Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2397: The Slightly-Less-Long Offseason

Episode Date: November 5, 2025

Ben and Meg banter about the slightly shorter-than-usual duration of the offseason, how big the WBC will be, and a few managerial hirings. After that (41:53), they talk to FanGraphs lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen about Munetaka Murakami and this offseason’s most promising free agents from international leagues, what we’ve learned about Roki Sasaki and […]

Did Richard Love, Lady ever strike a Taylor Teagot, and who had more, or Jason Kendall or Russell Martin, what if Joe Toney's dog was also a good lawyer? What would you do if Mike Trudges showed a bina foyer, or is it foyer? Find out Uneffectively Wild. Find out, uneffectively Wild. Find out on Effectively Wild today. Hello and welcome to episode 2397 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraph. presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of Fancrafts. Hello, Meg. Hello. I know last time was technically our first episode of the off-season, but this one feels like it because we were still so season-centric in that episode.

That was all backward-looking and recapping, and this will start our forward-looking, off-season primer kind of content. So our two episodes remaining this week will be about sort of setting up the free agent market and setting up hot stove seasons. So later this week, we will run down the domestic free agents and break down the free agent class. But today, well, we're doing a little breaking down of the free agent class, but the international free agent class. And so we will be joined soon by Eric Long and Hagen. And Fangraph's lead prospect analyst who recently combined with James Fegan on a fan graft's piece about the players to know coming over from the pro leagues in Asia, which really has made the last couple off seasons much more exciting than what they would have been otherwise.

And not saying that we're getting another Yamamoto or Sasaki exactly this offseason, but the quantity and quality of players either coming over for the first time or coming back. from a stint overseas has been, you know, that's been among the defining stories really of the past couple off seasons. And we've certainly seen the impact of those players as recently as last week in the World Series. So Eric will tell us the names to know and what they might look like and how their skills will translate and where they could end up and all that good stuff. And I know that at the beginning of the offseason, it can be a little daunting all those months stretching out ahead of you without Major League Baseball, of course. But I was thinking a heartening thought that this will be a short offseason, a little bit shorter

than usual, both because opening day. Opening day is so damn soon. It's a tad earlier than usual, March 26th. Such an early opening day. It is an early opening day. But also WBC. We got World Baseball Classic coming. Yes.

Which is, I think, March 5th, I think that starts. So March 5th to 17th, something like that. So that period, which would typically be the lull in spring training, where we've kind of gotten over the excitement of spring training games starting, such as it is, let alone pitchers and catchers reporting in mid-February. And we're counting down the days till opening day. And you're hoping that your players won't get hurt before the season starts. Well, you'll still, I guess, hope that they don't get hurt.

heard, but in the WBC instead. So I am very curious to see how big it gets this year. Because there's a lot of pent-up anticipation. Like last WBC in 2023 was way bigger, I think, in terms of how it captured attention in the U.S. at least. And so now, with a few more years of anticipation, I wonder whether it will reach an even higher level of enjoyment and attention. I think so. Yeah, there's, you know, I do think it's worth differentiating, like, the way that the WBC is engaged with internationally versus how it is engaged with here, but the gap between those things is rapidly collapsing in a way that I think is really terrific. It does make me think that, like, we're just, I don't know.

I don't know about the viability of baseball is an Olympic sport, but that's a separate conversation. So, you know, I think that, and something we'll have to contend with soon. Yeah. But I think that there has been a shift among American players about the WBC. The perception of that event among players has really changed in the last, call it, 10 years. And the desire for big, big stars from the U.S. to participate is, I think, a lot higher. Now, I don't want to suggest that their participation is what is important for that event in terms of, like, it being good. or exciting, but it does change

its profile in the U.S. and I think that having really good players from the U.S. compete raises the overall level of competition. I still, I still, Ben, I still think that you're going to have a pitching problem because you've gotten all of these guys who have said

that they're going to be a part of the U.S. squad and it's very exciting and goodness knows I all love to see you know, Cal and Aaron Judge on the same team, but who's throwing the innings? You know, who's throwing those innings? And I also, I also know, and I feel a little, you know, nervous saying this,

but I think that we could maybe have a better selection of coaches and managers for Team USA. And it's a tricky thing. Honestly, a trickier thing than securing individual player participation during the WBC. Because, you know who's really busy during spring training as a big league manager? Yeah, you can't really get special dispensation. You can't. Take Dave Roberts and send him to manage the WBC team. You can't be away from Big League camp if you're a manager.

So that immediately writes off those 30 people. And then it ends up being, yeah, former managers or MLB network commentators. Be personalities. And look, you know, and you're limited to like if you're a college coach, if you're some hot shot college coach, well, you can't. That's during the college baseball season, right? You can't take off time. So I appreciate that there are some timing issues that prevent, you know, it's not like Stephen Vogt can just go hang out.

And the way that they've structured the locations this year, it is a little harder, certainly for the Arizona-based folks because there aren't going to be games here like there was the last time. But, I don't know, I just like to, everyone could just think about it, you know? They could just think about it. I don't have anything against Marksorosly personally, but I also felt like, you know, we could have had a anyway. Oh, I do think it's become kind of a plum assignment. It is a plum assignment.

Yeah, totally. Like in terms of the prestige, the attention, the prominence, all of that. You mean, you should be able to get the pick of the litter, whatever the litter is left. Right, whatever litter is left. Other than people who are in major league coaching staffs, which is a lot of the litter, to be fair. But, like, you know, you can lure out of retirements or temporary retirement someone who could just, and they've done that in the past. But, yeah, you'd think you could really entice anyone who is available. So it's pretty cushy gig.

It doesn't take that long. And it's playoff atmosphere, right? It's like international attention and national pride at stake. Just long enough to be a problem for anyone who's currently managing a big league roster. But no, I think that it's very exciting. It was so much fun the last time. It had, you know, really great individual moments. I think the quality of play was really terrific.

And I look forward to it. I think that the WBC is awesome. And, you know, I'm going to need to have something to watch on delay when I'm up late editing PPR. So I guess the only way in which it isn't a plum assignment is navigating the many constituencies you serve as the manager of that team because you don't have free reign. It's very much a collaborative endeavor. If anything, you're sort of subject to the ground rules you are given. You have certain players and then you basically have to abide by what the teams and maybe to some extent the players also dictate in terms of their usage, especially with pitchers, of course.

But yeah, everyone's number one priority really. Even as the W.B. BC has become super important, at least on the U.S. team, you're still going to prioritize the MLB regular season. And so you do have to abide by all of those restrictions. And look, it was a fluky thing. I don't think that anyone would say that it was the result of like indifferent managing or risk-taking behavior. But like literally all you have to do is look to the last WBC to see why why teams are concerned, right? Because Edwin Diaz was just not available for the entire season, basically, because he got injured celebrating in the WVC.

Again, that's not like an indictment of the event, and I don't think that it was the fault of his team or his manager. It wasn't Edwin Diaz's fault. It was a freak, fluke thing. And it could have just as easily happened on, you know, a mound in Florida as, well, I guess it did happen on a mound in Florida, on a mound in a, you know, in the Mets, you know, in Port St. Lucy as it could anywhere else. I guess he might not have been celebrating quite as effusively if it had been a spring training game because he hurt himself sort of celebrating a win.

But other than that, yes, guys get hurt in spring training all the time. Right. And so it's, you know, it's not as if there's no risk to, there's just risks to playing baseball and there's risk to being a pitcher. And that risk is, I don't think, like, meaningfully heightened in any way by the fact that you're playing in international competitions. But I do think that, like, you have the reality of there being reticence around that because you want, gall darn it, if you're going to get hurt on them out, it's going to be for the Mets. I mean, not always, although historically often. But I think that all of that aside, I do not want anyone to think that I am down. on the WBC as an event. I think it is a wonderful event.

I think that getting to see the pride of place that a lot of the players have, you know, the profound sense of sort of pride and belonging for, you know, representing their country, particularly for the athletes who aren't Americans, although I think the Americans feel a pride of place too, right? But it's like, this is a meaningful thing for the players.

You get to see a bunch of guys you maybe would never see otherwise, or haven't seen in a long time. You get to learn fascinating things about everybody's secondary citizenship, you know? You're like, I had no idea you were Italian. That's great. And, you know, I think as we saw last time, like, when you have countries that put forth, like, a good team and maybe go a little bit further or play a little bit better than was

expected, like, it has knock on effects. Like, you know, the team from Great Britain, like, that missed something to kids over there. and that's not a baseball country, at least not primarily. So I think the WBC is great, and I can't wait to see them figure out a way to put Clayton Kershal for Team USA. Yeah, maybe that'll be the actual end of his pitching career. There you go. Yeah, take heart, everyone.

If you are counting down the days to meaningful MLB action, there are fewer days to count down, especially if you're into the WBC, which I think a lot of people will be and should be, then you're looking at a month shorter offseason than we used to have, and that's a significant difference. So that's the glass-half full perspective. And I will just remind everyone that all of the lead-home stuff is just available through MLBTV now. So if you are hankering for baseball, there's baseball to be had. There's a couple more weeks of Fall League, but more conveniently for you, like, all you have to do is navigate over to those Leadome games. And you can watch, you know, some guys who are going to be big league relevant next year, some guys who you are going to be delighted to remember. And, you know, I hope that I'm trying to remember if we got the, the commercials from the DR last year. The first year I watched Lidoam in a serious way, which was 2020. We just had to subscribe through a service and, like, we just got the commercials from the DR. And that was, it was so fun. It's just fun. Commercials from other countries are so much more.

on than your own because you're like, I don't know what I'm being advertised. I mean, often Presidente Golden Light. You get to hear the lead home announcers. You get to hear the guy, there's one announcer, and now I'm blinking on the team he primarily calls, and I feel so embarrassed. But he does a, you know, he has a couple of words that he consistently says in English during his calls, and then obviously the rest of the broadcast is in Spanish. And he will go, here's the pitch. And then he also goes, I can't believe it. Like when something cool happens. It's just, you know, it's a good fun time. And you can pick a squad and get really into it.

You're going to see some prospects. You're going to see some fringe 40-man guys. And, you know, you're going to see some Lead-Oam legend. So get on it. Lead-Om's fun. Yeah. Well, as we'll get into with Eric, there's a lot of baseball being played all over the world. All over the world.

It's a great game. A lot of people agree. They want to play it in their countries, too. So let's talk briefly before we bring on Eric. about a number of managers who will not be eligible to manage a WBC squad because they've been hired to manage major league teams. We've had a round of managerial hiring that has happened while we were busy talking about the playoffs. So let's do a little managerial catch-up, just a little quick managerial hiring catch-up. It occurs to me that we've seen essentially every kind of manager under the sun.

just a wide range. It's hard to identify exactly an archetype that teams are targeting here. And I guess maybe there shouldn't be. Maybe it should just be case by case. But yeah, you look at the variety here. And we talked about a couple of hirings. We did make time to talk about Tony Vitello, hired, of course, by the Giants coming straight out of college. And then we talked about Kurt Suzuki being hired by. by the Angels coming straight out of, well, also not managing, but more Big League experience. Sure. You was, of course, a catcher and then was a special assistant to the Angels, but no big league coaching staff, coaching experience, really, let alone managing experience. We've seen Albert Pujols be a top target, who has a little bit of managing experience, not in MLB or coaching for that matter. And then we saw the most recent hire was Walt Weiss.

of Atlanta. Now, Walt Weiss, I think, that's sort of like, that's the most cliched managerial. That's sort of like the most orthodox kind of hiring. I'm not saying that that's bad or good. I'm just saying if you had to come up with the mold of a managerial hiring traditionally, you'd come up with someone like Walt Weiss who was a player and was a manager formerly and then was a bench coach for, what, eight seasons with the team that hired him. I mean, that's just, you know, the standard model of managerial hiring, essentially, right? Just like player to manager and then, you know, go coach again, be the manager in waiting. And when Brian Snickers gone, then you get the job and you ascend to that role again. And you're a retread second time around manager.

Of course, he was with the Rockies both as a player and as a manager and also played for Atlanta. Anyway, that's the deal with Weiss, who I think is in his 60s now. And then elsewhere in the NL East, you have Blake Butera, who's hired by the Washington Nationals, not even one of the better-known Bouteras. Right. You probably know multiple other Bouteras before you know Blake. Of course, Drew Boutera and his dad was Sal Boutera. And as I understand it, Blake Boutera is from a different branch of Bouteras entirely. I think that's right.

No relation, as far as I'm aware. and the even more notable thing about Blake Boutera is that he's 33 years old. He turned 33 in August. Yep. And that's, that rocks you back on your heels if you're a certain age, perhaps. But the Nationals opted not to make Miguel Cairo a permanent hire. And of course, they just hired a new Pobo, Paul de Boni.

Paul, what did we say? We came up with something. Right? Poboni? Did we say that? Maybe. Anyway, Pobo, Toboni, Taboni, the Pobo. But he's a younger guy, too. So he's bringing in his own younger guy. Boutera is the youngest manager in more than 50 years. I mean, this is, you know, we've seen some young and inexperienced managers, but he's the youngest since Frank Quilessie was hired by the twins back in 1972. So that's how long it has been. And he was a raise guy. He was the senior player development director for the raise. And he was a minor league manager for four seasons, starting at 25 years old. So he's like the Juan Soto of managerial prospects. He's just like starting super young, which I guess bodes well.

And he won league championships in his last couple seasons, which was, you know, with low A Charleston. So that's quite a jump. he's skipping several rungs there as a manager, but has some managing, managing. Managing. Managing. Mr. Manager. He has some managing experience, at least. So that's another model, which is the minor league manager, two major league manager pipeline, but also like front office staffer, too. He was that as well, sort of a hybrid and barely played professionally, just very briefly at a low level, I believe. then you had the twins who hired or re-hired really Derek Shelton to replace Rocco Baldelli, who is still at large, still out there interviewing. Maybe he'll manage Team USA.

Maybe, but he might get a job before then. But if he doesn't, then yeah, can't think of a better guy. But Derek Shelton, this is interesting because he was with the twins previously. He was a bench coach for Baldelli and their besties, basically. Baldelli and Shelton, which is kind of awkward, I guess. Like, you know, I'm sure they had some conversations about it. There's no, like, manager brocode. I don't know.

It's not like, you know, I can't take the job you used to have. I mean, once you're let go, I'm sure Baldelli was like, yeah, by all means, I want my pal to be the manager and replace me. There are only so many of these jobs to go around. But obviously, they liked what they saw out of Shelton when he was in Minnesota. and he was in the interim pirates manager. And that didn't go so great, but no one really blamed him for that because there are more obvious people to blame for the pirates lack of success.

And then the Orioles replaced their interim guy with Craig Alburnaz. And Craig Alburnaz was the associate manager for the Guardians and was like their bench coach when they hired vote. And then he was a finalist for their managerial job. and then no one seems to know what the difference between an associate manager and a bench coach is. But he was both of those things and he was a catcher and he was, you know, future manager prospect and the raise had him as a coach. So he's kind of done it all too. So just really every possible path one could take to picking a manager we have seen.

And I don't know that there's a right answer, you know. If there were, then I guess all the teams would have conundered. converged on, oh, this is exactly the type of manager. And maybe that just speaks to how difficult it is to quantify the contribution of a manager. Or I guess you could even say maybe it just doesn't matter as much as it used to. But I kind of like that there's still a variety that's, yeah, we'll go get a young guy who was a minor league manager and a front office guy. We'll go get an old guy who's been around the block. We'll go get someone in between who's been a bench coach and was a player in the minors.

Oh, we'll go get this. Yeah. We'll rob the cradle to hire Blake Boutera and, you know, just like a college coach, a backup catcher who hasn't managed at all but was a special assistant. It's just really every possible, just such variety. We talk about the biodiversity of players. We do have a biodiversity of managers, at least. At least from a background perspective, right? Like it is a N&H perspective.

There are a couple of other demographic factors we could note some similarities on, not universally, but for several of the folks involved. But yeah, it's like I always feel like I don't know what to say about manager hires. I mean, sometimes I do. Sometimes I have like an understanding of a guy based on like what other people have said about him or particularly when that person has occupied a bench coach role before you've gotten at least a little bit of exposure. to them managing because they're the one who normally takes over when the manager gets tossed. But, you know, do I know how to evaluate Blake Butera? No, I keep stressing about calling him Drew Boutera. I've almost called him Drew Boutera four times today. But I do think that the notion that you're going to only, the teams would converge on one profile seems faulty to me

because there are so many different baseball players and presumably different rosters with different compositions might have different needs. You know, I imagine that the average big league manager, like maybe not right away, but like after a year, they're all probably pretty similar. I mean, I spent a month complaining about Dan Wilson managing, but like the the tactician piece of it, I think can be kind of assumed for a lot of guys. Now, if they've never managed before, maybe it becomes more of an issue and you have a steeper learning curve. But like, you know, these are all these are all baseball guys right they're baseball they're baseball dudes they've been baseball they've been baseball guys i feel like there's not a ton to necessarily differentiate them

um when it comes to that stuff and so then it's a question of like how does how does an individual guy fit with your roster and your team building philosophy and you know like maybe you're maybe you think that a really young guy who has a player dev background is going to like resonate with a particular kind of clubhouse or be an important departure from the last guy. Maybe you think, you know, you're Buster Posey and you want to, you want to zig when everyone thinks you've been zagging the whole time, right? Like, there are a lot of individual motivations that go into these choices. And as always, like, the stuff that goes into a guy being a really good, you know, manager, a lot of it we don't see. So it can be hard to know.

what to think of any of these individual hires other than, like, I do kind of resent the Blake Butera one just because I'm going to get his name wrong at least a couple of times. And I'm going to feel bad about it because I should be able to get it right. But I'm going to get it wrong. And he's so young. Yeah. We'll get used to it. And probably we'll all forget true Butueterra at some point. You know, you say that, but there are still people who. It's not like the Buterras are household names exactly. I mean, we're aware of the Boutterra's. Well, I'm not worried about how other people refer to Blake Butera. I'm worried about how I refer to Blake Butera because I'm a professional,

and I think it's important to get people's names right, but I'm going to get it wrong. You say the people won't, but every now and again, I'll be editing something. I'm not going to say from who. And I'll be like, why is Clay Bellinger in this copy? And then you just realize sometimes you brain fart, Ben, you know, you have a little brain fart. Yeah. To be clear, Meg doesn't edit me because I don't write for fancraft, but that is something. that I would do

because I remain fond of former effectively wild guest Clay Bellinger so Right but Ben the number of times we're in the midst of top 50 free agent season as we've noted and the number of times I've been like we have the right

Rogers brother on there right It's the right we have the one we mean we have the one we mean to have on there on there the one that we mean That's the one we mean It is important because they are not the same man they are different men. It occurs to me that a manager that young, I have no idea whether, I mean,

it's a promising thing, I think, in terms of Lake Butera's, you hear me just pause there as I was searching for the White Boutera. Just to be sure. But I think that it bodes well that he's getting the call this young and this early. But probably I would think from a clubhouse perspective, that's only viable with a young team that is still trying to rebuild because he is older than every Washington National, I believe, except I guess maybe Trevor Williams had internal brace surgery in July. I guess he's still on the injured list and he's 33, but I guess an older 33 than Blake Butera.

But other than that, just scanning down their roster resource page, they do not have anyone who is out of their 20s. So I think that probably makes it more manageable for him to manage this team because he at least does have some seniority over these guys. So that helps, I guess, a little bit because most teams he would be younger than some of his players, which has happened before.

It's not unprecedented at all. But if you had a significant number of players who were older than you were, and you had that background where you haven't been a big leaguer before, that might be an impediment, I would say. It might be challenging, yeah. Yeah, you're probably not going to hire the 33-year-old first-timer to take over a team that is expected to contend immediately,

though they'd certainly like the nationals to contend sooner rather than later, but, you know, he's not joining a team that is coming off of recent success, quite the opposite, in fact. Yeah, yeah. There are still two vacancies, as we speak. Right. The Padres have not yet hired a manager and the Rockies.

And what is going on with the Rockies? I guess that's an evergreen question. Do you think that that spot, I imagine that that spot will stay vacant until they have identified their POBO, right? Yeah, you'd think. But even that sounds like it's been a bit of an adventure. It's not going great. Yeah, I'm not following Rockies reporting that closely. I'm not the most plugged in on.

on Rockies news, but just from afar, I've picked up through osmosis that the two well-known and respected front office people, they were interviewing and were said to be finalists, I think, at one point from the Diamondbacks and Guardians, are now not in consideration, or maybe the Rockies are not in consideration by them might be the way to put it. So no one seems to know what's happening other than the fact that there was a recent report that they're interviewing Adam Ottavino as their pobo or as their front office head, not as their manager, like, as running the baseball ops department, which I guess there's no harm in interviewing anyone.

And Otavino seems like a pretty smart guy, but like, he was playing this spring. He was, he has done nothing, you know. I think that Otavino is a smart guy and, you know, he's got his facility and he does. Yeah. You know, all kinds of stuff. Yeah, player development. Yeah, but also, I'm sorry, come the fuck on. Like, what are we doing?

No. Yeah, I've written plenty about just, you know, the major leaguers. They're becoming GMs and poeboes again. Gabe Kapler was just promoted to GM. He's not pobo, of course. But we've seen, you know, these guys coming back into the game after a down cycle where it was out of vogue to have former players be managed. but now the former players are in many cases very analytically savvy and, you know, think the same way as some Ivy Leagueer who never played, right? So now you're getting more of those guys, but they do at least typically have some sort of apprenticeship, you know, like whether it's Craig Breslow or it's Chris Gets or it's Chris Young or, you know, like there are a bunch of them now, but they all did some stint in some front office and they worked their way up a little bit typically or they worked at the commissioner's office or whatever it is.

So, yeah, to go from playing in the preceding season to having that kind of responsibility, that would be wild. It's bonkers. And I'm not trying to say that, like, Odovino couldn't be a good executive. I mean, I have no idea. But he does seem like a thoughtful guy. You know, if he has aspirations toward that, okay, great. But you got to get your feet under you at least a little bit. Like, it's just a – and, like, the message that it sends.

that you are interviewing him. It's just, I found the, I found the other promotion title swap that we need to laugh out a little bit, and it's related to the Marlins. So they promoted Gabe to General Manager, and they made a lot of other front office moves, and one of them was promoting their existing, or maybe just retitling, I'm not sure.

Their existing director of amateur scouting, Frank Palleri, Two, Vice President of Amateur Forecasting and Player Evaluation Initiatives. Wow. Come the, again, come the fuck on. Like, no, no, no, no. Stop it. Stop it. You just don't want to say Amateur Scouting?

Like, what's the deal? Yeah, that's weird. Why do we need to, is that title inflation? I don't know. I don't know. That's so strange. What is it? The semantic treadmill, it's like when certain things you have to.

to come up with a new term for something that means the same as the old term, but maybe the old term has fallen out of favor for some reason. I don't think we need to do away with scouting. Scouting still seems fine. It sure seems fine. It's just, it's one of those moments where you're like, like, Peter, we remember you used to work for the race. You don't have to do this. You don't have to.

We know. You're fine. You're going to have to make a small text size on that business card to cram all of that in there. You're going to fit it. You're going to have to get big cards. It would be so funny, you can't fit them in a wallet, and then people just throw them away. You know, they're like, what am I supposed to do with this? Sometimes you get it, sometimes you get the business cards that are, like, weirdly long and narrow.

And you're like, what am I supposed to do with this? Where's this supposed to go? I think there was also a report I saw in passing that maybe they won't want to hire a Pobo until the CBA situation is settled. That's over a year from now. You have an entire off-season to conduct and a draft and a trade deadline. What are you talking about? What are you? Just, I issue a challenge.

Rockies, just don't be weird for once. Just don't be weird. It seemed like they were determined not to be weird this time. They were just like, we're going to go outside the organization. We're going to do a real search. Like, we're going to hire appealing people. And it seemed like they were reaching out to the type of people that a normal team might reach out to. And I don't know who rejected whom.

But it seems like they're just falling back into. Rocky's weirdness and people they know, you know, they said they were going to go outside the organization. Of course, Adam Adamatovino was in the organization for years and years. Yeah. Yeah. As a player. I mean, it's just, you know. Look, and I, again, I want to be, I want to be clear that I don't, I don't know what kind of executive he would be. He might end up being a very good one. Like, I'm, I'm not trying to knock Arvino here at all. Just like, I'm not trying to knock anyone who's or she with Marlins. It's just like, be serious. Like, come on. Be, have, I mean, those are

different, those are different levels of be serious also, to be clear. Like, just a very different levels of be serious. Higher normally, they could, they could call that person's title whatever they want. And Rocky's fans could live with that, I think, if they invented some, some novel thing, some new term for their top baseball ops exec, as long as it was this sort of baseball opes exec that Just a normal team might hire. That's all people are asking at this point from the Rockies, but are they going to get that? Who knows?

Who knows? Yeah, like, out of, you know, maybe he's a great front office prospect, but you need some seasoning. You know, you've got to get some reps. You've got to put some time in. And I guess you could say, well, how much worse could it be really?

Like, you know, if he's learning on the job, is it really going to get that much worse than it was? That's fair, probably. But, yeah, I just, I really thought, They might just turn over a new leaf, but it's Charlie Brown with the football. And I don't want to underestimate that, like, you know, you are swimming upstream there, right? There's the reputation for institutional dysfunction, and that's going to be a problem because it's not like ownership changed, right? So you're going to have to deal contend with that when you are trying to attract serious candidates.

And then there's the challenge of just trying to put a good team on the field when you play where you play, right? So I want to be fair to the Rockies about what challenges they face. But also, like, come on. Like, come, come, come on, come on. My last thought here, because the Padres have not yet hired someone and, you know, Baldelli's still out there and Poo-Holes is still out there. But whomever they hire will be the sixth full-time permanent, well, obviously not, permanent, but not interim manager, A.J. Preller has hired during his tenure as the top Padres baseball exec. And you don't usually get that many managers. You don't. Because if you've

had to dismiss that many managers or they've left for whatever reason, you know, Schilt just retired or, you know, some sort of circumstances surround that in his relationship with the coaching staff and Preller and everything else. But he did seemingly walk away. way. So you don't usually have that happen because, you know, you get a couple, you get a few maybe, and then you can kind of use that manager as your sacrificial lamb. You can basically, you know, take the heat off yourself by firing your manager and that can buy you a little bit of time. But that move only works a few times typically before suddenly the onus is on you because you've hired those managers that you had to fire

or the team just did poorly which is why you had to change managers and eventually the attention is on you and so this will be his sixth if you don't count interim managers if you count interim managers he's had eight already and I think there was a time

when Dave Roberts was a Padre's interim manager yeah and Pat Murphy I think was an interim manager that same season. And then the two former Padres interim managers ended up going head-to-head in the NLCS this year. But, you know, that was a while ago. But Preller's had eight interims, five full-times, and I wanted to see how many someone else's had. What's the record? Is this unprecedented? And so, you know, mini-staplast, I guess, from Kenny Jacklin of Baseball Reference,

who sent me the list using Baseball References designation of who the top baseball operations executive was for a given team in a given year. And the way that Kenny, well, he sent me a list of interims included, which I can share with people too, but I was more interested in the full times. And he just looked at, this only counts the first manager of the year, essentially. You know, you don't have an interim to start the year, typically. So only the first manager of the year during the tenure of the top baseball execs. So Preller has had five.

He will soon have six. The record technically is Calvin Griffith with the twins 11, but he was the owner, right? So a couple owners show up here. Calvin Griffith and Charlie Finley with the A's show up. So, you know, we're not going to count them, I don't think. Next on the list is Jim Campbell, who was Tiger's GM forever for 21 years. And he had eight managers under him. But Preller's only had 12 seasons.

I mean, only. That's kind of a lot, but it's not a Jim Campbell length of stint. And then it was John Holland with the Cubs. 19 seasons had eight managers. Ken Williams, Kenny Williams of the White Sox, six managers, and that was 23 seasons. Phil Segey with Cleveland 13 years, six managers. So that's Preller-esque. Mike Rizzo with the Nationals, whom we just talked about, six managers, but that was 17 years, so more time than Preller.

Jack McKeon, who of course managed himself, but was also a front office exec. He had 11 years with six managers with the Padres. So the Padres have a history of this sort of turnover. And then Roland Heemond with the White Sox, he had five managers in 13 years. So if Preller gets to six managers in 13 years, I guess that's exceeded only by, well, a handful of guys who actually qualify and almost all of them had longer tenures than Preller. So, yeah, this type of tenure, and there are even fewer guys ahead if you count the interims, which you probably shouldn't. But if you do, then Preller will be about to be on his ninth. You know, I guess you could count interims because it does sort of speak to the instability of the situation.

Maybe, you know, you couldn't pick someone, designate someone as the manager. So Gabe Paul in Cincinnati, he had eight in nine years, but then it's Finley and Griffith and Campbell and Holland. So it's the same group. He's on a short list, is the point. You know, there have been very few top baseball ops execs who have presided over this many managers, and most of them had longer stint. than Preller. So just another way in which A.J. Preller's stay with the Padres has been unusual. And aren't there so many ways? But you got to figure that this will probably be his last guy, I would think, right? It's probably his last crack at it. Because if this doesn't go well and, you know, the Padres, are they going to keep contending? Is this like, is their window starting to close? Who knows? So, yeah, if. If Preller doesn't nail this higher and also get the good results that are needed to actually keep a manager and keep your job as the Popo, then he may not be long for that front office. But he's had quite a run, that's for sure.

I'd like to read a book about A.J. Preller's time with the Padres. That would be quite eventful. No kidding. All right. Well, let's take a quick break. And we will be back with Eric Longenhagen to preview the professional international free agent market. How do you calculate more? Does it come from the heart?

Should we use defensive runs saved? Or follow the OAA way? Who's gone right in? With their quips and opinions? It's effectively wild. Effectively wild It's effectively wild Well, for most of us

It's the offseason But for FanGraph's lead prospect analyst Eric Langenhagen It's always scouting season The levels change The locations change But the goal does not And prospect ranking season

Really kind of kicks off in earnest When the season season ends And this is a man who's scouting the Arizona a fall league while everyone else is watching the World Series. To be clear, he was watching the World Series as well. He was just watching other stuff too. And his eternal Sisyphian struggle to figure out which guys are going to be good at baseball never ends. And thus, neither do his appearances on this podcast. Welcome back, Eric. Well, thank you. Yeah, there have been a couple times this fall when ye old Samsung tablet has come to the field with me so that, yeah, playoff

or a World Series game. I think the ALCS game is the last, one of the ALCS games is the last one I, like, sat and watched while I was at a field. But yeah, I'm excited to be back and we still have another couple weeks of Falle here. And then, you know, we'll have our tolerance break for the off season. But, yeah, I'm excited to get going on lists.

And I will say, like, those Verizon Wireless commercials where they're like, however old your phone or tablet is, you can bring it to us. And we'll, you know, you can trade in for the new one. They don't mean that when you have a Galaxy S3 tablets. Yeah, I was many S's behind the current model. And I also could not. But that's because our non-Iphones last so long.

They're just so durable that by the time you actually need a new one, you can't trade it in anymore. There's something going else with the iPhone that makes people really want the new one. Yeah, it might have that TV. tiny bit better camera or something maybe. Hey, it's not tiny, it's not, wait, it's not a tiny bit better. Get your girl finally photographed the moon, okay? I did it. I, I, it was visible. Oh, yeah. A detail. Yeah, thank you. It was my white whale or moon as the case may be. So, there you go. Well, we're here not to talk about the moon, but to talk about players who are coming over from Asia, possibly, potentially this offseason, or definitely in,

some cases. And maybe we can start actually by talking about some players who came over from Asia already, some of whom we were just watching in the World Series, because I am curious whether your scouting radar has been calibrated better just because there have been so many players coming over from Japan and Korea and elsewhere over the past few seasons. And we've seen some of them do super well and some of them not so much. And so I wonder, whether you now feel like you have a better sense of how the next group of players to come over will fare, because that's sort of what scouting is, right? It's like looking at what's worked or what hasn't worked before and extrapolating, projecting from that.

Yeah, I think there's definitely, just during our lifetime, I mean, the dice K Matsuzaka matriculation was such a big deal when we were kids. Like, at least I was still kid-ish. And then, you know, you could see how some of that stuff went and how Kaz Matsui did and how Hideki Matsui did. And now the last several years, it has sort of picked up. I do kind of have background anxiety that something akin to what has happened in Cuba is slowly happening in Asia, where you do have a few even Japanese amateur players, high schoolers, skipping their home countries, leagues, draft to, like, come to college in the States or do something else. And I wonder, you know, even if that trend, like, there's probably only a couple of guys every year from overseas who could conceivably make a real long-term big league impact.

And I'm talking both Japanese and Korean-born players and also the group of American players or sometimes, you know, Latin American players who have gone overseas, learn something new or changed in some way and are coming back. And that's, you know, Merrill Kelly was that guy. Robert Suarez was that guy. The Padres have had a bunch of these players over the years. There were plenty of pitchers especially who go learn a split or find something else and then come back, you know, having been on the fringe of a big league roster,

and now are pretty entrenched on a good team's pitching staff. It happens kind of a lot, actually. And then the very, very top of the group, the Yoshi Yamamoto's. Like, Yamamoto is freakish. Like, if people have seen what it's like when this guy's doing yoga or just, like, moving around, it is definitely a different thing. He was appropriately stuffed coming over. Like, you know, would have been the top two or three prospect.

Roki Sasaki, you can sort of see some of the limitations and just some of the chaos of pitching itself where even within this calendar year, his stuff is not operational at certain points and then is enough for him to close for the World Series team at others. So I think the one thing that is still tough, though, Ben, is the hitting piece of this and then, you know, obviously the individual chaos of injury and changing bodies, which we're going to talk about, I think, as we come to Muna Takamura, Akami here, but, like, you know, Yoshi-Sutsugo didn't come over here and hit. And there are plenty of players who have attempted to transition, and every once in a while,

you get a Shinsu-Chu, where he has an amazing, long, big league career. And then at other times, you do get, like, your Yoshi-Sut-Sugos or, you know, Akhinori-Wamora, where the longevity of the impact is pretty limited and the annual impact is, I think IwoMura did okay, but when you go back and look at his stats, it's like, all right, ultimately this is like a one more player. And so being attuned to some of the older Cuban players

and some of the players who are like kickback guys, that's a place I've stepped up in the last few years to the point where we've had reports on, you know, the Eric Fettys of the world. and how they've changed on the site for the last several years. And I think that it adds, you know, I think we are getting better at it. Let's talk about Roki for a second then, because I don't know that my outlook for him has really gotten any more concrete than it was when he came over. Obviously, the way his season started, not so hot.

And then being on the IEL and concerns about the speed and everything else, then he comes back and looks dominant at first out of the pen and then maybe a little shaky. So what do you think? What do you project him as now? Would you keep him in the bullpen? Do you still think he can start? What has to happen for him to be as much of a success as he was expected to be? I think they have the flexibility of him being what they need him to be. I think in a vacuum, I guess it's really not in a vacuum because his salary is so minimal compared to some of these other guys.

If he had been paid like a true free agent, then I'd be more inclined to try to start. start this guy because of what we're paying him, but that's just not the case here. So, you know, in the Dodger situation, like, I like Emmett Sheehan more than Roeke at this point, like, as a starter. And those two guys stand in contrast to one another, perhaps most of all, because of the fastball playability piece of it. Whereas, and some of it has to do with, like, Sheehan is a little bit more fluid. And there are other reasons to think Emmett Sheean's command will end up being more polished

and better than Roekees will. The strategy against Roki should still be just to stand there until, you know, you can just hunt for a fastball. Because I really think that, like, the level of strike throwing, this is, I think, pervasive in Asia, guys' lack of strike throwing can be masked by the hitters over their tendency to chase, especially in Korea. And I think, you know, as we talk about Tatsuya I, Mai today, that that's another thing that will come up is, does this I really have starter quality command, or does it look that way because more hitters over there just willing to offer at pitches outside the zone? And I think that I was definitely not tricked, so to speak, but overzealous in projecting Roki's command. Some of it was just,

this was like a freak athlete to me, despite the fact that his build is sort of strange and vampiric. And I think that he's maybe lacked more lower body. strength, like my appreciation for that piece of it was miscalibrated. So I think all that is to say that twist on my arm, I'd say Roki is probably a closer going forward. He's probably a best fit in that role just because I am skeptical that the command piece of it is going to develop to a satisfactory degree. If his fastball played more like Sheeons does, he would have more margin for error in that regard, because you can miss a little bit when your fastball has that kind of, that kind of life, not just the amount of life, but like the type of movement it has.

Rokies just sort of sinks into barrels, whereas Emmett Sheeans has like vertical ride. So the command piece of it has got to arrive for him if his fastball is going to be less vulnerable. And, you know, I don't know how you get to that point without trying to develop him in that role. The Dodgers roster is going to turn over some here. Like some of these guys who they have on the 60 day and, you know, I think who are currently on the 40 man but not on the projected big league roster, guys who've experienced as starters like NAC and Robleski and Nick Frosso and low leverage Ben and like there's going to be there's going to be some amount of turnover. There's got to be some kind of consolidation. And what they're starting pitching depth looks like when that stuff is done when like River Ryan's coming back. from injury and Gavin Stone had shoulder surgery at the end of 2024 and so like he should be back and how they decide to consolidate and what kind of real starter depth they have at the end of that I think is more than anything else will dictate what they try to do with him but if I'm just

projecting like what he'd be best suited for probably closer we had a lot of confidence and I think you've just walked through some of the complications that have arisen for him and some of the things we may be learned from Roki. When you look at this year's class of guys who are confirmed to come over, guys who, you know, when our top 50 free agent ranking comes out later this week will place, you have Marukami at the top of the guys we know to be coming over in 2026. And he's an interesting case because there's some flaw in the profile and there's also Titanic tools. So can you talk us through the Marukami of it all and sort of how your assessment of him has changed over his life as a prospect

on the international section of the board. When Murakami was 21-22, and we're talking at this point about 2021 and 2022, you know, it looked like he was going to be, he looked like a top three to five overall prospect. If he were a 22-year-old playing a double and triple A,

that he would have absolutely been like a top three to five prospect. He has, you know, two consecutive MVP seasons. He wins in a leg, Olympic gold medal as a 21-year-old. He has a 56 homer, like 10-war, 22-year-old season. He wins the Triple Crown. You know, the names he becomes associated with at this time are like,

oh, you're the youngest MVP since Hideki Matsui. You're the youngest Triple Crown winner ever. You're the most home runs by a Japanese-born player in our league ever. And then over the course of the most recent three seasons, his strikeout rates have spiked back to where they were when he, first debuted, which was sort of in a problematic area, like, but he was a teenager, and it was fine, and then they got better, and then they really regressed. And, you know, you think, okay, well, 28% strikeout rate, like, that's okay. There are plenty of guys who strike out

that much in major league baseball and are still good. And that's right, but when you start looking under the hood, I mean, you look at like Murakami's strikeout rates relative to other NPB success stories, it becomes kind of scary. So, for instance, in 2025 against secondary pitches, so splitters, sliders, curveballs, cutters, everything that's not a fastball, this guy's contact rate was like 49%, like, really bad. Like, there aren't big league hitters. His contact rate was 51% against breaking balls and off-speed pitches.

So for context, like, the best, the very best secondary pitches in baseball, like Rokey Splitter or whatever, pick your favorite pitch, they generate a contact rate this bad. Like, they're so good that hitters miss them like 40 to 50% of the time. And that's how every secondary pitch plays against Murakami. Yeah. And then you have some of the splits against velocity. And again, I'm just like doing this on Synergy as we're sitting here. So in 2025 against Fastball's 93 miles per hour and above, he's hitting 230 with a 70% contact rate.

That's not awful. If we looked at a multi-year sample, and this is an issue here too, if you looked at a multi-year sample, it's just like generally not favorable. Yeah. If we are looking at the big league player population at some of these splits, there, like, isn't much precedent for guys who succeed, even though they swing and miss this much. And some of those guys, you'd be excited about for some amount of time, like Joey Gallo. Like, if Munitaka Murakami were to come over and have a career similar to Joey Gallo

where he has, like, a couple of 40 homer seasons and, you know, some other productive power-hitting seasons on either side of that, Like, you'd be pretty happy with that. You know, Gallo is really the only precedent where you look at the contact rate and say, okay, this is, I'm down for this. I would pay $100 plus million to have this guy in his theoretical prime. If I'm looking back to, you know, the year 2000 at qualified hitters who have like swung and missed this much. And again, for Murakami, like from an overall contact rate standpoint, If I take, I'm going to include everything since 2022 in my sample now, just to have, like, a really big sample.

Because part of, you know, why 2025 might have been a down year for him is that his 2024 ended with injury and then he dealt with several more throughout 2025. And there were various different things. The only thing that recurred was oblique stuff throughout 2025. Everything else was, like, more acute. So Murakami, again, it's 63% contact rate against fastballs, 93 miles and above since 2022, and against secondary pitch types, his contact rate is roughly 60% against sliders,

55% against splitters. Like, these are bad numbers. Yeah. Okay, and this is the last four seasons. So that's scary. And then again, like, if I'm looking at pitch level data on the Thangraphs leader boards, guys with contact rates in this area, so overall for Murakami, it's 65%. The guys with the lowest contact rate in Major League Baseball, since the year 2000, there are only like 10 guys who have a contact rate under 65%. And it's like, Miguel Suno, Bobby Dalbeck, Kestenheura, Chris Carter, Mike Zanino.

Adalberto Mondesi, Jorge Alfaro. So it's not anyone who has had sustained, like, generational talent type success. How dare you say that about Mike Zanino on a podcast with Meg? And this is the thing. Zanino could do. Zinino played a valuable position. Jorge Alfaro plays a valuable position. And some of these, like, Adelberto Mondecee, man, like talk about, tooled out, and just not a good baseball player. but you can see how the makeup of some of these players

and once we get past the 65% threshold you can see some of the names I'm going to say to you sound a lot like the guy we're talking about because Murakami has insane power right Russell Branion Mark Reynolds Fran Mill Reyes Nolan Gorman Patrick Wisdom Luke Voight like these are the types of power hitters

who we're talking about bunch of beef boys yeah these are the kind of hitters who go to Japan and have success maybe after after they watch out of the majors So that's not great. So these are all players whose contact rate are hovering around that 65, 66% mark. And maybe there's a way to get this guy to a place mechanically that improves it because once we start creeping into the upper 60% area is when you start to get like Ryan Howard and James Wood and Ellie, right?

So it's just more if Adam done, if Murakami could become Adam done, you would be thrilled. Well, he needs a 70% contact rate to do that. And so, yeah, we're talking about really, it's five percentage points, but it's really like more, you know, like 8 to 10% improvement, which is kind of a lot. Yeah, I wonder if someone will bet on the upside or a bounce back. He kind of had a bounce back this year in his partial season after he came back from injury. his power was way up and way back, and he had a 210 WRC plus in 56 games, but still with the strikeouts. And it's odd. It's a strange progression because you don't usually see that when someone's that preternaturally and precociously good at 21 and 22.

Because if I see stats like that, even scouting the stat line, this was kind of the way I felt about Otani, where obviously with Otani, you didn't really just have to scout the stat line because he has all the tools. the build and everything else, too. But when there were people skeptical about his bat translating, I just kind of defaulted to, like, look what he already did, you know, in like the second highest level league in the world at an extremely young age. I just, it was hard for me to square that with the idea that he was not going to be a viable big league hitter. And that's what I would have said about Murakami, too, a few years ago when he's set in the single season and PP home run records at 22, and he has 56 bombs and a 225 WRC plus. And back then, he wasn't striking out that much.

So it's just, it's odd. I don't know whether he went backward physically and whether that's about the injuries that he's had, or maybe the injuries lead to mechanical issues, or whether the league figured out his vulnerabilities and exploited them to some extent. But anyone with that kind of talent at a young age, if you've demonstrated that, if you think that's somewhere still in there. Like, if you could port that version of Murakami to the majors, I believe he would hit. So can you get back to that version of him a few years later, I guess is the question.

Right. And there was a point where he had the one 2023 season where all of a sudden there were more strikeouts. And at that point, that was the anomaly. You say, okay, well, if I'm taking a Bayesian approach to this, then I care much. more about the last several seasons than I do just this most recent one. And now it's just been three seasons in a row. And I agree with you, there's a point, you know, where I would be in on Murakami. If I'm sitting in a front office, I'm in on him to an extent. And so much of it is just going to be dictated by which of the teams are in, who can afford to take a risk like

this, or who has some preconceived notions about what they can do to get him to the place that we're talking about. They are the ones who are going to be most likely to do a thing like this. It is not going to be the race, right? Like, it is going to be the Mets or something like that. It's going to be the Dodgers or the Mets or, you know, it's not going to be the Mariners who do it. It's, you know, it's going to be a team who can afford for it to go belly up if it does. Can he field?

He plays first, he plays third. If he was decent, at least, then that would maybe lower the bar a bit for how well he has to hit. but how long can he play those positions or how well? It is better at first than at third, but Max Muncie just played third base for the team that won. So it looks comparable to that. Muncie's feel for doing some stuff in time is, you know, commensurate with his experience.

Murakami is like a lumbering dude, but I think like whoever likes him most, again, probably thinks we can put this guy at third base. And so I would bet that he plays enough third base that it matters to hit, you know, the way his positional adjustment is done. So imagine your team and you're nervous about all the things that you just described about Murakami. One of the other options you might pivot to if you're keen on the international market is Akamoto. So tell us about Kazuma Akamoto. He's older.

He's 29. In some ways, he's got a similar track record to Murakami. there were big power-hitting seasons a couple of years ago. There was at one point also this issue of Okamoto versus better velocity. But that's been better of late. In fact, overall, his bat to ball skills have played better over the last couple of years. He was like a 20, 21% strikeout guy at a certain point and has cut that to 11%. he's been trending down

in the 16 to 11% range over the most of the last four seasons so I think you feel a little bit more confidence that the bat to ball skills are going to translate for him he's similar on defense where it's like he could play third base I guess but it's not great

and I have a 40 on him over there but he's not so bad that he's totally unplayable. It's just a more balanced overall skill set. He does have a couple like 40 homer seasons but realistically it's not that kind of power. It's just a good blend of contact and power. And you can see some of the stuff that you would expect

to see mechanically from a guy who has shortened up and is hitting big league velocity is like, oh, this guy, he's on time back to the baseball. He's able to pull the baseball more consistently. Not necessarily. Murakami, it's like all fields, huge, like pull-to-pull power when he's making contact. And Okamoto was more like, it's not quite,

Esoc parade A's level extreme in terms of how much pull, but that's what it looks like. He's crowding the plate. He's really trying to pull everything. He does have some in-zone slider, you know, swing and miss because of his approach. Like, he's just trying to pull, pull, pull. But he's on top of the plate enough that it's not like a ton of the zone. And I like him. And, you know, I've talked to scouts who were, you know, either in Japan at times this year or who did remote work on some

subset of these guys who, you know, agree with me that, like, at the price that they would rather have Okamoto and they're just more in play for him, they think, than for Murakami, because they expect Okamoto will get a lesser deal, in part because of his age, and they just feel like the floor is higher on him as, like, a contactator. Well, there's no Yamamoto on the pitching market, and there's no one who's even quite as sexy and enticing as Sasaki was a year ago, but let's talk for a moment. There's someone for everyone, Ben. You don't know. I'm sure that there will be plenty of suitors and you will find a match. But Tatsuya, Imae, whom you mentioned earlier, Reidy from the Sebu Lions,

and then we can talk about a guy who might come back over after remaking himself. But give us the skinny on Imae. I, the first round pick out of high school over there and was in a rotation at 20. He was pretty walk prone for several years. He was injury prone. And then really, starting in 2022, each year, strikes got better. He was working more and more innings to the point where, you know, like a lot of pitchers in Asia, he's thrown 160 innings. Like, some of these guys go to Korea and it's just like, wow, you threw 200 innings over there. Like, yeah, you're welcome. We have this idea of, you know, pitchers starting. that is sort of solidified when some of them, like, come through Asia.

And Imai is one of those guys, so, you know, he's coming off of four consecutive seasons with an ERA under two and a half, even in the seasons when he was walking a bunch of guys. And then in 2025, you know, he had a 192, he sat 95 all year. He has a legit plus slider and a splitter. He's like actually has a splitter and a change up, although towards the end of the year, like in the playoffs, it was really just the straight change. which he had, he's had for a while. Splitter is newer.

The straight change was really what he was leaning on as his off-speed. So still kind of developing that splitter, I'd say, you know, this is a really athletic, loose, wippy-bodied guy where if you're thinking about, you know, Ben, we've had conversations about this, like quantifying deception or what you're looking for, some of these deceptive pitchers and what makes them deceptive, if some of it is they're just hiding the baseball behind their own body

for longer. This is one of those guys where he just does not show you the baseball until very, very late because his body's just so loose and his arm is just back laying parallel with the ground until his release point almost. And so I

really think this guy's fastball and his slider both are going to play. There's stuff about his delivery I don't love. This is one of those pitchers who has a lot of arm side misses. His arm is late. Like if you slow the video down, When that front foot lands, like, his arm is late.

And when you see that and the up-and-arm side misses with the fastball, to me, that's like a little bit of a yellow flag, or at least an indication that something should change here, maybe. And then you look at the rest of his delivery, and I do think for how athletic he is, he's just got such a short striding delivery. It's one of those guys who, where he is on the rubber and or his stride direction, these are things that are pretty common to change.

Nowadays, like, Garra Crochet changed stuff after he was traded. Like, the Red Sox are one of those teams. They're a growing number of them where they're just like, we don't really care how good you've been to this point,

how this is working for you. If we think we can make you better by changing some of this stuff with the way you're on the rubber or the direction you're striding off of it, we're going to do it. So I think he might as a candidate for this. And some of it I think will help

his off-speed pitches play because I do think they're pretty easy to see out of his hand. They just start tailing away from the zone, like, too early. And I think if you change the angle of it some, that it will be less identifiable. So just on athleticism and durability and the way his on-paper strike-throwing has trended and the arm strength and the breaking ball quality,

like that's a lot of really good stuff. And so I think he might could slot into a rotation right away. And, like, I have him behind Gowan and Michael King, this year's free agent class. But I think, you know, once you start talking about like Emai versus Jack Flaherty and stuff like that, now we can really start having a conversation about who we'd rather have. He's 27. And so I think like he sort of slots into that next, probably at the front for me, of that next group of pitchers after the gallon and, and Michael King, you know, area. And then Ben made mention of someone who might be coming back and that

returner would be Cody Ponce. So what has changed for him? since he was a prospect and Big League are here in the U.S., and what are you expecting of him if he does make a return? Cody Ponce, I mean, it's funny, I saw Ponson College at Cal Poly Pomona, and he's always been like a cutter-heavy guy, and, you know, he made his way through the minors and had a whole pour-over's worth of Bigley-Diggings, and he's been overseas for a couple years

and was basically the same he was an MPB first and he was basically the same guy over there for the first couple of years and then in 2025 he went from MPB to KBO which is normally not a good sign but he added two ticks to his fastball

he lost a ton of weight like totally different conditioned guy and then had more of a split look to his off-speed pitch than before so there have been real discernible changes here and then, you know, monster season from him, he had a sub-2ERA, he worked 180 innings. He had like a, you know, 35 or 36 percent strikeout rate. He barely walked anybody.

And then even, like, deep, you know, in the season during the playoffs, he's, like, pumping 94-97. So Cody Ponce looks really good. He's got, you know, a better secondary pitch than he had before. I still think his curveball is good-looking. And there have been physical changes to his conditioning that make me. me think, okay, he's actually sitting 95 now, and he did it all year. He did it for 200 in his playoff innings, basically. Yeah, he was like otherworldly, to be clear. I mean,

KBO standards, he won the equivalent of the Cy Young. He led the league and everything, essentially. But I think he and Drew Anderson both are poised for like a real role over here. Drew Anderson, I don't know if he's going to come because he's married to a Japanese woman he has spent a lot of time in Asia but Drew Anderson's another one where he had a Velo spike and sustained it for 170 plus innings

and like I kind of buy it and I like Ponce more because I just think his secondary stuff is better but like Drew Anderson who's 31 is another one where like both of those guys I think should get big league deals and play meaningful roles in someone's rotation next year.

And they both, I think, like, at one point, they were sort of in a McGuire-Sosa, you know, KBO strikeout record race. And I forget how it settled because I think it maybe had to do with, like, the playoffs or not, but like, but yeah, both of those guys, I think totally, I'd be very interested in for more,

especially Ponce, for more than what Eric Fetty got a couple years ago, which was two years 15 Mell. I think Ponce will get closer to 25, and maybe Anderson's will be more like exactly like Fettys. So those are the headliners we've hit there, your first couple of tiers of players, and people can go to your piece, which we will link to on the show page to see the complete list. But is there anyone else who may come over, at least if they're not guaranteed to yet, who has real impact potential?

Yeah, so some of the same dynamics that are at play for Drew Anderson, Well, some of those were just like interpersonal. But basically, it's thought of that in Asia, NPB is obviously the best league, and then the KBO and then the CPBL in Taiwan. And so what normally happens is if, say, there is a good Taiwanese player, which there is, his name is Joe C. Sue.

And if folks watched the WBC qualifiers 10 months ago, you saw this guy pitching for Taiwan as they won. You know, he was pumping 98. He is a good splitter and curveball. He's little, but he's really athletic. Generally, the Taiwanese players will filter up through KBO and MPB either sequentially or like some of them will skip right to NPB. There's just better money there.

And the rules like guarding entry are easier when you're transitioning from one of the Asian leagues to the other than they are. if you want to come to MLB. And so Josie Sue is one where if a big league team thinks he can start, then maybe the money is enough for him to come. He's too young to be posted and paid closer to a free agent. He still has to pitch for a couple of years

in a foreign pro league before he could be posted and pursued in that manner. So it's going to be hard for the money to be that big. It would take teams who have pretty sure, right? I'm not talking out of school here. They're like, you know, the same considerations that Roki Sasaki had, you know, applied to this guy where how much money are you going to make if you come over here, especially if people over here only think that you can be a reliever.

And I think that that's the camp I fall into right now because at the end of the CPBL season, Sue was sitting like 92. So he went from like sitting 95, touching 98, 99 in the early, part of the season and during WBC qualifiers to like sitting 92 to 94 and he's little he's only 24 so so i would say that like he's more of a multi-year guy to watch it would be really interesting if there were a team that had real bonus pool space from like the amateur arena remaining to like actually make a run at this guy and maybe do the blue jays or somebody like no because the blue jays signed some other It sounded like a different Asian pitcher.

He just turned 25 on November 1st. Gotcha. Anyway, that's what named to follow. And then old buddy Lewin-Diaz, formerly of the twins, most of all, had 50 bombs in Korea this year. I don't think he's Eric Thames. I don't think it's real.

He's still so chase prone that I'd be scared for Lewin Diaz to come back over. I did speak with someone who was like, hey, this guy's always been a really good contact hitter. He's a good athlete. He's a good defender. We like this player. So maybe Levin Diaz comes over.

He was on like an 800K deal entering this season and then had a 50 homer year. And so you can imagine like there are restrictions on what KBO teams can pay for in players. And it's possible someone over here would rather, you know, can supersede that by a little bit. And he gets like a, you know, a two or three million dollar deal and ends up wanting to come over, but I don't know that that's necessarily going to happen. Heroto Saiki, who's from Han Shin, he's pretty startery. People don't think he's going to come over. There's been interest in the past that's been written about, like, people reported that

he's kicking the tires on it or whatever, like, I think twice over the last handful of years that's happened. But most of my sources are just like, eh, we don't think that guy's coming. And I think the same is true of Takahiri. Nori-Moto from Golden Eagles. He's like a 36-year-old who throws hard. He could be a reliever over here. It'd be okay.

Or maybe it's show Iwasaki. I have to look at my text messages, but one of the other players who I've got projected in relief, it's either Iwasaki or Nori-Moto. Somebody texted me and was just like, hey, I don't think that guy's going to come over. And then also, like, the Cubans,

Levan Moynello and Ray Del Martinez could definitely be good big leaguers. Raydell Martinez could be a set-up man, and Levan Moynello could be someone's mid-ro rotation piece. Like, he's really good. But the Cuban government and sort of the way that Cuban players end up on loan to Japanese teams, it would take these guys fleeing and defecting in a way that, like, Oscar Coloss did a couple years ago for them to sign, and nobody was like, you know, anticipates that that'll happen. It could conceivably happen at some point.

If it is about to happen, I would hope that it's not, like, out there for these guys' sake. You know, like, it's the type of thing that if it executed properly, nobody knows is going to happen. So who knows? And then I guess if I'm going to mention a couple other guys for the future, you know, there's Champati Yamashita, Yamashita, who pitches for Orix. He was heard a bunch this year. And do Yung Kim from Korea. She's a third baseman for the Kia Tigers. Yamashita is, like, really, really good, I think.

like could be a number two or number three type on a really good team three plus pitches he's strapping six with three guy and then dude young Kim has I think it was three different hamstring injuries this year

like just super tightly wound in his lower body type guy he's a 70 runner he has gone absolutely bonkers during you know international competition he won the KBO MVP last year in his early 20 He has real big league power and speed,

even though he's kind of a small-ish guy. He's like Smedium-framed guy. He's just been so injury-prone for the last 12 months and always his hamstring. And so those are two longer-term names for folks to know, I guess. They're still in the early 20s and several years away from even, you know, potentially coming over here. Although I would have told you, Rogi Sasaki was a couple years away, too,

based on his financial incentives. and maybe there are financial incentives that we're not appreciating at play for some of these guys. Well, we will be without you, Dharish, in 2026, who we learned on Tuesday is having internal brace repair. But we will have some new players coming over from Japan and elsewhere in Asia to get to know. The last thing I wanted to ask you is about the moratorium on scouting that does not apply to you, but applies to... Big league teams, you can keep scouting. Take that MLB, but the rules that we talked about when they were announced back in September in an effort to promote pitcher health and actually let guys get a bit of a break and not go all out at showcases

because MLB teams cannot scout them, cannot scout high school players as of now, I guess that's already started, and college players soon. So there will be a break. do you think that will work as intended? Do you think it will help? And will it change anything, really, about how teams scout and prepare for the draft? Well, I don't know.

There's still so many fall scrimmages scheduled for the period encompassed by the moratorium. So it's not like these college baseball programs have totally shut down. They're like, oh, well, our kids can't be scouted, So we have to do our false scrimmage in October rather than November. I don't know that this like sort of top-down way of incentivizing pitcher health, like, matters. It struck me as the kind of move made for a couple of other reasons.

One of them is similar to some of the NFL's posturing around concussions where it's like, hey, look, what we're doing to try to advocate for arm health. Right. That's one thing where even though what we're doing isn't necessarily useful or helpful at all, we're going to do it because then we can say we try to do stuff. Then there's the, is this more about scouting industry shrinking than is anything to do with arm health and like the players you're scouting? because to me, just the incentives of Major League Baseball and some of their behavior over the course of the last couple of CBA negotiations indicate to me that they are trying to outsource development to colleges. You know, they're cutting minor league affiliates, they're limiting minor league roster spots.

The timing of the draft changed to not really align at all with college baseball season and, you know, to try to best position it for the purposes of marketing. You know what I mean? Like, it seems to me as though we've, you know, talked about this, some on the pod, that there are people who view player development as an expense and there are people who view it as an investment. Right. And you can guess which teams fall on which side of that

based on the way we've talked about them, you know, during moments like this for the last 10 years. It seems like Cleveland, would rather outsource this and that and share data rather than, oh, the Astros put a trackman unit at Vanderbilt and have exclusive access. Like, all these themes are the same. So, you know, I can go to the field.

Teams are not technically supposed to purvey video from me or data from me or who knows. Like, can I talk on the phone with the scouting director about what I saw that day at ASU's. Scrimmage against Grand Canyon, like, how are you going to police that? Right. How are you going to police that? If I send a YouTube link to a buddy with a team because whatever guy threw a good inning at a

scrimmage I was at, how are you going to police that? To me, it doesn't really have teeth. It doesn't really have what I perceive to be an impact other than their scouts who would like to be at the field, please, because they want to be thought of as full-time year-round employees. Their contracts for most of them end at the end of October and notice the way the moratorium date kind of coincides with that. So, you know, there are probably a bunch of other reasons that have nothing to do with whether or not the pitchers at USC upstate, you know, are healthy or not. I think it's maybe about other stuff.

But I can say that, you know, I feel like I've favoriteed the D1 Baseball, by the way, great website. D1 Baseball just has a false scrimmage schedule, which is beautiful. Like, absolutely the type of thing that it's a super useful tool that a media entity like this could, you know, thank you for putting it into the other, like, so much. I can't find it at the moment. There it is. I found it. I'm looking at the schedule, and after the moratorium begins,

there's plenty of stuff. Like, a lot of them. Like, I just haven't stopped scrolling yet. So I think that I don't understand, I don't really understand their reasoning behind it or why they think it's helpful. Like, I didn't read any of their marketing material around it or the press releases.

Some of the places do their scrimmages before that, because if you're Lehigh or whatever, in November, you can't play baseball in Bethlehem. But if you're Arizona State, you can and probably should be. And I'd rather the facilities be used year-round because some of these are state schools and da-da-da. So, you know, I think I call kind of BS on it, but also I guess let's see.

To me, it's just the way of keeping scouts away and limiting their expenses for an extra. month, an extra month and a half? There's certainly the cynical interpretation, which I think, Megan, I mentioned the last time we talked, I guess I'm a little more optimistic about it, or at least hopeful, just every little bit of arm protection helps, and it sounds like there are some enforcement mechanisms, yeah, in the scenario where you're ruining everything by just texting information on YouTube, just freely, right, like, if I go to LSU's scrimmage in November and just put the

video on YouTube, how do you police that? If part of what's explicitly stated is, like, you shall not acquire data or video, like, essentially do remote scouting, then what is the point? And also, if there aren't, if the goal is, well, let's disincentivize

false scrimmages, all you might be doing, first of all, is they might just be front-loaded before the moratorium. Right? Like, you may be aren't limiting usage at all. You're just changing the distribution of it, yeah. Right? And then the other one is, okay, let's say the colleges were like, okay, fine, we're not going to have fall practices or scrimmages anymore.

Then all that's going to do is there's a certain subset of the college pitching population that the school is either going to pay for or the player is going to pay for going to drive line, going to tread, going to Maven or whatever, and doing their own training somewhere, and now you're going to bifurcate like a long, socioeconomic lines maybe even more than you already have right like think of the potential knock on if okay so if what you want to happen is

colleges don't do false schedules anymore or you know high schoolers like for one I do think if you're high school athlete play basketball kid like wrestle and play basketball or run track like go do other stuff

and don't play baseball year round please there's not a single baseball scout who would advocate for you playing baseball year around seriously. Like not a single one. But yeah, like, if let's say all this stuff is canceled, then there's nothing in the fall or winter.

I just think that there's a subset of college players, especially who are just, like, going to go to a tread or get private training, and you're just perpetuating a thing that is already kind of a problem that you've had to address in other areas with RBI and breakthrough series, which, by the way, good job on that.

That's going pretty well. Even though a lot of those athletes come from rich families, too. All right. Well, the scouting grind never stops. There's always winter ball. Australian baseball league starts next week. There's always something a little more NFL left. Yeah, that too. And you will start rolling out rankings and lists and lots to look forward to. But thanks for bringing us up to speed on this offseason's international pro class. Thank you again for having me on. And yeah, I look forward to whatever comes now. whether it's, I don't know, the next time I'll talk to you guys will be. But Ben, yeah, we should just talk for the sake of talking at some point, Ben, because we only ever do it on this pod. Talk to someone not on a podcast?

Not for content? Just a non-content conversation. Ben lives the rest of his life on vocal rest. It's an awful idea, but I'm into it. All right, a couple things to promote one self-serving, one less so. I'll start with the latter. Effectively Wild Secret Santa is open for business already early this year, the eighth consecutive year that listeners Zach Wentkos will be organizing this. You can sign up now and be matched with other participants, other effectively wild listeners, and you can send and hopefully receive some baseball-related gift.

The recommended maximum to spend is $25 unless you're feeling especially generous. And you can share pictures in our various online communities or not. Up to you. please sign up only if you intend to actually follow through and send someone a gift because it's a bummer if you get the equivalent of coal in your stocking and you've sent someone else a gift. That's not nice. That's not fair. That's not in the holiday spirit. So please don't flake follow through if you sign up. But if you intend to follow through, then I encourage you to sign up the more the merrier. Spread some holiday cheer. I always participate. I always get great gifts and hopefully give some. So the deadline is not until December 10th. But early notice this year, I will link. to this and keep the link on the show page until the deadline. Secondly, I never know how much to promote other projects of mine. It's when I'm doing effectively wild. I usually stick to asking people to support effectively wild. But I do do other stuff and I make other shows. And so you may have heard me reference Hang Up and Listen, the general sports podcast that I co-host for Slate. You may also

know that I host a video game podcast for The Ringer called Button Mash, which appears on the Ringerverse feed. And of course, I'd love for you to listen to those. But I have a new project, a new show that just launched, and I would love your support. It's called plot hole or not hole. It's a video series, a combination of an essay and an interview in which I talk to TV or movie makers about perceived plot holes in their work. And I ask them to weigh in on whether it is in fact a plot hole or whether they think it's not. And if not, how did they explain it? So it's sort of service journalism. Take something that is stuck in the fanbases craw. Ah, this doesn't seem to make sense. How did that happen? This is inconsistent. And then go straight to the source. Get an official answer.

and learn a little bit about the business of TV and movie making and how plot holes happen, how you can avoid them. And for this first episode, I probably peaked early here, but I talked to Vince Gilligan, legendary X-Files writer, creator of Breaking Bad, and Better Call Saul, and later this week, his latest show, Pluribus, on Apple TV, and we did a deep dive on an alleged plot hole in season five of Breaking Bad that fans have been wondering about for years in the episode to Hajali. I won't spoil the details here, but I will link to this video on the show page, and I hope you'll check it out. It even features a delightful, catchy theme song by my wonderful wife, Jesse, who also composed the Stapblast song and meet a major leaguer.

So you won't want to miss that. Even if you're not interested, give it a click just for me. But hopefully I'll hook you and you'll want to watch more. But I'd like to make more of these. That would be fun for me, but that's kind of contingent on anyone watching this one. So I would very much appreciate your support and help spreading the word about that. And as always, I deeply appreciate your support of this podcast as well, which you can offer by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pled some monthly or yearly amount, as have the following five listeners,

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We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you then. Effectively wild. It's the zombie runner. Bobby Shains, Bobby Shands. Unfactively wild It's the zombie runner Bobby Shands

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