Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2402: A (Qualifying) Offer You Can’t Refuse

Episode Date: November 20, 2025

Ben and Meg banter about the benefits of baseball supporting longer careers than some other sports (inspired by LeBron James becoming the first NBA player to make it to a 23rd season), the Mariners re-signing Josh Naylor, four free agents accepting qualifying offers, the Orioles and Angels swapping Grayson Rodriguez and Taylor Ward, whether teams […]

Upsters, that's in dentry, they both mean a lot to mean. That's wild of baseball. Special kids is previous series pitching and pure poetry. That's how the baseball. Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2402 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraps baseball podcast brought

you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraps, and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of the Ringer. How are you? I'm doing okay, and I am not suffering from sciatica. Neither is LeBron James anymore. He has returned to the floor. Why am I talking about a basketball player at the beginning of a baseball podcast? Well, as you know, I'm just an all-purpose sports pundit.

now. Yeah, you're a sports guy now. Keep my roving eye on all athletic endeavors. But LeBron returned to the Lakers. He played his first game of the season on Tuesday, and he set a record in the process. He played in his 23rd NBA season, and he is the first player ever to do that. He was previously tied with Vince Carter at 22 seasons. So now he has broken new ground, and that was fascinating to me, as mostly a baseball

guy because 23 is a lot, but it doesn't sound like it should be a record. And it wouldn't be in baseball. In fact, there are quite a few players who have played 23 seasons in Major League Baseball. In fact, baseball reference has a handy-dandy leaderboard. Most seasons played. And it is led by Nolan Ryan and Capanson about a century or so apart. And they each played for 27 seasons. So that is the record.

But there are 36 players who have gotten to 23 seasons or more. Wow. Yeah. And this is entirely unprecedented in the NBA. And it took arguably the greatest of all time to do it. Whereas in baseball, you know, just about everyone who played for that long was good, obviously. But you don't have to have been the best of all time to have done it. You could just be durable and good enough to keep going.

And I think that's a nice thing about baseball. Yeah. There's the potential for longer careers, you know? It's still rare to play for that long, obviously, but it's not inconceivable. And there are even some mechanisms by which it can be made easier because you could be a DH, so that helps. And you could be a pitcher and you could have to throw every five days or whatever it is and you can get some time off. So I think it's mostly a mechanism. It's a reflection of the sports levels of strenuousness, probably, right? I mean, you know, there are only so many guys on an NBA team, and so you're probably not going to just sit on the bench and never play.

In baseball, there are at least more bench or part-time roles, I suppose. And there's just been baseball a lot longer than there's been basketball or the NBA specifically. So that's probably part of it. like NBA history is less than 80 years. Right. And LeBron has played in more than a quarter of NBA seasons. So that's a little bit of it, I guess. When you put it that way, geez.

I know. Makes it sound like even more of an Iron Man, really. Or an old one. Right. And it's just like, you know, in basketball, you got to run a lot, right? Whereas baseball is famous, infamous for people just sort of standing still. You know, lolly gagging, which is maybe an exaggeration, but it is a little easier on the body than in basketball where you are expected to be sprinting and running to and fro. And, you know, in this era where the pace has picked up again and so it's even harder to keep up.

So it's a thing I appreciate about baseball because I like longevity when one of the greats comes along. It's nice when they can stay. It's funny. I would be curious, and this is like a crude taxonomy that I'm maybe about to suggest, but like what among the four major men's sports, like what percentage of careers are ended? You know, there's like the obvious one where it's like you ain't good enough, right? And you probably weren't strictly good enough for much of your career, but you were like aberrantly good enough. to stick around for a little while. So, like, there's that part, which is, like, a, you know, a classic skill issue, set that aside. But then, like, when, when you talk about guys who are good enough to be regulars or, like, the strong side of a platoon, um, to put it in baseball terms, like, what percentage of them are having their careers ended by, like, catastrophic injury? what percentage of them are having their careers ended by what we might casually refer to as like drag ass

like you know when you get to the point in your 30s where you're like I'm just kind of dragging ass and you're like why couldn't rightly tell you you know like slept that's not the issue sometimes that is the issue but like in this particular since not the issue right so there's like the drag ass part and then some of it is like roster machinations this and that and I'm just curious

I wonder if we were to make a study of it. Because, like, you think about the, and maybe we want to distinguish drag-ass from, like, grind-down, you know? Because I think that that's a different thing, particularly in sports that are, like, very, very punishing, or maybe, at the very least, more punishing than baseball. Because it's like, football is so violent. And you do get to a point where you're just, like, kind of broken,

or at least some of the guys do, right? you get to a point where, you know, to your, as you noted, you noted sports guy, the only person at your website who's ever claimed that title, by the way, the size of the sort of active roster in the NBA, it has a pruning effect to it. And then, you know, you just have like, you have drag ass. So I just, you know, I wonder about the prevalence of drag ass. And I wonder if it's the lowest in baseball. Despite the fact that the season is just so long. Yes, that's true, too. Yeah.

Hey, yeah. Like, you'd think that everybody, I mean, a lot of people are just kind of dragging ass at the end, but not in a way that, like, ends their career generally. And in basketball, there's such a tolerance for embrace of load management. And so someone like LeBron, their playoff minutes, their usage rate is going to be a lot higher than it is during the regular season. And that's sort of a thing, certainly a thing in. in Major League Baseball these days.

It didn't used to be so much. But I wonder also whether this is getting easier or harder in baseball specifically. Because just glancing at this leaderboard and list, there are a lot of different profiles of players who have made it this far. There are just top of the rotation aces and inner circle Hall of Fame position players. But there are also relievers who just hung on forever. There are, you know, innings eater, soft-tosser types, you know, your Tommy Johns and Jamie Moyers. Right. And then there's just like Rick Dempsey played in 24 seasons.

And, you know, he was like catching right up until the end. Or Carlton Fis because Hall of Famer, but, you know, also just catching. It's like lots of different types of guys did it. And in baseball now, so on the one hand, you'd think it would be getting easier because Universal D.H. So there are more spots where you can land when you can hit, but you can't really run. And then there's greater nutrition and conditioning and training improvements and all of that, which you would think would maybe lead to greater longevity. On the other hand, it seems like the aging curve has moved up.

It's shifted forward where the young guys are better and are coming up sooner and better than ever before. And I guess maybe you might just get like a shifted profile where people might still have long careers, but the careers will start earlier and end earlier. But it does seem like, you know, a lot of players have washed out earlier just because of that aging curve being less forgiving for old guys. And, you know, there's the PED aspect of this too. You got Roger Clemens on this list. Like, you know, there's that consideration also. And then little things like Jesse Orozco's. on this list, for instance, and you don't have Lugies so much anymore.

It's tough to apply your trade in that role with three-batter minimum. So different trends that are kind of working in different directions, and I don't know whether that's made it easier or harder to do. But I hope that it continues to be possible, at least, because I like when someone's just a staple for that long, and you look at the year they debuted and the year they finished and think about how different baseball was during those periods. It's like, Willie May has started in 1948 and finished in 1973 or like, Yaz, who's the only guy on this 23 or more seasons list to have played for one franchise the entire time. Actually, no, it's Yaz and Brooks Robinson, the only single franchise guys on the list.

But, you know, 1961 to 1983, it's just like totally different eras and aesthetics. and they spanned those periods and multiple generations got to see them. So I think that's a cool thing, that continuity. And just because baseball is less punishing and less strenuous and less of a contact sport, I think it historically has allowed. And, you know, there are guys like in the 19th century here. I mean, there's like Bobby Wallace started in 1894 and, you know, and then there are guys like Jamie Moyer who played fairly recently. So it's not exclusively a modern or an archaic phenomenon in baseball. Well, and I think you have, you know, you also have sort of the push and pull of, I guess I'd bucket it broadly under the notion of like roster efficiency, right?

Like, I just think that there's like a ruthlessness to the churn in a way that is, you know, and I don't say that like, you know, front office is really full of warm hugs in an earlier era of baseball. But I just think that as teams have gotten better at evaluation and have started to, well, not started to, and prioritize valuation as highly as they do now, you know, there's just a, there's not a lot of room to be a hanger on, you know, you're going to get cut, especially as you start to get more expensive and farther away from being considered young. So I think that probably is a sort of a countervailing force to longevity there too. Yeah, you're right. Less sentimentality or just kind of, you know, oh, he's been here forever. So we'll just bring him back for another year. If you're not producing, if you're not projecting to be productive, then, yeah, cut bait. And we say that and then, like, watch the Mets will give Pete Alonzo like $100 million.

And then we'll be like, I know, we got your sentimentality right here. But that makes it sound like he's bad. He's not. I just don't know if he's a $100 million guy anymore. You know what? But like Josh Nailer's a 92 million dollar guy. So maybe he is. Yeah, I think Pete will have a tough time getting to 23 seasons probably. He's at seven right now. So he's not even a third of the way there. But, you know, I hope for the best for him. Punishing profile. You know, you look at it and you're just like, it's a hard time, buddy. I'm sorry. Yeah. But yeah, you could be Harold Baines and you could just kind of chug along forever and be a DH. And I'm glad baseball permits that. And I get in the Hall of Fame. Yeah, exactly right. So congrats to LeBron and congrats to baseball for being slightly more friendly to just having the ultra long career. Yeah. I enjoy that about the sport. And it also sometimes leads to baseball getting better talent. It might be one of the reasons why a multi-sport. athlete chooses baseball. Like Ricky Henderson is on that list of the 23 plus season guys. That was, I think, at least partly because his mom wanted him to play baseball, not football, because it was

less dangerous and maybe he could last longer. Good choice, probably. Because in baseball, you might have a longer delay before your payday. You might have to ride the buses and be in the minors. You might not be as famous long term. But you might be in better shape physically for the rest of your life. Whereas you play football, your career might be how does the Hobbs line go? Solitaire. very poor, nasty, brutish and short. A couple of those adjectives might apply to football better than baseball. And baseball, if you're good, you've got some staying power. Yeah, and then, like, if you're playing careers done, you'll turn around and suddenly

you're Travis Janikowski and you're the Rangers first space coach. This is like... It seems to be bothering you. It's wrecking me, Ben. I want you to know that it is ruining me. It is... I spared Shane the bloop there, because it's... was going to be a real long one, but I, I am unwell with this news. I am unwell. And,

you know, like, Austin Nola being a, a bullpen coach, like, that's its own, that's its own brutality. But something about Chankowski being, I just, he was in the majors like a year ago, Ben. He was just like a big leaguer. Like, he was like one of the, he was like a, a, a religious. liable fourth outfielder. You know, here's a guy people wanted a round to be a fourth outfielder, and it wasn't all the hair, you know, it wasn't all about the hair. I'm, I'm on, I'm unsettled. Although, you know, I guess it's a little different if you do go almost directly from the field to the coaching staff, which has always happened a little bit because you just transition in there. So it's, it's not like there has to be some long interlude between your playing and.

in your coaching. And so if someone suddenly a coach, then that doesn't mean that they're old necessarily, right? And so if they're not old, then they don't have to make you feel that old. Yeah, no, but like, no, no. See, I wonder if I'm going to be able to. Jenkowski's only 34. Right. So if you kind of reframe, maybe it's just because we have the image of the coach being some old grizzled guy, right?

And if you just update that to, no, he's still, he's not that old. It's just that he has a different job now. He has a different job, but like that is a job. See, here's, I wonder if I'm going to be able to explain my distress, you know, not to make this therapy for Meg. But, like, baseball players are meant to be young, right? And you do have the, you do have the, like, the shock that hits you. And I get it when we get into, like, listenerness, where it's like you start looking at these states of birth and you're like, forget not being able to remember 9-11.

You weren't alive during 9-11. Like you were barely, you were in a babe-in-arms, you know? So you sit there and you feel rocked by that because, you know, it's just one more reminder that time only moves in the one direction. But there's something about a position of authority, and that's what a coach is, even though you'd like to strip them of their entire life's purpose, they have responsibility. you know like they they they they say things and then the guys have to do those things you know and they they'll be like whispering in their ear and be like okay like you should take you know the this guy's

pickoff move is bad you can take a longer lead and someone's going to go you bet coach and they're going to say it like that and sure they might look at someone like Travis jankowski and be like this is this guy's closer to appear than anything else but they're using the same word for him that they used for the grown man who instructed them in Little League. And that man is younger that I am now. And I don't care for that shit at all. You know, it is. It's like when Elvis Andrews coached in the freaking futures game and I was like,

excuse me? Aren't you, don't you, shouldn't you have like an active grievance against the white dogs or the A's or somebody? Like, I am, anyway, I don't care for it. I don't care for it, Ben. I don't like it. I don't like it even one little bit, not even one little bit. Well, I wish you well with your impending midlife crisis.

I'll be there with you. Thank you. Yeah. So we have some interesting transactions to talk about. Yeah. And you alluded to one of them. We have a Mariners signing or resigning, really. Josh Naylor, going back to Seattle or staying in Seattle on a five-year deal,

92.5 million guaranteed. Full no trade. Yeah, full no trade, some signing bonus in there, no deferrals. Yeah. Thank God. So, I assume that with your Mariners fan hat on, which is maybe just a Mariners cap, then I assume. It would be funny if it was a different hat, you know?

It was just, it said Mariners fan on it instead of Mariners. I have a hat that's pretty cool that is the skyline graphic from Frazier and this is Mariners. I think that's my, yeah, it's very. it's pretty sharp. I won't lie. I like it. I have been fascinated by their reaction to this deal, which I want to talk about ever so briefly, and then we should talk about like Josh Naylor's fit. So, like, look, I think that there are some Mariners fans who have been like big happy about this in a way that I think is like a little outsized to what their reasonable expectation of Josh Naylor's production should be going forward. And then I've seen a number of people who've been like very sour on the whole thing. mainly the, like, I guess the duration and the total dollar amount.

And I guess what I would say is I like it very much. I think that of all of Seattle's position player needs that could be filled in a dollar range that they are likely to play in, which is a self-imposed limitation that I invite them to examine, although they're not done. You know, it's like it's November 19th. Who can say what more they will do? But I feel comfortable guessing that, like, the Mariners did not see themselves, and we'll set aside, like, the particular vibe fit of the player I'm about to name. But just from a dollar's perspective, like, I don't think the Mariners were ever going to play in, like, Alex Breggman's market, right?

If you think about what Seattle needs, they actually need, like, a not small amount. But in terms of the things that they were likely to try to fill externally without blocking their middle infield prospects, right? Because you might remember Cole Young was up for stretches for this season. They have said that Cole Emerson, who is, you know, one of their top prospects and one of the better prospects in baseball. I think we have him, like, in the top 10, yeah, eighth, look at me remembering my own website. Eighth overall, you know, is their promising shortstop prospect who they have said that they expect to give runway, quote unquote, too, to win an opening day job. So I imagine that they're going to sort out their middle infield needs internally or at least try to. And of course, J.P. Crawford is under contract for another year.

But spoiler alert, I don't think J.P. Crawford's a viable big league shortstop anymore. But that's fine because they need a second baseman also. So maybe J.P. just play second base. So I think that they are going to look to solve the middle infield themselves with their available internal options. So that leaves the infield corners. And those with short-ish-term memories might remember that Tyler Locklear got traded to the Arizona Diamondbacks as part of the Ahayonio-Swarres deal. So he's not an available internal option at first base. So you're sitting there and you're like, uh, what, what are we going to be going to?

do? Are we, like, really excited about giving every day at-bats to Luke Rayleigh? I submit that you're probably not super-jazzed on that notion. There was obviously something of a love match between Naylor and the team. The vibes were great. His production was fantastic once he got to Seattle. It just seems like the best of their available options, given that they're not likely to upgrade third base with Bregman. I am terrified of A.ohenio Suarez as much as I love the

flow. But if you are thinking about, like, who, you know, that contingent of dudes who they brought in at the deadline or last winter, you know, you're probably more stoked on Naylor than you are Suarez, and it seems like

Polanco is likely to, you know, sign elsewhere. And as I said, they're they're likely to sort of sort of sort of their middle infield internally. So I think it's a good fit. Is it like a little bit more money than you would expect for someone who has like I think some serious downside scenarios built into his profile? I mean, I think you could make that argument, but also like this club should take itself seriously and it should go spend some money. And I think that he was like the flushes fit with their roster needs.

And I, for one, I'm tired of having to, like, remember who's playing first base for Seattle. When Michael Rosen was writing this up, I was like, hey, you should remind people who has cycled through that spot over the last half decade. Because apart from, like, two and a half-ish good years of Thai France, it's been pretty grim. So I like it. I think it's good. Naylor seems stoked to return. The Mariners are thrilled.

They put his initials on the side of the freaking building for a night, which was pretty cool. And now you go into the next season with like, you know, Randy and Cal and Julio and Naylor, I still would like them to add another bet because it's just like this team's offense will never be deep enough. The lineup will never be deep enough for me because after Canzon, you're still in like Victor Robles, J.B. Crawford, Ben Williamson. So like they do kind of need a third baseman. But that's what I think. I think it's good. I understand people kind of looking at Naylor and feeling like he, you know, he put together a really amazing two months and got paid off of that. But I also think that that underappreciates that he was a very

solid hitter in Arizona. And, you know, he's had, you know, he's been like a 120 to 130 WRC plus guy for the last several years. And so, yeah, I don't know. I think that like his profile, and the way that he shifted his profile from his time in Cleveland to his time in Seattle was really fascinating, right? Like, this is a guy who traded power for contact, which is not the direction that we see that going a lot these days. Do I imagine he'll have a 315 BAP in perpetuity?

I mean, maybe not. Is he going to have 30 stolen bases again? Remember have Josh Nailor had 30 stolen bases in 2025? I mean, that's probably going to come down. But, you know, he still hits for, a reasonable amount of pop and I think that like he is someone who put it this way is going to be a fascinating test case for like how we understand athleticism as it ages when it looks like that but yeah I like it I'm happy you could project even more stolen bases because

he really ramped up his rate after he got to Seattle he stole 11 in 93 games in Arizona and then 19 and 54 games in Seattle so if he keeps up that pace and you just extrapolate over a full season. Yeah, I know what you mean, though. You got to think that the book's kind of out on it. Yes, one would think, yeah. And so, yeah, I mean, it'll be, it'll be interesting. It'll be interesting. Yeah, he and Juan Soto and others sort of exposed that you can, you don't need speeds, you just need the will to steal and some whiliness and some instincts, and you can get away with it, but can you get away with it again is the question, I guess, once that's part of the

advanced scouting report that, hey, this guy will go if you take an eye off him, then do teams actually crack down? And I think that you could extend that sort of broader logic to him over the course of this deal, right? Like, do you continue to expect this caliber of production from a slower and less well put together athlete as he ages? I could see the back, you know, two years of this deal being kind of a bummer because. you know, you've traded power for contact, you've slowed down further, maybe your bat slows down. He did see a, like, a bat speed decline this year, although it seemed intentional like he was trying to slow his bat to make flusher contact. I could see the back two years of this being

kind of gross, but also I don't care because they need to win baseball games now. I think Josh Nailer dramatically improves. And I don't need a shadow box with the internet, but I do need shadow box with it a little bit. Because I do think that there is like a, you know, like there is a downside scenario here that could look kind of gross, but I don't think it's going to look like that for a while. Yeah. And yeah. No, I didn't think it was wildly out of line with what I was expecting or what people had predicted.

MLB trade rumors, for instance, had him at five years and 90, which is pretty much dead on. Yeah. Ben Clemens had him at $100 million for four years. So, yeah, I don't think it's an unreasonable or, or even surprising amount. And I think it's just a lot of it is how young he is. He's just very young for a free agent. So if this were his profile, but he were, say, three years older,

like a lot of free agents, well, yeah, then you're looking at it's all just downslope and decline. And it's not as if he's a superstar or something. But 28, you could project him to remain roughly at this level for a few years. And it's not an elite level. I think if you're a Mariners fan, whose awareness of Josh Naylor started when he became a mariner. Right.

Yeah, then maybe temper your expectations a little bit, not just going 19 for 19 in steals, but 137 WRC Plus and his playoff heroics and all of that. You know, he's probably not quite that good. He's projected for a 121 WRC Plus, according to Steamer, and 2.7 war. And, you know, that's roughly in line with what he's done before. So if he does that for a few years, that's fine. Yeah, that's what they need. It fills a hole in the lineup.

Clearly, he jelled well, like in the clubhouse. He's a fan favorite already. He kind of made an immediate impact and just fit in really well on that team and on that roster. So, yeah, fills a need. I think it's perfectly fine. I'm about to engage in some speculation here. But part of why I liked this was that the public perception, of this front office as it pertains to, like, the ability to successfully manage relationships

with players hasn't always been great. You know, there has been strain. That hasn't been true for everyone. And there have been examples of repair, right? Like, things, it seemed like at the end of Felix's tenure were bad, things seem like they're much better now. You know, there's a positive sort of alumni relationship between the Mariners and Felix. But, you know, the way that Jerry has talked about the team has, I think, at times led some players, or at least this is my perception of it, to go, I don't know if I want to deal with this guy, right? And so for Seattle to have traded for a player, for him to have gelled so well with the club, and for the front office to be able to, you know, handle a negotiation with that player and get them to enthusiastically return to the team,

feels like an arrow-up kind of indicator for their ability to, like, do other business. So there's that. Now, I think that a lot of Mariners fans, and I guess I would count myself among them, will probably remain dissatisfied until, like, you know, you go into spring training and you don't have to squint quite so much at the lineup to say, like, yeah, this would be good, right? I don't want to have to do, you know, like, self-talk quite so much when it comes to Seattle's lineup. This is a very positive step in that direction. I am mindful of the fact that, like, their ability to absorb, you know, bad production from any of their signings is more limited than other teams. And so, like, you better hope you have Naylor and his ability to sustain, like, properly pegged because, you know, this isn't the Dodgers who can just be like, what about Michael Comforto?

Who is that guy? Apart from someone we're putting in the lineup every day to torture Craig Goldstein. So, you know, I want to be clear-eyed about all of that also, but it just seemed like, you know, the number of times between the beginning of September and almost the end of October, which was pretty cool, that I. I felt compelled to say to people, you know, I really wouldn't mind it if they brought a nailer back. It was, there were a lot of those instances. It just seemed like a really good fit. So, yeah.

Good job. Elsewhere on the free agent market, a quartet of potential free agents took themselves off the market by accepting the qualifying offer. So we've already had some movement, some returns in our free agent contracts over underdraft, because I took a couple flyers. on potential qualifying offer guys. Yeah. And I took the over on Glaibre Torres for the qualifying offer amount that was predicted by MLB trade rumors.

That didn't pay off for me because he did accept it. Doesn't cost me anything, but still lack of upside there. However, I took the under on Trent Grisham. Yeah. And so I got a pretty penny there because he did accept the qualifying offer. And they were not alone. in addition to Glaber and Grisham, Brandon Woodruff, of the Brewers, accepted, as did Shota Imanaga of the Cubs. So four out of 13 accepted.

And then the others, Schwerber, Suarez, Tucker, Valdez, Bichette, Sees, King, Diaz, Gallen, all rejected the qualifying offer. And whoever signs them will have some draft pick compensation coming due. So that's a fairly high rate of acceptances. Because prior to this year, and this had changed, I think, a little bit in recent years. But overall, at least before this year, only 14 out of 144 qualifying offer extendees had accepted the qualifying offer. So that's just under 10%. And this year, four out of 13, that's just over 30%. So does this mean anything about the market?

it, or is it just that for these particular four guys, it seemed to be a decent deal? Because if anything you might have expected, if there was some fretting over potential work stoppage, that maybe guys would be less likely to take the qualifying offer, because they'd want to get a multi-year deal and not have to worry about next off season. And that was not the case for these four. They were perfectly happy to take their chances again next year. Bowman wrote about this for us today, and I found his argument to be quite persuasive. I think the thing it mostly tells us, the thing that I feel most confident extracting signal from, is that teams are being, I don't know, Lucy Goosey is probably too strong, but surprisingly liberal with their QO offers.

And some of that was reflected in this crop that accepted them. Like, I was surprised by Trent Grisham getting a qualifying offer. I was less surprised once Trent Grisham accepted the qualifying offer. And I think that what's, you know, important for folks to keep in mind here is that you, you end up in this weird spot where, you know, someone like Grisham, who I think we had projected for, like, a little over. 50 million when it was all said and done. Yeah, three years and 54 million was our contract prediction for him. That puts you in a spot where the QO is really going to be a drag on your market, right? Because you're not such a good player that you're going to, one, far exceed that and also be considered sort of worth it, quote unquote, for draft pick compensation.

You're right around where the thresholds start, which is the $50 million mark for most So these all kind of, you know, it depends if you're a payer and how much you give up and get is dependent on that stuff. And the whole system is sort of confusing for most people. But I think that like once Grisham got the QO, I thought he'll probably take it. And I hope that the transcript of our over underdraft reflects that because I can't remember what I said to you at the time. But I remember thinking that when he got tagged with the qualifying offer, I'm like, oh, he'll probably accept that. Because what team is going to make it worth his while? to not, you know,

no team's going to want to give up a draft compensation for Trent Grisham. No offense, Trang Grisham. I do think that, you know, whether that system is sort of operating the way that it ought to maybe bear some scrutiny because having it serve as such a drag

on like the middle class free agent is, I don't think, what was intended there. And I think that part of why it wasn't expected to be a problem is that when all this stuff was getting sorted out. I don't know that they anticipated that like Trent Grishams would be getting Q-O'd, right? Woodruff accepting the qualifying offer makes all the sense in the world. I thought that would happen as soon as he was tagged. I thought he would be tagged. I thought he would accept the QO. They'll just see where he is in a year. He'll be able to hit the market again,

hopefully unencumbered and uninjured, which is the most important thing. But it's like, yeah, go make $22 million, you know? For a guy who made what, like 12 starts in 2025? The Imanaga of it all is also so weird, but like it's weird in a particular way about his option situation and what the Cubs were going to have to pay as additional posting, which was a thing that I did not know was a thing until the Cubs declined his options and he declined his player option. And then we're like, oh, we got to put this guy on the top 50. And then we're like, oh, they have to pay a percentage. of any option thing as additional posting.

So, okay, fine, fine, fine. That makes more sense that they would want to get out from under that. I mean, you feel bad, I guess. You feel bad for the Bay Stars, but like, you know, what are you going to do there? So I am not inclined to, like, chicken little this situation. I agree that if what was motivating the behavior of this winter's market was anxiety about next year's, well, you kind of are more willing to, like, risk it for your biscuit

in the hopes of getting a two-year deal or a three-year deal and not having to worry about signing next off-season. So, you know, that doesn't seem like a super strong motivator. I think the one that I was maybe the most surprised by was Torres. You know, he had a good year, and I think not small part of his slower second half is probably explained by the fact that he had a sports hernia. But he also, as Bowman pointed out, was like unencumbered by qualifying off for last off season and couldn't really do better than the one-year deal. So, which was surprising to people, but was a reality of his market.

Yeah, this is my second straight year of overestimating Claibor's market. So I guess I've got to just adjust my expectations for him that teams just don't like him as much sure, just they don't appreciate the defense or whatever it is. I feel for him because at a certain point, if you keep stringing one-year deals together, sure, you're getting paid, but like your odds of ever securing a longer-term contract start to go down pretty precipitously. And I think that for someone like Torres, where the defense is the question, or at least the biggest question, surely you don't want to be into age-related decline while you're

trying to answer questions about your defense. And so the odds of him netting like a big, you know, nine-figure contract, I think have have fallen pretty precipitously relative to. Unless he just remains at this level forever and then just inadvertently ends up just having one-year deals forever and getting a pretty good rate on them and never declines and just doesn't need the security. Yeah, it doesn't have to be a bad living, right? Like that can be a perfectly reasonable way to get by. And you can have, you know, to circle back to the beginning of the episode, you can have a long career kind of writing that wave and doing it that way. But, you know, I think that there is also some interpretation of this that is the broader market this year will be sort of more tepid. And I think that that is true, but I'm having a hard time separating the quality of the class from any broader sort of macro.

Yes. Issues or concerns with, you know, the future of revenue in the game or the TV deals. We got more news on that today versus just the fact that like, you know, Kyle Tucker's your top guy in the class and, well, put it this way. I assign pre-rights to our full-time staff for free agents every winter, right? We want to know when Pete Alonzo signs, who's responsible for that? who has to interrupt dinner to go right up Pete Alonso, right? And typically, I will assign that down to, like, maybe the 25th or 30th guy on our top 50.

And I was like, through to Michael King. And to the point that when these qualifying offer decisions came through, we were able to take a bunch of guys off the board who would have been assigned pre-writes by virtue of-old. Michael King was 16th for anyone who is wondering. Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I went down through King and then I think, you know, all of the international pros will get sort of preassigned if only because, you know, Eric's the only one who's really watched those guys. So it's just a weaker class, which isn't to say that there aren't good players in it and that there aren't guys who are going to make a positive and meaningful impact for their next club. But it is full of sort of marquee dudes. And so, yeah, I think the market will be tepid relative to recent years. But I don't know that that. says anything or says anything negative about sort of the general state of affairs, which isn't also to say that there might not be negative things to say, but I don't know that the reaction to this free agent class is necessarily like the harbinger of those problems.

Yeah, I'd agree. It does take a chunk out of the low amount of compelling free agents who were there to begin with, though. So, yeah, there's even less to get excited about and fewer options out there if you're trying to fill a hole with someone external. Although there is, I guess, the opposite of a recession indicator, which was the report from Jeff Passon, that the pirates were primed to splurge on Josh Naylor before Seattle swooped in. So beautiful. Yeah, this prompted Davey Andrews to fire up the We tried tracker at Vangrass because Passon's report was that the pirates primed, primed, whatever that means they were primed. It means they're primed, Ben. You know, haven't you ever been primed?

Yeah, they were primed to spend more than twice their previous record for a free agent contract, which was $39 million for Frances Goliuriano. So a minimum, I guess, of $78 million or more than $78 million, they were willing. They were primed to spend on Josh Niller. So, hey, I guess that's a good sign. If the pirates are willing to double their extremely low previous high, then who knows? Clearly, Bob Nuttin, he's got some money to spend. He's ready to just spread it around, splash that cash. Bucks, bucks, as Davey Andrews called them.

Should I mock up a Bucks Buck? And I was like, sure. And then he took a first step and I was like, this might be too much. I'm included in the piece. You still get to do other drafts, Davey. I welcome them, but that first one was a little much for everyone. Primed. We are primed.

Who isn't primed? You know, aren't we all primed all the time? you know, sort of, it's sort of like dying, where we're doing it slowly, but probably not primed. So this is, this is new for them to be primed. I guess that's true. This is a new, this is a new state of affairs for the bucks and their bucks. Yep. It's, it's like you're getting ready to do something, you know, you might not do anything,

but you're, you're primed for it. You're like leaning forward. You're on the edge of your seats. You're starting to raise your hand. You're thinking about placing that call. Yeah. You know, it's like priming the pump. And you're priming the, you like push the gas pedal to, and then.

The other intriguing transaction that has been completed is a trade. Everyone loves a one-for-one trade of big leaguers. That's, I think, maybe everyone's favorite genre of trades. I like that. It's kind of a... It's always interesting to analyze. There's always like a little challenge aspect to it, or it's just a little easier to evaluate than when there is a prospect involved.

You think this trade is easy to evaluate? Excuse you, sir. Do you take that right back? Maybe not. Let's put it this way. This isn't the platonic ideal of the challenge trade. This isn't a, or maybe this is a better way of phrasing it, not your prototypical challenge trade.

Yeah, it's true. But at least if you follow baseball fairly closely, you have heard of these guys. You've maybe seen them pitch as opposed to, oh, it's a lottery ticket. It's an 18-year-old in the Dominican Summer League or something, and then you have to rely on someone who has a scouting report or has seen something or heard something. In this case, we can all form opinions of this traits. They may be varying opinions, and they may be tough to pin down. But we are referring, of course, to the Orioles, Angels, one-for-one swap of former Angels or former Orioles, now Angels, right-handed pitcher, Grayson Rodriguez. guess, and former Angels, now Orioles outfielder, Taylor Ward, not to be confused with Turner

Ward or Tyler Wade or any other names that sound like that, Taylor Ward. And this was about to be my question to you. First of all, what percentage of the baseball viewing public thinks that Tyler Wade is now a Baltimore Oriole? Tyler Wade was glimpsed behind Aaron Judge when Aaron Judge won his MVP award and he was briefly on camera. Tyler Wade was there in the contingent with judge's cute doxins and his wife and family or whoever else was there. Tyler Wade was there because they're like besties, evidently. I didn't know that. I mean, I know that they overlapped in New York, but I didn't know that they were so close. Yes, evidently. It's like the odd couple from a like a player value

perspective, basically. But yeah, they're they're cute together. So that's nice. But They're cute together. Oh, man, that's so sweet of you to say. They're so cute together. He has singled him out. He's named him among his top three all-time teammates, I believe. Who are the other two? Did he name the other two?

That's a good question. I think he, I'll figure out what he said. I don't actually know. I just know that Tyler Wade was one of them. He absolutely shouldn't name the other two because he is still an active player. So he should leave it a mystery. Yeah. I think he was actually asked.

former teammates, which is safer, top three former. That way safer, much safer. It was actually, it was Brett Gardner, C.C. Sabathia, and Tyler Wade, T. Wade. So, again, a bit of a mismatch there in terms of career accomplishments. But we would not confuse Tyler Wade and Taylor Ward. Here, I almost did it. But Taylor, Taylor, that was purely a pronunciation stumble. I knew who I was talking about.

So, this is pretty interesting because. Weird. It is weird. It's definitely weird. Yeah. And one of the notable aspects of this is the difference in team control years. So Taylor Ward is entering his last year of arbitration. He will be a free agent at the end of the 2026 season, whereas Grayson Rodriguez has four years

of control left and is considerably younger, as one might expect. And the Orioles need an outfielder, but they. They also need pitching as acutely as just about anyone. So that was kind of curious. And obviously, Rodriguez has been a highly touted prospect. He was a first round draftee. He was one of the top pitching prospects in baseball, if not the top pitching prospect in baseball, but has been oft injured and just didn't pitch this past season in the big leagues and

has just missed a ton of time. And one can infer from this trade that. The Orioles no longer believe that he is going to be a top of the rotation guy or give them a ton of value durability-wise either because if they thought that he could be a real core part of their pitching plan, then they probably would have wanted to keep him around because their rotation right now, it's still pretty thin. You've got Kyle Braddish, and that's good. That's a good start that he came back. And you've got Trevor Rogers, and that's good if he continues to pitch anything like he pitched last year after returning. Okay, solid start. But then what's the rest of your rotation?

Kind of an open question. And Grayson Rodriguez is expected to be ready for the start of the season. Now, who knows? Because we're talking about Grayson Rodriguez, but he is not currently injured. in a way that one would think would cost him time pending for their developments. So it seems like they just didn't think they could count on him or didn't think he had the same sort of ceiling. And they went with the one-year rental of a guy who has been durable and has been pretty

productive, again, hardly elite kind of production. But coming off a 36 home run year for the Angels, and they do have a need for that. And so they're sort of slotting him in as, I guess, more or less what they hoped Tyler O'Neill would be for them. But then he didn't play all that much and didn't play as well as they wanted him to. So you can kind of count on Taylor Ward to just do his thing. It's not the most exciting thing. But he's solid. So what do you make of all of this?

What are your takeaways from this trade? A weird-ass trade. Such a weird-ass trait. And I want people who aren't able to tell from. my inflection. I'm saying weird hyphen ass trade. Right. Not the XKCD comic where you're moving the hyphen to the weird ass trade. I don't know if it's a weird ass trade. I haven't seen either of their asses. So couldn't rightly say none of my business. Okay, let's start with the parts of everything you just said that

I agree with. So I think that the Orioles are in, one might say, dire need of additional good starting pitching. They don't just need depth, although they do need depth, but they also need a topline guy or two, because even if you believe in Trevor Rogers now, and I think that Trevor Rogers has appreciably altered my expectations of him, even if I don't think he'll be quite necessarily quite as good as he was toward the end of the year last year, but has positively improved my expectation of him. But a thing to know about Trevor Rogers, separate and apart from any volatility attendant with his profile, which of course there is, is that he is a free agent after the end of the 2026 season. So they're in their last year of the Trevor Rogers experience,

barring an extension. So, or I guess, resending him in free agency. So there's that part. I don't think that moving Grayson Rodriguez alters their shopping list. all that meaningfully for this off season because I don't think they were going to be able to count on Grayson Rodriguez for meaningful innings next year. Even if he's healthy, he almost... I think of that, too. It's like if he were still on the depth charts, it's all kind of hypothetical with him. So would you even feel that much better about their rotation going into next year with

Grayson Rodriguez than without him? I don't think that it changes my opinion of what they need. needed to do this offseason, they need to go spend money on starting pitching. And I suppose that by bringing in Taylor Ward, now I'm going to pause every time because I'm worried I'm going to get it wrong. I mean, it's not as high stakes a name as Cam Schitt. Oh, no, the season ends and I'm only a month out from having to say Cam Schlittler's name and I goof it on my first chance but you know and I suppose that like by trading for Ward you improve the outlook for your offense you do bolster your outfields and you're able to do that sort of more cheaply

than what your available options on the free agent market would be okay fine so like maybe you've you've ticked something off your shopping list by getting Ward and you haven't altered your pitching shopping list by moving Grayson because as we were saying, can't count on him to be healthy. Even if he is healthy, he's almost certainly on a very strict innings limit. So it's not like you're looking at this guy as like, oh, he's going to be an October force for us in all likelihood. We'll get to the likelihood piece of it when we assess the angel's side of this. But here's the thing.

Taylor Ward is not a center fielder. And yeah, they need a bat out there, but they also, then they need a center fielder because I don't believe. Maybe you believe. I don't know. I don't want to accuse you of anything. Maybe you think the Colton Couser is a big league center fielder, but I don't think that Colton Couser is a big league center fielder. And I think that Lioti Tavares, who is on a big league deal with them, is death. He's not a starter. So you're making a decision about potentially, and, you know, again, the offseason is young. Maybe they'll surprise us. Maybe they'll, maybe they'll woo Harrison Bader. Maybe they'll, maybe they'll, spend money on Cody Bellinger. I don't think you're going to do either of those things. Well, maybe they will, you know? Like, it's not certain they won't, you know? We can't say it for sure.

But I think that this, like, three quarters of the way addresses a need from the ward side of things, but only temporarily and not all the way. Because, again, I don't think he's not a, he's a coroner guy. He can't play center field either. So there's that part of it. And then there's the fact that it's only a year. And mostly, here's what I think. I think that this trade is the end result of a series of efficiency-driven moves on the part of the front office that did not yield a rotation that could really do what it needed to and has left a lineup that is surprisingly wholly.

And so they kind of had to do it in a way, but also they made themselves have to do it. So that seems bad. I like it, in a way I'm surprised by, for the Angels. I think this was pretty savvy on the Angels part. I don't get to say that very often, so I'm going to, like, luxury it in it for a second. I feel bad about it because, like, when he's been healthy, the talent is obvious as it pertains to Grayson, and the promise is obvious, and we've never really gotten to see it fully actualized, and he's been hurt so much. I'm pretty down on his long-term big league trajectory. But from the Angels perspective, they get a bunch of bites at that apple to see what they have.

And they are a club in desperate need of positive variance. And he has it. Now, it might not work. He could blow out the first day of spring training or he could just, like, be kind of okay and always, like, dealing with a little nagging something or other. but you're giving yourself an opportunity to discover something in the rotation that might really move the needle for you. And I think there's, even though I don't find it super likely, I think there's enough of a good chance that it makes a move like this worth it, particularly when what you're giving up is like one year of a good but not great outfielder who is about to be 32. So I think that's kind of where I land on it.

It's a weird-ass trade. It is, in some ways, a very surprising trade, just given how surplus value-driven this Orioles front office has been, right? And as I said, I think their focus on that has, you know, like box them in, right? Like, they're in a corner now where they have to suddenly not decide, they have to suddenly decide that they don't care about the surplus value piece of it. And for a guy who I think is a good player, like I think Taylor Ward is a good player, unlike Tyler Wade, who has not been particularly Sterling, but he's not exceptional, right? He's not, he's not going to alter on his own the trajectory of the 2026 Orioles. Yeah, I think of him being almost like Naylor, but four years older almost.

He's 32. I see them sort of similar value-wise just in kind of being high floor, but so. sort of low-ceiling players, like nice to have. It's just that he's considerably older, which, you know, obviously the Orioles are only signing up for a single year of him here. But yes, like if all of their prospects and players had panned out and if they had done a better job of developing all of their hitters at the big league level, maybe they wouldn't have a hole there.

Maybe they wouldn't need someone like Ward and they could afford to see what Rodriguez turns out to be. But if you're the Angels and the Angels don't have a centerfielder either, really, but... They don't. But moving war doesn't change that, right? Right, yes. And for them, they can hope for the upside of Rodriguez becoming, fulfilling his potential, staying healthy, being a top of the rotation guy, and then they could even move him again

if that happened, or maybe they could try to build around him a bit. But it does sort of signal for me, I think, that the Orioles are at least really acknowledging the urgency of their situation. I think that's right. And maybe they were kind of backed into a corner to have to make this move, but maybe it is a positive indicator that they're at least saying, okay, we can't be the surplus value people anymore purely. We actually have to win now, or we're going to squander this core and this window is going to close. And so, yeah, if it comes back to bite us and Rodriguez is good and he's still pitching well three years down the road, we will rue that, but we need to win now. And my initial reaction to seeing this was, Taylor Ward, you know, he's a nice player, but couldn't they have gone and just signed someone better and kept Grayson?

But then it kind of ties back into what we were saying about the free agent market. And I worked at the market, and there really aren't many outfielders who are better than Taylor Ward. There's two probably. There's Kyle Tucker and there's Cody Bellinger. And beyond that, I don't know that there is a better option. You know, maybe if Grisham had not taken the qualifying offer, maybe you look at him or something, but they're just, it's really light in terms of options who might be better than Ward. So it's partly a product of just the lack of alternatives. And you could always say, well, maybe you can make a trade or maybe you can pry Ctele away or something. Obviously, that's going to take much more to get a guy like that. But or you could say, well, the Orioles should not be shopping in the budget aisle. They should absolutely be bidding for Kyle Tucker. Right. And I would agree with that. Like, why shouldn't they set their sights high? Now, you're going to have competition and you're going to be going up against the big dogs who will be interested in Kyle Tucker too. But the Orioles need him as much as anyone. And they have money to spend and they should be as motivated. So there's no reason why they should set their sights lower than they need to. And so could they have taken a run at Tucker or Bellinger or someone? And then if they came up short there, maybe the Rodriguez for Ward trade is. is still out there for you.

So I could see it going either way for Orioles fans where you could be heartened that, okay, it seems like they realize they actually need to win in 2026. And now if you follow this up by signing a couple top-tier starters or something, suddenly we're feeling pretty good about things. Or you could say, well, it's good that they have shifted their site

to 2026, but it does seem as if this is maybe accepting that they are not going to be trying to bid for the top. for agents available. So I guess pick your own interpretation. Yeah, I think that this was like a bad day for people who had like futures in Orioles run payrolls, run payroll over $200 million. You know, like that's seemingly very much not on offer. And so yeah, I, I guess like when these are your options, you get yourself excited about Taylor Ward. And he's not a bad. player but the combination of an unwillingness to spend and a sort of lukewarm free agent market

that is maybe going to drive up prices on the couple of guys who actually do fit your roster need and like Kyle Zucker can't play centerfield either like I I feel like I'm maybe harping on this to the point of exhaustion and perhaps this is just further evidence of how centerfield defense pilled I am but like there's not center fieler on this team you need to send Ben that's a whole last position, you know? And like, I'm not trying to knock Colton Couser. I really enjoy saying Colton Couser. It's a satisfying name, you know? It's a satisfying name to say. And like, who knows, maybe, maybe if he's fully healthy, he'd be up for it. Certainly, like, he's who we have slotted in there right now on roster resource. I think he's who the team would understand their

opening day center fielder to be barring other changes. But, like, I don't think. he's his underfielder. So what are we doing? You know, you just traded that guy away. Maybe they can bring Mullins back. I don't know if he's a center fielder long term either, but I don't mean that just in a like the Mets part of it bum me out. It's just like the guy's aging, you know.

So anyway, I think it's a weird-ass trade. Mostly, I think it's a weird-ass trade that is perhaps, despite the surprise I felt upon reading about it, the inevitable conclusion of a chain of events that was started years ago, you know? Maybe we were always to arrive at Taylor Ward, Baltimore Oriole. And for that matter, Grayson Rodriguez's Los Angeles Angel. Yeah. I do wish that he were going to a team where, you know, he's like pretty fully cooked, so maybe you're less worried about this, but I do wish he were going to a team where I felt like they could do like positive pitching dev, you know, that would be nice, just because it's like he might need, if he

gets hurt again and you know it's unlikely it strikes me that he might need further adjustment right that like he might endure further injury that requires him to to change his arsenal or you know move his arm slot or whatever and it's like anything the angel are going to do that for him i am skeptical of that notion i am skeptical of it yeah i did want to mention an outgoing angel in major leaguer the retiring kyle hendricks the professor hanging it up because that occasioned an interesting piece by David Lorela at Fancrafts where he canvassed a few executives on when or whether we'll see the next Kyle Hendrix because he was famous for being a slow thrower with exquisite command and he made that work for quite a while and at a very high level for at least a little while and made a bunch

of money and made a bunch of teams happy and now he's sailing off into the sunset riding off into the sunset I guess you could sail or ride into the sunset at age 35 and so David talked to Jed Hoyer of the Cubs and Brandon Goams

of the Dodgers and Chris Young of the Rangers and just asked basically can teams still develop a guy like this or will we see his like again and the takeaway was I'm not sure.

Yeah. It didn't seem like there was a lot of confidence that we would see someone like this who was known for not breaking 90 a lot of the time. There is a tendency, I think, to downplay pitch speeds even more just to exaggerate how much of a soft tosser certain guys are. Yes. Or maybe you remember their latest incarnation when they were really old. Because people will always say that about Greg Maddox and how he was such a soft tosser. soft-tosser and everything, and he was the late model Greg Maddox was, but young Greg Maddox actually threw pretty hard. He had the stuff and the command. But Kyle Hendricks, it's pretty

accurate to say he never really threw that hard. Like his average fastball speed and his entire career was in the pitch tracking era. And his average fastball speed was never 90. It was always 80 something. And, you know, high 80s at first and mid-80s at the end. but still, 80s. And my attention was drawn recently to a couple other interview snippets from David because he at the GM meetings talked to Heim Bloom, and he asked him about the Cardinals and strikeout stuff.

And then subsequently, in an addition of his Sunday notes column, he talked to New Nationals, Pobo, Tall Poboni. Paul to Paul to, Tall Poboni. Is he tall? Is he tall? It would be better. I don't know if he is tall. Is he tall Paul Poboni? I wish his name were Poboni, but no, it's Toboni, which is also pretty good. Is he tall Paul Toboni? That's hard to say. So I'm less interested now. I take it back. I don't care.

How tall is he? How tall is he? I'll endeavor to find out. But do you think, wait, wait, sorry, can I entertain you hopefully with a very silly question? Sure. Have you ever wondered if taller baseball executives have a higher rate of successful transaction? And by that I mean not even that the trades themselves end up being good, but that they execute more of them as a result of being tall and thus being taken seriously. I think they don't because you know who's not as tall as you would think he is because he's a former big leaguer, Jerry Depoto. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. It's not tall. I mean, he's not short. He's tall for like a human man, but he is not tall for a former big leaguer. Anyway, think about that for the rest of your life. Paul appears to be pretty tall. So tall Paboni would actually work.

bony. Yeah. I think he's listed, it seems like, at 6-2 or 6-3, depending on the source. Oh, so he's as tall as Jerry then. So it's not that tall. Yeah, but he was not a big league or so I guess you don't expect the same height. Yeah, so it's more impressive because he wasn't a former athlete. Okay, yeah, I'm picking up what you're putting down.

Continue. Yeah. So he asked both of those executives about plans to develop strikeout stuff because that's something that the Cardinals and the nationals have struggled with. They had the two lowest team strikeout rates last year. other than the Rockies. And Bloom acknowledged the importance of strikeouts, but seemed to temper that somewhat

and say it's kind of a balancing act, and, you know, you don't want to go all in on strikeouts because there could potentially be some downsides there. And so he asked him if it's a concern that the Cardinals didn't strike out a lot of batterers. And Bloom said it's definitely a concern. It's not the only thing that matters, but it does matter.

Having stuff that can beat people in the strike zone that can miss bats both in and out of the zone is really important. It's hard to have an elite staff without being able to do that. It's not something you want to chase at the expense of throwing strikes. You're not trying to put people in positions where they can't succeed or stay healthy, but it's super important. So, okay. You know, he's acknowledging that it was important, but also saying, you know, command's important. Health is important. It's not the only thing. And when David talked to Toboni, he did not seem to qualify it the same way. He said, Missing bats is good, so we want to miss bats.

It's pretty simple and straightforward. I think it starts with doing a really good job of staffing out with folks who can create a structure for our pitching staff to put together a process for them to do so, create a culture, not solely around that, but to be a big piece of it. It's a debate that has been solved over time, right? It's an important thing to do, so we're going to want to do it, which is not incorrect, but he, at least in the portion of the quote that David included, he didn't have any kind of caveats about. other things that could also be important or not wanting to go all in. So I don't know if that's just a reflection of those particular quotes or those two particular gentlemen or their ages and Toboni is one of the younger top execs. But if that's the thinking, just, hey, we want to miss bats.

Missing bats is good, which is generally true. If that's the prevailing mindset, then yeah, I don't know how you're going to get the next Kyle Hendricks because it is really hard to do. And I've talked before about how maybe it's kind of market inefficiency, quote-unquote, to some extent now. There's just so many injuries. And if you could have some guys who don't throw as hard, but they're durable. And so, yeah, maybe they don't miss as many bats, but then they don't miss as many games either. And so you don't have to go down your depth charts to find someone to make those starts because they're actually there.

Then maybe you could find the next Kyle Hendricks. But also, Kyle Hendricks did have a top of the chart tool. It's kind of a subtle one or one that's easy to underappreciate or mis-evaluate, just being able to put the pitch where you want it and have pinpoint command. So it's not as if you can take just any old soft tosser and say, yeah, just lob it in there. Like someone like Hendrix could make that work because he had a truly elite knack for avoiding. the barrels, basically. So I don't know how replicable that is, but I hope it is. I hope that there will be more Hendrickses. I mean, yeah, I think that if what you're, what you want as a GM is like

a sure thing, I understand why the Hendrickses, of which there are not many, Hendricks is. So I get like wanting to bank on what you perceive to be the sure thing, or at least the sure-er thing, But I hope that there is room for all kinds of profiles because then the game's more interesting, you know? And I think that what a fun evaluation challenge. I'm sure that the folks who work for teams who listen to this are like, yeah, yeah, for really fun, Meg. But like to be able to successfully identify that guy, it's like, you tell me if this is a strain comp. Is it like being able to identify which of the super high contact guys will actually be able to arise it? you know is it the pitching equivalent of that with hendricks where it's like you know this guy's

standout tool really is sufficiently superlative you know really is an 80 such that he can not only survive but thrive at least for a good number of years despite having you know 30 grade velocity 20 grade velocity is this do you think that that's a fair comp yeah i guess it is kind similar because it's also hard to evaluate command probably relative to some other things because you do have to you're not sure exactly they are getting better at that yeah and you can track where the target was and everything but but it's it's a little murkier just because you don't know exactly where someone was aiming to put the pitch and not every catcher puts their glove exactly where they want the pitch to be and there's much more just kind of throw it down the

middle and let the natural movement take over going on these days. So yeah, it's hard to evaluate. It's not hard to evaluate, well, contact rate or strikeout rate. That's pretty straightforward relative to, say, measuring command, but it is hard to extrapolate and say, will this contact rate hold up and what other sacrifices will you have to make to sustain that contact rate. So they're both kind of tough to project or evaluate, I guess, and especially if you're top of the scale in either category, like arises with contact or with Hendrix, with command, then that's always going to be tough when you're an outlier. And also, I should note that Hendrix, despite being a soft tosser, could miss bats, at least early in his career. Yeah. So it wasn't

like he was totally a pitch-to-contact guy. He was striking out, what, eight per nine innings or something a decade ago, which wasn't bad for a starter. So he could kind of do all for a little while. So again, you know, he's, he's unusual. It's tough to extrapolate from kind of a one-of-one type like an arise or Hendrix. But there probably are more out there who do kind of go a little under the radar just because everyone is prioritizing speed and strikeouts. And so I believe that there could be another Hendricks out there. And I hope that that pitcher gets recognized and valued because it can be a valuable profile, even if it doesn't fit the typical one that teams are looking for these days. And maybe that'll change. Who knows, there's so much

hand-wringing about injuries and unavailability that maybe we'll see a slight swing back, or maybe the rules will change in a way that makes it even more important to swing back to durability as opposed to pure stuff. So we'll see. I hope that there will be a time when Another Hendricks is, if not in vogue, then at least findable and possible to develop at some point. I agree. Okay. And that news that you just alluded to did go official while we were just talking about Hendricks. We received a press release from Major League Baseball.

Subject line, MLB forms new three-year media rights agreements with ESPN, NBC Universal, and Netflix. So this has been in the air for some time, various bits and pieces. of these packages have been reported, and we've seen earlier on Wednesday, Andrew Marshand at The Athletic and Sports Business Journal and everyone, they've kind of been reporting bits of this, but now it has indeed gone official, and the headlines as MLB has it in this email, ESPN acquires the rights to MLB TV and a midweek game package, NBC Universal, gets rights to Sunday night baseball, Sunday leadoff. the entire wild card round, and this is for NBC and NBCSN and Peacock, and then Netflix gets

little pieces. Netflix gets the home run derby and the lone opening night game or opening, I guess it is night, right? It's what Yankees Giants play the first game of the 2026 season and the Field of Dreams game or equivalent, the World Baseball Classic. So that's kind of in line with Netflix's live sports strategy thus far, which has been big, buzzy events. And so that's what they're looking for from baseball,

just kind of cherry-picking some marquee events. And that's the smallest piece of this package. And essentially this was all precipitated by ESPN opting out of its arrangement with MLB, which would have covered the next three years. and technically I guess MLB also opted out of it but really it was ESPN that was opting out of it and this was something that Manfred had actually pressed to have an opt out in the deal

and then ESPN agreed to that opt out and then asked for their own and then MLB agreed to that and maybe that backfired because then ESPN decided it wanted to get out of the final three years there and that was going to pay MLB 1.65 billion in total for those three years. And so once ESPN opted out of that, for a while there, Manfred was kind of bad-mouthing ESPN and calling it a shrinking platform and suggesting

that it didn't give MLB priority, which is true. But I don't think MLB would have wanted to be out of business with ESPN, clearly, because it's still in business with ESPN, just a different form of business. So once that happened, there was this free-for-all and an auction essentially for rights and all of this being broken up and Manfred shopping, all of these. parts of the inventory around to various broadcasters. And so, as is often the case these days, it will be splintered and fractured and distributed over a number of places.

So you have NBC and Peacock and you get Sunday Night Baseball and the first round playoff games, and that's like $200 million a year for the next three seasons. And then Netflix gets the home run derby and opening day in the Field of Dreams games, and that's like $50 million per season over the same term. But then ESPN still gets something here. And I guess this amounts to more money in total for MLB, which, I mean, that's the bottom line for them is the bottom line often. But in exchange for that greater revenue, they are giving up more here. So ESPN's still going to give them something like that $1.65 billion that MLB was going to get from ESPN under the previous arrangement.

and that's in addition to the $750 million or so they'll be getting over the next three years from NBC Universal and Netflix, but MLBTV is part of the package here. And so ESPN gets a bunch of stuff, really, as part of this package and midweek games. And then I think a lot of people have had questions and maybe still have questions about how this is all going to work out

with MLBTV and its availability and the pricing and all the rest of it. But this is something that the league has not done before, just licensing MLBTV, giving ESPN, selling ESPN the rights to sell and distribute MLBTV, the out-of-market streaming. And then that will be part of ESPN's direct-to-consumer package. So this is all a little complicated.

This always tends to be streaming sports these days. You've got to have a whole lot of different providers and a whole lot of money to spend. if you want to catch them all and be a completest with sports now. But I guess the headline is MLB still in business with ESPN, also in business with various other providers, some of which it has been in business with before previously as well. And it amounts to more money into MLB's coffers, but they are also giving up more. And then we'll see how this affects the consumer, because that's of greater interest

to us at our audience, I think, will this affect our bank accounts? And it sounds like tentatively that MLBTV will not cost more. Right. That's the hope, at least. Marshand wrote at the Athletic, the network ESPN, that is, is expected to keep the service at the same $150 per season, but hasn't fully concluded how it will deliver. One possibility is that it will give MLTV,

subscribers a free month of ESPN Unlimited. It's direct to consumer service. And then it's like, do you have to pay for ESPN Unlimited in addition to MLTV? Because that would be an extra cost, too. So it's all a lot to get our arms around. Yeah. I just am thinking about everyone having to field calls from their families about where to find things. Yeah. Complicated. I think that the most interesting part of this is the length of the deal. Craig Goldstein made this point on blue sky, and it was a thought that occurred to me also, which is that it seems like this deal running through 2028 and not any longer maybe decreases the likelihood that we lose games in 2027, or at least strongly incentivizes ownership to make sure a deal gets done before.

It has some incentive for the players also, but diminishing your product and losing inventory before you go into what would be a new rights negotiation. That seems like an interesting thing seasoning all of this, right? Like how does this alter our understanding or expectation of how the negotiations for the next CBA? might unfold. But, you know, I think that your experience of this stuff is often determined by how you interact with the little frictions that it introduces. And those can be kind of hard to anticipate ahead of time, right? Like, also the draft is on Saturday now. I don't care for that. Stop moving stuff around. Move back to June. Anyway. But yeah, I think that it'll all depend on how grading people find the little frictions. How many of those there are and how long they persist before they

they get sanded down, I think, is something that kind of needs to be learned in real time. I do find it very funny that the opening line of the Netflix section in this announcement is, following a successful series of baseball documentaries, Netflix will hear live events and games. It's like, okay, well, one of these things is not like the other one. Yeah. And so now MLB has relationships with, gosh, can I even keep track of how many national broadcasting? Yeah. Fox, TNT, ESPN, NBC, Apple, Netflix.

It's like all of them, which I guess is good in a sense. Everyone wants to be in the MLB business. I mean, the downside is that if you're already on board and you want to see all of baseball, then it's very difficult to do that. You have to subscribe to a number of services, and it's going to cost you a pretty penny, and you're going to constantly be looking up where do I see this particular game and what service do I have to use

and which app is there for that. The positive spin would be that, well, baseball's everywhere. So whatever you do already subscribe to, you might just come across Major League Baseball. And that's good if you want exposure for your sports and you want people to kind of organically come across it. It's just that once you're already on board,

it does make it more difficult and more expensive for people to get all of MLB. But yeah, the timing here, I agree. I think there's every incentive, really, for the league to keep the gravy train rolling and not have a work stoppage that disrupts all of this. And clearly, Manfred is still trying to figure out the issues with blackouts and local broadcasts. And 2029 is a big moment to get that perhaps. straightened out. And this ESPN deal where they get the rights to MLBTV, they get the rights to six teams local in-market games. How does this affect that? Do you have to pay extra for that

relative to how that worked last year? Plus 30 exclusive weekday regular season games. So really depends on your point of view, you know? Everything does, as Obi-1 once told us. And so So it's just like, is your perspective that, well, they're getting more money and it's in more places and that can only be good, or as your perspective, it's just in so many places that it becomes diminishing returns or it's too complicated and you're actively repelling people, plus they're giving up more to get that money. So it's upsides and downsides. But baseball will be everywhere just about. And that's both the good news and the bad news, maybe. Yeah, I think it's mostly good news, but who knows? Like I said, I want to reserve judgment on this before, until we are like trying to do it, you know, when you can successfully log in and see the games you want, you'll be like, okay, fine.

If you can't do that, you're going to be annoyed. But then again, MLBTV was down for most of opening day this year. So, you know, it's not as if the existing platform is perfect, but it was pretty good. It was pretty good. I think that, you know, for all the grousing that there is about it and about blackouts, which I think is a valid complaint, but also often just like a completely separate issue from MLBTV, even though it got conflated, like the fact that you were able to use that platform to do what it did for like a hundred and what, 20 bucks, 50 bucks, $130,

depending on if you get it on sale, pretty incredible. Yeah. The value proposition there, I think, was pretty obvious. So I guess we'll see, you know, it would be a shame if they goofed it. But part of the appeal of buying MLBTV is to, I imagine, maintain it, right? One would hope, yes. That is the big concern because that has been a real win for Major League Baseball in a way in which they were ahead of the game and a real leader when it comes to making their games available digitally. And the technology underpinning that has been.

lucrative for them and has been ported into other services and products. And so, yes, I think people feel pretty protective of MLTV for a good reason and don't want that to be inshidified essentially. And so if we don't have to pay more for it and the T-Mobile discount is seemingly expected to continue according to Marshan. So if you've been getting free MLBTV, that might keep going for a while. And it sounds like for at least the first year, You can, if you subscribe to MLBTV, continue to just use the MLBTV app and maybe bypass ESPN entirely. But then what happens after that? You have to subscribe to the $30 per month ESPN app in order to get MLTV for the same price as before.

And yeah, it's still somewhat murky, even though this has been officially announced. And how does it interact with people who have ESPN as part of a bundle, you know, bundled with stuff? Yeah. And yeah, we just on Hang Up and Listen this week, we just talked about the big ESPN YouTube TV showdown and the resolution there and the ramifications of all of that. So all of this is very much in flux. And I don't know that we have all the specifics. And until we see it's like a proof in the pudding sort of situation, you know, you just don't touch it. Just leave it alone. It works pretty well, not perfectly, but pretty darn well. And hopefully they will recognize what have there and just want to keep delivering that excellent service for the people it makes sense for, like us, and they will not tamper with it too much. But who the heck knows? So we'll find out. All we know is that the Field of Dreams game has now been officially announced, and it will take place in August, and it will be Twins versus Phillies in Dyersville, and we can watch that on Netflix. We now know. How about that? And there are other little

aspects and carve-outs and things like that, like the Sunday night game on Peacock or NBC Universal, it depends. You want baseball to be on broadcast TV. That's still, you know, it's even with all the cord cutters and everything, and you have over-the-air people, too. But even if the audiences for those things are smaller than they used to be, still pretty big. And so if you can get baseball in front of those people, it's good. But there's a condition where with NBC Universal, the Sunday Night game shifts. to Peacock or NBC Sports new cable network during weeks when there's overlap with previously negotiated media rights deals. So essentially... So basically once football starts... Yes. When it overlaps

with football and maybe basketball too, then MLB gets relegated to peacock or cable and then the upside audience-wise isn't quite so high. So yeah, I don't know. I don't want Manfred to just prioritized revenue over long-term appeal, which is something that MLB has been guilty of, for sure. But if he's playing the long game here and looking forward to 2029 and let's consolidate a national media package and let's preserve the positive aspects of what we have while continuing to make money, hand over fist, but also safeguarding the long-term appeal in audience of the sport, that would be kind of the best of both worlds. So yeah, we'll see. And ESPN is a shrinking platform. I mean, what platform isn't shrinking at this point, I guess,

relative to the past, where there were only three channels and everyone watched the same stuff all the time, and there was more of a monoculture. But it's still a really prominent and big platform, relatively speaking, so you still want to be there. And we've seen the downside with other sports when you are off ESPN or when you sign up to be behind the Apple paywall or something, and it's very much a short-term cash grab, and you cost yourself long-term. and you're losing your long-term customers and you're not making new ones, then that's bad. So it seems like on first blush that this is a decent balance of getting paid, but also getting attention for your sport, which is more important to me. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. All right. Last thing, have you paid any attention to the updates on the women's pro baseball league? I know that they have identified, well, you tell me, what do you mean? updates because I know that team locations have been identified. Yes. Or I guess location, really.

So some details have come out. And I'm excited for this. I'm leading for it. You know, I think we would want to try to cover it in some capacity on the podcast and certainly support it. It does seem as if they've lowered their sights a little bit. And maybe it's, you know, you have your pie in the sky, how you want to roll this out. And then you're confronted with reality.

And so, for instance, they were planning to have six teams when they launched next year in August, and now it's down to four. And they still hope to expand to six in 2027. And then the other thing that raised some eyebrows about this is that – so they're playing their first season in Springfield, Illinois. And that's where this will happen. Not only is it four teams, but it's seven weeks. and there's some barnstorming, I guess, maybe, but it's these four teams, and they've named them after cities

in which they will not be playing. So that's one of the oddities here because the teams ostensibly are Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, and Boston. But they are not playing in those places. They're playing in Springfield, Illinois, at Robert Roberts Stadium, which has a capacity of about 5,000 people.

and something about it, it seems like they're trying to spin this as, here was the quote from co-founder Keith Stein, our sport is for everybody. It's for middle America, everybody. We thought our teams are on these two coasts. It would be good to be in the middle of the country, which doesn't really make much sense to me. It's like if your teams are on the two coasts, then you would want to be where the teams are. But, of course, they're not there. That's in name only for now.

They're playing in Springfield. So trying to spin this as like, we're for everybody. So we have team names that reflect coastal cities, but then we're in middle America. It's kind of, like, I assume this was just, yeah, like probably for financial reasons, it made sense to play here and to play in only one place and cut down on travel costs and everything. And, you know, do what you have to do to do to get this thing. launched and hopefully it's something to build on, but then to kind of have it be almost fictitious that they're in these other major media markets when they're not. It's kind of like the

Overwatch League, which I'm sure you paid very close attention to when it launched several years ago. But, you know, that was e-sports and it was played in a central location in California and they named the teams after cities all over the world. And the plan was long term to actually play in those places and develop fan bases there, but it wasn't initially that, and then the pandemic got in the way, and it kind of folded. But that was what this reminded me of, where it's like, okay, I mean, these aren't teams in those cities in any real way, and you could just say that this was the best place to play, and it made the most sense, and it's a central location, or there's a history of former women's professional baseball in the area, or

whatever it is, but to kind of be like, yeah, we thought this was a good idea because our teams are on the coast. And so we'll be in middle America and we'll kind of hit all four quadrants. It doesn't really, you know, it seems like kind of a muddled message. So I hope that this succeeds and that they can build on this. And, you know, what, 600 people tried out, I think. And there's some prominent players like Kelsey Whitmore and Monet Davis getting back into baseball. And so that's exciting and I hope that it goes well. You know, their funding, they raised, I think, a couple million bucks. Like, they wanted to raise two million, but they ended up raising close to three million or something in their series A, which I guess is good, but that's, you know,

it's a small number. It's a tiny number to launch a league. And I guess they plan to do another round of fundraising here, too. So I don't know. Like, it would be great if you could go zero to 60, basically having like no women's professional baseball in this country, to having like a big, glitzy, glamorous, successful, rich league right away. And that's not going to happen clearly. So it does sound as if they're, you know, hopefully prioritizing the conditions and the health and pay for the players and what will inevitably be a part-time short-term job. But if they can do that at least and manage to get through the season, then maybe it's a foundation you can build on. But I hope it doesn't turn out to be like we tried to do this

thing and we set our sites high and then we had to dramatically lower our sites and then people aren't as into it and then it makes it difficult to sustain or to do the next thing. So fingers crossed, I guess. Yeah. Kind of mixed messages or mixed signals and I'm not sure whether to be a bit downcast about some of these developments or to just hope for the best. That that I am hoping for regardless. Yeah, I think maybe the thing I would say is that, like, these things can take some time, you know, and it's not a positive indicator that there's been this reduction, but I think that having a realistic read of where you are from a capacity perspective

is probably going to red down to their benefit long term. So, you know, I don't know the ins and outs of their finances or how sort of recruiting has gone and what have you. So I don't want to be polyanish about it either, but I think an overly rapid expansion probably would have a more significant long-term

negative impact than keeping things manageable in the beginning with a good and well-structured plan for expansion down the road. I think getting your feet under you with these things is to your benefit. Like all you have to

do is look at the history of professional women's basketball in this country and the various leagues that have come and gone to know that it can be a slow build. And, like, that was true, the W and they had the institutional backing of the MBA. So, and, you know, they could have been better resources. But, like, that league expanded and contracted and contracted and contracted a bunch of times over the course of its early life, too. So I think that slow and steady can kind of win the race here. I understand the desire to capitalize on what is, I think, a very genuine sort of groundswell of interest in women's sports, particularly on the professional side.

But if you're in it for the long game, like, you know, start with what you can reasonably accomplish, generate enthusiasm from there, and then expand. I think that that's a defensible position. Yes, I think that's true. And it seems like they prioritized wanting to have this be a venue only for this league and not have to share during the period when they're playing, which I guess this will be. There was another quote from the league that just Robin Roberts Stadium not only offers a central strategic location with convenient access to Chicago O'Hare and St. Louis International

airports, but a first rate of any, convenient access, it's not actually close to either of those places particularly. Right. When you're citing those two airports, which are quite far from one another, the notion that it's convenient to either feels a little if you thought. Yeah. But I think you're right that the worst thing probably would be for this to get too ambitious and fold and become a fiasco and you end up, you know, not being able to pay players or something. And then maybe that sort of salts the earth for the next attempt or a future season.

So, yeah, at least get through year one, remain solvent, hopefully generate some interest. That's a good first step. Yep. All right. Obviously, we'll be a bit backloaded this week. We had some last minute scheduling. arrangements. But we'll get you your three podcasts as usual. And one programming note, just a heads up so you can do the reading or in this case watching before we discuss it. On our last episode this

week, we will be talking about the HBO documentary Alex versus Arod about Alex Rodriguez. Two of the three episodes of the docu series have already aired. The third will be on Thursday night. So catch up on that if you want to be up to speed when our pod drops, not that you need to have watched to listen. And I have another viewing recommendation for you. If you're looking for a little baseball-related off-season viewing, I have a hot tip for you, and thanks to listener Harley Winfrey for flagging this in our Facebook group, Stove League, or I guess it's going by Hot Stove League, is now available on Netflix in the U.S. Netflix, as in official broadcast partner of Major League Baseball Netflix, Stove League is probably the best scripted baseball show I've ever seen. It's a baseball

drama with some comedic elements. It's a K-drama. It's from Korea, it's about a KBO team, a fictional team called The Dreams, or just Dreams, and it aired in 2019 and 2020, and I initially praised it and raved about it on episode 1559 back in the summer of 2020. And then my effusive recommendation convinced Meg to watch it. And over the 2021 to 22 off season, beginning almost exactly four years ago, in fact, we did a watch along where we watched it together. I rewatched it. Meg watched it for the first time. And then we discussed it on four episodes of Effectively Wild. It's a single-season show. It won awards in Korea, but never got a second season. So it's one season, 16 hour-long-ish episodes. And it's about this

team's rise from being in the basement, being cellar dwellers, taking the team to the top, an unorthodox GM takes over and uses innovative tactics and saber metrics to get an edge. And it kind of covers all aspects of a professional baseball team in a fairly realistic manner. player evaluation and scouting and it gets into the team, too, and the players and the personalities. It's just a holistic look at this organization. And it's just really well done. So now that it's on Netflix in the U.S., you no longer have to sign up for another streaming service you may not have heard of. I have not evaluated the subtitles. I saw one comment in our Facebook group that suggested they're not great. As I recall, it was on two different streaming services when we watched

it and potted about it. And one of them had better subtitles than the other in English. So these May or may not be the good ones, but regardless, I recommend this series. And if you do choose to watch it now, just search for Hot Stove League on Netflix. I'll link to it on the show page. You can then find our episode 1774, 1777, 1783, and 1792 when we recapped and discussed four episodes of the show on each podcast. So that's Evergreen TV and podcast content for you. To get through Hot Stove season, you can watch Hot Stove League. You can also support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild

and signing up to pled 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, Jacob Levine, Alex Vigderman, Chris Collum, Caleb Cabo, and Maxwell Elkis, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answer, personalized messages, discounts on merch and ad-free fangras memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild.

If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us to the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email, send your questions, comments, intro, and outro themes to podcast at podcast at fangrafts.com. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group, such effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. You can rate review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube music, and other podcast platforms, and you can check the show notes at Fangraphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today, as well as

the site, where you can sign up for Effectively Wild Secret Santa. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance, and we'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. If baseball were different, I differ what it be. Players growing third arm is an infield of a tree. Anything is fair game. dirty pants and maybe if you're lucky

we'll co-call by the chance you never know precisely where it's going to go by definition effectively wild