Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2398: Free Agent Class is in Session

Episode Date: November 7, 2025

Ben and Meg banter about the Rockies reportedly hiring Paul DePodesta as their new head of baseball operations, another managerial hiring, MLB’s World Series ratings bonanza, the resurgence of the splitter, the Royals extending Salvador Perez, and more. Then (44:30) they bring on Ben Clemens to discuss his ranking of this offseason’s top 50 free […]

We're going to crunch those stats. We're going to talk about baseball, sticky stuff and torpedo bats. We'll talk about it all if you want good takes on baseball and life. Just tune in to Ben and his lovely co-host. Ben and Meg, it's effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2398 of Effectively Wild, a fangras baseball podcast brought you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraps and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of the Ringer. Ben, how are you? I'm okay. How are you?

Except for like nine hours last night. So I feel great. As I told you off mic, I feel like at least the sort of my brain has grown back. And as I said, we can work with that. That's all we need to podcasts. You don't need your whole brain to podcasts. people have listened to podcasts yeah you don't need you don't even need that much it's kind of a brainless activity for a lot of folks a lot of the time we try to bring a rigor though

to effectively wild an improved standard has it resulted in a massive Spotify deal for us no but you know it has its benefits it has its upsides I work for Spotify so I don't know if my deal is massive but I'll take it anyway

We'll put our thinking caps on because we have some baseball to discuss. And we will be joined by a second, Ben, a little later on the pod. On our last episode, we welcomed on Eric Lagenhagen to talk about this off-season class of international professional free agents. And this time, we will talk about the domestic ones. Well, Ben also ranked the international ones, but we won't talk about them as much because we already did that. But we'll talk about this year's free agent class. And some of the players, Ben is higher or lower on than the kids. consensus and this year relative to past years and how the prospect of a work stoppage in a year

looms over everything. We'll get to that shortly. But the NOS making moves, we've got some hirings here. Now, it'll be a little out of sequence because when you listen to our second segment, if you listen to our second segment, you will hear us react live to the news that the Rockies reportedly are hiring Paul de Podesta to be their new Popo. So, we'll hear us. We'll We'll get our Peter Brand, our Moneyball jokes off when we're live reacting to this. Yeah. But a little slightly more substantive reaction to this here out of sequence, Rockies. They just, they always Rockies in some way.

To their credit, I guess they did go outside the organization. And in fact, they went outside the sport entirely. They thought so out of the box that we, they thought, yeah, screw baseball. Well, let's just go to football and get a guy who has been working for the Cleveland Browns, you know, cream of the crop. Really, you want to poach the people from the best organizations. Now, there was a time when Paul Boutique Fedesta was thought to be among the class of the best baseball executives. Sure. That time was quite a while ago.

And I guess that's kind of hit character with the Rockies do, that they're hiring the guy who is kind of on the cutting edge. 15, 20 years ago. Yeah. Because Depot obviously was one of the lieutenants of Billy Bean with the Moneyball A's and featured in the Moneyball book. And then ran the Dodgers for a while and was kind of drummed out of town there,

perhaps prematurely. You know, he did some good things there. But baseball has changed quite a bit since he departed to join the Browns, which was in early 2016. And they've been brownsing ever since, basically like, you know, It was, can he be the guy who fixes the Cleveland Browns?

Nope. No, he could not. They have had two winning seasons since then, one of which was behind a quarterback that they then jettisoned in order to trade for and signed to a massive contract. One of the most reprehensible and also poorly performing quarterbacks and one of the worst moves in any sport maybe made ever. Yeah. Deshawn Watson trade and signing. So I, so, okay. So like, right, here's the thing.

Like, there, if, if, if one were inclined to revisit, like, the, the early 2000s flame wars of deputies's tenure with the Dodgers and him being. During the Frank McCourt era also. Yeah. Being called Google Boy, as I recall. Yes. Yep. There's a, there's like a rich baseball tapestry that we could unfurlough. they're not particularly relevant since again that happened in like i don't know 2004

2005 but yeah like his recent tenure there's the the moral piece of trading for and then giving to deshawn watson what was at the time the the largest contract in nfl history and the one with the most guaranteed money in nfl history because um for for those of our listeners you do not pay attention to the NFL, like, it's not, you know, like, not like, you're, like, you're like an expert now, you know, yep, I'm a sports pundit, all purpose. You're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, you're, full slate on Sunday. And then you're, you're up waiting for the all 22 to hit true media. And then you're like, I'm getting in on my true media.

I'm getting in on my all 22. In football, like, contracts are not typically guaranteed the way that they are in, in baseball. you know if we're just going to use a hypothetical player here like you know if if a star player let's call him son woto uh were to break both his legs tomorrow and not be able to play for two years wouldn't matter you get paid regardless right because his contract is fully guaranteed that's not the case in the NFL and there's all kinds of shenanigans uh that teams get up to and a lot of this has to do with it the fact that it's a salary cap sport Sean Watson for those who are unfamiliar with this particular saga was suspended during the end of his tenure with the Houston Texans

because I think upwards of 20 women credibly accused him of sexual misconduct while he was receiving massages from them. He's been sued multiple times, served as suspension. He was acquired by the Browns in 2022 with the help of the depodessia, he helped to facilitate that deal. And they traded for Watson and they sent the Texans their first round picks in 2022, 23, and 24. And then I think some supplementary picks in later rounds for those same years. And then Watson signed a new deal, which was worth $230 million. And they structured the deal such that the first year of it came with the lowest salary because there was anticipation of additional suspension for Watson. And then Watson has proceeded to suck and then get brutally

injured subsequent to that. So it has been a disaster of a trade front of back. It was a disaster from a football perspective. It was a disaster in terms of the draft capital that was expended to make it happen. The expense that they will be weighed down by for years to come yet. And also, this guy, and I feel comfortable using this expression, I will do a swear and asked to be have it left in is a piece of shit. So it's just like a bad look all around. But good news, he doesn't play baseball. So I guess that Paul D. Podesta can't reacquire him. But I'm just like, what do you do? Come. Yeah. And so, you know, he was not obviously solely responsible for that or probably even primarily. That's, you know, probably. Jimmy has some ownership

thing. And D. Podesta wasn't the GM either. But he was involved with him. that trade. It was reported at the time. Yeah. So I guess the positive spin would be that his better days were in baseball. So maybe go back to his original specialty. Perhaps that will be better. So yeah. I mean, D. Podesta, he definitely talked about like the due diligence on Deshaun Watson at the time and how comfortable they were with that acquisition, everything. So his hints are not. Acquisitions came out subsequent. It's just such a... Yeah, that's bad. So look, who knows what the state of his baseball thinking is or how much rain he will be allowed

and will he be able to kind of clean house there and bring in his own people and who would his own people even be at this point? I don't know. The Rocky still need a manager. I mean, maybe he can just hire Kevin Savansky when he inevitably gets to let go by the Browns. They can just kind of be a package deal.

But, yeah, I don't know. It's just, it's rare, obviously not unheard of, but fairly rare for a top ranking executive in one sport to go to another sport. But then to come back, it has happened, but it's like a time capsule situation. It's like, you know, who knows even like, I assume he's not just like, oh, yeah, baseball. I haven't really paid attention to that for the past decade, but I'm sure I can get up to speed again, you know. Probably he's kept an eye on baseball and he's familiar with everything that has happened while he has been away. but it does sort of seem like a rip van winkle.

You know, if you were cutting edge 20 years ago, the edge has moved quite a bit since then. But it hasn't for the Rockies as much as for everyone else. So, you know, if he comes back and introduces moneyball ideas to the Rockies, then that could really help modernize them. I'm sort of exaggerating, but not really. So look, you just knew they were going to do something weird. And it does seem like the more conventional hires,

they were interviewing the assistant GM of the Diamondbacks and the Guardians, and then it was reported that they either turned down an offer or they dropped out of the process. So it sounds like it was maybe mutual, but also them just not really wanting to run the Rockies. And, you know, we talked about this when the job became available because there was this prevailing idea that, oh, this challenge will actually be pretty seductive for a lot of top ranking execs. Like, they will want to run the Rockies. they will see this as a great challenge to win in Cores Field, or at least they would, if not, for just possibly being hamstrung by ownership and just the generally regressive way that that organization operates and the almost to a fault loyalty that the Rockies have employed. So perhaps it turns out that maybe that wasn't quite as coveted a position as some people were suggesting, or maybe the Rockies, you know, they just had high standards when it came to whom they could make their. Bobo. So we'll see, you know, they never cease to surprise us. And I've said this for years that on some level, I'm glad that there is still one sort of stuck in the past organization because

it's more fun for everyone. You know, like we are we punching down perhaps? But at least there's a punching bag because it just seems like so many other organizations, they're just moving in lockstep and they all sound the same and they're all kind of more or less looking at the same things with varying degrees of proficiency, but, you know, philosophically, they're more or less aligned. And then there were the Rockies. And so it's nice that the Rockies remain an outlier, but maybe they'll be a little less of an outlier than they were. Who knows? I've been a bit snarky here because we already got our jokes off. People just haven't heard him yet. But, you know, I am mindful of the fact that, like, their ability to attract talent

is different than, like, the Dodgers and that they are not necessarily going to be able to pull from the same pool of people. I do think that that tends to be a little overstated, if only because they're – I know we joke all the time about title inflation, all of the senior executives that exist within baseball. But, like, there are only so many pobo jobs or probos or hobos or pro – what was the other one that we came up with? What was our other? Well, there was the one for, if you're the head of business operations and also baseball, that's the po-both. Or you could be the bizbo? No, that doesn't work. So, anyway, all of that to say, like, there are only so many of those jobs.

And so I do think that it's not like they can't get anyone, although they clearly had some difficulty here. And so I want to be mindful of that. And I also, I want to be careful to note that, like, just because there was broad institutional dysfunction here and under-reason. Not resourcing doesn't mean that, like, there aren't smart people who work for the Rockies. They absolutely are. So I want to be fair in both those regards. I don't know that you need to then hire Paul de Podesta to, like, continue to be fair in both those regards. And, you know, I don't know what kind of job he'll do.

I don't know, what kind of job he'll do. I have some issues with both the football and moral resume, as it has constituted your right to say that those were not solely his doing, but they weren't not his doing either, right? so it's I'm underwhelmed Ben you know I find myself underwhelmed because the jokes they'll be done by the end of the day but he'll be around for at least a little while yeah I don't know if I'm underwhelmed because I'm rocky's adjusting what my expectations were to begin with so I'm I'm wellmed you know they they didn't promote a monfort so European of you yeah it's like we you know we're sitting there and it's a real monkey's pot kind of situation right because we're like please go outside the organization.

And they're like, yeah, I don't know. Maybe the other candidates dropped out because Colorado just raised taxes on high-income households to fund free meals for public school students. And they were just like, you know what? Nah, I don't think so. I don't think that's probably the primary impediment to the Rockies recruiting talent. I think that is more of a self-owned generally. But we will see.

We'll see whom Depot hires. Depot Pobo. Oh, man, this is good. This is good. We've got the Pobo Depot, the DePobo, the Depot. We could just call him the... See, the Pobo Depot needs to be... This is the...

This is, again, I'm not advocating for him getting, you know, another better job. But it's like if he's going to be the Pobo Depot, if he's going to be that, he needs to work for the Rangers. Because their stadium looks like a fulfillment center. Yeah. Well, that's the sole remaining men. managerial vacancy, the Rockies. So now Deepo can go get whoever his person is. What? Who is? And this is, to your point, who is his person? Is he just going to be like, our pal or something? I don't. Oh my God, that would be. I don't know. I would be something.

Anyway, they hired him just in the nick of time because GM meetings start on Monday. So now they they'll have a GM to send or a Pobo. They should get Miles Garrett to manage the call. Yeah. There's not a ton of overlap in the season. Just some. It's not like he needs to be available in October. Oh, I got another joke off. I got another joke off. Okay. Well, we had our fun at the Rockies expense. Now we have some kind of closure in that hiring process. And I did want to say because when we were talking about managerial hirings the other day, we skipped over one, Skip Schumacher, who was hired as the manager of the Rangers. And I did want to say, because when we were talking about managerial hirings the other day, we skipped over one, Skip Schumacher, who was hired as the manager of the Rangers. And, And now we have another manager to add to the pile. Craig Stammon was hired to be the manager of the Rockies, or of the Padres. I was like, wait a minute. That would have been. No, that was not the Rockies, but it was also somewhat surprising,

though I think probably less surprising than Deepedesta. But Jeff Passon, when he tweeted out this news, he said, in a season of shocking managerial hires, this one tops the list. Does it? No, I don't think it does. I don't think it does. Jeff, what's going on with you? What's going on with you, buddy?

I think Tony Vitello having no major league experience of any kind and basically being an unprecedented. Yeah. Yeah, that seems, I mean, maybe he means like. Jeff doesn't watch college baseball either. Maybe he will when his kid is playing it. But I would think that maybe he means just in the sense that like you could understand why they might want to hire one of the most accomplished coaches in college baseball. Sure.

There's less of a resume for Craig Stammon. There's no managerial resume. It is unusual in the sense that, well, he's a former pitcher, former reliever. We don't get a lot of former pitcher managers these days. And between that and the fact that he also has no coaching or managing experience, right? He was a special assistant to Preller in San Diego, but yeah, this, we've had many surprising ones to choose from. I mean, there was the Kurt Suzuki hiring, which was surprising partly for his resume, but also

because it was just a one-year deal, and they just angel stopped that whole hiring process. But so now this kind of fits in with what we were saying last time about there just being no mold for managers, because I neglected to touch on Schumacher, but, you know, he's more traditional in that he was a major player and he's been a previous manager and he was even a manager of the year a couple years ago. And then he was in a front office special assistant sort of role with the Rangers waiting in the wings for Bruce Bochi to retire, presumably. Sort of understood. Yeah, that was sort of, I guess, adept for him to anticipate that and know that there would be an opening sooner rather than later and to just slide into that spot.

So that's kind of in the predictable. Yeah, Skip Schumacher, he fits the moment. mold of a major league manager and stamina a little less so, just different experience and background and everything. But yeah, it just really runs the gamut, just takes all kinds, evidently, to become a major league manager. And this is the latest. So we'll see. I mean, yeah, I would disagree with this being the most shocking. It's top two or three most shocking. But now the Rockies can say, hold my beer, hold my course, and maybe they can make an even more shocking managerial hire to follow up the Deepaesta hiring. I'm telling you, Miles Garrett, there's something to this idea of mine.

I find the Padre's managerial approaches over the years so fascinating because they do seem to like vacillate pretty wildly. The adjase Tingler, which I miss being able to remind people that the Padres manager's name is Tingler every day. I know, although it sounds like he may be joining the giant. staff with Tony Vitello because he was college teammates with Tony Vitello. That's fantastic. That's what a delight.

What a delightful little piece of news you just gave me, Ben. Yeah. What a tingler? Oh, Tony V's going to have such crazy freaking nicknames for that guy. And so it's like you, you know, they've, they've had sort of the tingler end of things. I'm having fun again. I got all worked up about Paul de Podesta and Deshawn Watson. Now I'm having fun again.

Okay. What a nice way to end the week from a pod perspective. So, you know, you have the, like, the tingler of it all. There's no, there's no, there's no, unfunny way to mention him. There's no, there's no serious way. There's just, the mind reels. But you have like that kind of, uh, end of things. And then you have like the, the Bob Melvin Schilt side of stuff.

And there's been sort of a back and forth and back and forth. and back and forth and like what kind of a voice do you want and we don't know what what kind of a voice Craig Stamon's going to be in in the locker room uh in the dugout because he hasn't had one before because he's you know at least in a coaching capacity um because he's been like you know he's been prelors i was about to say special boy and that sounds terrible too um special assistant is the the uh title there and so you know this would seem to be them moving and at least from an age perspective, and what we might assume about approach just based on experience,

which might be unfair. Like, he could be a total hard ass. I don't know. But, you know, it seems to be a move back that way. And so I just find it interesting because there's been some coming and going on that roster, and there will be some more this offseason. But the core group remains relatively intact and has been bandied about from one end of the spectrum to the other. And as we talked about at various points,

their clubhouses seem to be really great and happy vibes and also has seemed to be wildly dysfunctional. And some of that is surely on the manager and a lot of it probably has to do with how the team was performing in any given time and, you know, background concerns about payroll and what have you. So I'm, I don't know where he'll fall, where Greg Simon will fall or how this will go. But it is interesting. I don't know if it speaks well of them as an organization to be willing to be adaptable and try something not totally new but different than what you just had or if it speaks to sort of an inability to land on something you know that job seems attractive right you sure like the rosters kind of influx and you don't quite know where you're going to fall

relative to the Dodgers but like if nothing else you get to live in san diego and that seems great on big league manager money so you can actually afford to live there also good if anyone is interested in stats that I shared last time about the number of managers hired by one front office executive. I shared that on our most recent episode. And AJ Preller is up there, not quite at the top, but he has hired among the most managers during a single stint with one team. So you can check that out if you want to go back to it. And, you know, I think the Rockies, I think it was wise for them to maybe, I don't know if they leaked it or what, but to float the Adam Ottavino rumor because in comparison to that.

No, I would have rather they hired Otto. Really? I don't know. I mean, they're both unusual to say the least. But I think hiring someone who at least was a GM and was a front office executive for multiple teams for years, I think that is maybe a little more understandable than hiring someone who played this year and has zero experience with that. anything else really. I think this makes maybe a bit more sense than that, but I could be persuaded

that it doesn't anyway. Wow. What do you think Paul DePadesda's familiarity is with the notion of the reliever familiarity effect? You know what I mean? I mean, like, you know, if he was listening to national broadcasts with John Smoltz in the most recent postseason. He probably had the muted. Well, maybe. Look, I think that like he's made some morally dubious choices as an executive. I don't think that he's a moron. I'm not saying that. It probably had it muted. I'm going to guess he has maintained some attention. I bet he's, he's reading the blogs. But they even know to ask him about that? Well, that's another, that's a separate question. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing.

And the front office people would, but ownership, I mean, like the front office people would know to ask that. If he has been out of touch with baseball and fallen behind, then they would not necessarily be the best equipped to assess that is the thing. So maybe they're a good match in that sense. I did see it, report. this week that in advance of the WBC, there will be a couple days of exhibition contests between WBC teams and MLB teams. So, yeah, I think that'll be fun, March 3rd and 4th. So you get, like, Great Britain versus the Milwaukee Brewers. That's great. You get Cuba versus the Kansas City Royals, you know? It's just, it seems fun.

And I guess in some of those cases, you'll get guys on WBC. rosters playing against their teammates in major league camp, I guess. Right. But one that stood out to me, on Wednesday, March 4th, we get the United States versus the Colorado Rockies. It just seems like a slight mismatch. And, you know, I can't imagine that many Rockies will crack the USWBC roster. But I like the idea of just the entire country's worth of stars going up.

against the Colorado Rockies in Scottsdale, you know, you could go. You could take in that game in person, perhaps, and it seems like, yeah, slightly lopsided. I don't know if that's even a tune-up. Is that really the warm-up that you want going into the WBC? Yeah, we'll just test our medal against the Colorado Rockies before we take on the Dominican Republic or Japan or somewhat, you know. It just doesn't seem like the best match when it comes to the caliber of competition. But I also wanted to say when we talked about factors from the postseason that other teams could pick up on that might be influential and might shape how rosters are constructor or anything. One thing that maybe we could have mentioned is splitter usage, just because that was such

a story this postseason, and the splitter usage was way up relative to any previous postseason on record. And that's a product of the personnel, obviously. That's just you happen to have Kevin Gossman and Raya Savage and Yamamoto and Otani and Jeff Hoffman and all these people who are very splitter forward, they were all just up until the World Series. They were throwing tons of splitters. So that reflects just how it shook out, how the cookie crumbled more so than everyone

suddenly decided that splitters are great, but splitter usage is up. It was a record this past season in the pitch tracking era, 3.3 percent, you know, during the regular season and 3% the season before, which was up from 2.2%, which was up from 1.6%. So the splitter usage has more than doubled in the past couple years. It's just doubled to still a very low percentage. But seeing those guys strut their splitter stuff on the postseason stage and have great success with it in some cases, I think you might get some teams. Or maybe it'll be like there's a pitch that's in vogue every year. Or maybe this year it was just about having lots of pitches. So we'll probably get some

when spring rolls around next year and the WBC squad is playing the Rockies. We'll probably get some, oh, I'm working on the splitter stories, you know. I think that'll happen. And some of the classification sometimes is that entirely consistent across the span of time. Perhaps not. And Rob Nyer believes that what we call splitters are in many cases what we used to call fork balls. And so there's always that squishiness. But

But yeah, the splitters kind of coming back to the four, I guess, after there were some fears about maybe the impact that it would have on arm health, et cetera. So, yeah. Splitters. And many, many people were watching everyone throw those splitters because we got the ratings. Of course, we got a press release from MLB, bragging about the ratings in the World Series specifically. And the ratings were bonkers.

It was a ratings bonanza. Many, many people tuned in to watch the World Series. series and especially game seven. So game seven had 51 million average viewers. So that means even more, we're probably watching it at the peak or over the span of the game. And that's in the U.S. and Canada and Japan combined. It was the most watched MLB game globally in 34 years. And it was just for the entire world series, 34 million average viewers combined in those three countries, most watch fall classic globally since 1992, largest world series viewership outside the U.S. in history, and, you know, like 18 million in Canada and

Japan on average and, you know, healthy ratings in the U.S., of course, too, like 16.1 million on average for the entire World Series. And, you know, it helps that there were seven games, obviously because the stakes rise as the series goes on and more people tune in to watch those climactic decisive games at the end. So long series going to translate to higher ratings and having the Dodgers in there with the LA market and having Toronto in there with the Canada market. So, you know, I've seen a lot of people comparing MLB World Series to NBA finals and showing that the MLB ratings were far higher than the NBA rating. this year and also last year.

And I don't get into too much of the sport exceptionalism. Hey, our ratings are higher than your ratings kind of conversation, I guess partly because MLB does not usually get the best of that conversation or hasn't during the time that I've been covering the sport. And so this is kind of a corrective. It's just, hey, don't sleep on Major League Baseball and, you know, don't anoint the NBA as the second most popular league in this country. MLBE absolutely holds its own, not just when you add up all the local ratings, but even now in the national ratings.

And, you know, obviously the NBA matchup in the most recent finals was OKC and then the Pacers. You know, it wasn't like the biggest market. So it's not apples to apples, obviously. But Canada came through, obviously, and Japan did too. And we've talked about just the share, like the percentage of the population that watches. say the WBC in Japan and how there's a perceptible uptick in toilets flushing, you know, like during the commercial breaks because so many people in the country are in unison watching these games. And I've been kind of envious of that, really. Like I wish that we had

that atmosphere in the U.S. where there are just, there's so many sports and so many teams and so many people and so many interests that you're never going to get that kind of monolithic attention the way that you used to. But in Canada, for instance, Game 7, I think, averaged about 11 million viewers on Sportsnet. And 18.5 million Canadians watched some of the game. It peaked at around 14 million at any one time. And there are 41 million Canadians, period. And across the seven games, 23 million Canadians watched baseball. And who knows if that's even fully completely accounting for people watching in group settings. They do make some effort to correct for that.

But, you know, if you have a bunch of people in a sports bar or whatever it is, are you fully measuring that? So the majority of the population was watching that World Series. And that's fun. I wish we had that. We didn't quite have that. But this World Series did give a sense. You know, I got that sense of like, oh, this is kind of broken containment.

Like, people are paying attention to this in the general culture. And it snowballs. And it builds on itself because when, you know, you have attention worldwide like that, then you get more news stories, you get more coverage, you get more people who normally wouldn't be watching or who are casual fans at most. And they're saying, oh, well, I know someone who's watching and I better pay attention to this so that I can talk about it and know what's going on. And it just, it builds. There's kind of like a tipping point where it feels like you have to pay attention to this even if you wouldn't normally. And it did feel like MLB briefly got there in this series. So that was fun.

Yeah, I agree. It felt I'm generally content with baseball to, like, occupy whatever niche it does. I think it occupies more than a niche. But, like, I appreciate how it is different in terms of its broader, like, cultural impact than, say, the NFL, right? But I thought it was just so fun. Like, there were a lot of people on, like, Blue Sky who were posted, who I do not follow for baseball, who were posting. about that game and seemed like they were having a good time and it's a beautiful sport and it's nice when people can enjoy it. It just had a good kind of vibe to it and it was an exciting series as we

discussed. So I thought that it like it put it put the sport in a place of cultural primacy that it hasn't been lately and it was a lot of fun and I thought it like, you know, kind of like showed well. Yeah. Yeah. I was like, look at our, look at our sport. We're so beautiful. Beautiful and talented. We've got just the sweetest, you know, most beautiful time. And that was a lot of fun. I thought that that was pretty great. I did have the thought, and this is probably a longer conversation so we can save it.

But, you know, it's like this was so successful. And everybody wanted to watch. And it feels, it does feel like even with all of the complication that the RSN collapse, has caused in terms of people's ability to watch games, it also has opened it up for some folks, and people are going to the ballpark. We get, it feels like every other day we get a press release about how many people went to a game, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I mean, not today, because no one's going to games here today, because it's November 6th. But, you know, it feels like the sport has really recovered and gained relative to where it was, you know, in the days sort of immediately after the pandemic or in the stretch immediately after the walkout where, you know, there was just like two back-to-back, like kind of cataclysmic events. I don't mean to equate them in terms of their broader impact, to be clear. But in terms of their impact on the sport, like two, you know, kind of damaging events.

And it feels like the sport is in a really good spot. And so I sat there and I thought, I'm really going to want to risk all that by locking out, folks. You know, it, and I think if they're determined to try to break the union, and get a cap, they're going to do what they're going to do. And, you know, the sport feeling like it's in a good spot on blue sky is no more dramatic a driver for the next set of negotiations than, like, the Dodgers winning the World Series. But, you know, it's like, you're in a good place. And I think that, you know, gate receipts are like low-key more important now than they used to be because of the uncertainty in the TV market. And it's like, you really want to risk on that,

like, maybe you don't have to. Right. Yeah, these are hard numbers. and actual data, but subjectively and nebulously, it does seem as if MLB has sort of shook the reputation, the stain of a sport in decline, which was just the predominant narrative about baseball, well, forever, really, but especially lately. And there was some truth to it on a national level, certainly. And it was always a bit overblown, but it was just kind of tiresome. Again, like, we don't think everyone needs to love baseball and plenty of people, enough people love it for it to be sustainable, but it did, it was a drag to just constantly be reading and hearing about how the thing that you both love and follow for fun, but also cover professionally.

It's just like circling the drain, essentially. And now it sounds like things have changed. And everyone's saying, hey, baseball. People are checking that out again. The youths are into this. Yeah. And, you know, have things completely changed? Not as much as people are saying. But, but no, there is a vibe shift. And it's not purely a vibe shift. It's also a measurable shift, but it's welcome because we haven't had this. It's so often doom and gloom surrounding MLB. And now things are cheerier and more upbeat, and we'll see if they continue to be. And, you know, if you want massive ratings, I guess forget expansion.

What if we go the other way, contract 29 teams so that everyone has to watch one team or contract 28? Canada can keep its team. I was going to say, who are they going to play? Yeah, contract 28, and then there's just one U.S. team, and then we can have one team per country and massive ratings. Can you imagine the ratings if everyone is watching one team in the entire country? I think I just reverse engineered. I just reinvented the WBC and the Olympics. I just invented the concept of international competition.

But then they have to play the Rockies, so I've done it. That's the catch. Okay. Well, we'll get to then. Yes, before we get to Ben, because it will be relevant to our conversation with Ben, which he, of course, didn't know when we recorded that conversation. We are coming back from the future so much. 13 players have received a qualifying offer.

Is this the full list? Looks like it. Kyle Tucker, Kyle Schwerber, Boguchette. Sure, you can read it. I was going to read it. Go ahead. From Brevaldez, Dillon Seas, Ranger Suarez, Edwin Diaz, Zach Allen, Chota Imanaga, Michael King, Trent Grisham.

show surprises me a little bit. Yeah. Anyway, I'm just saying. He might say yes to that. Glaber Torres and Brandon Woodruff also a little surprising to me. He might say yes to that too. Well, those 13 guys have the option of accepting $22.025 million for next season. But most of them won't, but maybe a couple of them will.

All right. And I'll just give a recommendation also because we're talking about this looming work stoppage situation, I think it's, I don't have a whole lot to say about it yet because these are sort of developing stories. But if you want to just bring yourself up to speed with all the issues and all the stuff that's confronting the parties and the Players Association and everything, there were a couple stories that surfaced either during or after, immediately after the World Series. And so they didn't get a ton of attention. But I'll link to reports. There's a report at ESPN by Don Ben Nata Jr. and Jeff Passen about how the feds are investigating the MLBPA. This has been kind of like an ongoing thing, but there were some details.

There's this like for-profit venture called Players Way that's supposed to essentially like promote live events for kids and baseball stuff for youth players. But it hasn't done a whole lot. And yet there's been a lot of money that the MLBPA has put into there. And so there's some question of like, is this some sort of self-dealing that's going on? Is like, you know, is there nepotism? Are these execs and Tony Clark and others kind of funneling money to themselves or others by kind of having this front almost, which is not really doing very much? So, you know, that's being investigated, and we will see what comes of that.

Could turn out to be a nothing burger. Could turn out to be a big scandal. But, yeah, there's a lot of intrigue at the Players Association. And, you know, we'll probably have to get, like, Evendrelic or someone on at some point to break down all of that. The power struggles for the union, like, can, They get their house in order before they have to go head to head with MLB, which will probably start this offseason. And then there was also a story about an agent named Jim Murray, who was banned for a few years because he was essentially a mole. Like he was feeding information to Rob Manfred and executives at MLB.

This was in 2020, especially, like when they were negotiating about how and when to open up the game again. And Jim Murray was basically, like, giving information to MLB and helping MLB craft its proposals and, like, seemingly being on MLB's sides in everything, despite being a player representative. And it's kind of enlightening just, you know, I'll link to Evan's story on it. But just to see, like, all the back and forth and all the, you know, just like trying to find out information about what's going on on the other side and some of the sort of nefarious stuff that, uh, that people get up to here. So, you know, it's high stakes. And it's inherently pretty adversarial. And so there's just a lot that goes on here sort of beneath the surface.

And it's good to read up on this stuff just to see where things stand as all of this starts to come to a head. So I'll link to those on the show page. Maybe we'll do a deeper dive as those stories merit at some point in the future. And also just want to shout out Salvador Paris and his extension with the Royals. Because I, you know, like there's a baseball. There's a purely baseball case to be made for extending Sal. Sure. It's mostly just that like they just want him to be on that team.

And he wants to be on that team. And he's a leader and he's a fan favorite and he's meant a lot to that organization. And so, you know, there was one point where they had a super team friendly extension with him. And then they kind of tore it up and just maybe. it more player-friendly, and now they have extended him into 2027, which they didn't really need to do, you know, like there was an option for 2026, and they just did the thing where they add on a year, essentially, and then it's a lower AAV. But given his age and defensive performance and on-base issues and everything, despite still slugging, he's, you know, wouldn't

have been super in demand probably to the point where they needed to, like, sign him to an additional year right now if they were just trying to be efficient spending-wise, but that's clearly not the priority with him. And, you know, he can be the bridge to Carter Jensen, the catcher of the future, and they've got a bunch of other younger catchers in the mix. But, you know, and who knows, he might just DH a lot more, play for space a lot more. That might be best for him and for the organization. But I kind of like that, you know. It's just like there's a point where loyalty becomes counterproductive. We talked about the Rockies already.

But with Salvi and the royals, it's kind of nice. You know, it's just like, who doesn't want Salvi to? You know, now if he, like, completely collapses as a player, then I guess there's a point where you can be a little too loyal to a player, too, if you're still giving them playing time. But if you just want to say, you know what, you've meant a lot to us. And we want you to be a career royal. And so why the heck not?

You know, we're not trying to win the AV awards here. We're trying to keep Salvador Paris in our team. So it's unusual, I think, how they handled that. And I kind of, I'm charmed by it. Yeah. It felt like a throwback, and it feels very consistent with sort of the way that they have conducted themselves as an organization in the past. You know, I think that we could pick nits. There have been times to your point where, like, the loyalty can kind of get away from.

from you. And I won't say that it's always been done perfectly, but they do have reputation for, like, treating their people well. And this feels like a continuation of that theme. So, yeah. All right. Well, let's take a quick break, and we'll be back with other Ben to talk free agents. Okay, we are back, and we're back And we have doubled our Ben Quotient Because other Ben, Ben Clemens, has joined us fresh off of his 2026, top 50 MLB for agents. technically it's not 2026 yet, but we knew what he meant. The free agent class will stretch into 2026 and the way things are going,

probably a lot of free agents won't sign until 2026. He is one of our top-ranking guests by total appearances and guest quality, too. You would hope that those things are correlated. He's Ben Clemens. Hello, Ben. Hey, Ben, how's it going? Okay, so this is the fifth year of your labors when it comes to. free agent rankings. And as you noted, at the top of your piece, not the sexiest top of the list this year. That's, it's not a commentary on Kyle Tucker's appearance or raw animal magnetism

or anything like that, but just compared to the past few years where we had Judge and Otani and so. We've been spoiled. I think the last three years are, they're the three biggest free agent deals ever, right? Yeah, yeah. And that can't keep, and they're increasing every time, too, and to really ridiculous numbers. So it makes you think that, but no, Kyle Tucker's not as good as those guys. Yeah, he's going to do well, but I don't think he's going to, he's not going to top the Soto contract, I don't think.

No, not quite. Well, as you noted, even though you had Kyle Tucker, number one, which just about everyone will, I imagine, there are some reasons why he won't top the aforementioned trio. And partly they're related to his performance, but I guess mostly they're related to his recent availability. So what kind of concerns might you have if you were one of the teams that's considering breaking the bank for Kyle Tucker? Yeah, I mean, I think one thing really interesting about Tucker is he really broke out to a new level in 2024, and people thought, oh, like, hey, maybe he will be in that Soto kind of level of free age. Well, probably not Soto, but like, get a judge kind of deal. And then he's just been hurt.

you know, he missed the majority of the 2024 season. I remember he broke his toe, I believe, on, like, June 2nd, and I was talking to beg because he was writing article the next day. And he's like, I will be back in a few days. I am day-to-day. Then he missed three months. It was really bad. Breaking your toes, like, very tough for baseball.

And then he had some injury concerns this year. His hitting took a little bit of a step back, although it's hard to tell how much of that's from injury. But basically the upshot is that, I don't know, Tucker is, you know, Tucker is, now a 29-year-old guy who's a very good hitter, 40% above average for his career, had that same stat line last year and might even have upside above that, but he also hasn't played that much. And that puts you in an awkward situation because, you know, the judge deal, yeah, Judge has had some injury and availability concerns in his career and he even has since signing his deal,

but when he plays, he's the best player in baseball. And Tucker just hasn't done that enough, I feel like, to get into that class of, like, crazy good contracts. But he has been really good. I mean, he's been kind of the power average combo that you want. It just, he hasn't put that together for a length of time while healthy. And so I think his deal is going to reflect that. Another thing that you noted and that I was struck by as we were starting to vet out the list is just, this is, I think, the second year in a row where it is largely dominated by pitchers.

There are a number of very good hitters, and we can talk about some of the other ones. One's Beyond Tucker, who I imagine will be paid and paid handsomely, but there are a lot of pitchers on here, and you've noted it as part of a trend. What do you think is driving sort of the prevalence of the most injury prone of positions being so dominant here? I mean, that's actually one good way to think about it, is that teams need a lot of pitchers, but I look every year at the top 50 contract sign to get an idea of who teams think are the best players. as opposed to who I think are.

And almost always two-thirds are pitchers. That's been the case for the last three or four years, and it's like a trend. It's heading in that direction. My take on it is that teams often feel pretty good about using their farm system to get decent value on the position player side, particularly up-the-middle positions and defense positions or platoon DHS. There's these roles that teams think they can feel okay from their minor league system.

But one of those roles is not like high leverage relief farm or medium leverage relief farm or starter who we think can go every five days. Those are really hard to find in your farm system. Like obviously every team is using all they can, but they're just not making enough reliable ones. And that's how you end up with like World Series teams who don't trust their bullpins. Yeah, I've been waiting for top pitchers to start making less money. Not that I'm hoping for that. I'm not like, when will they finally stop paying these pitchers so much? But I do wonder about that just because top pitchers tend to be less valuable than the top pitchers of yours, because they just don't pitch as much.

We had three guys make it to the 200-inning threshold this past season, and barely they were all about one start away from not doing so. Maybe next year will be the year when we have no 200-inning guys. And so I guess that- As long as Logan Webb's around. Well, hopefully, yeah. But even he was at 207, you know, barely cleared it. So I keep thinking, okay, sure, you need just as many innings to get through a season as before and just as many starts. And so you still need just as much pitching.

And maybe that pitching is harder to come by, as you said in some ways, although in other ways, I guess it's easier. But I keep expecting that that will lead to a decline in just the per player value or the average annual value for the pitcher contracts. And it just doesn't really seem to be the case. And I don't know whether that's because, like, the entire pitching class has gotten less durable. And so if you're still relatively more durable than other guys, then you're just still going to get paid a lot, even though you're not as durable as the previous generation of pitchers. How do you sort that all out? I see it as basically being a replacement level thing, which is that, yeah, you're covering less innings now, for sure. But the innings of the guy who would replace you have gone down commensurately and perhaps even more.

teams just don't really use bad starters for 150 innings anymore. They just can't, and those guys don't seem to be able to take it. Additionally, I think more money is just generally flowing into free agency pitching. That's kind of what this trend is saying. And so they are paying the other guys more, too. They're just putting more money into the pie overall, is what I'd say. Like, instead of the top pitchers contracts going down, they're kind of remaining stable while teams pour money into the seventh inning guys

in the fifth starters. One pitcher who is not on your list, though, I imagine he was until shortly before publication. Feel free to share the story of last-minute revisions that Shane Bieber forced you to make. But that was one of the surprises this week of the various option pickups and everything. Shane Bieber exercised his $16 million option to stay with the Blue Chase. He had a $4 million buyout. This was actually a $12 million option. Yeah, true.

And you would think that he would have been in line for much more money on the open market, having returned from Tommy John surgery, pitched pretty well for the Jays down the stretch, made starts in the World Series. Like, you know, that typically suggests that you're pretty important pitcher and that people will pay more for you than that. So do you think this was just Bieber loved being a Blue Jays as a lot of Blue Jays seemed to this season? Or was there more to it than that? Was he forecasting a light market or something? He may have been I don't really know And I will say that

I mean luckily Shota Amanaga Unexpectedly becoming a free agent Did a nice little Panic But it doesn't matter Because 12 hours later Here's a new person

To replace Bieber And that's pretty And just like at a convenient time Shoto did it You know he was like Hey I know that you're very busy And you got stuff to do And you don't want to do HTML surgery

I'm just going to announce this So you have time to write a blurb Very considerate It was very rude Shane You're not worth it but yeah I definitely had a little bit a little moment of panic

I thought Bieber was going to get like a two year 16 or 17 million dollar a year contract I talked with Meg about whether I should lower pitchers in that kind of tier Brandon Woodruff is the guy who I had given the same contract to and I kind of thought that's like the going

it's basically the contract that Bieber had this year which is like a two year deal for like not a huge average annual value, but some kind of player protection, either an opt-out or some kind of escalator clause on innings. Jack Flaherty had the same deal. And I basically thought that's what Bieber would get. I think that's what Woodruff will get. I'm very surprised that he decided to stay. He might, just like being a Blue Jay, he might want to hit free agency, not have one of these gimmicky deals, like just hit it after pitching for a full year in the same place that he's used

to. Like, this could be a smart long-term deal, but I definitely don't think he's maximizing his $2026. Sort of shifting to back to the position players for a second. How did you think about some of the talented but flawed guys in concert with one another? So we ended up with, you know, Schwerber and Pete Alonzo sort of back to back on this list. How did you think about those two guys and their skill sets in relation to each other, the deals they might sign? And sort of just generally, like, how do you imagine teams are going to think about sequencing, some of these contracts because you make the note the point in the introduction to the piece that in part because he is a less sort of generational talent than Otani or Judge or Soto was that

Kyle Tucker doesn't seem likely to hold up the market the way that those guys did right the teams that were in on Otani weren't doing other business until they knew that they were going to get him or not whereas Tucker is a good free agent and likely to sign a large deal but isn't going to be like the top of everybody's list. There might be other guys are sort of parallel pathing with him. So I'm curious sort of how you think the timing of the market is going to shake out particularly for guys like Schwerber and Alonzo where there's like a sort of similarity of profile and flaws attendant with both.

Yeah, I actually think that theirs will be fairly straightforward. And that won't be the case for most players on this list. And we could maybe talk about some of the downstream effects that later. but almost every team can just plug in Kyle Schwerber or Pete Alonzo. You know, like maybe the Dodgers can't because they have Otani. But it's not like that hard. There's a lot of contending teams who would like to have just pure offense in a can. And Schwerber and Alonzo are like really good bets to provide that for you.

The reason I have them kind of back to back is they both seem like they're going to do similar stuff. I'd probably prefer Schwerber for a one-year deal. but Alonzo's two years younger and Alonzo is not bad you can feel really confident that he's going to give you like very solid offense and a lot of power with it so I think both of those guys

are going to have a pretty robust market and both them have like this nice thing going for them I think particularly Alonzo in that the team that is like the team that's losing them probably needs someone in that role and there aren't that many guys in that role

who are available this winter. Like, if you're the Mets and you don't re-sign Piedelonzo and you also don't sign Schwerber, it's, like, kind of awkward to add offense. Like, are you going to get, like, Josh Naylor? That's not as good. And then, like, he's not as good as those guys. And then try to plow the savings into, I don't know, like, are the Mets signing Alex Bregman? There aren't a lot of options for big bats.

And Alonzo fits pretty cleanly there and also will have a good market away. So I think that both of those guys are going to, like you said, they might be parallel tracked for some teams with Kyle Tucker. I was thinking about this. Like, if you already have kind of average corner outfielders, that's, like, Tucker has had some good defensive seasons, but I don't know, he's been hurt a lot, and I just wouldn't necessarily project him as a great corner defender going forward.

So if you already have average outfield defenders, how different is Tucker from Kyle Schwerber in terms of defensive value? it's like it's honestly kind of zero even though our sheets don't say that if you have like good alternatives that you'd be happy playing in the outfield so i think a lot of teams are going to be like yeah like we'd love to sign any of these great hitters and we'll figure out something to do with them and the way that they'll go is just like schwerber's the oldest so if you want him for just a few years he'll probably be your preference and then alonzo's in the middle although i really think he's going to stay with the mets it's just a hunch but it just feels right and then tucker is the guy that if you want, like, you need a new cornerstone. I think teams who don't have good outfielders will just be the massive leaders for Tucker, basically. Yeah. You are projecting Alonzo to do better than he did last year.

We talked about whether this would be the case. Obviously, last off-season didn't go quite the way he had envisioned it, and perhaps he had unrealistic expectations in this era, but nonetheless. And then he had a bounce back. He started great and then kind of cooled down, but ultimately it ended up being his best offensive season in a while. but also he's a year older because that's how time works

and he is still essentially the same player profile so why do you think things will go a bit better for him this time? The main reason is that I thought they'd go better for him last time

yeah I think that last time a lot came down to the fact that the shape didn't look great that 2024 was his worst season and it was easy to say that it was his worst season because of like variance

and I kind of think it was like his power played down but not in a way that, like, made you think he had less power. You know, he still had a, like, pretty high consistent with his career average barrel rate. Like, most of the stuff looked fine, but he was ticking down. And he had just, he was about to turn 30, and the market wasn't as good as he thought. I feel like he was kind of hoping to get a really godfatherish offer from the Mets. You know, they had Soto, and then they wanted everybody to feel good, and they give Alonzo a big deal.

And it kind of fell apart, and he had to take, like, basically a pillow contract. and a like, hey, if you're actually only a 120 way to runs creative plus hitter instead of 140, maybe we can't give you a big $100 million deal. And then he, like, rebounded. I don't think he got better. I just think that 2024 was one of those random down years that just happens, right? Like sometimes you just don't play as well. Not everyone has the same performance every year.

And I basically think that this year, now that it's pretty clear that that wasn't the start of a new trajectory and he's gone, he's just going to be able to get back to the deal that he wanted. Because if he, if the Mets knew he would play like this this year, they would have offered him that deal last year. Yeah. Yeah. One somewhat surprising thing is that you have one spot below on your ranking Pete Alonzo, Boba Shett, which would probably seem a little low to most people I'd imagine. And your ranking is a personal preference ranking, to be clear, and you do have him with the second highest predicted contract total. So why the disconnect between the predicted contract in your actual ranking?

So this is one that is definitely going to stand out the most. And I spent a long time, I guess I do two things. I project the contracts, which is pretty model-based. And then I go take a bunch of passes, like actually reading specifics out there at each market. And then separately, I try to rank who I like the most. And I talked a little bit with Eric Blangenhagen about this. And I talked a little bit with some other people who I go back and forth with during this exercise. and I just don't know what to do with Bichette.

Like, he looks pretty good in the playoffs, but, you know, limited, obviously. Like, he was clearly, like, really hurt. They were pinch running for him all the time. He, like, he played second base, but not notably well or anything. He looked hurt. His foot speed was shockingly slow. And, but that trend has been going for a while, actually.

Like, it's not new this year. He's been kind of slowed by injury. I think he's going to hit. Like, I'm almost certain he's going to hit. I have no idea if he's, like, you know, Jorge Polanco's, like, level offense going forward as a second baseman who can hit, or is he going to play shortstop again? And I basically just thought, the guys who I have in front of him, so Alonzo and Schorber, just no question.

Like, I don't have any doubt that they're going to do exactly what I put it on my team to do. Cody Bellinger, I just think, is a, like, really nice free agency case. Then two great pitchers in Frambervalda's, Dillon C. Alex Bregman and Kyle Tucker. Like, I just don't have questions about those guys in the same way. And it felt really weird for me to rank Bichette ahead of any of them, given that. I do think he's going to get more money. He's younger.

Like, I mentioned it in my kind of commentary on it, but his comps are all really good. You can lean down and shade down on all of them, and he's still going to get a big contract. He's a young shortstop who hits for power and average. Like, those guys just get paid. I just couldn't talk myself into, if I were a team, wanting that. wanting Bichette more than these seven names. It doesn't mean I think he's not good or anything, and I think he'll get that money.

The other guys just felt more likely to do the thing that I wanted than he did. And that's actually also why I had Ranier Suarez down at 9 is kind of the same deal. I thought the other two pitchers I'm more in on. And I said, would I rather have Bo Bichet or Ranger Suarez? And I went, oh, Boba Chet. Okay. So, like, great, there's the line.

And so I kind of used him. that. I am often surprised. I guess I shouldn't be surprised at this point, but I am often struck by the way that reliever free agent contracts seem to continue to defy sort of a straight dollars per war calculation. You know, there's no, the top arms just get paid well, in part because of the value that they bring in the postseason if they're healthy. And you have the top two relief arms on this list stacked the way that I think most people would expect where we have Edwin Diaz and then Robert Suarez. But then right behind Suarez, you have Devin Williams and Ryan Helsley.

And I'm sure Yankees and Mets fans listening to this are like, what's that about? Because they were very bad at the end of the year and very bad at the end of the year for Helzley. So talk about the sort of thinking there because I think you, and you note this in the intro, you are a little higher than consensus on those two guys in particular. How did you think about their placement on this list? Those are the two guys, I think, kind of stand. out. And that's because I think that both of them are going to be quite good relievers going

forward. Just trying to figure out what went wrong. And it's like really hard. I just don't know. If you look at like Helsley's raw stuff in 2025, it was like basically the same. His command was like not terribly bad. He wasn't even that bad on the Cardinals, you know? And then he just went to the Mets and imploded. Just inexplicably. I, I cannot figured out. He said he was tipping pitches. I don't really know if that was true. Then he started getting shelved with the base is empty. It was very strange season, but I basically think that the stuff there and with Williams as well is good enough that, I don't know, relievers have weird years, and I can't explain why, but guys are very up and down. Some of it's just like the lack

of innings that, you know, you can get a smaller sample in every year. But I just feel comfortable with those guys as being like probably the best bets to be good relievers in 2026. Like no reliever that you can get aside from I think Edwin Diaz, which is why he's clearly ahead of them. And

Suarez is kind of a different case. He has been extremely up and down. He just happens to be up right now. But no reliever that you're going to sign this year other than Diaz is like, oh yeah, he'll definitely be good. Like, there's no way. All these guys have crazy ups and downs. And I just like kind of the building blocks of

Williams and Halsley a lot. It doesn't hurt that I feel like you won't have to give them a four-year deal. Right. They won't want a four-year deal, honestly. They're going to want one of these deals that let them test free agency again if they're good. I just think that the stuff is so good and the past results are so good that I'd be willing to look through a really down 2025. We talked to Eric last time about the four international players, KBO and Peeb who are on your list, Munitaka, Murakami, Cosmo Okamoto, Tatsuya Imai, and Cody Ponce. We talked to Eric plenty of about those guys from a scouting perspective, less so from a contract perspective or potential fit perspective. So with Murakami, where do you see him landing or at least how do you see his

market shaping up given the incredible power potential, but some of the contact concerns? I had a lot of trouble trying to figure out what the market for Murakami should be. I think that the questions about how he'll be able to hit in the majors being real are scary, right, for someone that you're going to almost assuredly be giving more than $100 million plus posting fees. But the upside is also extremely high. I think there's very little question, like you talked to Eric, there's very little question that he could be great. If you sign this guy when he's great at 26, it's going to be a really good deal.

And I basically think that that is going to propel the market for him to be a little bit higher than you'd expect for what is essentially a prospect, just because you can't really get guys like this with dollars only very often. and many times that people have been able to do so recently it has seemed to work out. Similar deals were signed by, like, Zheng Hui Li, who I think was clearly less good of a prospect than Murakami, from my opinion at least. Matsaki Yoshida got a fairly sizable deal. It's like getting these kind of bonus, like reasonably aged players who have a chance to be very good

or a chance to really contribute is just attractive to teams. I think that's going to like basically widen Murakami's market, even though there are real questions around him, because like just being able to add to farm system this way is so nice. And the other options on the market just aren't 26, you know? Like, that's just really something that he has going for him. I think that also, if we're being honest, the range of outcomes here is really wide, right? Like, Eric has watched a lot of video of the sky and scouts have scattered him in person. They've looked at a lot of data, but you don't know how it's going to translate and we don't know how he's going to develop. It's a really

tough question and the error bars are just much bigger than for your average free agent. So I think that someone's opinion of him is going to be meaningfully higher than ours is, and that's going to get him a big deal. I have no idea how it's going to work out. It could end up being the best deal that anyone signs this winter, from a team perspective, for sure, because his ceiling is clearly very high. But I think that's actually going to make a pretty wide market. I don't know what his preferences are for he wants to play. I assume he would prefer to play third, but I don't think teams want him to, or at least it doesn't seem like a lot to. So that'll be interesting. Aside from, yeah, being pretty confident that he will get, like, a lengthy deal.

Like, that's the main thing, a very lengthy deal. Because if you sign a guy like this, part of what you're getting is that you can have a ton of his prime, I think he'll sign a very long deal for a solid average annual value. I don't have a great ton of insight into where. We kind of joked about Shotanaga. Well, first getting his team option declined and then himself declining his player option and becoming a free agent, which I think was a surprise to most people, in part because the Cubs are pitching needy and are relinquishing rates to a starter.

But what do you make of the decision to let him become a free agent? And then what do you think his actual market looks like? Yeah. I mean, I don't like it from the Cubs standpoint. I don't really understand it. I mean, like, if you were certain that this was going to be a not-so-great deal, you're probably lying, right? Yeah.

It can't be that far off. I looked at projecting Shoda into the free agent club. last, you know, so that this wouldn't have been a surprise. And I looked at it and I was like, like, how much worse than this deal could he be? Like, why would the Cubs give up, you know, the chance to basically make this decision again next year for, like, why would they give this up for so little edge? And so I just said, oh, they're definitely going to pick it up. Their situation implies that they need to. So I missed that they do owe 15% of the deal to the Bay Stars, his NPB team, from the posting agreement.

So they do save, like, an extra $9 million there. That's still, like, really small. I'm surprised that they didn't pick this up. I do think that his market will end up limited by, I think he's likely to get a qualifying offer. Like, that kind of deal doesn't seem crazy if he wants to go hit the market again next year, like a, you know, the classic, like the Brandon Woodruff deal, basically. It's not exactly the same. Like, but I think Shoda was hurt this year. I think that his stats basically look like that.

His fastball velocity was down, his consistency was down. He'd missed some time with injury in the early part of the year, and just, like, didn't look the same when he came back. I think that that just implies one of these, like, hit the market again if it all works out well-shaped contracts. It is, he's 32, so that's going to limit the length of his deals naturally anyway. And so to me, that just makes one of these, like, shorter deals with a load of middle dollars make a lot of sense. He might just take the QO, but that would just feel a little strange after they'd, they declined the long option. Yeah.

Sandwich between Imenaga at 18 and Imi at 20. You have Zach Gallen at 19, who a couple of years ago probably coming off of 2020 and how good he was in 2023. If you were having a conversation about the best pitchers in baseball, he would have been in it, at least. And now you have him number 19 on a ranking of this offseason's free agents. So how hard was it to pin down how good he's going to be? Very difficult.

And one of the tough things about Gallen is that it always looks like it shouldn't work. You know, like, you're like, what is the good thing here? And it's like, I don't know, he understands his pitchers really well. He's got great command. He sequences great. I feel like I'm watching in pitch and he's like tricking the hitter and I can actually see it. There's a lot of these like kind of soft skills that, like, basically the models that spit out projections haven't done a great job of capturing for Gallen. And that stuff's kind of all the same.

I mean, his, like, pitching bot ERA has gone down. That's largely a feature of his command. But his stuff's gotten a little worse, but his stuff was never good. And so when it just stops working, I have a really hard time trying to figure out how it's going to come back. It basically did just stop working. Like, they had some bad batted ball luck in 2025, but also he was just worse. And he struck out. He was like a career low strikeout rate by a lot.

and so I'd love to see like I like seeing players get a change of scenery when this happens and just figure out if you can figure it out somewhere else I think that it is in Gallin's best interest to do that rather than try to get a long-term deal now I think that a long-term deal for him now would be

very low dollar and the teams just might not even be willing to offer it but obviously like peak Zach Allen like you said is really good he's just turning 30 it's not too old for a pitcher peak to happen again but until he demonstrates that the the trajectory of his career is not, you know, what he put on, uh, what he put down

over the past two years. Uh, he got, he missed some time last year, but yeah, a worse season on rate. And then he had a very bad season this year. I, I think the deal to sign here is a short deal. And that's also why I have him a little bit lower is because, I don't know, like, how exciting is it to get Zach Allen and if he's great in a year, then he's leaving for sure. It's, it's exciting. I'd like to do it. But it's less exciting to me. I think similarly exciting to getting Imanaga for a year, but less exciting to me than some of the very good pitchers towards the top that you could pick up for a long time and be confident that they're going to be good now. We started by saying that the number one is not as exciting as the number one on the

list in the past few years. I guess you could say the same about the best starting pitchers available and that there's no one quite as good as Yamamoto was and is, or even probably Corbyn Burns, despite what happened to him shortly after he signed. The best starters, the highest ranking starters you have on your list are Dylan Sees and Frampero Valdez and those guys Sees at least has been sort of up and down a little bit

and kind of volatile sometimes. I think he's good also, but yeah, I don't know if you feel quite as good about these guys as you do typically about the best starting pitcher available so how do you think they're going to do? Yeah, I think a little lower. Yamamoto is a special deal. I thought he

was really good. He was like number two on our behind only Otani, and I think he would have been number one most years. He was just like, yeah. I mean, he signed the biggest contract in history for a pitcher. That was kind of a standout one. But, yeah, like, I think I'm probably down on C's relative to the consensus by a touch, but I don't think by that much.

I think he's pretty good. He's pretty wild for a good pitcher, which just always feels a little, it's just like not my preferred style of good pitcher for whatever reason. I'm not sure that you can prove that that. does worse and didn't feature into my projections or anything. But I don't know, he's not to my baseball watching taste, if that makes sense. But he's got a lot of the statistical markers that get you paid and a lot of statistical markers that mean you're good for a long time. He strikes out a lot of batters. He misses bats. He has kind of fixed his fastball shape. Early in his career, his fast fall

shape was just no good. It was really flat for a four-seamer, and it just got hit, like, really hard. And so changing that has made me, like, much more confident. And his, like, ability to change pitches and improve that way. Makes me confident that he'll be able to keep doing it for a while. I think of him as a much lower octane Blake Snell in that, like, Blake Snell won two Sion Awards. So I don't think that's still on Cise. But, you know, like, capable striking out a ton of guys going to walk more than you want and probably not go into games, like, quite as deep as you'd hope. Like, Cease hasn't missed a lot of starts. That's one thing that is really attractive about him is that he's made, you know, the full complement of starts in each the last five years,

and he's never even hit 190 innings because he just doesn't pitch a lot of innings per start. So those are kind of the limiting factors, but I don't think that means he's not going to get, you know, a five-year deal. Like, he's turning 30. You can expect him to be pretty good for, like, most of that. And guys with strikeout stuff are just, they're in-demand. in general. If you watch the playoffs, like those are the guys the managers trust.

And I think that that is going to, that's what the kicker was for having me put him over from Rvaldez, whose results have been better on the field thus far. But even though Cs says, you know, he'll walk too many

and like when he does, it's very frustrating. He's been worse than his FIP over a very long sample. So I think our war is probably giving him too much credit. But he's got the really high top end. And Valdez is much more

like he does have that really awesome strikeout curveball but because of the way he pitches he's just not the same kind of oh yeah this guy could just throw a 12 strikeout shut out in the playoffs kind of feeling that cease gives you the obvious answer to this is probably the same as it is in most years which is catcher but if you're a gm and you're sitting there going oh i got some big holes i have to fill in my roster where are you the most nervous looking at this free agent class because i say catcher because it's like j t real muto and then it's like hey feel about Danny Jansen and Victor Caratini, who, by the way, was the late sub for Bieber to answer your earlier question, Ben Prime. But if you're a GM and you're staring down a hole, where are you the most nervous about the possible depth and quality in this class? I don't think it's actually Catcher because no one has ever gone into free agency trying to fix Catcher. Just like doesn't work. That's just not how Catcher plays out in the major leagues. Every year we're like, oh my God. Who are we going to put it catcher in the top 50? I think it's the middle infield.

I think the middle infield is quite weak this year, and it's not normally. You know, it's been basically an unending shortstop bonanza for most of a decade. And this year, I don't have Bichet as a long-term shortstop, and I don't think many teams do. So, like, I don't know, are you, like, really, really in on Hassan Kim? Like, doesn't feel that likely to be, like, amazing. Glaver Torres, like, not really a great middle infielder. There's just not a lot of, like, the Red Sox are a team that I think about a lot, and they need to improve their infield.

They have a great outfield. They have great starters. They're like the drawing of the horse, and the infield's the side of the horse that's drawn by a child. But their best infielder is the only infielder other than first baseman that's on the market that I'm really into. Yeah. And so first, like, first, let's get him back.

But they're just in this awkward situation where, look, their situation in the infield was so bad. They were using the best center fielder in all of baseball to play second base. Yeah. Because they just didn't have second baseman. And though that guy is not a good hitter either. Like, he went from being, like, the most valuable outfield defender in baseball to being, like, a below average middle infielder. Because they just literally have no options. And they're just not going to find any this winter either.

like I don't really picture them as a Boba Chet suitor just because of the way that they've been handling large contracts of late like extensions for internal guys only is kind of their model these days and also like with Christian Campbell like still kind of percolating around maybe they can fix second base that way although he didn't look like he could actually play the position in 2024 or 2025 but I guess my point is like even if they don't want like a very long high dollar commitment well like I don't really really really think Jorge Polanco should play second for too much longer.

So I don't even think he's a great option there. I think he's a great bat, but I'm more interested in the bat than, like, I might move in the DH pretty soon. Luis Arise, like, not really a second basement either. Yeah, I just think that's a really weak spot. And it's a spot that, like, teams who are nearing contention or, like, have a lot of money to spend have been able to just feel secure that they could go pay some shortstop to be an All-Star for 10 years if they wanted.

too. Like the Rangers did it, the two guys in a year. It worked out pretty well. And that's just not here this year. I do think we were kind of vindicated on being high on Glaber Torres last year. Not super high. Yeah, there are flaws, their drawbacks. But we were both surprised. I remember talking about this last year about what he was projected to make and then what he actually made. I missed badly on him. Yeah. So did our crowdsourcing. You were not alone. And he was dramatically off consensus. I think across the board.

Well, maybe teams miss. Not you. I mean, he would. You know, he was pretty good, right? I mean, you know, was it great? But 2.6 war and you just get a one-year deal. And he had a sports tourney in the second half. Right. So, like, you know, he was compromised when he was not good. Yeah.

Yeah. And he's still somehow 28 years old. He came up so young. And you're still, you're projecting him, I guess, kind of Alonzo-esque regression to the mean off-season-wise. I guess, like, you're projecting him for a lot less than you projected him for last year, but also a lot more than he actually got last year. I thought a lot about whether I should lower him so much on my list, and I'll tell you what I ended up deciding after thinking about this,

because I moved him from in the top 10 to 15th after he had a better season. That does seem strange. But I do think that he's the kind of player who our current positional adjustments are a little too high on. But he's not really a good defender. You don't really want him to play there. Like, every defensive system thinks he's not very good. They differ in how bad they think he is. And if you watch him, he's like, yeah.

So he's not, like, an asset defensively. And he's, like, 10 to 20% above average offensively. That's essentially, like, an average first baseman. I think that that puts some pressure down in my estimation of him. Is that, like, he's not, if he's not playing the defensive spot with some value, I think that he's more of a corner guy. And, like, I'd love to see him try third base. But that moved my estimation of him down a little.

But on the other hand, look, he still is a guy who can play second base. And like I said, it's a weak portion of the market this year. So I think the ability to fake it there will definitely entice some teams who really need someone to fake it there, essentially. Is there anyone else that you want to highlight here that you think you are a little lower or higher on than the consensus? Some bargain or I always think the term free agent. landmine is like a little aggressive I will not be using that one they're not going to look like yeah

it's a tad strong but but someone you're a little lower on or higher two people one lower one higher we'll start with lower so we can end on a high note so Brandon Woodruff is a player who I have projected for a lot more money than the other players around him on my list

which generally means that I think he's that I like him a little bit less than the people who are going to get paid the same amount of money as him That is not because I don't think he was a very good pitcher. I'm just worried that he is going, that he is too hurt to ever return to his prior form. So he came back this year and had like really good results. I was very impressed by how quickly he bounced back.

But under the hood, it was like not good. It was like he threw much less hard. The shape of all of his pitches was like much worse. he really, I think at his best, was a power pitcher who had like plus plus command. And the reason that he had these like crazy good results was because he paired like his command with like George Kirby level of stuff, let's call it. Like good stuff above average. And then if he doesn't have that, it's just hard for me to imagine him being the same

kind of elite guy sustainably. Like he's got really good command, but it's not going to get you to like what Brandon Woodruff was at his peak if he throws like he did this year. And between that and the fact that he still got hurt throwing with this diminished stuff, I would just be really worried that it's just not going to happen. And that just lowered my estimation of him quite a lot, not because I don't think he can be great, but because I think the risks and the shape of what his performance looked like upon returning both really scared me, basically. So I have him lower than the deal I think he'll get. And I, look, I don't get to look at his medicals.

I could be way off base on this, but that's just from my view. That felt like a kind of deal that if I were a GM, I'd be like, oh, I don't know. The other side, the guy who I think I'm definitely highest on relative to consensus is Tyler Rogers. And I think I'm a little higher than consensus on his contract. Although I looked at some other people and, you know, I'm at least in the ballpark there. But in terms of where I have him ranked in preference, it's like, Really? I'm very in on him. I just don't see why teams aren't. Even at the trade deadline, he fetched a huge return from the Mets. He had like probably the biggest return for a reliever

like relative to their, definitely the biggest return for a reliever relative to their perceived level, but like one of the best returns for a reliever. And also he was great and he was great like on the Mets and he was great with the Giants and he's been really good for a number of years. he strangely does not have platoon splits and I think basically the reason for that is it's like you know how over the top guys don't have platoon splits because they're like they're not like he's under the top like he's not a side armor

he's an underhander and so it's not the normal platoon thing about you throwing directly at their eyes just doesn't really apply but anyway like he's a really versatile pitcher he throws a ton of innings because he just I mean he throws 80 It's just not that hard on his arm. He throws a lot.

He got traded, you know, at the trade deadline, and then he threw another 30 innings in the last two months. That's just outrageous. He's pitching every other day, like, and no one else is doing that. In any case, I think that that profile is just really valuable. You have a guy who gets a ton of grounders, who's good against lefties and righties, and who is rubber-armed who you can always bring in,

and he's not going to cost that much, like, sign me up. I think our crowd is too low with a one. one year, $8 million deal, I just think that what the Mets gave up to acquire him implies that that at least one or two teams value him more than that. But I would. Like, I just look at this guy's numbers, and he's an incredible. He had an ERA below two. He had Mierre below three last year. He's, like, very durable. I would really want him on my team as a reliever. He just feels like the most reliable guy he can get for a relative bargain. He was definitely the guy who I checked the most frequently that we had like the right player ID associated with him and we we were joking

when we were going through because like one of the checks that we do on this list is to look and make sure that nobody's projection looks like weird because generally that implies that there's something like something got goofed with playing time or something like that and I was sort of to your point and perhaps driving the perception of him from our readers when they did crowdsourcing I was briefly concerned that his projection and his brothers had been swaps. And the answer was no, it had not been. His brother actually projects better than he does, but from just a result and market perspective, I think that you're going to be right. Because just look at how his brother was dealt literally at the deadline relative to him. But, yeah.

We talked about that a little bit. I think that this is just not a protection that systems can get right. Yeah. He doesn't strike anybody out. How does he keep running a 278 Babbat? How does he allow so a few home runs. Well, it's because he's not throwing major league pitches. He's throwing pitches from a different game that no one's ever played. But I sympathize with projection systems inability to make any of it make sense. Like a 2% walk rate? Like, what does that even mean? I don't know. The numbers are just so weird when you're throwing so slow that I'm not surprised his projections are bad. I just don't believe them. Yeah, you have a couple outliers like that on the list, including Louisa Rice at number 37. How do you figure out what to do with him?

I was also heartened to see that Justin Verlander made your list for old time's sake and also for 2026's sake. He's 50. I mean, he's not 50 yet. He's not that far from 50. He'll be 43 early next year, but he pitched quite well. As I've noted, there was a point in the year where he and Kirshod and Verlander all kind of pitched better after starting the season fairly disastrously or unavailably.

Scher did not make your list. You don't want the game. seven world series starter you don't want to sign that guy you want justin burlander um i didn't really like furlader was in and out of the top 50 yeah and i do think that the general idea of signing one of the old starters is good um you snubbed rich hill also by the way i snubbed rich hill has charlie morton retired i'm not sure he does yeah hasn't rich hill's been a free agent for like Four months now. Yeah.

Doesn't mean he couldn't be a top 50. That's true. That's generally how it works. They just let them sit at home for a little while, get some rest. But I guess what I'd say is you'd be pretty happy if you just signed one of the old dudes at random last year, right? Like, Verlena worked out okay. Scherzer worked out okay in the end.

And Morton worked out okay for the Braves. Yep. They got something out of it. So basically, like, I could have been convinced to put Scherzer on here instead. I feel like teams are just going to keep tossing, like, what is for major league teams of relative pittance of these guys to see if they still have it. And I bet you that managers love it, you know? Yeah, yeah. It seems like I would love to have Justin Verlander in the clubhouse for a year.

Or Max Scher. Like, Schrozer could have easily been in this spot. I don't have a strong view on which of those guys is, like, obviously better than the other. I think that each of them is a decent risk to just, you know, not have it and just be DFA and retire. but if they're not, they're, like, it's going to be fun and it won't cost you that much. Xtre, Xtre, breaking news on the pod that will not be breaking by the time people listen to this. The Rockies have a new pobo. Do you want to guess?

You're never, you're never going to, you're never, you're not allowed to look at social media or slack. You're never going to guess. Okay, so this is, is it like Jeopardy and the guy leading the search got it? It was Monfort's son? No. Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope. That would have been predictable, really. Yeah.

That's true. Yeah, I already saw who it was, so I can't guess. Paul DiPedesta. Whoa. That's great. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

Things are going so great for the Browns. Yeah, I was going to say, how do you leave such a storied franchise where things have gone so well? So is he still with the Browns? He went there so long ago. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think the Rockies just read Moneyball? And they were like, ooh, this guy.

Sounds like a hot shot, Fridge and Pobo prospect. That would give them, I'd be giving him a lot of credit. That means they didn't watch the movie. They read the book. Yeah, true. Peter Brand was a finalist. Yeah, Peter. Yeah, they tried to sign Peter Brand, and then they realized he didn't exist.

It's not a real guy. It's not a real guy. Wow. Wow. Okay. Well, I was like, what are we going to talk about when we intro after we're done with Ben here? And now we're going to talk about this, I think. I'm talking about it a little bit.

Now people will hear the breaking news on the second segment of the podcast that we already discussed on the first segment. Wow. Interesting. What is time? Temporal barriers here. This is some Star Trek situation. Okay. My last question, I think, for you, Ben, unless another occurs to me while you're answering it, is do you think that the looming prospect of a possible work stoppage next offseason, the potential for a lost season, which I think is unlikely, but not out of the realm of possibility.

Do you think that should or will and or will affect how teams and players approach this year's Hot Stove League? So Meg and I talked about whether or not we should write about that. And, I mean, I considered it a little bit for sure in that I think I kept contract lengths down. I think that you've seen in advance of CBA negotiations in general contract lengths go down, even if they're not going to be contentious. It just kind of makes sense. you want to like I think makes sense for players too that like maybe you want another bite at the apple with the new rules you know like everyone wants to know what the rules are when they sign a contract so I do think that it's maybe going to keep contract links down it didn't change my like inflation of contracts projections so like I think that the I basically project things in terms of like millions of dollars allocated per war in the free agent market and it ticks up over time

as you'd expect and I don't think that that the general trajectory of that's going to change too much I think that the top end dollars are going to go down this year and you might see less money overall allocated

because there's no like Soto basically who kind of breaks the model but I don't think that the potential of a lockout is going to do more than the or strike but the potential of labor stoppage is going to do

anything different than the previous ones, which is like kind of string contract sizes down. Now, if we get to next winter and it's like now the chances of work stoppage have ticked way up, that'll be a different story. But in this position, yeah, aside from generally airing on the low side on length, I didn't do much. All right. Well, we will link to your voluminous, lengthy, comprehensive free agent ranking on the show page. And we will probably have you back soon because it's all.

almost time to recap preseason predictions and minor league free agent draft, et cetera. So goodbye for now, and we will talk to you again. Yeah, see you again soon. All right. One closing note, apropos of nothing, or maybe apropos of making fun of the Rockies. MLB's stat cast developer Tom Tango did a post on his blog recently, in which he developed a challenge probability for the ABS challenge system heading into next year based on results in the minor leagues in 2020.

which he will update next year based on Major League results. But as part of this, he went through some of the extreme individual results in challenging last year in the minors, players who were very successful at challenging, players who were very unsuccessful at challenging. I've been thinking about this ever since I saw it, but didn't have a time to mention it during the playoffs. Rocky's outfielder, Zach Veen, former Rocky's top prospect, current Rockies' lower-ranked prospect.

Not because of this, but this didn't help. Here's what Tango wrote. The worst challenger as a batter was Zach Vien, with three overturns and 21 lost. So he challenged 24 total times. Only three times did he get an overturned. Given his pitch distribution, Tango writes, we'd have expected 2.9 overturns and 5.6 losses. So he was fairly reckless as a challenger, I'd say, with a net net of negative 15.2. He runs through some positive results, too, but that was among the more extreme.

Can you imagine? How do you have the confidence to keep challenging when your results are that bad? You're three for 24. I'm not sure if he's a true talent, terrible challenger. We'd have to see how many challenges it takes as a batter to reflect your challenging skill as opposed to randomness. Lots of coin flips coming up one way instead of the other. But this is something that I am looking forward to monitoring throughout next season as we

see which guys challenge most and which challenge best or worst and how we credit or debit value based on that. I'll remind everyone that Secret Sam. Santa signups are now open. Check the show page. Deadline to sign up, December 10th. And I'll put in one more plug for a video I made in a series I'm trying to launch at the ringer plot hole or not hole. I know some effectively wild listeners have already checked it out. I appreciate it. But I interviewed Vince Gilligan about a possible plot hole in Breaking Bad. That's the concede of the series. Have a storyteller on to ask them about a perceived plot hole in their

work. See what they say. Is it a plot hole or is it not? Hence the name. But I could use your support to get enough views to make more of these, so check the show page if you're interested in giving me a click and helping me out. And of course, you can help me out and Meg and producer Shane and fan graphs by supporting Effectively Wild on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild 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. Liam, John Hausman, Nick Pierce, Gabriel Suarez, and Andrea Zekis, thanks to all of you.

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