Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2403: How Our Preseason Predictions Panned Out

Episode Date: November 21, 2025

Ben, Meg, Michael Baumann, Ben Clemens, and Chris Hanel congregate to review the results of the 2025 minor league free agent draft (11:45) and recap their 40 bold preseason predictions (19:01), following quick games of “2025 College World Series Starting Pitching Matchup or First Amendment Supreme Court Case” (2:58) and “Cedar Rapids Kernel or Character […]

Hello, and it's wildly effective. It's good and baseball into perfect perspective. Impressive, smart, and impeccably styled. It's the wildly effective, effectively wild. Spin rate a long shangle, bad to pay a war. You might hear something you never heard before. Hello and welcome to episode 2403 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters.

I am Belmondberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. We have a full house here today because almost exactly eight months ago, by the time this podcast is posted probably exactly eight months ago, we convened to pretext. predict things about 2025 in baseball, which I am loath to do, but I make an exception for this annual exercise, which is fun for us all and hopefully for you. And today is the appointed

time when we reconvene to find out whether we were right about things or how wrong we were. So that was episode 2298. This is episode 2403. And we are rejoined both by Michael Bowman and Ben Clemens of FanGraphs. Hello, fellows. Hello. Yo. And by Chris Handel, the mastermind of this whole exercise, who is probably the only person on this call who remembers what we said back on March 21st. That's true. Hi, Chris. I hope that some of the reminders that you've seen on Blue Sky might have prompted something in your brains at some point. But yes, me and the EW Stats team have been keeping very fervent track of everything that's been going on, and we have some reports for you on how you all did today.

And we do very much appreciate that. And yes, you remind us both now and also throughout the year, really. So you're very diligent, along with your colleagues, at tracking what we said and how wrong we were and recording it for posterity. And today we get our scorecard, essentially. we find out who was most or least wrong about baseball in 2025. And I guess we have a few things to get out of the way before we get into the meat of the predictions recap. Because for one thing, we have to quickly recap the minor league for agent draft, which is probably the number one priority for me. But then we...

Whenever Bowman is here, I assume he has prepared a fun game slash torture for me. Yes, it's different. It's not college baseball player or, but it's a fun spin on the classic game. Okay. What you got for me? All right. So today we're going to play 2025 College World Series starting pitching matchup or First Amendment Supreme Court case. Okay. So I'm going to give you two last names. So it is still sort of college baseball player or. Yeah. So really, it's two.

college baseball players or so you've got multiple chances to leverage your your college baseball knowledge and i'll say like there are a lot of names you probably should know in here of of first amendment cases or college baseball players you might know you actually might know one or two of these core cases but let's uh let's just go ahead and and start uh the first one is morse v frederick morse v frederick all right that that sounds that sounds like a case that sounds like if If it were baseball players, it would have been maybe a long time ago. So I'm going to go with First Amendment case. That is correct.

It's a 2007 case decided by a 5-4 margin. You might know it as the bong hits for Jesus v. U.S. case. Yeah. Well, if you'd put it that way, it would have been even easier. So you're off to a good start. Number two, Wood v. Silva. Oh, that sounds baseball-y to me. I'm going to go baseball.

It is baseball. This is Wood is Gagewood, who did what in the College World Series, Ben? Oh, was he the one who threw the no-hitter? That is the 19 strikeout no-hitter versus Murray State. All right, look at that. He later went on to be the Phillies first-round draft pick. So, man, you're doing way better at this than I thought you would. Wow.

Riding high. All right. All right. Number three, Davis v. Beeson. That sounds baseball-y to me. I'm going to go baseball. Incorrect. Davis v. Beeson is an 1890 case that held by a 9-0 vote, and I'm surprised you didn't know this, that a federal prohibition on polygamy did not violate the free exercise clause of the First Amendment. Oh, right. That's been a thorn in my side all these years. Yeah. Hmm. Okay. Davis versus Beeson.

Next one, Route V. Anderson. Root v. Anderson. Boy, I could go either way with that one. I guess I'll go baseball. It is baseball. It's a matchup between LSU and Arkansas featuring two first-round picks, including Seattle Mariners' lefty,

Kate Anderson, who went third overall. Oh, heard of him. The last one, Stump v. Iyonson. Stump v. Ionson. I'll go case. No, it's baseball. This is Lampen Stump of UCLA versus Anthony Iyensen of LSU.

Ionson went on to start the ultimate national championship game against Coastal Carolina, and then he was drafted in the third round by the Boston Red Sox. Wow. What a name. Landon Stump. I'm surprised I haven't heard that one. If I had heard that one, it might have stuck in my mind. Okay. Well, I finished over 500.

That's what you get when you drop Long John Silver. Yeah. That's right. I feel like we got a lot of Landon's floating around. Doesn't I feel like there are a lot of Landon's floating around these days? Like, way more Landon's in baseball. I've never known a Landon. Have you ever known a Landon?

My cousin Landon. Yeah, I went to school with a couple Landon's. Yeah, I know, like, one, but that's a low number. I mean, that's more than I know. That's 100% more Landon. My cousin Landon is actually a notable Landon. Landon Castle used to race in NASCAR. Oh, cool.

How about that? Okay. I love how I said, oh, as if that was like a reference that immediately registered for me, you know? Like, oh, yeah, my deep rolodex of Landon's. Ben, as we all know, he's a multi-sport pundit now. So I would just expect that he would know Landon Castle. I know Landau. I know Landau Norris, not the Star Wars Landau, but the driver, racer. Yeah, that's a start.

Okay. Well, I'm happy to come out ahead. I'll take three and two. That's a winning ratio. Chris, I know you have a game for Michael, but I don't know if you want to save it until... Oh, okay. I'm not going to spoil what it is. I was going to do it now.

I was going to do it now because we're about to do the minor league free agent draft. And Bauman doesn't get to participate in that. So I felt bad. Don't feel bad. To be clear, we're not doing the draft today. We are simply rebacking the prior year's results. Who won? Clemens is like, wait a minute.

What? Yeah. Yeah. I couldn't do worse. I don't do worse. I did make a game, Bauman, this is a game that the E.W. Stats team has put together for you. We are calling this Cedar Rapids Colonel or Character in the Star Wars universe. Okay.

Is this books or is this Disney bullshit? This is the entire Star Wars universe, both the Legends Canon and the current extended universe. Okay. I've noticed in a decade of doing this game with Ben, I've never used Star Wars because his knowledge is... Your first name, Yormin Landa. That feels Cedar Rapids Cernoli to me. That is a Cedar Rapids Curnally, joined the Twins, Oregon, 2011, and played for the Colonels in 2014 and 15. Oh, this is all-time Cedar Rapids Colonels.

Oh, yeah, it's a very rich history. This is my hometown minor league team. I had to go with them. Yeah, this is the High A affiliate of the Twins for those who are not in the know. And it's Colonels with a K. Yes, it is. Yeah. Your second name, Caleb Merck.

Oh, no. That feels like a misdirect. Wow, I'm really enjoying Babin being on the spot for us. Oh, my bitard. I'm going to say Star Wars. Sorry, that is a relief pitcher drafted by the Twins in 2012, who played for the Colonels in 2013. I should just go with my gut.

Number three, Jim Docian. Jim J.I.M. I will not spell it for you. Oh, I always spell for Ben. I also don't make that extremely rude buzzer sound that you just did. Sorry, I'm drunk with power. I usually don't ask for spellings, to be clear. Maybe I have at some point.

I still at least a couple of the cars. I believe you asked during the Republican Congress one, and I believe Meg's response was, would that help? And we never got to it. Can you say the name again? Jim Doshin I'm gonna say baseball Jim Doshin

also known as the Star Killer Kid Jim appeared in the Marvel Comics series of Star Wars in the 1980s It doesn't feel like it should count Yeah it counts But Chris play tested this with me I don't know if it's exactly the same people

But just to calibrate the difficulty And Ben destroyed it I did okay but I was whiffing on the late 70s Star Wars comics characters So that's a whole my knowledge as well. Number four, Gabe Jacobo.

That's baseball. That is baseball. First baseman drafted by the Angels back when the colonels were part of their organization instead. And number five, Hayden Gleimo. Oh, man. If I don't guess Star Wars for Glemo and get it wrong, I'm going to kick myself. So I'm going to guess Star Wars.

If I get it wrong, I'll accept it. Hayden Glemo was a pitcher for the 2003 Cedar weapons girls. Glimo. G-L-I-E-M-M-O. G-L-I-E-M-O. Hayden Gleimo. Gleimo. Yeah.

I don't know about that. I don't know about that, doesn't it? Yeah, that feel, Glemo feels like it, like an alien character on Tadween who reads its anti-Semitic. Well, that's a target-rich environment, it turns out, in many sci-fi universes. So anyways, I enjoyed that. That was delightful just to hear Baumann squirming and overthinking everything just the way that I do. I've gone into the last couple of these, like not actively trying to make Ben's life miserable. And I think that's going to end after this incident.

Don't make me pay. This was not my idea. I did condone it, but I didn't suggest it. He could have said no. He could have put a stop to all of this. We support that we tolerate or whatever. Yeah, it's true. Yeah.

Well, you got on the boards. Good for you, buddy. All right. So, what's recap the 2025 minor league free agent draft in which I and Meg and other Ben, Ben Clemens, participated about a year ago, almost, I guess. It's getting around to be minor league free agent draft season. again, but let's hear how we did as if I don't know and as if I hadn't just poured over these numbers just to console myself before I sleep every night. Well, just to go back, during spring

training, we use the fangrass projection systems to kind of take a close look at the ballots. And when things got started, Meg had the most valuable projected ballot at 733, Ben Lindberg 602, Ben Clemens at 201, not being helped by Sixto Sanchez going to the Mexican League. Dalton Jeffries did not get signed,

and Thomas Pinone, or Pinone? Is it Pinone or Pinone? Great question, Chris. Wow, okay. Let's leave that in then. Okay. Cover both my bases. But yeah, Ben Clemm is

at 201, and the one player that was projected to the best out of everyone was Bryce Wilson, who is on Meg's ballot. Bryce was projected at 418. Bryce would not be the most valuable. The most valuable would be Adrian Howser, who was also on Meg's ballot, who ended up completing 518. But our winner is Ben Lindbergh with 1,594 plate appearances and total batters faced and completes the, I guess we call it batting around.

You batted around with your ballot as all 10 of your players made an appearance in the big leagues. Yes, you buried the lead there. This is unprecedented. I scoff at your projections. That's why they play the games, people. That's why they play the games.

And it is, by the way, Pannon, at least according to baseball reference. Oh, thank you. But yes, I'm glad I won, but I believe I would have won in a manner of speaking if I had completed the sweep and not gotten the most. All right. Because that is, I mean, that has never been done before. There's a winner every year. But no one has ever gone 10 for 10 has had a 100% hit rate on their picks.

Is it also the record for like, you know, PA's plus batter's face? It is not, right? That would go to a Mr. Jeff Sullivan in 2019 had 1,640. Okay. Oh, close. Meg got 1,163, which is the sixth highest score ever and is also the highest score to not win in a single year. Meg had six players who recorded, played appearances, and total batters faced. Ben Clemens, the throwback ballot method

did not pan out for you on this one. But I did appreciate the fact that out of everyone's ballots, I knew all of the names of the players on your ballot. So there was a lot of rooting interest in that, but it did not come to fruition. But we can now put to bed the minor league free agent draft and prepare for 2026.

Well, just don't be too hasty. Let's not put it to bed just yet. let's talk and think about it. Nope, we've all moved on emotionally. Just a little more because this is like I'm not a tattoo guy, but if I were to get a tattoo, I think it would be of my 2025 minor league free agent draft roster. This is my epitaph. Put this on my headstone, this team. Like these guys will be special to me for the rest of my life. Whenever I see one of these names, it will remind me of the miracle year. That's what they're calling it when I went 10 for 10. I'm sure there's an element

of randomness to this. I acknowledge that. Sure. Generally, we hit on about half of our picks, probably, and things have to go your way. And you do enough minor league for agent drafts, then eventually it's going to break your way. And some guys are going to get called up and not get heard or whatever it takes to get to the majors. But 10 for 10. I mean, I may have. I may have finished second to Jeff Sullivan by 46 plate appearances plus batter's face or whatever it is. No wonder a baseball team hired him to work for it. But this is one of my proudest accomplishments professionally, I think. I don't think that's an exaggeration. I favor this and will forever. That was gross. I mean, look, we were all like, oh, yeah, we'll we'll excitedly embrace Ben's victory. You know, he's our friend. We want him to be happy. And then you were like, actually, I want to want to want no matter what. And I was like, I think that we should skin him alive, you know? I think that's where I've landed.

I'm thinking I probably won't win the latter part of this podcast. So I got to take my victories where I can. But I just, I am very pleased about this, as you can probably tell. I am crowing about it. And I won't have to eat crow because I won suckers, 10 for 10. Jeez. Well done. My number one guy was Jason Alex.

Not that Jason Alexander, but the baseball one, who had 336. So Meg had the best pick in this draft. Thank you. And I was like the bulk guy. It was, you know, it was a team effort. It wasn't just like 10 superstars. Are you doing a second monologue about this? Yes.

It's like Adrian Brody at the freaking Oscars. We get it. They're playing by music. Act like you've been there before, man. It was no one ever has been here before. I'm the first to summit this mountain. And so I'm going to survey my territory for a while. This is my equivalent of playing them off.

I'm playing the music right now. It was a true team effort, as I'm saying, no one selfishly hogging all the playing time. It wasn't 10 stars, 10 cabs back from the ballpark. It was true, incredible clubhouse morale. A band of brothers. from Jason Alexander at 336 to Josh Walker at 25. Everyone made equally important contributions to the 10 for 10. Is this now the third monologue? Is this the third monologue?

All right. I'm looking forward to seeing this added to the YouTube supercut of inspirational speeches. Hallie Berry has like thrown a shoe at you. She's gotten her revenge. You're Adrian Brody again. I yield my time. Not that I have any remaining. Uh-huh. Shall we move on to? the main event.

Please. I mean, if you want to call it the main event, I feel like my main event has happened already. But yes, let's proceed. The 21 pages of the Google Doc in front of me tell me this is the main event. Yes. Okay. Well, you're the MC now. You're the captain now.

It's in your hand. So we will do this as you see fit. All right. Let's get into the 2025 preseason predictions game because it's time to answer some burning questions. Like, how bold did listeners grade your predictions? How disapproving will Ben Clemens be of those ratings? And who will be the last person left in the proverbial green room as we work our way through the list and thus earning the title of Mr. or Ms. Chalk? And did we hire freelance paparazzi to follow Sabrina Carpenter?

That answer is no. But let us begin the reveal of the preseason predictions game. To brief a recap, all four of our panelists made 10 prognostications before the start of the season. and listeners were asked to grade them by their likelihood. Those results determined how many points a prediction could make if it came true, or how many points it would lose if it was proven false, and the less likely a prediction was graded the better. We set a new record this year with 1,556 listener ballots received,

and those listeners were able to track their own personal performances on the EW Stats website for the first time, which we continue to work on, iterate for this, the minor league free agent draft. The contract over underdraft is now live on the EW Stats website. And we are on our way to making it a home for every competition in the history of the podcast. Huge shout-outs. Who else has contributed to that effort? Yes, please. That's Sean McNamee, our project leader. Michael Fazio is our lead developer. We have other people contributing. Michael Mountain has been helping out. Raymond Chen has been helping us out

with a couple things. Our team is growing all the time, but those are the main hitters right there. I cannot thank them enough for the effort that they have been putting into this. This is not something I can do on my own anymore. So three cheers to the EW Stats team. Yes, entirely too much effort.

This is far too professional for what we deserve. I say this every time. These guys like this podcast a lot, man. Yeah. Projects manager. Uh, guilty is charged. Put it on your resume, I guess. It sounds good. I don't know. It is on my resume, actually. If you go to my website, it's like, yeah, that's one of the things that's listed on there.

Say, I do this fun thing. Like last year, what we're going to do is we're going to go through all 40 predictions, sorted from least likely to most. And for the first time, that order has been completely secret until now. So, I am happy to acknowledge that the award for boldest pick, goes to Ben Clemens. Ben Clemens, number one. Shohei Otani will throw the fastest pitch thrown by a starter in the 2025 regular season,

excluding openers. That rating, 12%. Okay. So, fun note, while this was calculated to be the boldest pick, it was not the prediction to receive the most 0% ratings. 387 listeners graded this at zero. and it would not be a preseason predictions game without having to track Otani in ways that sometimes get weird. At first blush, you would think that this is not hard to track. However, the last two words of this prediction had a potential factor in the outcome as Otani's return to the mound was accompanied by an extreme pitch limit to the point where he was more or less being used as an opener.

And his fastest pitch for a long time, 1001.7 miles per hour came on June 28th against the Royals in which he only stayed. stayed in as a pitcher for two innings. Is he an opener? I believe that that counts as being an opener. He did go on to match that speed, though, in a later start, but all of this was moot, as he was taught by multiple players, including Terrick Scoobel and Hunter Green, both of which cleared 102 miles an hour with room to spare. I will now use this platform to lobby baseball savant to make additional search features to make

this easier to research, including individual event sorting and filtering, starting, and relief pitchers, thank you very much. This is like a classic, how do you classify an opener? Yes. How do you define an opener? Bold effort, or a good effort by Shohei there. That was supposed to be a pretty unlikely prediction. And he almost did it.

I was really impressed. I was charting every pitch of his first return to the mound. Yep. That was fun. And he was starting hard. Oh, yeah. Yes. I am somewhat surprised that was the boldest.

I guess in retrospect, maybe seeing how hard he threw, it seems less bold than it seemed at the time. He would have needed to throw a lot harder than he'd ever thrown, basically. Yeah. Yeah. He had hit 102 in the World Baseball Classic, right? But, yeah, he had not done that in the majors. Yeah.

But I was very impressed. It's like the only thing he didn't do this year, but he really came close. Good work. He did. All right. Number two, and this is the prediction that did receive the most 0% ratings. A major league player will date. Sabrina Carpenter, Michael Bauman, 13%.

Sabrina Carpenter's romantic aspirations were more or less out of public view until an August 29th report on the pop culture website Dumois, which published an article about tips that they had received about Sabrina being seen in Europe with a hot, tall blonde with his long hair in a bun. This was on July 9th, which is almost a full week before the All-Star break, so not likely to be someone actually. active in major leagues. You have not ruled out Michael Copac yet. I was just about to say. Michael Cindergards out there. A famous, famous celebrity serial monogamous. Yeah, I have here. Bowman's prediction didn't necessarily require the major league player be active, but I cannot accept it on blind faith that this was Michael Copeck or Noah Cindergarde. And so due to a lack of evidence, I must deem this prediction false. I feel like Manchild could be about many major League players.

Including Michael Kope. I watched that video and I thought, I thought Brandon Marsh was in that video. I mean, I'm just saying, we don't know for sure. We don't. I cannot accept a prediction on artistic interpretation, I am sorry to say.

I might just do this on no grade. I feel like that song was as much hint as we'll get. I think that it's a tantalizing possibility, though, because it could be Kopeck. There was rumors about Yamamoto, but they ended up being debunked. But all of that, those rumors were like before the prediction even got made, I believe. Yeah.

It's going to surprise you. I did zero research for this, so. Yeah. Well, we can't conclusively rule it out, but for the purposes of this prediction, I guess we can. Number three, Meg Rowley. Yeah. Cattell Marte will win the NL MVP, 16%. Yeah.

Catell was hampered in a few ways on this. his injury early in the season, costing him a month of playing time, strong competition that he was up against in the form of, oh, I don't know, Shohayotani, a couple others, and also the primary narrative surrounding him throughout the second half was less than charitable, which is going to have an influence on voting whether it's valid or not, but in the end, Shohayotani took the MVP crown last week. I must deduct 16 points. Wow. 16%. Like, I love Citell Marte. I remember vividly cheering this prediction, 16% for him to be an LMVP is insane. So remember that all of these are just skewed up.

I'm trying to keep that in my head. 12% likelihood for a tonny to throw the fastest pitch. That's too high. There's a lot of guys who throw harder than that. Anything for Sabrina Carpenter is too. The way to think about these is always how they rate in relation to one another. That's where I've landed on all of this. There's like some behavioral effect here.

I want to pitch a shut out here on their balance. They want these things to come true. Yeah. And with that, we now have our Mr. Chalk. Ben Lindberg is Mr. Chalk for 2025. How long will Ben Lindberg sit in the green room? Let's find out. Number four, Ben Clements.

Jacob de Grom will pitch more than 150 innings, but earn less than four fan graphs wore points for Ben Clemens. It might have been 140, right? But he got there either way. He pitched more than 150 innings. Oh, yeah. He got there either way. Yeah. I thought I predicted at 140. But either way. He cleared both bars. Easy. Yes, 82 points for you as it was graded at 18%. This is now the second best prediction all time behind Bauman's and animal will kill another animal prediction. And early on, the worry was that DeGrom wasn't necessarily on pace to get enough in it.

But as the season progressed, that concern flipped, as it became clear, he absolutely would. But he had a really strong string of excellent outings. And then the risk was that he was just going to blow past four Fangraphs War without breaking a sweat. But that petered out, and we all held our collective breath in September. DeGromf finished with 3.4. Fangraphs wore earning Clemens a healthy amount of points for what turned out to be a fantastic prediction. Excellent work, Ben. 82 points is what I would say, if this prediction were. correct? And it is. So well done.

I want to say a shout out to the fans voting on this one. I was worried that these contingent things can be tough to think about. But yeah, like this should be very hard. It was a pretty bold prediction. Good work, fans. Yes, good work, everybody. Number five, Michael Bowman. At least one majorly game this season will be played behind closed doors, 21%. And as much as it might have felt sometimes like this one had come to pass in Miami, which will come up in a later discussion. We have no documented instances of empty stadium baseball. This is false. Negative 21 points. God damn it, I see. Can't even do this right. Good shit.

Probably a good thing for the world and for baseball that this prediction did not come true, but bad for Bammon. Number six, Meg Rowley. Yeah. Come on. I tried to be bold with my predictions. I guess I can't even when I'm trying to. I believe you that you tried to be bold. Yes. Meg Rally, number six. Chandler Simpson will lead the league in stolen bases, 24%. We now come to the part of our podcast where I blame Jeff Sullivan for something.

Yay. Chandler Simpson did not record a stolen base until April 20th, at which point the league leader already had 10. This did not matter, though, as Simpson displayed why this prediction was made in the first place. He immediately began gaining ground at one point, stealing five bases in a two-day span, bringing his total to 19, only two behind the top spot, and then literally the very next day he got optioned to triple A. He would stay there for a few weeks, but that was enough to keep him from contending for the top rank on the leaderboard. At three different points in July and

August, he got back within two, but his stolen base pace would fizzle down the stretch and finish with 44, 5 behind the Yankees, Jose Caballero. Isn't that funny? So that is false. Isn't that the funniest bit? You are hereby assigned to spend the next year at a trampoline park. Number seven, Ben Clemens. Oh, my goodness.

Vladimir Guerrero Jr. will win the home run derby, 25%. And I am sorry to say the home run derby was not able to deliver for you the way it did so spectacularly last year. Well, he was glad he should play, right? Yes, he elected not to participate, which is quite the obstacle to overcome when picking someone to win. That is a prerequisite. I was hoping for the old, this player is either going to hit free agency or be traded,

like the Juan Soto wins the derby year when the Nats were shopping him. Yeah. But then he got his contract, so, you know, good for him. But I imagine if he were going into free agency, he might have wanted to play in a derby. Yeah, I also cannot accept the philosophical victory a la War Games, where you believe that the home run derby curse is real and that it hurts your performance and thus meaning the only winning move is to not play, that is not applicable here. So, minus 25. Number eight, Michael Bowman.

At some level of domestic professional baseball, a mascot will strike a pedestrian with a motorized vehicle 26%. I felt like I started getting blue car syndrome. with the number of news articles that played a kind of mad libs with the target parameters, but never being in the right configuration. We had lots of incidents outside of baseball, some involving some serious injuries that I'm not going to detail here, but never exactly matching the desired event. And I want to say, Bauman, I think that in the history of this competition, this is far in a way the hardest prediction to track because...

Oh, sorry. I thought this was a lot. I thought it was going to happen. He always makes it hard on you. some way. Well, it's this one, it's that, this one's not hard in the same way that the Shohei Otani Media Rounds one was, because I really believe that there are a lot of incidents that would completely fulfill the necessary conditions, like a mascot gently nudging a coach or an umpire in the butt with an ATV, but that would never be

noteworthy enough to be covered by a journalist or become popular on social media. And I would even go so far as to say that on balance, I'd be willing to bet that this happened, but we have no knowledge of it, no evidence. I did give a full-throated effort and proactively sought out video of mascot antics, but I have been left wanting. I have no choice but to deem this false and penalize you 26 points. Some things are unknowable. I've almost personally been killed by the fanatic more than once. Maybe I should have just jumped in front of his quad bike. Yeah. Well, I was going to credit you for not cooking the books here because you did have the power to make this come true and you abided by the rules. And I mean, even the rules permitted.

The rules permit it. I permit cooking the books. Yeah. You could have swayed this and yet you let things play out and the chips fell as they would. And we'll never know. I guess we can't know whether Sabrina Carpenter dated a baseball player. We can't know whether a mascot ran over someone and it just wasn't witnessed by anyone. Wow. I will be awaiting videos sent in the next week proving all of these true and it'll be hilarious. Number nine, Ben Clements. Oh, my gosh. Is it just going to be everyone else's predictions and then mine at the very end all in a row? Was I this cowardly last year? Was I? No, you were not. Right. I was pretty bold last year, right? I thought I was proud of my boldness. No, Bauman was Mr. Chalk last year. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Ben Clemens, number nine, the Chicago White Sox will end at least one. day with sole possession of the AL Central lead, 26%. We were this close. The prediction absolutely carried the first few days of the season for me. Between March 31st and April 2nd, the White Sox had multiple opportunities to bring this home, including games where every other team that were in their way had already taken the required loss earlier in the day, only for the White Sox to squander the moment in the nightcap. The entire A.L. Central finished that stretch, locked in a five-way tie at two and four, but our dreams were all but dead four short days later when Chicago dropped three straight games, and from there, destiny was written in stone. This is false. This is the one that I followed a little bit when, I think they lost one-nothing to the Angels when they just needed to win, and I would get the prediction.

And it was like, oh, I was just seeing the score pop up in zero, zero, zero, zero, zero, zero. It's like, come on. Come on. You weren't actually going to tune in to watch, though. You were just watching the scoreboard from afar because you wouldn't subject yourself to White Sox Angels, even when a prediction was at stake. Well, I have limits. Yeah, this one, it was now or never. It was either it's going to happen right at the start of the season or it's not going to happen again because White Sox, they made some strides.

They improved. Not to the point where this was ever viable past the first few days of the season. Number 10, Meg Rowley. Yeah. The athletics will finish second in the A.L. West. We were not this close. Yeah, this didn't happen. To their credit, I can actually say that the athletics did spend time in second place.

They did, yeah. A total of seven days in May, but then they lost 19 of their next 20 games and put this one to bed in short order. Oh, that was 26%. Okay. Now, before I read this next prediction, may I be so bold as to ask our panelists to either minimize the 90 tabs of fan graphs they collectively have open or, at the very least, look away from them. Ben Clemens, at least three players who play at some point for the Colorado Rockies will finish the season with 500 plate appearances and negative fan graphs war. 29%. Let's play a little trivia. I might need the three of you to tell me, can you tell me the three players for the Rockies that qualified as batters for the season? Absolutely not. Oh, gosh. I know Hunter Goodman.

Hunter Goodman is one. Yes. He was one good man. Brenton Doyle? Yes, he's two. Jordan Beck. That's three. Very well done.

Hunter Goodman, Jordan Beck, and Brenton Doyle. We remembered some Rockies. They all had positive fan graphs war. Yeah. The Rockies had 18. Yeah. Stupid Tolia. 18 players had negative

fan grass whore for the Rockies there was no overlap between those two lists Tyler Freeman came the closest earning negative 0.7 over 428 plate appearances Michael Toglia, Kyle Farmer should also be recognized as Rowan Atkinson might say in his welcome to hell

sketch for putting in an awful lot of work but they were not able to do it. I have to say, this was a bad prediction by the readers. This was incredibly unlike Yeah. This basically can't happen.

I thought this was going to be much bolder than it was. I kind of forgot about this one because it was such a throwaway. Just because it's hard to qualify while being that bad. If anyone, if any team could have made it happen, it would have been the 2025 Rockies. Well, if any team could, right. Like, I feel like I picked one of the best teams in history to do this. But, like, there were only five batters to qualify with negative war this year. Yeah.

Yeah. And none were on the Rockies. Yeah. None were on the Rockies. One of them was Andrew McCutcheon, which is shocking. Number 12. Ben Lindbergh. Finally.

I knew the reason I showed up other than to take several victory laps about the minor league of trade draft. All right. The Atlanta Braves will finish out of first place in the NL East by no more than the number of games they lose in which Craig Kimbril takes the loss or blows a save, 29%. So we finally hear from you, Ben. I only wish I had good news for you. Craig Kimbrel made exactly one appearance for Atlanta in a game that he did not factor into the decision before being DFAed and picked up by the Astros, where he did make 13 appearances and was responsible for a single loss, which means you made one of the classic blunders, not of course to never get involved in a land war in Asia, but had you been less specific, this would have earned you points, had you phrased it, a team will miss the postseason by the number of games they lose in which Craig Kimball takes the loss or blows this eight. The Houston Astros get you there because they lost the tiebreaker to the Detroit Tigers, and he had one loss. Yes, we got an email about this from listener, Patreon, supporter, Alana about a month ago, who said, as I was watching the sadly Astros list ALCS this weekend, I couldn't help wondering where to put the tipping point when Houston's season went irrevocably wrong.

Sure, they let Bregman walk, traded Tucker, and lost the most value to injury of any team. Those are the obvious answers and clearly red herrings. After disposing of those horses, I started hunting zebra and realized that Ben had already pinpointed exactly what wound up being the final nail in Houston's coffin and amazingly called his shot all the way back in episode 2298 with one big caveat. During the preseason predictions game, Ben bet that Craig Kimbril would cost Atlanta the NL East by posting more blown saves and losses than the margin by which the team lost the division at face value. This prediction was hilariously wrong. Atlanta lost the East by a full 20 games. However, I'd encourage a slightly different perspective. Kimbril lost a single game in 2025, but not until he was playing for Houston.

On September 9th, he gave up a walk-off run in the 10th inning in Toronto. One could easily argue this was the straw that broke the camel's back. The next morning, Houston's playoff odds fell below 80% for the first time in three months. Three Astros went to the IL within the next week. 17 games after Kimbril's loss in Canada, the Astros tied the Tigers 87 wins and missed the playoffs for the first time since President Obama left office. Ben was wrong. Ben was right.

All hail Ben. Thank you, Alana. Did she really say all hail, Ben? Yes, it's in there. Meg can verify. I can, but I'm not inclined to be generous to you after your marathon acceptance speech earlier. Yeah.

I knew Craig Kimbrough could do it. I just didn't know where. Before we move on, I do want to state, the EW Stats team had a really fun time. working on figuring out the magic number for this prediction because theoretically at any point Kimbril could be put back on waivers by the Astros reclaimed by Atlanta and then go on an epic stretch where they won every game that he didn't pitch in to get back in contention but then he would factor in the loss of all the other ones and have that be enough games to make this

prediction true that's actually not the easiest math problem but they reached it somewhere within the month of August. I don't have the exact date, but it was a fun thing to try and figure out. Anyways, 29% that was false. Number 13,

Meg Rally. Yes. Ethan Holiday will be the first pick in this year's MLB amateur draft. He wasn't. 30%.

Holiday did, in fact, top multiple mock drafts, including Jim Callis's projection for MLB.com. Meanwhile, on fan graphs, Eric Long and Hagan had him ninth, so I have to imagine that he agreed

that this prediction was very bold but in the end the poetic outcome won out with Ethan going to his father's Colorado Rockies with the fourth pick this is false

yeah yeah it's true number 14 Ben Clemens Raphael Devers will play more innings

at third base than Alex Breggman 31% and I hate to break this to you and this may come as a shock

this did not happen I thought it was very funny when he played some innings at third base this year. This does offer me the opportunity, though, to, I want to plug a really cool feature of Fangraphs. Did you know that Fangraphs has a community block? Yes. And not just a thing where you can post nonsense and hope to get eyeballs. If you have a post that is worth publishing, you will get an editor to work with you on your article. And so I wanted to do mid-season updates on each panelist draft boards and decided that using

the community blog would be an awesome way to do it. And I was very delighted when I received an email from FanGraph's own Matt Martel to begin the process for editing it and making my writing ready for prime time and I ended up getting three posts on the site breaking down the status of Bauman, Clemens, and Meg I ran out of time to do Ben Lindberg's but... Wow, snub. I just

want to thank Matt for sharing his time and expertise to help me with my nonsense. The reason I mentioned this here is I had this really great write-up on this exact prediction that I was really happy with and it literally was going to go up the day before Devers got traded and I had to completely

pivot, and I got to experience something that I'm sure everyone here has had to deal with at some point while riding, where it's like, oh, I guess I get to toss this in the trash. But thanks to Matt's help, I had something I was happy with. But regardless, no, you lost this prediction in very funny fashion, negative 31

points. Number 15, Ben Lindbergh. Three or more non-position player pitchers will throw at least 20 knuckle balls, each in the majors. Even without the qualifier that eliminated position player pitchers. This did not come to pass. Matt Waldron held up his end of the bargain. He

threw 77 knuckle balls. The second most prolific starting pitcher was Adrian Morhone, who threw five knuckle balls by April 14th, and then just stopped. And he didn't throw another one the rest of the season. Twins rookie Pearson Oll also had five, which is amusing because Pearson wasn't even the twins prospect that you had brought up as being clocked as a promising knuckleballer. Before this season's That was Corey Lewis, but he did not get called up this season. This is false. Ben, I thought this one was bold, too. Yeah.

I think this is definitely, we all just wanted it to happen very, very badly. Maybe my Mr. Chalk reputation has caused people to downplay my boldness. Maybe I'm cursed by my past lack of boldness. There is also, like, everyone wants more knuckleballers. I bet you, I, like, it's just so tempting. I want to click, yes. Yeah, it was a great disappointment to me. Matt Waldron made one start in the majors, and it didn't go great, as you could probably infer.

And also, his minor league season didn't go so great either. He had a six and a half ERA-ish in 90 and a third minor league getting, so not a total shock that he didn't get to make more major league starts. And, yeah, sad that he was not joined in the big leagues by some of the other knuckleballers. There are a few floating around the minors just carrying the torch. and I hope that one of these years this will be true. Number 16, we stick with Ben Lindbergh. The success rate for scoring from third base in Sackfly situations will fall to 94% or below, 32%. This was a very fun one to track, and I want to give a big thank you to Patrick Dubuque of baseball prospectus,

not just for inspiring this prediction, but also for corresponding with me about the statistics he was tracking. And I wanted to be as fair as possible because the data set, that you had looked at when originally making this prediction was based on Patrick's work, which does not agree with baseball savant, ever so slightly. This is a really fun thing about baseball stats. Different data sets have separate criteria for what constitutes a fly ball, which has an impact on how you count sack fly situations. So I looked at both Savant's and BP's data sets. When the season was over, though, it was moot. Both Savant and Patrick's data both decided that the tactical adjustment that you were hoping for did not come to pass, and we saw a success rate of

97.5% using baseball savant or 96.4 using baseball prospectuses. So that is a false negative 32. Did it even go down? Do you remember what it was before? I don't remember what it was. If it went down, it didn't go down by much. No. I was, yeah, I was predicting a big drop because there had been Patrick's article and other things written that suggested, oh, teams are just too cowardly when it comes to this too like me, evidently, when making predictions. And they should be waving those guys around much more often. And outs are the price that you pay for all the extra runs that you score. And yet, there didn't seem to be any significant shift in how teams were thinking about this, unfortunately, for me and my prediction. So maybe one of these years.

Well, and Twins fans will tell you that the fact that Tommy Watkins has been hired away from being third base coach from the twins to go work for Atlanta means that these odds are probably going up because Tommy was very famous for having a very quick gun on sending people. So that will not help in your stats for next year. Yeah, there were a couple third base coaches who were dismissed mid-season, as I remember messaging Patrick about them to ask if this was, it was happening finally, that teams were finally recognizing that this would be the case. I think it was It was at least two teams. I think it was Atlanta replaced their third base coach because of some bad sins.

But then maybe that's even confirming the problem is that when you have someone who has some bad sins and then you fire them. That suggests that you're not having a high enough level of tolerance for some guys getting thrown out. It's going to happen. Exactly. Oh, well. Number 17. Ben Clemens. The strikeout rate will fall below 22% league.

wide, 33%. For so much of the season, I thought you had this. After a few weeks, the number fluctuating a fair bit. It dropped below 22% on May 19th, did not come back up for air, repeatedly flirted with 21.9%, which doesn't sound like a big difference, but keep in mind, we're talking about tens of thousands of plate appearances. But on August 23rd, it started going back up. It just did not stop. It reached 22% again on September 7th, kept rising at full speed, and finished at 22.22%, and it turns out that had I actually familiarized myself with historical trends pertaining to the strikeout rate, this would not have shocked me at all, which brings me to today's stat blast. Play the music. Whoa.

They'll take a data set sorted by something like E.R.A. minus or OBS plus. And then they'll tease out some interesting day but discuss it. Length and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's today's Stap Blast. Today's Stap Blast is brought to you by EW Stats, Team A and Frequent Stapast correspondent Michael Mountain, and what we looked at was how often the strikeout rate goes up in September and by how much, and it turns out that the answer to these questions is almost always and by a meaningful amount. Since 1957, with 2020 removed from the dataset for obvious reasons, the strikeout rate

for games played September 1st or later has risen all but eight times, and of those eight only three saw an actual drop, the others stayed level. Sixteen times during that stretch, the increase was by more than a full percentage point over the strikeout rate over the rest of the season. So it should be pointed out that a raise of 1% is a significant bump, considering that over that span, league strikeout rates were somewhere between 12.5 and 22.5%. There is only one instance of the K rate dropping by more than one percentage point in September, and that was in 2021, when the league went more or less wire-to-wire with the highest year-to-date K-rate K-rate for a full season, again, excluding 2020. And if you, I say this, because

as Michael noted during our research for this stat blast, episode 1742, released September 3rd, 2021, during the outro, Ben mentions that he was hoping to see the first season-to-season decrease in K-rate in 16 years, and quote, we have a real shot because coming into this weekend, we're only barely over last season's rate, given that 2020 had finished at 23.4. And historically, that would have almost always meant that your hopes were dead in the water, but it was the one year where there was a decrease. and you ended up getting what you wanted.

So your wish, or should I say, prediction came to pass, but I cannot retroactively give you points for that one in 2021. I feel like I had the direction right on this. Lowest strikeout rate since 2017. Yeah, exactly. Went a little far. Number 18, Ben Lindberg, Max Freed, Cody Bellinger, and Devin Williams will collectively surpass Juan Soto's Fangraph's War,

but the Yankees will miss the postseason. 33% So obviously the Yankees did not miss the postseason But if it will help you at all The rest of it was right Freed Bellinger and Williams Easily outperformed

Juan Soto's 5.8 Fanagraph's war They totaled for 11.1 And in fact, any combination of two out of those three players would have cleared The bar for you. Freed at 4.8,

Bellinger at 4.9, Devin Williams, 1.4. Yeah, they really did recreate Juan Soto in the aggregate If not, something even better. Yeah. So I guess the thing that made it bold was that that would happen and then they would somehow miss the playoffs. And that obviously did not happen. But they didn't win the division. So there was that. There was a time where their fortunes were tanking and their playoff odds were sinking and everyone was freaking out in New York even more than usual. And it looked like they might actually be on a trajectory to potentially miss the playoffs. And I was thinking of this prediction. But no, it did not come true. I refreshed my memory. about the multiple base coaches who were dismissed. It was the Diamondbacks who relieved third base coach Shane Larkin of his base coaching duties

in August. And it was Atlanta that made the same move and brought back Freddie Gonzalez, actually, to be the third base coach in the middle of the season in June. And this was the first time that Alex Anthopoulos had ever dismissed a coach or made a coaching change during a season. they reassigned the major league third base coach to the minors. And he said, there's been some aggressive sends, and that's part of the job. But the results from my standpoint, and in talking to SNIT, he understood and he ultimately agreed,

I felt like we could do better. So, again, your aggressiveness coming back to bite you for the third base coaches. Number 19, Michael Bowman. At least three Boston Red Sox players will earn rookie of the year votes, 34% Roman Anthony finished third in voting you had him in the bag

that was we were pretty certain that he was going to get votes early on so the real question was if two more would come along for the ride Carlos Narvaez finished 6th but they would be

the only two Red Sox players to earn votes if you were to go through the roster and look for who would have been the next most likely candidate

I think you end up with Hunter Dobbins who pitched 61 innings over 11 starts but had an ERA over 4 So this is false. Yeah, Christian Campbell and Marcel O'Meyer let me down here a little bit, but still getting two. Feels good.

Number 20, Meg Rowley. Yeah. Isaac Peretti will earn more Fangraph's War than Kyle Tucker. That didn't happen. No, Kyle Tucker had his struggles late in the season, but Peretti's lengthy aisle stint made taking advantage of that slump ball but impossible. Tucker finished with 4.5, Peretti's behind him at 2.5. This was 34% and it is false. Yeah, I liked this one when you made it.

And for a while, it was looking good. It was looking good. Yeah. I think that it should get bonus points for being just like a little bit sassy, you know, like in a fun way. Much like me, just a little bit sassy in a fun way. But no, it didn't end up coming to fruition there. So what are you going to do? Add a separate scoring system for sassiness in next year's prediction.

Yeah, because then you, you, you, definitely finish last because your predictions are so milk toast. That's a weird word. I don't like that. I don't care for it. You should leave it in, shame. Leave it in. Number 21, Ben Lindberg. A player will steal at least

80 bases, 34%. That's a high odds. That's pretty high. As previously discussed, Jose Cabierro led the league with only 49. That's so wild. I think it's time that we all went back to the early 2000s Internet vibe of writing about baseball as if bullying managers and front offices being completely out of touch

with optimal strategy. Let's bring back bullying people. Let's get stolen bases back in the strats. It seems like this should have been doable. If one Soto can lead the league in steals, then someone who's actually fast surely could have stolen 80. Come on. This next prediction is one that I am granting special recognition in the form of the inaugural Daniel Vogelbach Memorial Trophy. An award presented to the prediction that is most in the spirit of this exercise through its originality,

commitment to the bit, and the entertainment derived from watching it progress. And this award is hereby presented to Mr. Ben Clemens. Four, the Chicago Cubs will score enough runs to double the number of points

scored by the Chicago Bears in the month of September 35%. I already loved this prediction and Ben clinched earning this trophy by posting on Blue Sky oh, you're fading Cable of Williams

and fantasy football neat, cool, yeah I managed to fade him in baseball. I was wrong. Yeah, we're wrong, but this was still really fun to think

about and watch. The Bears only had four games in September compared to 25 of the Cubs. We did also include the one postseason game that the Cubs played in September 30th

because it was in the month of September. Bears games also became fun to watch. because every touchdown was a huge swing. Week 1's game against the Vikings was initially very scary. Their very first drive, bears carved up the Vikings defense, scored in 10 plays, and you're thinking, oh, God.

And then they went punt, turnover on downs, punt, field goal, punt, punt, missed field goal, punt. Now it starts feeling like, this is all back in play. And then they had a pick six and another touchdown in the final two minutes. And all of a sudden, the pace was completely blown. And with subsequent efforts of 21, 31, and 24 points, you need to take away the the doubling that you offered the Bears in order for this to be true, but the Cubs had 120 runs to the Bears, 202 doubled points. So this is false, but congratulations on being the recipient of the Daniel Vogabock Memorial Trophy. Yeah, I don't think that that was a reasonable

like percentage odds for this to happen. Like, I looked at it and I was like, well, I can't say one X. A double is like almost impossible. But, It'll be funny. Yeah. So I kind of thought this would be like a 10%er, but it would have been amazing if it happened. No such thing as a 10%er. That's fair. I did this specifically because I wanted to tell my friend is a Bears fan that I did it.

And I did. And he thought it was funny. So success. I feel like the Bears are occupying this weird spot where like they're seven and three and they're leading their division. I'm not telling Ben Lindberg noted sports journalist anything. He doesn't know. But I do think that they're actively trying to kill their fans With the way that they're playing football

They're like really Have I told my Packers bar story on this podcast before? Will you allow a quick digression? Granted. When I was in grad school in Wisconsin And I wanted to watch the Seahawks, I'd have to like go out to watch them Because unless they were playing a national game

They weren't on where I was. And so a bunch of my grad school friends and I would like go watch Sunday games together and we walked into the bar where we normally played trivia and the Packers had just lost in devastating fashion in a game that they were supposed to win and

the game ends and there's sort of like a moment of silence that falls across the bar because they're very serious about their packers up there and then a poca starts to play and the words of the poca are the bears still suck and then the bartender was like look

we made all these green and yellow Jello shots, so we're just going to give them out anyway because that state has a really weird relationship with alcohol. And that was my Packers story where I was like, so in this moment where you have embarrassed yourselves or your team has, you still need to get that little shot in at the Bears. That's wicked hate. Yeah. Meg, I have a follow up for this story. My wife is from Wisconsin, and she's a big Packers fan. And the first time that I went to go see a Packers game with her. It's at this bar called Kettle of Fish in New York. It's a cool bar. I've been a kettle of fish.

It's like, it's a Packer's bar. It's Wisconsin themed. There, when the Packers score, they play a Packers poker and the whole place dances. And I think they hand out shots. Sure. And whenever the other team scores, no matter who it is, they play the Bears still suck. Oh, my God. That's amazing. Like 10 times the game or whatever, you know, if they're getting blown out. But they play it every time the other team scores. That's so good.

That's great. Lewis Black always had a really good joke. He was doing a stand-up set in Wisconsin, and he said, I love Wisconsin. It's like you have a government. and it's like you have a government subsidy for drinking. Yes. How do you guys even tell when it's New Year's? And he mime, oh, New Year's, that's when we drink with hats on. Yeah.

He said accurately that it's cheaper to fly from New York to Madison and drink there than it is to drink in New York. That's true, too. Number 23, Meg Rowley. Yes. We will have no repeat division winners other than the Los Angeles Dodgers, 35%. This percentage was far too high. I will say it on your behalf. The Dodgers did repeat,

but this did look like an extreme long shot will before September arrived. On August 21st, I was able to run the numbers against Fangraff's playoff odds, and it calculated this prediction at 0.21% odds, mostly thanks to the Brewers and the Phillies. On the final day,

we did have some surprise in terms of who would join them in playing spoiler with the Guardians being surprised winners and the Yankees falling short, but this is false negative 35. Yeah. Number 24. Michael Bauman. The Tampa Bay Rays will announce a relocation plan to move to a specific destination outside the Tampa Bay area 36%. Now, we will be diving much deeper into the news regarding ownership situations later on. But as of the end of this competition, any news that's been reported related to the long-term direction of the club has been the team staying in the Tampa Bay area. They'll be expected to return to Tropicana Field in 2026. Their current agreement to play their runs until 2020.

All active efforts to find a new stadium location have focused on staying in the Tampa Bay area. There is some rumbling that a few factions in the new investment group are based in Jacksonville and might want to seek an angle to move the team there, but that just remains idle speculation at this point. This is false, negative 36. For now. For now. I might run this back next year. Number 25, Meg Rowley.

Yes. We have points. New York Mets will miss the post season. That's right. 37% meaning you earn 63 points. And for the second consecutive year, I had to watch the final Mets game of the season to see if a prediction became true. And for the second straight season, it was. On September 5th, the Mets had a 96.6% chance to reach the postseason, according to fan graphs.

And a few weeks later, they were eliminated on the final day of the season. I just want to say you didn't have to watch the final Mets game in the season. They would have put that in the newspaper between then and now. You need to understand, and I was going to get into this at some point. It's well known that I am a Twins fan. If I wasn't running this competition, I would have stopped watching baseball in August. For the first time since 2016, I would have just said, I'm done. I'm done with baseball.

Screw this game. But this competition, I had more fun with the second half of this season because it was very stress-firy and I was like watching games and tuning in and I have fully bought into the slog to rigor-mortis argument that Sam Miller put on. This is all for entertainment and I had a lot of fun with baseball. So thank you very much for allowing you to have this opportunity to not hate baseball. Having something at stake with regards to predictions gave you an interest in games. which she didn't have a car. This is not advocacy for sports betting. That's what you're trying to get to. Yeah, it sounds like you're treading dangerously close to that territory. But yeah, well, you can thank yourself because this whole game was your idea, I guess, but you've you've become almost more of a fan of the effectively wild predictions than of the sport itself. I guess you know what? You need the sport to be able to grade the predictions, so it's still essential. I don't like how that's only half joking and that's something I'm going to have to talk to my therapist about next week. Number 26, we stick with Meg Rowley and we stick with more points.

At least three primary catchers as defined by fan graphs will hit 30 plus home runs this season. 38% meaning you earn 62 points. One of the more exciting predictions to track because even though Cal Raleigh was on track to blow past 30 home runs almost immediately, a path for the other two catchers to join them felt extremely tenuous as late as September

and the list of who had the best chance was frequently in flux. Logan O'Hoppy had close to 20 by the All-Star break and then completely fell off a cliff soon afterwards. Salvi got off to a hot streak. Then he cooled off. But finally, Hunter Goodman and Shea Lang Lear's eclipse 30 home runs. They both finished at 31. And Salvador Perez snuck in at the very last second and reached 30 on September 19th. You earned points. Thank you. This came true with a catcher despair. Yeah. Number 27, Michael Bowman, at least one of of the 2025 Cy Young winners will finish with five or lower fan graphs wore.

39%. This is false. I think we all collectively felt like this was not going to happen due to the exploits of Terrick School and Paul Skeen's as the season drew close. Amusingly, I did have to keep it open until the very end because Hunter Brown was included on the list of finalists. And so technically, the result was still up in the air. But if we're being honest with ourselves, I think we knew that this was not going to happen. This is false negative 39. I would have been very pleasantly surprised if Hunter Brown had ended up winning the Siong.

No, you wouldn't. We would have had a gambling scandal. I'd tell you what, I've never carved that out as a little bailiwick of mine, so I would have had something to write about. We now come to the prediction that makes me want to walk into the ocean and never come back.

Meg Rowley, at least two Major League teams will announce new, controlling ownership. Yeah. 39%. I will now ask producer Shane to play the clip of Meg

proclaiming that we will know. We'll know. We'll know. We'll know. Hopefully that's specific and precise enough for us to be able to evaluate this. I think it is.

Yeah. I think we'll probably know it when we, like, yeah. You'll know. Okay. You'll know. Mm-hmm. We'll know.

The trouble, Trouble with a capital T, which rhymes with P, which stands for predictions, started when the White Sox announced a deal between owner, Jerry Reinsdorf and billionaire investor Justin Ishbia, to transfer shares over the next several years, with Isbia being able to hold a controlling stake as early as 2029. Now, based on the wording of the announcement and how the language of the prediction can be parsed as well as Meg's spelling out that the sale does not have to be completed by the deadline, it simply must be announced. I felt that this met the requirements in the evening that the news broke after reading through multiple reports and how it was being analyzed. I shared on social media that this counted towards this prediction being fulfilled. However, a fair number of listeners react to that. They expressed their disagreement. And I am willing to admit they do have a valid argument because technically the announcement wasn't about, quote unquote, new controlling ownership. It was, quote, a deal in place between two parties that builds a framework for said parties to have the

option to transfer controlling ownership. There is definitely a sequence of events where neither party exercises are their part in that deal, and Reinsdorf somehow remains owner of the White Sox at the spry young age of 98 years old. I think he'll find a way to do it when he's a ghost, you know, that possibility of this. My counter to this has been that the contract of this scope is not signed lightly. It does not happen unless both sides go into the deal fully intending to see this go through. The tone of the press release quotes from both sides of the deal, analysis of media members close to the relevant parties, all communicated that this was, for all intents and purposes,

a succession plan. Now, while all of this was going on, there were two other franchises at the epicenter of news and rumors regarding their sale, the rays, and the twins. Now, given the volume of noise and rumors related to these, my prayer, for very selfish reasons, was that these would both happen, and I do admit that I was a very, very selfish hope. But if both teams sold, the White Sox decision becomes moot, and I'm off the hook. But the Poled family found a new and novel way to disappoint me even further, pulling out of plans to sell their majority stake. And with the Ray's ownership groups actually selling very late in the situation, we are left in the situation where I am standing on principle and I am declaring this prediction true, plus 61 points. However, we have a clause, much like the potential sale of the White Sox.

Yeah, I am not deaf to the cries of those who deem this decision questionable, and as a result, we're going to have a bit of fun with it. I've already conversed with all four of our competitors, and the decree is this, in future years of this competition, should news come out that Ishbia and Reinsdorf have washed their hands of this whole affair, and no transfer of majority ownership takes place, Meg will lose the 61 points that she has earned today in that year's iteration of the preseason predictions game, which will be colossally funny if. it should happen. So, you know, let's turn that frown upside down, people. Yeah, fair enough. I like this condition very much. And I want to make clear to our listeners that I was very willing to submit to the judgment of both the listeners and also to my fellow contestants.

I did not cause a fuss about this. I wanted to do what everyone thought was fair because that seemed like it's in the spirit of the thing. Yeah, but in the end, as I said, as we've said many times before, this is all for fun. This is all for entertainment. There's zero stakes. Unlike the minor league for agent draft, which is life or death. I am going to want to sit in. Even if I don't say anything, I am going to want to sit in on the next one so I can just chime in and be like, uh, I want to tweak that one all a little bit. Uh, number 29, Michael Bellman, a division one college team will hit more home runs than the average MLB team 40%. In the college ranks, Georgia was the division one leader with 144 home runs. That was overtaken fairly easily by a league average of 188. 29 of the 30 MLB teams hit more than 144. Only the pirates hit less with 117. So they're way behind. the rest of the league, but that is minus 40.

I expected home runs to go up in college and down in the majors, and the reverse happened. Number 30, Ben Lindbergh. The Cleveland Guardians will finish outside the top 10 in Team Reliever WPA, or Team Relief Pitcher WPA, 40%. The Guardians finished third in the league, even with all of the Class A Ortiz-related nonsense happening throughout the second half of the season, they did fall to 10th. mid-season, but rebounded soon after and finished third. For a while there, it was looking like this would come true, and then Class A couldn't

pitch anymore, and somehow they got better. Isn't that always the way? This went south from a prediction perspective. But what I was getting at that they would go from best ever to less good, that happened, but not to the same extent. So there was regression, but it didn't bite them hard enough to keep them out of the top three or the playoffs, as it turned out. Yeah.

number 31. We stick with Ben Lindberg. This season will feature the most ever teams finishing at or above 500, both by the total teams and percentage of teams across the league, 42%. For multiple long stretches of the season, this was projected to happen by fan graphs as well as the league being on pace. But it all fell apart in the final three weeks of the season. Things did not go your way. And while it was still possible, it required multiple teams to either want, win out or close to it was not meant to be. In the end, 17 of the 30 teams won at least 81 games. You needed 19. This is false. So close. So close. Yeah. It was kind of chalky in the sense that it was actually predicted to come to pass when I made this prediction. But also not chocky in the sense that it would have been unprecedented. Never happened before. Yeah. But still hasn't. Number 32, Michael Bauman. Jamie Arnold will be one of the first two. picks in this year's MLB amateur draft, 43%. This prediction saw the most 50% ratings by listeners on 196.

196 people threw their hands up and they went, I don't know. People are like, we do not understand college baseball. Yeah, that was my reaction to this prediction. Yeah, the athletics selected Jamie with the 11th pick of the first round. This is false. So let me tell you what happened. I expected I thought it was a mortal lock

that the angels would pick a really polished fast-moving college arm number two overall and they did and they just went crazy

and picked like the seventh best one so they picked Tyler Bremner and they should have picked Jamie Arnold second overall but you know you can only control so much

you can't bet on the angels to do the predictable conventional thing I like how in the last few episode. You've talked about how silly the Rockies are and how important it is for there to be a weird team in the league. And the whole time I'm listening, I'm like, guys, the angels are right there. We still have the angels. Yeah. Ben Lindberg, number 33. Luis Robert Jr. and Sandy Elkantara

will be moved by the trade deadline and still lead their respective original teams in full season fan graphs wore 43%. This one fell at the first hurdle as neither of them were traded. That's an absurdly high. But even looking past that, neither of the two players led their team in Fangraphs War for the full season either. This could not have been more wrong. It was wrong on every possible count. There were so many different steps.

Let's find some points here. Ben Lindbergh. Oh, points. Number 34, a player will be ejected or fined for tapping their head. As if calling for a ball strike challenge, 44%. You, my friend, earned 56. points. On June 1st, the raise, Taylor Walls stepped out of the batters box visibly upset with a strike

call, and while re-entering the batters box, locked eyes with the umpire, while pretending to adjust his helmet and added the most obvious mock challenge signal, and then acted completely outraged that the umpire would see this for what it clearly was, and immediately ejected him, as all players had been warned, would be the consequences for such an act. all told given Taylor Walsh's personal views this was a lovely way to start Pride Month on my part and for Ben's part here in 56 points

so hey, nice this was the only time this happened this season the only time, yes there were a couple of close calls maybe or miscommunications but yeah this was the only confirmed case so just barely squeaked away with this one. And I believe this was the

first prediction that earned points this season. Okay. Number 35, Michael Bauman, sticking in some familiar territory, Luis Robert Jr. will earn more fan grafts war after being traded mid-season than before. As previously mentioned, Robert wasn't traded, so this had 47% odds. I did try and come up with a tortured hypothetical where he remained with the White Sox, but then had a negative fan graphs war, thus meaning his fan graphs war after being traded undefined is still more than a negative number. But I'm pretty sure every mathematician and programmer in a

thousand mile radius would attack me until I could be represented by a null variable for doing so. This is false. Negative 47. Bummer. Number 36, Meg Rally,

Nick Kurtz will earn more fan graphs war than Travis Bazzana. 40%. You earn 52 points. Just barely made it. Yeah, you know, just literally one rookie of the year. Well, Bazana never even made the majors.

And yet, this prediction still had some twists and turns because when Kurtz got called up on April 23rd, he got off to a slow start and was at negative point four fan grasps, meaning Travis Bazana was winning without being in the majors. But then his debut got sidelined by an oblique strain, and Nick Kurtz took his metamorphosis into Big Amish very seriously, going fully Super-Sayan on July 25th, with a four homer, six-hit night against the Astros,

firmly cementing this as one of the biggest poster dunks of a prediction since we started this exercise three years ago. 52 points to you, Meg. Thank you. On the shortlist for best rookie offensive season ever. He's up there. I had faith in him. I had faith in my boy.

Number 37. We're in the home stretch. Ben Clemens. Juan Soto will earn more fan grafts war than Aaron Judge. Ben, you spoke of this prediction as a litmus test for the listener, saying no projection system had Soto ahead of Judge, and thus, the listener vote should be under 50%. It was 49%. They got there. Yeah. Moral victory of you. Yeah, I mean, they're still fairly far, just to be clear. But, yeah, good work. The projection systems are designed by some pretty clever people, and they were correct. Judge came close to doubling Soto's fan graphs war. He finished with 10.1 to Soto's 5.5.4.

This is false. Number 38, Ben Lindberg. Neither of the teams playing home games in minor league parks, both Sacramento and Tampa Bay, will have the league's lowest average home attendance. 50%. We finally reach a 50% prediction at number 38. This is the latest we have ever reached 50% in our odds. According to the data on baseball reference, the two minor league parks in question still occupy. the bottom two ranks in attendance. Both averaged under 10,000 fans at home. Miami was next up at

14,282. However, I do want to note that the Marlins had nine home games with lower attendance than any of the games played by the race or athletics. The Marlins' low point was 5,894. The raise low point was 7,731. And coincidentally, the athletics lowest attended game was also 7,000. 1731, except it wasn't coincident at all because it was a game that they played against each other in Sacramento. So the lowest attended game in Steinbrenner Field, just slightly higher at 7,883. All right. I knew the Marlins had it in them, just not consistently enough. Yeah. Number 39, Ben Clemens, Patrick Corbyn, will throw at least 100 innings for the Texas Rangers, 51%. You earn 49 points. Good work, Patrick.

Yes, he earned 100 innings and lightning speed. This was one of the first predictions to earn points that required a full season metric to come true. So there wasn't much suspense, but the conversation around it was more fascinating. Meg, we need to do a tangent here. You went into a very deep analogy involving the Gilmore Girls, Tobin, and saying, get off my side immediately. Yep. And I know we're on our penultimate prediction, but I have an extremely burning question that I wanted to ask you.

Are you team Logan or team Jess? You're so Team Jess coded. I'm already mad. I am Team Jess. I am Team Jess. I think that look, here's the thing about it. Jess had potential to grow into a better person, and I'm skeptical of that capacity in Logan. Because, like, what incentive did he have to change?

No, Jess, Jess did grow into a better person, which this was the only thing that I thought was worthwhile about the revival, was that he was, that he was exactly the same kind of dip-shy teenager who grows into a cool adult after he moves to Philadelphia. But he was a dipsy teenager. Oh, I mean, to be clear, terrible teenager. And one where you're like, hey, buddy, stuff's happened to in your life. Like, I can imagine that some of this is like unprocessed whatever about your mom. But some of it is just your dipsy teenager. Not all of it, though.

Some of it. You go to talk like this the whole time. And he thinks he's the smartest person in the room. Fuck off, man. See, my argument on all of this is that it's actually a trick question and they both suck. Well, they all suck. Yeah, but that's the thing is that Rory and Paris's selection in men in both of their lives, all of these dudes need to get. I mean, Michael York, 35-year age gap, and, like, Doyle was, like, dating and Malcolm at Matt.

Michael York rules, first of all. Yeah, but Michael York's character in Gilman is very much. Did not, yeah. You know, the, here's the... She also divorced Doyle. the real take the real take and I say this is someone who

you know will rewatch the show the real person who sucks is Rory oh yeah yeah I don't think that's controversial at all I was like dreading watching her scenes by the end of the show relative to Laurelise

part of it too is that you know like you had the creator shift and so that was some of it but she does better in high school than she does in college particularly toward the end. But that show just got, like, increasingly ridiculous this time went off. So I'm a team Logan person. Really?

I'm shocked by that. Really? Oh, man. I, no, this is, so this is a problem is, like, I knew you were going to be, like, in the world, I'm a magnet for women who, one, when Harry Potter was not problematic, were really into being Ravenclaw. and women who are very militantly team Jess. I don't think I'm militant about it. I don't remember having super strong, like, house affiliation at the time.

But, I mean, probably if I had sat and thought about it for a while, I would have been like, yeah, that feels like a better fit. Gryffindor had too many adventures. Seems like I'm going to get hurt. The Gryffindores were annoying. You feel the need to return us to the rails? I'm so happy. Sorry, let me get this takeoff.

There are two correct answers, even as a team Logan person. One is Rory does not deserve love. And the other is, is Rory and Paris should have ended up together. Yeah, yeah. That was, you stole my point. You stole my point. I didn't steal it. I've been telling everybody who listened to Bory and Parrish should.

Okay, you stole the thing I had written down right here that I was told me. Okay. It doesn't have to write it down. It's committed to memory. Well, I'm very pleased with the discourse that I've created here. All right. I will say that I tracked what I wanted to be my Patrick Corbyn related prediction all season long. I didn't even remember what we were talking about.

Because that kind of came down to the wire two where I had wanted to make a prediction that Corbyn would lead the Rangers in innings pitched. And then I refrained because other Ben beat me to a Corbyn prediction. He came close. He finished second about. 17 innings behind Jacob de Grum. So for a guy who was picked up at the last second for break glass in case of emergency and you signed Patrick Corbyn, he ended up eating innings, as he always does. The most bold trick would have been.

Only one ranger's pitcher will throw more innings than Patrick Corbyn, and it'll be Jacob de Gras. Yeah, that would have done well. All right. Last one. Our final prediction, Michael Bauman, the Rockies representative in the all. star game will be someone other than Michael Toglia, Nolan Jones, or Ezekiel Tovar, and it was. 46 points for you, 54% odds. And that's the only one I got right, right? That is the only one you got right. The way you predicted that, didn't you just ask us to name Rockies? Yes. And then you

use them. And then Ben stole other Ben's name inexplicably. But yeah. Well, there are only so many Rockies anyone can name. That's so funny. That was part of it. I wanted to make sure that every everybody here could name a Rockies flyer. It was touch and go. Rockies, if you're listening, I would love to be your GM, by the way. You're more qualified than they're higher. Too late. They made a higher already. I'm just saying. If that doesn't take it.

Well, no, he's the, Ben, what did you call him? The depobo? Yeah. Well, depoto is the depobo. It was the depobo, right? Yeah. Since it's the one opportunity to have to insert this, Derek Falavi of the Twins' title is president of business and baseball operations, which makes him the Pobabo. Yeah. Oh, yeah.

Well, he was the Poboth. Poboth, yeah. Yeah, he brought up Poboth, and I was screaming. No, Pobabo. That's funnier. Pobababot. Poboth is better. But yeah, but Paube Poboth, there's an opening underneath him for a Ben G. Emmons.

It's true. I like that. Yeah. No, we're not allowed to have anyone else from Fangraphs go work for a team. I can't do another hiring cycle. Dear God. We stole one back with Brendan. I was like, ha, take that, teams.

What's our final score? Well, first, I want to give a shout out to our leaderboard, listener leaderboard. Benjamin Hamler is our winner with 5,910 points. Great. Or Ben's. Yes, Ben's triumphant. He wins swag from the effectively wild store. Someone should be reaching out to you about that.

Tyler Green, Alex Isherwood, T.J. Krafnik. Jordan S. Billy Dennis, John Cressuli, Daniel Swan, Turquoise, and Ryan G. Roundout our top 10. Thank you to the 1,556 people who submitted ballots. I want to top that next year. Obviously, always onward and upward. But now it is time for our final scores. In last place, Ben Lindberg, negative 278 points. I get my comeuppance. Wow. Can you say it again like four times? I can say it again. Ben Lindbergh, negative 278 points. How is it possible that I was the most chock and also the last place?

Yeah. Well, that's how it works, right? Oh, yeah, I guess that's true. You can not be bold and wrong. That's how that works. Third place, Michael Bowman, negative 253. Okay. I was like, I only got one right.

In second place, Ben Clements, negative 109. So your winner, Meg Raleigh with positive 73 points. That's got to be a first, right? No, Meg won with positive points the first year that we did this as well. I think the key... Megar and Otani. The key is to just not remember your predictions at all. because I never

commit them to memory you could tell me that they are anything and I would believe you but mostly I'm just like so impressed with what you guys have built out for this exercise

and all the people who contributed it's like a lot it's a great deal of fun so we appreciate everybody that's not nearly self-aggrandizing enough while I'm trying to draw a contrast between me

and my co-host people say that we agree too much and so now I want them to realize that I'm really something So gracious. Such a gracious winner. You know, so generous. With her praise.

And then there's Adrian Brody over here. Well, as always, I always say, I do very much appreciate the opportunity to run this for you. It's like being a year-long D&D DM with baseball and getting to have fun with this. And people on social media get really into it. And it just gives an extra fun zero-stakes thing to enjoy throughout the season. and have reason to tune in to other baseball games you wouldn't normally follow. I have some notes about this year's ballots. According to listeners, this was the boldest set of ballots in the exercise yet.

You averaged 34%, which was down 4% from last year's 37.75, and the first year's average was 37.98. So you're getting bolder. You're all getting bolder. Not me. I guess I'm getting less bold, but the rest of you were making up for me. for the second straight year the second boldest ballot won Meg's ballot was the second boldest out of everybody's and

I am here by announcing we are adding a rule next year. This was inspired by something that Bauman said last year in response to me where he said can I have the points that Ben Clemens lost on this because he made it to spite me

and I said no next year's contest each of you will get to pick one prediction from each of your fellow contestants to take the other side of the action on. Very good rule change. Very good. I do like that. So if you are going to look for something that you think people will grade as being

likely so that when it's wrong, you will get more points. But if more than one person picks the same prediction to take the other action on, it splits the amount of points they get from it as well. So we will be tracking that as well, and we'll get to have a surprise reveal at the end of next year as to who took each other's predictions in a bit of sassiness, I believe. Wait, who had the boldest ballot this year? The boldest ballot was Ben Clements, with a potential 691 points. So were all of us, like, were me, Meg, Bowman pretty close? Because I was listening to those, and I thought Bowman's are pretty bold.

You were all very close. So the way that it works is you look at how many points you could have earned if you got all 10 predictions right. Ben Clemens 691, Meg, 674, Bowman, 648, Ben Lindberg, 623. Oh. So that was actually in a pretty narrow band. Yeah. We're actually, everybody was pretty bold. Yes.

It was just that Ben didn't have any of the bottom like 10 or whatever. 12, yeah. I'm deciding whether I want to try to win next year or whether I want to get all 10 of my predictions. read before Ben has to speak. Just competing to the boldest. Yeah. I think adding the recognition of Mr. Chalk adds a lot to the results episode for sure. So we will keep that going for sure.

Yeah. So how many total correct predictions did we have? We had five or something? No, we had more than that. I believe we had eight. Let me take a look. We had Bowman had one. Ben Clemens had two.

Meg had four, and Ben Lindberg had one. So that is eight total. Yes. And I think in past it's been like 10 and 11. So that's still not too far off. Yeah. I wonder if you added up all of the listener percentages, though, what the expected number of correct predictions would be.

It would probably be way higher than the actuals. It'd be much, much, much higher. I can do that math, and I'll be sure to post it on the EW Stats Blue Sky account. Chris is learning the perils of doing a game like this in front of a bunch of stats people. Oh, I got that beat into me long ago, and as you said, he loves it. So, you know, I just accept you, I accept myself for what I am. And that's a stat nerd. Well, that puts a bow on the 2025 pre-season's predictions game.

Congratulations, everybody. You all participated. Well, one of us won. Yes. We all won in a way. Hopefully our listeners did as well. You didn't win. You didn't win it anyway.

There was no way in which you won. I won the joy that this brought me. All right, fine. You're allowed the joy. I will not begrudge you the joy. No, you're doing joy now. That's new. All right.

Well, this was fun. We'll do it again in March. Thanks, everyone. Thank you. All right. That will do it for today. as always for listening, and thanks to those of you who support Effectively Wild on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and signing up to pledge some

monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad-free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners. Mitch Goldich, Nick E.D., Ryan Pavlicek, Paul Hendrickson, and Eric Johnson. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include monthly bonus episodes, personalized messages, prioritized email answers, play off live streams, discounts on merch and ad-free fan graphs 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 through the Patreon site, and won't that make you feel special. If you're not, though, you can still contact us via email, send your questions, your comments, your intro and outro themes to podcast at

fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes in the podcast post at Fangraphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats recited today,

including a link to the site where you can register for Effectively Wild Secret Santa. Deadline is December 10th. Thanks to Shane McKean for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. which means we will talk to you then. Can you effectively sort through all of these stats and players in your head

isn't it while to repeat them to all of your indifferent family and friends Keep your company They'll keep your sane A long bike ride or a slow work day Making bin waxing about a playoff race I'll lose bats hide It's effectively wild

So stick around you'll be well beguiled it's effectively wild like Nolan Ryan was sometimes