Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2359: I Am Familiar With Winning

Episode Date: August 9, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about whether Mike Trout has become a boring baseball player, Paul Skenes almost perfectly replicating his sensational rookie season, and recent trends in pre-arb extensions, answer a listener email (57:39) about becoming a fan of the whole league instead of (or in addition to) one team, and (1:14:49) meet […]

It's the zombie runner, Bobby Shands, Bobby Shands, Effectively Wild. Joey Manessus, walk off three-run digger. Stop it. Walk off three-run shot. Oh, my God. Meg, he's the best player in baseball. Affectively wild.

Hello, and welcome to episode 2359 of Effectively Wild a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. It pains me deeply to say this, but I must admit that Mike Trout has become boring. I think he's just kind of a boring baseball player these days. It hurts me to say that, given the history of my fandom for Mike Trout and his significance

to this podcast. Sure. And all of the wild hypotheticals that we have entertained over the years. Yes. But really, we haven't talked about him since he returned from injury. Yeah. And, of course, I'm happy that he was able to return and that he's been playing regularly. And he's already up to the most played appearances he's had in a season since 2022, I believe.

But there just hasn't been that much to say about how he has played. He's played okay. Yeah. He's still a perfectly fine player. He's an above average baseball player, but that's about all. Yeah. And when he was perpetually heard, which was quite recently, and I'm not taking for granted that that's not going to be the case again. But that wasn't boring, at least.

It was noteworthy. It was sad. It was tragic in a sports sense. Yeah. It was extremely lamentable, and I guess it became kind of a constant refrain, and it was sort of a broken record, so there wasn't much new to say about it, but it was at least something notable, whereas now that he's playing regularly, you can't lament that he's not in there, and yet he's just sort of there chugging along, doing okay.

He just turned 34 this week. Happy birthday to Mike Trout, and that... Happy birthday, Mike. That rocked me a bit, because I think 34, I don't know how you feel, but I think 34 is the first baseball age that feels old to me. Is that how you would, where would you put that when you see age X season and you think, oh, he's really getting up there? I think maybe I agree that it's 34. Now, having said that, I don't think that that necessarily makes you actually. actually old, even in baseball terms, right?

Because we always have to make this distinction between the normal 34-year-olds walking around in the world and then those who happen to play professional sports. But I think that 34 is where you have background anxiety about small injuries or dips in performance being harbingers of a broader decline. obviously with Trout we have some circumstances particular to him that brought that concern about earlier we've been worried for a minute but I think that when they hit 34 you know if they have a couple week stretch where they're playing poorly you start to go hmm

what does that mean you know does that mean anything is this indicative is this a harbinger You're not really looking for Harbingers when a guy's 30, you know? You're just like, yeah, he's having a bad two weeks. But I think 34 is when you start to feel nervous on behalf of strangers, you know. And it depends on the player, obviously. And maybe it depends on the era.

This is probably change as the aging curve has kind of moved up a bit when we were young and it was the steroid era and you had these sort of anomalous aging curves. And, of course, you had guys who were really great. and deep into their 40s, then I don't know that I would have attributed anything to 34. But now, 34, I don't know, it feels like you've kind of crossed a chasm there. It's, you know, it's not enormous difference between 33 and 34, but 33, just it feels like it's the other side of that divide for me for whatever reason. Yeah, I think that to co-mingle it with life stuff, you know, when you hear about a like a 34-year-old who's, a homeowner, you're like, yeah, that's the thing that people do at 34. I mean, not me,

but like that people do. Um, and, uh, you, you, you maybe are, um, reacting to it differently if the person is like 24. You're like, whoa, how did that work? Which grandparent wrote that kid a check, you know? So, uh, just to like be specific. So, um, so there's that piece of it where you're, you're into a different era of life, both as a player. and as a person, which, you know, has an era component to it also, right? And, yeah, it's in the grand scheme of things, still a young man. So we're talking about sports old, and it feels fraught to talk about this now that we are older than this.

But still, it's especially striking, I guess, just because I met Mike Trout in a sports sense from afar when he was a teenager. He came up when he was 19 years old. And so that was a full 15 years ago now. That's a long time. And because he played such an outsized role in this podcast past and because his rise and establishment as the best player in baseball coincided with the beginning of this podcast. It was, I think, an early topic in our rookie year of effectively wild. Like, is Mike Trout already the best player in baseball?

In retrospect, yeah, probably he was. But he's fallen far from that now. it's just he's he's not that entertaining a player now he is actually the league leader among all qualified hitters he has the highest three true outcomes percentage oh okay yeah so he's at 51.1% of his played appearances have ended in a walk strikeout or home run and i don't know if that's inherently less interesting i mean erin judge is second he's quite interesting you know right so i'm not not saying that that necessarily means that you're a boring batter if you're just the three true outcomes guy. But he does strike out in 30% of his plate appearances these days. That's a lot.

And even though he walks at about half that rate, which is still considerable, he doesn't do that much when he's on the bases anymore. Right. He's stolen two this year. And he probably shouldn't. He probably shouldn't strain himself in that way. But of course, he was such an exciting runner and bass runner and based sealer when he was younger, that the fall from that is also stark. Yeah. And this is really, I guess, the first year where you could say just looking at his sprint speeds that he has lost a step, at least. He's still an above average runner, but he's 67th percentile sprint speed this year.

And basically every year of his career, he's been 90 or above, like even as well. recently as last year he was 90th percentile and then the year before that he was 96th percentile like he was still not necessarily stealing as much but when he wanted to he had that gear yeah and i guess it's possible that he still does and he's just not shifting into it as much because he's trying to preserve his body which is probably a smart calculus but the fact remains that we just don't really see him getting up to his old top speeds anymore he's no longer a center feel which, again, is also probably for the best. Right.

He is probably a below average right fielder even now. So it's just like a guy who could do absolutely everything when he came up and was known for that other than, I guess, throw really well. Although even that weakness, he kind of corrected over time. And now he doesn't really do anything especially well, except he hits still fairly well. You know, he's in the 130-ish WRC-plus range a little bit below that. And I've been hoping that there was more there because he has had a bit of expected weighted-on-base, actual weighted-on-base disparity. Yeah. Yeah, but it's not that huge a gap.

And this is the third season now that he has had some significant gap between those metrics. So maybe this is just who he is now. Yeah. You know, in this era of baseball, there aren't many 34-year-old hitters who are like even this good anymore. But, man, it's just kind of deflating that, you know, he's gone from either great or unavailable to now even when he's available. He's just kind of good, I guess. It's tricky. I wonder if we shouldn't have been, I don't know that you would describe yourself as blindsided.

so maybe I'm fighting with a guy I'm made up. But I wonder if we shouldn't have been quite so surprised because, you know, part of the chore of sort of persuading people who looked at Trout and saw even at a time when he was the best player in baseball, sort of a boring guy, you know, part of getting people to appreciate just how good he was was helping them to understand like the completeness of the game, the way that he was able to do everything well, even if he wasn't, you know, a standout in a way that was obvious compared to someone like Judge,

where it's like you have this guy who has one of his tools that is truly several standard deviations above and beyond everyone else, right? Like, you don't need to persuade people that, like, Aaron Judge can hit the baseball far and with force. No, Mike Trott's a good home run hitter too, right? But it was a more muted, every tool. was a little bit more muted than the guys who were like sevens or eights, but he was able to do all of them very well, right?

And he had this profound capacity to improve in areas of the game of his game where he perceived or others perceived that there was weakness. And so I wonder if with a guy like that, yeah, you're just going to end up having sort of a boring middle or decline phase because it's like, yeah, now you're taking all of these tools that were previously, like, quite good, but not loud. necessarily all at once, right? Like the cacophony came from them in concert. Can I strain this musical in Elie any further?

And now you've sort of turned down the volume on all of that. Yeah, and he's been a three true outcomes guy for a long time. Sure. Other than his rookie season, he was in the 36 or 37 percent of played appearances range. And after that, he's pretty consistently been in the 40s, mid-40s. I think that's even one year, maybe two. 2021 when it was even higher than this year. And the league-wide rate has increased since his rookie season, at least, though it's actually been down a bit lately. It appears to have peaked

at, well, 2020, I guess, if you count 2020. But if you don't count 2020, then 2019, 2021, we're around 35% of all played appearances league-wide. And now it's down to 33.4%. So MLB's kind of gotten that under control or it's self-corrected in some way. But yeah, it's just like old player skills and old player profiles at this point. And there are only a handful of guys older than he is or as old as he is who are hitting better than he is. That's just a reflection of this era of baseball. Even though he turned 34, this is his age 33 season.

And the only qualified hitters, age 33 season and above, who has. have a higher WRC plus than Mike Trout, are Aaron Judge, George Springer, who's had a fun bounce-back season for Toronto, Max Muncie, who has returned to the Dodgers now, Freddie Freeman, fellow Dodger, and Ehio Hsuarez. So that's it. It's not a long list of guys at that age who are better than he is or have been better than he is. But yeah, I just wanted him to defy that, of course, and I guess if he has a Pujolzian compiler phase now, then that wouldn't be the worst thing. Like, he's at 398 home runs, so in short order, he's probably going to get to 400, and that'll

be a nice little milestone for him. Yeah. And it would be nice if he could just stick around and manage to stay in the lineup and hit 25, 30 homers a year the way that Pujolst was, and if he could. get to 500 at some point, that would be nice. Obviously, like, the more optimistic outcomes for him war-wise and being a inner circle great by that metric and being one of the best of all time as he was through age 27, then that's been off the board for a while now.

But it'd be nice if he could at least get the career numbers up a little higher so that, you know, there'd just be a little less of a taint to the overall career. where we wouldn't have to think just, oh, the talent, what could have been? If only he had aged better than that. And we could just appreciate the great body of work and the thrill that he gave us for the first 10 years or so of his career. And hopefully that's what will be memorable in the long term. I'm optimistic about that.

I thought about this a good bit when we were going through Griffey's Hall of Fame, conversation, right? And obviously, you know, his career is very much bifurcated between the part that we all loved and more enthusiastic about and then, you know, his time basically with the Reds on. And I know that we're aware of that. Like, clearly, I just brought it up. It is part of his story as a ball player. But when the time came for him to, you know, be feted in Cooperstown, nobody cared about that part of it, right? We were just, and obviously Griffey had a cultural import and impact that Trout has never had, right? Like, you can't put his fascination with the weather up against Griffey just being

like the coolest guy in America for a while, you know? And so there's a difference in their stories related to that, obviously. But I have a feeling that when the time comes for us to mark Trout's career, we're not going to be worried about that piece of it. I think if anything, if there's any regret that we end up having related to his career, like, sure, yeah, I wish that he had just stayed himself for the remainder of his 30s. But I think the thing that people are going to feel the most sort of remorse over is the fact that he just was stuck in Anaheim and only had limited postseason exposure as a result of that. I have a feeling that'll be a much bigger part of the what could have been

narrative as it pertains to Trout. But I could be wrong. Yeah, maybe that's part of it too, is that we're not even really talking about the larger angels, quote unquote, wasting Mike Trout or Mike Trout never being on a good team anymore, though that is still true, even though the angels have been a bit more respectable than expected because Otani's not there anymore, because no one was expecting the angels to go anywhere this year. It's just, it's not really front-centered. It's not top of mind thinking, oh, yeah, another season that the angels have squandered with Mike Trout. It's just they have both kind of faded in parallel at this point. I want to be careful that I'm not like blaming Mike Trout.

But like Mike Trout also made proactive decisions to stay in Anaheim, right? You know, he he wanted to stay there. And I have a feeling that if at a different juncture in his career, if he had really made a point of it, he could have. He could have gotten out of there, you know, if he had wanted to, either by not signing one of the extensions or by saying, hey, trade me, you know. He didn't do that, you know. He wanted to stay there for reasons, some of which I find out of Rumble and some of which I find kind of confounding. But it's hard to say that they didn't waste Mike Trout, but also Mike Trout decided to stick around. And I bet Angels fans, you know, this most recent couple of seasons, notwithstanding.

are grateful to him for that, you know, I was, I was grateful to Felix for him deciding to stay. Like, it, you know, profoundly altered my enjoyment of those Mariners teams. It did facilitate them being more frustrating because I was like, you're ruining this, let him be, why in October? I sounded exactly like that, like a lesser Muppet, maybe. But, you know, Trout, Trout made his bed. he decided to stay in it. Yeah, multiple times he decided. And he reaffirmed that fairly recently when the topic of Mike Trout being traded came up.

And he pretty consistently said he didn't want to be traded. He wanted to stay. He wanted to win in Anaheim. At this point, that ship has sailed. Like, unless they want to just eat the contract, he's got five years and about 185 million left on his deal after this year. Yeah, and yeah, it's a lot for the type of player that he appears to be now. And you're not even going to get like Mike Trout trade speculation at this point because. There was none at the deadline.

There was a no crickets found to chirp that particular song. Yeah, because at least up until a couple years ago or, you know, you could talk yourself into, well, every time he's been on the field, he's still. great and now you just can't because the extended exposure to him kind of counterintuitively has shown that maybe that upside that ceiling has lowered so eh it's a bit of a bummer i do think we need a different way to refer to that phenomenon of a team not contending not being good while it has a great player other than wasting that player because i i do and i know we're in agreement on this, that there is a great value in having a great player, regardless of whether

your team is any good. And in some ways, if your team is bad, it's even more important to have a guy like that who is maybe a career angel at this point and wanted to stay. And that means a lot to the fans. And even if he's in his elder statesman phase, still hopefully conjures some warm, fuzzy feelings and still flashes some semblance of the old talent and reminds you of of what was. So there's a real value to that. And especially if it's a phenom like Otani or like Young Trout, but even more Otani, if you're an Angels fan and you can talk about having seen Joey Otani perform at his peak for your team. Yeah, of course, it'd be better if you could talk about how he took you to the playoffs.

But still, not too shabby. Not too many people have that sort of joy. Sure. I don't know. Maybe we could put it in terms of like failing. to capitalize on that situation or something as opposed to wasting it. Yeah, I think we might need some new, some new terminology there. They didn't maximize Mike Trapp.

Right. I mean, I still think that we have to grapple with the possibility that this is all our fault because the number of ailments we heaped on that guy. That's true. Hypothetical to be sure, but the number of them that we heaped on, I don't know how magic works. Do you, you know? Are we responsible? The wildest thing about Mike Trout is that, and I don't mean to say this is true over the current contract he's sitting on, but like over the course of his career with the angels, he's still going to be on the right side of like a story plus value calculation and like not by just a little bit, right?

He's not going to squeak by. This is the funny thing when you get that part of the, and I'm, you know, I'm making like kind of conservative of some. I guess about dollars per war, but still, like, this is the wild thing that happens when you get to that level of production. It's like you can't, you can't be paid. I mean, you could be paid. I don't mean it, like, it's impossible. But in the current, like, salary and payroll environment, you're never going to be paid commensurate with your value because you'd be making like $60 million a year. So it's a funny sort of thing, isn't it? Yeah. So he has made to this point almost $320 million. Right. He's got a little more than $185 left. So he will have earned just a little more than $500 million through his baseball salaries alone. And right now, if you go to his fangrass player page and just look at the dollars value there, it's $670 million. And that is just the war.

86.9 times the dollars per war. That's what that value would have gone for on the free agent market. Of course, he wasn't a free agent for all of that. For all of that. Totally. So it's slightly misleading. But, yeah, but that's not really misleading because that's also reflecting the fact that free free agency players don't get paid what they're worth.

So, yeah. He was making $650,000 in a 10 war season or whatever it was. Like, my goodness. So, yeah, there's a, a. big surplus value there, even if he contributes nothing from this point forward. So anyway, I hate to be all negative and doom and gloom about Mike Trout. Again, I'm glad he's out there every day. And if I do tune into an Angels game, which I do a lot less than I used to, then it's just

nice to see him and his name in the lineup at everything. And happy birthday, Mike Trout, even though the premise for this bit of banter was that Mike Trout is born now. I mean, I think that it's a far nicer topic than I was going to bring to bear because we were struggling a little bit pre-show to be like, there hasn't really been any news, what are we going to talk about? We have some major leaguers to meet later. But the only thing I had landed on was, is Dustin May, does his trade to Boston mean that he has the worst hair to uniform clash in baseball? discuss that feels a little mean and pointed i i think i'm look here's the thing there's precedent for this everybody go look at what andy dalton looked like when he was a vangle that was bad you

know it's not that um Dustin may has this like very um bright distinctive uh head of hair and i'm not knocking the hair i'm saying that hair with the red sox uniform um like their their base you know home whites is that's rough you know it's not his fault yeah it's not as bad as when dalton was a bangle because when doughton was a bangle it was like good lord this is like something out of an old-timey children's book you know this is bad this bad news the only thing he could do though is i guess shave the beard so that there would just be less of the hair and and cut the the long-flowing mane. Yeah.

So he could have it be such that you wouldn't see the hair at all because it would just be contained by his cap and he'd have no facial hair. And then I guess that would be one way to resolve that problem if you see it as one. Because it sounds like it could go well in theory because you have the red socks and the red uniform and red hair, but red hair isn't really red. It's not really red. It's orange. It's orange.

It's more orangey and, yeah, there's a little clash there. Again, not as bad as Andy Dalton, who had a brighter red hair and an orange. And so it was like they didn't match. I don't think that Dustin May should shave the beard. I think the beard suits him. It looks very nice. It's not the worst. But it's maybe the worst of the guys who got traded to a new team.

You know, with the blue, like, the Dodger blue, like really provided a ready contrast. And then you were like, oh, okay, a ready conscience. Ready, ready. See, like, this, doesn't this feel worse as a topic than it feels like I'm picking on Dustin May. Dustin May had a terrible debut. Yeah. It was not good. It wasn't good.

He didn't choose which team traded for him. He didn't choose the color of the uniforms. Red Sox debuted to be. Yeah. He chose the quantity of. of his hair. But I actually, I don't know, I think maybe the Dalton Bengals look might be better just because I actually think there's closer. I think there's the color palette, the hue there. It's a closer match, I think. That's the problem. It's closer, but it's not quite the same.

You know, this is the problem. It's, it's almost perfect, but not quite. And so then it was, no, no. He looks like the, part of it, too, is the. Part of it, too, is the. that like Andy Dalton is much closer to like the heat miser in his look. And so it looks to me though that he just like he really liked being a Bengal and he took it so seriously that he just wanted to be Bengal colors just head to toe and like maybe he even he even dyed it to embrace the Bengals color scheme, which I know is not the case. But that just looks to me like he just bleeds Bengal. orange. Well, he's not a Bengal anymore. He's a panther currently. He had, but he, I, I don't think

that he died it. I think everyone's like, I came to this baseball podcast to hear about Andy Dalton, current quarterback for the Carolina Panthers, backup quarterback for the Carolina Panthers. No, when he was at TCU, his, boy, the orange and the, and the purple, I don't know if I like that or not. I forgot how he went to TCU. No, I'm not suggesting that he chose his hair color based on the team. just that it looks like that. Like he took it so seriously that he wanted to just rep the team colors wherever he went. Right, but then he like dialed it up a little too strong and you were like, whoa, Andy, too much. Anyway, Dustin May, I hope you have a better time pitching for the Red Sox than your debut because,

but boy, was that not the best? Well, maybe we can pivot for a second from a former phenom to a present phenom. I just wanted to remark for a moment on the similarity of. of the stats in Paul Skeens' first two seasons. Okay. He has almost identical stats through this point in the season compared to his final stats from his rookie year. The ERA is 1.94 compared to 1.96. The expected ERA, according to statcast, is 0.04 apart.

The FIP is 0.12 apart. He is now thrown more innings than he did last year because he's made. one more start, but on a innings per start basis, it's essentially the same. He's now he's thrown 24 starts, 144 innings compared to 233 starts. Last year, 133 innings. He has essentially had the same season. I guess if you wanted to nitpick, you could say that there's some aspects of this season that are not quite as good. He's not missed as many bats.

the strikeout rate is a little lower. The average and I guess top line fastball speed is down a tad, which I think is probably because we asked him about that. Right. And effectively wild when we talked to him this spring. And we just put that in his head and the Jacob de Grum cop and, hey, maybe you don't have to be max effort all the time. So he's lost or maybe intentionally taken off about half a tick from the average four seamer this year.

But the control is like walk rate is basically identical. He's been a little more fortunate home run wise, home run per fly ball rate and thus home run rate wise. And so the strikeout rate is down a tad and the ground ball rate is down a tad. And so perhaps there's a little bit of better fortune buoying the line. But on the whole, he has just repeated a superlative start to his career. And it's really nice. that a phenom like that with all the hype that surrounded him, he has completely lived up to it. I don't know whether he's exceeded it, but he has not fallen short of it one iota.

He has been, from the day he arrived, maybe the best pitcher in baseball. If you do the fan graphs war back to last May 11th, which was his first start, he is second in standard fan grafts war to Terrick Scouble alone. So he's tops in the National League. And if you do RA9-based war, runs aloud, based war at Fancrafts, he's number one. He clears scoble by more than a win, best in baseball. So basically fully formed best pitcher in baseball from day one. And unlike, say, Stephen Strasbourg has not sproined and flamed out quickly after that exciting debut. He has just kept chugging along.

And he's just been great. And I just, I feel like this is kind of just who he is. He's just going to put up these numbers as long as he has this sort of stuff. Yeah. And, you know, we've seen him exhibit adaptability, not only as it pertains to the Vilo, but also as it pertains to his repertoire. And so I can imagine the contours and sort of shape of his production looking a little different year to year, depending on what he thinks he needs to adjust. or alter, but it generally being of this caliber, that's pretty exciting. And I would hope would ignite some urgency on the part of the team to, like, really surround

him with the kinds of not only complementary players, but other core players who can really take advantage of that while he's around to offer it, because if he keeps pitching like this and Pittsburgh's approach continues to be what it is, like the minute he's. can get out of there. You have to imagine he will. So, you know, I hope that that Pittsburgh fans get to enjoy a couple of good runs with him because I wouldn't want to face that guy in the postseason. Are you kidding? Like, absolutely not. There were some rumors, reports that the pirates were open to, not open to, but like discussing an extension with Paul Skeen's a few days ago. But then that was kind of downplayed by other reporters. And I mean, they might.

express interest, but why would that interest be mutual at this point? If it's anything close to the typical pirates pay scale and what could they possibly do to assure him that they're actually going to invest in the roster and surround him with complementary players. So those conversations wouldn't go very far were I in Paul Skeen's shoes unless I just really loved Pittsburgh. I don't know. Maybe that's the case. It's a nice town. But yeah, I don't see that happening. But, but I'm happy to watch him pitch, even though it is a little depressing to see him lose as often as he has or to see the pirates lose when Paul Skeens is pitching. And for him to get as little run support as he has at times, I still do find myself tuning in to watch Paul Skeens quite often because regardless of how many runs the anemic pirate's offense scores while he's on the mound or what bullpen support he gets, I'm there to watch Paul Skeens put on a pitching clinic. and he has.

So, yeah, his win-loss record is 7 and 8, and I guess it's another nail in the coffin of wins and losses for pitchers as something people pay attention to. I'm pretty sure that's been 6 feet under for a while at this point. But I'm still deriving some joy. Now, I'm not a Pirates fan, and I'm sure for Pirates fans,

it's probably possible to appreciate his pitching prowess. That was a lot of P-words. But then also, I'm sure, it's just infuriating. Sure, yeah. Because every time he does that, you're kind of counting down to when you lose control of him. And it's that same conversation about wasting or squandering or failing to capitalize on. They're not maximizing Paul Skeens, that's for sure.

But he is maximizing himself, if not max-efferting himself. His top speed for the fastball this year is down 1.5 miles per hour from last year. And I say, well done, sir. I say, congratulations. I say you're doing the right thing because if you can run a sub two ERA as it is, or even if you end up with a low two's fit or something, or if the ERA comes up over to the horror, then please make that more sustainable.

Can I offer you a little trick for enjoying Paul Skeen starts and not worrying about the fact that. that he doesn't win them very often. When he comes out of the game, you just turn it off. Then you never, you just never see him lose. That's true. You just don't see it. You're like, well, I guess what happens?

Yeah, you often know that he can't get the win when he leaves. Right, right. But you're just like, what happens to him? Who could say, you know, who could possibly offer an opinion about that? Now, me, I've seen what I've come here to see. Now, moving on, moving on to something else. That's what I would do if I were. That's what I do when I watch Paul Skeen starts.

I'm like, great, he's come out of the game. Surely there's another game on somewhere that I could watch. Yeah. I see some similarities between Skeens and Trout from a personality perspective. I do find Skeens to be a bit more interesting. Like, even if he's not flashy, he's not necessarily courting attention, though he finds it sometimes, courtesy of his girlfriend as often as himself. But it just seems like, you know, he has deeper thoughts and interests and yearnings and musings. You know, he's not always conveying them, I guess, in the most scintillating fashion.

But we quite enjoyed talking to him. He's not defaulting to cliches. So he's not self-aggrandizing. He's not trying to draw attention to himself. But I get the sense that he is sincerely pondering questions. and answering them as he actually feels about them. And yeah, I enjoy him. And he has this sort of almost precocious dad energy to him,

which is kind of entertaining in a way in one so young. Yeah, I think that's right. I appreciate anyone, you know, whether it's part of a formal interview or not, that just is comfortable taking the pause to like contemplate what you've asked. them and think about it before they deliver an answer. I think that's a nice attribute to have. I'm glad that we could have a positive influence on Paul Skeens.

Maybe that makes up for the fact that we were low-grade cursing Mike Trout for, like, the better part of a decade, you know? I don't know if that actually balances, like, cosmically, but I hope it does. We didn't mean to curse Mike Trout. And I can't say that every single one of them was a curse. But I worry that a couple of them, like, you know, kind of popped through the armor there, you know? And then it's like if he hadn't talked about him only being able to eat meat or like slowing down because he has all these coins in his pocket, like maybe he'd be okay. That's the thing that reassures me is that he has not actually been visited by seven.

biblical plagues or whatever. Sure, yeah. I mean, the litany of the things that we raised. Right. It's not the exact scenarios that we, or to be honest, mostly our listeners over the years, devise. So, you know, it's not us at all. It's not like there has actually been a permanent physical rain cloud that is suspended over Mike Trout at all times. Metaphorically, maybe it seemed like that at times, but not actually.

But not actually. Yeah. His body has betrayed him, but not. in the ways that we entertained on the podcast. So it's not, at most it's our listeners' fault, not ours individually, specifically? Sure, let's shift the blame. I think that's okay, yeah.

Okay. But they do have a similarity just in how delightfully mundane their interests are also. Oh, yeah. Trout with weather, skeins with groundskeeping, you know. It's just like simple pleasures, you know, and that's nice for guys who are so great at what they do at such early ages. I would need a mundane distraction if I could do what either of those guys could do. I would need to feel grounded in something that isn't highfalutin, you know.

And we don't know them. So they may have other interests they have developed that we're unaware of that would be best described as highfalutin, I suppose. But we're, you know, it's like taking care of your grass. That's nice. It's nice to take care of your yard. You know, gardening is a simple pleasure that many enjoy. That's really all groundskeeping is, is like, more straightforward gardening. And they are highly intertwined weather and groundskeeping.

So they could have a meeting of the minds. Their mutual interests have a strong bearing on each other, really. So you've got to take weather into account when you're keeping the grounds. Maybe Paul Skeens can come fix my lawn so the H.O.A. stops bothering me. Maybe that could happen. it's just that it's so hot ben you know it's so hot and that part of the yard it's in shade what do you want for me really what do you want from me i'm doing it doesn't they're just going to seed it for winter grass soon anyway what do you i'm in your corner there thank you all right so speaking of extensions for a player like skeins i was just reading something neil pain at his substack the aptly named neal's substack he did a little check in on the state of extensions and specifically pre-arb extensions peg to Roman Anthony's new extension with the Red Sox. And one thing he noted here was how rare a pre-arb extension for a pitcher is,

at least like a big high dollar one. It's almost unheard of. And I guess that's not shocking, but maybe the magnitude of the skew toward position players sort of surprised me. So Neil writes here, and he did some adjustments, relative to average payroll in the first year of these deals to kind of put them on the same scale. And so he found, for instance, that Anthony's is the sixth longest of any pre-arb extension since 2011, and it's the ninth largest relative to the league in that span.

He found that each of the top 13 biggest contracts relative to an average payroll in year one of the deal since 2011 belonged to batters. So all of the top 13 were for position players, as did 25 of the top 26. Wow. The lone exception was Spencer Strider, who signed a $6-year $75 million extension for 2023. So no one else, no other pre-ar pitcher, has had that kind of high dollar deal or long-term pre-arb extension. So that just makes the Skeen's scenario even more far-fetched, although, So if you were going to give pre-arb money and a lot of it to any pitcher, it would probably be Paul Skeens. But that just does go to show.

I mean, that's teams putting their money where their mouth is and saying, well, we just can't really trust pitchers long term. And even Spencer Strider, he has elbow surgery and comes back and doesn't look quite like his old self, at least initially. So that's really striking to me that if you're a pre-ar pitcher, you're just not going to get that kind of deal. Maybe that would have gone without saying, I don't know, but the fact that there are just like no exceptions to that rule, really, that stood out to me. And Neil ran the numbers to see, okay, like how have these worked out for teams overall? And he writes, whether a prospect is a hit or a pitcher, we can see why teams have trended toward buying up more years of players under team control. even if it means operating on less of a sample to evaluate the player's true talent and foregoing those ultra-cheap and productive young seasons that are baked into MLB's salary system. If we look at the completed non-veteran contract extensions in SpotTracks database since 2011, tracking each player's average value created per fangraph's war-based dollar valuations versus his average annual value paid over those seasons, we see that the typical pre-arb extension across all positions offers,

more than double the surplus value per season as deals signed once a player hit arbitration. So you get twice the bang for your buck or even more if you can sign a player to a pre-ARP extension than if you sign them to an ARB extension. So that's why it has paid overall for teams to do this. And as Neil notes, that could be because only the best players tend to get those very early deals. Because if you're Roman Anthony, there's a lot of confidence that you're going to be good because you're young, you're good already in the majors. You were the number one or number two prospect heading into this season. So you don't need as huge a sample of MLB production to say, yeah, we trust this guy to continue to produce.

And so, yeah, the earlier you're signing someone in their career, maybe the more of a no-doubter they are or a less doubter that they are. Of course, there are some guys who were doubters in retrospect. There's Scott Kingery. There's Evan White, as you well recall. Yeah. And, you know, injuries played a part in both of those guys' careers, I guess, and also just not quite panning out. Yeah. Too weird and asked to overcome for Evan White.

Yeah. So, but that's why it pays. And this is just going back to 2011, too. So this isn't even looking at earlier ones, like the first Evan Longoria extension. Teams were probably making bank even more before players and their agents got a little more hip to this, maybe being a bad deal for them on the whole. The other interesting thing that he notes here is that this does seem to be paying off for teams less and less over time. So he breaks the pre-arb signings into yearly classes based on when the deal kicked in,

tracks the average surplus value per season for players who've completed at least 80% of their deals as of this season. It seems to be that these players are providing less and less of an edge over time. In fact, by the time of the class of 2020, our pre-arb group was down to an average of just 2.3 million in surplus per year and negative 0.1 million among the batters specifically. So that could just be because that particular class had some not incredible players. Brian Hayes is in there. Miles Straw is in there, for example. But it seems like there's just diminishing returns maybe that, you know,

A, I guess the earlier you signed some stars, then they aren't available to be signed in subsequent years. and so the earlier classes just look better by comparison. But he concludes it's also true that just like any other novel strategy, the more it catches on and everyone starts doing it, the less of a bargain it becomes. Because they're making more. So the surplus value is diminished because they're maybe making a little more on average with the deals than they used to, right?

Yeah, because, yeah, players, agents have looked at some of the steals that teams have gotten. Right. And players maybe, it's hard to say, being hoodwinked, obviously, in all of these deals, you're making many millions of dollars, you're setting yourself up for life, you're taking away any concern that you might have about just being left with nothing as long as you invest it wisely. But as Neil writes, the practice went from practically unheard of in the mid-2000s to having teams commit roughly 200% of a league average payroll to pre-arb extensions in aggregate per season in the early 2010. So you start doing that more and more, and players start to know their worth, I guess. And that doesn't mean that you don't go and get a Roman Anthony because he's really good and you want to keep him around for a long time. But, yeah, it does seem to be a little bit less of a one weird trick, life hack kind of thing.

Sure. Like this will automatically pay off just incredible investment for teams. And now maybe the players are driving a harbor bargain or they're waiting for free agency in some cases or they're just fewer candidates because they've all been snapped up already. I don't know. But yeah, there are fewer of them, I guess, or if not fewer of them than just fewer that are total slam dunks, home runs, touchdowns, whatever sports metaphor we want to use here. So maybe Roman Anthony will work out so well that the Red Sox will gain a great deal of surplus value here. They certainly hope so. So Red Sox fans probably hope so too, now that he signed and they want him to be the best that he can be.

But it was interesting. I think it shows why teams have been motivated to do this, why it has paid off on the whole, but why it's not paying off quite as well anymore if you just go by surplus value as opposed to just saying, well, it's a win just to keep that player in your uniform for a while and have that be a certainty. Yeah, it definitely depends on, like, how you're defining it. And to say, oh, they're less of a bargain doesn't mean that, like, none of those players worked out or were good and productive major leaguers, even very good major leaguers. Was Brian Bayo not a pre-arb extension? He was, but I think he wasn't one of the top ones by dollar value.

Yeah, yeah, because that's another thing, like, got to give the Red Sox. credit they're doing a lot of these they are doing a lot of these yeah so i mean you know they they signed christian campbell to one and then he has a hot start and then he cools off and and and that went south quickly this season yeah great i think you would grade the christian campbell pre-arb extension as incomplete at this moment like it's just too early you know right but then i mean the crochet extension they signed crochet they signed anthony now they signed bail like that's i mean you know, I hate to invoke another ALE East team here, but Orioles fans are quick to observe that they've not signed anyone to an extension.

So it's one thing to not break the bank in free agency. That can be frustrating. But if you are at least putting these other players in place and keeping them in place for a long time. And that's especially important for the Red Sox, given their recent history of trading each face of the franchise in succession. And you've got to make some sort of goodwill gesture to your fan base to say there is going to be some continuity. It's not going to be constant turnover. You can actually, you can emotionally invest in this young group of guys because we are financially investing in them. Well, and I, you know, I would imagine that if you're a Red Sox fan, and let's see if I thread the needle on this quite right.

Because, you know, different, some of those contracts are signed by different people. like you might have different folks negotiating them but part of what you know i think the takeaway one of the concerns to come out of the whole devers fiasco was that this front office just wasn't able to have relationships with players that were productive right and so if you're seeing roman anthony and granted roman anthony is going to make a lot of money and that can cover up all all number of disputes. But like to see Roman Anthony say, no, I want to stay here. You know, I'm going to, I think this is a good deal. Like it, it offers him the ability to make much more money depending on the escalators. Like for him to commit to staying after you've just had this worry that the current administration is not able to communicate effectively with players, even long tenured and already extended ones, that has to come as something of a relief to the fans too. Right? Like, oh, well, it can't be that bad. He can't be that much of a robot. He got Roman Anthony to sign a deal. And it's like, yeah, I mean, like you put up with some robots if you're making $130 million with the potential for $100 million more. But, you know, like he could do well in arbitration and then go be a free agent somewhere if he's as good as we think and the Red Sox hope. And he opted not to do that. So that seems like a good sign. By the way, we neglected to mention one other very important extension for a young. member of that team, Saddam, Raphaelah, also sent to an extension and is flourishing.

So, you know, I'm sure there's still some cynicism. And you can certainly look at the Devers and Bogarts and Betts era and say, okay, well, those guys ended up not sticking around that long. And the great team that they put together around them just kind of didn't last. So in theory, the same could happen. could repeat itself here. These guys could end up getting traded too, but this is what you have to do to reinforce and reassure.

If you're going to trade all those other guys, you have to say, okay, we have this foundation in place and many more prospects to come. And really, there are very few teams, if any, whom I would rather have from a just sort of future value standpoint just based on their young, excellent players on the big league roster

and the prospect pipeline still to come just how that whole roster is formed. Some of the extensions, there are very few teams, I think, that you would bet on to have a better next five years or whatever just based on those fundamentals. And you're able to say, both internally and to your fan base as you're thinking through, like, how do you then supplement that core? You know, you have all of this payroll certainty. You know what you're going to owe for these. guys who are so important to you. And I think that from a budget and planning perspective, it does put you in a good position, not because like, oh, and now we get to trade them, but it's like, no, we're going to keep them. And we know what the nine most important guys

on our roster are going to be making. And so I imagine that that would facilitate some conversations with ownership where it's like, okay, we have this group. And it's not like they're inexpensive relative to making the league minimum. But if they're as good as we think in five years, they're going to be making an undermarket salary relative to what they could get if they even were just going through the arbitration process. So, you know, give us the wiggle room to sign, you know, this guy who we think is important to pushing us over the line. We know exactly what that's going to cost. I think that's an underrated advantage when you're in roster building mode to be able to say, like, no, we know exactly what Roman Anthony is going to make. Now, I guess they don't know

exactly what Rowan Anthony is going to make because his contract has the escalators. But you get what I mean. Like there's a there's an upper bound to his earnings that is known to you today. And it's known to you about, you know, what his salary is going to be four years from now. And that wouldn't necessarily have been true two weeks ago. So I think that that can help to kind of grease the wheels internally as you're planning a couple of years ahead. Because you can say, okay, this is the year that we like this class of free agents a lot we're going to spend big so let's make sure that like we aren't in year two of luxury tax penalties it just it allows you to to potentially be nimble around some of this stuff in a way that I think teams that are really smart about how they

construct their rosters often do like we see this with the Dodgers a lot I'd hate to be the one to come the Dodgers again it wasn't even one of my bold predictions but I just like to say I was right about them. So anyway, I'm being insistent only because what nasty emails we got, Ben. Holy cow. Never, never rude her emails about anything in our entire in my tenure. And I've gotten some doozies than people being mad about me saying that the Dodgers were not a surefire world series winner. Good God.

Anyway, they do this very well. And they're not the only team that does it, but they come immediately to mind where, you know, they are committed to spending and they spend big and they aren't afraid to go over the luxury tax threshold but they also plan several seasons in advance and so that you know if they have a year where they're unenthused about the free agent class they might take it as a year to dip below reset their penalties not because they're being cheap but because they want to be able to go bonkers two years from now or whatever it is right so i think that there's that advantage to it also wow see we said so many nice things about the

Red Sox. And meanwhile, that person who sent the Blue Jays email is like, what does my stupid baseball team have to do for you to guys sit? We've talked about the Blue Jays a few times in recent days, I know. I think. Yeah, we've touched on them at least. When you're excited, you want more. You want nothing but Blue Jays talk. You want all Blue Jays all the time. Yes. What you just said about the Dodgers and the CBT makes me remember when we talked last time about that email that had the scenario where if you win the World Series, then you're exempt from the tax. And we said, that probably wouldn't make that much difference in terms of team spending because no one is really an overwhelming favorite anyway.

And effectively wild wikikeeper and Patreon supporter Raymond, he pointed out in the Discord group that that's for the best that it's that way because you could end up in this sort of self-perpetuating cycle where a team is the best and is exempt from the payroll tax and then wins the World Series and continues to stay exempt from that tax and then is able to spend more and more and more without having to pay the tax while everyone else does. And then they could really make themselves into an unsaleable super team. And it would just be sort of self-reinforcing. So it is maybe for the best that baseball has the natural guardrail of randomness. Yes.

They'd have to put a limit on it. They'd have to be like, you can't do this more than X number of times in a row. Yeah. Okay. We have two major leaguers to meet. There's one email that I'd like to address before we get to that. This is from Tommy, Patreon supporter, who has a question and wants some advice from us. This is a topic that we've touched on.

I don't know if we've answered an email about it specifically, perhaps, but Tommy says, how has distancing yourself from team fandom affected your enjoyment of the game? Is it more, less, or just the same, but different? It seems like you, Ben, have distanced yourself more from the Yankees but got to experience multiple championships during more formative years. I can't believe I'm being reminded of this like two days in a row. Hey. You Meg still remain very close to your Mariners,

but have not experienced the same level of success as a fan. That's a charitable way to put it. That is a nice way of putting it, very diplomatic. As a fan of a team that has no interest in investing in their roster year after year, I'm wondering if it may be time to take a step back and try and join MLB as a whole. Is this the right decision for me? How would I even start? Is this too low stakes to bring up to my therapists?

This is Tommy who signs this message, a Cleveland fan. So I assume that he's a Guardians fan, which I'm sure has been frustrating in some respects, certainly, from an ownership and spending perspective. But also, that team is always in contention somehow. They manage to make it work and stay in it. So there are worse situations to be in as a fan, that's for sure. I really appreciate having the distance I do have. And like, you know, on any given day, I'd prefer the Mariners to win or not.

I'm certainly in the minutia of them as a team in a way that is unique among the 30. But I got to say, like, it has been just such a joy to broaden my view. And it's not like I only watched the Mariners before, but I think that ball players are just so good now. You know, we're just in this. And the game isn't perfect. And we spent a lot of time contemplating the ways that it could be different. But we really just are seeing such incredible talent at the big league level and getting to enjoy it and have it as, you know, a bomb when the mariners are being lousy. or being dopey or whatever it is

is tremendous, but it's a delight in and of itself. I've realized something about me and sports generally. And this is not unique to baseball. But I was having this thought last night as I was watching

the Seaggs Raiders preseason game because look, I can only be myself, everyone, you know? It can only ever be me. And I'm sitting there like, Getting excited about fullback usage. Good God. And I think that this is what I believe. And I reserve the right to offer a revision to this take if come October the Mariners are on a deep postseason run. And it looks like they're going to make the World Series or even win one, God forbid. The playoffs suck when it's your team. You know? And I know that I don't have a ton of experience with it with baseball. But like I remember the anxiety of. of when the Seahawks won the Super Bowl, it's a, you're, you just have, like, gird for a whole month, you know,

you're nervous. Unless it's a blowout and your team's winning, the Seahawks Super Bowl was great fun because it was like, you know, I won't bore everyone with the details of that game because blowout Super Bowls are only fun for the fans of the winning team. They're not fun for anybody else. I acknowledge that. There was a moment early in that game where one of the Thomas's on the Broncos, and I don't remember which got just like absolutely destroyed by a Seahawks defender. And I was like, oh, the Seahawks are going to win the Super Bowl.

Like, it was like the first series. It was like, Seahawks going to win this game, though. And then they did emphatically. I was like, they can't handle this, this record-setting offense. No, it's going to go badly. for them so um and thank god that proved to be true because then the next year i got to experience devastation that i just get randomly whacked with every freaking sunday for the rest of my life uh it doesn't matter um but like the playoffs are so fun and they super suck if

your team's in it you know and when you're able to just like sit back and like enjoy the quality of the play the drama it's a lot better of a time, in my opinion. And this might just be my inability to generate regular cortisol levels anymore. This might be a meg problem.

But I think particularly in the postseason, being able to enjoy other teams, other players is really tremendous because when it's your guys out there, or gals, like, you know, I've

spent a couple anxious storm championship runs too. You feel unwell, Ben. You know, it's like in your, it's like, it's an acidy feeling for me. I really

would liken it to like reflux. You're unwell. And, and they go on for so long. Like, good, my God, we just you know, it's every sport now. You just play so much stupid postseason, whatever.

Whatever. How are they alive at the end of it, you know, they just must be exhausted. Their body's broken. Their spirits wavering. Of course, if your team is the last one standing, it's all worth it. In the end, you'll have to take my word for it. Hey, again, I have experienced championships just not from the Mariners. I am familiar with winning, sir. That's a good title for this episode. I'm familiar with winning. But no, it's... I'm familiar.

I am acquainted. I'm glad that I had the experience of traditional, dyed in the wool, hardcore fandom where my mood rose and fall with the success of the team every day. It's definitely more even keeled without that, without my mood being tied in a significant fashion to this. the fortunes of a single team where if that team lost in a certain fashion, it just would leave me dejected or angry that I don't miss so much, although it's all just sort of flattened because you don't get as high highs really either. So there's a trade-off there. There are aspects of it that I miss. I'm glad that I had that so that I can understand that perspective, having lived

it because that's the way that most sports fans experience sports and probably baseball, most of all, among the major ones, because it is a more regional game. And people do view baseball through the lens of their local team for the most part. And I do think it's, you lose a lot if you do have that just sort of myopic, very, very narrow focus on a single team. I mean, that is certainly a legitimate way to watch and love sports. in a way that many people do, but you are just costing yourself a lot of delight just by not watching the other teams except when they play your team or by actively rooting against them. I do think you can have the best of both worlds.

I'm not suggesting that these are mutually exclusive. There are people who manage to retain their fandom for a team and still have this more global, holistic view of the sport. And I mean, you're one of them, I guess. guess, to some extent, right? Like, it's, it's cost you a little bit of your attachment to the Mariners. And I think that's, it's not inevitable, I guess. There are people who manage to, to cling to that single team loyalty and feel it as strongly as ever while still being very aware of everything that's going on. And there's kind of a fine line to tread, I guess, especially if,

like, if you're a media member, you know, you don't want to be biased. You don't want to be a homer. You don't want to miss everything else that's exciting and going on there. But then, again, you also want to be able to understand how fans feel and, like, translate that into content too. So if you can strike that balance, I think it's hard to do because it's not like I set out to not be a big fan anymore. It just happens. It kind of happens. Yeah, like, I don't know. I got older.

I worked for the team. It wasn't like I was massively disillusioned by working for my favorite team or anything. But, you know, it's like it's a business and you're working for a team and you're working in baseball. And it's not like you like baseball less necessarily, but it's, you know, it's not your diversion. It's not your recreation. It's your occupation. It's your profession. It's your vocation.

So there's just a different relationship to it. And then when I left the Yankees and just became more of a writer or had started to do that before I was with the Yankees. And I just found it difficult to hyper focus on one team when there was so much else going on there. So I just gradually lost that focus because I just wanted to watch this other good player over there and that other team. So if you can find a way to do both, then by all means do. If you can still have your primary team that you really root for, but that doesn't preclude you tuning in to watch some other interesting team or some other interesting player,

then maybe that's the best way for you to do it. I think most people go, if they shift, if their fandom shifts over time, and if it's not just, well, I'm no longer a fan, I lost interest in the sport entirely, it's more common, I guess, to go from being a fan of only one team to being a fan of the league, than it is to go in the other direction, probably where you're, like, appreciating everyone.

And then you just decide, no, I'm only watching this team from here on out. So I think there's something to be said for making that transition, or at least stabling, at least dipping your toe, at least seeing if you can retain your fondness for that one team while still expanding your horizons a little bit. Well, and I think that one way to maybe give it a try is, you know, if you have, If you have MLB TV, starting with, like, watching The Big Inning, which is, it sounds like I'm saying, the beginning, the big inning. Begin with the beginning. Beginning with the beginning. Would maybe be a way to go because you get to literally just sort of bop around in a curated way where you're seeing, you know, interesting play depending on what's going on.

that's one approach. I think that sometimes I've known people who have found it easier to say, like, let's say you, um, you know, you're, you're a guardians fan pick an NL team in the same time zone. So you're not having to brush up against a feeling of like, well, but you've beat, you know, you've beaten my guardians before. And like, NL teams will have beaten your guardians too. It's tricky because I would say like, go be a Cubs fan, but that might not feel awesome for you as a Guardians fan most immediately. But, you know, pick an NL team in your same general time zone so that you're not having to change the rhythm of when you watch necessarily, but you're able to kind of operate at a distance

from the club that you're maybe keen to move on from. You know, I think part of why I found it easy to maintain some connection to the Mariners, even as I was watching more of the league for work. was that like they were just I'm still in the Pacific time zone and they were just often like the last game on you know and so it's like oh I'd close my evening with this but I had already watched parts of you know the the East Coast and Midwestern slate so being able to maintain your same cadence I think can be helpful you know it doesn't always feel like work I still enjoy watching baseball very very much and it can feel like, you know, it can feel relaxing, but there are times where I'm just like, I need a break from this. Like, after the deadline, I was like, I need a little step back here. Just because, you know, you, like, I'm like, I can't refill the void with this yet. Like the, I need to fill the space in my stress load with something that isn't so proximate to work so

I can think about something that isn't work for the first time in two months. So, I don't know, just like pop around a little bit. There's no right answer, right? And there's also no wrong answer. If you decide, hey, actually, you know, I grew up a Guardians fan. I've been so committed to this, but like, I'm watching the Tigers. This is a fun team and I like them a lot. Like, that's fine.

That's within your rights as an American. It allows you to manage your risk to diversify your portfolio in a way because if your team is bad, now a part of fandom is that you stick with your team through thick and thin. And then that makes it all the more worthwhile maybe when they get good again, you know, unless they're actively repelling you or leaving your city or something like that. But just a normal bad baseball team that comes with the territory for most fan bases. But if there is a downturn, that doesn't mean you desert your team necessarily, but maybe you check out some other teams. You know, you play the field a little bit. I mean, I feel like if Tommy is even asking this question, then there's an inclination in him to try this out. Because if he's getting other team curious here, there was a time in my life where I couldn't have conceived of not being a Yankees fan and not just watching the sport through that prism.

So if you're even getting to the point where you're thinking, huh, maybe this would work for me. Maybe I'm missing out here. Well, that's perhaps an indication that you could go further in that direction. Yeah, and just see how it goes, you know? And then if it doesn't grab you, the guardians will still be there, you know? And here's the thing, they won't know. We're not going to tell Stephen Kwan. You're fine.

You just go try it out a little bit and see if anybody else grabs you. And then if not, you can just go back. back and say hello to Jose Ramirez and act like nothing happened. Yeah, it doesn't mean you love Stephen Quander, Jose Ramirez, any less. You're just making a little more room in your heart for someone else. Yeah, you're making room in your heart for more love. And wouldn't we all benefit from doing that, really? Yeah, we would.

All right, well, let's make a little room for love for two new major leaguers in our recurring feature, meet a major leaguer, which has not recurred in a bit. It's been a while. I anticipated it for once. You got to, you, you, you, you, you're forcing it, you know. You're, you really, I know you really want to do it. Yeah, I'm in my head about it now. You're in your head about it.

And you can't, you got a, you got to, it needs to be call in response. And I can't, I, I had the thought the other day. I was like, maybe I'll tee bent up for, uh, it's been a while. But then you'd know, you know, you know, it's got a. I got to be caught unaware, so just relax. It's going to happen for you. Yeah, well, one will slip out without my realizing it sometime. Oh, yeah.

And you'll hit me with one, and it'll work out fun. Okay, but we are meeting two new major leaguers. Meet a major leaguer. I am very eager to meet this nascent major leaguer. It's the thrilling debut of somebody new Let's meet this mysterious major leaguer There have been 183 new big leaguers this season Through Thursday's games

And we have two here who have been suggested by listeners We do take your nominations We don't always take them We welcome them We don't always do them. But in this case, we have. So we have a recommendation from listener Joel, whom you'll be recommending, and a recommendation from listener, Patreon, supporter, Peter, whom I will be introducing you all to.

So I will lead off here. And my meter major league, I always feel like this is show and tell. I'm standing up in front of the class. It's like holding up this human person and telling people about him. But my guy is one Josh Simpson. Josh Simpson, who is a Miami Marlin. He is 27 years old. He will turn 28 later this month.

Happy early birthday. He is a 6-2190 left-handed reliever from Stafford, Connecticut. And he is a long-shot major leaguer, as many of our meter major leaguers are. Yes. We tend to go for the non-household name, non-top process. types whom you might not meet otherwise. And he is a 32nd round draftee. And there are only two other guys who've debuted this year who were drafted at least that

late. There is Javian Sandridge of the Yankees who was also a 32nd rounder and Drew Avons of the A's and Brewers, who is a 33rd rounder. So Josh Simpson, 951st overall pick. He got himself a $25,000 signing bonus. And I've said this before. I'll say it again. I'm going to miss when we run out of the late round guys.

When those like 30-something rounders just don't make the majors anymore because the draft doesn't go that deep anymore, it's going to be sort of sad. It's just, it's special when you have a 30-second rounder as someone who 950 players were picked ahead of Josh Simpson. And yet he still made it. ahead of most of them. So this was in 2019 that he was selected by the Marlins. So he is a career Marlin. He's just been working his way up through the system ever since. Of course, he missed out on the 2020 season that was canceled, but he's just been working his way up. He finally made his big league debut this June 21st, and he got clobbered. He pitched two winnings against Atlanta. He gave up four runs on three hits. Two of them by a fellow rookie,

rookie on rookie crime, although a major leaguer you probably have heard of Drake Baldwin. Two of those three hits were by him. He singled against Simpson to lead off Simpson's first inning of work and then struck the big blow in the next inning, a three run home run. So Josh Simpson probably not the biggest fan of Drake Baldwin that day. So after that game, Simpson's ERA was 18. He subsequently got it down to 3.09, but now it has reinflated to 5.87 because he had two multi-run outings recently. Reliever ERAs, it's tough. You know, I mean, I know that we don't put as much stock in ERA anymore, but like he's gone from having an 18 to a 3.09 and then back over six again. All it takes when you haven't had a huge sample season is just one bad outing to just

completely change the conclusion that most fans would draw if they just eyeballed your stat line probably. It's like the old game Samin I used to play is this guy good with relievers where it's just it's hard to know sometimes. But certainly in a case like this where you have 15 and two thirds big league innings under his belt. The good news is that of the 5002 pitchers, who have thrown at least 15 innings this year, the gap between Simpson's ERA and his stat-cast-based expected ERA is the 12th largest.

So that's good, I guess, the underlying stuff augers better results ahead. The fifth largest gap on that list, by the way, belongs to my best friend, John Brebia, who I might add, in addition to that better-expected ERA work in the majors when he was with the Tigers, He also has a 1.5 ERA in 10 games and 12 innings for AAA Gwinnett with a 10-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio and a 554 OPS allowed, so please call him up already, Atlanta.

Anyway, Simpson sits 94, which is fine for a lefty and has a five-pitch mix, four-seamer, sinker, slider, change curve. Quite a diverse repertoire for a reliever. throws each of those pitches at least 10% or so of the time. Thus far, he has missed vats. He's gotten grounders, but he has walked too many guys. The interesting thing about him, well, there are a couple interesting things aside from the fact that he was such a late round draftee. One is that he is a former Phantom Major Leaguer. So he appeared to have made it back in 2023 in September.

he was called up by the Marlins and he spent several days on the roster and he never got into a game. And then they sent him back down again. The Marlins made the playoffs that year. He was not on the playoff roster. Technically he was recalled or he was activated on the day after the Marlins got eliminated. So I guess you could say he's been called up twice, sort of, just like he was on the roster at least. And he was expected to start 2024 with the big club, most likely. But then misfortune befell him, and he had to have elbow surgery.

He had left elbow neuritis. And so he had to have surgery for ulnar nerve neuritis, perhaps not so different from the kind that has plagued us at times with our slight numbness in our pinky fingers. Yeah. So maybe it was more serious. for him or more serious for a pitcher in general. So he was on the IL for most of 2024 and then was activated only late in the year and got into some minor league action.

And he's had other injury woes. He had shoulder impingement, I think the previous season that cost him a couple months. So to be that close to be in the big leagues in 2023 and then be a presumed big leaguer going into 2024 and have that just be a lost season. must have been quite frustrating because you never know. I mean, there are a lot of guys who were phantom big leaguers who never got back and never actually got into a game. And I'm sure there were some long dark nights of the soul

when Josh Simpson was wondering whether he would be one of them. You start having elbow issues, you know, that's the worst case scenario. I was also reading some old articles about his initial call-up story. Which is interesting. Like, I wonder which call-up story do you. tell. Like if someone asks you, if you were a former phantom major leaguer and someone asks you about, oh, how did you get the call? How did you find out you were coming to the big leagues?

Do you tell them both stories? Do you tell them the first one, the second one? Do you tell the first one and then caveat it and then tell the second one? Or maybe to simplify things, you just talk about your first big league game or something, maybe? I don't know. But I was reading about, you know, he found out late that he was getting called up in 2023 and he missed his manager's call and he had a few voicemails and he calls back and he finds out, oh, I'm coming and it's late at night and he got the call and then his fiance was with him, but he called his parents and his sister and it's a lifelong dream and, you know, they've been with him every step of the way. And then they're frantically making travel arrangements to go to

Milwaukee where the Marlins were playing the Brewers and like everyone's scrambling. It's the middle of the night. How do we get to Milwaukee? And they all get there the next day when Simpson arrives to join his new teammates and then they're following him around and he doesn't

actually get into a game. So they were still with him at that meaningful moment. They get to see him in a big league uniform and everything. So I'm sure they didn't consider it a wasted trip but probably a bit of a letdown. I would think.

Anyway, hopefully they did the same and made the trip again for his actual debut in 2025. And the last thing that I will say, I saved this for last, I didn't mention where he was drafted out of. He went to Columbia University. So he is an Ivy Leaguer. And you know whenever you have an Ivy League, big leaguer, you will hear about that forever for as long as they're in the big leagues. Every time they come out of the bullpen, the opposing broadcast, at least, will inevitably mention that, oh, this guy, he went to Yale, he went to Columbia, wherever it is. So he is the sole Columbia grad in the big leagues right now. By my count, there are seven active Ivy Leaguers, or there have been seven at some point this season.

There's Josh Simpson. There was Cole Solzer with the Rays who went to Dart. Hunter Biggie, also with the race who went to Harvard. Ben Rice of the Yankees went to Dartmouth, as did the professor, Kyle Hendricks of the Angels now. And then Matt Bowman, who pitched a bit for the Orioles this year, went to Princeton. And Brent Suter of the Reds went to Harvard. Brett Suter underrated reliever. He's very good year in and year out, I think.

And it seems to be a good guy, entertaining guy as well. loves the climate anyway we have another ivy leagher to add to the list so i i did just look to see which of the ivy leagues has been most productive or which of the ivy league schools has been the most productive when it comes to minting major leaguers i just i looked in the draft era and you know we're 60 years into the draft era at this point so that's a pretty big sample though i know these schools pride themselves on going back to colonial times i guess with the exception of Cornell so they did have big leaguers who predated the draft but draft era only 1965 on would you care to to guess which of the Ivy League schools has been the baseball powerhouse

in a relative sense Princeton Princeton is second I would say in terms of uh total war yeah total war generated there Princeton second third in Yale Yale is third in total war Nope Harvard's fifth Yeah It's it's Dartmouth Really?

The baseball bastion Of the Ivy League Dartmouth has sent Ten players To the big leagues Or ten draftees Out of Dartmouth Have made the majors

And have combined For 52.8 war Which might not sound like So much for ten players But is by far the most Of any of the Ivy's So yeah Ten players

502.8 war for Dartmouth. Princeton, seven players, 34 war. Yale, only three players, but 24.7 war. So all of the Yalys have actually been pretty good at baseball. You have Ron Darling, Craig Breslo, and, well, Ryan LeVarnway also was in the mix there. It's mostly darling. But then UPenn, four major leaguers, 23 war. And then Harvard has had some quantity. eight players, but only 6.7 war. Brown, just one. Only one Brown grad has made the majors and produced 4.6 war. That was Bill Allman. And then Columbia, four major leaguers, 1.5 war in total. Sadly, so far, Josh Simpson has subtracted from that total, but hopefully he'll add to it at some point. And then Cornell skunked. Cornell has not sent a single big leaguer to the majors, or at least no one has been drafted out of Cornell and made the majors. So I guess another way in which Cornell is the exception, not from the colonial era, and no big leaguers drafted out of there.

So some Ivy inferiority complex, Ivy Imposter Syndrome there going on for Cornell, perhaps. But that's my story. Marlins reliever, not the first Marlins reliever we have met in this series. Of course, Declan Cronin, who is a dear to me because he attended my high school and unfortunately has not been in the big leagues thus far this year, but also still in the Marlins organization in AAA, wish him well. And now I will root for Josh Simpson as well, who is probably not the best known rookie to debut this year for a Florida team named Simpson because there was also Chandler Simpson of the raise. But unlike Chandler Simpson, Josh is still in the big leagues. So there's that. Okay.

Well, my major leaguer is Dugan Darnel. Yeah. Oh, hey, Chandler Simpson's back in the big leagues. Sorry, I didn't mean. Oh, I thought he had been sent down again. But, yeah, he was back as of a couple days ago. Yeah. Okay.

Dugan, yeah. Dugan, Dugan, Dugin, who is 28. He's a right-handed reliever for the Colorado Rockies. and he has had quite the winding journey to the majors, which is, I think, why he came on the radar of listener Joel, who suggested him. Darnell is from Northville, Michigan, and in high school, he was a shortstop, not a pitcher.

All good players in high school are shortstops. But he was quite undersized, so he was only 5'1 and barely 100 pounds when he started playing high school ball, and he told the spokesman review, which is a paper in Spokane, Washington in 2021, quote, I was always the smallest guy on every team. I was that little shortstop who was just fast and quick and a contact hitter.

And with that profile, you might imagine he wasn't heavily recruited to play college ball, but by the end of high school, he had grown a good bit. He was 5'9 and a good enough hitter to play for Division III Adrian College, which is also in Michigan, a good D3 program, but a D3 program nonetheless, and continued to grow and eventually shift to third base. And then, and here I'm going to quote from that spokesman review piece again, he was fooling around with teammates one day, throwing off the mound, and he was surprisingly topping out in the low 90s.

That was the end of my junior year, beginning my senior year, he said. And that was where it all started. At first, I was just playing third base and chucking it hard over to first. The coach added to Darnell's responsibilities, his senior year, he played third, and was the squad's closer. I didn't throw anything but a fastball, he said. I'd go from playing third base for eight innings to just going straight to the mound, throw as hard as I could, and get my three outs.

My body grew more. I got more into the wait room, into arm care, all that. And next thing I know, my senior year is a different story. His first full season pitching, which was that senior year, he recorded a school record eight saves with an 039 ERA. He struck out 37 over 23 innings. And he was a Division III fourth teamer, which doesn't sound particularly illustrious, but I'm sure he was excited.

And, you know, he did all of that, but he was not drafted and started to line up other opportunities. He was going to follow his brother into finance. But before a job started for him, he said, I wanted to pursue baseball. So I just kind of called around. And this is from a post on the Rockies, like, official team blog. You know, all these teams have medium blogs now. This is by Jack Etkin.

So he calls around. down Darnel, not Atkin, the Rockford Rivets in the North Woods League, a collegiate summer league that uses wooden bat, said they could use this help. Darnel spent three or four weeks with that team. He went 0 and 1-1 with a 265 ERA in seven games, one start with nine walks and 19 strikeouts. Dernal said, it went really well, but it didn't go well enough for him to get any pro authors. So I thought that was it. He said, I hung it up and went to work in Chicago. It was the real world. It was quite a prospective check, I guess. And he starts this job, and then one day he gets a call

from the Gary South Shore Railcats of the American Association. And Darnell said he quit his job on the spot. He only appeared in three games for the rail cats, which might have made him a little nervous about having quit his job. He was there to basically cover innings for a guy who was on the injured list

for the rail cats, but it was enough to attract the attention of the east side diamond hoppers of the United Shore Professional Baseball League. And so he played the 2020 season with Eastside. He earned five saves and allowed just four rounds in 28 endings posting 031 ERA. And again, this is from the Spokesman Review. I was having a really good year.

At the end of the year, a lot of different teams were calling just saying, hey, you're on our radar. But with COVID, nobody really knew what opportunities were going to present themselves. So that was just kind of put on hold. And he continued to work out and refine his approach to pitching, trying to build out his repertoire and have more than just the fastball and then returning to the Rockies post. After his success in 2020, he continued to train. He saw other minor leaguers signing minor league deals, guys getting ready to go to spring training. He was confident in his

stuff. He felt he was physically and mentally ready to pitch an organized ball. He had to attract interest from a team, but he had no contacts in any team's front office. It was winter. How to be seen. Darnel took a desperate times call for desperate measures approach. He sent a two-part video that included his most recent bullpen with Rapsoto numbers and game footage from 2020 that highlighted each of his pitches. He sent the video to seven or eight major league teams, typically to about a half dozen people with each team. He looked for emails of front office members on the internet. He found an email. He sent the video.

He was flying blind. He had no choice. I sent it to as many people as I could because I knew that deep down in my heart and in my mind, I had the stuff. I didn't want to leave any what-ifs, any stones on turn. So I was giving it my all. And one of the people to receive that video was John Weill, who oversaw professional scouting for the Rockies at the time. Will said he used to get several videos a month from players in independent leagues and had mentors who taught him he always had time to respond to every single person. That said, the response was typically thanks, but no thanks.

I was in charge of signing pitchers, he said. I watched the video and I'm like, well, this isn't all that bad. This is pretty good. He had some leverage on the ball. He could spin the breaking ball. There was a little something there, and his arm worked well. There were some text exchanges and a phone call between the two of them after he sent the initial video, and that communication helped to sway him. But I'm saying wheel, but it might be V-E-I-L. How would we say that?

I guess I would say while. Wild. But I don't know. Regardless, he now scouts for the Nationals, but he said he had never signed a guy off video in his life. He doesn't believe in it, preferring out of respect for the craft to rely on the process. where a scout would be sent to see Darnel throw. So he said, so there was some trepidation in signing him off of video.

And while, we'll, they, he called Darnel and told him that the Rockies would not be sending a scout to watch him throw. Darnel was dejected and asked why. And he said it was because they didn't want to scout him because instead they wanted to sign him. So he signed in the offseason of 2021 and he had a great spring training

and ended up being assigned directly to Loway Fresno. He had a 195 ERA in 2021 pitching between low and high A, and then he started what became sort of a familiar pattern for Darnell, where upon his initial promotion to a new level, he would struggle very badly. And that proved to be true in 2022, which was much more of a challenge for him. He drew a double A assignment, and it resulted in an ERA and a FIP in the fives. And then prior to the 2023 season, he went and played winner ball in all. Australia, which went very well. He pitched to a 241 ERA over 15 appearances striking out 28.

The following season went better, at least at AA, but then upon a promotion to AAA, he had an ERA in the sixes. And that brings us to his scouting report at Fangraphs. This is his 2024 scouting report. He was 35 plus placing 43rd on the Rockies list. And here is Eric's report. After he finished pitching at Division III Adrian College, he pitched. in a few independent leagues and worked as a mortgage loan officer, according to his LinkedIn.

That's the scouting you get at Fangraphs. Until he signed with the Rockies, he has struck out more than a batter per inning since debuting an affiliated ball and has continued to strike out plenty of upper-level hitters so far in 2024. He touched 97 and the uphill angle on his fastball helps it miss bats. His splitters movement varies from pitch to pitch at times looking like a slider, at others like a pure splitter. And sometimes like just sort of, it just sort of floats toward the plate and still garners an uncomfortable After his VILO was down somewhat in

2023, it was rebounded early in 2024. He was sitting 94 to 96 early on at Hartford where he was essentially demoted after struggling at AAA during the second half of the 2020 season. This guy has carved a unique path to the upper levels of the miners and is going to pitch in the big leagues as

an up-down reliever. I will note he did not make the 2025 Rockies list. So I think Eric was less impressed by the back half of his 2024 season. But this year not ranked on the Marlins list either to be clear. Yeah. This year, he posted a 319 ERA and a 371 FIP at AAA, and his contract was selected on August 1st, because as our listeners might remember, the Rockies dealt Jake Bird to the

Yankees, so they needed some bullpen help. And now I'm quoting from Purple Rose Evan Lang, who is quoting Dornel, saying, I blacked out. I thought I was going to cry, but I didn't cry. I was sweating quite a bit. I didn't cry until I called my fiancé and let out some emotion. you know, driving back to my apartment to pack up. I'm like, is this real life? It didn't feel real until I got to the airport. And his first Bigley action came in a truly bonkers baseball game. He entered with the Rockies down 10 to 16 in the eighth inning.

So these are meant to be low leverage innings, right? Yeah. You bring in the new guy. He's going to mop up a little bit. He got Brian Reynolds to ground out. And then Nick Gonzalez singled. They're playing the pirates, by the way. But O'Neill Cruz grounded into a double play.

and got him out of it. And then the Rockies scored two runs in the bottom of the inning. But it's still, you know, it's still a four-run game. So Darnell goes back out there for the ninth. And he held the Pirate scoreless. Tommy Fan flew out to right.

Joey Bart grounded out to second. Jared Triolo struck out looking. And that's why he was in line for the win when the Rockies rallied to walk it off in the bottom of the inning, which is bonkers. So his first big league game, he earns the win in a very,

Very improbable comeback. And after the game, manager Warren Schaefer said, I saw a guy that has taken such a long road to get here, a winding road, a lot of failure. I know I saw him poised out there tonight. Who knows what was going through his head. And for his part, Darnel said that he was thinking, focus on executing pitches, not getting freaked out. I was just trying to breathe. It felt like a movie. It's been crazy. But, you know, I've enjoyed every second of it, and I wouldn't change a thing. All told, he has thrown five innings across four games. He has a 360 ear. and a 511 FIP. And that has been Dugendarnell and the various people whose names I can't pronounce along the way. Yeah. I'm always skeptical of the I wouldn't change a thing. I would change so many things if I were him. Yeah, I might just might make it a little smoother and easier. But I do understand the philosophical, the perspective, you know.

Yeah. Whatever didn't kill him made him stronger. And maybe he had to go through all those things to get here. And it's a good way to think about it, right? Even if someone actually presented you with the choice and said, you could just be the best pitcher in baseball from the get-go. Well, that'd be tough to turn down. But who knows, you know, I don't know.

Maybe he wouldn't have met his fiancé or something. Like there's probably all sorts of other stuff that went on in his life that wouldn't have happened if he hadn't taken exactly that course. So always nice to see an indie baller make it an undrafted guy. You topped my 32nd round drafty with an undrafted guy. Yeah, the Gary South Shore Railcats, they signed a couple of stompers, much to mine. Oh, yeah? Slight dismay back in 2015, they got promoted to that level.

That was how low the stompers were, that the rail cats. That was a big step up from the Pacific Association. But, yeah, happy for Dugan, Darnel, great name. First Dugin in Big League history. I mean, there have been multiple surname Dugans, but not a first name of Dugan. Not a first name, Dugan. Yeah. And that is, that's his name. All right. He's a Dugan Tate Darnell. So Rockies have the lowest fan grafts were from a bullpen, which is not a shock, I guess. But they could use some help from Dugan. Yeah, Dugan. Well, I think we fulfilled the assignment. We chose a couple roughly 28-year-old Rockies and Marlins rookie relievers. So that's how we drew it up with Meet a Major League. That's what this segment is all about. It's a segment for the sickos.

Now you know, Josh Simpson and Dugendarnell. And that'll do it for today and for this week. Thanks, as always, for listening. You can support EffectivelyWild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash EffectivelyWild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners. Michael Zerbib, Lawrence McDaniel, Mark Wagner, Dexter Mull, and Jake Schultz. Thanks to all of you.

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Thank you.