Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2416: Oh Say Can You WBC

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about an “oppo taco” mention in Wake Up Dead Man, a run on free-agent relievers and the lack of late-inning options remaining on the market, when big free agents actually tend to sign, the Nationals’ youth movement in the front office and on the coaching staff, and the stacked USA WBC pitching staff, plus follow-ups on several subjects. Audio intro: Ian H., “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Liz Panella, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to Rian Johnson clip Link to MLB.com on Weaver Link to Williams message Link to FG post on Keller Link to Arizona gulls Link to MLBTR on May Link to Jimmy trailer Link to Buzzfeed post on Jimmy Link to remaining FA RP Link to Nats youth story Link to Nats youth story 2 Link to Nats youth tweet Link to MLBTR on DeBartolo Link to Butera quote Link to Nats ticket settlement Link to scouts lawsuit Link to ump age study Link to Sheehan research Link to Raleigh award tweet Link to USA WBC roster Link to 2023 roster Link to Trout WBC story Link to announced players post Link to Ben on WBC injuries Link to Ben on more WBCs Link to Grinch oral history Link to roast beast Link to MLBTR on Kim’s offer Link to “Big Smooth” article Link to Pomeranz post Link to Calcaterra on the HoF Link to ineligible list wiki  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Give a Gift Subscription  Email Us: [e-mail]  Effectively Wild Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  Apple Podcasts Feed   Spotify Feed  YouTube Playlist  Facebook Group  Bluesky Account  Twitter Account  Get Our Merch! var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source

With Ben Lindberg and McRowley, come for the ball, the banter's free. Baseball is a simulation. It's all just one big conversation. Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2416 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs Baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs,

And I am joined by Ben Lindberg of the ringer, Ben. How are you? I'm doing well, and I'm realizing that I omitted something from my previous banter about the baseball in Wake Up Dead Man. Oh. This is, again, non-spoilery. It's more of a content warning, really, if you're contemplating watching the movie. The phrase Apotaco does appear in Wake Up Dead Man. No.

No, we'll never escape Apotaco. Yep. Yeah, it was kind of a jump scare, frankly, to hear Aco Taco, where I was at least expecting it. Apotago. I wonder if it's intentional. It's in one of the times where there's just baseball in the background. I forget which of the scenes, but, you know, there's a baseball broadcast on and you hear a snippet of the commentary. And someone says Apo Taco very clearly.

And I do wonder whether it's an inside joke, whether it's a reference, because I know that Ryan Johnson did write and script some of the baseball commentary that you hear during those broadcast scenes. So it's not, even though it's real, okay, and again, I don't, I haven't seen it yet. This is, look, I made a promise to my mom. Oh, holy shit, that's a huge seagull. Sorry, I'm in. You're not in Arizona, clearly. I'm not in Arizona.

I'm up in Washington for the holidays. I'm in the bedroom of an Airbnb and a. Siegel the size of a freaking albatross just landed on the roof of the building that I can see out the window. Anyway, be well, Siegel, pal. I've made a promise to my mom that we will watch Wake Up Dead Man during the holiday week next week. And so I don't know anything, but it's real guys, right? It's like actual MLB footage. Yes, it's actual MLB footage, but at least some of the broadcast commentary that you hear while you're watching that is not real. And in fact, Joseph Gordon Levitt, who is a frequent collaborator with Ryan Johnson, appears in a lot of his movies

and does cameos in all of the Knives Out movies in some way, vocal audio cameos. He is a baseball broadcaster. He voices one of the baseball broadcasters. I don't think it was during the JGL scene that Apotako appeared, but I forget. But it is in there. And because Ryan Johnson wrote some of that. I just, I wonder, you know, he's a baseball fan. His wife's a baseball fan. Yeah, maybe he's been haunted. Yeah, he's listened to some baseball radio broadcasts and heard that over and over again and stuck it in Apotaco there. Didn't bother to define it for anyone who was watching the movie. I might not know what Apotaco meant. But yeah, just, just warning anyone who might be triggered by hearing that phrase, it's in there. I'm just, you know, this is one of the

things I appreciate about him as a filmmaker. I feel like he has respect for his audience, right? He's like, sure, Abu Taco, but I don't have to tell them what that means. They know. Or if they don't, they'll exhibit one of the manifestations of intellectual curiosity and they'll try to go find out. I'm surprised that they were able to clear broadcast footage, but opted not to just have the broadcast commentary. I also, and I have no evidence to this end, but I feel like, Like, you know, because some of it is Cubs, right? Mm-hmm. A lot of it is.

So I feel like Ryan Johnson and Boo could be like spiritual kindreds, you know? So I wonder if that is just like a vagary of rights this or that that I'm failing to appreciate. Like they were able to get the rights to the broadcast footage from the league, but maybe weren't able to clear the audio with Marquis or something. Yeah. Or he just wanted to script it himself for fun. Or some of it might be real. I didn't pay that close attention. It's just that my ears perked up when I heard Apotaco, unfortunately.

I've also just learned that sometimes there are seagulls in Arizona, especially during the winter when they're migrating. They migrate. There could have been a seagull sighting. I've never seen a seagull in Arizona. I have never, I'm not disputing that they could be there. I imagine they would, I mean, maybe like. over by like Tempe Town Lake or something.

But, you know, I've never seen a seagull in Arizona. Grackles. Yeah. But never a sea. The size of the seagull was really fun. I feel like I sound like Jimmy Stewart. The size of it, you'll never believe. It is the season for Jimmy after all.

Yes. But it was enormous, Ben. It was just a huge seagull. It was striking. I had to interrupt the pod to talk about it. And here we are talking about it still. Yeah. There's a Jimmy Stewart biopic.

coming up soon. Trailer just came out. Big news for you. Anyway, I just... Who's playing in Jimmy Stewart? It's a K.J. Appa. Not familiar. All right. Well, here we are doing movie talk on... Yeah. I see a buzzfeed headline. The internet has thoughts about KJ. Appa's voice in the Jimmy Stewart biopic. I don't know what the internet's thoughts were. Maybe they were, this is great. It sounds perfect. Probably not, though. But yeah, maybe they'll... Oh, from Riverdale. Ah, right, yes. Maybe they'll... That's weird casting. campaigned for for you to do some VO. You could do some pickups, some ADR on that.

The real answer, I've thought about this before, why, who could say? I think the answer to any Jimmy Stewart biopic is to have everyone in the Jimmy Stewart biopic be played by a person and then have Jimmy Stewart played by a Muppet. I think that would be, I think that would be perfect because then you can make the voice a little silly and people are like, that's fine he's being played by a Muppet I'm not saying Kermit to be clear a Kermit Jimmy Stewart portrayal

would not be credible to me it would be distracting because then you'd have to do Kermit voice just in case anyone was wondering my thoughts on potential Muppet casting for Jimmy Stewart look it's the holidays for being a little loose but like

you could make like a Jimmy Stewart shaped Muppet sort of like the news broadcaster why not like in that fame they're bringing back the Muppet show for a special so why not are they really I'm just breaking lots of news to you about upcoming film and TV projects yeah I've also learned about birds in Arizona I've just learned that it's pronounced KJ APA not APA so I'm correcting myself in real time here I'm heading off emails from KJ APA fans from bird watchers from ornithologists of all sorts yeah we're a self-correcting program here

Okay. So, some news, some banter bits of baseball here. There have been some signings. Nothing super exciting. More of the minor, modest variety. Lots of, lots of relievers. There's been a real run-on-relievers. Yeah, all the Caleb's off the board, basically. All the Calibs are spoken for. If you wanted a Caleb and you didn't get one, out of luck. Tough luck, buddy. You are not getting any other Caleb's, because those are. Caleb's, they work for other people now. Yes, and the shelves are bare of Caleb's. And really, there's not a lot of relief left on the market in terms of actual relievers.

So Luke Weaver signed with the Mets. And Brad Keller signed with the Phillies. So we got some NL East rearming here. Identical contracts, or at least the top level guarantee terms the same, two years, 22 million. Top number is the same, yeah. Yeah, lots of 11 million average annual values going around lately. We've talked about some.

So Weaver and Keller, Weaver, just the latest former Yankee to migrate to Queens. It's like Williams, Weaver, Clay Holmes over there, Soto, of course. Carlos Mendoza himself is a former bench coach of the Yankees. So for whatever reason, maybe it's like they're stress tested. And they're proven in New York, except I guess not in all of those cases or not sometimes with Williams. It seems like Williams. Borough dependent, apparently. Yeah, maybe.

There has been some, we talked about, like, no one ever says, can you make it in New York when you go to Queens? It's like Bronx and Yankees and Pinstrype specific. Some people have sent us examples of that same sentiment being expressed about the Mets. But I guess if you've played for the Yankees first, although there was, you know, with Williams, like, can he hack it here? because he started sort of poorly. And it seems like not a love lost, really, between Williams and Yankees fans. I think he had sort of a salty comments

when people were commenting on him going to the Mets. And he was like, really like you're all upset about that. Didn't seem like you were so happy to have me on your team. Anyway, the late-inning combo for the Mets will now be the recently departed late-inning combo for the Yankees. And they're both coming off kind of down-year. for them, and they both, I think, were dogged by pitch-tipping buzz, you know? There was supposedly Weaver was pitch-tipping too, maybe, and I've expressed my skepticism

about that before, but yeah, he didn't have quite as solid a season, so I guess the Mets are banking on bouncebacks from both of them. But interesting strategy, just to collect all the Yankees. I'm pretty sure we did a stat blast at some point about former teammates becoming teammates on a different team or the most members of a team to have previously played with a former team. I think that was a stat blast not too long ago. So save your staplast questions about that that might be prompted by this bit of banter. But yeah, lots of familiar faces across town. And always nice because you don't have to have a new living situation. If you've

purchased or rented or whatever, you know your routine, you got to have a new commute, got to figure out your way to a different borough in a different ballpark, but it's a little less disruptive. I love that you say it got to find his way to a new borough and ballpark because when Williams was on MLB network during winter meetings, he talked about like the change in his routine. And he was like, yeah, and I had to like figure out how to get to the ballpark, how to get my family to the ballpark. And I was like, shouldn't the Yankees have helped you with that? Yeah, right. Yeah, I was just put it into Google Maps or something. It's not, yeah, it's not that complicated but I mean you don't want to drive up there I mean you don't want to drive anywhere but

right I think that uh imagining a bounce back for both of those guys is completely reasonable and uh I think that as we've talked about before I never I never know how much to make of the the tipping stuff you know I just don't I never I never know but um if if a lot of or even some portion of their struggle was tipping related and they figured out how to deal with that, well, then okay, great. I think you got two good relievers at reasonable prices and you can kind of go from there. What's the rest of that bullpen? Like, they have a better mix of lefties and righties than I thought. I was like, aren't they light on lefties? And you know what? They're not. Oh, yeah, they have Dickie Love Lady. Dickie. But if you have not signed your reliever yet,

then Pickens are sort of slim. Good luck. Yeah. There's not a lot left. I'm looking at the Fangraph's depth charts relievers projections. And, yeah, the best ones left, at least by projected war. Hunter Harvey is at the top of the list. Pete Fairbanks, Sir Anthony Dominguez, Justin Wilson, Sean Newcomb, David Robertson, the other Rogers, Taylor Rogers, Tyler Kinley, Danny Coulomb. Yeah, yeah, it's not a ton.

So hopefully you've gotten your Christmas shopping done by now when it comes to the bullpen. Yeah, it's a little, I mean, I guess what, Pete Fairbanks is probably the best remaining. Yeah, maybe, Fairbanks, Dominguez, yeah, I don't know. I'd rather, well, which would you rather have? Like, Pete always looks so nervous. Yeah. And Sir Anthony is very stoic, but sometimes maybe should look more nervous than he does, just from a results perspective. So I can't decide who I'd rather there, but I think probably.

Pete, I was surprised when they declined that option, put it that way. Yeah. When the race declined that option, I was like, oh, buddy. I love how Andrew Chafin is just knocking around still. Man, good for that guy. Not a lot else going on, though. We know that the posting deadline for Moracami is coming up on Monday. And I wouldn't be surprised if we see some other significant signings pre-Christmas, you know,

whether it's Michael King or Frumber or even Tucker or someone. I assume you're hoping that either that happens very soon or not for a while. Yeah, my preference, if I were to lay these things out, I mean, I have long been an advocate of an enforced signing dead period around the holidays because these bozos just apparently don't love their families enough. I think that's the only reasonable conclusion to draw. And granted, not everyone is celebrating Christmas. So perhaps it doesn't hit the same way for them. And they don't have to write about it. You know, this is the thing.

It's like you do the work of signing a guy. Your job is done. You know, if you're a GM and you execute a free agent signing or a trade on Christmas Eve, Bing, bang, boom, you've done your business. You get to go enjoy your roast beast. You have no obligations after that. I guess there might be a physical, a press conference. Yeah, but you're not going to do the presser on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day or the day after Christmas.

You're doing that stuff. You're doing that stuff in the New Year in all likelihood. Maybe the week between Christmas and New Year's, but you're not doing that stuff on Christmas Day. So you get to go tuck into your roast beast. Meanwhile, some poor fan grass writer has to do the calculus of, is this deal significant enough that I might be obligated to write about it on Christmas you know and some poor signing editor

at Fangraphs namely me or Matt has to decide is this noteworthy enough that we have to disrupt somebody's holiday and for that reason I think we should have an enforced signing dead period from well really from like Christmas

Eve through January 1st people should get back to work on the second that's fine that's reasonable you know you've had time to digest your Christmas beast um you've put away all of the the um you know wrapping paper detritus that's been recycled your tree's probably still up because you get to have a little holly jolly through the new year in my opinion i know some people push it further than that i'm of the opinion we don't have a lot to talk about so we're just doing this today okay it's it's a it's basically our friday show

even though we're recording on thursday i am of the opinion and i'm curious your opinion of this because you listen to Christmas music in August. And so I am prepared for a truly unhinged take from you, Ben Lindberg. But I am of the opinion that you should feel free to leave your tree up through the new year. And then at your first weekend after the new year is when the tree does need to come down. So this year is sort of a raw deal because New Year's day is on a Thursday. So by my logic, trees got to come down the weekend. immediately after that. But if New Year's Day is on,

is on like, well, if it's on a Friday, you get grace until the following weekend because you have to recover from New Year's. You shouldn't have to put all the tree away, you know, before that recovery period has lapsed. And then you have to vacuum, you know. So it's like, it's not just putting away the tree. You got to put,

you got to put away all the stuff and then you got to clean up. The decorations, it's a whole production. It's a whole production, right? So you get until the weekend, immediately after new year's unless new year falls on a friday now you might say to me what's the difference between thursday and friday shouldn't i get until the following weekend and i'm here to say you know what that's fine i'm i'm not i'm not an absolutist on these things and i appreciate especially now that i'm up in washington when it gets dark at like 2 p.m that if you need something

to combat the big dark well you you go you go to town now you do need to make allowances for whether you have an artificial tree or a real tree and if that real tree is that real tree is getting crispy, then you need to prioritize fire safety over lights combating the big dark, but you can leave the rest of your decorations up. This has been my treatise. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Your treatis? There you go, buddy. There you go. Yeah, I'm not a hardliner on this, really. I don't know that there's a particular day, but I'm not someone who's, you know, leaving it up until March or something. I mean,

it's, you know, what you do behind closed doors inside your own house. it doesn't bother me much, but if I see it through the window and it's February or something, I might look askance at the procrastination, but I get the impulse because, yeah, it's a pain to to get rid of it or put it away. And also, it's sort of sad because I like the Christmas season and I like Christmas trees and I have a real one and it smells lovely and I will miss it when it's gone. But yes, it does become a fire hazard at a certain point and it becomes just a clear dead thing in your living room. And that's kind of depressing in a way. And also it just reminds you that Christmas is gone and you feel like you're clinging to it and you're trying to stretch it and make it

last. And it's over. And you do just have to accept that and move on. You know, you can keep Christmas in your heart year round. But you should perhaps not keep a Christmas tree in your living room year round. But I understand and sympathize with the impulse to just hold on to it a little longer because it's a pretty thing you know we we just have a pretty tree and the lights are on at night and uh i like it so i hate to lose it and this year we got jobs by the calendar because thanksgiving was so late and so if you are an adherent to the idea that you shouldn't put christmas stuff up until thanksgiving is over which i subscribe to i know some people have their christmas stuff out during thanksgiving which i think causes holiday confusion and then you

look at pictures and you're like one was this from couldn't couldn't rightly tell you because the trees in the picture both times you know you can't identify when the meal was because there's a tree it's insane so i will extend people an additional week in years like this where thanksgiving falls very late and then you don't have your stuff up but i don't know by mid-January i i'm like you can have lights on on the outside because again we are in the big dark a lot of places but i think that the christmas piece of it needs to be needs to be done but part of that is that I think you want to maintain novelty as a means of keeping it special. Yeah.

You know, it's like I said to my nieces at Disneyland, if we got to go every week, it wouldn't be special. And they looked at me like, no, I think we'd find a way to make it special. Let's test that contention. Yeah, we'll find out. I'm fine with finding out on that one, Auntie. Yeah, that's how I feel about immortality, which I've discussed on the podcast. Everyone's like, I wouldn't want to live that long. I'm like, you know what?

let's see what's no i that's bananas well it depends on your quality of life and the condition that you're in obviously i'm just saying i'm in i'm in no hurry to uh to test the contention that it's better to die than to live a really long time i'm just saying i feel like it's cope to some extent i feel like we tell ourselves that because we don't actually have the option of immortality yet yeah okay so back to baseball transactions after that little diversion yeah not much has happened. Dustin May signed with the Cardinals. I like Dustin May. I root for Dustin May. I kind of keep buying Dustin May, even though he hasn't been that good for a while. I feel for Dustin May because literally lettuce almost killed the man. It really almost killed him. It sounds flippant

and I'm not trying to be because it really was serious and life-threatening. It really did. I eat a lot of lettuce and I'm there for, but the grace of whatever, the wrong piece of lettuce getting lodged in my throat, go I. So I hope that he will harness his stuff because again, like he's had so many injuries, most of them non-letus-related. And just like every time it seems like,

okay, he's putting it together, then something else strikes. And he was so good with the Dodgers before the Tommy John because it was like, oh, he's got great stuff, but he can't miss bats. And then he figured out how to miss bats, but then he got hurt,

and then he came back, and he wasn't missing bats as much. or, you know, like the underlying numbers last year were just not that great. And the Dodgers ditched him at the time. It seemed like, wow, the Dodgers are actually trading a starting pitcher? Are you sure you want to do that? Because all of your other starters are hurt. And I guess they had confidence that by the time October rolled around, they wouldn't eat him.

And that turned out to be true. They had all of their better starters were healthy by that point. Yeah. And so the Red Sox acquired him, and he did not pitch well for them. So, I don't know, you know, given the way he pitched, it's almost surprising. He signed for $12.5 million in 2026, and then there's a mutual option after that. There's a buyout on the option. So I guess he's getting a guaranteed 13 mil for next year.

And again, I have to recalibrate, I guess, because we're looking at what these guys are getting coming off of not very productive. seasons, and there is some amount of projection and figuring that they'll be better, but that's far from a sure thing with Dustin May. So, I mean, maybe it's just like a one-win guy. That's kind of what they go for at this stage, at least when you're talking about a one-year short-term deal. So, yeah, maybe it's just that I have to, like, this is what the market is now, which is, I mean, it's nice, I guess, if guys are getting paid and teams are spending to some extent. But Yeah, I look at some of these deals and I think, what do you think you're going to get out of this guy? Who knows? I think that they would probably say, we don't really know, you know. But for that, for that little, it's worth trying to find out, you know, particularly when the upper end of the demonstrated, like, talent continuum is as high as Mays was. It's like, 13 million. You can find out for 13 million.

And he's 28. He just turned 28 in September. But he's coming off a year, I mean, by baseball reference war, he was significantly below replacement level. And even by FanGrafts War, he was below one win, right? Yeah, it wasn't even a one-one player. Yeah. And it's not like you can even look at his late season performance and say, okay, he was coming

around, he was figuring it out, he was putting it together. No. So you're hoping that he'll be the guy he was in 2023. And maybe he can be that. Or, you know, he doesn't even know. have to be quite that good. He could be the guy that he was in some years before that, but he's young enough, and yeah, maybe this stuff is still there enough that you can sort of buy into it, but it doesn't seem like it's the same. So I hope, I hope that they're right and

that, you know, they get a bargain because he's good again. But that seems to be the price of admission now for just like, he's not even coming off a good year. It's just like, maybe he'll be good because he was kind of good once. Yeah, I'm fulmixed by this market. it a little bit man like i on the one hand part of it is just that a lot of the the big guys haven't signed but like the big guys have mostly signed for more than we thought they would has evidenced by my contract or over underdraft results so far and there's been robust business in the in the sort of mid to lower tier of arms and they are making more than we thought but i don't know i'm my I still feel like we're experiencing some kind of pinch, feels frigid in a way, but I guess we'll just see what Kyle Tucker gets and go from there.

Yeah, there will be movement before the end of the year, I think, maybe much to your dismay. It doesn't need to be tonight. I'm going to the Seahawks game tonight. It doesn't need to be tonight. And Matt is a Rams fan, and he wants to watch that game. And we've agreed to not talk at all during that game for the purposes. or, you know, conviviality, congeniality, any of the various words you might throw around at, like, a debutante ball.

It's just better if we don't. Just better if we don't. Yeah. And usually, I know there is a perception these days that sometimes free agencies stretch way into the new year and even into spring training. And sometimes that's true. But I think that we tend to remember the times when that happened

and extrapolate it to the rest of the market. It usually doesn't happen. Those are still sort of the outliers. Joshian documented this earlier this month in his newsletter and kind of combated the perception. You know, because there was like the year when, well, Bryce Harper in 2018, there was like Alex Bregman last year. There was Mani Machado. It was, I think it was like that year that Bryce Harper and Mani Machado signed in February or whenever it was and it was just dragging on. And, you know, if we put aside, like, the COVID period and the lockout, like, there have been some odd off-season in the past several years.

But before that and after that, that is not the norm. That is unusual. And I think maybe we've kind of forgotten that because usually the big contracts, the guys who are getting $100 million deals. And Joe, he tallied this up. So since the 2018 to 19 off-season, there have been 40. $100 million contract signed in free agency, four of them in November, 25 of them in December. So that's the real hot spot.

Three in January, three in February, and six in March. And if you take out the COVID and lockout off-seasons, then it's even more skewed early. It's three in November, 19 in December, one in January, two in February, one in March. So it's really just a trickle after the New Year, typically. And even Scott Boris, because the perception is, oh, Boris will drag it out. And Joe looked into that. And that's not really typically true either. There are sometimes it's true.

And it's a big story when it's true. And so we kind of anchor on that. And we remember, oh, yeah, it drags on forever and Boris. But, no, it's a big story when that happens because it's actually fairly rare. Yeah. Yeah. So December's busy. You know, you have the winter meetings.

And this December has not been super busy. really, but there's still almost half of it left. It's the holiday period of it and maybe the slower time, but we'll see. I think more of those dominoes will fall. I think that they will too. And, you know, I think you're right that we just tend to, our memories sort of like overindex on the late ones because they are unusual. And what's been funny is that, you know, there have certainly been exceptions to this. Like, the reason Bregman is back on the market is that he didn't get the deal he wanted last year. But, you know, I don't know that we would look back to, like, the late signings of Harper

and Machado and be like, oh, my gosh, they didn't get what was coming to them. They signed huge contracts. They just came much later in the off season. I think you're right that we tend to sort of misremember the real cadence of it. And this one maybe strikes me as a little bit slower than in some recent years. But I think that my perception of that has less to do with the free agent signings and more to do with us not having had like big blockbuster trades she says knocking on wood that we don't get one today you know that's the other part of the the winter's activity that i think needs to be

included in our accounting of sort of how active and vibrant the market is because those trades can like trades can impact the cadence on free agent stuff too right if you think you're going to be able to fill a position of need not through the free agent market but because you're going to ship prospects out to someone and get a big leger back in return, well, that can, you know, if that doesn't materialize and then you have to pivot back to free agents,

like that can change how teams sort of approach it from a cadence perspective also. So, you know. Yeah. What has been busy, the Washington Nationals hiring news, there's been a lot of that, and they're all so young.

They're so young. This is such an incredible front office and field staff youth movements. I don't know that we've ever seen something exactly like this because Paul Toboni, some listeners said Poboni is perfectly fine. I think they've spoken on that if we want to dub him that. But Paul Toboni, the Pobo, is 35. Yeah. He's the old man in the front office.

Yeah. So they just hired Annie Colambi, who was a Philly's assistant GM and is now going to be the GM of the nationals under Toboni. Klombe is 31. They have hired, as their assistant GMs, Justin Horowitz and Devin Persson, who I believe are 34 and 31, respectively. So, again, like all of them, super young. Devin Pearson, that is, not person. They're ex-red Soxed Red Soxed people who came along with Toboni. So all the front office brain trusts there are in there early to mid-30.

30s, 35 max. And then, of course, Blake Butera is the manager. He's 33. Simon Matthews, pitching coach, 30. First base coach, Corey Ray, is 31. So the senior members here, they did retain the services of Mike DeBartolo, who was the assistant GM under Rizzo and then the interim GM. He is 41, ancient. And then they have also hired Michael Johns as their bench coach, another, an ex-rays guy.

He's 50, so he's the true graybeard here. But everyone else is essentially in their early 30s or 35 in Toboni's case. And that's not bad or good, but it's definitely different because Mike Rizzo just turned 65. So, I mean, some of these guys barely remember that the expos existed probably like these are some youngsters. These are some youngens. So, you know, there could be drawbacks to that. could be downsides to a lack of experience, though, you know, all of these people have, like, been in baseball for a while and have done jobs before. But there's also the advantage of,

well, if you want a fresh start, then I guess you're going to get one, or if you want new fresh thinking or ways of looking at the game, and if you want to turn the page on the Rizzo era, which had the reputation of, you know, being a bit more old school and, you know, sort of older methods of player evaluation based. It certainly sounds like there's a new philosophy in place here. I guess if you wanted to be cynical and observe that the learners are pretty cheap, that maybe if you're hiring people who are doing this job for the first time in many cases or getting a promotion to this title, don't have that experience, you know,

maybe you're saving a little bit on the 35-year-old's pobo or the 33-year-old. manager who's, you know, going to leap at that chance potentially. I don't really know the terms of these people's contracts or whether that was in any way a motivation. Just saying, you know, it's the learners. It's the nationals. You can't put it past them. But, you know, it sounds like that they've hired people who are respected and have worked for successful organizations and everything. So seems fine on the surface. But boy, they're so young. I also do not know the particulars of their deals. I would imagine that given that a lot of these folks are looking at title bumps that they're probably looking at compensation bumps along with it and you know leaving

orgs that are postseason contenders for one mid rebuild like you'd think that sure you want to be able to put your you know your fingerprints on it and you want a title bump but i would imagine that there's some sort of appreciation and understanding that you want you want it to be worthwhile right um i think that our ability, your ability, and my ability to comment on the particulars of any one of these hires is limited, just because we don't always know, like, the folks involved. And, you know, even when I do know the folks involved, I'm often, like, triangulating. I know them as, like, are they, you know, nice people to be around more than I necessary? And do they seem smart about baseball rather than their actual execution? But I think that it seems like they

you know they're trying to do something here they like are serious about improving and innovating within the confines of the organization and you know i think that that front office had talented people in it but was pretty comfortably in the bottom third at least that was the perception of them across the industry and i think that that has changed pretty materially with the rounds of hires that they've done since toboni came in so uh you know that that will assuming it's accurate still take time to to bear fruit in terms of the on-field performance of the team and the record and what have you but i think that the idea that that there hasn't been meaningful change here would be would be wrong so you know we'll see we'll see how they can how they

can do it and it's also interesting because it's like you know that grew previously before the new sort of to boney administration came in it had pretty severe limitations from a player dev perspective. Things weren't going great on that front. And, you know, they had important players who the sort of word on the street was the relationship had kind of soured between the front office and the player or even just the front office and their representation, which is interesting because a lot of those guys are Boris guys and Boris is like, you know, tight in with the learners. But, you know, I'll also be curious to see over the next couple of months, like, is there any shift and change

and sort of their plan of attack for trading guys and trying to jumpstart a rebuild or are they able to say like hey why don't you stick around with us a little bit and see you know if we can get something going so it's just going to be a really interesting situation

to watch if I were a nationals fan I'd be very encouraged by the direction that they've taken and you know I hope that they're able to to make something sort of happen sooner than later because they've just had to go through so many of these and you know there's been improvement but they've been sort of like a you know like a dark horse wild card contender pick for a lot of people preseason over the last

couple of years just because of the progress individual players have made at the big league level and it's never really come together you know it's like are we just going to do another one of these you know are they going to get anything out of this group before abrams reached this free agency and all of those guys they got back who were doing well and we're supposed to be be the next great group or a lot of them are doing well, but they're getting older. So anyway, it's just going to be a fascinating situation to observe and yeah. Yeah, someone asked Buter about the age of his staff and he said, that wasn't on purpose. We weren't trying to get a young staff.

Someone made a joke like, did you tell Paul when you got hired that the staff has to be under 40 years old? You might not believe me, but no. And then he did hire a 50-year-old. Also, just as an aside, like, first of all, what the hell else are they going to say? I remember talking to my mom one time My mom is a school And employment law lawyer And she's like, you know

People, employers who do Nasty shit with their employees Excuse me I swear Like they try to be kind of shifty about it You know, if what they're doing is engaging In like discriminatory behavior They try to be shifty about it in their emails So that like if they're ever to post

Or their emails are part of discovery They aren't like on record saying something really horrible Age is the one place where people are really dumb about this stuff And they'll just be like, no, he's too old. And it's like, well, you are not allowed to discriminate on the basis of age. So watch out. Yeah, it's always a funny thing in pro sports because, like, it is a relevant characteristic for athletes. But, you know, we've seen over the last several years, like, people bringing age discrimination suits against teams, against the league.

And I think people are a little loosey-goosey with it, you know, just because someone's over the age of 40 doesn't mean they can't be, like, a valuable baseball executive. Yeah, sure. Yeah. And there are cases about this. Of course, there were scouts who alleged age discrimination. There was even, there was, I think this was settled, but there was a case against the nationals for age-based discrimination among ticket sales because there was like a special promotion, I think. It was like you get a millennial discount or young professional discount or something if you were under 40 when you bought a ticket or something like that. I think they got sued over that. So, yeah, you have to be careful about that sort of thing. And, you know, I guess there are times when it can be beneficial to be young, and then there are times when it can backfire. And I always think it's interesting, the politics of hiring, this doesn't apply only to baseball, but someone like Mike Di Bartolo, who I don't know, but, you know, he's been with the nationals for a long time and was like Rizzo's right-hand man, and then was the one who was in charge for a while after Rizzo. got very summarily dismissed and like, you know, was running their draft and stuff, I guess, for a while there.

And then usually when that person gets passed over for the hiring of the top job, they move on because they just feel like, well, I hit the ceiling here, I guess, and they ultimately didn't want me. And maybe there's a little bad blood about that or something. But he seems to have stayed. And it works both ways where maybe that person can find. feel bad about the way they played out and want a fresh start somewhere else where they might tell themselves that they'll be more highly valued or, you know, the new people come in and they

don't want that person who was there before in a leadership position because they sort of want to start fresh. But it can be useful to have someone like that around just for the institutional knowledge and memory. Absolutely. Yeah, like even if, even if you want to do everything differently and, you know, build your own database or whatever it is. Right. Still, just to, like, know, like, here's where we keep all this stuff, you know. Like, here's the person you call when you need that thing done. Yeah, exactly.

Right. Yeah. You know, not that you want to, like, keep on an assistant GM just to be kind of a glorified gopher or something. Like, yeah, here's where you find that folder or whatever. Right. You know, still, it's helpful to know, or even just like, how did you do things before and and what worked and what didn't, and here's what we can learn from that so that we can.

You can't really plan to do things differently unless you know how they were done before exactly. So I think that's helpful. And just like everyone throughout your organization, you're not going to fire everyone, you know, at the same time. And so, yes, you bring in your own people, but they're inevitably going to be some holdovers. And so it's helpful to have a holdover.

And again, I know nothing about Di Bartolo for all. I know he might be perfectly happy just being an AGM. Maybe he doesn't want to have the responsibility and the pressure of being a pobo. Who knows? You know, he did that job for a while. I got a bunch of Yahoo's on a podcast trying to fit your name into your title. Yeah, I guess he was under consideration for the top job, too. So I don't know that he withdrew his name from consideration or was just like, no, I don't want that, don't want that pressure.

But still, like, you know, maybe it works out for both sides. Or maybe it's temporary and transitional and ultimately he moves on. But, yeah. I think that we tend to, and I hope that you and I don't do this, because we are perfect angels. But when you have organizations in the game that exhibit a good amount of dysfunction that have a long track record of failure, you know, I think that we can assume that everyone affiliated with the organization is sort of not able to, isn't up to snuff, right? It's invariably not true, right? there are smart people who work for every team in baseball.

There are smart people at every team who would be, you know, sort of a value added higher at other clubs, including clubs that maybe are at a very different point on the wind curve than the dysfunctional organization they work for. It's not like everyone who works for the Rockies isn't a good baseball sport. There are plenty of smart people for every team. And, you know, I always feel badly for those people

because they kind of get ragged on, and it's like, no, they're there, you know. You're right that when a new, when a new sort of head comes in, they bring in their own people and invariably there's like a reasonable anxiety on the part of the people who work for a team about how much turnover there's going to be. But very rarely did they fully clean house or need to, you know, and it's not to your point just because like, oh, well, he knows, you know, what the password is on that server. You know, they have important institutional knowledge and are able to provide insight on how the club operated before, what parts of it worked and what parts of it didn't, what's been tried with a particular player versus not. And so, you know, I think that there's a lot to be said for keeping those folks around. And I think one of the big projects of new regimes, administrations, what have you, is to do the talent identification and say, yeah, we should hold on to that gal. we should keep that guy, you know, they have, they have smart stuff to say, an interesting expertise to bring to bear. And, you know, how can we, you know, sometimes when I talk to people

who have, who have changed teams, it's like, oh, the infrastructure was so much better. The systems I had access to were so much, were so much better. This was architected in a more sort of interesting way, in a way that was more useful to me. And so I also think that part of what they will try to do is say like what you know if we took that person and all that they already have in terms of expertise and we were able to give them more useful tools like what could we get out of them and I think that's part of their process too of not and I'm not trying to speak to any particular conversations that the gnats have had but I think that every time you see a GM change like this is part of what they're doing in that first couple of months is like who are we keeping

who are we letting go? What are we trying to bring to bear to get more out of this group? And so yeah, and don't discriminate based on age. I want to make clear that we are opposed to age discrimination as a podcast. You might have an intention to let go of someone or replace someone, but then you come in

and you have a meeting and it turns out you get along really well and you actually like their insight. And so you decide, oh, this person could be helpful to me. And yeah, that's the thing with like the age discrimination stuff and scouts, well, scouting has changed a ton over the past few decades, of course, and I think there's absolutely a bias, and you might think that because someone started scouting

in a certain time, they might not be receptive to new methods, or they might be stuck in their ways or something, and if you're coming to that conclusion solely based on the age of the person, well, that certainly seems like discrimination. There are times where that's true, of course, Like you learn your craft in one era, and then you kind of don't do the continuing education and update how that works. And then if you get dismissed, it's not necessarily because of your age, but because you just like didn't change with the times.

I mean, it could be either. It's definitely the former sometimes. With umpires, we saw that on the whole, younger umpires coming into the league have tended to be, quote unquote, better as far as conforming to. the rulebook zone more just because they came up in an era post-Quest-tech, post-zone evaluation system where they were getting graded based on the rulebook zone and they were getting that feedback, whereas you still had some long-tenured umpires who kind of were used to the more Wild West days, you know, cowboy Joe West days where you could kind of do your own thing and have your own zone and it varied very much because there was no real objective standard that you

were getting based on. And so the younger umpires would come up and they would grade out better. And it wasn't because they were young exactly. I mean, maybe in some cases, but it wasn't necessarily because of like visual acuity or mobility or anything like that. And, you know, that doesn't necessarily get worse with age for umpires anyway. But just it was because they came up in a different era and were kind of conditioned differently and got different forms of feedback and maybe, you know, weren't sort of stuck with the way that they were doing it before. So sometimes that could happen. You're not kind of like imprinted on a certain way of operating that is no longer the current or best way.

But then there are other times when you feel like you know everything and there are things you're missing and actually experience can be really useful sometimes and just having gone through things and seen things and what worked and what didn't and seen things change over time. just like having someone who could be that sort of sounding board can be really valuable. So yeah, don't don't make decisions based solely on age is the takeaway. And often you tend to hire within your cohort kind of. Right. So it could be an old boys club or it could be a young boys club or ideally not just a boys club, but it's still baseball. So often it is. But, but you know, you come up with your peers and you then tend to hire them if you get a job, right? Like, I mean, you might bring your, your mentor over or something, but often you're thinking about who are my contacts. And well, your contacts tend to be the people

who you kind of came up with and associated with and socialized with and just had more common ground with because you were the same age or you were breaking in around the same time. And so, yeah, it tends to be if you're a young guy, then maybe you will also hire other young people because that's just who you know. And so that's how it often works in hiring, as they say, there is kind of a cliche. It's who you know, right? So, yeah, you know, I hope it works because they've had it rough lately.

And Nax fans have, too. It's been about as bad for the Nats as any other team but the Rockies. So, again, probably can't be worse. I mean, it does, it does, I will say it does help that they won that World Series, though. It does. You know, they did win that World Series, though. Yes. Yeah.

And it's not ancient history either. Yeah. It was not. It's gone about as badly as it conceivably can post-world series, but they do still have that flag flying forever. I also think, though, that what do you? Okay. I have not studied this question to the point of having a definitive answer. But I think that there are a World Series that we really remember and ones we super don't.

And I would submit that that Nat's World Series is in danger of falling into the don't remember category for some people just because people don't remember pre-pendemic stuff very well. People are just like, remember a time before that. And I'm like, I don't even know how old I am. So no, I can't remember my own age. I mean, I can now because I'm just like staring down 40 in six months. The actual series was pretty memorable. I mean, seven games. It was a great series.

It had the weird like road team keeps winning. thing, and then, you know, baby shark, I prefer to forget baby shark. Remember when they were doing the, they were doing the car thing in the dugout, the Nats were? They were doing the like, vurm-vrum thing? Yeah, yeah. Remember that? I do. And, you know, just the Howie Kendrick Homer that will live on.

And sort of slaying the big bad Astros and everything. Yeah. Yeah, that's a memorable series. So that granky appearance. Also, wanted to note another bit of news that we've gotten actually kind of an avalan. of news lately. We have WBC roster updates. Yeah.

And it turns out that the USWBC team actually has a pitching staff. It has some pitching, Ben. It has some pitching. Really impressive pitching staff. Because you start at the top with the two best pitchers in baseball, I would say. Paul Skeens and Terrick Scouble, they will be anchoring that staff. And then Joe Ryan, you have Joe Ryan as your number three. And then Noel McLean's on the staff.

Clay Holmes. You don't even need like a five-man rotation exactly in the WBC. But you start with Skeen, Scoobel, Ryan, and then McLean, Holmes, Mason Miller is on this squad. Yeah. David Bednar was just announced. And that's to go along with the great position players, which that's not new, really, but you do have Cal Raleigh, Will Smith. Who's the backup catcher there? Man, I mean, that's two first stringers. That's two great catchers. You have Gunner Henderson and Bobby Witt, Jr., So I guess one of them plays third, presumably. Yeah. You have Bryce Terang.

Your outfield is Aaron, Judge, Corbyn, Carol, and PCA. Yeah. You have Kyle Swarber as your DH. I mean, this is dream team territory now. It is. It's like sure a squad. Yeah. And this is pretty exciting because the U.S. roster in the 2023 WBC.

I'm looking back at the pitching staff. So David Bednar is the constant. he was there too. But the starters on the 2023 team were like Merrill Kelly, Miles Michaelis, old Adam Wainwright, Lance Lynn, Kyle Freeland. I mean, you know, these were the best and brightest that we were setting. And then, you know, a bunch of like Jason Adam and Daniel Bard, Kendall Graveman, Aaron Loop was on that team. Adam Ottavino, Ryan Presley, Nick Martinez, Brady Singer, Devin Williams was on that team. So some pretty good relievers, but really, the starters, like, who's the ace of that team?

Merrill Kelly? Like, it was not great. So now, ooh, man, I mean, that I think is a reflection of the fact that the WBC really matters to players now. I mean, they're really into it. It was huge in 2023, and this was something that we talked about at the time and speculated about, like, wow, this was a sensation. This was the breakout moment for this event. Now will we see pitchers wanting to sign up for this squad? Side note, sort of sad that the former captain, Mike Trout, like, might not make the team?

I mean, I get it. I get why. I mean, where is he going to play? He's not going to start over any of the guys I just mentioned, really. But you almost kind of want him there just like for old time's sake. But, you know, former captain and star on that roster. And now it's kind of like still what's. his state going to be physically and Ken, even though the angels are saying he might place an

actual outfield or even center again, okay, good luck with that. But anyway, Trout aside, we wondered whether we would see more pitchers want to get in on this. And yeah, clearly yes. I mean, last time around, I remember Clayton Kershaw wanted to, but wasn't allowed to, right, for insurance reasons or something. But Skeens and Scoobel and Ryan, man, I mean, this is a whole new kind of team. Obviously, we will have to see which of them actually ends up doing it because guys get hurt, you know, maybe your stuff changes in terms of your team's willingness to let you participate, the ramp up, et cetera. But I do think that the excitement around the event has really changed. And I do want to like make sure we're differentiating. I think that like team EOSA

was sort of late to the game on this. Like the WBC has been a big deal in other kind of trees, I think, for longer than even that most recent one. But it does feel like something shifted, and yeah, it's super exciting. It's a really fun squad. You know, I think, you know, my expectations of what they could achieve are meaningfully different now than they were even a couple of weeks ago because, yeah, the pitching was just lagging so far behind what they were able to do on offense. Yeah.

So, yeah. Yeah. And I almost, yeah, I wonder also whether it's just, uh, maybe the, the perception that the WBC caused injuries or increased injury risk, which I always thought was fairly flimsy. Yeah. Maybe that has receded to, I remember, writing about, there's no real actual evidence that this is true.

It's just that a lot of guys get hurt in spring training, whether you're playing in the WBC or not. So maybe that, that there were not a ton of catastrophic injuries last time around, perhaps that helped. I almost, maybe this sounds American exception. or overconfident or something. But will this team be too good? Like, I mean, I was... Relax.

I know. Look, there's so much global game, international talent, but you still have more American players than you have anywhere else, even with the incredible wealth of talent from the Dominican and Japan and Venezuela and everywhere else. And so if you do have the absolute best players from every country, the eligible players play, then the American team is still probably going to be the best. I'm not suggesting that it's, you know, it's not like an actual old school dream team scenario

where the other teams really were outclassed there for a while. But that was one thing I think that made the 2023 tournament fun is that there were a lot of teams that had a legitimate shot to win and it was close. And I think it still should be close and competitive. but there is a scenario where you just have like scoble and skeins going out there every time and just dominating and maybe it's like a little less fun in a way like just I want the teams you know if they're more evenly matched I think that's for the best too because I'm not out here like you know Mr. Ra Ra like will beat all the other countries I just I kind of want to see good baseball so yeah I almost don't want any one team to be too stacked. maybe so right but yeah that's a very different if that even is a problem a very different problem than the yeah merrill kelly is the best we can muster here hey that's like pretty rude to merrill kelly who is a perfectly good pitcher he's still a pretty good pitcher i don't know that he can make

this team anymore it's such a weird thing because like the last wbc was so fun and like this this wbc will take place in like a broader geopolitical context that is yeah well not fun doesn't quite do it justice now does it Ben. So, you know, I'm not in a particularly patriotic mood but I do think it's a very cool competition and

I think having you know every team sort of be able to bring real standout talent is great and so that part of it is fun even as the rest. Yeah. Yeah, I forgot a few

other people who I think have committed I think Griffin Jacks and Matthew Boyd, Garrett Whitlock, Garrett Clevenger. Well, those were the headliners I named, but you can still make this team without being a Cy Young Award winner is the point. But still, it's really a different kind of caliber of team. And yes, that is my concern as well. I'm really looking forward to this. I think they should do this even more often, though again, as you said, every day is. Disney, that's not quite as exciting as going once in a while. If you had the WBC every year,

maybe it wouldn't be quite as exciting. But then again, if the alternative is spring training and grapefruit and cactus league, I'd still take it. But I get it to a whole production. There are a lot of logistics and everything. I still think we're doing it not often enough, you know, just because it was so exciting. And now we've, we've had three years since the last. It feels like that's too much. I know that, you know, there's like Olympics and other international competitions. But even the Olympics, you have some Olympics every two years. Right. Yeah, I think we should have it even more, maybe.

But happening in this environment, I do worry that the good vibes of the 2023 competition will get trampled by Trump, that Trump will trump all over this because that's kind of what he does with every international sporting competition. He is a very sports forward president. And we saw what happened with the four nations face off, not the four nations puck drop. the Four Nations face off. There as many people have written in to say, you can say puck drop. I feel so validated by all of our, I was like, don't they call it a.

Yes, you can call it. There's the ceremonial puck drop. There's also just the puck drop, which is, but you can also say opening face off. That's also acceptable. Anyway, we got many emails. Thanks for confirming that everyone. Yes, thank you.

But yeah, we saw what happened with the Four Nation faceoff and the Ryder Cup and the World Cup. And it's just unrelenting. and the jingoism and just, you know, the self-aggrandization and all of that. And it also, frankly, if it were just Trump inserting himself into all of these things, that would be one thing. But it is often just the sort of obsequiousness of the participants in those competitions that makes them a little less palatable, you know,

because it's not just him trying to make it about him, but it is like coaches and players very much playing into making it about him. And, you know, given their political loyalties in many cases, that's not surprising. But it just becomes when everything else is about Trump, you want, you know, forget the stick to sports. Like, you know, keep politics out of sports. Good luck because Trump is inserting himself into sports constantly. So if this becomes about that and, yeah, you have this whole like, you know, standoff with Venezuela and blockade and just all the ridiculous things that we're doing. And just like if that, you know, not that that should be ignored, but if the WBC becomes about that and about him, which frankly, it would be an upset if it didn't at this point, then we will have to reckon with that as well.

Yeah. And, you know, the things that he says about the participants from other countries, the potential for, you know, them to engage in, like, horrible, like, immigration enforcement activities around the. events. Like, there are a lot of ways that this can go fast in a bad direction. And I think being clear right about that going in is important, even as like the rosters themselves seem like they're really fun and exciting. Like, this is the, you know, the reality that this guy is keen on creating. So we can't ignore that piece of it. But the baseball could be good. So there's that. The baseball team sure is good anyway. Well, and I, you know, I, I know that asking for pro athletes to say like thoughtful and conscientious things about politics and immigration might be a fool's errand setting myself up for disappointment and failure but like a lot of

the folks who are participating in the wBC for team USA will have teammates from their you know major league squads um competing on other teams and I think it's an opportunity for someone to to point out. Like, there's a lot of really good and talented baseball players here and they make this competition better and they make the game better overall. So maybe everybody could prioritize that in their commentary. That would be great. I just saw that Mariners PR announced or publicized that Cal Rally was named Breakout Star of the Year by Sports Illustrated, adding to his list of awards that he is won that aren't the MVP. And the number one reply from some salty Mariners Finn, I assume, is Cal winning every award but the MVP is very telling that the writers are biased

and awful judges of what the MVP really means. Actually, he wrote awful judge. Probably not a play on words, but Judge did win it. But that, I think, is the wrong takeaway. I think the takeaway is that Cal should win every award but the MVP. You know, he had a case for MVP, but I do think judges was probably on-balance stronger. But my point was that Cal should win, like all the other awards, that unfortunately, for him mean less to people, but still, he was the player of the year. He was the outstanding

player, and he's collected a lot of those awards that, you know, no one has ever heard of. But still, he's the deserving winner. And breakout star of the year, I am not going to do anything pedantic about breakout because, well, first of all, they included breakout star, which I think is, that's nice. I think he was. And also, I'm okay with calling the season that he had a breakout season, even though he was already a really good player, he still had a breakout. I think he can have multiple breakouts when you go from five wins to nine wins or whatever and, you know, 34 homers to 60 homers. Yeah, you had a breakout. You can. It's just that the bar has to be really high. If you're predicting a breakout for a guy who is already a four or five win player, then he

better be like a MVP candidate. He better be a nine-win player. And Cal was. So, yeah, perfectly fine. Yeah. Okay. And a few other follow-ups here to things that we've discussed recently. We mentioned Hassan Kim's one year, $20 million deal. And that was one of the things that made me do a double-take. Wow, 20 million coming off a rough year. And we talked about why it made sense. And there weren't many alternatives out there. And then it was subsequently reported, I believe, by Ken Rosenthal with a classic we tried that the A's offered Hassan Kim 48 million. They offered him a four-year $48 million deal. So assuming that that's true and was a legitimate offer,

I think Passon had reported that Kim had declined multi-year offers, but 48, I mean, that's a lot. So either he really did not want to play for the A's, which, you know, understandable, or he just wanted to, yeah, bet on himself and he thought, I'll take this pillow contract and it'll be a very soft, comfortable, $20 million pillow, and then I'll have a good year, and then I can make way more, but yes, that's nothing to sneeze at. Four years, 48, I mean, you turn down more than double the total guaranteed dollars.

That's a lot, but it does validate that this wasn't some sort of outlier offer, evidently. Like, there were other, there was big money out there for him. and evidently a belief that he really will bounce back all the way. Yeah, I think that that's right. I think that there is appetite for his services. And they were definitely paying an A's premium. I will say that, like, that's what they're going to have to do, you know? And they'll have to overpay less in theory as time goes on if they get the big overpays done early.

Does that make sense right? Because part of what guys are deciding is like, is this is a really? real is this a going concern you know yeah yeah plus once they i imagine that their ability to sign guys might also improve once they actually break ground on their ballpark yeah which they still haven't done in a real way yeah in a non-seremonial puck drop kind of way yes exactly yeah i learned from the discord group and raymond chen i believe that the home team always wins the ceremonial puck drop, evidently. That's kind of the tradition that the home team wins, the ceremonial one.

And one of our emails pointed out, and I think this was sort of implied in some of our commentary, but like, when you're doing the puck drop, when you're doing the tip-off, like, you're determining possession with that action. Yeah. But we know who's on offense and defense in baseball. And this is like a maybe another wrinkle and another. sort of argument or example in my argument that like there isn't as much uniformity in this as we maybe were assuming because like in football you kick off now you can do things as the

return team that will cause the possession to change right like you could you could turn the ball over and then the the team that would have been on defense first will suddenly be on offense but you you have a sense of possession there too So I think that there's just like a beautiful, diverse ecosystem of approaches to these things, and we should let it stand, man. Sure, yeah. And there's a beautiful diverse ecosystem of nicknames. We got some nickname responses when we talked about that last time and what the value of a nickname is to a player or to a team. And I was saying that there's got to be some correlation between nickname coolness and just player and personality and performance.

coolness and that maybe if you have a cool nickname it's because you are already cool and thus the nickname would not confer that much of an extra advantage on you but some people did point out exceptions to that and guys who have great nicknames and aren't maybe actually that great for example John Kenzie Noel big Christmas right great nickname not not great to player to this point and and password we talked about password right the other day right so right you know he was has been a decent prospect yostensen garcia but uh would we even know his name if not for the nickname maybe not i mean maybe again like maybe we'd just be aware that he had a really hard to spell or pronounce name but and that's how he ended up with his nickname of course but yeah to this point the

nickname awareness and coolness outstrips his accomplishments as a baseball player. And we got another nomination there from Sam, the nickname Coolness versus Personal Coolness Gap. Drew Pomeranz has to be the most boring, mediocre player with the coolest nickname. What on earth did this guy do to deserve being called Big Smooth? Sincerely, Sam, a Red Sox fan who's still upset about that trade and thinks Anderson Espinoza could have been somebody. Drew Pomeran's just signed, by the way, right, with the Angels. Anyway, his nickname is Big Smooth, and I tried to figure out why that was. And I think this was one of the ones he used this in Players Weekend in, like, 2017.

But it seems like it was a real nickname. Pomerant said at the time, I'm quoting from MLV.com. I didn't even ask or think about the name I would use. It was going to be Big Smooth, no avoiding that one. No one would let me get away with not putting it on the uniform. The origin goes back to last season when, Comerens was traded to Boston. Teammates, David Price and Rick Porcelo worked together to come up with the nickname.

That is his nickname. No one made it up, Chris Young said. Well, every, yeah, that's, I mean, yeah, that seems to contradict both the existence of nicknames and also the preceding sentence, which said that David Price and Rick Porcelo worked together to come up with it. I guess, I made it up. Yeah, maybe what he meant is that no one made it up for players weekend specifically. Oh, okay. Yeah, that makes sense. That makes sense.

Okay, okay. Okay. Okay. And he said that's what everyone in the clubhouse calls him. Gotcha, gotcha. Andrew Benintendi said it's one of his favorite nicknames on the team. It is funny. I think it has to do with the way he pitches and really taking his time, Benintendi said. I call him Drew, but a lot of guys call him Big Smooth. So I guess that's why he was Big Smooth. Although, yeah, there are a lot of kind of not real, like illegitimate nicknames on baseball reference.

Like we were talking about the kid for Mike Tram. out and the way that you say that is horrifying i don't know how would one say it i i mean i don't know but any other way but the way that you're doing well no one ever actually does say it so we'll never have to find out because it's not really his nickname but i got a message from mat true blood who who said that that kid sorry i said again comes from the biggest pool of terrible baseball reference nicknames things that were on the back of guys players weekend jerseys in 2018 to 2019 so many guys have nicknames listed that were really just honoring their mother or were weird in jokes or something it's a disaster so yeah maybe there has to be a nickname call of some sort like yeah are you actually called that or did you make it up as a on a lark once i can't believe that the guardians cut jenkinsi noel the week before christmas yeah it's just you fade him yeah brutal you know you know what might have prevented that what a transaction freeze oh it's true Yeah. And it's even like you could, you could market it because it's, you know, it's freezing out. You could like have a cool little graphic of the ice and the snow and just call it the transaction freeze.

It just, it just needs to be, first of all, we would get like a wild flurry of activity, a flurry of activity like the day before because people would want to get their business done before the holiday. You know, it's like when people send me emails and freelance pitches at 5 p.m. on a Friday. And I'm like, well, what am I supposed to do with this? you can schedule emails you guys you're allowed to schedule them i know you need to get it off your brain yeah for you go into the weekend i respect that i think that's normal i don't need to pitch if i p.m on friday come on now come on now anyway there would be this flurry of activity it would be very exciting so that would be fun and then everyone could rest you know they could rest and enjoy their christmas beast you say beast so as not to to specify beef because it could be any creature that someone might be eating because in in holly grinch stole christmas don't they have a christmas beast they have their roast beast it's not roast

they don't specify yeah no they see i'm pretty sure it's roast beast i believe you unless you've mishearing it all these years i haven't rewashed this year completely possible to be clear so so possible that i have been now i have to google no i think you're right i think you're right i think You're right. It's the roast beast. Yeah. Beast. Grinch.

Yeah. Okay. Oh, thank. Yes. It's their, it's like they're, the center piece of their meal. They're not having a turkey because no one has told the who's about brining. Right. Exactly.

You know? Although I think it does have little legs in the, yeah. See, the way that it is put in the cartoon. And here we're going to get a couple of seconds of Meg Grinch thoughts. First of all, in this household, we only. acknowledge the cartoon Grinch. The Jim Carrey thing, that's an abomination. The Grinch didn't need a backstory, okay?

The Grinch, the live-action Grinch remake with Jim Carrey is a low-key precursor to everything that's wrong with media today. So there's that. But the funny thing about the roast beast in Dr. Sous's How the Grinch St. Christmas, the animated version with you know what I mean? is that it has little turkey legs, but it cuts like a, like a non-pultery animal, you know, because he's cutting it and it looks like he's, he has like a slab of roast beast that looks much more like, you know, like a prime rib or something, you know? Yeah. You know? That's a great one.

Yeah. And I like how the little who's get so small when they're bringing out the roast beast. There's like a whole little train of a little line of who. chefs and and some of them are very tiny and then the little tiny one is carrying strawberry for Cindy Lou Who. Oh. Have you not seen how the Grinch stole Christmas? Not recently, but yes, of course I have.

And there was a, I don't know about it. I don't know if I believe you. I don't, we don't know exactly what sort of, what manner of beast it is and maybe that's for the best and are the, right, it's like a combo beast. Yeah, it's, it can be whatever you imagine it to be. It looks like a combo. It's like, it's got. like a turkey and it cuts like a prime rib mythical yeah like a griffin or something it's just like a

combination of i don't know anyway there was a griffin falter did a very very lengthy and in-depth oral history of how the grinch stole christmas the live action one just last week wild movie wild production it's so unnecessary why does he have a backstory unnecessary and like you know jim i Jim Carrey, I have so much respect for Jim Carrey as a comedic actor, to be clear. This is not an anti-Jim Carrey take. He went through a lot to embody the Grinch in that movie. He's doing so much Jim Carrey as the Grinch. And here's the note that I would offer Jim Carrey.

Hey, buddy, this isn't about you, you know? We're going to get so many emails about this episode. There have been no transactions. What else were you to talk about? How have we been talking for an hour and 19 minutes? The sports so has created breakout. star of the year. I just noticed they define, they specify that it should go to an athlete who unexpectedly dominated the sports conversation making the leap from skilled performer to household

name. Honestly, he did. Pitch perfect. Perfect. Yeah. That's great. Yeah. That's great. I like that because it specifies that it's about the way in which they broke out. Yeah. And about the fame. Because so often when when people make breakout picks, it's about the performance. But then it kind of gets conflated into like, well, yeah, he was already great, but people don't know about it, but you're kind of like, you're mixing and matching, like, people who aren't good yet, but you are saying that they're going to be good. They're going to make a leap on the field. And then you're also including players who were good, but maybe people don't know about it. And so you're saying they're going to take a leap in fame. And those are kind of two different things. I guess they both could be

breakouts, but I tend to lean towards one of them, unless you specify that there's. This is what you're doing, in which case I have no problem with it. Okay. Some other people wrote in about Nacho and Ignacio. I know that Nacho is a nickname for Ignacio. In case that wasn't clear, I was not, yeah. And I maybe, when I expressed it, didn't make clear that I knew that, but I, I, but I just love the name Ignacio. Yeah, I feel like.

I like both. Nacho is fun to say, too. But, yeah. Fun. Okay. And then last thing, some responses. So one thing, when we answered a listener email about. about ways that the Hall of Fame could keep Pete Rose out.

And one of the proposals was they could just say that if you have been on the ineligible list at any point, then you're never able to be inducted into the Hall of Fame. And I objected to that just on the grounds that, well, it seems kind of inconsistent. If you take someone off the ineligible list and they're no longer ineligible, then why should they continue to be ineligible for the Hall of Fame? what if they were redeemed? What if they were exonerated? And their name is cleared. Then why should they still be ineligible for the hall? And I should have noted, and a couple people did, that there's precedent for that already because Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were banned from baseball for a while because they were like greeters for... At a casino, right? Right. You know, back when that could actually make you persona non grata to like be associated with betting on sports in any way or any kind of gambling. And that was controversial at the time, but Bowie Cune was pretty liberal with the handing, you know, dropping the banhammer. And so Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays were on the ineligible list for a while. And Fergie Jenkins was because of a drug thing. And so, you know, they're all

Hall of Famers. And actually, Roberto Alamar is currently on the ineligible list. And he is in the Hall of Fame, too. And, you know, that's another thing where it's like character clause. There's no mechanism for removing someone if suddenly you find out that their character was not so great or there's additional evidence that their character was not worthy, then what do you do? Like you can't, there's no, you know, processed, I'm not saying, like you have to remove their plaque or something, but note it at least or I don't know, right? There's no, yeah. And so that's part of why I kind of hughed toward that.

Maybe it would be better and cleaner, not even to make that part of the criteria. Anyway, worth pointing out that, yes, that would apply to a few treasured Hall of Famers who were already in the hall, and Roberto Almar, currently, if we were to go with that. And we got an email from Patreon supporter Jason. Jason said, since Manfred's announcement about Rose, I've thought the obvious answer was, if you die while still on the permanent ineligible list, you will not be considered for the hall. Manfred's ostensible and BS reason for repealing the ineligibility was that it didn't matter, for practical purposes. Rose and Shulis Joe can't attend games or get jobs as a coach. Fine. Also, theoretically, while alive, someone could do something to improve their image or make restitution. I could imagine a player like Rose, but not actually Rose, really taking responsibility for

their actions and spending years in advocacy against gambling or whatever and then being reinstated. That can't happen once someone has died. They both can't apply for a job and they can't make amends. So the hall could just say, hey, as of their death, they hadn't done enough work to change MLB's mind. And given that, we will honor MLB's final judgment. When that person was alive to advocate for themselves and leave it there, seems simple and clean to me. That's a possibility. I guess there's always, you know, someone could be kind of cleared post-mortem, like something comes out after death even that rehabilitates their image. Usually it goes the other way where something comes out after their death that tarnishes the image.

but it could happen the other way around. And your position on this was basically like we don't need to do all that. You know, you can just, if you really want to keep him out, you could sort of stack the deck and have people who are opposed to having him in there at all, being the ones who are voting for it. I was trying to think of this in terms of, like, what would lead to less blowback, like just making him ineligible or making him eligible, but excluding him anyway. And you don't necessarily need to care, I guess, about what big, Pete Rose fans think, but, you know, if you want to avoid, like, endless rounds of discussion

of Pete Rose forever, if you came up with some reason why he's just still ineligible, then you can sidestep the whole induction process and the voting and everything. And in a way, that would be better because, like, I don't know, if they elect other players who are less deserving statistically and they keep Rose out, then will people be even more up in arms about that? Or will they say, oh, clearly they stacked the deck and this was biased and he didn't get a fair shake or whatever, maybe. Then again, I guess you could say that if you keep him from even being on the ballot, then you might say, oh, you know, at least give him a chance, like let people vote on it and they pulled strings and they, you know, kept him off out of consideration. And that in itself was worse if you're a big Pete Rose fan. But I don't know, we probably talk too much about Pete Rose.

We'd rather not talk about P. Rose at all. It's just that it's going to come up. So, you know, so we're kind of anticipating that, I suppose. But we don't have to worry about it, at least for a little while because he's not up for induction. I don't think that managing blowback is something that I guess I shouldn't be naive to it being a consideration for every institution to a certain degree. But it's, you know, I think that if you're the hall, like, the thing you should be prioritizing is getting the decision right. Yeah. And having a process that stands up to scrutiny, which, you know, is a standard that sometimes with these committee ballots, they fall short of with less controversial candidates than Pete Rose, right?

So that's an ongoing project for them, I think. But I mostly think that giving people, giving players a hearing on this stuff. rather than having their eligibility necessarily curtailed after the fact is probably the way to go. Now, I would be fine. I would be fine if the Hall were to institute a policy tomorrow saying, hey, if you were put on the permanent and eligible list for gambling related activities, you are disqualified from any future Hall of Fame consideration and have that be sort of a going, forward pronouncement on their part

because I think unfortunately we're going to deal with a lot more of these right I think that if they wanted

to make that a rule going forward I'd be fine with that but in Rose's case they didn't have

that rule they had this rule around you know if you're on this list you can't be considered

and I think that they should consider him I hope that they will say he is not worthy of induction

because of his violation of this rule but for me, Pete Rose is an obvious no-go. He is an obvious no-go, but apparently that isn't everyone's perspective on him. And so, and I can imagine there being circumstances for other potential Hall of Famers where I might view it as necessary to have a conversation and a debate about it and a real assessment by a panel of serious experts, and it would be a no-go for other people. So I think

that the best way to deal with this stuff is to just like have them have their hearing and then you know go from there and it means that who put on the panel is important and I don't mean that in a cronyism way but in a way where you're going to have people who really give serious weight to the conversation but yeah I just think that you got to you got to give it it's due because it's an important question and precedent around it I think is important to establish you know if If Rose is considered and the panel says, no, we're not doing this because of this thing, it does, I think, establish precedent that we can point to in future conversations and be like, well, we know how this stuff goes.

You do this, you don't get in. Look at Pete Rose. You know? Yep. Yep. I assume he doesn't get in. Right. Yeah.

I do think even as someone who doesn't care much about, and I hate that Hall of Fame is synonymous with plaques, the plaque. Right. He's in the hall. He's in the museum right now. Yeah. And it's a small part of the museum and a lot of the valuable work that the museum does and all the archiving and everything. I support that. And it's inevitable that, yeah, who's in the plaque room is going to dominate the discussion because the museum, it's a nice place, but it's in Cooperstown, New York. And most people are not going there. So, you know, not often, at least. And so if you're engaging with the Hall of Fame, then you're much more likely to be engaging with. the plaque discussion and who deserves to be enshrined there than you are anything else. Even me, I live in the same state as the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum,

and I haven't been there in years. I feel bad about that. I should go again. I'd like to. I will at some point. But, you know, even though I'm in the same state, I'm a four-hour drive away. And as you noted, I don't drive anyway. So, so 21-hour bike ride, you know.

Yeah. How long would it take you to walk? Let's see. 66 hours. according to Google Maps. So, you know, good exercise, but it's probably not the time of year to do it. But, yeah, like the fame of the Hall of Fame, it's tied up in the plaque room. And I'm sure they consider that a good thing on the whole, because even though it generates

controversy and anger and blowback, it also generates interest and attention and attendance and donations, et cetera. So it's, you know, you take the good with the bad, I guess. But one thing that I sometimes see people express, I know Craig Calcutera has said this, he's no big fan of the Hall of Fame discourse either, but he thinks that the Hall of Fame leads to non-Hullof-famers being forgotten, essentially, because we just hyper fixate on the guys who get their plaques and everyone else gets forgotten and maybe unfairly overlooked. And I think that's actually not true. I think I disagree with that. I think that it's true that we should just value players based on the value of their career and their contributions, regardless of whether they've passed this bar or not, you know, this kind of inconsistent, hard to figure out bar with multiple ways to get in. I think, yeah, if you're not a Hall of Famer, that doesn't mean we should write you off or anything.

But I think that most ballplayers get forgotten regardless. Most people, most historical figures just aren't going to be widely remembered. And so only the scholars or the real hardcore sickos are going to really remember you at a certain point. And I do think that the conversation about the plaque and all the intrigue about who's in the Hall of Fame and who's not, I think that does shine a light on some of these players and more players would be forgotten if not for the Hall of Fame. I think that's actually a benefit of it. And even though the distinctions are kind of arbitrary, I do think that, and there are guys who are in the Hall of Fame who are themselves pretty widely forgotten. You know, like there are a lot of obscure Hall of Famers who you ask your average baseball fan and they're not going to know anything about them.

But they're better known, I think, than they would be if they weren't in the Hall of Fame. And also, all the controversy about guys who didn't get in, that keeps their memory alive. Unfortunately, in Pete Rose's case, but more fortunately, in a lot of cases, but more fortunately, in a lot of cases, cases where we probably talk more about Lou Whitaker because he's not in and is clearly deserving than we would. How often would Lou Whitaker come up on this podcast if he was not one of the obvious snubs from the Hall of Fame? So that actually helps, I think.

And yeah, it does lead to division and kind of like, you know, talking about this guy is better than that guy. And then you're focusing on the flaws of players instead of celebrating their accomplishments and everything. But I think on the whole, it does lead to more baseball history and more baseball players being remembered than forgotten. So even though I share a lot of the apathy and indifference and objections to the process and everything, I don't share that objection that it leads to players being unfairly forgotten. I think everyone gets forgotten, really, and that the Hall of Fame helps preserve some of those memories a little longer than they would be otherwise. I think that's right.

I don't think I have anything to add except to say, I think you're right. I think you're right. Lou Whitaker sounds like a name that should be in like a musical lyric to me. I don't know why. Yeah. It does have a nice flow to it. Yeah. It's pretty mellifluous. Okay.

Yeah. All right. Well, that does it for this week. And not quite for this year for you, but you'll be off next week quite sensibly. And understand it really is. Just watching wake up dead man over and over and over again with my mom. Yes. Over and over and over again.

Yes. Re-quinting yourself with Apocaco. and communing with the seagulls, et cetera, and then... They don't have seagulls in the mountains, Ben. There aren't going to be any seagulls up there. There's no sea, I guess, yeah. But some other scenery that you will see. Yes.

And then we will talk the week after that, and we will do some of our year-end stuff. Oh, and I'll put out a little call here, preliminary call for stories we missed, because that's traditionally our last episode or two of the year or among them is what did we not talk about this year. So we try to collect little tidbits, little stories about each and every team that we overlooked for whatever reason this year. And I know that we do a lot of podcasting. We talk about a lot of things, but we are just sort of scratching the surface of everything that happens in baseball. So if there was something we ignored, please do let us know. And we will shout it out on those year-end episodes.

And while you are away, I will podcast. But I will try to take it easy. I often overcompensate when I don't have a co-host. Because when you're here, I just figure, okay, we'll banter and we'll figure it out. We'll talk about Christmas trees and, you know, it'll all work out. But when you're not here, I'm like, well, I can't monologue. I need help. What will I do?

And then I overcompensate in co-host and I end up with like three people and three guests. And I'm going to try to take it easy this time. I'm going to try to, you know, not take the week off, but take the week easy, at least by my standards. We'll see if I can live up to that. I think, I think, Ben, what I would offer is that you should take the week easy by Shane's standards. Yeah, I'm sure you'd appreciate that too. Let Shane's standards be your guide because our wonderful producer, Shane, he does a great job. And, you know, Shane is game.

Shane, when we have bonkers drafts, Shane's like, let's go. I'm going to edit this. But I'll tell you, Ben, and I hope I'm not blowing it. on up Shane's spot. When you were gone, which is very rare, and I'm co-hosting on my own, and I turn around an hour-long episode, Shane's like, that was nice. Yeah, I'm sure. So I'm just, I'm just saying, I'm offering. And look, I'm the one who's like, I can't pod next week, because I don't think that the mountain, the mountain is not conducive. Yeah, the Wi-Fi won't cooperate. No, I was able to do it one time while you were in Sweden. Yeah, maybe. And it,

It was dicey, you know? Craig had to start and stop a couple of times with me. So it's just not, it's a place of peace, not pod. And I so appreciate you carrying on in my stead. Potting brings me peace, you know? I know. You love to pod. You love to pod.

And I don't want anyone to think I don't like potting. I love to pot. But you don't live to pod, maybe. I don't live to pod. I don't live to pod. I love to pod. I don't live to pod. Sometimes I need peace from the pot.

You know? Well, after we recorded, Logan Webb was added to the USWBC squad so that starting staff gets even stronger. Also, one of those big dominoes that I mentioned expecting to fall did indeed topple. Michael King, re-signed with the Padres three years, $75 million. I did have the under on $80 million for King in the free agent contracts over underdraft. That one just barely went my way. Nothing shocking, but we'll break it down next week. I will remind everyone that if you are giving gifts this season, you can give the gifts.

gift of an Effectively Wild Patreon membership for that special listener or prospective listener in your life. There's a link on the show page in the episode description for every episode that says give a gift subscription. So just click on that or go to patreon.com slash effectively wild slash gift and make someone's holiday season and make our holiday seasons in the process. That link on the show page is immediately below the link that says sponsor us on Patreon. And you can do that by both clicking the link and 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. Tess, Jeff, David Moll, Jeremy, and Katie, 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 answers, shoutouts at the end of episodes, personalized messages, discounts on merch and ad-free fan graphs, memberships, and so much more.

Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash EffectivelyWild. If you are 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 Fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to EffectivelyWild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook.com slash Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the aforementioned podcast posts at Fangraphs or episode description in

podcast app for links to the stories and stats and gift subscription sites that we discussed today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. Thanks to you for listening. That will do it for today and for this week. We hope you have a wonderful weekend. And yes, I will be back to talk to you next week. collecting baseball cards before I could read. They say I waste my time tracking all these stat lines but it's here I found my kind I'm all effectively wild.