Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2418: The Challenge System Challenge

Episode Date: December 24, 2025

Ben Lindbergh, Craig Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus, and Joe Sheehan of The Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter break down teams’ last-minute Christmas shopping—including the White Sox signing Munetaka Murakami, the Padres signing Michael King and Sung Mun Song, the Orioles trading for Shane Baz, the Red Sox trading for Willson Contreras, a three-team trade involving the Pirates, Rays, and Astros, Jeff McNeil and Matt Strahm swaps, and the Yankees’ hibernation—plus banter about the quasi-retirement of Craig’s nemesis, Joe Kelly, the future of NPB, a report about Emmanuel Clase’s mid-game phone use, and supporting independent media. Then (1:11:40) they conduct an in-depth debate about the respective merits of human umpiring, the challenge system, and full ABS. Audio intro: Harold Walker, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Tom Rhoads, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to Kelly’s podcast Link to Dubuque on the challenge system Link to Craig on the challenge system Link to Joe on the challenge system Link to previous podcast discussion Link to Seitz decision wiki Link to Joe on the Seitz decision Link to Baumann on Murakami Link to Rosenblum on Murakami Link to Longenhagen on Murakami Link to Craig on Murakami Link to Sarris on Murakami Link to Ben on Murakami in 2022 Link to Sato story Link to FG post on King Link to FG post on Song Link to FG post on Baz Link to Craig on Baz Link to team SP projections Link to Joe on three-team trade Link to FG post on three-team trade Link to FG post on Contreras Link to FG post on Strahm Link to Strahm’s beer stance Link to Bowlan info Link to FG post on McNeil Link to Lindor/McNeil drama Link to Clase report Link to Craig on the K-Zone Link to Tango on challenge tactics Link to Five and Dive Link to subscribe to BP Link to subscribe to Joe Link to MLBTR on O’Hearn Link to Posnanski MVP post Link to A’s ballpark update Link to Rian Johnson post  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

Maybe if you're lucky, we'll co-paw by the chance. You never know precisely where it's going to go. By definition, Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2418 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, not joined today by Meg Rally of Fangrass, who is very sensibly off for the week of Christmas.

And so I have two guests who have the difficult assignment of following Jeff Passon. They're not insiders. They're just outsiders like me. First, I am joined by Meg's editor-in-chief counterpart at Baseball Prospectus, Craig Goldstein. Howdy, Craig? Hello. And we are joined by one of the people who made it possible for me and Craig to become editors-in-chief of Baseball Perspectus by co-founding the company, the proprietor of the

Josian Baseball Newsletter, which sort of ends the suspense. about who I'm introducing. Joe Sheehan. Hi, Joe. I wish I'd looked back. I wish I'd done what Craig Calcutera did and give it a different name. And looking back, it's like, man, it's really egotistical of name something after yourself. But hey, here we are.

Yeah, I couldn't be more aptly named, really. It's truth in advertising. It's a real does what it says in the tin sort of situation. It's Josian writing a newsletter about baseball. You get what you pay for. You get a lot when you pay for either of your products. but we will get to that a little later. I had a grand plan for this episode

because back in early October, one of Craig's colleagues, Patrick DeBuke, wrote a piece for BP, headlined various great philosophers and how they would feel about the automated ball strike system. And the subhead was gathering the greatest minds of two and a half millennia

to embrace a little debate. And I could not book the greatest minds of two and a half millennia. So instead, I called up Craig and Joe. And I did that because in late September, a Patreon supporter, who goes by cold coffee in our Discord group, suggested that it might be interesting to have these two on to debate the merits of the challenge system. And he made that suggestion because back on episode 2379, I noted that Craig and Joe were

in complete agreement and complete disagreement about the challenge system simultaneously. They each independently described it as a half measure and a compromise. Joe wrote, this is a half measure that won't have much effect. It is, in fact, designed to not have much effect, but rather to win the press conference, and added, this program is a compromise, and it should serve as a reminder that not all compromise is good. Meanwhile, Craig wrote, while half measures are usually anathema, this one just might work. And perhaps this is the mythical compromise where neither camp is happy, and it's also for the best. So I was tickled by how you saw the challenge system exactly the same way.

described it in the same terms until you came to diametrically opposite conclusions about whether you liked it or not. And so today, I have you here to hash out your differences or agree to disagree. But you respect each other. You read each other's work. So I'm sure you're aware of your respective positions on this issue and have come prepared to debate. I'm picturing Portia Daraasi and David Cross and the arrested development. It could work for us. But maybe it could work for us. I think Craig actually linked to that. That is what I am picturing too. Yes, exactly.

We are in agreement on that as well. And after that, you can debate whether one's subscription dollars are better spent on baseball prospectus or the Joshian baseball newsletter. That's a why not. That's the girl with the why not both. Yes, why not both? I'm sure that you would both graciously suggest that you should buy both if you can. And, of course, I will give you an opportunity to plug your products and various

discounts and such that are available for the holiday season. But first, some news. Well, okay, this is minor news, but major news probably for Craig Goldstein. I feel like I should congratulate you on the retirement, in quotes, of your nemesis, Joe Kelly. Though he is not using those words, but I assume that you were informed of this if you didn't already have alerts set up to listen to every Joe Kelly podcast appearance. but this week on the podcast, Baseball isn't boring, which Joe Kelly co-founded. He said his playing career is over, but he put it this way, I ain't playing.

Athletes don't. We just stop fucking playing, okay? Let's cancel the word retirement. So he refuses to concede that he is retired, but for all intensive purposes, it's over. He will haunt you no more. Cancel culture is alive and well. Poor retirement. And I'm looking forward to that.

Let's not cancel that. Yeah, I was alerted to that by several helpful people. I did not know he co-founded that. I didn't know he co-founded any podcast. So that's a little bit of news. He's one of us. Yeah. Yeah, right.

He's not retiring. He's just turning into one of us. Are you suddenly warming up to him now that you know he's a podcaster like us? You know, I had begun the process of warming up to him, even as he haunted my dreams. but it's nice to have the security of not being haunted so much. I have other people to do that now. I mean, Tanner Scott is alive and well. Michael Comforto, not coming back to the Dodgers, so that'll be nice.

But, you know, there were stand-ins. It's always exciting to see who the next. It's almost like Doctor Who, right? Like, there's just a new one. So we'll find out who that is for the upcoming season. Yeah, well, Disney just decided that it doesn't. want to make any more Doctor Who, but the BBC still will. So that's good, I guess. And I know you Dodgers fans, you have it hard. Your life is torment. So I hope that things look up for you

sometime soon. And Joe, as you pointed out in your newsletter this week, we are recording on the 50th anniversary of the landmark sites decision, the arbitrator decision that paved the path for free agency in Major League Baseball. So what better time to talk about free agents, because Since Meg and I last recorded, the weather has been cold, at least where we are, but the stove has stayed hot. It has gotten hotter. And we have some transaction action to catch up on, if you will oblige me, with some banter about baseball news and moves, which both of you relish breaking down. So I don't know where to start because there's so many momentous moves here, but maybe we can start with Munitaka Morikami because this was a huge windfall for Meg. in our free agent contracts over-under draft. I don't know whether you're aware, but every year we take the over or the under on a bunch of players, their predictions for their earnings from MLB trade rumors. And then if we pick the right direction, then we get credit for the difference between

their actual guaranteed dollar amount and what MLB trade rumors predicted. And Meg was really lagging behind until Murakami signed with the White Sucks because MLB trade Rumors had pegged him at, I think, $180 million, and he got 34. So that may very well have won that competition for Meg. But more importantly, the White Sox are now the proud employers of Morikami. So were you all as surprised as I guess we would have been if you had told us back in late October, early November, that these would be the terms? Joe, did you think that the dollar amount would be anywhere near this low? No, I don't think it'd be this low. I think Bowden and MLVTR both had it way high, though, because this is a player who has egregious flaws. And in modern Major League Baseball, they're going to see those flaws very quickly. They're going to understand that they're not getting the baseball card stats that Murakami was putting up in Japan. They're going to get the underlying skills, which, frankly, I mean, might not even pay off at 2 and 34. I think it's a fine move for the White Sox based on where they are. You take a chance at

having an NPB star. It's a position that's basically open for them. And even if they have to move into first base, they have plenty of places to put him. And you can take the risk that he's actually, as I referred to him in Slack, Russell Branion like. Man, that endears him to me because I really loved Russell Branion. And I probably loved him too long and was usually not rewarded for that. But he was a big fantasy guy for me back when I was a fantasy player. Craig, are you any higher on this move or on Murakami? Probably a little higher than potentially Russell Branden, but I think that exists. I mean, I think there's, the floor is very low for Murakami.

And I think, you know, I am very surprised at the dollar amount in the years, but it makes sense once you think about it for a second in the sense that I thought he was going to get, I didn't think necessarily $180 million or anything like that. But I did think he was going to get a longer deal. And you could see the concerns that Joe is. talking about. I mean, the swing and miss is a big deal, especially against velocity. I guess I thought there would be a club or two that would talk themselves into being able to fix him and then talk themselves into saying, like, if we, well, if we can fix him, we want to have him under contract for a substantial number of years, even if the dollars are like, because if it does click, if you can fix the holes in his swing, then you're talking about

a real, a real potential steal in terms of his overall production, because the, he's, His damage on contact is really good. He has, you know, absurd power numbers, especially for the NPB ball and things like that. So, and I understand, you know, I assume there's usually one team that thinks someone can play, you know, can hang at third rather than play first. It sounds like they're already just saying he's a first baseman, as I thought I read that. Yep. So I guess, but, you know, the way you end up here is no one could really allay those concerns and everyone thought he was a first baseman and not a third baseman at all. and that really does change the dynamic.

I think this is great for Chicago. I mean, why not take the chance? You don't really have a better option anywhere, and it's not like their money is going to better use than figuring out if it can be him. I don't know if the White Sox are the team to fix his swing, but it makes sense for him to then focus on short-term and potentially reach free agency at, what, age 27,

again, where he could line himself up for a big deal if he can figure out how to mitigate some of the issues in his swing. Well, if it doesn't work with the White Sox, they can always trade him to Milwaukee and they can just Andrew Vonify him. But, Joe, you often describe yourself as low man or high man on particular players. And I guess I'm high man on Murakami, at least on this podcast. I don't dismiss any of the concerns that you're mentioning and that many people have mentioned. But I really like this signing. I think, yes, it could not work out, but I think there's real potential for it to be a major bargain. And we should mention, yeah, I mean, two years, $34 million, there is about a $6.5 million posting fee that the White Sox have to pay to the occult swallows, the former team of Murakami.

But nonetheless, Jeff Passon, my last guest, reported that though teams tried to get in for lower dollar long-term deals, Murakami opted for a higher dollar short-term offering, allowing himself to prove his ability to adjust to superior MLB pitching. So presumably he could have gotten more money if he had just wanted to maximize that surface figure, but instead he went for the shorter term. And still, it's not really that high dollar, you know, 17 million. I mean, everyone gets 11 million now, you know, sub-replacement level players get 11 million seemingly this off-season. So 17 on a two-year deal is just not much. And I do understand the flaws and the in-zone whiff rate and all the rest. The power we know will translate. I mean, he may not be able to actualize it. If he doesn't make contact, then the

power won't help him. But we know that the power is real and he hits the ball really hard and would hit it hard by MLB standards as well. So it's just a question of can he get the bat on the ball? And if you look at the typical translations or the hit that an NPP player takes when they come to MLB, and there's just an article on this by Jordan Rosenblum, who operates the oopsie projection system at Fangrafson. And it's a pretty sizable hit, depending on how you look at it. It could be 30 to 50 something points of WRC Plus. If you just say that Morikami will suffer the same penalty, well, he's coming from 211,

WRC plus in his most recent season, a partial season after he returned from injury. I guess the concern, though, is that he'll be more like the 150-something WRC-plus guy he was in the preceding two seasons, and then if you lop off 50 points, then he's like a league average hitter with no defensive or base running value, and that's just not very valuable. But I'm kind of a believer that they can unlock something or that he can unlock something if you just look at the projection systems. So, Steamer has him at a 115 WRC plus, and oopsie has him at a 123. I just feel ridiculous saying oopsie, but it appears to be a pretty good projection system. Zips has him at 126. So even if you sort of split the difference, if you figure that he's like a 120 WRC plus guy, I mean, what if we cop him to Wilson Contreras, another guy that we will probably talk about in just a second here?

Contreras has 41.5 million coming to him over the next two seasons, which is more than the White Sox are paying Murakami, even including the posting fee. Murakami is almost eight years younger. There's no real defensive or ancillary skills difference. And the war projection at Fancrafts, even slightly higher for Murakami than Contreras. I understand that Contreras is proven. He's been a good hitter in MLP for a long time. And with Murakami, it's somewhat speculative. but if you think he'll be in that realm, then I think this is way better than the going rate. And that's assuming that he doesn't have more in him, which I would not write off that possibility. I know this is going to sound like hedging,

which is not something I like to do, but you're making the case for the signing, and I agree with all of that. I don't particularly like the player. I like the signing. It's 2 and 34 for a team that can just run them out there for 300 games and, you know, 1,100 plate appearances of the next two years. And it almost doesn't matter how we, I don't see it doesn't matter how he plays, but the White Sox 2026 World Series chances are not hinging on whether Murakami works out.

This is exactly the team. Yeah. It's not affecting their payroll. They're nowhere near the luxury tax thresholds. The signing itself is fine. I don't believe the player is going to work out. But, you know, this is exactly the situation where, you know, if it does, you know, we'll say, hey, this is a good move. It's good to see the White Sox doing, well, anything.

And I just, I completely agree with everything you're saying. And, you know, I think the floor, well, the floor is he washes out of the league. But let's say a somewhat more optimistic floor is Schwabers 21 and 22, which was basically, I want to say he's worth maybe two, two and a half wins over the two seasons. Yeah. Like that works out. Like if Borikami is worth three wins over the next two seasons, that works out fine. And I think that is from where you're coming from.

You're saying, you know, okay, let's lop off 50 points from his, you know, MPB, WRC Plus by oops. And my God, that's a sentence I don't have want to say again. I think that's where he could reasonably win. I think, you know, 200, 275, 410 with average first base defense. You know, that probably comes out to like a 95, 995 WRC plus and, you know, maybe one win a year. I think that's a reasonable expectation. Yeah. And I want to say that there could be more in there just because of the youth and because of his

past performance, which is now a few years past him. But in a way, that makes it even more impressive because he was so young when he did what he did. And so that just makes me think, well, that's in there somewhere. The guy who was an MVP who is hitting 56 bombs in his age 22 season with a 225 WRC plus. And then there were injuries and maybe those injuries had lingering effects or maybe there were mechanical changes. You know, in the past couple of years, the strikeout rate has spiked. He wasn't that kind of hitter back when he was in his early 20s. And it just makes me think, you know, if you figure NPB is at least AAA level, generally believed to be, if not better, then I got to think that kind of performance at that age, you know, if he had become a free agent then, obviously if he had been posted then, he would have gotten an enormous deal.

I wrote a piece years ago at The Ringer about Morikami and Sasaki, Roki Sasaki, and basically said, you know, these are the best baseball prospects in the world. These are the best young baseball players. And since then, they've each had injuries and things have happened. But I have to think that maybe that's in there somewhere, and maybe he will adapt in some way. And, you know, if you're just looking at his surface stats and NPB, of course, you have to remember that it's just extreme deadball era over there. So the kind of power that he has produced relative to the league is pretty impressive even at his down years. And a lot of people have comped him to Joey Gallo and said, okay, maybe he's peak Gallo at the plate. And I love Joey Gallo.

I was fascinated by Joey Gallo and just the extremes, the power, the whiff, could he make it work? He made it work for a while. He was a peculiar player and he had a short shelf life and obviously he had more defensive value than Murakami. He's actually a good defensive outfielder and maybe a pitcher at some point. We'll find out. But Gallo managed a 117 WRC plus from 2017 to 2021. That was his age 23 to 27 season. And, you know, just the bat.

He was about 50 runs above average as a hitter in those years. And if that's a good comp, if Murakami is even Pete Gallo, well, that's worth way more than $34 million in this market. I mean, one of the White Sox division rivals just signed Josh Bell to play for them, right, for less than Morikami got. But still, Josh Bell, he's 33. He's been a barely above average hitter over the past three seasons. So I'm still sort of a believer.

that maybe he could get back to what he was a few years ago, and there's sort of like a Bill James signature significance element to that. But even if not, even if he's just a kind of above average hitter, and that's all, I think that there's not a ton of downside here. And it makes the White Sox way more interesting. I don't know if Morikami sells a lot of season tickets, but I know that I'll be watching way more White Sox baseball just to see how he pans out.

You'll be watching four additional at bat to game. Let's be real. Just for what it's worth, I was able to pull up our Pocoda projection, or at least the current one, since it's not released. But we have them for 129, DRC Plus, so right in that's sexy. Yeah, I mean, look, DRC Plus and Pocoda have always loved the elite hitters from NPB, generally speaking, when we look at kind of our projections every offseason before the release at the players, including players that don't come over, they've always rated extremely. well. I think, just to add on really quickly, you guys have covered it. But this really comes down to, our projection has him a 34% strikeout, right, and a 14% walk rate. And I don't know that those coexist for him. If he's striking out 34% of the time, I don't know that pitchers are avoiding

him such that he's going to get a 14% walk rate. And so that's where you see this kind of dichotomy of views on him, I think. If he can get that under 30%, sure, I think we can talk. about the real upside that he offers. And I think we all agree, like, he offers that if he can do it. And you go back to his, you know, everyone looks at his 2022, but even 2020 and 2021 for Murakami, he was striking out 22% of the time, walking 17% of the time. That's going to play. Something changed after 2022, where he just started striking out a lot more and walking less. It was 15% in 2023, 14% in 2025. He was back at 17 and

2024. But it's just going to be hard. It's hard for me to imagine that he's going to strike out at 34% and be able to get on base to support the kind of WRC plus or DRC plus or whatever your metric of choice is in that sense.

You know what I mean? And Joey Gallo did that. But Joey Gallo is a freak. And even Kyle Schwerber didn't really do that, right? Kyle Schwerber in that time was not quite striking out so much. He was 29 and a half percent in 2020, 27 percent in 2021, right? So I think he needs to get into that area before we can even start making like the not current Kyle Schwerber comps. And I'm not saying it's a bad one, but like he needs to do some work to get there.

Yeah. And part of my optimism is probably that I imprinted on Murakami when he was so successful. so young, and maybe I haven't updated by priors, and I'm too hyped, and I'll acknowledge that there's some scouting the stat line here, I guess, scouting the more flattering aspects of the stat line, the surface stat line, that is. But I'm cautiously optimistic, I guess, just because everyone has been kind of doom and gloom about whether this will translate, and I want to believe. So, well, I think the, I think that's okay. I think the flip side is that everyone is focusing on the negatives or overly focusing on the negatives and not really coming to terms

is what it looks like if he can make these adjustments. And he's a person, you know, he's a, he's a human being. He can change things about his swing. Now, there's risk associated with that, which is what these clubs care about. And I think it shows in the way that the signing ended up. But he can make these adjustments. And honestly, he's probably better suited than a lot of guys who have come over to make these adjustments because he is only 25, right? So I think we shouldn't preclude that, but we should also understand that there are a lot of risks kind of concomitant

with needing to do that. Yeah, you know, you could look at it if you're a pessimist and say, well, this is a league where people still prize contact and discourage extreme strikeouts and the fact that he was still pretty extreme relative to the league, that would be worrisome. You could also say, though,

that he didn't really have to change over there with the pitching he was facing. It was working, at least in his most recent season, it was working. And maybe if he goes to MLB and he knows that it won't work as well against the pitching that he's going to see and the sort of velo that he'll be facing regularly,

then maybe he will have to adapt and maybe he is well aware of that and maybe he will actually have the skills to it. It does give me some pause that it seems like the usual suspects for just high profile NPB players weren't really in on him or just weren't really big believers, but I'm holding out some hope. And, you know, the White Sucks, they're going to be kind of fun to watch.

They're not going to be good yet, but they did bounce back from the low of 2024. And you wrote about them at some point in pretty optimistic terms, Joe, I remember, you know, when they were calling up some of the young guys and you look at the lineup, and even if you don't believe that Colson Montgomery is going to repeat that performance long term. I guess he might be kind of a Morikami-esque hitter. But, you know, you have Kyle Teal in that lineup, and you have Edgar Caro up, and you just have, like, a bunch of young guys who are showing up in a surprisingly solid staff. And I'm kind of liking the way things are shaping up for them.

And maybe I will eat my words. And we've seen a impressive group of White Sox young talent fizzle before anyone expected in the not-distant past. And presumably Luis Robert will be on the way sometimes. soon to some other team. But I'm kind of in on the White Sox, at least the compelling product that they might put on the field next year. Certainly a more watchable version of the team next year that should be even more, you know, a little bit more watchable next year. I just, to Kat Murakami, I just, if he was, if his name was Mike Miller with these swing and miss rates, I don't think we'd be having this conversation. And the idea that he's going to come to the league that has

optimized his pitchers for swing and miss and fix that particular problem in a way that turns him into a, all of the numbers I've heard so far from, you know, oopsie and Daisy and all the production systems we're talking about, I'll take the under on every single one. Okay. Right. And that, and mind you, there's a lot of gap between under those numbers and still a viable major league player.

I just, I think those numbers are really, really too high. Okay. I'm going to, I'm going to bet on the signature significance of what he did when he was super young, but we will see. You just, you just lost a bet on the economy, and you're going back to the well so quickly. In fairness, he didn't lose it so much as Meg wanted. Yeah. Throwing good fake money after bad here, I guess, sunk cost.

Anyway, I do worry about the future of NPB a little bit. I've mentioned this before. But when stars like Murakami are constantly coming over and then others are bypassing the league entirely, which is maybe more concerning because that was another recent development that a young promising prospect over there, Ganesato, he is skipping NPB. He's a college pitcher. who is projected to be one of the top picks in the NPB draft. Instead, he is transferring to Penn State,

and he is sitting out the upcoming college season and then plans to pitch for Penn State in 2027, after which he'll enter the MLB draft. Sort of what Rintaro Sasaki, previous top prospect in Japan, he did the same thing. He went to Stanford. He skipped the MPB draft. There's some precedent for this,

but if this becomes more common, and you're both losing the established superstars after several years in the league and then also missing out on the pipeline and the feeder system of the young guys who are just coming across when they are prospects still, that's kind of concerning.

I mean, you know, you might take a global view and say, well, as long as the best baseball players are playing somewhere, then that's fine. But I do like the fact that there is a healthy,

thriving baseball ecosystem in Japan with its own rich storied history. And as we've seen in recent years, just and absolutely, rabid fan base that just, you know, can't get enough of the game. And I don't want anything to happen to sort of sap that enthusiasm. Because I do think baseball is stronger when we have all these different baseball cultures that are kind of existing independently. And then also at some point, we'll maybe send their guys over here to MLB, but not before entertaining the home crowds for a while.

So that would worry me a little bit if I were someone who was more invested in, you know, in the future of Japanese baseball, but even to the degree that I am, I hope that it remains robust. Would a worldwide draft eventually come to drafting Japanese kids? Yeah, I'm sure that would be simple and not problematic in any way. Sorry, we're a half hour in on one player. I shouldn't be introducing side quests. Well, we just had a preliminary Murakami debate before the challenge system debate. But yeah, speaking of players coming over from Asia, I did want to pivot to the Padres here.

The headline move for them was that they re-signed Michael King. They also signed a Korean player, Sung-moon Song. So King, in theory, he signed a three-year contract for $75 million. That's the top line guaranteed figure. But it's a weird one where he probably will not actually be with the Padres for the duration because they're just opt-outs after every season. And so this was sort of, you know, maybe buying low on him or when his value was depressed a little bit because of the injuries that he sustained this past year. And then as for song, this is another bet on a KBO star hoping that that bat will translate.

And that I'm less optimistic about because there's not as much of a track record of that actually happening. You know, we've talked about some Korean players and we talked about. The Braves and their recent shortstop signing of Hassam Kim, you know, Hassan Kim's been a good, valuable player, but not so much because of the bat. He's held his own when healthy, but he's really a glove guy. So the flashy offensive stats that he put up in the KBO, which is more of an offensive league than NPB is these days by far, those haven't really translated. So I guess my main takeaway here is that I'm pleased that the Padres are still able to retain players, I guess. that's good, players that they traded for, and they don't immediately have to watch them walk away. So they still have some resources, evidently, even if the King deal is not quite as big a number as it appears to be in theory.

So what do you think of these signings, Joe, and how the Padre set up? Yeah, I agree with you. It's probably just a one-year deal. They desperately needed to hold on to King, though. If you look at, you know, Darvish is going to be out for next year. Dill and C signed with the Blue Jays. I mean, they have trouble filling out that rotation. Looks like right now you've got the back end, Randy Vasquez, Kyle Hart, I'm forgetting somebody.

They traded two starters to get Freddie Fermin, which is, you know, a choice. And I think we just don't know what they are right now. I mean, the Padres for a five-year period tried to play with the big boys. And it paid off. They drew three million people to Petco the last three years. So even if they didn't necessarily win a World Series, I don't think you could, I think they're the argument for signing free agents, for going out and taking big swings. But if the Seidler family, I mean, the Seidler family, once Peter passed, it seemed. to be unsure of what they want to do,

and now they're looking to possibly sell the teams or certainly some uncertainty. But at least for 2026, I think any chance they had, they needed to bring in some starting pitcher, and this is probably as cheap an option as they were going to be able to get. So this keeps them in the wild card mix, but, you know, they,

Craig, what was it down to? Maybe three games in August, September, when you guys were trying to hold them off? Yeah, it was really, I mean, they had a series late in the season where this division was in the balance. Yeah, I don't think that'll be the case next year. I don't think.

I think the Padres are the third best team in the division at best. And, you know, you could probably squint and make a case for the Giants ahead of them as well. So I think we're talking about a team that's going to be in that wildcard mix with the Reds and maybe the Pirates, the Mets, teams like that as opposed to challenging for the division again. But, you know, as somebody who's, and I'm sure you guys have both been to the ballpark, that is a really great place to watch a game. It is a great crowd. It's a great environment. I don't need to sell anybody on San Diego, presumably.

So I'm glad to see them extending this run because it is a fantastic place to watch a game. And certainly those Padres Dodgers games, I mean, over the last five years, they've just played some epic games down there. So extending this rivalry even one more year will be fun. Yeah, I largely agree with that. I think it's just hard for me to get a grip on what the Padres are. They've been fairly consistent even after Peter Seidler passed away, but obviously have drawn back some. And I keep thinking at some point, this is the year they're going to have to switch gears. And they just kind of don't really do that. But every year is kind of a little

bit more diminished version of the year prior. And so at some point, it's going to fall out. I mean, I think this is a good signing in terms of, I really like Michael King as a pitcher. And they need him along with a healthy Joe Musgrove. But that's a lot of, that's a lot to gamble. on, right? Like, these guys have not been particularly healthy, obviously. And even if they are, you still have Randy Vasquez in this rotation somehow, who is, I mean, just a living affront to FIP, I think. Like, I don't really understand how this is all supposed to work. They basically didn't have half a lineup much of last season, which is why they traded for O'Hern and Luriano and for mean, they're largely in that same situation again. And I don't know that, you know, for example,

song solves that. To your point, I don't know that it's a bad signing necessarily. I think he'd be fine as a utility guy. He'd be an improvement over Jose Iglesias in 2025 as a utility guy. But the KBO hitters have not translated. And if they have, they generally have not translated in their first season, right? And we just saw, even Heison Kim for the Dodgers was not. bad early on, but the book got out on him, and he went from kind of a very babb-heavy 400 average to anonymous. He couldn't even get on the field. Yeah, he ended up with a 95 WRC plus, which that'll play, but he had a 31% strikeout rate with a 4% walk rate, and it took a 400 babb, basically, to keep those numbers respectable. So right now he's penciled in as the Dodgers

starting second baseman on the roster resource depth chart. And, yeah, if he's in a utility role, then that seems fine. But if you're counting on one of these guys to start, I would be wary. Exactly. And I just, I don't know what the Padre's plan is. And I guess that's just life under A.J. Preller in a lot of ways. Because they also have Nick Povetta, but you're hearing about potentially trading him, right? So it depends, obviously, what they would get back and what they would prioritize.

but it's almost like they don't really have a firm concept of what they want to be for next year, which is potentially fine. Their roster is in a very awkward spot, but it's hard to sell when you have kind of the tent pulls of Machado and Tatis, and I don't just mean on production, but I mean on their books as well. So it's just a tricky spot to be in for them. Yeah, you've got Bogart's and Darvish who are sucking down almost $50 billion and untradable. so even and i don't think machado is necessarily tradable so i mean do you want if you were to trade fernando tatis jr and an email left from somebody last week basically crafting some uh tatis junior

trades that's telling that's just chasing everybody away for five years i don't think they can realistically trade chatees and that that's the rebuild move but i just so i i agree with you i think they're trapped by and i keep coming back to the bogart's deal which even at the time we all kind of went huh? And that's the one I think keeps them locked into this. We've got to try to win now, but we don't have the resources or any longer the farm system to do it. Yeah, I think the nice thing about it is that they did spend some money. And, you know, they're kind of in that situation that the twins were in where they're exploring a sale. And when the twins were in that position, they didn't do anything. They just completely stood

Pat, never upgraded their roster, didn't bring guys back, didn't make moves at the deadline, and they just squandered the chances that they had. The Padres may also be exploring a sale, but it seems that that does not preclude them from making some moves, which it always seems to be, like if you want to enrich the value of the asset that you're selling, the franchise,

then wouldn't you want not to tank it? Wouldn't you want not to drive it into the ground and just lower your attendance and your revenue and all the rest? So if they can at least keep up a credible attempt to contend while they're, going through the motions of exploring a sale, then, well, that's better for Padres fans than it's been for twins fans. And I don't have many concerns about King from a performance standpoint

because he's been really good. Aside from late in the year, when he came back maybe prematurely. He wasn't fully healthy. Yeah, right. So if you assume that that wasn't the real king and that he'll be back to his usual self, he's been great. He's been, you know, a top of the rotation type guy when he's been healthy. So if he can have another 20-24 season, then this is,

an absolute steal, and he'll be back on the market next year. And, you know, the possibility that he won't have a 24-24 season because he just won't be available is why he had to settle for a contract like this. The only other thing I wanted to add on this is just a little bit of appreciation for AJ Preller. I don't always agree with what he's done. I don't know that I'm saying that he's one of the top GMs in the league or anything like that. But we see a lot of GMs willing to just take that five-year punt, right? And he has not done that so much, at least recently, right? Like, he's put his foot on the accelerator quite a number of times over the last few years.

And so I just, I appreciate, in an era where I think these guys are paid a lot of money and are supposed to be really good at figuring out how to compete, they often remove themselves and their teams from the situation for an extended period of time. Preller does not do that, right? He actually figures out, he's figuring out in the midst of a sale and these kind of, anchoring contracts, how to compete with very limited budget. And maybe it's not going to work, and we can talk about kind of the hazard of the next few years beyond it.

But between Povetta last year and King this year, he's finding ways to keep his team at least in the wildcard hunt. Again, this is probably not a division contender. But, you know, he's trying. He's putting his talents towards something rather than just taking several steps back out of the spotlight and saying, we'll see you in three to five years. And I appreciate that. Yeah. Well, Preller probably doesn't have three to five years. No. I mean, he almost never has, but then he's still here, right? I mean, that's kind of the thing of it.

Who would have expected that he would last this long and go through this many managers and rebuilds and rosters and entire farm systems worth of prospects that he has traded? Speaking of trading prospects, let's talk trade here. Craig, you just wrote about an intra-division swap between the Orioles and the Rays. The Orioles got some pitching. Meg and everyone else on the baseball internet has been imploring the Orioles to acquire some pitching for quite a while now. I have joined her in that. And now they finally have acquired a pitcher, at least.

Shane Boz cost them four prospects and a draft pick. So since you have already published the transaction analysis, maybe you can adapt that to podcast form. Sure. Yeah, I think this is both, it's an interesting move. I don't know that I love it. They definitely needed to get a pitcher, in my view, and I think I'm probably a little bit of an outlier on this, but I think there's maybe too many similarities to me to the pitcher they dealt away to get Taylor Ward for this.

Boz, just through 166 innings. So the biggest difference is that he's available, and Grayson Rodriguez is not. But they've kind of between the trade deadline where they, dealt away Ramon Laureano and Ryan O'Hern for six prospects, and then traded Grayson Rodriguez for Taylor Ward, and then traded five, well, four prospects in a draft pick for Shane Boss. They've done this little dance, and I think they've moved forward and not insubstantially, but they've kind of paid a lot to do it. And I like Boz a lot. I've long been a fan of him. I loved him as a prospect. As a major leaguer, there's nothing he does exceptionally well.

I'm not sure that he's at front of the rotation guy. I think he's a fine third starter, but I'm not also confident that he's going to throw 166 innings again next year. And they really do need the innings. I think they need to continue to fill out this rotation, ideally with someone at the top of the rotation. There are only, I don't know, I guess Frambervaldez is the kind of the one guy who fits that maybe IMAI, I guess, could fit that role.

Ranger Swarer is kind of more in the good middle of the rotation profile to me. So I don't know. I think this is, again, they continue to raise their floor, which they need to do, but they are going up against Boston, which is improving themselves. It sounds like we'll get to that shortly. And Toronto continues to, obviously, they've added Dillon Cease. It sounds like they're in on Bregman. I don't know if they're still in on Bo Bichette.

So I don't know that it's kind of big enough steps forward, especially for the price that they're paying. I absolutely think these are improvements, but they're paying a lot for the amount that they're improving, in my view. Yeah, it's, I feel like a broken record. It's just constantly like, Orioles, got to get more pitching, got to get more pitching. And now they did. And so I want to sort of slap them on the back and say, well done, you did it. But also, you got to go get more pitching. Yeah, right.

Please keep going, though. Yeah, you can't be done. Yeah, what do you think, Joe? I think there's similarities between Boz and Rodriguez, the guy they were replacing, getting Boz to replace in that. I think we all need to just update our priors. Like, we've been talking about these guys forever, and we think of them as, ooh, Grayson Rodriguez, and, ooh, Shane Boz.

Well, Shane Boz is 27. He's thrown 80 innings in the majors once. He's had, he's got a 425 career IRA, 428 career fit. And again, he's one full season in the majors. I just, in that season, he wasn't very good. You know, as with Rodriguez, we kind of like, we all went, oh, Grasian Rodriguez, he was a top 10 prospect. Right, but he's a guy who didn't pitch last year.

And I just think for a lot of these guys, we kind of get caught up in what they once were for us and not look at what they are now, which is, you know, Shane Bosn looks like a number three if he can stay on the mound, which he's done exactly once. And I don't mean to, I mean, I kind of dumped on Murakami and, well, you know, We get to the Red Sox. I'm not going to dump on a guy. I actually like that move. But I feel like we're just not,

and maybe this is just the nature of pitching now. Maybe it's just too damn hard to find a guy who's been healthy and effective for three straight years. And you're just going to always be hoping that this is the year the guy is either 130 innings of good or 180 innings of middling and almost not expecting him to be 108 innings worth of good. I remember a couple years back when Jacob deGrom signed, I pointed out that there's just never been a contract like this for a pitcher with

platform year like he'd had. He'd had like 100 innings in his platform year. And it may just be now that teams are just almost giving up on getting full-time good starting pitchers and committing to resources to guys like King who threw 70 or whatever was 80 innings last year or, you know, Boss who was

very good in 80 innings two years ago and then not so good in 166 innings this year. I just, I think it's a weird time for pitching, which is really what I'm getting out. Boss is also just a weird pitcher, right? His ERA is was obviously well over four. He gave up a ton of home runs, obviously, in the minor league park.

So you can – I wrote this in the TA, but there's a lot of contradictions in him. He had an 85 DRA minus last year. So you get 166 innings of 85 DRA minus. That's almost a number two starter these days, right? But the actual production obviously didn't reflect that, but maybe getting him out of a minor league ballpark where he gave up a ton of home runs would help him, right? But also, you can go deeper. You can go into his stuff pro ratings are very good.

I think his stuff plus stuff is also very good as well across his five pitches, but also he doesn't even generate a 30% whiff rate on any one of his individual pitches. So there's like, he's a kind of a walking contradiction in and of himself. And so I don't know how to feel confident about what he's going to give Baltimore next year. This isn't like when they acquired Corbyn Burns, where it was like, okay, you know what to expect of Corbyn Burns, and Corbyn's delivered, right? So I don't know. He's just a tough one. Yeah, if you look at the depth charts projections for starting staffs at Fangraphs, the Orioles, even with Boz, are number 19. So if you say, okay, Rogers and Radish will pick up where they left off last season and Bos will be as good as he's ever been and they'll all stay healthy, okay, sure, best case scenario, there's a decent ceiling here and those aren't a bad three guys to go into a playoff series with.

But what are the chances that everything works out perfectly with pitchers? So if you can add Fromber or Ranger Suarez or maybe even Zach Gallen or am I or someone to that mix, okay, then we're talking, you know, then maybe that looks like a rotation that could contend in the ALEs. But I don't think it's quite there yet. It's a start. They hope it'll be a lot of starts. And it's the right idea to trade some prospects to shore up a weakness while you're within your competitive window. So hopefully Michael Isis is earned that lesson.

and, you know, coming on the heels of the Alonzo signing and the word trade and Helsley and all the rest, you can't say that they haven't been active. You know, they have clearly turned over a new leaf compared to last winter. Elias is acting like a guy who's playing for his job. Yes, and he should be. It feels unfair, like you're saying, Ben, for years,

to be saying, like, do more than you do something, like do more than you're doing, and then he does it. And at least for me, I'm kind of like, but not like that necessarily, you know, which is, like, completely unfair, But also, I kind of stand by it. And I would also add, you know, this trade, they sent out Slater de Braun, and I apologize if I'm mispronouncing these names, and Kaden Bodine.

And those are the 30th and 37th picks in the 2025 draft, and they sent a 20, I think the 33rd overall pick currently in the 2026 draft. Plus Michael Forrett, who is kind of a breakout arm in their system. This wasn't a light payment, right? This is a lot to give up in a lot of ways. And obviously, look, we don't know what's going to come of these guys. You can like or dislike their profiles. I think there are flaws in all of these guys.

But to trade the three picks in the 30 to 40 range is a substantial price to pay. Yep, you're almost there. One more move. Keep pushing. Don't stop now. So do we like what the raise have done? Well, yeah, we should talk about that. So I guess I didn't know whether to go to the Red Sox trade or the other raise

involved trade. We're going to get to all 30 teams. This is going to be whatever the record is for Fangraphs. We're breaking the, we're effectively wild. We're breaking the record today. Well, so you wrote about the three-team trade, Joe, so I guess we can cover that kind of quickly because the headliners aren't in as big print as the ones we've been talking about, or Wilson Contreras, for that matter. But this was a complicated one. The Reyes, the Astros, the Pirates.

The big names, relatively speaking, Brandon Lau is going from the raise to the pirates along with Jake Mangum and Mason Montgomery, who is a favorite of Josian. The pirates are shipping out Mike Burroughs, who's, you know, mid to back rotation starter, controllable. He's going to Houston. And then there are prospects who are changing teams here. The rays are getting a couple of good prospects from the Astros, or at least what passes for good prospects on the Astros these days. And then the Astros, yeah, they're getting Burroughs. There are a lot of moving pieces here. But I guess the main takeaway is that not very good hitters can still be big upgrades for the Pirates lineup. Yeah. Brandon Lau would have

been the second best hitter on their team last year. And even in decline in second base, you know, whether he stays there, plays some DH for them. It's going to help their lineup. They're still probably two hitters short. But hey, you've started the process. And you didn't give up much. You know, maybe we can debate what Mike Burroughs is. I think he's, He's a number three, and he's a number three for $750,000, and that's valuable. But on the Pirates, he actually probably would have a four or five. Remember, they've got so much pitching established, plus you've got Jared Jones coming back. You've got Chandler coming up.

This to me, I don't think they gave up anything. I really don't think they gave up anything to get loud. To get Mangum, who's basically a fourth outfielder. I'm curious to see how they deploy him with O'Neill Cruz, because Mangum's a much better center fielder than Cruz. I'm a much better center fielder than Cruz. And, you know, Montgomery, it's funny. They signed Gregory Soto right before they did this deal.

And I just think if you knew you were getting Mason Montgomery, there was really no reason to sign Soto. To me, Montgomery has, you know, he's not going to be got a crochet and that. You're going to put him back in the rotation. I don't think he's been a couple of years now removed from starting. But he's got a chance to be just what have kind of come out of nowhere to be one of your electric left-handed relievers. So I think they got three pieces who are among the, you know, Lowe is probably one of the six best players on the team. Well, take the pitching staff into account, maybe not that high. And, you know, Mengham's a good player for them.

and, you know, Montgomery could be one of their best relievers. I love the trade for them. I see it for the race. You know, obviously, any time the race can have an opportunity to spend less money, they'll do it. But, you know, you kind of are getting Milton and Brito, again, two of the three best prospects in the Astro system. Yay! Brito was a pop-up guy. Kind of came out of nowhere.

He's only slightly bigger than your four-year-old, Craig. But, I mean, the power arm picked up a lot of MPAH this year. Melton's probably just another. He's like a, again, Mengham replacement. He's younger, he's a fourth outfielder. He had an 81% groundball rate, which I don't think I've ever seen anywhere for any player, even in a small sample. So, you know, I think the bet on Brito is worth it. And then, like I say, for the Raid Astros, I just don't get it.

It's a lot to pay for a cheap, controllable starter who doesn't have a lot of upside. I think Burroughs just doesn't have a high ceiling. He's not going to step up and make that jump to be the Valdez replacement for them. And to me, it's another indication that the Astros would rather trade two highly rated prospects in their own system in an expensive starter than go out and sign, M.I, Gallen, Valdez, Suarez, one of those guys. They have definitely made the step that the Padres, to go back to what Craig was saying earlier, haven't made, which is we're retrenching from a payroll standpoint, and we'll make the baseball work around that. I just think that Astros are kind of in a similar position for me to the Padres. they've had a little bit more success related to the division and playoffs in recent years. But I keep looking at them and wondering when they're going to throw it in reverse,

and they don't seem to, but they're kind of just idling. And this move, okay, I can, when this first came down, I kind of thought, oh, like, this is an arm, the Astros can optimize in a way that the pirates might not. Like, that's maybe not a bad get for them. They've already said they're going to give him a sinker, kind of the hunter. Brown treatment. I don't know that he has that kind of upside. At the same time, they don't really have a full rotation at all. Like Lance McCullors factors into their rotation right now, and you don't really want to be in a position where you're relying on him to be on the mound with any

consistency. They keep just kind of losing pieces. And I just wonder when the time comes that they're either going to put it in reverse or at least give a nod to the fact that, like, there's a year beyond the next year. And they don't seem to be doing that. And it just seems like it's going to be crashing down. They also don't seem to be committing, to your point about signing someone like Am I or something like that. They're not really going in on the current year either. They're just kind of mosying along. And I don't know what the plan is. Yeah, I don't know. That's kind of, to me, the most pressing question coming out of this. I understand it from Pittsburgh side. I agree. I think they did pretty well. I don't know to what end. You know, what are they going to keep going? Like,

They're not even a wild card contender to me at this point. And the race, this is what the raise do. I mean, they're going to figure it out. And they're restocking and moving guys off their 40-man whenever they can and, you know, going from there. Brandon Lau could not have been more available for probably a year now. So they finally pulled the trigger. And I think they got a nice deal out of it from their perspective. We'll see what they do, you know, in their lineup and in rotation.

but I'm least concerned about them of the three teams, even if they're not getting any major leaders back here. All right. The last major move to discuss is the Wilson Contreras trade. And by the way, I should say that since we started recording, Jeff Passon reported that the White Sox have signed Sean Newcomb. So that happened. Now we have to go back and talk about the White Sox team.

Yeah. That changes everything. Now let's revisit the entire signing. Yeah. So Wilson Contreras goes to the Red Sox from St. Louis. So they recently synced up on the sunny gray trade. And I guess the Red Sox like that so much, they went back for more. And they plundered that Cardinals roster for one of its better hitters, Wilson Contreras, for Hunter Dobbins and a couple of starting pitching prospects. Very amusing to me that after all the drama about Hunter Dobbins's dad and his grudge against the Yankees, which was seemingly based on some sort of fiction. Now, Hunter Dobbins will not have to be part of the Yankees Red Sox rivalry anymore. But the Red Sox, crucially, did acquire a first baseman and one who can really rake. So this does not add to their collection of great gloves, but it does fill what was a glaring hole for them last year with a guy who's getting up there in years and is basically bat only, but it is a really solid bat. So this makes a ton of sense to me from their perspective.

And clearly the Cardinals are just rebuilding and kind of casting away their veterans and getting what they can in prospects as Heinblum puts his stamp on the roster. And, of course, you have written many a time about the stamp that is still on the Red Sox roster because of the work that Heinblum did there before he was dismissed, which could maybe give Cardinals fans some hope that he'll be able to pull that off again, another X-Rays guy as well. So this seems to me to just be a big addition for Boston, and maybe that is obvious. But, Joe, do you have anything less obvious to say about it? Yeah, I thought this is a good pickup for the Red Sox. Wilson Contreras is just underrated. I mean, there was the whole controversy when he first signed with the Cardinals about, you know, they moved off on the catcher because the pitchers were complaining and whining is really the word I would use.

I don't think Wilson Contreras ever should have been moved out from beyond catcher. I think the Red Sox should catch him 50 times next year. And especially if that means getting Connor Wong off the roster. I think that this is the player he can be for them. And also that would create some opportunity for Tristan Kastis to somehow get his job back. I think there are some moving parts there. The Red Sox still have to figure out. They still have that crowded outfield.

They have to figure out whether Christian Campbell's going to come back and be the second base. But there's a lot of moving parts there. But this trade alone, I think it fit what both teams were trying to do. But when you actually look at Contreras's a skill set, the contract, the fact they adapted well to playing first base, this is a really good pickup for them. The Red Sox were a playoff team last year. I don't think we think of them in those terms, but they made the playoffs last year. They're running back pretty much that entire roster, and now they've upgraded it with Contreras.

I can't say I know a ton about the pitchers other than Dobbins. I'm not a prospect guy, and I feel like that's something I should say here. So, you know, Craig was mentioning the prospects, the raise picked up in the Boz deal. I just don't have a great grip on the talent that the Red Sox traded here, other than Dobbins, who's a back-end starter. But I think they're better, I think they're better than they were six weeks ago.

And what is a fairly crowded top of the ALE East, if we had to pick today, I'd probably be picking them to win the division. Yeah, I love this one. I'm actually in full agreement with Joe.

I think I've been talking about the Red Sox potentially acquiring Wilson Contreras for a year now. And I agree, I would catch him some. I was going to say probably like 30 games at least,

but you could get me to 50 very quickly. I fully agree with that. I think he's a great bat. He's had a number of injuries. They've all been kind of weird. They're not the kind that you would necessarily think, like, oh, this is going to happen. Again, I know he missed time with a broken wrist when he was catching. He got hit by a bat back there.

I think he broke his arm this year getting hit by a pitch or something like that. But, yeah, I love this. He's a right-handed bat. They're very lefty heavy at the top of their lineup. He's a right-handed bat that you can put right in there. I don't know exactly how he's going to translate to Fenway. It's obviously a quirky park, but I think he has the kind of swing that should translate basically anywhere. And, yeah, he was, I think, something around a scratch defender at first base.

So if you are just going to keep him there, he's an upgrade over Casas. I don't know what I, you know, I still kind of like Casas, but he wasn't good. And then he was hurt, and he's been hurt a lot. So I think this makes a lot of sense. And I thought, yeah, I think it makes sense for St. Louis as well. I like, I really liked, I think it's Joyker. I might be wrong on that. but I think it's Joyker Fahardo.

He's got a high-velocity fastball. It doesn't have great shape, but he has two secondaries that are really good. You can potentially see if you can get to work on the fastball shape issue, and you could have a breakout guy in that mold. And they need guys to soak up innings. Obviously, they traded gray. They just need guys who are going to be back-end guys to get through a season. So I think Dobbins offers at least that, if not a little more.

Makes a lot of sense for both sides. Yeah. And, you know, this also makes me just remember how wild that transition to St. Louis was for Contreras. And we talked about it a ton at the time. But there was, it was just Yadir Malina broke people's brains. And I get it. You know, he was a great defensive catcher. But you had to sign Wilson Contreras with the expectation that he wasn't going to be Yadi back there. But he was going to be serviceable. And from all appearances, he was. But there just seemed to be a mass revolt. among Cardinals pitchers, and they just could not acclimate to anyone other than Yadi back there, and I think prematurely moved him off that position and, you know, hurt his feelings seemingly at the time, and he soldiered on. I gave him credit for how he handled that. I don't know, maybe it's too late for him to strap on the chest protector at this point, but I think he certainly could have held his own at that position for longer than they let him, and the bat was a big addition back there especially, but good enough to play at first base. And that was just such a glaring need

for the Red Sox that that's huge. And I got to think, you know, watching what Toronto and Boston and Baltimore have done this offseason, Yankees fans got to be getting antsy, right? I mean, not that they're ever otherwise, but they've done so little. They had Trent Grisham take the qualifying offer, and they have resigned Ryan Yarbrough, Paul Blackburn, and Ahmed Rosario. That is essentially, the sum total of major league moves that the Yankees have made. And there's plenty of offseason left, but they got to keep pace, you know? Maybe they didn't have as much to do, maybe. They've got Garrett Cole coming back.

But, boy, they've just sat out this offseason, essentially. I've made this point in other off seasons, and, you know, fans always want their team to go out and do stuff. But sometimes the market doesn't fit what you need. There's just no good place to spend money. And I think the Yankees might be there right now. they could sign Kyle Tucker because Kyle Tucker fits everywhere but you've already got Judge as a corner outfielder for 40 million a year I think you'd have to move Tucker to left if you move Tucker to left

okay now you've still got Grisham you've got Jason Dominguez who really should go back to center you've got Stanton who's got it then is locked into D.H which you should be but it's a roster building issue there's just not what the Yankees really need I guess if I was going to say you know what do the Yankees really need they've got they retained McMahon so they've got a third baseman they've got jazz at second. Yankee fans are really mad at Anthony Volpe, who I think just played hurt all last year and should just be left alone at shortstop. There's just not a lot for the Yankees too. You can go out and sign Valdez, but do you really want a third, very expensive,

left-handed starter at the top of your rotation? It's just a bad market for what the Yankees need to do. Okay, I'm not going to make you discuss Matt Strom. He was traded. I love that strong. Yeah, who doesn't? Matt Strom, yeah, he's been excellent for the Phillies. And also, you know, we've ragged on Phillies players recently, so I'll say Matt Strom seems to be a level-headed fellow. And I remember back a couple years ago, and we were reminded by a listener, Katie Davenport, who emailed us about this, that Strom objected to MLB teams extending alcohol sales and, you know, going beyond the traditional seventh inning cutoff because that was something that teams were interested in doing in the pitch clock era, because, you know, not as much time to go get concessions.

And he made the point that, well, this seems like the opposite of what you should do. If you have a faster-paced game that the game's going to be over more quickly, then shouldn't you actually cut off everyone sooner so that they can sober up and drive home first? So, you know, that was sort of a good point in contrast to whatever alternative treatments Bryce Harper is pursuing these days. And Straub, he was just really effective for them. He's going to the Royals for Jonathan Bolin. that's it's kind of a rare

I guess reliever for reliever trade I said I wasn't going to make you talk about it so I'm actually not unless you have pressing Matt Strom thoughts well he's a spare reliever Spare Bolin spare I get this thing on this thing on

Craig was it one of your staff I think it was one of your guys I saw I retweeted on Blue Sky okay that's a weird phrase talked about Bolin like throwing a lot of sliders and actually having a pretty good swing and miss I thought it was one of your guys his his fastball

has a lot of... I think he had a 40% with weight on his fastball. And he throws that a lot. He's certainly interesting, right? I mean, they're going to get a lot of control, but he's 29 already. But this is kind of modern baseball, right?

Is that you're trading for specific attributes that these guys have. And so the Phillies get a lot of control. I don't think five... We talk about this a lot on five and I, but like, five years of control over reliever is nothing. Like, you don't...

You're not getting five, right? I remember when the Yankees traded for Scott Efros. It was like, oh, he's been really good and they get five years. Well, how's that going? You go back to anyone, basically, for five years as a reliever. You're not getting five actual years out of them. Either good years or they get hurt or, you know, whatever. This is just how relievers are these things.

Can I make the point that I feel that way about all pitchers? I don't think you're getting five years for any pitcher. Fair. But, yeah, I think Bolan, I think this is, obviously there was some, a little bit of discord or whatever going on, disagreement with the clubhouse. and whatever was going on. Strom is really good. There are some markers you could see that maybe not as good as he was at his peak.

And so they're getting out from that early and they pick up a guy with some upside in Bolin with a fastball that guys just don't see if you can teach him a breaking ball or a better breaking ball. And that's what they've been able to do in a number of cases. You know, you might really have something.

They've gotten really good years out of guys you wouldn't expect. You know, Tanner Banks was very good last. year, and Tanner Banks was kind of an afterthought for several years. So, you know, at this point, I kind of trust the Phillies and their ability to analyze that. The way that they've done, it's surprising because they had, obviously, one of the most kind of implosion-heavy bullpens for an extended run, but they've been pretty good for the last few years. And the last move, which we already kind of talked about the circumstances that contributed to it, was the latest sign

of the Metz-Metzis, as Michael Bowman. has labeled it. They've lost a lot of guys, and now they have lost Jeff McNeil, which, unlike some of the other departures, was not really a surprise because once they acquired Marcus Semyon and given the clubhouse issues and the performance issues for McNeil, I'm pretty sure I said when we talked about the Semen and Nimmo trades that McNeil's days on the roster seemed to be limited, but they have now shipped him out to the A's for a 17-year-old Dominican summer league pitcher. So, you know, total lottery ticket there. They just kind of wanted to clear space, clear payroll room, et cetera. So what is your great takeaway if you have one from the Mets

turning over a large portion of their roster here, Joe? I get to use the phrase baseball zygote. Yes. I love these guys who are in the DSL. I'm like, you don't know what you're getting. They're just baseball zygots. But I'll be the 900th person to mention that McBeal try to hit the ball harder and pull it more in the air in recent years, a play that's going to, might work really well in Sacramento. So, you know, the A's might get a decent amount of value for this. You know, it does seem to me, too, that David Stearns, met fans are obviously upset. They've lost a lot of players that they've been rooting for for quite some time. David Stern seems to be, makes, seems to be making a very clear statement about what he thought about that core, that the core

that he inherited. And, you know, it's his, it's going to be his team now. For better or for worse, These are now the David Stern Mets. David Stern's, Mets. Yeah, I don't think Francisco Lindor will miss McNeil seemed like not a lot of love lost there. So maybe there's a clubhouse benefit, too. But there are probably more Mets moves to be made. But we did a whole stap blast recently about the precedent for turning over your roster, losing this amount of war produced for your team, and long-tenured players in a single off-season.

And it has happened before. It's not as uncommon as it seems. The 1914 A's? Yeah, I think they came up, but it's jarring for fans, obviously, when that many familiar faces get shipped out or leave up their own accord in quick succession like that. You win, and they'll be fun. Yes, exactly. It changes the team identity.

But if the identity goes from team that collapsed to team that actually wins and makes the playoffs, then I think you'll learn to love the new guys pretty soon. Okay, did want to just note, did you guys see the report at the athletic by, Evan Drellick and Zach Myzel about MLB having warned Emmanuel Class A about breaking the cell phone rules during games prior to his being caught here. Joe, we both wrote about this, but this was another little wrinkle that evidently the Players Association has protested some of the constraints on players being able to use their phones in game. And so post-sign stealing, if we can safely say that we are post-sign stealing and you never know because it always comes back

like the killer in a slasher film. But if it's gone, thanks to pitchcom, et cetera, now they've kind of loosened the restrictions. And yes, they have monitors and they have people roaming around, but, you know, they can't be everywhere at all times. And also are they actually going to get on every player because they're seemingly sending a quick text, which is probably innocuous in all cases. But it does seem as if Class A was warned at some point that this behavior of his was detected, but obviously not prevented. So that was interesting. It doesn't make MLB look any better. I guess, you know, the Players Association not entirely innocent here either.

And it seems like the sources cited in this piece just kind of threw up their hands and said, well, what are you going to do? If guys want to send a text, they're going to, you know, they'll stash a second phone in the bathroom or something. and I guess you could be kind of fatalistic about it, or you could, as other people mentioned, you know, there's precedent like you go to a Bob Dylan concert and you have to put your phone in a bag for a few hours, right? And if you're a player, maybe you're paid well enough to do that because ostensibly you're not supposed to be using it anyway

for that small portion of your day. So I do wonder whether this coming to light and the fallout from that scandal will lead to some sort of crackdown here, even if it's just for show, just for appearances sake, because not great that they evidently sort of saw him doing this, but didn't take any steps to stop him. I don't know how realistically, how realistic it is to take these guys' phones away. I mean, I know where, Ben, you live in the city,

and there's, you know, movement to keep care of not like kids have phones in schools, which is something I actually agree with. My daughter doesn't go to school in the city, but, you know, Sloan's about to start, I'd imagine. I don't think you can enforce that for adults in a major clubhouse. And not least because these guys put in long days. It's not like they're getting there at 6.30, putting the uniform on and playing baseball for three hours, two and a half hours. They're there at 11 or whatever, 12 to kind of do their workout and hang out. You're just not going to be able to keep phones out of the clubhouse for 10 hours a day.

Could you have, you know, a pouch system doesn't seem realistic. As we note, it's not like these guys can't buy a second phone. They make pretty good money. So it's just, it's not a problem you can reasonably police at the last. level of, you know, 26 guys for, you know, across 30 teams for eight hours a day. So it's, wasn't the initial impetus for that rule, somebody using Instagram during a game? That has happened too, yeah. So.

There was, wasn't someone, was it Sandoval in the Red Sox? Pablo Sandoval used it like in the bathroom midgame, something like that. Yeah, I, that might have been it. Yeah. And it was something kind of embarrassing, right? Because it was like, yeah, it was Pablo Sandoval. It was like he was, yeah, like in women's photos on Instagram. Oh, like when Ted Cruz, like the porn site or something?

Yeah, fat finger, purely an accident, I'm sure. But yes. So that has happened, you know, that's much more innocent, I guess, ultimately. But it does feel like, you know, if you're trying to cut this off and curtail this behavior by, you know, taking their phones away like their kids, you're playing whack-a-mole at that point. And it feels better to address it by sort of. stemming the problem at the source and removing the incentive to do this. This feels like treating a symptom and like not even actually treating a symptom. It feels like pretending to treat a symptom. You're going to tell me MLB is going to treat a symptom and not

address the actual problem? Come on, guys. Come on. That wouldn't pass the Barry Weiss test. Come on. Well, I guess that's actually a pretty decent segue to why I ostensibly brought you on here to talk about whether this is actually treating a symptom or the cause by implementing. implementing a challenge system. Folks, this might be a good time to get a drink, get some food. I'm guessing we won't go quite as long on the actual debate here, the main topic as we did on the transactions, because teams have been busy. They've been doing a lot of last-minute Christmas shopping, so what can we do?

But I am interested in hearing your perspectives on this because they do differ somewhat from mine and Megs. I mean, you know, we are pretty pro-challenge system, but partly, largely, because we're just kind of pro-catcher defense and catcher framing, which is anathema to Joe. And so we have different philosophies on that. And, you know, I see some of the same benefits that Craig does. So I guess I'll sort of recuse myself a little bit. I'll be more of the moderator kind of teeing you up to explain your positions here. Maybe, Joe, you can start and you can explain, I guess, both your opposition to stealing strikes, as you sometimes refer to it. And then, you know,

what you want the actual recourse to be and why this does not address the problems that you see with pitch calling? There are two primary statements that I use to kind of frame my position here. The first is this. Pitches should be called based on where they cross the plate, not what happens after that. That has long been my main opposition to catch a picture framing, to the whole framing debate. The pitch should be called based on where it crosses the plate. And one of the things that framing statistics have revealed is that that's not the case. The catcher, the pitches are being called based on what the catcher does. And that's unfair to the hitter who cannot possibly have that information. That's one. The second is a little more pithy, I think. Umpires are calling catches, and ABS system calls

pitches. And again, I go back to the framing stats. We know, without a doubt, that umpires aren't actually calling the pitches. They're calling the catches. They're calling the receding. They're calling what the catcher does with the pitch. And I think, both of those things are bad for the game. They're bad for hitters. They contribute to the imbalance we have right now in a league that's hitting 245, but the imbalance between the pitchers and the hitters. So fundamentally, I think the fact that framing exists at all, and of course, we only had the technology to fix this in fairly recent history. In 1987, we couldn't have done anything about this. But now we can do something about it. We can ensure that pitches are called based on

where they cross the plate. And that's what I want to get to. I want pitches to be called based on where they cross the plate. Okay. Well, you make it sound so reasonable. Craig. We're done. Good talking to you guys. Happy honest.

That's it. I don't know if you want to rebut Joe's points or just express your own position in sort of an opening statement for our challenge system challenge here. I don't want to rebut those because I largely agree. And I largely agree with Joe on a lot of this stuff. I'm just a little more unsure that we want the, the ultimate consequences of a fully automated zone at all times. And I think it is extremely

frustrating to watch umpires screw up obvious calls or important calls or the nexus of the two of those things. And look, I think it changed. I think you can go back to the Yankees, Dodgers World Series, and I think it was a strike to Glaver Torres, right? I think that was called a strike and wasn't. And it was exceeding. consequential, I think both in the game and I think you could argue in the course of the series. There's a fastball up that was either either just clipped the top

of the zone or... I don't think it just clipped it. I don't think it was close. Hey, you're the Dodger fan. No, no, I'm saying I think it was a ball and they called it a strike and I don't think it was really honestly that close. I also think we can I guess my view

is less of, it's more about what we actually want out of the sport and the game overall. And my view is not, it used to be that I want every call to be correct, and now it's more that I want everyone to agree on the call, whatever it is, and move on almost as quickly as possible. I think there are damaging aspects to, you know, replay, I really wanted replay in general, and it has not gone how I wanted it to. And I've kind of tried to take that into account when I look towards other, you know, technological adjustments towards getting every call right.

I think automatic zones aren't going to be burdened with kind of the time wasting that we get out of other replay. It's fairly instantaneous. But I also think umpires do a number of important things in terms of controlling the pace of the game in non-close games. And I understand if people disagree with kind of the value of this relative to just getting the calls right in the most important moments. But I also think that's why the challenge system is kind of a. compelling half measure in this case. It absolutely is a half measure. I think they often don't work, and I am Tobias Fuenke saying, you know, maybe it can work for us in this case because it allows, you know, I think the 3-0 strike or the 02 ball or whatever, it kind of gives us

more opportunity to get players to put the ball in play in certain situations. And I think overall that's to the game's benefit. I'm not saying this is the most important. thing in general. But I think things like that, the way that they control pace of game and kind of act as a kind of rubber band effect in certain situations is actually a good thing, even if it is not the fairest thing. Yeah, I've made that point, too. I do think that there will be some sort of unintended consequence there.

And yes, it seems completely ridiculous that the zone is a different size and shape on 02 and 30, the plate has not changed. It has not shrunk or expanded. It seems unfair. I think the effects of the unfairness are mitigated a bit by the fact that everyone involved knows the drill. And so they know that it expands and contracts in that way. And they can plan for that. And maybe you say, well, they shouldn't have to. And that's reasonable, I think. But I'm with you, Craig, that I do think there will be a real effect there. Because, I mean, you've written about how when you get to two strikes these days, Joe, or you get down 02, it's over, you know? And that's even with the advantage of the strike zone shrinking to benefit the batter who's down. And so it is this rubber

band effect. It's essentially subconsciously or otherwise the umpire just extending a helping hand to the party that is currently at a disadvantage in that plate appearance. And I think we would see faster exits essentially, you know, once you fall behind an account, whether you're the pitcher or the hitter, you're going to have a lot fewer comebacks in the count, essentially, and comebacks in a plate appearance, I think, are sort of exciting, too. We don't tend to think of comebacks on a plate appearance level. It's more of a full game thing. But I think it does happen on that micro level, too, and that that would have some effect just on how watchable a plate appearances, you know, whether you're still kind of glued to the screen when a guy's

down 1-2 or 02. And I think the league-wide splits will probably reflect. like that. I'm not saying that's a deal breaker or that's the reason why you can't make a change. But if you went to full ABS, I do think that would make a meaningful difference. I disagree that the strike zone should change on 3002. I don't expect to convince you guys of that. But let me ask you this. On balance, do you think the current model where umpires are largely calling pitches based on what the catcher does versus calling the rulebook strike zone, which is what an ABS system would do. Adds or subtracts offense from the league? I do think it subtracts. Okay. So let me do, I'm not trying to gotcha here, but so you guys, the argument you're making,

and this is really more bent, is that by, you know, calling the 30-O auto strike or calling the 202 auto ball, it will help put offense back in the game, put balls and play back in the game. My argument is consistent with that. My argument is that if you were to call a consistent rulebook strikes, I want to make a point here that I'm largely talking about with. My issue is almost entirely with the width of the plate, with pitches being called strikes that are not designed to be hitable by the rules of baseball that are an inch, two inches off the plate. I think that if you call a rulebook width of the plate, which is what the system is largely designed to do, you would put offense back in the game because so much of pitching right now is getting ahead in the count and then exploiting this massive hole in the game where the hitter has to cover an 1819 inch plate. The pitchers just can have so, their stuff is so good now that hitters are dealing with the velocity, they're dealing with the spin, and now they're dealing with all this surface

area. I am 110% convinced that if you simply called a rulebook strike zone, an ABS strike zone the entire time, you would add balls in play and you would add offense back into the game, not just because of the strike zone itself, but because of the decision tree you would create for pitchers. I think it would force pitchers to value control and command. I'm not saying everybody's going to be Jim Cock. But I'm saying right now pitchers can just value stuff above all else and exploit this hole in the game, whereas if they had to throw the ball over the plate more, we would have a more entertaining game. I'm with you. I think you're right. I think

it would benefit hitters. And I am generally in favor of boosting offense a little bit and giving hitters more of an edge because goodness knows they need it. and I've even advocated for certain changes that might help them. I guess with the expanding and contracting strike zone, it's not even so much that I think it will suppress offense overall as just, like, might make each individual plate appearance a little less entertaining, which is kind of tough to quantify, but I just... I think they won't get to 3.0 and 0.02 as often.

Maybe. Maybe so. And yeah, and they'll know, of course, that they can't count on the zone benefiting them if they get down it. Yeah. So they're... It's tough because you, You know, you could kind of run this experiment in your mind, but then humans are involved. There is still a human element, even if you are removing some of the human element of umpiring. And so players adapt, yeah. The other thing is we center the umpires in this conversation way too much. We should center the players.

The players and the ball, if you will. I think the umpires really almost be a non-factor in this. I mean, talk about, you know, people talk about the human element for as long as I've been alive. You know, the players are human too. Yeah. Oh, that's true. And they're the ones that we're actually... Except for Otani.

And the players are the humans that we're most interested in seeing. And in fact, when we see too much of the umpires, then it's an ump show and everyone gets upset about it. So it's true. I do think it would benefit the offense. I also think that based on what we've seen in the minors, a lot of that would come in the form of walks, at least in the short term. Which is going to be a transition period. Yeah. No question.

Right. And maybe there will be an acclamation. In the short term, I think there will be more walks. And, you know, you'll take offense wherever you can get it, I guess, if you're a team. But from a spectator perspective, maybe that's not quite as compelling as if you're suddenly seeing strikeout rates plunge and, you know, batting averages go way up. So it might just be in the form of free passes. If it creates 1933, is that really that under not unintertaining? That's almost the word.

Yeah, I mean, maybe it's better than the league batting 240 and not having any of the secondary skills that sort of prop up that line, depending on whether the ball is dead that season or not. So just a couple notes. One, I agree that it would improve offense, and I think it would mostly be through walks early. I also do think pitchers would adapt in ways that would exploit the way that whatever the zone ends up being. I don't know that it's calling the rulebook zone, right? The rule book zone is what the umpire – the way the strike zone is written is it's what the umpire calls based on some very vague parameters, generally speaking, right? especially north to south, and I understand you're talking the width of the zone. But I also would point out that, like, the way the ABS works is hanging a box in the middle

of the plate. It's not when it crosses the plate. It's the middle of the plate, right? And that's fine if everyone agrees with it. But it's not traditionally what we've talked about of, like, it's not that 3D box that sometimes ESPN shows after a pitch or whatever, where it's like the entire plate raised up in a three-dimensional shape. And if the ball clips a part of it. That's not the way that ABS works. And maybe that's for the better. Maybe it's not, I don't know, but

I just think we should be clear on that. Right, but it's also not the way umpires work. Sure. No, no. I agree. The idea that the umpires... I agree. The ball is over the plate for six one thousandth of a second. There's not a human being alive that can discern whether it clip the front of their back. For sure. And I also just would say,

I don't know that I agree that it would prioritize command over stuff, because if you have to pitch, if you're being forced into the zone, which is essentially what you're talking about there, you have to have stuff to live in the zone. You can't just do it on command because hitters are going to punish you in the areas that they can reach. And I think you're right that they're responsible for too much plate right now or plate and then some, right? But if you're forcing pitchers back in the zone, I think what you're incentivizing is the kind of stuff that can survive it. And so I think

you're going to see, you know, and ultimately the difference between a ball a quarter inch off the plate and a ball a foot off the plate is nothing, right? I think you're actually incentivizing pitchers who don't have command because when they get it over the plate is successful and when it's not over the plate, because you're talking about an automatic system, no matter how little you miss by, it's a miss. And I think, again, I think this would be good for offense. And that's that's fine if that's what you want. I'm not saying one way or the other, but the way that these,

Max Muncie is never going to swing at a ball out of the zone once he learns an automated strike zone, right? He's going to know, you know, these guys generally are going to know exactly where it is and are going to be able to have some of them, what, you know, now we would call like the balliest takes you've ever seen because they know, some of these guys just know the zone that well. And I don't, again, if that's fine with everybody, that's fine with me.

But I think I just don't know that people tend to think through the second and third order effects of how all this works. I also do think in the areas that the ball can clip, you know, the smallest amount of zone possible in the corners and things like that, you're going to see certain pitchers over time. I don't think it's going to happen early on, be able to take advantage of that. And there are going to be, again, this is all about responding to responses and things like that. But I don't know how, and I don't mean you on this, Joe. I think you have thought about it quite a bit.

But I don't know that generally when I see this talked about that people are thinking of things like that. And just lastly, in terms of what the zone is and the automated zone and how it's called, we've actually seen. They went and implemented what you might conceive of the rulebook zone very early on in this process in the minors. it was a mess. Everyone hated it. Pitchers didn't like it. Hitters didn't like it. And they've been slowly adapting it to the way that current umpires call the zone, which I think is both reasonable and also pretty funny if you're trying to get away from how umpires call the zone. You know what I mean? So I don't know. I think there's a lot of, there are a lot of levers here in this discussion. And ultimately it depends. I end up kind of looking at it more of like an aesthetic.

level. And I think about it a lot, like, I'm very philosophically against restricting the shift, right? And I think you were the same. Oh, yeah. I don't remember. But yeah. We were all aligned on that one. I'm extremely philosophically against it. I don't, I think teams should be able to position guys how and where they want to, to play the best defense. I also, when this came down, I kind of said, like, I don't know that I'm going to mind it that much aesthetically in my, in my day-to-day. experience, I'm not going to regret not seeing a guy, you know, in between, in short right field or whatever. And largely, I don't. I don't mind this the way it's played out. I don't agree with it philosophically, but I think it's generally fine. I don't know that I agree philosophically

with the idea that we should, philosophically, I think every call should be right. I also think this might actually be a very livable half measure as it plays out. A lot to. to get to there, but I think the one thing that I want to focus on, you talk about pitchers exploiting, clipping the edge of the zone. If the pitch is a strike, it's a strike. And I'd much rather see pitchers exploit clipping the edge of the zone than pitchers exploit two inches outside the zone. I'm fine.

I mean, if the pitch is a strike, it's a strike. And hitters, sure, guys have been dotting the corners. It's dotting not the corners that drives me nuts. So let's make the game better. And again, I really do go back to the, gap between pitchers and hitters right now. One of the secondary effects I'm trying for here is to say, I think the game would be better with an automated zone.

And you get to the point, like they've been tweaking the automated zone for years now to make it, quote, more like the umpires call it, however we want to do it. It is, if we want to say, let's use the strike zone to build the game that we want to see. And this gets into you guys' point about three O and O2. And I understand that. But I just think if we can, there's no way to do. It's talk about this without talking about making life harder for pitchers. And it sounds like you're biased against pitchers.

But I approach this from the standpoint of the guy sitting in Section 323. Pitch framing is just completely, it doesn't exist if you're sitting there. But you know what does exist? A double. What does exist is a ground ball. What does exist are balls in play. And I want to try to tweak, use this system to get the calls right. But the more I think about this, I want to use it to make the game look more like baseball.

And I really do believe that I agree with you guys The walk rate would spike initially Just as it has in the minors But I think over time It would force more actual hitable pitches To be thrown And we would end up with more balls and play

And a more entertaining game For the guy in 323 Yeah and I'll say as the framing fan It's a niche interest And I acknowledge that And there are many more people who are It's a fetish You can call it a framing fetish

I'll acknowledge that Yeah, it's a vanishingly small percentage of people who pay attention to that or care one way or another compared to the people who care about getting the call, quote, unquote, correct. And I acknowledge that I'll even say that, aesthetically speaking, I don't find framing as pleasing these days. Well, I was going to say, when you first started talking about framing, and I want to say, was it fast or I'm going to forget the gentleman who originally did the research back in, like, 2008, 2009? There were a lot of, yeah, there were, Dan Turkenkoff was involved, Mike Fast, Mac. Marky. Marky, that's the name I keep forgetting. Yeah, there were others, and I found out about it when I was an intern with the Yankees

before it even really became publicly widely known. And so part of my attraction to it was just that it was the cool thing that, you know, was the new hotness in Sabermetric circles. And we felt smart and, hey, we learned something about the game. And it was so eye-opening. But I think it was more of an art and more of a skill. And now it's just a bunch of guys yanking every single picture in the middle of them. And it's odd because when I was writing about that weekly for a while,

I always made the point that it's not yanking, that yanking is bad, actually, because yanking is obvious, and that draws the umpire's attention to it. And what you really want is the subtle, barely perceptible movement of a Jose Molina. And that's, that's poetry to watch Jose Molina. If you ever just... I settle down. This is where we get into fetish territory. But, yeah, if you can cue up a montage of Jose Molina frames for me, I'll watch that all day. That out here, we're writing Jose Molina Thick.

I mean, I've considered naming a child after Molina if I were to have another, but, and it wouldn't be the Molina that everyone expected, but the only one who's been a guest on this podcast, in fact, of the other more famous Molinas, but they don't look like that anymore. And evidently it works somewhat to my disappointment that it's that the wool is pulled over umpire's eyes, even when the movements are so demonstrative. And so that has sapped some of the appeal for me. I think most people at any given time are watching the game from the center field camera. So you can see that. You're not the guy in Section 323, although, you know, but I do think baseball should do more for the guy. Yeah. I agree with that. And I do think

most people would rather see balls in play than a sweet, perfect frame. And I just think, you know, there are some cases where philosophically the idea of just getting the calls, right? I mean, that sounds fair to me. I think there are some cases where my philosophical inclination is one thing, and then in practice, I see something else. And I think this actually is more entertaining, even if it's sort of inconsistent, even if it seems unfair to some degree. Now, you know, one reason why framing doesn't bother me the way it bothers you is that that is still a player having an effect. It's not the umpire screwing up. Now, the empire screw up sometimes, to be clear.

But when it is the player having that impact, you know, it's not just an umpire seeing it wrong and calling a fair ball foul or something. There's a player's perceptible impact there. Framing stats are umpire stats. I'm just not going to move off of that. Well, it's a bit of both, obviously. But, you know, clearly there's some signal there that it's persistent for players. I mean, so we know, like, some umpires get fooled more than others, right? So, like, there has to be.

And they have jobs for life, so I guess it doesn't know. Yeah. And it's something that, you know, if you are aware that there's a certain umpire with certain traits back there or a certain catcher with certain traits, then you should study the scouting report and adjust accordingly. Yeah, but this is where it gets into like your praising flopping. Yeah, well, yeah, we've had this conversation. Like, I don't think framing is, I don't think framing is cheating. I don't think framing, I kind of, I don't even really think it's flopping. But once you start talking about exploiting the umpire, is that really why you're going to a baseball game? No, I, yeah, I see what you're saying. And I do think, though, that

there's kind of a meta-game aspect to these things that is, that is important. One thing I've been thinking about is, is, like, these balls on the, on the edge that in a lot of, because we have different umpires calling their own zone, or their interpretation of, of the rulebook zone or whatever, right? We have balls that we'll talk about are 50-50 balls, right, that are on, they're in the, what are you call the shadow zone, right? Or whatever. I think for my entertainment value, I think it's good that we don't know for certain whether some of those balls are balls or strikes. Like, I think the certainty of knowing whether a ball, you know, an eighth of an inch off the plate is a ball versus usually is a ball, but sometimes a strike. Like, I think that that randomness is something that we actually, as fans do seek in our sports.

Because if it just went how we know, and I under, and again, this is just a philosophical. kind of, like, what you want out of the game. And I think people can reasonably differ. I don't think people who disagree with me on this are wrong. But I think as I've kind of been reflecting on what I want, I think this idea of a 50-50 ball or a ball, even if you coded it into the system, I would be happier than saying, like, anything that, like, just use,

again, I've been advocating for this kind of challenge system or replay since Hawkeye was being used in tennis, and they recreate the shot and zoom in. And sometimes they have to zoom in. And again, that's a fake, that's a recreation, right? It's not what actually happened, but everyone sees it and says, okay, fine. We all agree that either missed or that was in by the smallest of pretend margins. And I think that is ultimately a benefit.

But ultimately, we don't know whether it actually hit the zone or didn't or actually hit the line or didn't. It's just something that happened. and we all agree and move on. And I think that is the better part, is that everyone can agree and just say, like, well, that's what this thing says, and that's fine. And you get that with ABS, but I also kind of like the uncertainty

that comes with certain areas of the zone. And I think I'd be even happier if you could code in that, like, 60% of the time this is a strike, 40% of the time it's a ball, 50, whatever it is, in certain areas of the plate. That would honestly make me happy. I wouldn't.

I think that would drive people baddie. I love it This came up Somebody said something To the effect of And I'm gonna I'm misremembering An athletic article probably

But like there was a question As to whether If you challenged a pitch And it was within a certain tolerance of the strike zone It wouldn't actually be overturned Which my head actually exploded I had to react

I had to physically put my skull back on Because like you're going to have this system And then say well no Good enough for horseshoes hand grenades nuclear war and pitches on the on the black i yeah i'm with you on that sure that could actually get the call right and they're deciding that eh you know but what is right no but ultimately like what is right because again it's not it's not necessarily look these things are not they are extremely fine-tuned and they're also they're also somewhat estimates no it's not it's

the plate is 17 inches wide did the baseball cross over and again i know we're doing 2d but that doesn't bother me because umpires do it 2d because umpires don't have that can't get to that level of detail. So the fact that it's going to be a 2D box doesn't bother me at all. I don't think it actually matters in terms of gameplay, whether it's... It doesn't bother me. It's just I want people to know that that's what it is. Well, that's the reputation... Like, you've been against K-Zone. You and Will Leach are the great warriors against KZone. Like, and I think that's the same thing, right? This representation on the screen that gets everybody all worked up, and I'm guilty of this myself, doesn't

actually necessarily reflect what actually happened. Yeah, I'm with each of you on something here. I'm with you, Craig, I think on your opposition to the K zone. Because even though sometimes I think I think when you take it away from me, I don't actually miss it. I don't miss it at all. Yeah. It's like the shift. It's like you said about the shift. And I think it has negative effects that's, you know, just because it gets people riled up and it's inaccurate and et cetera. Right. But the thing that I agree with Joe about it, and we've answered listener emails about this, the idea of programming randomness into the system to sort of mimic the way that umpires actually call these things, the results. And I think that there's a big difference between, yes, having in practice with human

elements that there's going to be kind of a coin flip aspect to some of these pitches on the border. But when you're telling the computer to randomize it, I think that would frustrate people immensely. Now, you should absolutely acknowledge that there's inevitably going to be some margin of error. And there's no perfect precision with any system. But you still have your best estimate, right? And so, you know, unless it's like perfectly, you know, out to seven decimal places, it's 50-50. Like home run distances in the home run derby. Yeah, they could call, right.

You know, as long as it's 50.1 and 49.9, you know, it's a strike, right? And I think as long as you're aware that it's not perfect, but then what is perfect? We're certainly dealing with an imperfect system now. And that's the other thing is that some people will say, well, the system's not perfect. And it's not, it's sometimes. Oh, I hate this argument. I hate this, too. I think there was a time when, yeah, there were an.

enough kinks in the system that you couldn't completely trust it. And sure, there might be a moment every now and then where the system goes down and you miss a pitch, you know, improbably. Which happens now. Yeah, every, you know, very rarely. But, well, right, with a computer. I mean, you know, which happens now. Guys, with umpires. Once a week, an umpire will call a fastball down the word I'm not going to say, a strike and a ball and it's like, I don't remember what your cursing policy is. Sorry. Well, he cursed, he cursed to open. Well, he quoted Joe Kelly. All right. Well, a fastball down the dick will be called a ball. And it's like, wait a minute, what? Or a pitch completely, you know, three inches off the, you know, four inches off the plate, we call to a strike. You get those burps every now. And then I think one of the best arguments against full ABS. And this is more of a long-term concern. But would calling balls and strikes become a recessive trait so that we actually would not have. And I have an umpire who reads me. Great guy. He's been following me forever. And he's been an umpire. And he makes this point that, well, what is going to cause,

why would people learn this skill in Little League, high school, minor college, adult baseball, if at the major league, there's no advancement to the major league level. Even if you're not on that track initially, why would you necessarily do that?

Why would you learn how to call balls and strikes in double A if you're not going to be able to, and we do need guys to have these skills, not just at the lower levels, but for the day that the internet goes down and all of a sudden the system isn't working. I do think that's an argument. against this. And if there's a blip, if there's one missed pitch, then even if in theory,

you're telling yourself, hey, if the computer goes down here, I have to be ready, you know, in practice, it's going to be 100% almost, yeah, there's no way you're going to be keyed up and you can't just glued to that. Right, exactly. But yeah, this is the point I was making is that the standard shouldn't be perfection. The standard should be, is it meaningfully better than what we have now? And it would be, clearly. I mean, this is, this comes back to something people say about driverless cars, right? Which is something that I have a vested interest in as a non-driver without a driver's license who's hoping that those robots will save me. Is this the first time non-drivers have outnumbered drivers on the podcast? Maybe. Well, a couple New Yorkers, I guess it makes sense. But yeah,

no, I mean, you know, I'm hoping those robots bail me out in that situation before the other robots ruin the rest of my life. But, but, you know, that's something where whenever there's an accident that involves a driverless car, it's a huge, I mean, you know, And you can understand why, because we're primed to, you know, the robots are coming to kill us and it's Skynet and everything. And, of course, if there's a single incident, then that's tragic. Now, often when that's the case, it turns out that there was some human error involved also. But the point is, have you seen humans drive? Or even something more benign, like a car that drives around a parking lot because it can't figure out where to stop and you're trapped in it or something.

Right. Driving is incredibly unsafe as it is. So even if the computers aren't perfect, they're bound to be better. I'm with you on, is it better than the current baseline? And I think in this case it is, and the risks are not as substantial as driving, although you can also argue the benefits, not nearly as substantial as, you know, robot drivers. But my biggest contention with robot drivers, to your point, Ben, is there's a responsibility, ultimately.

If there's an accident, who's responsible, right? And when you look at cars that use, let's just say, full self-driving or something like that, they are constantly seeking to avoid responsibility for things that do go wrong. And ultimately, the way our current system is set up is that, like, there needs to be someone responsible, or, you know, obviously there can be situations where it seemed no fault or whatever. But the point is that someone, somewhere along the line, can be held responsible. And the way things are set up for current drivers is, like, or for automated driving, is that, like, it removes responsibility from basically anyone, and you're just stuck with a tragedy.

And you're stuck with a tragedy either way, but there's kind of no recourse, right? You've got to regulate it. It's not like I want to put my life in Elon Musk's hands either. I understand the parallel, but I'm having a... No, no, I'm not saying that applies to baseball. I was going to say, I'm having a hard time seeing what the recourse is against bad umpires. No, no, no. I don't think that's the same thing.

I'm just saying I think that's a difference here in, in, in, as a difference between the two. The one thing I wanted to ask Joe, though, do you get interested at all? all in the metagame aspect to this, just the layers of analysis that would be possible with a challenge system. Because if you just have full ABS and it works as designed, all the calls are correct, okay, it's yes, no, there's nothing to analyze, really. There's nothing to get upset about. You know, there are people who think, oh, it's better actually to have the entertainment value of managers yelling at umpires and everything. And, you know, getting rid of that, even that sort of side show.

Just, you know, you're like, you're someone who loves the analysis and digging deep into things and the strategy. And there is a great strategy and tactical aspect to the challenge system in theory, right, where you can analyze, hey, are teams not being aggressive enough? Are they hoarding their challenges when they should be using them earlier? Who's actually good at this? You know, which players should be challenging more? Okay, so you're not interested in that at all, which is interesting to me because that.

I'm not either. I am kind of interested in that because I always, you know, even like framing, umpiring, there's so much analysis, you know, ways that we can break these things down. And I get that it's not for everyone. We're the sickos, right? And so even if the sickos aren't even interested in this, then I guess I'm the upper percentile sicko. But I'm just saying there are a lot of interesting, to me, at least, wrinkles to this system

and the strategy and the implications and the decisions and all of that, that if you do away with the challenge aspect, then there's nothing to that. And there's player value, too. You know, maybe you substitute some framing value for challenging value. You have to know when to challenge. And that is interesting to me. But it seems like that just does not resonate with you, Joe, at all. Craig, do you want to jump in? Because when I start talking, I might not stop for a while. Sure. Well, so I'm not really interested in that at all either. I will also tell you, from the early stuff I've seen, basically nobody should challenge. Yes, and that's the way it'll work. Yeah. Beyond that, I don't like,

limiting the number of challenges. If you can turn this thing around in like 10 seconds or whatever in terms of getting the replay done, then like just, you know, again, to the point of getting the calls right, if you can get them right, like let's try and do that to some degree. I want to just step back to the K-Zone point. So I think Joe should answer that direct question, but I do want to add something after. I mentioned a couple of first principles at the start of the conversation. Here's another one. The players should play the game, the managers should manage, and the umpires or whatever technology you've deputized should officiate the game.

So I think getting players and managers involved in officiating the game, which is a challenge system, is bad. It's just bad on a first level. I don't like it in any league. I think that the fact that the NFL started with a challenge system has caused the other leagues

to create challenge systems. Challenge systems are bad. Everything people hate about replay, Craig, I want to say you're one of the more vocal ones about the plays on the bases where the foot comes off the bag for a second. Okay, I'm actually fine with that because the rule is you've got to be on the

base. Slide different. I've never had a problem with that. My problem is that you're at that point, you're not centering the baseball game. You're not centering even the call. You're centering what's best for your team. So if you had a fifth umpire system, which I've been screaming about since, I don't even know, third grade, I think that you would need, you would never even have those calls be reviewed because they're not the design of the system. Systems should be designed to correct errors, but

once you put a vested interest in getting a call overturned, you've turned it into what Craig what, actually Ben is talking about here, which is leverage, a decision making, how efficiently are you using your challenge? I don't want any of that in the game. I think the challenge systems that we have in all sports

are bad because they're not designed to officiate the game. They're designed to make things get you your team the call. So this just extends that idea. We already have a challenge system that shouldn't exist in baseball, which has caused, like I say, all of these really frame-rate, you know, frame-level outs and guys being safe. And it wasn't really what we envisioned when we talked about a replay system in baseball. But it's not the replay system. It's the challenge system. And we're going to get the same thing in baseball. Because instead of we're going to get the call right, it's going to be, well, do I want to challenge this call?

my 650 OPS hitter, or do I want to save it for my 900 OPS hitter? Do I want to make challenge this pitch that was egregiously wrong with a two-one count and nobody on in the bottom of the third, or do I want to save that challenge? But managers can't do it, right? No, but what I'm saying, but that's going to be to the top. It's actually not even going to be the manager. It's going to be the top level, the analysts, and kind of working on a piece, it's going to look at this now.

But you're going to have the analyst level tell the manager to tell the players that, okay only these three guys can challenge only can only do it and these it's going to look like a blackjack you ever see one of those little blackjack cards that tells you how to play every blackjack hand I have

16 against a four what should I do it's going to look a little bit like that it's not in any way shape or form going to be about getting the calls right it's going to be about the skill of the player and the leverage of the situation which means now we're not talking about the calls at all we're talking about the leverage

We're getting into what Ben is talking about a little bit here. But it's not at all. When you only have, as Craig points out, two wrong challenges a game, you have to hoard those. So we're still going to see hundreds of bad calls a day, hundreds of missed calls a day across the league. And a very small handful of those are going to get challenged. And frankly, I don't think many teams are going to have challenges left for the highest leverage spots. Was it Craig or bad? One of you talked about how Baseball America did this study where the pitchers were bad at it.

the hitters were average and the catchers were the best. My fear is that this is going to turn into a catcher-only system. And instead of adding offense back to the league, we're going to take offense out of the league because it's going to be catchers, challenging balls, getting them called strikes, and it's actually going to even worse for the hitters. But I don't think the system, as currently announced, as currently planned for 2026, is really going to be about the calls at all. It's going to be at these leverage spots.

It's going to be about we have this limited resource of challenges. their challenges tend to be about 50% overturned so your expectation would be I think four if I'm doing the math right you'd expect to get four in any given game if you just flip a coin you know keep clip on a coin uh if you start with two challenges by the time you've used the fourth one you will have used them all up you're just it's just not enough and again I if Anthony Volpe not to dunk on him I like Volpe decide just reflexively challenges a pitch with one out and nobody on in the bottom of the third. And that challenge isn't available to Aaron Judge in the eighth inning.

That's bad. That's bad for my team. These challenges have intrinsic value. So again, it's gamifying something when we can just say, get the damn calls, right? I largely agree with all of that. I guess my view is, like you said, there are going to be however many wrong calls a week anyway. My view is generally, I don't know that that upsets me that much, honestly, anymore. It used to.

It really did. But I think these are honestly generally low leverage misses and that you can fix the agree. The other part of this is like, yeah, sometimes there's going to be, like you said, there's a fastball down the dick and the umpire misses it because the catcher dropped it, right, or whatever. Well, that can be fixed now. And it can be fixed in low leverage or high leverage or whoever it is when it's obvious,

it's obvious. And those are the ones that really tend to rankle. I think, again, these 50-50 balls that might matter in the third inning, I don't mind that it's, you know, that's close enough to me. And it washes out, generally speaking, over the course of a season. And that's just a place where I found myself recently, right? That it's more, there was a time in my life I absolutely wanted every single call right. But I think in general, like, I don't mind this. And I do want to go back to the K-Zone aspect that you guys both talked about, Joe. Like you said, when you get a chance to watch a game without it, you don't miss it.

And my guess is it doesn't bother you when a pitch an inch off the zone gets called a strike the same way, because the zone isn't there to tell you that. No, I, this, look, we are in the, not to be egotistical here, but we're in the top 0.01% of baseball observers. And I think we all recognize, can watch a game and know when it pitches a ball even without the K-Zone. Depends on the camera angle a little bit. Yeah, yeah. It's easier in Texas than it is in some other places, yeah. But it also depends by how much. I think there are balls where it's like, well, that's right there.

That's both a good pitch, and that can be an incredible pitch, and it might be, you know, a ball by a fraction of an inch or something like that, you know? And I'm okay with that being called a ball. And I'm okay with it being called a ball, but it also doesn't bother me if it's called a strike. Right, but you're – let me see if I can kind of figure out where our difference is here. You're talking about the 50-50 balls, and I'm focused on the 90-10 ones, and I think there are still a lot of – But I think 90-10 gets challenged, Joe. I do.

And I don't because I think there are going to be a lot of situations where 90-10 balls and it's going to be a situation where you just don't want to challenge. Because I only have two of these. I might have four of these and it's not a situation where- I think there should be more than two challenges. I think that is a mistake. I can't fix that. I mean, you think there should be more than two.

I think they should be, I guess technically I think there should be zero. But, you know, I think making the number two is wildly unrealistic based on the baseball that I watch. I think there should be at least one per inning. Right. I think that's a good number. And I do think that, you know, one of the insights coming from the front office will be don't save these for the last possible second because we're passing up value here. And it may be tough to talk catchers into that. But if there is a clearly egregious call, then you're not really risking that much because you're not wasting that challenge. You get to keep it if you're correct.

This is where I think pitchers should never challenge because they're moving. They're the worst people to possibly make this. And hitters, look, I think hitters. Look, I think hitters have good eye. You mentioned Muncie earlier, and I think there are going to be hitters that are better at this. But I also think it's risky a lot too.

Because remember, it's supposed to be instantaneous. It's not just going to be, hey, do I think that would? No, you've got to make that tap gesture immediately. And you won't have time to pull a card out of your pocket that tells you whether you should challenge you not. Which is why I do think it's going to be literally telling hitters, look, you don't challenge three-off. You don't challenge with nobody on base.

You don't challenge if we're up, you know, up or down four runs. You don't challenge if you're not one of the five best hitters we have. I kind of question whether players are going to be able to resist, right, tapping their head, their head when they think, you know, they, because they have a lot of certainty in the moment, whether they should or shouldn't, right? But they do. But to your point, like, if it's three inches off the zone, and to you, that's definitely, that's definitely a ball. And it is definitely a ball. If it's three inches off the zone, then, like, what is the risk? And I think players are going to learn that pretty quickly. They're going to learn what the zone is versus what's being called. And I think, you're going to see more aggressive challenges in these situations, except for when they don't actually matter that much, in which case we can all just move on. And that's kind of where I think, again, this is a half measure. And look, I admit, this could go very poorly. I'm not, I'm not trying to say otherwise. I don't, I'm not trying to say with any certainty this is going to work out really well. I think it could, though. I think go very poorly is probably,

there's a limit to how bad this can go. I think you're talking about the shift earlier is probably a really good example. I can point to all the ways that shift banning the shift is making baseball worse by encouraging dead pole hitting. I've talked about this with you, Ben. But I don't think that there's that much downside risk to the automated system. And there's an argument

that, oh, fans will love it because this video animation on the screen, and I've got to figure that's going to get old two weeks into the season. It's not going to be like, you know, can you bet on it actually? Because then MLB might actually be encouraging us. Then we will get one challenge in it. I was going to make that point. There is some entertainment value there.

may wear off. Maybe the fun will wear off. But for now, I get, well, but you go to tennis and they do. Yeah, that has persisted. They've incorporated it for years. And they have a full robo system. And it'll be sponsored. Oh, we absolutely will be sponsored. Sure. Yeah. Of course. Of course. Yes. But, but there's something to that that some people seem to enjoy that. And I will say, I think your position is pretty persuasive, Joe. I think you're talking sense here. I think probably most people are aligned with you. I don't know. I mean, or No, I don't. I don't think. I think people are enthusiastically behind the system. It reminds me of the pitch clock, which I was pretty against. And everybody in the world loved it turned out to be a positive for the game. Yeah, the shift is a similar example. I just, it's the half measure part because to me, it's also consistent with how MLB has run itself for 50 years, where you're just not actually addressing the problem. And I just, I think the downside risk is going to be realized when teams run out of challenges. And then Doug Eddings gets involved.

I do think there's, you're going to see this reaction to, wait, what do you mean? Why can't we challenge it? Because you're out of challenges because in the third inning, Fred Stanley decided to challenge a ball. And we already see that now, right? We see teams run out of replay challenges and then essentially just say, hey, can you look at it anyway? Like, I'm not making you, but can you? There's not that backdoor. First of all, I don't see teams run at a challenge.

I don't feel like I see teams run out of challenges all that often. And there is the back door of, hey, guys, you know, we think you might have gotten this wrong. I don't believe that's in place for this. No, I don't think it is. And again, I think you're going to see, I don't know that they're ever going to get to one per inning. I think they're going to move it up to four or five after a couple seasons. Yeah, I wouldn't be surprised. Yeah.

And on the pitch clock, I didn't really see your side of things, Joe, but on this, I absolutely, I do. Oh, I was clearly wrong. I was, I was clear. Yeah, no, I see it too. To me, it's almost personal preference, really. And if you're very much in the camp of just get all the calls, right? I think that makes perfect sense. And you might just not be as entertained by certain things as I am.

We might just have different things that kind of get us excited. You're Jose Molina, love. Yeah, as baseball fans. And I might be getting too clever about all the complexities and layers and intricacies. I may be wrong about the downstream effects of what full automation would do. I am kind of betting on the come here that it would make for a more entertaining game. And it's possible that Craig's right, it would just be eaten up by walk. So I'm speculating a big year.

I want MLB. to create the beta league. I really want a 16 league where they just try all kinds of nonsense. 88 foot base paths. Lab league, as Meg has called it. Yes, exactly. Lab league, perfect.

Meg and I disagreed on the 2019 experiment with the Atlantic League. But you're going to eventually want a test bed for a lot of... And Lord knows, MLB can afford this. MLB can afford to pay a bunch of recently retired ex-ball players or college kids who never made it.

You know, 20,000 bucks for a summer to play 50 games under these. whatever different rules we want to try, rather than having to kind of treat MLB as a beta test all the time. And I do think a lot of this, if we had somehow had a system that just called all the pitches correctly from the start, then I probably would not be out here suggesting, what if we got some of them wrong, though?

And that would be more interesting. Well, I firmly believe if you just implement an ABS and didn't tell anybody next year. Yeah. No, I think a lot of these things that I've talked myself into enjoying, maybe if they weren't there, I would say, yeah, this is fine, you know, and maybe it's even better in some way. So I'm not that much of a hardliner on this. And another thing that I agree with you on Joe, I mean, both of you,

I guess, is that this is a half measure. And I do suspect that once you open this box, you could call it a Pandora's box or you could say that it should be opened all the way. But I think it will be because I do think even though all the surveys seem to say, no, people prefer this system. And I've kind of done a double take when I've looked at that and even doubted MLB's data there on how many people seemingly prefer the challenges. I get why players do, but fans even supposedly just overwhelmingly prefer the challenge system. I think in practice, if it all goes smoothly from a technological perspective, which I expect, and if we do still have some glaring calls, because I think you're right that that won't be an extremely regular

occurrence, Craig, but I think you're right, Joe, that it's still going to happen sometimes, and it's going to be even more bothersome when it happens when it's clear that we have a way to undo that. And, you know, if it's the playoffs and it's a big moment and your team loses on an egregious call because you ran out of challenges and maybe, yeah, you can give people more challenges and that won't happen all that much. But to the extent that that happens at all, it'll bother people even more. Just the way that having replay, once you had replay, you couldn't maintain a system where replay wasn't used in games because we could all see it and we could see it in super slow high-deaf replays as many times as we wanted. And that was just

not sustainable to have the fans have the correct answer and the umpires routinely be wrong. I think we've seen the same thing with pitch calls. And once the system is in place and you don't have the objection of, oh, what this could happen or that could happen or it could just self-destruct or something, if it works fine, then it'll be very, I think, tempting to say, hey, we could just have this work fine all the time. And so I, yeah, I suspect that this will be just a stop along the way. And maybe I'll be okay with that. And I'll be curious to see both how the challenge system evolves and also how our views on this evolve. And maybe we completely come around to Joe's way of thinking, or maybe you find that, hey, this challenge system, this is actually

kind of cool. It's still, I think, malleable. And it could kind of go in either direction. But I think that, yeah, once you introduce it at all, then it's a slippery slope. Or if, you know, that makes it sound negative for you, you're hoping to slide down the slope. It wouldn't surprise me at all. And I'm very open to being convinced that if this, if this works that way, well in a lot of ways it might just point to, well, just do it all the time then. And I'm very open to that. But I do, you know, I'm still looking, I'm looking at the article I wrote about the K-Zone and like there's a, there's a, you can go pull up on game day these pitches that you still, there are pitches on game day that they show up and I'm like, well, is that clipping the zone

or isn't it? I don't know. And I'm looking at the circle of the ball overlaid on what it would be the called strike zone, right? So I think you're still going to find people who look at this and say, like, find a way to disagree with a call on the field, even if that call is being made robotically. Right? I do think

that's still going to happen. And I do want to, one benefit of this, by the way, to me, like an unabashed benefit is it seems like they are going to take whatever K-Zone is ESPNs, but I'm using it for all of them. But the superimposed strike zones

off of televisions, because they think, as Ben does, that there's an entertainment value to not knowing what it is until a challenge actually happens. And because they don't want the players seeing it and possibly being able to challenge because of, you know, someone shouts out. There won't be enough time. There won't be enough time.

There might not be enough time, but there's so much sensitivity around all that stuff post-sign stealing scandal that, yeah, I don't think they want to mess with any of that. But so it sounds like this superimposed strike zone is going away. And what I think people will find is that their tolerance for these edge calls is going to go up, essentially, in the sense that they're not going to mind these. It's not going to wrinkle when you don't see something telling you that's out of the zone. And look, this happens to me all the time.

I'm watching and I'm going, oh, that was a ball. What are you swinging at or what are you calling? And it's like, oh, I think if that zone wasn't there, I would have been like, well, you know, hard to, that's a tougher one. Except for the fact that people have been pissed at umpires since before TV existed, before radio existed. Oh, I'm not saying no one will be. I think the tolerance will be higher. I don't know that, again, from the baseline, I don't, I'm not saying people aren't going to get mad at us. They will. Baseball perspective invented killed the umpire in 2009. Yeah. So, so yeah, I don't know. But I'm very open to where I am being. I've, my, my perspective has evolved already and it would not surprise me if it is.

evolved further or went back or whatever. I am excited. I think this is at least a step along the way, and I think it will be a positive. It might not be positive enough. Mostly, though, it's because of the KZone coming out. Like, most of your wanting this is because it will take KZone off the national broadcast. I want to make a point is, I don't think they're going to come off the local broadcast as much, because not to run back a joke, but they're sponsored in a lot of places.

It's money. It's revenue for these. I don't know that the league is going to allow them. Oh, that would be interesting. I suspect that that's the case. but, look, I don't know if any of us has changed anyone else's minds, maybe some listeners' minds, but I think we have some common ground here, clearly. Craig, did you hear him earlier say, I agree with Craig, and I agree.

Is that not some professional hosting or what, agreeing with both guys? We're all pretty persuadable on this issue, I think, to some extent, and our minds are somewhat open, and I'm glad that we could air all of this and hash out the differences, and hopefully it's illuminating for listeners, whether they agree or not, and maybe we can change. check back in in a year and see where we stand and how it went and whether our minds have been changed at all. But this was fun. I think we're going to know pretty quickly. Yeah, maybe so. I think by the end of April, in much the same way was the case with the pitch clock, we're going to have a pretty good sense after one month of real baseball how this is going to

play out. Okay. Well, this has been great. Glad we did the debate. The challenge system challenge, you both rose to it. Plug your products, please. Hock your wares. Craig, give the quick pitch for baseball prospectus. Sure. Well, now is the time. We are unfortunately, but necessarily raising our prices as of January 1st. So if you want to sign up for Baseball Perspectus to get our analysis, it's not just me talking about my feelings. I promise we have actually great writers and great analysts, prospect coverage, fantasy coverage, all of it.

Now is the time to do it. The prices raising, as I said, in January 1st, if you are a subscriber and you want to extend a subscription, the only way to do that is through our BP360, promotion, which is ending today. So I don't know when Ben is getting this out, but it's December 23rd. So if you missed it, I apologize, but I've been trying to promote it as much as possible. I figured I'd toss it out here. So please, give us a shot. I promise you will not regret it. It's some of the best value out there, as is the next guy you're going to hear from. Yes. Yeah, it's obviously no secret that I've been reading baseball perspectives for quite some time. And I just did the package of writers that you get. I mean, literally some of my favorite writers in the world, Patrick Dubuque and Rob Baines, Russell Carlton. Craig doesn't, I don't think Craig writes as much as those guys. He's more of an editorial role, but he's a wonderful writer.

I should, but I don't. It's just a tremendous package of writers. And I want to make the point here, you know, Ben's with fan graphs on the ringer. Maybe I'm not your cup of tea. Maybe Joe Postansky is more, or Craig Alcatera or prospectus. Support somebody, Mark Normandine. It doesn't matter who you're supporting, but reach into your pocket, support one of these independent outlets.

And, you know, this may be the weak to mention that independent journalism is kind of important. You know, I've been doing the newsletter since, you know, I left BP back in 2010, coming up on its, it's in its 16th year now. You can go to joshean.com and get all the information. There's actually a 25% off discount for one year, running right now, go to the site, go to my blue sky, get the information there. But support some type of independent, even if it's not baseball. You know, Marissa Cabus, if I'm saying that name right, she's been running lists of independent journalists, not even just sports, you know, baseball, sports. actual real world important. You know, we all work in the toy department,

but support somebody. Please reach in, and whether it's baseball, whether it's sports, whether it's politics, anything. Bolt smags. Yeah, just get out. Just go out if you can support at least one of these writers. If you can support them all, support them all. See, I don't think it's competition.

I really don't believe that promoting prospectus or fan graphs or Calcutera or Przansky or any of these people that are writing about baseball is bad for me. If people want to choose one of the other, that's fine. if you want to choose them all, great. But I really do believe that there's enough out there for all of us to succeed. And, you know, prospectus has been around for 30 years, fangrass for coming up on 20 or just had 20, I think, just turn 20. Yeah, I've been doing mine for the newsletter for 16.

There's plenty of room out there for all of us to succeed. So, like I said, just support someone in a moment when independent, and as we go into next year, certainly independent baseball journalism is going to be very important. Joe is very magnanimous, but I'll put it on it. his output is absolutely incredible. And I would also say, I am a subscriber or reader, and I bring up your newsletter all the time on the podcast. No one makes me think as much. We don't always agree, but he's extremely good at explaining where he's coming from.

And it's a newsletter that really makes me consider my stances, and I learn something, and I think about things a lot more after reading your newsletter, Joe. So hopefully, I mean, yeah, I couldn't recommend. Joe is absolutely right. Sign up for somebody, but you should also sign up for Joe. Thank you. I will second both of those endorsements. And, of course, you can catch Craig and his podcast, Five and Dive, which is also on Patreon, as is effectively wild.

You can give gift subscriptions to Patreon, too, if you're looking for something, last minute, last second Christmas gift. If you're in the market, we're both on it. And I am a happy, satisfied customer of Joe's newsletter for many years. And I guess Craig still comps me because of my past service to BP. So if you need some extra revenue, you could cut me off and I would happily subscribe. So I probably should just do that. You've just given me free BP all these years. I don't know.

Is that still happening? I'm going to have to talk to someone. I think so. Yeah. Maybe I earned it. I'm going to safely say my comp. My comp is lifetime. Yeah.

Right. And I want to, please, if I could, you know, you're promoting our stuff and that's really cool. but, you know, Ben Clemens is an essential read for me. Jay Jaffe is an essential read for me. I love Davy Andrews. You guys do incredible work at Fangraphs, too. So, again, whether it's BP, me, or Fangraphs, subscribe to somebody. Everybody's doing great work.

All right. Well, you've issued a challenge of your own to support independent media. And I hope people will. That's how we've been doing this podcast all these years. People have come through and continue to. And I appreciate it very much. So we had our cordial differences on this podcast, but in the end, we all came together for a mutual love fest. And so glad I could get you guys on to do this finally.

Thank you so much, gentlemen. Thanks, Shwed. Thank you. Well, I did say I was going to take it easy when Meg was away this week. And I did try. I said I wasn't going to get three guests per pod. And I'm sticking to that, two guests max on the episodes this week. But apparently that doesn't preclude long episodes.

Actually, we stopped recording. And we all almost simultaneously said, we could have kept going. What can I say? We just like talking about baseball. Hopefully you like listening to us talk about baseball. And I stuck to the two-guest rule for our third episode of the week, the upcoming one, which is already mostly recorded. So, hey, teams, do be a solid refrain from making major moves between now and then. Though there was one more move that we could have covered had Joe and Craig and I kept talking.

A Pirates signing, the Pittsburgh Pirates, signed Ryan O'Hern, former Oriole, to a two-year, $29 million deal. that's real money by Bob Nutting's spending standards. Another guy you could comp to Morikami and got kind of a comparable contract coming off a three-war year, but that was a career high. Worse projections than Morikami and several years older, but also plenty of MLB experience didn't get much less money than Morikami did. And again, I'd take Morikami over O'Hern. Speaking of Joe Posnanski, I was reminded that Posnetsky came up with a little widget, almost

a flow chart sort of thing related to the MVP race and his reader's preferences. Judge versus Cal, he just constructed this questionnaire, and you could rate how much you care about various aspects of value, and then it would crunch those numbers and spit out, you support Judge, you support Cal Rally. You could probably come up with something similar for human umps versus challenge system versus ABS, just weighing various considerations to say, well, if you're this type of fan and you find this aspect of the sport entertaining, then you should support that challenge system. Could be cool. Then again, maybe people don't need a widget. Maybe they can make up their own minds. And I'll remind everyone that we, are soliciting submissions for stories we missed about each and every team in 2025. We'll be collecting and recapping those in the last week of the year. So keep them coming. Anything interesting that you think we may not have discussed this year, but should bring up now.

A couple follow-up emails, one from Patreon Sporter Wondering Winder, who says, aren't there two kinds of nicknames, the kind that something people call you when they're talking to you, i.e. an actual nickname. But then that in-print old-timey thing, for example, the Millville Meteor is more of an appellation. examples from my beloved 1990s Rangers, Pudge was a nickname, Rusty Greer was a nickname, the Red Baron was an appellation for Rusty Greer. The Doctor of Defense was an appellation for Mark McLemore. I miss Appalachians. Yes, that is a useful distinction. We haven't entirely

lost appellations, but it is more of a media creation, kind of an affected mostly for print phenomenon, as opposed to something you might call someone in casual conversation. For one thing, it's usually longer than their actual name. And Patreon supporter Michael says I was listening to episode 2416 and wanted to add a note on the A's ballpark. I'm all for calling the A's organization out for their multitude of issues, but the stadium is actually under construction. Counter to what was said, as of now, they have constructed portions of the concrete for the first deck. It's not much, but it's more than the ceremonial shovels full of dirt. Fair enough, we do strive to be accurate, even where a figure is loathed as John Fisher is concerned. They have done a bit more than

broken ground in a purely ceremonial photo op. But I believe the project is still far from fully funded. So I guess Fisher is hoping he'll figure it out as he goes. He is at least keeping up appearances. And finally, as to the question of whether Ryan Johnson inserted the phrase Apotaco into Wake Up Dead Man on purpose, I have it on good authority that he did. Someone who knows him reached out to him on our behalf, and he said that, yes, it's been his favorite baseball phrase for years. So perhaps predating the endless litany of definitions of Apotaco on radio broadcast this past season. Ryan Johnson enjoyed Apotaco before the phrase drove us mad. And as I've said, he is a big baseball guy. In fact, this past October during the World Series, he posted on blue sky

to anyone not into baseball. I'm sorry, but also get into baseball. Good advice. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks. As have the following five listeners, Nicholas Brindle, Tim White, Trevor Howitt, Andrew Guthrie, and Hannah, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord Group 4 patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, potential podcast appearances, shoutouts at the end of episodes, discounts on merch and ad-free fangras memberships and so much more, check out all

the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message just through 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 Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, and other podcast platforms. You can join the Effectively Wild Facebook group at Facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at R.Sach effectively wild. You can check the show notes in the podcast post at Fangraphs or in the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats and subscription signups we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKee,

for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week, but after Christmas, and so I wish you a Merry Christmas if you are celebrating the holiday, or even if you're just enjoying a day off, which is also a reason to celebrate. I'll be back to talk to you soon. Does baseball look the same to you as it does to me?

When we look at baseball, how much do we see? Well, the curveballs bend and. The home runs fly, more to the game that beats the eye To get the stats compiled and the stories filed Fans on the internet might get riled But we can break it down on effectively wild