some miracle a prophet could describe the future exactly as it was going to take place, his predictions would sound so absurd, so far-fetched, that everybody would laugh him to scorn. This is going to be probably a silly pick, but I would say the Orioles. The Orioles? Not a bad pick?

Well, I don't know. It might be a bad pick. Good morning and welcome to episode 231 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you? Okay. So we just got an email about two hours ago saying from a person who said he liked the show and hoped that we would never run out of topics. And we lulled, we LOL'd because we are completely out of topics to the point that, in fact, today we are doing that old standby, the hits, the clips show. We're doing a clip show. Milestone episode 231.

Yes, clip show. We're doing a clip show. Milestone episode 231. We're actually going to be, we're going to just, we each picked a couple of topics that we talked about and that provide some ability to reassess now that we have more information. So basically we're, I guess we're kind of going back to semi-predictive things that we said to see how our opinions have changed i guess is that a fair way to phrase it yeah i guess mine aren't completely predict predictions yeah mine aren't either okay so that's not not a fair way to put it then there are things though that i when uh now that we have more information i think it's it's fun to re i i actually what i wanted to do basically when when i when i proposed this to you is i just wanted to re-raise the same original question

now that we know more um so anyway uh so i have uh three things i wanted to bring up did you you brought two uh yeah i might have i kind of have two to three. Well, I have three to five. Well, I can't top that. All right. All right. Well, I'll go first. Okay. So, and all of mine are fairly quick. So, Barry Zito, after his second start of the year, he had two scoreless outings to start the season uh seven innings

apiece and i made the perhaps uh outlandish uh suggestion that the giants should just go ahead and negotiate a contract extension with him as a as a way of avoiding the awkwardness um if his if it looked like he was going to later on in the year reach his his 200-inning vesting mark for an $18 million deal for next year. It's a $7 million buyout. So basically it's an $11 million option, more or less. And I just figured that the Giants, that there was a reasonable chance that Zito was going to get there, even though he hadn't thrown 200 innings as a Giant, and that it would make things easier if they just picked it up now.

Even though Zito sucks, the Giants have so little pitching depth and there were so little options coming along the way that they might actually not even consider $11 million a bad deal for Zito. And, you know, he's well-liked personally in any way. Maybe it would be a way to end the story nicely. So since then, Zito has a 5.25 ERA. He has the lowest ERA plus of his career. He has averaged 5.5 innings per start since we brought it up, 5.73 innings per start for the season, brought it up, 5.73 innings per start for the season,

which would basically put him on pace to do about 183 to 190 innings if he pitches a full season without missing a start or getting hurt. So he is not currently on pace to reach 200. The Giants are probably going to get out of this. And that was part of the risk. In proposing it, I also knew that there was some reasonable chance that Zito would just continue to be terrible and get worse. Obviously, the team would be acting before they been terrible, and even though Zito is not likely to have his option best, it isn't like the worst case scenario for the Giants would still be to have Zito, I don't think. Because, I mean, it would be worse than not having done anything.

But he's got, strangely enough, he has only the fourth worst ERA plus in his own rotation. Vogelsang, Lincecum and kane have all been worse and kane obviously is not you know not going anywhere but the other two um i mean we talked about this with ian miller in the preseason preview show where it sort of shocked me that the giants didn't do anything to to solidify their sixth seventh eighth eighth spots in the rotation in the minors or whatever the case may be. I mean, the fact is that Lincecum is not really an option and they're stuck with him and Vogelsang is not really an option. And right now he's been replaced by Chad Godin temporarily. And it remains the case that

they don't have a really legitimate pitching prospect above high A, and it's a weak free agent class for starting pitchers. And Brian Sabian has really strongly resisted free agents, particularly top-tier free agents, as long as he's been a Giants GM. So they would have taken on a contract, an option or an extension, I guess, that they wouldn't have wanted to. But on the other hand, if there's any team that would benefit from any innings, even lousy innings, right now it might be the Giants. And I would like to note a bit tangentially that the Giants this year are a big disappointment. I think they're a 500 team, and they have 110 OPS+, which is by far the best in the National League.

It's actually an improvement on last year when they had the second-best offense in the National League. And by UZR, they're the number two defense in baseball. So it really pretty much all comes down to the fact that they don't have five decent pitchers. Right now, they only have one. And even if you give Kane credit for being the second one, they still only have two. And I'm not sure that they really adequately assessed their own starting pitchers coming into the year, although it's very easy to say that after the fact. Yeah, I was scrolling through our really old topics in google reader um and we had a topic i think it

was it was before last year's playoffs about whether we trusted their rotation or maybe it was during last year's playoffs um about whether we trusted the giantsants pitching. And I guess we had doubts even then and more doubts this spring. So, yeah, we had doubts. We had doubts. Mm-hmm. All right. That's mine. Okay.

Oh, all right. Are we alternating? Sure. Okay. So this one you and i were just listening to uh we we did a podcast on what we thought the least likely team to win a world series in the next 10 years was uh we did that on august 31st episode 33 uh so close to a year ago. And my pick was awful, just a horrible, horrible pick.

We were just listening to ourselves and laughing and cringing before we started recording. I picked the Orioles, which was awful. I mean, not just in that they've been good this year, but they... We acknowledged in the conversation that they were... Yeah, I acknowledged in the conversation that they were strong contenders to make the playoffs in the current season, and yet, which put them ahead of most teams at that point, just in terms of their odds of winning the World Series last year. And yet I still pick them. So I'm not proud of that pick. And you picked the Indians after almost picking the Blue Jays,

which I wish you would pick the Blue Jays so I would feel a little less bad about my own pick. Why? Why? The Orioles are a worse pick than the Blue Jays today. Yeah. Blue Jays would still have been a bad pick.

Worse than the Indians, I think. But, well, I mean... Yeah, it's hard to say. We've talked about, I mean, 12 games ago, we talked about the Blue Jays and we wondered what the long-term implications were of going sort of all in on this and what it meant for the front office. We've discussed whether this, you know, is a, you know, scorches the earth in Toronto for baseball for a years. I mean, for a few years. I mean, that was only two weeks ago. So I agree that Toronto is not the pick that I would like to have made. And I'm glad I didn't.

But Cleveland's sort of, you know, Cleveland's not a good pick. you know cleveland's not a good pick yeah i mean they were they were we basically we failed to foresee off-season spending sprees or remakes overhauls um yeah if we if we had to to redo our picks would we just both take the marlins now yeah well there's no doubt about it and we were wondering just you and i a few minutes ago, why we didn't pick the Marlins. And it was because the Marlins hadn't done their huge, huge forfeiture of talent yet. Maybe we should have foreseen because the Exodus had sort of started. Sort of, but Sanchez was a free agent. Infante, you wouldn't have any problem trading Infante.

And then Hanley, that was a bad contract. It seemed like a bad contract at the time. And it is a bad contract. It's a bad contract now. So I don't know. And Hanley had had some issues in Florida. So I didn't foresee their offseason going the way it did. And I saw a front office that had seemed fairly committed to winning at that point.

And, you know, had done, I would say, arguably done the smart thing when it didn't work out and made taken prudent steps in the in the, you know, at the trade deadline. OK, so that. But now it's now there's no doubt. I would take the Marlins against the field. So the Marlins are the givey pick now. So let's each pick a non-Marlins team. Yeah. I mean, I want to say no.

Well, I mean, we'll need a topic 10 months from now that we can revisit. We can't avoid risible picks in a 10-month time frame. And so now we're talking about 10 years. I mean this is just – this is the great fallacy of the human brain that it just thinks it can always predict way further out than it can. I mean we are horrible at this. To be fair, we hate making predictions. We do hate making predictions. We do hate making predictions. So, all right. I will – it's funny because I've been a big Mariners booster for like the last four years and yet I'm leaning toward the Mariners right now.

And like I kind of want to say the Brewers but – Yeah, that's my mind. but I mean come on like you know 10 months ago the Brewers were making a charge at the playoffs and they had just pulled off this incredible heist of the Angels talent and two years ago they were they were in the playoffs and you know they what you know you know what I mean the combination of a team that's not going to make the playoffs this year, doesn't have a great farm system, and is a small market team makes them a pretty good pick. Yes, that's right. Right, there's basically three factors that we can identify that we are pretty good at predicting one year out, I would say. We're pretty good at that. out. I would say we're pretty good at that. You and I are not bad at predicting when you're out, especially for things that are sort of self-evident and anybody could predict them.

So that's one factor. And then farm system, as we've seen in those couple of pieces I did in the off-season about the 10 years of farm system effects, that's a pretty good proxy for the next three or four years. And then market size is a pretty good proxy for the next three or four years. And then market size is a pretty good proxy forever. Although, as we talked about earlier, not really anymore. There's a much smaller correlation between market size and once than there ever has been. So maybe not. But yeah, the brewers struggle on all three of those, although they're basically a mid-market team. I think I would go with either the Brewers or the White Sox.

If you had any guts, you'd pick the Pirates. The Pirates would be the equivalent of the Orioles. I'll double down on the Orioles. They haven't won yet. I could still be right. No, I think I'll pick, I don't know. I'll take either the Brewers. I guess I'll take the White Sox just to pick a team other than the Brewers.

I tell you what, in a year, the Royals might be the slam dunk number two. Or they could be in the playoffs in four months. But if things go really badly for the royals in the next year i mean you could you could envision us having this conversation a year from now and and mastakis and osmer are both considered you know justin smoke level flops and um you know they've they will have fired their front office by that point and i mean you can you can foresee a lot of things going wrong for the royals between now and then and and they have the they have the strongest legacy of i mean they're the they and the pirates are the only two teams that have you know have 20 years of this right so uh you would probably

we're we're right on that line where the royals are uh either you know they're going to tip one way or the other and you could see them being the easy pick in a year. Yeah. Or not. That makes sense. Yeah. I mentioned White Sox just because they are a current last place team with a weak farm

system, and we talked about recently how they're kind of in that no man's land between, I mean, they're not really rebuilding, and they're not really contending, and they don't have a lot of great players coming up, and they don't have a lot of great players coming up and they don't have a lot of great assets that they can trade. So it's kind of a sticky position. I guess they have the fact that they're a bigger market team going for them, I suppose. But yeah, I'll take them. All right. I've decided in the middle of this by the way that I'm removing one of my topics and it's going to be it's own topic on Thursday

just so you know alright so now I want to actually smoothly transition to my other one which is the Royals we talked about the Royals about a week or two into the season in our confirmation bias episodes because the Royals were, let me think,

they were winning at the time behind their strong pitching. And so you could say that Dayton Moore's plan to get Irvin Santana and James Shields and Wayne Davis was brilliant and was going to work out. However, the premise of that whole thing was that their young hitters were all going to blossom at once, and that had not been happening yet. So we assumed that both of those trends would probably reverse themselves, and in fact, neither one has. You'd have to say that Shields in a vacuum has been a very good addition.

Irvin Santana has obviously been a very good addition. has been a very good addition. Irvin Santana has obviously been a very good addition. Jeremy Guthrie, unless you can correct me if I'm blanking, if I've missed the last three weeks or something, but Jeremy Guthrie has been pitching very well for them. And the problem is entirely that they are not getting good. Wow, Jeremy Guthrie has actually turned lousy. How about that?

Yeah, he was kind of a luck regression candidate guy. Goodness gracious, that's not many strikeouts. No. Anyway, but none of their young hitters, you would say, have matriculated, right? Not a single one of them has. Perez has probably held serve i guess and hosmer has not he's uh he's he's where he's been mastakis has regressed to not quite brandon wood levels but i would imagine dfa talk if it's not being you know or not dfa'd, optioned, options, might be whispered about.

And so, yeah, I mean, I guess we were... Yeah, so... What did we say about them? I was optimistic, I think, just because I was optimistic going into the season because I did think that those hitters were likely to kind of, as a group, take a step forward. So I don't know. I guess at the time when we talked about it, I was still kind of optimistic that that would happen at some point this season, or at least that it was, I guess, about as likely that that would happen as it was

that the pitching would collapse. So now, I don't know. I mean, it's... I guess the question is, is the way this has played out, here's the question, is the way this has played out vindication of Dayton Moore's plan, or is it an indictment? Well, I think he should probably be commended for putting a rotation together that has been good. I mean, ideally he would have had some homegrown starters to go into that rotation but he didn't and if you failed to develop pitching then the best thing you can do is to go acquire successful pitching and mostly he has done that and and i think exceeded our expectations um but the yeah the objection though is always that it was it was bad timing that they were not as good a team as as he thought

and even if james shields and you know maybe urban were not as good a team as he thought. And even if James Shields and maybe Urban Santana even pitched as well as he thought they could, it wasn't going to be enough to make them much better than a 500 team. And here it is. They're not better than a 500 team. And yet, not for the reasons that we thought necessarily. Yeah. It's kind of hard to parse that.

It makes it very hard to. I can't tell who's wrong or who should be. This is why, yeah, no, this is why people hire lawyers and this is why everybody thinks that all lawyers are liars. Because two lawyers could absolutely argue opposite facts in this case. You know, there's a lot of ways that Dayton Moore could say that he did it just right. And then there's a lot of ways that you could go, geez, every blogger with a dial-up

knew how this was going to play out. Why didn't you? Yeah, if you had told us this spring that the Royals pitchers would pitch this well, we probably would have thought that Kansas City would be a playoff team. I think I might have. I think I would have given them the possibility of it.

I mean, if you told me and they're a playoff team, I wouldn't slap you in the face or anything like that. But, I mean, it required a lot of growth. Their hitting wasn't good last year. I mean, you don't assume that young hitters are going to put it together. You just can't do that. And they had not put it together yet. They had flashed, but they had not sustained. And you especially can't do that when it's the Royals, it seems like. It does seem like that. So now I guess the question for more is how bad do the optics start to look

now that Myers is in the majors? Francour and Shields have produced 0.3 warp. And of course, Francour is who wouldn't be playing if Myers were there. And, you know, it seems pretty, I mean, who knows what, maybe, we don't know which direction Myers will go. He's looked very good. RJ is completely, completely all in on him after being pretty skeptical, you know, a week ago. And, you know, it seems like, it seems likely that we're probably a few weeks away at most from Myers passing Frank Cora and Shield's combined warp. And that's just probably some version of that fun fact is probably going to get brought up a lot. And it'll be interesting to see how much that becomes the narrative of the season. Every time Myers hits a home run, whether it gets mentioned that he's not a royal.

Yeah, that will be brought up. One of the topics I wanted to revisit was when we talked about why everyone doesn't like the Cardinals. It was last October, episode 63, why does everyone hate the Cardinals? episode 63, why does everyone hate the Cardinals? And at the time we, if I recall correctly, were kind of perplexed about why people didn't like the Cardinals, why they were rooting against the Cardinals, why they seem to have this animosity for the team. And I guess we kind of pinned it on maybe their, I guess they're kind of under La Russa, their tendency to complain about things or his tendency to complain about things. Or maybe the reputation that Cardinals fans have as the best fans in baseball, which annoys every other fan base. baseball, which annoys every other fan base. But it seems to me, and I don't know that I'm right about this,

but it seems like there's been a change now where people no longer resent the Cardinals, but they have now just come to respect them and admire them. And I really haven't heard anything negative about the Cardinals lately. I mean, maybe you still hear negative things from Royals fans or Reds fans or, you know, whoever their rivals are. But certainly in the national press or things that you read, there is nothing but love and universal admiration and respect for the job that the Cardinals have done. universal admiration and respect for the job that the Cardinals have done. I guess it's more directed toward the front office than toward the team, but it seems like there's no real animosity directed toward the team either at this point. And I've kind of been thinking about it because it seems like every day I listen to a podcast or I read an article about

how incredibly brilliant the Cardinals are and it's really hard to to argue with that um Will Leach's line on his podcast is always that just in the last several years the Cardinals have uh gone from having one of the worst farm systems to probably the consensus best farm system, and also won two World Series over the same span, which seems unfair. It seems like maybe you should be able to do one of those things, or count yourself lucky if you can do one of those things, but both at the same time is just not fair. You shouldn't be able to be that successful while restocking your farm system and

having this wave of young talent coming. So it makes me wonder, because I always get this feeling when this sort of groundswell of support starts building for a front office or a regime or a general manager, I always wonder whether we are overrating them as, as great as it seems like they've been. It's like that old baseball saying about how you're never as bad as you look when you're in a slump and you never as good as you look when you're winning 11 games in a row, like the Blue Jays or whatever, whatever it is. It seems like maybe it should apply to, to front offices also.

Um, and you look at the Cardinals and a lot of their success has come from drafting and developing players. And you talk to pretty much anyone in the industry and they will tell you that the Cardinals are just really, really good at those things. Really good at identifying young players who will be good and then grooming them to be good and all of that. But we've also probably talked about on the show, the element of luck that comes into the draft also. So I always wonder when a team kind of goes through this period where it's almost universally hailed as the smartest front office, and we've seen this lately. I mean, you know, the Reyes have been that team. I guess they sort of still are. The Blue Jays were kind of hailed as that team. And I wonder whether or how much luck or just kind of having some breaks go your way influences that opinion of a team. The comp I think of is the Rangers. I mean,

they're the, the Cardinals have, have moved up alongside the Rangers as the team that is, um, that, that just seems to be so good at every facet of team building that, that you, you, you just eventually you just start rooting for them. Um, and I, uh, you know, I, it was, it was sort of, I mean, the Rangers have the Rangers have come back to earth a little bit compared to where a year ago they seemed to be. But they're still, you know, they are also a team that has, you know, made the playoffs three years in a row, gone to the World Series twice, and has, according to Jason Parks, a top five farm system. system. And I think that one thing that has, I think the thing that has to some degree turned the tide for Cardinals haters is that people really like prospects. I don't think people like it when a 26-year-old comes up and scraps his way to being a really good player. Like, I think there's a sort of resentment when like a

John Jay or a, a Ryan Ludwig or, or whatever the case may be just shows up and you're like, Oh, come on, he's 28. Like, what is that about? It feels lucky or it feels sort of weird. It's like somehow suspicious or something, or just like not, not sporting. Uh, but people love prospects. And it's kind of ironic because there are teams that, you know, are always like trying to get like the big splash free agent because like they think that's going to put butts in the seats. And, you know, there's this idea that like fans love famous people. But I think what fans love is like just hot, sexy prospects. Like they love they

love youth I and that's that's changed I think probably to some extent now that it's much easier to to follow those people and much more people covering it I mean yes you're more aware of those players coming up I think that's I think that's absolutely true uh I also think that, and this might just be in my life or in my perception, but I feel like so much of what has become interesting in the game is just old people doing things and young people doing things. We've become really obsessed with age. And so a 26-year-old who does things, even if he's new to the league, isn't that interesting, but a 20-year-old is. We're if he's even if he's you know new to the league isn't that interesting but a 20-year-old is we're really really into the extremes of age um and so the

cardinals um i think right now to some degree the the cardinals uh big league club is more popular because their minor leagues are more popular their minor league system is more popular and when they were winning for the most part when they were winning, for the most part, when they were winning over the last 15 years, I mean, the Cardinals have been good forever, geez. They were, you never really thought of them as the team with the elite farm system. I mean, even Albert Pujols came up,

MVP candidate from day one. Arguably the best, up to that point um you know one of the three or four best rookies ever one of the three or four best two-year players ever i mean immediate hall of fame superstar talent and really one time on a on a baseball america top prospect list and like in the 40s or 50s and and a 16th or 13th round pick. So it's always been like getting these guys who you felt like were overachieving. It's interesting that that didn't resonate because you would imagine for a Cardinals fan that would resonate a great deal, and you would internalize that sort of sense of pride

that your guys were not elite prospects and that they made themselves into something. But I think for us it's harder to accept. Yeah, and it's always interesting to me when there is turnover in a front office that's highly respected and has been successful. When maybe the guy at the top leaves or some key executive who's been credited with a lot of things leave, there's always the question of whether that guy was responsible for their success and whether if the team continues to win after he leaves, whether he should be getting the credit for that and whether the system he set up can continue without him.

So I know that I guess it was like a couple weeks ago, someone tweeted at me and i think also separately at you uh to ask about lunau and whether lunau should be getting credit for all of the cardinals success right now and then asking us about like individual you know like their their farm director their scouting director or whatever, and how good they are and all of those things. So that interests me too because it's, I guess, and you see it like, I don't know, when Theo Epstein leaves the Red Sox or something, it's like, well, is that the end then?

Can they sustain what that guy set up? And then does the guy who set it up deserve all the credit even after he left? And I think we both said, I think, you know, Jeff Luna probably got all the reward that he wanted and deserved when he became a general manager. That's kind of the recognition of the job that he did. And it seems like when you read interviews with these guys, they seem to say that once that system or that process is set up, you can kind of lose the guy at the top and replace him with some other probably equally smart person. And it will just continue to function smoothly. I guess there's a limit to that. There's a point at which too many people leave or there's too much brain drain and you start to see kinks in the armor or something starts to spring a gasket. But it seems like you can just kind of keep the machine running.

And a lot of the people who were around when the Cardinals were building the team that they have now are still there. Uh, and it, it seems like they are set up to win for quite some time, but they, I mean, they have a, they have a mix of, of the hot, sexy prospect and the, the 28 year old guy who no one saw coming. They have both. They have everything. Well, right. They're currently still winning with the 28-year-old guy. They just, like, they have this incredible system beneath it. Although, I mean, there is Shelby Miller and Rosenthal contributing. How much credit do you give them, by the way, for not re-signing Albert Pujols? I mean, you wrote about the process of the Angels signing him for ESPN. And I don't, I mean, do you think that the Cardinals, did they, did they expect him to decline that offer when they made the offer that they made to him? Yeah, I think they did. I, I, uh, I think that they're, uh, if they, well, look, if they had signed him for the offer that they made, which I think was something like $10,195, as I recall.

I thought it was more, but I thought it was like $220 or something, but I'm not sure. It would similarly look terrible right now. Which is weird because at the time, I think that was seen as being a low-ball offer, and the Angels was seen as being way too high. And yet, at the end of the day, it's – Yeah, the reports at the time were that they offered him 10 years and 220. I remember there being a lower number involved. I remember there being a lower number involved. I don't remember why I think there was a lower number involved,

but I'm just saying that there's a possibility that there was actually a lower number involved. Because there were multiple offers being made at various stages and that sort of thing. But no, I don't think that they... I don't think they expected him to accept it, and I don't think that they were really that super eager to have him back. That's what I think. Yeah, it would be interesting.

So I give him credit. I definitely give him credit for letting him go. Yeah, I would too. Although if he had accepted that, if it was 220 and he had accepted that and decided that he just wanted to be a Cardinal for the rest of his career, and I don't know whether they knew for sure that there was going to be an offer that exceeded that, but I mean, they had to make some sort of effort to, to keep him, I guess. Um, just, yeah. Well, it's hard to know. It's hard to know whether how much they, well, okay. I'll put

it this way. Uh, Albert didn't feel like they wanted him back so whatever they were telegraphing they were telegraphing a you know sort of like go away kind of disinterest so uh either that was by accident and they botched it and or pools was just sort of paranoid and oversensitive or you know they did what they had to do to make sure that that that didn't uh you know come back to them so okay um uh see i'm finding 195 here although oh you know nine and 195 so uh all right um there was one more thing i wanted to wait wait i want yeah me too so let's not move on are we are we on the same topic uh no but you yes okay I just I just want to ask you quickly is the Cardinals Rangers the baseball nerd ideal World Series matchup uh not you know not the common man necessarily but the

baseball nerd or is it uh does it get demerits for being too repetitive? Yeah, I guess it would to me. I mean, you know, I would kind of like to, it would be nice if the Rangers won a World Series with this team. I mean, they've been there a couple times. They've been competitive and they've put it together well and they deserve to win as much as any team does, I guess. But I think the A's have to be in a stat nerd World Series just for the kind of killing the Billy Bean can't win in the playoffs,

money ball can't win World Series argument for good. So I think they have to be there more so than the Rangers do. Yeah. A lot of validation at Thanksgiving dinners around the country if he wins one. A lot of uncles being told the what for. Yeah. I guess the Cardinals would be the NL representative. I can't think of a team that would be more emblematic of that.

Uh-huh. Yeah. And the last thing that I wanted to mention, I don't know that we have anything to say about it now that we didn't then. But we've talked about some of the stupid stuff that we've said. We could probably do multiple hours on that subject. But we did, at the end of November, last week of November, first week of December, we did two shows when we talked about why two players didn't make more money than they did, Russell Martin and Koji Uehara.

And I'm still wondering about that, I guess. It seems like every time you read or hear anything about Russell Martin, he has to be referred to as a steal. He is one of the, I guess, one of the best values so far. And he's exceeded probably our expectations also for him. And maybe Uehara has also. I don't know. not though uh we we both really liked him but he is i mean he's now closing right he's i mean he's like the the number one guy in the the boston bullpen and has been fantastic as always, has not been hurt, which I guess is what we speculated ultimately was the reason that he didn't make more money than he did, was just that teams thought he

was fragile and didn't trust him, right? I mean, is there any other theory? That he let Texas down in the pennant race. Yeah, right. And he's old. And he's old. And he's suspicious because he just, I mean, he's just pumping in strikes. There's something, I mean, he, one of the fun factoids, fun facts about Koji Uhara is that since he got traded to Texas,

he's allowed more home runs than walks. And it was actually twice as many home runs as walks. And so while we might get really excited about the strikeout-to-walk ratios, there's a fair number of home runs mixed in there. But, I mean, look, he's 38 right now, and I'd put his chances at probably 6%, maybe 7% at making the Hall of Fame. It's how into him I am. You like him a little more than I do.

I like him a lot too. I actually would – I will gladly accept Mariano Rivera's retirement if Urahara promises to go another 15 years okay uh yeah i don't really have any anything to add to what we probably said then seemed like those guys should should make more money than they did um and we could always revisit the podcast where we talked about brandon league's contract if League's contract if we want to look exactly as smart as everyone else who talked or wrote about Brendan League at the time.

Very briefly, somebody just asked me tonight to project Puig's end of the year slash line and we also talked about Puig at various points and our impressions of his future as well as his hype. Do you want to give me a slash line?

Okay. I guess I'll say 313, 378, 540. Oh, 5.40. Oh, wow. So you're actually higher than me. Paul, who asked, took the under on all of mine. I said 3.26, 3.55, 5.69, which for no reason at all was simply Kendry's, Morales' 2009 line with a few extra points of batting average.

So, yeah, so we're both high. I mean, I did not calculate how much of what that line would actually be from this point forward to get there. I honestly don't know whether that is a compliment or an insult to be given what his line currently is. I imagine it's a compliment because he's at like 1170 right now through three weeks or whatever.

And if we're both projecting something like a 950, for three months from now, there can't be that much correction there. So all right, so we're all in on him. We're buying him, I guess, or something, for this year at least, for this year. We'll figure out ways to badmouth them for next year, but for now we're in. All right, that'll do. All right, and tomorrow's the email show,

and we could still use some, I think. So please send us some at podcast at baseballperspectives.com.