Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2349: Swing-Off, Derby, and Draft

Episode Date: July 17, 2025

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen discuss the lows and highs of the Home Run Derby and the All-Star Game and swing-off, plus banter about beef boys, Blooper, kissing, and the timing of the All-Star break, then (1:03:40) recap the amateur draft, touching on the selection of Eli Willits first […]

Does baseball look the same to you as it does to me? When we look at baseball, how much do we see? Well, the curveball's bent and the home runs fly More to the game than meets the eye To get the stats compiled and the stories filed Fans on the internet might get riled, but we can break it down on Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2349 of Effectively Wild,

a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of The Ringer, rejoined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello Meg. Hello. Also with us and also in the Atlanta area I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, rejoined by Meg Rowley of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Also with us and also in the Atlanta area for All-Star Week is Eric Long and Higgin

Lee, prospect analysts for FanGraphs. Hello, Eric. Hello. How are you? Still okay. We are in Kylie's house. Oh, yeah. Well.

We are coming to you from Kylie McDaniel's abode. If Kylie wants to crash the podcast, he's welcome to as well. It's very busy. Okay. Well, so are we, I guess, because we have a lot to discuss. A lot has happened since we last potted. We had a futures game, we had an all-star game, we had a home run derby, we had a draft, which is, I guess, the primary reason Eric is here, to drop some draft knowledge on us,

but we have to talk about some other news before we even get to that, just so much to cover here. So I guess we can talk a little bit about the Derby first, maybe? Sure. Yeah, the Derby was, you know, it was kind of fun. It was fun in person, I assume. I mean, I've been to past Derbies, it's been quite a while for me,

but I do enjoy the in-person Derby experience and obviously Cal hit lots of dingers as he has done all year. You know, it can be kind of variable. I'm gonna do a thing that is very annoying and I will admit that upfront, but you know, so much of your experience of the Derby in person when you're there as a Media member is contingent on like the particular

Oxbox setup and so we we got to witness Derby. We got to see some very Long home runs a very hard hit home runs And we got to hear very little of it at all, which when Pat McAfee was up was just fine. That was about as much audio as I really needed, the muted thumpings of a wrestling man and his sleeveless sidekick. But yeah, it was good. I think the Derby's a good show.

I know that there's a lot of tinkering that everyone wants to do all the time. I'm open to tinkering. We should talk about the advisability of separating winners by less than an inch of home run distance. But I think it is easily one of the better sort of exhibition events that the league does.

And that remained true even with no Pete Alonso, That is easily one of the better sort of exhibition events that the league does. And that remained true even with no Pete Alonso, with no Aaron Judge, with no Otani. We got to see some terrific performances. And then yes, Big Dumper emerged victorious and I was delighted. Yeah. I mean, the Aux Box experiences its own thing and you do feel like you're listening to the derby through like, a wall in a hotel room.

Some of it was amazing to like, have a Junior Caminero Homer or two pelt the glass that made up the Ox Box, even if you know, some of the seats there, the foul pole is like, blocking your ability to like, see the guy swing or whatever. But yeah, just the recent prospects who I watched take BP in high school, who I watched take BP on a backfield in Florida because Junior Caminero has come this far this fast. Looking just at O'Neil Cruz's body and the way that like he dwarfs literally everyone and even to like a greater degree than he did when he was like a freaky 21 year old kid. It was, you know, it was amazing to see

Cal Raleigh's, which hit home runs at the Derby. So, you know, it is more of a feat of strength event for me than anything I care about somebody winning. The joy, like Cal Raleigh's definitely been doing the media car wash. I think the MLB had him on the program, you know, to try to get that stuff kind of kickstarted. He's on Mina's show, he's on McAfee,

he's sort of pressing the ample flesh of the cow rally and trying to get more comfortable. And I think that it has been good. I think him after the Derby, he's legitimately joyful. I think you winning a Whiffleball home run Derby, you know, he's, he's legitimately joyful. Like I think you winning a Whiffleball home run Derby in your backyard and there being home, home video of it that can be played after you win like a big league home run Derby is like

a really special thing. I can't imagine what that's like in that moment to sort of have your life not flashing before your eyes, just like presented in front of you while you're on national TV. That would totally weird me out and probably make me really emotional. But yeah, it was mostly a really good time. I had a fried green tomato slider on a biscuit

with like a lot of pimento cheese and that was good. And I accidentally spilled some of that pimento cheese on the seat next to me in the Oxbox. Sorry to those dudes from Diario Exclusiva. I tried my best to get that up before you guys sat down. But that basically encompassed my derby experience and sweating profusely through my scout fit, which was a theme here this week,

just like hairy guy sweats through all his clothes. That was, that's like sort of the long and short of everything that wasn't me like staring at a screen doing draft and futures game stuff. Yeah, on the broadcast, I find it to be a bit frenetic McAfee or no McAfee just because under the current format, we just, we've all debated so many home run derby formats and tried so many home run derby formats.

I always forget what the format actually is until the thing starts, if not after that. And there's just always someone suggesting some sort of tweak and often it's just going back to what we had and when we had that, no one was happy with that. So I don't know if there is a perfect Derby format that would please everyone.

But generally speaking, I do find it to be a bit too fast paced just because I do like to see where the home runs land and just be able to track the trajectory. It seems like that's half the fun of it. It's just seeing these gigantic taters and now one barely lands or doesn't even land before the next swing is

happening and you've got split screen and you've got various stats all over the place and it's just a little tough to track. Then again, in the other formats where there was a bit more time to breathe and admire, those things would just last forever. Yeah. It would just wear you down. So I appreciate the fast pace too. And so maybe there's a happy medium

or maybe this is the happy medium. Mostly I enjoy it. And yeah, it was weird. Baseball is a game of inches. The Derby is a game of inch, I guess, one inch. Not even. Yeah, so that was unusual, unexpected. And guys get gassed by the end of it.

It's like in the early derbies, you look at the totals of the home runs that they hit back then, and it was single digits. I mean, some guys didn't go deep at all. It was kind of boring by comparison, but now players are hitting so many home runs that they're just sweaty. They're just getting fatigued by the end of it. So I don't know if there's a perfect Derby format and maybe this is just the,

the compromise that no one is perfectly happy about, but pleases the most people or at least displeases the most people lease potentially it was, you know, there were good moments. There was like Cal getting plunked by his dad, the batting practice. There was a home run robbery by just a kid in the field, but it didn't count, which was kind of disappointing. I mean, I guess it's not the home run robbery derby, though that is something people suggest and seem to desire.

And so I kind of wanted to just like, it should count. Like that was effort, that was talent. And yet we're not actually there to watch the fielders try to take the home runs away, but that was fun. And then there was like O'Neill doing what you you were O'Neill to do, which is, you know, tie the non-cores record with a 513 foot home run. And in a way it's like whoever hits the longest one

wins the Derby on some level and, and Cruz kind of won it right there, but not really. So yeah, you know, it was fun. I mean, it's kind of unusual in that the Derby, which I feel like lately has been the highlight of All-Star Week. It seems like people are more psyched for the Derby than for the All-Star Game.

But this year, the Home Run Derby got upstaged by the Home Run Derby at the end of the All-Star game. But this year, the Home Run Derby got upstaged by the Home Run Derby at the end of the All-Star game. Brace. Which was weird, but we kind of got double the Derby. Double Derby. The actual Derby was almost overshadowed by what happened at the end of the All-Star game. I wanna talk about the swing off,

but I will just say the range of emotions I went through on behalf of the kid who robbed the home run, we were watching and we were both so concerned that I was like, if it comes to... I wasn't tracking that they had actually awarded Kaminaro a home run for it because you're watching Vlad just be despondent and keeps gesturing to the outfield and like, are they going to count it? And I was like, if he loses by one home run because of that kid's robbery, like, is this kid going to get like pilloried on the internet? Is this kid going to face some sort

of crazy consequence the next day? Next day? What is today? Today is Wednesday? Yesterday? When are we? Anyway, we had our BBWA meeting and part of that is an availability from Rob Manfred and he joked that he has already instructed league officials to tell the Shaggers next year, no home run robberies attempted. And I gotta say, like, just hit it for everyone further then. Come on, this seems like I don't wanna accuse Junior Caminero of having a skill issue because clearly quite skilled, but also, you just gotta don't put it in a robbable spot. But I was very worried for that kid,

but it ended up being just fine, obviously. They already tell them not to rob it. You can see the other kids around as soon as he did it being like, oh, shouldn't have done that. I would be tempted to try even if I had been told. Not to. But the thing my mind went to immediately was, was there an over under, your cam and

arrow like home runs that was just impacted by this kid? And are the lunatics who bet on that the ones who are more likely to be a problem for this young fellow who were showing three, four, five times. Right. I'm like, stop showing his face. On the broadcast because now it's just like, oh, hey, Gemini, who's this person? Us walking into the ballpark, my mug, even like, you know, as variable as my beard length can be,

the crazy identifying camera that they have on us as we're walking into the ballpark. And it was sort of like the same one that we walk into like Disneyland or whatever. It's taken a picture of your face and it tells the usher letting you in like who you are. And mine was like taking my picture from outside the thing anyway. But yeah, I think the home run robbery idea is interesting. Like I think if Byron Buxton wants to go shag, he should be able to rob the other guys if he can. And that's just true of anybody.

And like part of me really wants to see Kyle Schwaber out there trying to do that, or whoever the, you know, Humpty Dumpty-ish guy of that year's Derby would be like Pete Alonso out there trying to rob people. Would I think it'd be funny? Yeah, I was gonna say. He definitely would. I don't think anyone else would actually do that.

I don't think they would be sufficiently motivated to do that other than Pete. I think Pete, if he were in the Derby, would commit to the bit. But yeah, I enjoyed that at least. And you know, it's still, it's just a little too long for me because it's just, it's a lot of swings and homers and there's just not that much variety.

And the first round takes like an hour and a half for something, you know? It's just, that's why maybe the swing off was comparatively so refreshing. It's short and sweet, you know? I'm not saying I want the derby to be that short, but a little shorter. It feels like the current format is kind of an amalgamation

of everything that has been tried over the years, just like various derby formats. Like you get a certain number of pitches, or there's a clock, or you have the head-to-head brackets, or you get a certain number of swings and outs, and they've just kind of jumbled it all together. And maybe it's the best of all worlds, I don't know, potentially, but it's still quite long. And that's why I think you still constantly hear the calls for skills competitions where the

Derby would just be one of many, and there'd be more variety. And look, we've been doing this podcast for 13 years and people have been demanding that for longer than that. So we have answered this question. We've discussed it ad nauseam, I think in the past, every possible skills competition, you know, place hitting, bunting, relay, throwing, sprinting, home run, robbing, whatever it is. And you know, the international all-star games that incorporate some of that stuff, I'm into it.

I'd be happy to have that, but it just doesn't seem like there's much will to do it. A lot of the competitions that are proposed have some degree of injury risk more than just home run derby. Even if it's just running or throwing hard, you know, there's just a little bit more of an injury risk than trying to hit home runs off of batting practice pitches basically. And so it just doesn't seem like the will is there for it to happen or that like things

have bottomed out far enough in terms of all-star game interest because the MLB all-star game relative to the NBA all-star game, the NFL all-star game, it's still relatively like the regular sport and still generates some interest and is not quite as lost a cause as those other sports equivalents. And so maybe things have to get desperate in order for a real shakeup to happen. And maybe that's what the swing-off spurs. Maybe that prompts further change. Maybe, I do think it's interesting that it does feel as though the other sports,

all-star festivities, at least like these types of things, the dunk contest and the three-point shooting contest and like some of the NHL skills stuff. Although the NHL skills stuff I do, I think is a lot of fun to watch and it seems like people love watching it, but like the Pro Bowl and stuff like that. And they've tried to, you know, when we were kids and they had some of these like skills competitions that we're talking about now where the guys would like race each other or they would do like bench press competition, uh, rest in peace, Larry Allen. Um, and that stuff for, you know,

reasons that everyone listening to this knows to be obvious. Like once someone blows their ACL playing flag football with, you know, retired players and celebrities and stuff, like that's the end of that. And it was, and so some of that stuff. Yeah. But like I'd love an infield defense competition that like Rafael Furcal is on the, it's like Judge, like the dunk contest or iron chef where it's like Rafael Furcal and Alton Brown and like the guys from outcast are, you know, like local people plus like those who would know, you know, Edgar Renteria

and you know, I want to, that's who I want to be like, Oh, hey, Jose Iglesias won the skills competition this year, like infield defense stuff. But yeah, the swing off was great. I thought it created an interesting dynamic where it is home run Derby like, but it is not just for you anymore. It's for the whole squad. And I think when, you know, Rooker told, I guess it was Passin', like, hey, I'm nervous,

or no, I guess it was Verducci, right? And he did look more nervous than during the Derby. And I think it's because, like, all right, now everyone is out of the dugout and rooting for you in a way that is totally different than it was yesterday where it was just you for you within yourself. The dynamics of it are totally different and almost like an NHL shootout where you have to go X home runs per swing.

I thought that created a cool sort of tension that I really liked. And I also think that they should have, the only thing about it. My note is Change how you can pick who gets the swing No offense to Jonathan Aranda who's definitely deserved to be an all-star that poor guy is you know service time has been manipulated to death He should have been a big leader for the last three years probably He's really good, but like I don't want him up there for that Yeah, and I know some of the reasons make sense. Like some of the dudes are showered and changed, like Tarek Scoobal was.

Exactly, right. And you can't have them come back out to do it. But I feel like the managers or the squad or someone should vote on who you send out there to do it. Because it is kind of, the young guys, like who winning the All-Star game makes more of a difference like they should get to pick who goes out there. Yeah. Yeah. I know you two were otherwise occupied for part of the game itself and you didn't

miss that much in the early innings because it was fairly lopsided. And there were moments and, you know, Jacob Mizrowski came out and did what everyone thought he would do. Just throw the ball really hard and throw a 98 mile per hour slider. That's why he was there. So he delivered. But that was nice. They cut to the dugout right after that.

Yeah, yes, exactly. And you know, you too, I guess being there in person, you missed the broadcast aspects of the in game live player interviews. And, you know, even though we're anti that generally on this podcast, I'm not anti that when it comes to the All-Star game. But this specific implementation of it was not great. Because Cal was not into it.

And so like, you know, Tarek's Google and Cal being miked up, it was pretty awkward. And it was short answers and just nothing revealing whatsoever. Like, you know, give Cal all the shine. Absolutely. This is the season of Cal. I'm glad he won the Derby and it's fitting at everything. But yeah, like, I feel like you have to curate it to make sure that the right players are doing it, who really want to do it,

and are in a position to be able to, like it's tough if you're pitching or catching. I mean, I know that there have been some instances of that where it's worked pretty well, I guess, during All-Star Games. I'm fine with that, All-Star Games, Spring Training, whatever, exhibition games,

that's totally the time to do it, I think. But also, you know, like you have to have players who are really playing along with it, I think. Yeah. That was not the greatest. So, you know, if you could actually hear in real time, like pitchers and catchers talking you through their strategy or something,

somehow without being overheard by the batter, then that sounds like it would be cool. In theory it does, but in practice, it's just, it's not. Like when Alec Manoa did it, it was pretty fun, I thought. It was great. Yeah, he was into it, but he's not an all-star anymore. The challenge during a regular season game is that the players, the star players

you want to hear from are on the field. And in the All-Star game, that's you can talk to someone who's just chilling in the dugout and you're still good to talk to Francisco Lindor or whoever for an inning. And they don't have to be distracted by what it is they're doing. Yes. So much of the draft stuff, when you like see any of these players or are writing about any of these players, the context is important. And I think that's true for this too. Like

these guys are, it's the All-Star game, it's a big stage even for them. And some of them, it's more natural to be loose and charismatic. And for some of them, it's not like to be on TV or to be in an All-star game for the first time. And some of their heroes are, you know, Clayton Kershaw is playing catch with them or whatever it is. So, you know, I think that there's a simple fix to that. And it's just like, talk to these guys when they're not doing anything else but talking to you. Yeah. Yeah. For the all-star game.

Right. I mean, yeah, you could always talk to a starting pitcher who's not pitching that day or something like that, even in a regular season game. But in an All-Star game, it's All-Stars. So you can just have your pick. And also, like, even if the All-Star game doesn't have the same intrigue that it once did, every matchup is pretty compelling. Even the least interesting matchup in the All-Star game, it's still between pretty good players.

And so it's not like it is during a regular season game, where there's just, you know, a lot of stuff that's not super interesting happening. In an All-Star game, everything is fairly interesting. And so, it's just sort of a distraction from that. I did think one nice thing about the game was that, because some of the best players were not starters, they didn't win the fan vote or whatever, there were really good players there at the end of the game, which is often

not the case these days. So people look back and they will meant the days when, you know, Willie Mays or Mickey Mantle or whoever would be in there at the end of the game. And it was just the starters stayed in and now it's not. But in this case, you know, you had like Javi Baez in the starting lineup and Kamen Arrow and Ryan O'Hern and Jacob Wilson and you know, I'm not saying these guys weren't deserving all stars, but they weren't the biggest stars. And because of that, this time you had like Byron Buxton coming in late. You had Bobby Witt Jr. in big moments late in the game.

You had, you know, like Jazz Chisholm, I guess. You had Stephen Kwan with an exciting at bat against Edwin Diaz. Like, and that's good. And I'm not saying everyone has to stay in the whole game, but it worked out well this time. And people talk about a reentry rule for the All-Star game, just like bring guys back in at the end if it's close or high stakes or something. And it's complicated, because as you said, people just leave.

They're just not in a mindset to be playing anymore. But I thought that made things more compelling. Plus the fact that a comeback was happening, which I guess is related to this. And so because of that, you I guess is related to this. And so because of that, you end up with this swing off. And the great thing was like, nobody was prepared for this. Which is so funny because it was in the CBA. This is this was we just haven't had occasion to use it until now. But yeah, this wasn't just, you know, if it had been an invention

of this All-Star game, like I don't think that would have made it any less cool. But yeah, this is a provision that's in the most recent collective bargaining agreement as a way of addressing the end of, because they don't want it to end on a tie and they definitely don't want to play extras. So what do you do? You do a swing off. Yeah. And it's just funny that no one was really aware of this. And even on the broadcast, it's like they weren't talking about it. I don't know if they knew it's like they wanted to keep it a secret or something. And then the players themselves, I saw a report that the players didn't know

until there were like two outs in the ninth or something. And then at least a lot of the players just weren't aware that this was how the game was going to end. And so that was kind of fun just to have this sprung on everyone. And yeah, as you said, Eric, the selection of the hitters, so I guess the way it works is that you designate the swing-off guys before the game. There was just one replacement who had to fill in, I think,

for Eugenio Suarez because Suarez got hit by a pitch. And so then there was an alternate. I forget which of the swingers it was, but there was an alternate replacement for Suarez. But other than that, like, oh, it was Kyle Stowers was the alternate. Okay, that explains that. We were wondering. Yeah. Really, how did Stowers end up drawing this straw? that explains that. We were wondering. Yeah.

We're like, how did Stowers end up drawing this straw? Yeah, because Schwab or Alonzo, okay, that makes sense. Sure, yeah. Brent Rooker, legitimate pick. But yeah, to have it end on Jonathan Aranda is like not the number one guy you would want in that situation swinging off. We did have drama. That one almost snuck out. It did.

It was, yeah, off the wall, right? But yeah, that was really cool. Now, would it have been cooler, I guess, if you had like, Judge and Shohei going up there in that spot? Yeah. Obviously. Yes. But I think Passant, in his piece for ESPN, he said that like, half the players were gone. Like, they weren't just showered and changed.

They had left the ballpark, according to Passant. He said that like half the players were gone. Like they weren't just showered and changed. They had left the ballpark. Yes. Which I guess tells you something about, you know, the importance that players place on the All-Star game these days that they're not even sticking around for the end of it. Or just their own sleep.

Like some of it is, you say Kikuchi sleeps how much? Right. Yes. That's weird. Yeah. And you know, it's, as you said, it's hot in Atlanta and so they want to get out of there and, you know, use the, the off day that comes after and, and maybe take a trip or something. I don't fault them, but that's, that's why it was not the number one guys you would want up there and why it would probably be a

tough sell to, to implement that, to just say, you can't leave, you have to stay in uniform until the last second. Then you'll probably get even more guys begging out of the game. So, but you know, as it was like Schwabr, three swings, three bombs, just like that was awesome. Yeah, it was amazing. Schwabr, he's had a lot of big moments in his career. He sure has. He rises to the occasion, a lot of big moments in his career. Like he sure has. He rises to the occasion. A lot of memorable highlights in his career.

So you know, he's one of the best home run hitters in baseball, certainly. Yeah. He even swing in a good pitch at the end. Right? Yeah. Yeah. He was just like, whatever. I'm going to hit it.

I'm going to hit it. He might be at the top of a leaderboard that I am making up in precisely this moment, which is like, if you were an alien and you came to earth and the way that you understood baseball was to watch highlights from jewel events. So the all star game postseason, I think you would have a completely warped perspective on how important to the history of this era of baseball. Kyle Schwab, or as he might be at the top of my like weird alien interprets baseball history leaderboard, because you're right. He's just like, he has hit big, big home runs in big, big moments. And you know, he's a good hitter.

There have been times where he's been a less good one. There have been times where he has been a bad outfielder as a service to his team. but like I think that he would completely confound an alien civilization trying to make sense of our bad to ball sports. Yeah. I guess you could say that he just has exerted an outsized influence on baseball history. It's not even like he has had a big impact more so than I guess his overall on field value, which is in itself quite considerable. Like, he's a really good player, but also... Yes, for sure. To me, he is... I mean, I've had my random, deeply important personal stuff

that he has just sort of intersected with. Like, even when he was in college, you know, I went to Penn State to see him with my, like, then brother-in-law. Like, we took a guy's trip to go see Kyle Schwab. Er and It was graduation weekend at Penn State and so it was insane like we didn't know that was the case and like I was There to see Kyle Schwab er And then when he was returning from injury while the Cubs were on their World Series run he was getting tuned up in the Folly because there was no other baseball going on. And so this is just enormously important thing happening

amidst all of the Fall League normalcy. And the games were packed to see this guy. And the Cubs, I think, won the the NLCS, or at least like something they advanced somehow while he was like playing in a folly game and he left the folly game to like champagne shower the Cubs employees who were there in the facility. And all you know this was like just fun random important stuff and he might be the all time like war under rates this guy. If you want to nitpick war accurately telling you baseball talent, this is one of the guys. And I think Luis Arias is the other guy, just like at the front of my mind. Where it's not properly capturing how skilled they are and how their skill plays against

any individual person. It doesn't matter who else. The other guys who produce like them from a war standpoint are often just like, OK, players who are all this Chapman will overwhelm and Jose Alvarado will overwhelm those guys. But like Luis Arias and Kyle Schwab are no like they can do the thing they do against anybody. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. I guess skill doesn't always correlate perfectly to value as we measure

it. But sure, Meg and I had that conversation, I think, about Schwab, like, what if he hits 500 bombs? Like, is he going to get in the Hall of Fame someday? And even if he doesn't have the the war or the jaws to support it, and if he does, and if it's like a committee vote down the road, if the writers don't vote him in, then it would probably be based on the fact that he had these moments, you know? Yeah, for sure. And say, hey, all-star game MVP without actually getting a hit in the game proper,

I guess, technically. He didn't get a hit in the game, technically. He was in there as batter three or whatever, right? Like if you look at the box score from last night, it is so confused. The box score didn't know about the CBA either. They're like, how do we account for these guys? I do not know what to do. Yeah, technically it's a 6-6 game. I mean, and yet the National League wins it. So yeah,

it was weird. But yeah, there were 24 pitchers used or something. So I'm totally fine with ending an exhibition and All-Star Game this way. Of course I'm afraid, given the great response to this. I've seen so many people, players and managers included, have said like, I'm sure you're gonna be hearing about this as a regular season solution too. And mostly disapproving of that and saying, I wouldn't support it or I don't think we're gonna get it. But I'm afraid now because of the precedence

of the zombie runner and just, you know, I was very much like, okay, fine in the minor leagues, I get it, it makes sense, it doesn't really matter that much who wins or loses down there. And then, okay, COVID, I guess, fine, sure. And then, you know, it just, you open the door, crack, and suddenly we're stuck with the zombie runner forever. I guess if I had, fine, sure. And then, you know, it just, you open the door, crack, and suddenly we're stuck with the zombie runner forever. I guess if I had to choose,

I'd still prefer zombie runner to swing off in every regular season game that's a tie after nine or however many innings. Again, like I would, number one, prefer, just do what we used to do, which is play until there's a winner. Number two, ties. I'm okay with ties.

And number three, well, I don't like any of the number three options, but you know, like the thing that was fun about the swing off is that it was something we didn't see coming and we've never seen before. And if you had this be routine, then then it stink. Like, you know, A, you're not gonna get all-star, the best hitters, I guess. Well, I don't know, I guess if you're gonna have the best hitters available, if it's a regular season game, and you can probably come up with three who were all-star caliber on just about any team.

But yeah, the charm would wear off, and I don't want a baseball game to be decided by one sliver of what constitutes the playing of baseball, which is hitting home runs. That's an important part of it, obviously. But yeah, even if even if you had like, and how would you even handle it? Would it be like off pitching machines? Would you have the opposing team? That's the weird thing when the stakes are actually there. The competition matters. You kind of can't do it because of that. Right.

Yeah, you have like some Traject machine out there, and it's just like a lot of whiffs, and eventually you hit a home run, but like 3% of the time. If I want to really be Slippery Slope Guy, then it's like, well, when Paul Skeens gets hurt, can I use the Traject machine to recreate him? Traject Skeens? Yeah, we have answered a clone question about Skeens gets hurt, can I use the Traject Machine to recreate him on my roster?

Yeah, we have answered a clone question about Skeens, but yeah, pitching machines. People are obsessed with that clone question, Ben. My goodness. Cause people talked about bringing in pitching machines in the Home Run Derby, because there is always that aspect, which wasn't that bad this year, but has frustrated me in many years,

which is just either the batting practice pitcher is wild or they do not understand the urgency of the timer and they're taking their time and ultimately it becomes as much about the batting practice pitcher's performance as the home run hitter which is weird and backward like it's yeah not the point yeah it's fun that you can have your dad throw to you or your old coach or whoever, your buddy. I like that aspect of things. It's kind of informal and emphasizes the family bonds and everything, which is one of the nice things about the Derby and the All-Star games. Like everyone's got their families and their kids and it's memorable for those kids and everything. Especially

when you have so many kids of big leaguers who are now themselves big leaguers and there's the whole generational thing of, I remember being here when I was a kid and now I have my kids there. You know, there's a lot of nepotism in pro sports these days because of the expense of amateur sports and all the other historical advantages that you have, but that is charming and heartwarming. But yeah, it's just, I would hate to see this become

a regular thing in anything other than an exhibition, and I'm just worried because of, maybe it's an unrealistic fear, but I've been burned before. And so I'm just, you know, when MLB gets a win and suddenly people are talking about the All-Star game and, ooh, this was so cool, it's just, it's hard to, you know, not have that be a Pandora's box or a slippery slope.

I get wanting to solve your problem, any problem you have of this sort. And the problem in this case is the game is taking too long and we're wearing out everyone's pitching staff. To solve the problem with the thing that is entertaining is the smart approach to take. And definitely the decision to swing off in this scenario is way better than like people going over to Bugged Ceiling and being like, what do we do? And then him just going like, well, I know Freddie Garcia has been warming up, but like, it's a tie. But in this case, you know, like with soccer shootouts, the way you're scoring is so much different than the way you have to go about trying to score during a game That it is offensive to my sense if it doesn't pass the smell test.

And the zombie runner thing, I'm with you, like, I've become more open to changes as a result of what I think are positive impacts of the changes that they have made. I personally think the zombie runner should be a first base thing in the 10th and maybe a second base thing in the 11th. I think it would be cool if you got to pick the runner every inning so that if you have Gerard Dyson on your roster, he's your runner every extra inning. And then the thing that is injected in that is fun is, well,

guess what? He's going to run. And so you have that piece of it that's like added into the fold rather than just like scoring period where when the zombie runner is on second base. So I guess it would be a 28 days later zombie runner if it's always draw Dyson and he's running. But yeah, I think the swing off thing would be a problem. What did you think of the of the challenge system, Ben?

I thought it was cool. I've yeah, I mean, we've been pretty pro Meg has convinced me that it's good. And yeah, I thought, we've been pretty pro. Meg has convinced me that it's good. And yeah, I thought with it being on the board and the stakes and the presentation of it all, I think it was savvy of MLB, I guess, to get it into this high-profile game, just to get everyone even more used to the idea than they were in spring training,

and see it in a high-profile spot, just to normalize it further before presumably implementing it next season. And it led to some suspense and some kind of collective oohs and aahs and that was pretty fun. The thing they should anticipate is strike three to Stowers toward the end. It looked like an obvious strike with the K-Zone, the broadcast's K-Zone. Yes. Like the entire ball was in the zone and then he challenged it and it had just like nipped

the zone per Hawkeye. And that has to be the same. Yeah, I think they have talked about just doing away with the K-Zone if we get challenges, which is another... Another good reason to create. Yeah, because I hate the K-Zone. I hate having it up there. So yeah, overall, good All-Star week, good events. And like, you know, the Aaron tribute

was nice, obviously sanitized. And MLB has been criticized for cutting off the end of the Vince Gulley call that made it clear that he was marveling at the fact that a black man in the South had just hit that home run and broken Babe Ruth's record and they conspicuously did not play that part of the call. So it was very, you know, calculated not to offend anyone as was all the messaging around the game actually being where it was after having

been moved years earlier and nothing really changing about the conditions on the ground otherwise and you know, Dave Roberts kind of danced around a question about that, etc. So they wanted to keep the focus off of anything that could possibly lead to any backlash or offend anyone and just make it the marquee jewel event that they wanted to be and they were fairly successful at that. I did want to point out, Meg, I saw a story about Cal that taught me something about him that I did not know,

which is that Cal Raleigh may have invented Beef Boy. What? Possibly before we did or we- Oh yeah, cause he had, he was called that in the minors at times, right? Yeah, so this was a story for NBC Sports or NBC News about his minor league career. He was at Modesto. This was 2019. And it says, at 6'2 and pushing 230 pounds, Raleigh was among the roster's bigger players

and he embraced his frame by helping form a club he nicknamed the Beef Boy. Oh my God. Raleigh's parents who owned a screen printing business in his North Carolina hometown had sent T-shirts with the outline of a cow and the words, 100% pure beef, no added steroids or fillers. Raleigh had also written a Beef Boy song

with lyrics to the tune of Die Grey's Drift Away. Oh my God. The qualifier to be a Beef Boy was that you had to be over like 225, 230 and you had to hit tanks. That's delightful. Yeah, I don't think I was aware of this. The Big Dumber has so supplanted Beef Boy. Right, yeah.

The legend of Cal that I guess he beat us to Beef Boy, or I forget exactly when we started saying that, but. I can't recall. It's been so many pods, man. We've just had so many. That's funny. I mean, look, I appreciate that there is, as is true for many players,

and you're reminded of it when you're in close physical proximity to them, like you are at an event like this where you're just like, these are some big guys, you know? They are tall, they are muscular, you know, they're the kinds of folks who, when they're in street clothes and you see them from behind, you're like, just look at their shoulders. That guy has to be a professional athlete.

And so I appreciate that there is a general sort of professional athlete largeness to Cal, but I do think that we have settled on the most notable largeness as it were with him. It's really about the dumper, Ben. You know, it's a, he know, he's an ass man. I don't know that I can recall a time recently, we were talking about this with various folks over the course of the week, like the national fixation on Cal's Hinder. Can't recall a time recently that we've been talking about a grown man's ass so freely as a culture, as a community.

Right, yeah. And the culture has gotten friendlier toward large posteriors just in general, I would say. And so its moment has arrived. There might've been a time where this would've been seen as derogatory and now it's really celebratory. It's, I guess it's objectification to some extent, but he's clearly come around on it

and is fine with it. So yeah, and it's funny, Sam put out a controversial Blue Sky post this week that he questioned whether the big dumper is actually that big. He said it's his most contrarian take, that he just doesn't think it's that big. He thinks it's just a normal-sized dumper?

I don't know if he thinks it's average, but just... Average is less judgment, is a better word. Because I don't mean like it's abnormal. I have no information that would suggest that there's anything weird about the dumper, simply that it is larger than average. I don't mean like it's abnormal. I have no information that would suggest that there's anything weird about the dumper, simply that it is larger than average. He did phrase it that way.

He said, my most contrarian take is that Calralli's butt is normal. And I assume what he means by that is like not disproportionate, you know, not overly large. And I'm with him to an extent. I think it's a big dumper, but I think that like if like if his entire nickname is that, it's not quite as big as I would think if like his whole public identity is based around it, you know? It's like, I don't know, man. If I

didn't know his nickname, I'm not sure that I would do a double take and be like, whoa, get a load of that big dumper. I don't know that I... Because, you know, compared to other catchers too, it's like Anthony Wrecker. That guy had a big butt. That guy, huge butt, like bigger. And I guess maybe it was more of a like, Ned Flanders in the Simpsons kind of butt than Cal has. I also think it's partly that Cal does not wear tight pants. You know, possibly because he wants to avoid accentuating the dumper, or yeah, maybe he just couldn't. But like, if he were in Spencer Strider, Walker Bueller pants, like...

I don't think you could crouch in those pants. I think they'd split it right in half. Yeah, so maybe if he were wearing that style of pant, then the dumper would be clear. But it's true. Like when I see it, sometimes I'm not like, Whoa, it's like, you know, that guy had a BBL or something. No, it's, it's, you know, it's, it's big.

I'm not saying it's a misnomer. It's just like, yeah, like the big unit, which obviously, you know, I'd like to, I just want everyone to take a moment to appreciate that Ben is the one saying this and not me. I just want us to all be clear on who is bringing up the unit in this moment. That nickname, that nickname could have been based on something else entirely, but it was based on height and how big Randy Johnson was. And he is big.

Like he, that's the first thing you think when you see Randy Johnson. That guy's huge. That guy's so tall. Yeah. There's no mistaking Randy Johnson at baggage claim. Right. Yeah. Yeah. Whereas I feel like Cal could blend in with a crowd more. And maybe it's just a but versus being 6'10". It's just, you know, a little less noticeable just in general.

Well, the culture was not ready for Jorge Alfaro, right? Like, as much as Jason Parkson, you know, was writing... Right, it was not just about Jorge Alfaro's tools, although it was, you know what I mean? Yeah, you hear stories about baseball players and big units that are pertained to different units. Once again, not me bringing this up.

Jorge Alfaro had a hose in all the ways it was possible to. And some of it is the culture evolving around the player because like lots of baseball players have had big keysters, including Anthony Rekker, whose butt got big later. Like Anthony Rekker went to my high school. My little, you know, 125 people in a class, public high school, Catasauqua, Pennsylvania. Like Anthony Recker is one of the couple of pro athletes to come from there and was in high school

when I was in middle school. Okay, yeah. Like when Buck Showalter closes his eyes, like visions of Anthony Wrecker's butt dance in his mind's eye. Basically. But like, yeah, so many do's, but some of it is just like, now we, yeah, you're right, we celebrate it now, and it's just, is the thing that has evolved, I think, around the player.

But I kind of do agree with Sam that, like, proportion to the rest of Cal's body. Sure, he's just Cal's body. Sure. He's just large all over. Yeah. Yeah. He's proportionate. But I think that if you are to, you know, if you had Cal, if you had a line of men and

I'm not saying they have to have their pants off, their pants can be on. That's the thing about the butt. You don't need a pants off situation to do this kind of check. If there's a line of men and they are standing there and you are comparing the size of their butts relative to one another, I imagine you're looking at Cal and going, that's a 90th percentile butt. And it is proportional. So you're right. It doesn't, it's not like he's like a Lewis Carroll character or something, but like, you know, he's, he's a, he's, look, he's, he's, he's big dumper. He's, he's got a big dumper. Yeah. I'm not a, I'm not a big dumper truther. Just, yeah, there's some, some merit to what Sam was saying. I'll allow it. Sir Makes A Lot was a head of the culture and

we've all just kind of caught up. So appropriate that he came. He went to my high school. Wow. My Instagram reels tell me like, do 20 squats and Cal Raleigh squats for three hours. You wanna live a long life? Just do 20 body squats like this every day.

And it's like, this guy is doing it hundreds and hundreds of times. Like, of course, of course it's gonna be like this every day. And it's like this guy is doing it hundreds and hundreds of times. Like, of course, of course it's going to be like this. Before we get to the draft, a couple, a couple of quick other items. Meg, I mentioned last time with Davey, your selfie with Blooper in the background. I'm relieved to hear that you survived this encounter, so you were in close proximity to Bloer. Don't know if you had any direct interaction,

but I assume that up close and personal, this was not any Weston's concern. No, no, and there was a moment later in the draft, and this could serve as transition if we wanted to, you know, famously, next year's All-Star Game draft, Futures Game, etc. will be in Philly. And so toward the end of the draft, there was a moment where Blooper and the fanatic took the stage together, and Blooper handed the fanatic a bat as if to pass the baton to the next

to pass the baton to the next mascot whose home city will serve as a venue for the draft. And I was sitting there hoping that the fanatic would beat him to death and just disappointed that he did not. I was like, look. Strangles him to death with his tongue? Yeah, or something. I know. Blood force trauma from a belly bash. He's just not It's not good. It remains unnatural. He remains a fleshy monstrosity. We were in sort of prime

mascot territory Mrs. Matt came and flirted with me at the beginning, but I was very occupied getting the mock out and And so I was not able to flirt back. And I feel badly because I was able to observe up close and personal the interaction between Mrs. Mett and Mr. Mett. And I don't know if it was his fall from the stage at a Lumineers concert, but the love seems to be out of the marriage. And so I think that if I had wanted to, I could be

Mrs. Metz, very special friend. So that felt like a missed opportunity. The Moose was there. The Moose remains a personal fave, but not because he is objectively a great mascot, but because he is my favorite teams. I think that Billy the Marlin is a hazard. I don't understand why they were like, let's do hard plastic, pointy nose, this seems smart. All it takes is somebody not paying attention, they're going to lose an eye. I was like, I've given the Mariners guff for their Trident, this is way more dangerous. What other mascot thoughts did I have? There were mascot security people and one of the mascot security people was a gal. Handlers. Handlers. She was in a t-shirt

that said mascot security and she was wearing aviators inside and I was like, is she doing a bit? Like, is she trying to look like she's like Secret Service? She had roll-tied gear. No, it was, it was Braves gear. I was wrong. It was just it was the a I It was the Braves a so she's bloopers. Yeah Yeah, I'm betraying my Status as a coastal elite that I could not distinguish those ace from one another It's my bad and I do feel badly about it. I feel bad about it blooper looks like a car that you

Like you get it and you, like, you get it, and you're like, oh, the air in the city I live in is too dirty to have a white car. Yes. That's what the mascot, like, skin, whatever fur looks like on him. Yeah. After snow falls in the city, and it's all, yeah, there's like a crust of darkened snow on top, and it's kind of gross. Yeah.

It's tough to come back from Mr. Met's indignity at that Lumineers concert, which is one of the funniest highlights I've seen, or bloopers, I guess it is a blooper. Not to invoke blooper again, but if you haven't seen that, anyone listening, you would take a look. It's a blooper of a blooper. It is, yeah.

He's at a Lumineers concert, they toss him a tambourine, he fails to catch it, which is understandable. I'm sure it's like restricted visibility in there with a big baseball head. And then he recovers from that and is confidently striding elsewhere on the stage. And there's like a juncture in the stage where it goes out into the crowd.

He just walks right off. And just an inadvertent crowd surf where there is no crowd and then just pops back up again. One of the best. Yeah, I hope he's okay as well. But the mascot costume probably provides ample cushioning. Obviously his head is well cushioned, I would think so. Now that he's got the fake guns, I think you're probably right.

He's like jacked under there. It's weird. The other thing that I talked to Davey about in an effort to forestall further emails was just about the Jack Caglione, Vinny Pasquentino kisses, which we received many a message about and you probably received more than I did. So many. So many. Thank you. You know, just like we got that, wanted to head off further emails at the pass. But if you did have any thoughts on that, obviously, you know, the Italian American connection. Oh yeah. The kissing if they want to,

which in this case, clearly they do. Clearly they did. And we've talked about, there have been other instances of this. There's been lots of twins, Minnesota twins, smooching. And you know, lots of like- As opposed to twins smooching, which could get into very dirty territory very quickly.

Lots of like, you know, pecks on the cheek, almost European. Lots of like top of the head kissing. Oh yeah, that's so nice. You know, we're not seeing like full on mouth to mouth here, which when, when you say only if they want to, like, I don't know whether that's within the realm of what you're talking about or hoping for or advocating. But we haven't really seen teams cross that frontier so much. But what Jack and Vinny have been doing, it's nice.

You know, it's just it goes to show that like rookies, they don't get hazed as much anymore. They're embraced, they're encouraged by the... How about that? Not that Vinny is like an old season veteran or something, but he's, he's been around a little bit and you know, obviously a character very good on, on Twitter, like our boy Brent Rooker and just fun to see them embrace and share that connection. I just like there being a variety of positive, tender, friendly affirmations that can exist between people. And I think that quite often men are discouraged

from engaging in those, and that's a bummer. And a lot of the expressions of excitement that we see on the baseball field, I think from pro athletes generally, and I will say this, this does seem to cut across gender, so it's not purely a gender thing, but a lot of it is like, you're doing the yell, and you're like,

ah, and you're so excited, and I'm happy that they're so excited, but I just think that humans contain so many different shades of emotion, and it's nice for there to be ones that are about seeming happiness, tenderness, affection. It just is good to tell the people in your life seeming happiness, tenderness, affection, it just is good to tell the people in your life who you love that you love them.

Give them a little peck if that's what you wanna do. And so I just think it's a nice thing and it can take on whatever shape feels best to them. But I'm glad that there is, that more forms of that kind of affection are being given expression. I think that's good. I also think it's, you know, like,

you cannot be more secure. Right. Yeah. Like as dudes, like, but I do, you know, as somebody, as a certain someone gets closer and closer to, you know, deeper into their arby years, there might be a Michael and Fredo thing happening. Ooh.

Because certain someones both play first base. Oh, oh wow. Drama. So I'm both play first base. Oh, drama. So, I'm just saying, don't get too attached to tweaking, Craig. The love affair will curdle. I'm going to be drinking daiquiris in Cuba and then it's going to really go south. Last thing is that, got to shout out Josh Joe Sheehan and his excellent newsletter at JoeSheehan.com because he provided further fodder for my, it's not a half of the season crusade, which probably pretty tiresome, I understand that, but he provided data.

He brought data. This is not pure pedantry. I mean, it is, but it's objectively based pedantry because Joe argued that the All-Star break is too late. Whether you think it's too late or not, it is inarguably later than it used to be in terms of the percentage of the season played. It's more or less when it was always played, but it's settled in as the second or third week of July now. And the start of the season has moved up and not just with a few international games, but seasons start in March now. And they used to start typically in mid April for a long time, or at least like first week of April. And so the start date keeps moving up to accommodate expanded playoffs and more playoff rounds. You either have to go later, which they've done sometimes,

or start earlier, or both, and you're contending with potentially bad weather on either end. And so if you keep the All-Star game in the same spot, more or less, in July, and you move up the start of the season, well then a higher percentage of the season will have been played by the All-Star break. And that is exactly what Joe showed. And so this year we're at 59.5% of the season

has been completed. Last season it was 59.7%. There was only one prior year, little bit of an outlier in 1973, it was 60%. But most of the time, like this year and last year, are the second and third highest percentages of the season completed by the All-Star break. And for many years, it was 50-50. It was actually a half.

And so like, I'm fine with the origin of saying first half, second half, it was accurate at one time. Like in 1990, it was 50.6% of the regular season was completed by the All-Star break. 1991, 49.8%. Even I am not pedantic enough to complain about calling it first, second half, when it's that close to 50-50. But now it's 60-40. That's just not a half.

It's just not. And this, I think, has implications. Now, Joe is arguing that it actually, it's worse for the rhythm of the season, that one reason why you have an All-Star break is actually to give guys a break so that they can rest and recuperate. And so if you're going deeper into the season, then maybe that's not good. Granted, I guess the playoffs go deeper into October

and even November sometimes. And so maybe for some players, it ends up being roughly the same percentage. But for most, maybe they're getting gassed before the break. Plus it distorts all the fun facts because there are so many fun facts about like, most X before, you know, in the first half, before the All-Star break, whatever it is, and it's just a totally different percentage of the season. And a lot of people still do the mental math of like,

okay, you have X wins at the All-Star break. We can just double that. That's what you're on pace for. Or you've hit X X wins at the All-Star break. We can just double that. That's what you're on pace for. Or you've hit X home runs by the All-Star break. Double that. That's what you're on pace for. And now that's not even close to true. Unfortunately, we have fan crafts

and it's on pace projections page to correct these misperceptions. But just saying, it's not a half. It's further from being a half than it's ever been. And we got an email from valued, treasured Patreon supporter, Peter, who wanted to out-pedant me. And I mean, if you're gonna try to go toe to toe with me when it comes to a pedantry competition,

you better be prepared. And Peter, I think came in and thought he had his trump card and he said, I come to be pedantic about Ben's pedantry. My take, it's fine to refer to the post-Allstar break as the second half of the season. Why? Because in all sorts of media, the haves are unequal. The second half of most plays are often shorter, the same with movies that include intermissions and often books too. If you were watching The Brutalist, for example, and whispered before the intermission

that the second half starts now, I'd consider you a crazy person. Just because the second half isn't at the 50% mark doesn't mean that the break plays a big role. I reject the premise of this argument because I wouldn't call any of those things halves either. I would refer to a second act of a play. If it's not in the middle of the play, yeah, I'd call it a second act,

a second part, a second section, a second chapter. A half is a half. I mean, I guess, like, there's one definition by which maybe it makes sense, like, if you. Like if you say that you have two things, you have two sections, and so one of the two is half of the things. You have two things, one of the things is half of the things. But I think we're talking about a percentage of the whole, not a percentage of the number of subsections.

You know, it's like when people joke about, oh, you have a 50-50 shot of being right or wrong or whatever, it's like it's going to be one or the other, right? It's either it's going to be true or false or whatever it is. And so there are only two options for responses. So you got a 50% chance of being right, but not really. Everyone knows that's kind of tongue in cheek and you don't actually. So just what I'm saying, just thanks to Joe, my campaign continues. I sometimes complain about nitpicky emails

that we get of my verbal texture personhood and I'm gaining insight into the environment we've created and maybe facility of those beings. Just saying. If your expectations are, I'm trying to think of a possible solution for this and it is really difficult. Like there are too many cuts of meat, you know, or you pull like Twinkies apart or whatever

and a certain chunk of Twinkie is left onto the one like where you separate an Oreo and the frosting goes on one side. Yeah. We had a Patreon supporter named Mac who suggested calling the post-All-Star break portion of the season the back nine Because it's like nine twentieths of the season remaining kind of But I thought that would probably still be kind of confusing because it's kind of confusing Yeah, cuz you know in golf the back nine It's still half of the holes and so I think most people would would think of it as

half of the holes and so I think most people would think of it as synonymous with the golf meaning where it is half and then we're right back at second half but I do appreciate the attempt. I would like the All-Star Break to be whenever it is the nicest in the place they want to have it. Oh my, amen. Within a window, a reasonable window but like yeah if you want to have a May 30th start to your All-Star weekend, if it means putting it here or like in Texas or something where it's like nicer than it is, like you don't want to have an All-Star weekend in Phoenix and it's 117 every day. You don't want to do that.

And I would imagine with like the stadium getting renovated, uh, that Arizona will get one again in the next decade. But yeah, he can't do that. I don't know. Joe just suggested a week earlier, it wouldn't be out of line with where it's been historically, it would still be, I guess, more than 50%, but close enough that I wouldn't make

as much of a stink about it, probably. Probably. Yeah, anyway, the Olympics are coming up in a few years and that's going to disrupt things. And maybe like the Olympics, that's going to be like July 15th to 20th. Maybe that ends up with the break being moved earlier to be in advance of the Olympics. I don't know. Or maybe it replaces the all-star break, which I'm sure MLB doesn't want because less revenue. Anyway, let's proceed to the second half of this podcast, the second act at least of this podcast. And

we'll talk about the draft and if you want to give any future game in person looks or anything like that, feel free. But yeah, maybe we can just, we can do a kind of condensed version of the draft digest that we usually do on this podcast, but we could maybe start at the top, I guess, because that was... I mean, you tell me, but it didn't seem like there was a clear consensus, no doubt, number one. And then everyone learned that Reggie Willetts has a son

who is of age to be drafted by a virtually team. Barely, to be fair. Seventeen-year- old Eli Willits, who is I guess the youngest draftee ever or since Ken Griffey Jr. It's been a long time. And I guess all else being equal, the younger the better for a draftee, but is all else equal? Like, did this make sense? Do you think this was disrupted at all by the disruption in the nationals front office? Were there designs on moves later in the draft that made this made sense?

Or are you as high on Willetts as the nationals are? And does he have more power than his dad? Which would be hard not to have, I guess. I remember Reggie Willetts fondly. That one year he had it, he was fun for a little while, you know? Just speedster, slap hitter, but not the type of profile that would go one-one. So I'm guessing that Eli's a little different.

He's a shortstop. I mean, I guess what draftee who's 17 and is taken at the top of the draft is not a shortstop in high school, I guess, but still. I think some of the like dynamics of the progeny part of it are really fascinating now that I've been doing this long enough for there to have been so many young players whose fathers were big leaguers or ex-athletes of some kind.

And look, Eli Willis, yeah, he's 17 and a half. I don't know that he's one of the youngest draftees ever or since a certain time, that might be true. It does feel, we've had a number of reclassifications over the last decade or so where players move from one draft class to the other, like they accelerate their academic calendar and graduate or get their GED or the homeschooling laws in their state are loose or whatever it is, and they graduate high school a year early. And I think as parents, especially baseball parents, have become hip to the idea that teams operate in a more model-driven way, at least a greater percentage of the teams

do, care about the age of high school players, terrified of 19 year old high school players, more intrigued by the idea of 17 year old high school players just because of historical precedent. I think there's less signal in some of that stuff when part of the reason Ken Griffey Jr. is drafted at the age he is with the sort of confidence that he's drafted, that he was, is because of how special he was. It wasn't just that he's 17 when he's drafted that made Ken Griffey Jr. good. So I do think that some of the behavior of all the stakeholders, both the teams and now

baseball parents, there's less signal in some of this stuff. But I do think Eli Willits is a really good player. And I do think that there is a greater error bar in terms of projecting him as an athlete in a physical sense, because he is 17 and a half years old and Billy Carlson is 19. And at this age, as I'm sure we've talked about on this show, 18 months is a big deal for physical development, social development. Like we're just young people. So Eli Willits does everything else.

He's an excellent shortstop defender. He's a great contact hitter and he is not built like 17 year old Ellie De La Cruz or Fernando Tatis Jr. And so it's not obvious that at 23, he's going to have that kind of power and physicality or build or anything like that. And it's just sort of going to be up to him how strong he gets. And there are plenty of athletes who are like Eli Willis's and, you know, go through, enter their physical prime, like having done hard work and like been on good strength and conditioning programs because

the personnel that their organization employs in those spaces are like, they really know what they're doing. And so yeah, like he could be very good. Part of the Nationals motivation was, you know, the financial part of this, the strategic, really more the strategic drafting part of this, that they had a number of players in mind at the top of the draft. As the draft approached, like we're talking the hours

leading up to the draft, as I'm finishing my mock and working on this stuff and seeing, trying to sift through BS and what is real, it did seem true that they were exploring Willett, Holliday, and Kate Anderson, and whichever of that group would take the least amount of money, they would do. Just condensing the negotiating period down to like that amount of time. And so just logically, because of like during the mock draft period of time, like once teams start getting into the room and meeting the week and a half,

two weeks before the draft, some more of this stuff starts to emerge. It did seem like the Rizzo stuff made it harder for people on the outside to have a feel for what was going on. And that maybe some of like the Scott Boris of it all who represented Ethan Holliday, Kate Anderson, that that was complicating things on this end too. You know, if you're negotiating with individual players and they're separate from one another, like there's like a prisoner's dilemma almost that's created by this dynamic of having one agent representing multiple parties and he gets to know what one of the other players numbers, he knows what two of the three players like numbers are basically.

And so it just made it seem logical to me that it would be Willets who would take the least amount of money of that group. Now what that allowed them to do is, you know, I think if we're just doing the logical part of it here, Eli Willett's next home in the draft seemed like it was five to St. Louis and slot at five is $8 million. And so the slot at one is $11 million. And so if you can offer Eli Willett $8.1 million to be the first pick in the draft, he has incentive to say, yes, I'll do that.

But if Kate Anderson and Ethan Holliday might go two, three, four, they don't necessarily have the incentive to do it for not as much anyway. So the Nationals have other high school players later in this class, Landon Harmon, who they took in the third round, Miguel Samae in the fourth round. They're hard throwing high school pitchers. Landon Harmon I really, really like. I had him just like pure ranking wise towards the back of the first round. Miguel Samae is a high school player from New York who is more likely a reliever, but he's

like a high school kid who throws a hundred. And sometimes these guys become Harlan Susana or whatever. He is freaky in this way and we'll just see how it goes. He sure looks like a reliever now, but he's a high school kid. He's a six foot four, 240 pound high school kid from New York. And so who knows what he might be. And then Koi James, who they took in fifth round, like now we're talking about taking seven figure high school players deep in the draft because of what they were able to execute at the very top of the draft, cutting an under slot deal with Eli Willits. And then probably I would guess an under slot deal in the second round with Ethan Petrie,

the power hitting realistically like first base DH type guy from South Carolina, a college player. In a relatively short amount of time, you know, that this new nationals leadership, I mean, it's not really like there's, it was a pretty seamless transition. Like you have an interim person who's been there. There are people in the industry who are just like not sure who's making the pick or the picks plural. And so I think we're still sussing that stuff out, but they had continuity.

It is mostly the scouting director and cross checkers who are like running the bulk of your draft. No doubt when you're picking first, like Mike Rizzo would have been involved in that decision making process. And then suddenly wasn't. So there's a change. But really they mostly just had continuity and I think it was fine. But I thought they did pretty well.

I really like a lot of the players they took. There are high upside high school players in this class and a lot of the teams who I would class, it's interesting because the Nationals who you might consider at least under Rizzo to to have been on the old school side of the continuum just because of Rizzo, and not that they're an ignorant franchise, but just that the person in charge is more that way. In this draft, employed a strategy that the Milwaukee Brewers, who I think we would all say is on the other end of the highly analytical and decision-making processes are this and that particular way,

end of the spectrum. This thing again, that we've talked about for the last several years where their class includes how many this year? Well over half a dozen high school players because they're cutting deals and they're having like a go wide style draft class on high schoolers and Like using more of the draft like using more of the space that 20 rounds of a draft affords you To try to deploy this strategy while other teams the their money is spent down to the penny by the end of round 11. And then the rest of their draft is organizational players, basically 125K bonuses and below

players maybe they've like left wiggle room to try to leverage, you know, 25K here and there to get the players they want who they know have agents, you know We'll give you 150 K to come here rather than be the 15th rounder at 125 K somewhere else but like mostly teams are kind of done and So for some of these teams Like Milwaukee to structure their first 10 rounds such that they still have money to throw around on day two 10 rounds such that they still have money to throw around on day two and be able to do it when the draft is a day shorter, like just the logistics of time. When rather than have 20 rounds spread across three days and in between day one and two

have time to strategize in between day two and three have time to do accounting for how much bonus pool you've spent and then re-strategize and be like, okay, what players do we like who are out there who are signable for the amount of money that we think we have left? And let's call their agents and see if that's still their number and that kind of stuff.

What are the medicals on those five players? And all of that was condensed down to like an hour's worth of time. So the amount of preparation, right? Because rather than the day two and after round 10, and then the next 10 rounds or day three, you had an hour between round 10 and 11. And so, you know, just the...

What must have been going on in the draft rooms at those times, just to, you know, and the preparation to be on point and have your ducks in a row so that you weren't scrambling during that timeframe and like knew what you could possibly do. Yeah, like these, this is the nitty gritty stuff that like has nothing to do with anyone's like 30 yard dash time. And, but like, it's really important.

You can definitely see some of these teams like leveraging that that is a difficult thing and operating in this way that is novel relative to the most of the rest of the league. They are like done drafting this entire, you just have your pick of every high school player from for the last 10 rounds because you're one of the only couple of teams who has like budgeted to give a bunch of them in the mid six figures and they're not even know like I'm the Brewers don't know which of these guys they are actually going to sign. Some of them they won't, like, some of them are contingencies. Right.

They're just, they're still negotiating with these players and trying to fit as many of them into their bonus pool as they can. Yeah, speaking of that compression, the, that's another, I guess, reason to maybe move the All-Star game a little earlier, if you insist on packaging the All-Star break and the draft, which I know is controversial with a lot of teams. It's not controversial, they all hate it. Yeah, okay, they all hate it.

Let's state that plainly. Strong consensus. Yeah, so another reason why having the All-Star break this late. And of course, you don't have to have the draft and the All-Star game at the same time. It didn't used to be, but if you are going to insist on doing that, then the All-Star break coming as late as it does in close proximity to the trade deadline, where you have people who are trying to prep for the draft and the deadline at the same time, just another pile up. Yeah. Yeah, you've made the degree of difficulty like

PG national for 2026 class, you know, this enormous week long showcase, it's grueling, it's in Phoenix, it's 110 degrees every day, and you're watching baseball for 12 hours a day. And it's all during the window of time right before the draft when theoretically you should be doing everything I just said. You know, and some scouts are just left in like out of draft rooms entirely because they've already started on 2026. People are on the

Cape and some of the prospects for like some of the weird knock on effects of this stuff being as late as it has been after the pandemic is if you're JT Quinn, or if you're Nick Nostrini, you go to the Cape after the college season to rebuild your stock or whatever. Or if you're a player who's interesting, but didn't have a great spring or you were hurt or whatever it is, now the draft is late enough that you can go to the Cape and show scouts. I was watching a guy in the lead up to the draft working on updates. His name is JT Quinn. Quinn was the Orioles comp pick after the second round. He went to Georgia

and he was okay, but it was one of those situations where why not show that you're healthy and throwing hard on the cape? And so I put on the tape and like, there's the Yankee scouting director and it's like July 1st. And like, you know, right behind home plate, like in clear view is like, for people who I recognize. So yeah, it's definitely a strange thing. But that's, you know, it's good for JT Quinn to be able to have that opportunity to show that while people just catch it and they're just like, oh yeah, this guy looks, he's throwing 95, like good, I know that about him. Whereas it's been since May when I saw the guy whose team didn't even make the conference

playoffs or whatever. So given that sort of strange environment, both generally and then this year with the, we should be clear, the same number of rounds occurred, but they just happened over two days rather than three, which is what is typical. And good luck to both of us remembering whether to say day two or day three for any of these guys in their reports next year. Good luck to all of us on that. And by us, I mean me mostly.

I'm curious, you know, I know that we can't grade a draft class, certainly not a couple of days after it's come together. A lot of these guys have not signed yet, so we don't know what the class for each of these teams is even necessarily going to be. But who struck you as the draft has concluded here as having a particularly good couple of days, which were the teams whose classes sort of excited you the most in terms of their prospect potential? Yeah, I thought I liked the player pool in this draft class in general.

And so there were a lot of teams whose halls, I was just like, I sit back and go like, this is a nice little cluster of dudes like to add into their farm system. I thought Pittsburgh did well. Pittsburgh and I, as far as draft stuff, like often mesh pretty well. They got three of my top 30 players. The one guy who I was like sort of the black sheep on from those three was

Murph Gray, the third baseman at Fresno State, who's just sort of like physically freaky, big, powerful guy. Third base, like 6'5", you know, 240 type of dude who really overhauled his swing this year. Much more pole oriented, like my notes, as far as what was happening with like the nature of his contact from the off season to now, like we're totally different, you know, 2024 and 2025 and performed, you know, amid the swing change and is, you know, like a maybe third baseman

where he's just size wise, you don't know. But athletically and arm strength wise, it's like, yes. So the thing that is tough about him is, you know, tough to sort of nail down is he beat up on small conference pitching. The data, you know, against small conference pitching is great. I think he's in like an 89% zone contact guy who's, you know, 6'4 pull power. Like I really liked him. But there is just this delta on how do you project this guy's hit tool when he's facing dudes who throw like 88, 91 every weekend.

Like the Friday night starter at some of these like mid major schools is a dude with a good breaking ball who like sits 90. So it's tough to nail that down. But the other guys, you know, Seth Hernandez, who they took six overall, he's in that pantheon of like, is this the best high school pitcher I've ever seen? Like, you know, you see him on the right day and that's what it looks like. It looks like, you know, Hunter Green, it looks like Dylan Lesko, it looks like Josh Beckett. It's that type of thing where he's overpowering really good high school hitters.

In Hernandez's case, there are times when the strikes aren't there, when his fastball location is just loose in the zone and you see that the shape of his fastball doesn't quite play to the level of his velocity, you know, like Roki Sasaki type stuff where you go, huh, that's like 98 but Everyone's hitting it or at least fouling it off What's going on with that? We should we should probably know about that before we take a guy and in the top, you know, three or five or whatever What we're gonna do about that. We should have some preconceived notions about what we're going to do. But just like crazy athlete, two-way high school player, a first baseman with power and amazing defense and just like your prototypical top of the draft high school pitcher, the best high school

change up you've ever seen, or certainly in that pantheon for me. And then Angel Cervantes, who they took 50th, he's a high school pitcher from California as well. This is, you know, he's shy of 18, 6'3", 195 pound dude who last summer it was, hey, this guy's delivery is kind of a mess and he's like not in the best shape. And it was really a, if this player during the offseason changes his conditioning, then next spring he could absolutely be a first round pick and that's what happened. So you know I imagine

that he'll get over slot money at 50. He'll get something in the in like the two two and a half million dollar range I would guess and I absolutely had him in that area. And then at pick 113, they took Gustavo Melendez, who was a Puerto Rican high school infielder, who was just like my type of player, where it's like, he's five nine, and actually he might not even be five nine.

I have him listed as five nine. I think the East Coast Pro player guidebook that is sitting on Kylie's desk right now has him at 5'8". Really good athlete, compact little guy, but is powerful for his size. Has some of the stuff happening with his swing that makes me believe, yeah, this is a special athlete of some kind. Even though he's little, he's not a shrimpy, small guy.

He's short, but he's not small. And so I really like him too. Another one where he's 17 and a half. Now he's one of those players where if I'm in a draft room, I'm saying, hey, can you make the model not adjust him for his age? Like, because at five, eight hundred and, you know,

75 pounds, he's not projectable in the way the model thinks. A 17 and a half year old is projectable. And wants to say, well, his future power will be this because it's this right now. It's like, no, like this kid's mostly done growing and any more than what he has would maybe start to be detrimental to his mobility because he's like already so physically strong

for a five, eight kid. Like he's built like a little wrestler. And so that's one where it's just like, make it to 18 and a half in the model, like manually put it in there. But yeah, so I thought they had a good class. Baltimore had a really good class in part because they had a lot of picks

and they traded Brian Baker for a pick right before the draft and added an extra pick at the end. It was interesting, I thought, you know, those two teams coming together for that particular deal is interesting for a number of reasons because it kind of shows us the going rate for a pick like that. Where it's like, Brian Baker is a good middle reliever and the 37th, I think most, you know, I don't think a person who was thinking about baseball at all this way could be described

as casual, but I think most people, if you told them, pick a player on every team who you think is worth like a late first round, early second round pick, basically, they would shoot for higher than solid middle reliever. And so I think that kind of like speaks to anytime there's a one for one Alex Claudio got traded for like the 41st overall pick at 1.2 Yeah, this is just sort of the going rate for a pick around this area is like middle reliever So that's a thing to keep in mind Baltimore yeah a lot of different picks they had one two three four five six seven

picks in the top 100 so you know I thought that they got a lot of good players like Irish fell on draft night because Well first of all this I mean it's an interesting story that as this transpired, people didn't know what was going on. That like people expected Irish would go somewhere in the two to seven, you know, maybe nine range. And then he didn't go. And at the very beginning of the draft, so I'm sitting there and like 10 minutes before the draft, I'm sitting there and I learn that it's going to be Willett. And then it becomes like trying to figure out who would go in the next couple. And as rumors of that,

like I'm texting people in draft rooms who were in the top 10 because they want to know too. And Anaheim has been very quiet except that people are just like, they're going to do what they do and take a college pitcher who they're going to put in the big leagues like very quickly. And I had multiple people text me, you know, hey, we hear like Irish is going too.

I don't know how that happened. And it's possible that one person got bad information because as the night transpired... And then spread it to everyone else. Yes, like there were times the other night when I'm pretty sure, like anytime I heard one thing from a particular two people, I just counted it as it being the same person.

You know what I mean? Like, it seemed clear that they were communicating with each other, and if one of them heard it from the other, like, they were telling each other and then me. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like, any information, they were sharing information and then sharing it with me.

So I just counted it as one person the whole night. But anyway, that's, I think what happened with this Irish situation and that maybe someone just got bad, dope in the moment. But then they took Tyler Bremner and it was a surprise, not because Bremner is not talented, like he is, but there just wasn't any real connection with those two. And I think you could tell Bremner, like, on the broadcast was also very surprised. There was some Bremner smoke at three, but that was like the if the Mariners do the sort of thing that they've done

in recent drafts where they cut a big deal and then also get like a bunch of high, you know, bonus high schoolers, that Bremner was the guy who they would do that with at three. But then the Irish start to unfold, and I I have teams now in more than the middle third and back third of the draft asking like, what's going on with this? And these are people who did not think that Ike Irish had any chance of sniffing their pick. And so they have not had reason to do the same kind of makeup work on a player like

Ike Irish as someone who you think maybe you do want to, like, will be there at your pick. And so they're all scrambling to try to find out, like, did this guy flunk someone's medical, a bunch of teams' medicals, but not ours, or like, what happened here? And so like people are efforting to find out and they, you know, are telling me that there's like video circulating of like him saying like hateful bigoted stuff. And so I haven't seen the video but like that is seems like we're scared enough of it that they passed or

we're like at least trying to find out and didn't know and weren't comfortable or whatever it is. And then there was someone sitting right next to Megan and I at the draft who was like, some of this is also just like, people don't think he can catch and his splits against velocity are bad. Like not everyone necessarily was out like because they knew this. Or concerned about a video they haven't seen. They like had Ike Irish further down their board and just took the player that they had at

the top without thinking about Ike Irish at all. But it did seem that this happened and that was part of the reason he fell. And as far as Baltimore is concerned, it is a pretty buttoned up room in general, and I have no idea. And they have plausible deniability about not knowing about it because the notion that he would have been there and the idea that they could have found out before they picked, you want to find out before you pick so that you're not having to deal with the possibility of someone like me saying something like this on a podcast, I guess.

But it's tough because everyone else is on TV. So it's like no one else in the moment really can sit there and try to figure out what's going on because they're all on TV. Yeah, that's your competitive advantage, not being on TV, I guess. To some extent, it's my competitive advantage. And to another extent, it's like my Eli Willis crossed the bear. I did want to ask you about Ethan Holliday, who was at one point thought to be a possible number one Mike Rizzo pick. He ends up going to the Rockies at number four. So you have a Holliday family connection there. And with anyone else, if it were someone

who were less highly touted, I'd think, oh, it's the Rockies Rockiesing because they just wanted another holiday or something. But obviously he's a top talent and you had him number three on your mock going to the Mariners, but then the Mariners took your number four, Kate Anderson. And so holiday went to the Rockies.

So just because people know that there's another holiday. How does this holiday compare to the two previous holidays? And should we think any differently of the Rockies for having gone to the holiday well once more? Ethan holiday is tough because he does emphatically check, you know, the box of in the Scouting Manifesto, underlined rule number one, is bet on freaks. He's got just so much left-handed power and I don't know, it's just crazy. Like, he swings so hard, you guys. And the thing is, like, he didn't really perform on the high school showcase circuit in a way that would truly indicate and make one comfortable that it is a slam dunk, no doubt thing.

People should not spend hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars on one of one, Ethan Holiday, Boehm and, like, please don't. This guy slugged under 400 in a big sample on the showcase circuit because as big as his power is, it did not play in games on the showcase circuit in the way that like you wanted it to. It was surprising for me too. Like, you know, like he has some of the Drew Jones markers where he can't turn on fastballs at all. This type of stuff where in high school, if it's happening,

then in pro ball, you don't really know how it's going to go. It might be a thing that requires a substantial adjustment to try to fix and you might not be able to do it. Now in Drew Jones case, he does not have this kind of power. He does not have this kind of like physical strength. Drew Jones is one of those players who just really hasn't gotten a whole lot stronger. Like his body just isn't whether I don't know like how much he's I'm sure he's worked at it. Like in the Diamondbacks made Corbin Carroll

as strong as he is. Yeah. Right, like, so it's not, I don't think it's that issue. I just think it's like Drew can't get strong in that way. And Ethan Holliday is already like way, way that strong at his age in like a big league, in a way that would stand out on a big league field already. I hope that he and the Rockies and presumably his dad can find a thing that works for him.

But like this is one of the sort of same sort of thing that like, hey, Zach Vien isn't pulling any of these fastballs. What's up with that? Like Rockies fans should be intimately familiar with this dynamic where, boy, this guy's tools sure are big, but he really can't do anything with elevated fastballs. And so we're gonna see how that goes for Ethan. There has to be some sort of adjustment here and the Rockies have not really been able to make their players better. So that's going to be tough.

It's going to be interesting. Just want to get your quick take on one other physical outlier here. You were talking about a littler player who was solidly built. This is the opposite of that. Jason Wrights. I just I got to ask you about Jason Wrights, who was the the twins fourth round pick, 119 overall. He's a 20 year old junior about to be 21 out of Oregon. And he, I mean, we talked about the big unit.

This is the bigger unit. He is, he's 6'11", 215 is the listed weight. And so he looks so elongated. He looks like the Savannah bananas guy on stilts essentially. And you know, he's a pitcher obviously. So, and I guess he's exactly what you would expect for just a giant like that, like, you know, long levers and hard to repeat the delivery,

many moving parts and command can be an issue, et cetera. But man, like I saw a photo of him and I was just like, wow, there are not a lot of basketball, or not a lot of, Freudian slip there, cause there are some basketball players who look like that. There are not a lot of baseball players who do. But he looks more like Wemby than he looks like a baseball player.

Yes. Yeah, it kind of broke my brain a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, he's good. It kind of broke my brain a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. He's good. The twins track traffic in big pitchers like this, you know, like the Bailey-Obers of the world and stuff. Like, I think they have plenty of, of comfort and history with, uh, developing guys like this who exceed our expectations.

I think, you know, this is one of those guys when those guys when he goes, it's like, oh, of course, this guy should have been on my top 150. I feel pretty good about Jason Reitz being a big leaguer. It's not that bad, Ben. The strikes, it's not terrible. For a 6'11 guy who's sitting, you know, 90, 195 basically. It's like 60% fastball strikes. And the thing that the twins have to reckon with is like below average fastball

playability, like his size is helping how much depth is on his secondary stuff. Like just the dudes who are that big, the bigger you are, your stuff just starts downhill anyway. And then when your slider starts, it's break or your change up starts to sink or whatever it is. It just accelerates the rate at which it is sinking. It just gives it like more room and time to do its movement because your release point has started from higher above the ground. There's just more room for it to break down and down and down and so he benefits from that and so like both of his secondary pitches sliders like like 84 87 like it's it's not like a 79 mile an hour Curveball like he's throwing a hard slider his changeup is hard to both of them you know, we're north of 40% in terms of miss and 30% chase and, you know,

he's throwing all of them for strikes 60% or more at the time. Like, it's starter traits. It's just like his fastball gets shelled and the twins are gonna have to figure out a way to just be like, hey, so hold your fastball like this and release it like this and now it sinks too. See, all right, good. Like, go to St. Paul.

See you in St. Paul and 12 months Mm-hmm. Yeah He's gonna be a big leaguer regardless of the league. I think so Big big yeah, it's it's appropriate the twins took him because he's two people sacked on top of yeah There is one guy I want to ask you about before We go and I would like to give you an opportunity to sing before we go. And I would like to give you an opportunity to sing the ballad of Marcus Phillips, because this is a guy you were very excited about. He went to the Red Sox. You were pleased he went to a team that seems to have acumen for developing starting pitching.

Tell us about Marcus Phillips. I don't know. Marcus Phillips is a pitcher from Tennessee who just had, he's like, you know, looks like most big league starters do. He moves like most big league starters do. He throws really hard. He's another player where the shape of his fastball is not good for the way it plays. But I just think that the physical characteristics, teams can do so much with development that the physical characteristics are just mostly what I care about.

And so, you know, Brian Wu at one point was like, Hey, that guy's built like a pitcher and moves like a pitcher and he is a 70 RA. And the Mariners were like, actually, we know how to mold athletes into good pitchers. And that is precisely the sort of thing that I think can be done with, well, with everybody on, you know, whatever prospect was basically. But I think Marcus Phillips is especially ripe for cogent development. I think, you know, no offense, the University of Tennessee is a powerhouse in college baseball. It is the powerhouse in college baseball. And I know,

you know, LSU is right there too, I suppose. But in terms of producing talent that Major League Baseball cares about, it is Tennessee that is king. Of course, LSU is actually champion. But yeah, so, but they don't develop pitchers. I don't think to the degree to which they could I think that they are a recruiting machine but I think the Boston Red Sox are very good at developing pitchers and You know there have been times in the past where you like a player and then a team that is maybe not particularly good at Developing players drafts the player that you really liked and you go, now I'm going to be wrong about the guy I liked.

But for this one, I was like, oh, good. You put your neck into the guillotine of public opinion with every individual player. All 1500 players you write up over the course of nine months, you're just sort of like at least making their mom angry sometimes. And understandably, you like to try to be right about whoever. So Colby Thomas, like sorry, Colby Thomas' mom. But sorry. But yeah, like Marcus Phillips, now that he's Red Talk, it's like, okay, good.

Maybe this will work out the way I'm envisioning it to, even if it's just like, hey, Michael Kopeck, it's the same thing. I'm not disappointed in Michael Kopeck. I think the fact that he has had the career that he's had given some of the stuff he's had to overcome is like amazing. And some of it is just because like he does move like that. It's like amazing. And Marcus Phillips is in that area.

There's so many players I thought was a fun draft and yeah, it could go on and on and on about dozens of players, but you might as well just read the however many hundred thousand words it was. Yeah, the last thing I wanna ask you, I forwarded a study to you. I don't know if you've had time to read it because you've been busy, but there was a study last week at Down on the Farm, the substack by the oyster analytics guys, Maxfield Lane

and Owen Riley. And they basically looked at where does it make sense to spend money on the amateur market? What's the most bang for your buck or what's most predictive? And we know that like there's, there's a lot of noise in the draft. There's a lot of unpredictability and variation, but there's also some signal. There's a correlation between how high you're drafted and how good you are or how big your bonus is

and how good you are. But what they found is that on the international market, international amateurs, that's not the case evidently. That according to their research, at least, there's just no correlation between the size of the bonus and that player's production down the road. And you and Kylie wrote a lot about the international market in Future Value, your book. And it's interesting because this is the time of year when in the past, we would have been talking about J2 and, you know, the international market. Now it's moved, it's January and the signing period is different. So it's not as top of mind.

But I was thinking about this because of the draft. And so their strategy, basically, they said what we would do is just like quantity over quality, basically. Like we wouldn't hand out the biggest bonus to anyone because it's just, you know, throwing darts basically, and you just want as many mixing metaphors here, but as many lotto tickets as you can, essentially, is that the way that you feel? Do you feel like the draft is just miles in a way more predictive than you know, because you're not an international scouting guy as much like you're not doing quite as many reports and everything on, you know, like the 16 year olds who's just eligible

to sign now. And no wonder, like it makes sense that it'd be hard to project those guys because they're so young and there's so much more development and physical growth to happen. But I thought it was an interesting finding. Like I, it doesn't surprise me that there's not much signal there, but that there's not any evidently on the whole. That was kind of a revelation to me. Yeah.

I think there was a point where the bonus amounts still correlated. And then there, I think as the CBA changed and we got to the point where we are now, where more and more often the teams are coming to verbal agreements with the players at younger and younger ages that it is just inherently becoming more volatile. I would want to study it during the windows. You can't just use the rules of the CBA, I suppose, as like the markers for like the eras of team behavior because the agreements have been done years in advance.

And so like there's sort of a blending that happens at the margins of it, or at least along the seams of it. it but I do think the general trend at play here is coming to agreement with players earlier and earlier and earlier. It has crept over time as the current rules have been in place and seemingly stable for a while. You know, crept earlier and earlier and earlier. I don't know what a good solution is. It is an icky, bad thing. The people who tend to, again, not necessarily get ahead because as you said,

we're past the point of there being correlation between the bonus amounts and productivity. And for sure, there is at least like a half decades worth of window You know like a star dying, you know, like as we're sitting here right now The 2021 international class like its pro outcomes have not even remotely come close to playing out neither has 22 22 or 23 like the post pandemic Means for this market. We don't really know a whole lot about it just yet, but like, it's gross, you know, when you have a deal with kid four plus years out and yeah, I just, I think there's hubris involved. You just have no idea what's going to happen between now and then. victim of the observer effect to some point because now the adolescent boy that you've promised millions of dollars to can just, how he handles that, how the hell do you have

any idea how that's going to go? But I don't know what a solution is because the draft, an international draft part of it is bad for other reasons where the players lose their agency to some extent and where you're doubling the incentive to tank in a way. If we make the players wait longer to enter pro baseball than age 16, then you're also reducing, like you're doing the owners a favor down the line because part of the reason Juan Soto hits free agency at the age he does is because he got into pro baseball at the age he did. And so, you know, I'm sure the owners collectively would love for there to not be another Juan Soto contract among them, but and a way to help facilitate that is to make the international players

wait to be drafted when they're 18 instead of, you know, signing a pro contract at 16. facilitate that is to make the international players wait to be drafted when they're 18 instead of, you know, signing a pro contract at 16. And so yeah, it's a, it's a very complex issue, but generally I think that agreeing to players more and more when they're so, so young, you're just like, you don't, you don't really know what they're going to be at that age. Plus it's gross. And some of the teams are benefiting from it, the teams who do go wide and have a particular

type of player who they target and with mid six figure deals. That's how Milwaukee got Jesus Madde and Luis Peña. Yeah. Well, it's the old adage, the William Goldman about movies, no one knows anything. I don't think that's quite true about baseball. People know Goldman about movies, no one knows anything. I don't think that's quite true about baseball. People know some things, but no one knows everything. Eric Langenhagen knows more than most, which is why it's always a pleasure to have you on. Thank you very much, Eric.

Thanks for having me. All right, shout out to Sean, listener who sent us a question about the swing-off and the regular season. He said, would you be in favor of scrapping the extra inning rules for a swing-off style ending to games? No, to take this question up a notch, should we also scrap the records-based standings and move to a point-style table for divisions slash leagues? Every win would be worth three points, no points for losses,

one point for a game that ends in nine innings and a tie, and one point if your team wins the swing-off. How exciting would it be to be the home team fan in the bottom of the ninth, having your team down a few runs, knowing that if your team ties it, they win the division. Sort of a hockey style solution. I definitely don't hate it if you implement ties.

I can live with ties. With all these other extra innings gimmicks in the regular season, there's kind of a Calvin Ball aspect to the ending. With ties, there's just an ending. But as long as the game's going on, it's played the regular season. There's kind of a Calvin Ball aspect to the ending. With ties, there's just an ending. But as long as the game's going on, it's played the same way. And we can keep podcasting the same way

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Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week. We will talk to you soon. I've been in makeup all night, you know it's gonna be a good time I wanna let her batten with statistics I wanna hear about her name, RBI's head Tell me about some prospect I should know about A fair, a fair daily world. A fair, a fair, a fair daily world. A fair, a fair daily world.