Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2419: TJ and TK in Triple-A

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

Ben Lindbergh talks to two pitchers who topped out at Triple-A in 2025, which was a demotion for one and a promotion for the other. First, he brings back Rangers pitcher Declan Cronin, the only major leaguer alum of Ben’s high school, to discuss a setback of a season that included a mysterious hip injury, compromised mechanics, diminished stuff, a cutthroat release and, finally, Tommy John surgery. Along the way, they cover the urge to play through injuries, joining the Rangers after being unceremoniously jettisoned by the Marlins, what tearing a UCL feels like, the incentives that lead to elbow problems, Declan’s plan to bounce back from a challenging year, MLB-NWSL romances, and competing with other players for wedding dates. Then (1:05:45), Ben talks to White Sox pitcher/sportswriter Duncan Davitt about becoming a journalist on the side, being on both ends of interviews, being blacked out of baseball broadcasts, the plight and importance of local media, his deceptive delivery, being traded and making a 40-man for the first time, what he has to do to earn a call-up, whether pitchers wear protective cups, and much more. Audio intro: Ian Phillips, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Jonathan Crymes, “Effectively Wild Theme 2” Link to “TK” journalism term Link to MLBTR on Soderstrom Link to Regis High School wiki Link to Declan’s first pod appearance Link to Declan’s second pod appearance Link to article about baseball weddings Link to Declan t-shirt Link to MLBTR on Declan’s TJ Link to list of TJ surgeries Link to cascade injury article Link to MLBTR on Declan’s deal Link to team RP WPA Link to team RP WAR Link to staff page at Tread Link to Tyler Zombro wiki Link to Paige Monaghan wiki Link to Paige’s wedding post Link to Dansby/Mallory article Link to Peña/Grosso engagement Link to Duncan strikeout reel Link to Register feature on Duncan Link to Sox Machine feature on Duncan Link to Duncan’s wedding post Link to Rays prospect ranking Link to traded prospects ranking Link to minor league IP leaders Link to Ben on deception Link to Indianola IA website Link to Indianola wiki Link to J.D. Scholten appearance Link to Indianola IA sports page Link to Duncan’s boys’ basketball article Link to Duncan’s girls’ basketball article Link to Duncan on the offseason Link to Duncan on the trade Link to Duncan on the 40-man Link to Duncan on Triple-A Link to Duncan on big league belief Link to Laurila’s notes column Link to Ben on the gap in 2025 Link to Ben on the gap in 2015 Link to Davenport on the gap Link to MLB.com on Abbott Elementary Link to Schwarber’s 4-HR game Link to MLB survey question  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

Give me, Give me, Effectively Wild, Give me, Give me, Give me, Effectively Wild. This is Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2419 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, hoping that you had a nice Christmas, even if it wasn't quite as lucrative as Tyler Soderstrom's, and I did indeed have a happy birthday.

So thanks to those of you who wished me one, I got some good gifts. I did not receive an $86 million extension. Meg will be back next week, and I will put out one more call for stories we missed in 2025. We'll be going team to team and talking about some aspect of each team in 2025 that we did not discuss, at least not in any depth during this year. So if you have a nomination for a particular team, please email us. But today, in Meg's absence, I am once again joined by two excellent guests, Declan Cronin and Duncan Davitt. Declan and Duncan, Duncan and Declan, D&D.

Both are right-handed pitchers who topped out at AAA in 2025. Both pitchers have interesting second jobs. And both are recently married. Aside from that, their years couldn't have gone much differently. Declan had a down year. Duncan had an up year, but they both ended up at the same level. So it was the worst of times. It was the best of times.

But either way, it was AAA. Now, if you've been with us for a while, you've heard from Declan before. He has made two previous appearances on the podcast. And like Joe Sheehan, one of my guests on episode 2418, and also like Bougshambi and Pablo Torre, for that matter, he attended the same high school as me, Regis High School in Manhattan, which made him of immediate interest to me when he made the major leagues in 2023. And in fact, we did a meet a major leaguer segment back then, on which Declan himself appeared. I literally met him, at least via audio. So that was episode 2040. He debuted with the White Sox. He then spent just about the entirety of 2024 in the majors with the Marlins. He came back on the podcast on episode 2216. So I thought it would be nice to extend the streak to three straight ears appearing on the podcast. The problem was, things didn't go as great for him this year. But I thought that might be interesting in its own way if he was willing to talk about it.

And he was. He was hurt much of the year. He had a hip injury. It affected his performance when he was trying to rehab in AAA. One thing led to another. And suddenly he found himself having Tommy John surgery. So we will get into all of that, the hip, the elbow, the frustration of trying to pitch through in injury, being dropped by one team and picked up by another, and the positive takeaways from

those downs and ups, how he'll handle a year away from pitching, his plans for the following season, and some personal stuff too. Declan's great. Always enjoy talking to him. I think he has some excellent insights here. My second guest, Duncan Davitt, is a couple years younger than Declan. Declan's 28, Duncan's 26. And whereas Declan is now in the Rangers organization, Duncan is with the White Sox, as Declan was when he first appeared on this podcast. Now, Duncan has not yet made his major league debut, but he's close. He is on the precipice. He's on the 40 man. He'll be in big league camp. And so my hope here is that we are pre meeting a major leaguer, that he will get the call sometime soon and we'll be able to say, hey, we already met that guy. And I'm pleased to meet him because he has a really interesting side gig. He's a sports writer. So we'll get into that, his journalistic aspirations and training and many aspects of his pitching performance as well. He had an eventful year too. He was traded on deadline day to the White Sox. from the raise in the Adrian Houser deal. So I really like talking to both of these guys.

I hope you'll like listening to me talk to them. And I won't delay any longer. It's time for our annual Declan check-in. Rejoining me now is not only the first Major League alum of Regis High School, but as far as I know, the first Tommy John surgery survivor of Regis High School. I can't confirm that, but seems fairly likely. Now a member of the Texas Rangers organization, Declan Kronin is here. Hello, Declan.

Hey, Ben. Good morning. Thanks for having me. Thanks for coming back. We are speaking while you're on a pit stop en route to your upcoming wedding. Congrats. Thank you. Thank you. When you attend the all-boys high school that we did, it does not seem like a given that you'll ever talk to a girl, let alone talk one into marrying you. So go us. We did it. Huge win for the community at large, yes. Everyone. on. I guess it's conceivable that your high school experience as a six foot four future professional athlete was different from mine in some ways. I should allow for that possibility, perhaps. All I'll say is that my friends and I went to a Mets game on our prom night and the high

school girls of New York were not distraught about our absence. But enough about me. I googled Declan Cronin registry to see if I could send you. you something, and the top three results are actually for another guy named Declan Kronin who just got married in October. Were you aware that there's another Declan Kronin who barely beat you down the aisle? I was not aware, and I'll have to check out his registry maybe for some ideas. I wonder if we have similar taste or not. I looked, and there's nothing left on it, unfortunately. Yeah, his wedding was in October, so I guess everything was crossed off the list. So maybe his guests who weren't so timely with their gifts will head over to my registry and make the same mistakes.

Yeah, could be. One can only hope, yeah. I have to tell you what the fourth Google result was when I searched for Declan Cronin registry. An Amazon project listing added in April for, and I quote, just a girl who loves Declan Cronin, Miami Baseball MLBPA V-neck T-shirt. Oh, wow. It has a baseball mitt with a ball in it, and it says, just a girl who loves Declan Kronin with a little MLB Players logo at the bottom. It comes in black, baby blue, and dark Heather Gray.

And here's what it says in the About This Item area. Whether you are a fan of Declan Cronin or just want the latest baseball apparel, this product is for you. I'm not sure that's true, honestly. If you just want the latest baseball apparel and you aren't a fan of Declan Cronin, I think it would be an unusual choice, I guess. But nonetheless, it continues, as a diehard Miami fan, this is the perfect design to show your classy style. And I know you're not with Miami anymore, which we will discuss.

But the shirt doesn't say Miami or Marlins anywhere. It's text is in Marlins' colors. So I think it's still good. And the page says, this design, is officially licensed by the MLBPA and is unique, so it's perfect to wear to show off your love for Declan Cronin. Wow. Well, you just did my Christmas shopping for me, because I'm going to head over to that link

right after we get off here. And everybody's getting one of those this year. I might get one, too. It's for women only, I guess. There's no men's version of the Just a Girl who loves Declan Cronin shirt, unfortunately. I wondered whether it actually was unique or if this is just something you could get for any MLB player. Like maybe there was just an automated thing that uploaded this for every player. So I looked.

There's no just a girl who loves Kyle Stour's shirt. There's no just a girl who loves Jensen Junk shirt. So it actually does seem unique to you. I have no idea how this happened, but it did. Wow, that is interesting. And one can always count on you to do the deep digging on these things. Yeah, you're not Googling yourself enough, clearly, because this is cursory research on my part. So, yeah, if you do have a registry, just might not be a bad addition.

Just 2795, it seems like a steal. Perfect. Yeah. I wanted to ask you about wedding scheduling because Brittany Giroli of The Athletic wrote an article about a year ago about how it's tough to schedule your wedding as a baseball player. She wrote, there are only two months for a baseball wedding, November and December, securing a date, not just for prospective venues, but to work around other engaged baseball couples is nearly its own sports. So has that been your experience? Yeah, I remember reading that article, and it was right after around the time that I got engaged, so it felt extremely relevant at the time. Yeah, there's definitely truth to that. I mean, obviously, as a baseball player, you miss a lot of weddings. I've missed a lot of close friends' weddings over the years because we're in season and really have no flexibility to travel outside of whatever the game schedule demands. But when you're planning your own wedding, you're also similarly restricted by the demands of the schedule. So, Yeah, you really have, I guess, October through technically beginning of February, but I don't think anybody wants to get married right before sprint training or anything like that.

So when you actually sit down and look at the calendar, you know, we wanted to do it before the new year because, you know, generally January is a pretty serious time for on-ramping. And also my fiancé plays professional soccer and the NWSL. So they report in mid-January. So we also have her schedule to work around. and that just adds a layer of complexity to it. But yes, that's very real. I know there was a lot of Marlins guys that got married this offseason,

and that was definitely the talk in the clubhouse last spring training was how everybody's weekends were filled with weddings, and some guys were going to have to unfortunately miss some for others or their own or whatever it might be. You can only plan so much, and there are really only so many weekends in the off season to get married. It's definitely a real thing. We were lucky that we got a date that worked for a lot of people, but not for everybody.

Yeah, even October is kind of off-limits. I mean, you hope it's off-limits, right? You can't plan at least on being available in October because you hope you'll still be playing and your guests might, too. Exactly. You can't schedule your wedding in October. That's a pretty bad ju-ju. What's going on with the MLB NWSL love connection here?

Because it's you, I didn't even know. And then Danesby Swanson, right? and Jeremy Pena all engaged and or married to NWSL players? Is this like, is there some sort of matchmaking service? How does this happen? Yeah, yeah. I think, yeah, I think we all, we're all on the platform. No, I noticed obviously knew about Dansby and Mallory for a while just because, you know,

both, you know, titans of their respective games, you know, especially Mao's, you know, the face of professional women's soccer in America, I would say. But, yeah, there's more of us than I realized. Maybe we should get a group together, a support group. Now, I'm just kidding. But, no, it's interesting. I wonder why that is. Part of it could be just that the seasons align.

And it makes things a little bit easier to have somebody that can relate to our schedule, which is not necessarily easy on significant others. Yeah, I wonder about that because, I mean, it's not uncommon for people in similar lines of work to end up together just because you're in sort of the same circles. And in my circles, there are writers and journalists who end up getting married to each other, baseball writers, that sort of thing. My wife has nothing to do with the industry. I'm in. And I actually kind of like that, I guess, because I worry that if she were in the same line of work, we'd just constantly

be talking shop and we'd be like, I don't know, competing for stories or something. It just it would feel like I was kind of on the clock, even in my off hours or something. So is it good to have a fellow professional athletes to be kind of your life partner because you can identify over so many similar things and challenges and training or everything? Or does that make things even more difficult? Because you both have like all of these, you know, competitive concerns and obligations and demands on your time. I think it is ultimately a huge positive. Just someone who understands the fact that, you know, there's a limited window for a career. and there's certain sacrifices you need to make during those years to maximize, you know,

your potential as an athlete and your performance on the field. Like, it's very helpful when your partner is also kind of chasing those same goals. No pun intended in Page's case. So, yeah, I think at least for us, it's been a huge benefit to be able to have someone that relates to that side of things and can understand that, you know, while others might be doing more quote-unquote fun stuff with their time. We're planning training and stuff in our off-season's, you know, and even around the holidays and things like that and around our own wedding, you know, like just still finding a way

to prioritize our career as athletes might seem, you know, a little silly to other people, but for us it's a huge deal and it's nice that we both are kind of on the same page with that. Yeah, I guess it's tough from a planning perspective also just in the sense that you never know where you're going to get traded or whatever. I mean, that's not easy on any family, obviously, and having to uproot your partner potentially or your kids or just see them only part of the time. But, you know, if you're a baseball player and you've gotten from the White Sox to the Astros, to the Marlins, to the Rangers, right? And, you know, you hope you'll stay in one place for a while, but you never know for sure. And if your wife is in the same

boat, then, yeah, what happens, I guess, if you are playing in different places and your schedules don't sync up. Yeah, I think we've never been in the same, like, even time zone, I don't think, for more than a little bit, at least. And Paige, my fiance has done her fair share of bouncing around as well, trades. And she was taken a couple years ago in an expansion draft out to Salt Lake City. So she's been in Utah for the last couple of years. Luckily, their season allows for a little more personal time, I would say, that, you know, they have a few more two to three day chunks of off time scattered throughout a pretty long season a little bit longer than ours. So she's the MVP during the playing season coming to see me kind of

wherever I am. But it's been funny. When I was in AAA in 2022 or three, we both had connecting flights through Atlanta, I want to say, and met in the airport for like a cup of coffee before she got on her flight to wherever she was going and I got on mine. So sometimes it's little stuff like that that's just kind of the stars align. But more often it's Paige coming out and, you know, spending a series with me somewhere else. Obviously this year will look a little bit different. But yeah, she's been fantastic. Well, Jersey girl and Jersey guy. I see. So I guess your families, your roots are in the same vicinity at least. Yes, that is nice. Okay. Well, enough prying into your personal life, at least for now.

It's been an eventful year for you, and this is just the latest big life event and a happy one. This seems like a good way to end the year on an up note because it's been a challenging year, at least baseball-wise, which was not the case in the two preceding seasons. I mean, they're all challenging in some way, but they were banner years for you, 2023, you make the majors, 2024, you spend the whole season in the majors. 25, things didn't quite go as planned. So last year, you led all Marlins relievers by a lot in innings pitched. You had a very long streak of not allowing a home run, snapped only after I brought it up to you on Effectively Wild. And then you immediately gave up one. You were named the team's rookie of the year.

So all going well. And then spring training arrived. and I guess the first sign of trouble was some left hip discomfort, so take me through that. Yeah, in spring training last year, obviously, you know, as you said, was feeling really good, was ready to kind of take another step forward and be an even bigger part of that bullpen and a part of a team that was looking to do some exciting things with a lot of other younger, whether in years or in experience players on that roster. and yeah in the i don't know exactly when it was but after you know a couple outings maybe even

one or two outings uh we identified some stuff that we wanted to work on and i used we because there was truly a collective you know agreement and effort and i started uh adding a couple new drills to my kind of daily prep routine and one of these ended up just completely for lack of a better term, like shredding some of my deep internal rotators in my left hip. Maybe shredding is a little extreme, but certainly straining, and these are really delicate little muscles that even, like, the first doctor in Miami that read the MRI had to, like, look up what the names of the muscles were. That's how you know you're dealing with, like, a pretty unique injury.

And the thing was, it would feel normal until kind of foot strike. And then when I was actually completing rotation of my hips was when I would feel the pain. So, you know, obviously tried to throw through it for a little bit. We realized I was going to miss the start of the season, but thought it wouldn't be something that would keep me out much longer. So started the year on the IL, ended up, you know, missing a good chunk of spring training as well. And unfortunately, the rehab for it was very touch and go. I think what we initially thought the injury was, too, was slightly different from what it actually was. I ended up, you know, building up, throwing-wise, getting kind of cleared for a rehab assignment, but still not

feeling 100%. And when I went like full game speed effort, I would feel it. But I was really eager to just get back to pitching in games. And I think, you know, if anything was pushing them to allow me to kind of rehab things a little quicker. Obviously, you know, hindsight is is 2020 and things that seem, you know, very apparent right now are rarely as apparent to us at the time. So, you know, what I probably should have done was taking some serious time off from throwing and just actually allowing the muscles and the tissue to fully heal before putting them through that stress again. But I wanted to kind of go, go, go. So we quote unquote, kept the arm moving, kept throwing. I was cleared for a rehab assignment. I went out. I made one outing where I felt

actually pretty good and then I had a second outing either the next day or after one day's rest and felt kind of right back to square one with the hip so I was pulled for my rehab assignment go back to Miami I end up getting in with a hip specialist in Nashville who saw things a little bit differently than what we had been seeing them as and from that point on kind of changed the rehab plan a little bit took a little bit more time off from throwing and But still was doing some low effort thrown just to keep the arm moving in various ways. But start to come back from that. I'm feeling much better at that point.

Like the pain threshold is down. I'm not really feeling it even when I am trying to find it. Right. So like feeling really good about that. I want to say this is mid-May or so. I was ramping back up, getting clear to go on another rehab assignment. I'm happy that I'm pain free. the team flew me up to Chicago through live ABs at Wrigley and felt really good.

That was like a really good day and I was cleared to go on a rehab assignment. So I went back on a rehab assignment and this whole time my velocity had been down a little bit. My shapes have been a little bit off, but I and everyone else kind of thought, okay, you're just getting back into the swing a bit. You got to remember this is kind of like a second off season on ramp for you. Like things aren't going to be as crisp as you want them to be. The calendar says May or June, but, you know, to your. body. This is like October, November, December, right? Like, you're going to have to work through some

stuff, right? So I went back out on my rehab outing. I was pain free, but, you know, I think I made three or four outings and just, you know, it didn't look like myself. So I was optioned because I was healthy. And the conversation was still, look, this is going to be a one or two week thing. You're going to, you know, come back, find your stride and you'll be back in the bullpen. Just like, right now, you're just not, you know, who you are. Like, you're not pitching. You're not pitching to your full capability, you know, the numbers aren't where we need them to be or where you need them to be. And I completely agreed. I mean, at the time I was saying, I'm pain free. I really thought I was one or two weeks out from everything clicking. I also did want to be prematurely, you know,

dropped into the major leagues where, you know, quite frankly, it's tough up there. You want to really feel like your best self or at least something close to it when you're going out there every day. And I didn't feel like that. I didn't have the confidence or the performance count of metrics to justify that. So I think we were all on board with that, as frustrating as it was. But, yeah, so I was in AAA,

and honestly, I just never got back to what I felt like before the hip injury. And when I was looking at video, and even speaking to the biomechanists in Miami, you know, things were just different. And unfortunately,

like, I was trying to cue things and working on various drills and stuff and daily work. and certainly no shortage of people trying to help me. But my body had patterned over months of low-intensity throwing and or throwing with pain, like a certain kind of compensatory movement patterns that just totally compromised my ability to throw how I want to throw. And so even though I was pain-free, I could not convince myself to throw normally and to use my lower half specifically normally. And there were a lot of other compensations, one of which was things in my upper half were compensating around what was happening in the lower half, which led to some shoulder pain initially.

I ended up getting a little brief I L stint to let that calm down and then the All Star Break. And when I came back from the All Star Break, the shoulder felt good, but I was moving the same way. And I remember thinking to myself, like, something has to give here because I can't keep throwing like that. And my velocity actually started to creep up while I looked still the same kind of just bad moving, you know, bad mechanics way on the mound. And, you know, I think after a couple weeks, like I still was starting to throw a little bit harder, but shapes were not there. Something was still not right. And eventually, obviously, culminated in, you know, blowing out my elbow, which, you know, the thought crossed my mind. Not that I felt anything at my elbow, but looking at myself, throw, and looking at video and breaking things down, I was just like, this, I don't know how much longer I can keep this up before something goes wrong, like, especially adding in increased velocity and stuff like that.

You know, my body was finding a way to produce better output, but it didn't look how it should have. So, yeah, it ended up kind of ending in the worst way possible. Yeah, that's a lot to go through. what was the initial drill, the fateful drill that you think could have started all of this? Yeah, I think it was a water bag drill we were doing where we had identified that there was some room for, there was some skin on the bone in terms of how I was completing rotation with my hips after landing. And I totally agreed. I mean, we had good conversations with this, myself and the staff in Miami. And I was on board that my 20,

24, you know, movement was a little bit off from spring training 2025, and they thought that this was a good drill that would help kind of feel what it was like to get back into that position. And I totally agreed and I actually really liked the feel. The problem was, I think it was just too much force and load on a pretty like end range position in the hip. And again, like you could give that drill to 99 guys and maybe only one guy tears those tiny little muscles that I did. Unfortunately, that is what happened. So, yeah. Yeah, it's got to be frustrating to not know what's wrong exactly because at least if you blow out your elbow, that's

bad news, but at least there's kind of a clear way to treat it or a recourse or, you know, we'll get into what the actual diagnosis and treatment there was. But yeah, if you're kind of have something that's uncommon and maybe experts seem to disagree about it, then it's tough to know where to go next or what exactly is wrong because you kind of have to identify the problem before you can come up with a solution. Yeah, exactly. And I think it was just one of those things where people just really didn't have an answer. And, you know, even the specialist that we saw in Nashville, he and his team had really only seen it in like a couple hockey players. And usually when people have that injury that I had, it also comes with like some serious trauma

to the hip at large. Like, you know, you're also tearing a lot of other stuff and these muscles get there. Like, no one had really seen everything looks fine except these two little muscles buried deep in the hip musculature. Like, that was what was so odd about it is there really wasn't, there is no return to play plan for that.

And so, you know, we were kind of just trying to do our best. And I think we did do that, but we just didn't, you know, no, and there was really no precedent for it, especially for baseball. Yeah, you didn't get body checked, into the boards or anything, which would make it easier to figure out what happened. Exactly, exactly. Yeah, so I guess it's often called a cascade injury or an injury cascade when one thing goes

wrong and then you compensate maybe even without being aware of it. And then that places additional strain on something that's not accustomed to it. And then something else down the chain breaks too. And I guess maybe that's what happened with the hip and then forcing you to do different things. and then that has an effect on the elbow. So was it a single traumatic thing where you just felt something give? Or was it just that things weren't feeling right?

So you got checked out and realized there was an issue with the elbow. It was one pitch. It's honestly, it's so funny and strange. Like you hear people describe the feeling of what it's like to tear your UCL, but if you've never experienced it yourself, you don't quite know exactly what they're, you know, referring to and describing.

But when it happened on that pitch, I immediately knew. Like I immediately was kind of matching what I was feeling up with, you know, the probably tens of descriptors I've heard from other people. And obviously, with UCL's, you know, it's going to be different for everybody. I forget the percentage, but I think I want to say it's actually more often that you don't feel like, a pop or a one pitch that you can point to where it happens. But for me, I could, I mean, I remember I could feel the space in my elbow expand at ball release. As crazy as that sounds, and we're talking about millimeters here, like, it just felt different. And then it was obviously

quite painful, but I kind of felt that pop and release of tension. Okay. Yeah, I was going to ask if it was actually pain or if it was just sort of an unnatural sensation or a popping feeling. but I guess all of the above. Yeah, I mean, in the immediate aftermath, it was quite painful. And I actually tried to throw another pitch after and kind of, I played it off like, oh, that was weird, even though in my head I think I knew. But I threw another pitch after and that was quite painful. But then it was kind of weird because by like the next morning, nothing really hurt

except the, you know, tests that are designed to hurt it. So that was kind of interesting too. Like maybe I expected it to hurt ambiently a little more. than I did, but it's certainly a unique thing. So if you could go back in time, I guess you said, you know, you'd rather that you had just taken more time off. It's tough because you're coming off this successful first full season and you want to build on that and you'd probably feel like your team needs you.

The Marlins finished 26th in bullpen war this past season, although fifth in bullpen win probability added. So I guess they had great timing. So that's kind of interesting. But, yeah, how would you advise that teams try to counteract that tendency to rush guys back or, you know, talk players out of that idea that, like, I got to keep going because it must be so hardwired into you as an athlete? Yeah, I think it's very difficult to be off the field, especially for something that isn't like an elbow surgery or a labrum or an ACL or something like that. you know, for like for a kind of weird soft tissue injury, you almost want to just, you know, get it over with and get back out there. But I think there's a lot of obviously incentives out

there. And I guess most of them are aligned. You know, they want you back out there. You want to be back out there. Maybe the timelines look a little bit different one way or the other. Usually one of the two parties is a little more cautious than the other. I think the first time around maybe I was a little more aggressive and then after seeing the specialist they were or sorry other way around after seeing the specialist I think they were a little more you know cautious and and encouraging me to take the time it took but yeah I mean it's tough being off the field and again especially for something that doesn't have a set timeline like that or you don't really know what you're dealing with you're going to want to kind of set that timeline yourself and you know I got in my head that okay

I want to be back in a couple weeks so okay what do I need to do to get back in a couple weeks I need to you know, keep throwing and get ready and just hope that the hip meets me somewhere along the way, which wasn't the case. But I think it's very difficult, especially in my case, it's very difficult. But in general, I think it's difficult because obviously the best thing to do probably is to be extremely cautious, but that keeps players off the field longer. And you can't do that. You know, you can't just shut everybody down anytime something happens and then ramp them back up and miss half the season for something relatively minor, even. though that might be the best for their longevity or something like that. We understand that

our job is to be out on the field playing. So I think it's tough. And obviously, as you said, like the cascading effects, yes, we're all aware. And I think, you know, I was trying to mitigate those, you know, it's especially not lost on me that these things happen, that one thing can lead to another. But ultimately, it's really tough when you're going out there and still, you know, trying to pitch in games and collect out, whether it's in AAA or the big leagues, like you're competitor first and you're thinking less about everything else, I think, when the lights turn on. So your last outing in the minors, I assume that's when this happened, was August 16th, and then you got the surgery late September, right? So what happened in the interim? Did you have

to get multiple opinions, or was it pretty clear cut what you were going to do? It was pretty clear cut. So I decided with the Marlins and myself and my agent that I would have Keith Meister in Dallas, do the surgery. He's obviously the hottest ticket in town these days, unfortunately, because there's so many surgeries to be done. And so while we were somewhat fast-tracked to get in with him, it just took a little bit of time to get in, meet with his team, and then get a surgery date on the calendar. Because of when it happened, it was pretty clear that unless I got the surgery right away, I'd probably miss 2026 season anyway. So that gave us a little bit of grace there that there wasn't like a huge rush to get under the knife as much as I wanted

as soon as possible, obviously, to start that clock. So yeah, I mean, I did fly out to Dallas to see him. You know, the MRI was read by a number of people within Miami's kind of network of doctors and was pretty clear that I needed, you know, the full UCL reconstruction. But nobody really wanted to say that for sure until I'd seen him. And then when I saw him, you know, he was like, yeah, you're, uh, your ligaments shredded, man. Like there's no, there's no, uh, there's no, uh, there's no hope here. No PRP and, and rest. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. So he's like, you got two options. You can get the surgery or you can like try to rehab it and probably never throw a pitch again. Um, so basically you're, you're getting the surgery. Yeah, just took a little bit of time, honestly, just to get on the calendar there. So part of that was, or a result of that was, It was nice that I was able to do a lot of prehab work.

So I had really over a month to prepare my body for the surgery. So I was just kind of working out five days a week and doing a lot of rehab work for the surrounding musculature and the forearm and the arm itself to make rehab as easy as possible and on myself and to hit the ground running as best as possible. So in that sense, there's obviously, there's been a lot of research that that's very beneficial for ACL. We're actually delaying surgery and doing a set kind of prehabilitation program leads to better outcomes on the back end. I don't think there's research for the UCL, at least not documented, but that was kind of the attitude I had was that, you know, this is, this will be good for me. In the long run, we'll make rehab a better road. Yeah, so there was no possibility of internal brace or one of the newer variants of the surgery. It was just straight ahead traditional T.J.

Yeah, you're really kind of at the mercy of how the ligament tears and just the kind of the way that mine was torn. There was really nothing to brace, unfortunately. But what Keith Meister does and what a lot of surgeons now are doing is actually when they take the graft and put in your new ligament, he adds an internal brace as well. So you're getting the best of both roles as well. So I have a new ligament taken from right behind my knee and i have that kind of wrapped around the internal brace so in theory this thing is as strong as it can get yeah so you're one of the lucky 70 it looks like major or minor league pitchers as of this recording who've undergone a documented Tommy john surgery this season so plenty of company yes no shortage company yeah yeah right exactly and were you talking to a bunch of other people in the game who've had it already about tips and tricks. Yeah, honestly, it was fantastic, the outpouring of support from guys that I've, you know, played with at some point, but maybe don't keep in, you know, touch with regularly who

saw the news and reached out with advice and encouragement and stuff like that. It's been really helpful. Obviously, there were a fair number of guys in the Marlins org as well who, who were the first to reach out and kind of offer me. anything they could to help with, you know, what to expect and certain things they wish they knew, you know, going in and stuff like that. So that's been really helpful. There's obviously a huge and ever-growing community of guys that have gone through it, which certainly helps as somebody going through it for the first time to know that, you know, a lot of the

guys I've played with and guys I look up to, you know, have undergone this and come back from it even better and gone on to throw a lot more earnings. So by the time you actually went under the knife, you were no longer a member of the Marlins organization, right? Because they released you in September. So walk me through this, because I guess they had the option. I mean, you weren't in the big leagues when this happened, but you were on the 40 man, right? So a team could just continue to carry a player on the 40 man while he rehabs from this surgery and you can keep using their facilities or whatever, right? So, Is this, were you expecting that to happen?

Did it take you by surprise that you were released before the surgery, or how does that typically work? Yes, it was very surprising, certainly not something that I anticipated or anybody close to me anticipated, but also kind of wasn't what we had been told, and nothing I'd ever seen before, but, you know, check the rulebook. They're allowed to do it, so power to them to exercise their rights. I'm not one to get in the way of that. But yes, it was shocking.

I was actually in North Carolina out in Kerry, like, Raleigh area. And I was happy to be able to catch one of my fiancé's games in September, which is a rare slash impossible occurrence with my normal schedule. Yeah. And it was the night before her game. I turned my phone off, and I was just about to set my alarm. This was like 10-something at night, and I realized I have a missed call. So I call the number back and then I'm informed by Marlin's front office member that I'm being released and that's kind of it.

So that was the last I spoke to anyone over there. And that was, you know, pretty close to the surgery date at that point, which also, you know, obviously just as a human being was a little bit stressful to hear. Yeah. You know, in my head, I'm thinking, okay, I'll be on the 60-day aisle next year. it's not ideal, but as situations go, it gives me a good chance to get back and get all the resources I need and have a fair shake at, you know, earning my spot back in 27. But now that's kind of thrown out the window after I received that phone call. That seems kind of callous. I wonder, I mean, is this something that you think there should be

a rule change or that you would advocate for, you know, I assume it's a collective bargaining issue, but is that something you would be in favor of preventing a team from doing what happened to you? Well, the reason it's so rare is that most teams wouldn't do that. They would rather actually hold on to the player and rehab them and see what they've got on the other end. You just don't hear about it because most organizations don't, you know, I guess, operate that way. But the thing with the release versus DFA, too, is in the rule, they can release, me, but, you know, they are punished by, I become a free agent so I can go anywhere. Obviously, players are protected from being DFA while they're injured because then if they

clear waivers, they just end up at the same team and you've effectively just gotten the guy off the roster who's going under surgery, which is probably worse. So given the choice between the two poisons, you'd rather be released. And again, I don't think there needs to be any huge legislation about this because it doesn't happen because it doesn't usually align with what the teams want, but obviously if you're looking to, well, I actually don't even want to speculate on what the reasons were. So, but, you know, one can imagine if you don't want to, you know, pay the money for a year or something like that. And that's the reason. Then I guess you should be able to do that.

Does that have then service time implications for you if you had been on the 40 men throughout the rehab and recovery and everything that you could have been accruing service time or? Yeah. So I would have gotten, yeah, a full year of service time next year. Well, that sucks. Ben, it's not ideal. But I'm at least at peace with the logic of it. And, you know, at the end of the day, too, like, Miami was great to me. They gave me a lot of opportunity.

And, you know, they selected me off waivers in 2024 right before spring training. And it gave me a shot and a really fair shot. And I really enjoyed my time there. So I don't want to say it, you know, just because of how it ended, I don't want to, you know, give the impression that I'm not grateful for everything they did do for me. It's obviously how it ended, it's just tough. But ultimately, like, I can be pretty dispassioned about this stuff. Like, they felt it was the right decision for the baseball club, and they made it. So it's like, it's okay.

I'm okay with the logic of that, at least. Yeah, I guess you come to terms pretty quickly with the whole baseball is a business, Maxim. So, yeah, for sure. Yeah. They do have a full 40-man roster right now, but I don't know how urgent it was. I mean, you know, I guess they're hoping to contend. They had a somewhat surprisingly successful season, but, you know, I haven't really gone through the 40-man to see, like, was there really no room at the inn that they couldn't have carried you for a year there? But that's, you know, kind of cold-blooded. I mean, that seems like the sort of thing that maybe you wouldn't, like, lean to the best reputation for an organization. when it comes to, like, being player-friendly and everything. And, you know, obviously you've gone to the Rangers. We'll talk about that. But in the immediate aftermath of it, like, do they have any obligations to you in terms of, like, I mean, you know, I assume the procedures covered by insurance.

And then, like, if you have training facilities that you can use, like, was that even a question of, like, where am I even going to recover from this? Yeah. So that is a nice protection that's in there is that if I had not signed with anything. anybody, they would be still obligated to cover all of the surgery, rehab, and everything until I was, like, cleared to play, basically. Uh-huh. And so you would have, like, awkwardly been at their facilities, even though they've released you?

No, I would not be welcome at their facilities. I would have to be doing that somewhere else, but they would cover it. Yes, yes, exactly. Huh. Okay. Well, fortunately, that isn't an issue now because the Rangers signed you shortly after the surgery, I guess, is that right? And you signed a two-year minor league deal, which is kind of unusual. It's not uncommon to see a multi-year major league deal for someone who is returning

from surgery, and you figure that they're probably not going to pitch that first season or not much, and you're hoping that you can kind of catch them on the rebound in the second season, but you don't often, I don't think, see the multi-year minor league deal, and maybe that's because you don't often see what happened to you because usually you would just still be in your old organization. So how did this take shape and when? Things happened very quickly. You know, my agent was down with me in Texas when I had the surgery and as soon as it was, you know, a success and Dr. Meister signed off on that. He immediately went to work. And by the time I woke up from my anesthesia induced drought,

housiness that afternoon where I had napped for about three hours in the hotel. He had already, you know, talked to a large percentage of the teams in baseball and gotten some, you know, obviously we had the benefit of a pretty long runway before surgery to have a lot of these conversations. But, you know, once the surgery was deemed a success, we already, we didn't have offers in hand that day, but we had a ton of interest and we're feeling really good about my chances to get a two-year deal, which obviously is what we wanted because, you know, I'll miss this next season. So I wanted someone who was, you know, obviously invested in, uh, with some skin in the game for a fair shake in 27. Texas was one of those teams, but was just one of many,

honestly. And then when Skip Schumacher got hired as manager there, we had a brief kind of back and forth. And then the next day I had an offer in my hands from them. He was your manager in 2024 for anyone who. It's not making that connection. Yeah, yeah. Yep. That's important context, honestly. And so we had an offer from them.

And they were actually the quickest to get us, you know, something in writing. And we liked the way it looked. And obviously, I have said it a million times to anybody who will listen that I'd play for Skip any day. So I was really excited to see that he was over there. So we jumped at the opportunity to get into that org. And obviously, I know a lot of other, you know, staff actually know some of the medical team over there. and some players, and it just felt like a really good landing spot. They have a really good reputation for just kind of how they treat players,

and especially on the rehab side of things, how they take care of guys and get them back and return to playwise. So the stars seem to kind of align in that 24 hours, and we got the deal done, which was really exciting. Yeah, now you can get tips from Jacob de Grum, I guess, maybe. Yeah, well, there's another guy that's been through it. Yeah. I think we've wondered about this before on the podcast. You know, you call a manager Skip. So what do you call a manager whose nickname was already Skip? Do you call him Skip? Or does that seem too familiar? That is really funny. We've joked about that, too. Skip is Skip, but sometimes maybe Skipper. I don't know. I think last year in Miami, I always called Clayton McCullough skipper because it just felt weird to call him Skip. after that was our manager's name the year before yeah maybe i'll get over that one day but yeah what the players call you do you have a baseball nickname not really in miami funny enough a a lot of the guys called me crowbar uh we were we were joking around around players weekend in

twenty twenty four uh like what our nicknames would be if we they went back to the jerseys that had nicknames on the back and i think max mire came up with crowbar for me and it actually stuck to the point where like all of the staff and players called me that in Miami for the next year so okay we'll see if it follows you to Texas yeah maybe maybe skip will bring it with him so what was the actual surgery like I assume most listeners have had some sort of surgery if not tabby john surgery is it like any surgery that requires anesthesia like how long are you under and what kind of preparation do you have to do and what's the immediate recovery like yeah i might be a bad person to ask for this

because it's actually my first surgery i've ever had okay but so to me it was uh unlike anything i'd ever done before but might be like any surgery you might have done to you um but it pretty standard yes went under i think it was a very quick surgery around 45 minutes or so oh wow yeah full anesthetic uh woke up was you know pretty out of it and pretty uh uncomfortable for that next day or so the worst part for me my arm felt great after surgery like i had no pain in my elbow from the even from the trauma of the like the incisions and what they're you know the work they're doing in there my arm has felt great ever since but i got my graft from my leg as i mentioned earlier yeah that was a hundred times worse like pain wise restricting mobility i couldn't really

like bend my leg much for the first 24, 48 hours-ish. So getting up and down out of seats or in and out of bed was really, really difficult. And they definitely undersold that, maybe intentionally so. But yeah, I was like on a crutch for the first four or five days and then did rapidly get better, which is what they said is they're like, oh, it'll hurt a little bit. But by a week out, nobody really complains about it anymore, which ended up being true. But I think they undersold how bad the first you know, 72 hours would be. So that was like really what I was complaining about mostly. And the next day when I went in for my post-op,

they were like, oh, yeah, that's what everybody says. Well, you're actually moving better than everybody. There are most people that we see, which was hard to believe because I was like hobbling around at, you know, a snail's pace with a crutch. But that was actually way worse. And I had to do a lot of rehab for that as well. But I guess that was kind of the media aftermath.

Yeah, flying was interesting. I was lucky that the fine, folks in American Airlines took great care of me and definitely took some pity on me as well, seeing me in that pretty disheveled state the next day. But we got from point A to point B, all right. And yeah, honestly, once, about after a week or so, I was starting to feel more like myself and getting around the house and going to PT and start in the process. And now you're about three months removed. So where are you in the process? Yeah, I know. It's crazy. Time has definitely flown. I shed it.

My brace at six weeks, so I'm just over 11 weeks now. So I'm out of the brace. I have full range of motion, starting to get my strength back next Monday. So a little wedding present to myself, I'll be able to get back in the gym with my right arm and start kind of unrestricted weightlifting. Obviously, I got a long way to go to regain the real strength there. But in terms of the little stuff and physical therapy, things are going really well. the arm feels great the leg feels really good starting to feel more like an athlete every day which is

nice because obviously as anyone who's been through any sort of procedure like that you know knows it's really tough to all of a sudden and not be able to do all the things that you like to do especially you know physical activity and working out and things like that so and then you know multiply that by a hundred for someone whose livelihood is you know involved with getting into the gym and stuff like that so it's been really nice to get back into the swing of things that way and uh you know every day i'm getting closer to picking up a baseball again so uh that kind of keeps me motivated yeah i know just from what other pitchers say that it's it's odd when you start throwing again and it just feels like you're kind of relearning how to throw and don't know where your arm is in space and all of that so i guess that's

all ahead of you but uh but it'll be good to embark on that part of the process at least and it's good that you're less encumbered now. Yeah. Do you have any big picture thoughts about just, you know, the scourge of UCL surgeries and how this just seems to be the bane of baseball's existence now? And I guess you know from your, I guess I should say, fiancé, although by the time people hear this, it will be wife, you know, assuming she doesn't have any second thoughts at the last second. I'm sure she won't.

But in soccer, it's ACLs, right, in women's soccer. Yeah. In baseball, it's UCLs. I mean, you know, it's, you are one of the pitchers who had a Velo boost, right? That's something that you trained for. We probably talked about it on one of your previous appearances. And it seems like, you know, there is kind of a correlation there between guys throwing max effort and trying to throw as hard as they can.

And inevitably, there's going to be some weak point and the UCL is often it. But all the incentives are aligned for a pitcher to throw as hard as they can, to throw the nastiest stuff to, you know, not really take anything off. So do you have any thoughts on how baseball can sort of solve this problem of, you know, not getting guys kind of conditioned to be the next on the table? Yeah. No, I mean, I probably don't have anything that hasn't been said by someone at some point. I can only really speak to my personal experience with it, which is, you know, for me, like you spoke about, like, you know, I had, you know, velocity gains and certainly stuff games because I'm still not a guy that throws you know upper 90s right like you know

93 to 95 and try to manipulate the baseball to be most effective but you know if you gave me the choice between throwing 89 or 90 and never getting hurt or having the kind of career arc I've had now if you gave me that choice five years ago like you know I wouldn't be playing baseball still Right. So, like, you have to think about it from that standpoint, right? Like, the alternative to, you know, not gaining velocity or not trying to maximize your stuff and get the nastiest fish as you can is being out of baseball, right? Like, yeah, you don't need Tommy John if you don't have a job and aren't playing baseball. Yeah. So I think, obviously, there's things that we can do to mitigate the risks. And I think there's a lot of people working really hard on that problem. But, The incentives of the game, from a pitcher's standpoint, are to, you know, number one, primarily get batters out, but also to reduce contact, increase whiffs, strikeout percentage, stuff like that. And the way to do that, you know, we know is to throw harder, throw nastier pitches that get more whiffs. And until the object of the game changes, I just don't see this curve really, like, flattening, to be honest. And, you know, there's certain things you can do to, like I said, like to mitigate that and to lower those risks.

And I think, you know, I did a lot of that. Like I think maybe, you know, if I don't train the way I do and take the kind of preventative measures I've taken in my career, I potentially blow out sooner. But it feels almost inevitable at this point for guys. If you play long enough, you're going to have some sort of injury. It's like much rarer to see the guy that has a long career who hasn't gone under the knife at some point. And one possible solution I've advocated for is, well, if you reduce the number of pitchers on the active roster, then maybe that trickles down. And eventually you get back to a place where guys are going deeper into games and, you know, they have to pace themselves more and it's not max effort all the time. Sure. But I'm not a pitcher. So that's easy for me to say. Maybe you're thinking, wait, hold on a second. You want to lower the number of pitchers on the roster. That means fewer spots for me.

So that doesn't work out in your favor either. So, yeah, there are all these competing incentives. And I guess what's good for the game in theory might not be good for an individual player, even if it's designed to sort of protect players. So it's all kind of an intractable problem, though I hope it won't be forever. No, and I do as well. I just maybe it's just above my head or my pay grade, but I don't see like a set solution. Because even what you suggest, like, my first thought is, but tell that to the guy that's there throwing, you know, not an X effort and just getting whacked around the yard.

Like, this is good for you. You know, this is good for the game. Yeah. Like, he's not going to like that very much, right? He's going to want to, you know, try to strike guys out again. And that's really tough. I don't know. I don't know how we get around that.

Yeah. And it's bad for the game to not really be able to invest in a pitcher because you feel like, well, they might not be on the mound next year. You know, you buy just a girl who loves Declan Cronin shirt and then maybe you can't wear it out to a Declan Cronin game for a while because you're off the field. So that stinks. It stinks for fans. It obviously sticks more for you for the person who's actually getting the surgery. But do you think that because of the enforced inactivity that will benefit your hip, do you have any concerns about the hip when your elbow is ready for action again? No, I don't.

I'm feeling good there. And even by the time that I did blow out my elbow, like my hip was feeling good. It was just a matter of the movement patterns have become so, you know, for lack of a better term, jacked up by months of really bad habit forming. It wasn't actually like an injury anymore.

But I'm sure it'll only help with being able to kind of pattern things the way I want to when I get back, though. Yeah, you just have to unlearn what you've learned I guess, in those last few months, whatever it was that you were trying to compensate for. And I guess, you know, there's kind of a mostly a myth, I think, of the idea that guys come back throwing harder and better than ever. I think maybe that's partly the perception is just because you weren't throwing as hard as you usually do before you got hurt, like you. Like you, you know, your video was down a little bit.

And so if you just get back to your baseline, then it looks like you got a boost. But really, it was just getting back to where you were. But they do say also that just because of the training and the amount of time you're spending in the gym, just recovering from the surgery and getting back to full strength, that, I mean, it doesn't seem like, you know, not staying in shape was an issue for you. But I guess if you weren't fully getting after it pre-surgery, then just the work it takes to get back maybe gets you in the best ship of your life, perhaps. Yeah, I think you definitely see that. And even for someone like me, I think it's still a really unique. opportunity where you don't have to, you know, worry about competition for a little bit and can really just be completely developmentally focused for a 12-month period. Right. Yeah. So what will

you do then with this year off, which is unusual in the middle of a career? Are you just going to be a regular at Utah Royals FC games? Or do you have to be or want to be around the team? I mean, like, what's your kind of connection to the rangers while you're in this sort of transitional period while you're a member of the organization, but not actually suiting up? Yeah, good question. So I'll actually be going to Major League Spring Training with everybody else, and then I'm going to be in Arizona rehabbing for the year. So I'll be at the complex up in surprise rehabbing there. Obviously, I would love to be a Utah Royal Superfan. and hit every game.

You know, I might have an opportunity to hit a few more than I normally would during the season. But, yeah, no, I'll still be, I'll be going into the complex every day and working with the PTs there, train coaches there, you know, rehab pitching staff there for 2026, yeah. And you still have a side gig, right? We've talked about your job at Tread Athletics, and you still have that. So does that, you're an operation specialist there, does this give you more? more time to work on things there? Is it still sort of the same workload?

I anticipate the workload being fairly similar to years past, but, yeah, that will be really nice, as always, to stay kind of clued in and connected to those guys back in in Charlotte when I'm gone. And it seems like the reputation of Tread has only been enhanced because Tyler Zambrough, who worked there or still works there in some capacity, maybe? Yeah, he was hired by the Cubs about a year ago as a special assistant, and then they just promoted him to vice president of pitching after this last recent season. So that probably reflects well on the entirety of Tread. So I guess that's good. And you've probably learned from

being a colleague of his. What's the latest buzz at Tread? Because, you know, every year there's like, here's the new hot pitching trend. And it seemed like this year it was more about just like everyone having really deep repertoires and even relievers just throwing more pitchings. types than everything that was the big buzz and in the past it's been about you know it's the year of the sweeper it's the year of the splitter right we saw tons of splitters on display in the postseason this year and so people were or the sinkers making a comeback or you know the death ball was a tread thing right i mean that's right yeah so so what's the the cutting edge now or going into 2026 yeah that's a good question yeah i think the kick change last year got a lot of press as well and that was a really big one

Yeah, that's a good question. Maybe because I'm not throwing, I'm not as clued into or interested in that stuff right now. Like, I'm not having as many of those conversations. I know right now everybody's really gearing up for their pro day, which is a huge event. It's like a three-day event where, you know, all 30 teams are represented and all free agents, you know, come into town or in town and throw. So that's a big point of focus. They're also doing some work with Asian teams and the KB. and the MPB.

So that's been really exciting. We see a lot of those guys in-house in Charlotte now every day from various teams from overseas. In terms of the next big fad, I'm not really sure if I have an answer on that one. I'm sure something will come up and we can turn back to here and say, how did you not know this? But I can't, nothing comes to the top of my head. And I'm not being, you know, secretive or Koi. I really don't.

I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Me neither. I'm sure we'll find out together, though. There's always something. Right, probably. Well, I'm glad that we could catch up, and I'm sorry that it was a rough year, professionally speaking, but hopefully this was sort of an illuminating conversation as well, because, you know, we talked when you were riding high and things were going great, and I certainly hope that that will be the case again soon.

But, you know, it's also probably eye-opening, I guess, to go through a year when every day. everything kind of goes wrong and yeah and yeah then the insult to injury of the release and then the surgery and just all the rest of it yeah is you know i guess this was hopefully the the bottom and it'll only be uphill from here in 2026 and beyond yeah yeah that's how i feel about it too so uh no this is great i'm always happy to talk and uh can't always just be talking when things are going great so right yeah it's the whatever the say if you don't love me at my worst uh You don't get to love me at my best or whatever the Marilyn Monroe attributed to saying is. So, yeah, we got to talk to you when things aren't going so great so that we can celebrate the highs again when you get back to those.

Is there anything that, like, given this time off, a longer-term project that you are able to undertake because you normally just wouldn't have as much downtime? I mean, whether it's like learning a new pitch or something, I guess you always have the off-season to work on. things that are more in depth. But I wonder if it's a time to step back and take stock and say, what do I want to do with this time to improve myself as a pitcher while I have the capacity to? Yeah, I think I want to treat myself as close to a kind of blank slate as possible when coming back. Obviously, I'll have certain, you know, touchstones that make me who I am. But I'm really excited to talk to, you know, the staff in Texas about, you know, their ideas for what, you know, I can change, improve, modify, work on moving forward to what they envisioned me being as

someone that contributes to their club in 2027. So while I don't necessarily have the answers right now to what that looks like, I'm excited for those conversations and definitely want to use this as an opportunity to maybe work on some things that I either haven't had the time or bandwidth to in the past, but now given this kind of unique situation, we'll actually have the opportunity to do. So, yeah, I'd be very surprised if you see me on a mound in 2027 and everything, you know, repertoire-wise and even, you know, delivery looks the exact same. You know, I want to use this as an opportunity to, you know, write the wrongs and, you know, improve things that I can in this, you know, unique time frame

that I have. So, yeah, we'll see what that looks like. I don't really know right now, but I'm definitely looking to do whatever I can. All right. Well, looking forward to seeing you back out there eventually, however you look, and good luck with the rest of the rehab and the recovery. And, of course, the wedding. Thanks, Ben.

Yeah, I appreciate that. And this past Saturday, Declan did indeed marry Page Monaghan. At the Church of St. Ignatius Loyal, no less, that's just across the street from our high school, where we each went to Mass while we were at Regis, somewhat reluctantly, in my case. Hey, you had to have been baptized to get in, but you didn't have to be a believer.

But I am very grateful for that high school experience. And no, I'm not giving away any secrets here. Page put pictures on Instagram. Looks like it was a lovely ceremony. And I'm very happy that Declan was able to wrap up a rough year professionally with a happy personal milestone. He seems to have a good head on his shoulders, but I'd expect nothing less from a fellow regian.

Now let's get to our second AAA pitcher of 2025. White Sox righty Duncan Davitt. 2-2 pitch. Swing and a miss. David's 2-2. Got him swinging as this pitch comes in and it's a called strike three pitch swung on and missed not even close on a slider Two on nobody out the one two got him swinging they off pitch with two on this is a big one here it is and he got him swinging one two swung on and missed one two coming swing and a miss two and coming slider got him for strike three two ball two strike pitch and it's tipped into the mitt

Davitt's got his 10th strikeout. Well, on the Friday before Christmas, the Indianola, Iowa boys and girls high school basketball teams took tough losses against the Norwalk Warriors coming off of convincing wins over the Lincoln Rail Splitters. I know that thanks to Duncan Davitt, sports reporter for the Indianola independent advocate. But Duncan doesn't just write sports stories. He's also the subject of them. He's right-handed pitcher in the White Sox system who made it to AAA this year was recently added. to do a 40-man roster for the first time and is one promotion away from the majors. And now, instead of doing the interviewing, he is the interviewee on Effectively Wild.

Welcome, Duncan. Hi, thanks for having me on. I believe you got added to the 40-man, what, three days after you got married, something like that? Yeah. That's quite a week. Yeah, it was a good week. Meant to buy a Powerball ticket, didn't get around to doing that. But, no, it was a good time. Were you on a honeymoon, or were you still in the podcast?

post-wedding high, and then you get more good news? No, so it was interesting. My agents were at the wedding, and they came up to me at one point, and they said, hey, like, if we think that some trades might happen, and if that does, then we think you'll be on. So there was a pretty, there was a nice little wedding gift at the wedding that they told me about, and then it didn't end up working out, obviously, like, confirming that until later in the week. And my wife and I, we're not going to take our honeymoon until next fall

where we have a little bit more freedom to go where we please rather than have to find somewhere where I'd have to continue doing my workouts. So we're taking a little breather before we go do the honeymoon. So we're still in Iowa at the time. And depending on how the next season goes, maybe you'll have a little more money to spend on the trip. Yeah, we'll see. That would be very nice. Well, we'll talk about the baseball, but I guess we'll bury the lead, as we sports writers say here, and talk about your side gig for a bit here. And I told you this via email, but it's very flattering to the ego of a sports writer like me that you are interested in pursuing that also, because it's not universal, but it's not uncommon for people to end up

writing about sports because they had to stop playing them. And that was their way to stay close to the game. And so here you are. You have not been forced to stop playing them. In fact, your career is ascendant. And yet, you're still interested in doing the thing that we ink-stained wretches and scribblers do. So tell me about your interest in sports writing and how and when this started. Yeah. So it was probably, I want to say the offseason of 2023, where I had been back home. I was living in Des Moines. My parents, that's about 30 minutes from Indianola. So my parents were like, hey, we really need a sports writer. I know you studied history, so you like did a lot of writing and stuff, but like, do you think you could write a couple

sports stories for us? I was like, I mean, I have no idea what I'm doing. I'm completely terrified because I don't want to look like an idiot to all these people reading this, but I'll give it a go. So I went and covered a couple high school football games. I showed up with my basically just a little black notebook to keep notes. And since then, I started bringing my laptop to take a little bit more detailed notes. And it really just kind of blossomed from, I need a little bit of extra cash in the offseason. And my parents needed a sports reporter. And I found, like, I kind of actually enjoy doing this.

I get to see a lot of kind of up-and-coming players throughout the county in Central Iowa and see some really talented players, actually. It is very funny that a professional athlete would pick up sports writing to make more money because that's kind of, it's not the most lucrative career. Yeah, right. It's the nature of minor league baseball or it's, you get paid and it's better than, it's obviously 100% better than it used to be, but it's still not quite as much as you might want it to be, especially in the off season.

So it's just a little extra boost to just kind of get you through the off season. and it's not like a major league player may not need the money quite as much as a guy coming off of his first low-a-high-a season. Right. And if you are a major league player at some point, as you hope you will be, then how will that affect your sports writing aspirations?

Do you think will you want to kind of keep a finger in just for the love of the game, so to speak? Yeah, I mean, I always, like I said, my parents run the paper, and I don't want to really necessarily leave them out to dry as much. And I've, like I said, I've come to enjoy it. So I'll probably continue doing some writing. At the very least, I'll continue writing the column that I do for the paper.

Whether I do as much with the actual athletics side of it, like covering the high school side, I'm not sure. But I know for sure I'd continue doing the column. I think people around the town really enjoy it. And it acts as a sort of diary for me so I can get some stuff out when I need to. Yeah, much more material for calls. all to the bullpen. Although, you're working as a starter these days, right? So I guess you're not getting called in from the bullpen except unless you're warming up there before first pitch. Yeah, pretty much. We couldn't think of a better name for it. So we're like, yeah, that's kind of

a clever name. We'll go with that. So that's kind of how that one ended up. Yeah. Well, I love it. I guess there are some sports writers who might be threatened by this. Like, oh, he's a he's a two-way player. He can do it all. Like get off our turf, you know, like you're encroaching on our corner. You're athletically blessed and we're here relegated to writing. You think you could do that, too, big shot? They should feel very secure because as much as my writing has improved over the last two or three years, it's still not as good as some of these very skilled sports reporters. You're a sports writing prospect as well as a baseball prospect, I guess.

We'll call it that. That works. I've always thought that, and kind of fantasized about being the one in the clubhouse, if I were a player who the beat writers would want to talk to. Like, I'd be the guy with the go-to quote, you know, standing there and they know they can come to me to give them some good material, which the fact that I've even fantasized about that as opposed to like athletic success probably goes to show that I'm in the right line of work, I guess, and your other line of work I'm probably not quite cut out for

because, yeah, the whole idea of like, I'll be the best. quote on the team. That's not exactly what you probably grow up imagining when you're in the backyard with the, it's game seven scenario. That's exactly what I was going to say. It's, you know, more so pretending that I winning the World Series than that. But I kind of understand it, just the nature of what your job is. That's kind of what you think about. Well, and has being on the other side of the tape recorder or the digital recorder, whatever it is, and having to collect quotes now. Has that made you more conscious of not just sort of spewing cliches when someone comes to you after a game? You want to give them something good? Yeah, absolutely.

It was funny. A couple weeks after being traded to the White Sox, I was doing something for their media people. Some interview, I can't remember what it was for, but I remember calling my mom afterwards, and I was like, Mom, I just gave the worst interview of my entire life. I think it was so bad. And she's like, why? It was like, I stuttered. I didn't know exactly what I wanted to say. I felt like I was talking in circles. It was very funny because now that I see like all these high school kids, like,

and obviously high school kids don't know how to give an interview. They're high school kids. They're just talking. So I see all these kids talk in circles, not really answer questions, not really give full in-depth answers. And I'm like, okay, now I'm starting to see the problems of things that I, I did. And I still don't miss the landmines for them, but I know that they're there. Yeah. Do you, have you gotten media training as a player? Just, hey, here's what to say,

how to say it, what not to say, how not to get yourself into trouble, that kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, when I got drafted, the race did a very, maybe an hour or so long media training of, hey, don't leave your teammates out to dry. Like, if you messed up that day, like, just take the punches. it'll be much easier than a three-day story of you missing the questions rather than a one night of you having a bad game and some stuff like that. Like always make sure you're saying nice things about other people, like trying to look like a gracious person. Yeah. And I think those are all very very good things to keep in mind when answering questions. There are probably some people out there who are thinking, oh, Nepo baby, Duncan's parents own the paper.

That's how he gets the gig. And let me tell you, you're not the only Nepo baby in sports journalism or the only person who is partly supported by their parents because that's how a lot of people get into the business for better or worse. But tell me about the paper and about their journalistic careers and how they ended up in that position. Yeah. So my mom and dad have been in newspaper. For sure, my mom has been in newspapers for literally my own entire life. And my dad was in the papers, in the Ames area, and then a couple other places. and then he took a small hiatus to be a state representative in the state house and then came back to it. But he does all the photography stuff or a lot of the photography things. While my mom does a lot of the editor-publisher role, she'll obviously write some stories because it's not a very

large newspaper. There's not really that many reporters that they have employed. So they run it pretty small. So they do most of the work themselves. They cover Warren County, which is Andy Nolan the surrounding towns. So like Norwalk, which you had mentioned in your introduction, and then a couple other smaller high schools around the county. And those are kind of my responsibility when they play sports. So getting to drive out to some of these towns of maybe 700 people is always a very fun experience for me, getting to see a different side of it. And as the paper's name suggests, this is an independent paper. And as I'm sure you're aware, it's a challenge. time for local media and local papers these days. There's just been this great contraction,

a death of local media, and it has really negative effects. It can increase political polarization because just all politics is national now. It can reduce oversight of local government. There's no media watchdogs out there. It can create a news desert where there's just no coverage of a local area. So how are they making this work and how hard has that been? You know, I would almost say that that is part of the reason that it does work. I think that people want to have local papers. They want to know what's going on in their town. They want to be able to look in the paper and see their kid playing basketball.

So when my mom first decided she was going to start doing this, she had relatively recently been laid off of the conglomerate, I guess, with the record Harold and the Des Moines Register. She had been with them for a long time. And eventually it was laid off as newspapers were contracting, as you mentioned. And then she decided she's just going to start writing a news blog, essentially just covering city council and maybe a couple other smaller stories around. And then she realized, hold on, I'm kind of getting a lot of people to read this.

Like, let's see what happens. And they started this newspaper. And it's been pretty successful over the last five or so years. And I think that one of the reasons for that is because people are interested. in what's going on in their town. And now that they have a place that they can go and see it, it makes it much more accessible and much more easier for them to consume because my mom is a great writer and does a very good job of making things

that might seem complicated, pretty easy to understand in the grand scheme of things. Yeah, was that local coverage of you important when you were an amateur athlete, let's say, were you saving clippings? Or did you think, oh, this is cool, I'm in the paper? Yeah, I definitely thought it was cool. I mean, like at our high school, there was like a clipboard of like our students in the news kind of a thing. And it was always kind of cool to like go up to see this board as the year went on and you got to look at, oh, there's this person in the paper for doing this thing. And oh, there's this other person.

So it was always like people were always pretty interested in at least in high school because, well, I'm in the newspaper. I'm in the newspaper. And I think that that's kind of part of the reason that I've started to look at this more as. something fun to do rather than just a job. Because I get to give that to some of the high school students around where they get to look at this and say, hey, look, guys, I'm in the paper. And I guess the unionization of the minors, did that happen the year after your debut season, just after you got drafted and then I think.

I want to say, yeah, CBA was signed the 23, I think. So, yeah. Right. So you got in just before that happened. And so as you mentioned, conditions have improved, pay is improved, nutrition, all the rest of it. But it's still not the most lucrative, at least especially in the lower minors. So, yeah, how has that changed the need or the desire for guys to get jobs other than the year-round job of prepping to be a professional athlete? But, you know, it's just, it used to be commonplace in Major League baseball for guys to get jobs in the offseason.

And now not so much. But in the minors, it's still pretty common. guys will get coaching jobs and do something baseball related often. But is it as pressing now? Is it just because, you know, it used to be that, I mean, you play for a few months and you don't get paid well during those months and then you have to support yourself somehow? Yeah, I think that I would say most guys probably have something, whether it's finishing school or working, like giving lessons or stuff like that. But I think you're right that it's definitely less pressing than it used to be, especially for guys that signed for a lot. of money out of the draft or whatever yeah they've got kind of money to fall back on but i was an 18th round pick i don't exactly have that so right even as the conditions improved and you

get paid more during the off season you still have to go home and you still have to make rent and whatever you were able to save during the season really only goes so far so having something supplemental like that is always is beneficial in that way but it's still like it like i said a little bit less pressing. Yeah. What did you do with your big $25,000 bonus after you just splurge on a mid-tier, reasonably priced car or something? No, I actually pretty much immediately put it into a high-yield savings and a small mutual fund. So I try doing my best to save it. Yeah, that's a good move, I think. I've actually had an Iowa State representative on the podcast, J.D. Shulton. Yeah, you know him.

He's, of course, a pitcher as well, so he has multiple jobs. And one of his issues was the MLBTV blackouts in Iowa, which I know have been really burdensome because you're blacked out of six teams, despite most of them being very far away. And I assume that's still the case. So if you were to debut for the White Sox, your parents would have to go see you in person. I mean, I'm sure they would want to anyway. But your friends, your extended family in Iowa. would not be able to watch you, I guess,

through legal means, through MLBTV, because that's still an issue, right? So has that been a problem for you just coming up as a baseball fan? Yeah, I mean, I always, I mean, I always would flip on a game and it'd be like the, I don't know, named two random teams,

and it would always be those teams. And if you, there's a couple local stations that would play the Cubs or occasionally the White Sox, but like, If you wanted to find a Royals or a Cardinals game on a random Thursday night, like good luck, like that's not happening.

But like you said, like a lot of these, my family and friends, Chicago is about a five or six hour drive from where I'm at. So it's kind of reasonable for a lot of people. And a lot of my friends and family made the trip over to Omaha when we were up there. So I don't think that it would necessarily prevent a lot of people from driving over to Chicago and seeing me play there for the first time. But just in general, I think JD's on the nose with the blackouts. I think that at the very least there's room to make an extra level of the subscription

to get through the blackouts and just put the local station on that broadcast. I'm not sure why the blackouts exist. I can't imagine that any reasoning really makes up for. kind of the lack of coverage of teams that people probably really care about. How do Iowans feel about Field of Dreams? Are you just like so inundated with Field of Dreams from childhood that you're sick of it or are you obligated to love it or what are your feelings about it? I mean, I'm not sure if it's so much an Iowa thing, or at least for me, it's not so much an Iowa thing. It's more of just how much do you love baseball? Like for me,

I love the Field of Dreams. It's really cool. Don't tell Iowans. I've never had actually been. We're a good four-hour drive away from Dyersville, probably, if I had to guess. So it's never really been in the cards for me to get out there just because I've always been busy. But I think that the idea of it is cool and beyond just, oh, let's make a movie about a guy with the baseball field and his cornfield. It's not so much about that. It's about loving something so much that you're willing to sacrifice for it. And I think the idea behind that is awesome. And it's kind of a really cool message for them to put out to people. And I really enjoy the game that they hold there when the Yankees and the White Sox played out there back in 2022 was such a cool game, having guys come out of the feel.

I mean, it's just a really cool atmosphere. And it's a place you don't get to see big league players play. So it's an interesting spot. Yeah, you were a few years late, I guess. Maybe if the White Sox can go back there, then you can finally. make it to Dyersville, you can actually just pitch. That'd be nice. Yeah, I'd be good with that. That'd be a good just human interest story for the game, I think. Just, you know, at least promote you, keep you around the hometown kid playing in the Field of Dreams game that would play

well. So as a prospect, as a baseball player, I'm sure that you study what other pitchers do and you compare yourself to their stuff and maybe you model yourself after them to some extent. Do you do that now as a writer? You were just the subject. of a good profile from the Des Moines Register, which that's how I heard about your other career. And so are you reading that and kind of evaluating it now as a writer and trying to figure out what can I pick up from this or reading other baseball writing or sports writing to mine it for tips and tricks? Yeah, to an extent for sure. I think my biggest problem with sports writing typically is that I add too much to it, like it's too long. So yeah, you and me both.

Yeah, I've tried to learn from people how to write interesting things, like things that sound interesting to read without adding 50 extra words that don't need to be there. That's kind of been my struggle. I also, I've picked up a couple of phrases, like, where kind of, it's fluff, really. Sorry, there are dogs going crazy. That's okay. But it's fluff, if we're being honest. But it's interesting fluff that doesn't take too long to say.

So I've kind of picked up some of those short phrases as well. Yeah, it's like learning a new pitch or something. For sure. For sure. You've done and maybe are doing. You wrote a column, I think, last off-season about just what the off-season is like for a player. And you've gone to an independent facility to work on things. And yet you're in communication with the team.

So how have things changed since you were traded last year or earlier this year from the raise to the White Sox? What did the White Sox tell you about what they want you to work on? if anything that's different from what Tampa Bay told you. Yeah, no, I think that the White Sox have done a good job with kind of understanding where I'm coming from. The Rays are obviously a fantastic organization all across the board, especially with their pitching side. So I think the White Sox kind of understand that and say,

you're coming from an org that does a really good job of pitching. These are our suggestions. We kind of know that you understand this. So, for example, like this offseason, and I really was not looking to change a whole lot pitch-wise. And then I was throwing some change-ups. I was like, man, I really don't like this change-ups. So I was texting with Zach Bov, the new pitching coach.

And he's like, have you ever tried the kick change? So we're kind of, it's less like we think you need to work on this and more almost like spitballing ideas. But don't do an actual spitball. That's still against the most. Yeah, that'd be gross. And I think it might be illegal. It is.

But it's that kind of idea where you're just kind of, you're bound. bouncing ideas off of each other rather than one person telling you to do something. Yeah, and I noticed that it's kind of the opposite of the typical progression in the minors. You sort of started as a swingman or maybe even mostly a reliever and kind of struggled in that role out of the gate. And then you were converted to starting and you've had a lot of success in that role, which is kind of backward, right? Because often guys will start their professional careers as starters and then maybe they'll

struggle and then they get moved to the bullpen, and you've kind of gone in the other direction. Yeah, and it's an interesting story just because it was really just luck. I got lucky that I got to start because we had a guy get hurt when I was in Bowling Green. I was the only guy who hadn't thrown. I was capable of going multiple innings. They're like, all right, you got it. Get out there. So I kind of went back to what my college pit or pre-pitch routine was and threw well. And they're like, okay, well, we'll see what happens. And the guy was heard another week and I got to continue starting and continue to improve. And it was very clear that the routine was helpful for me. I wasn't as sure how to throw out of the bullpen as I was as a starter. I think that since being

in professional baseball longer, I think I might have a better understanding of how it might work. But at the time, I really had zero idea. I was kind of just doing things. And, you know, either wasn't prepared or was even slightly too, like, I don't want to say over-prepared, but like to a point where it was detrimental, if that makes sense. So kind of understanding, I was more comfortable for sure in that new role. I think the routine made a big difference. It's obviously a lot easier to pitch when you have an idea of what situations you're going to be put into. And when you're always put into nobody on, nobody out, first-sitting, clean inning, you kind of know what to expect at least a little bit.

So describe yourself as a pitcher as if you were writing about yourself, I guess. How would you describe your repertoire, your approach to pitching? I would say low slot carry. It's relatively average carry, but the low slot kind of allows me to get away with it, if you will. Not necessarily overpowering with below, but it'll get on you just a little bit deceptive. three different shapes of breaking balls, short, hard-curbed ball, sweeper, and a cutter. The change-up is more or less an on-factor at this point, but it's developing, I would say. Those are the main ideas.

Well, Eric Longin-Higgin, who's the lead prospect analyst for Fangraphs, I looked up what he's written about you. And when you were on the Ray's prospect list a year ago or before this past season, he said that you would have a sneaky 40-man case nine months from now. nailed that, good projection. And he did describe you as a funky low-slot guy at Iowa, who has successfully been turned into a back-end starter prospect in pro-ball. His arm slot has been raised some, and he's throwing strikes with a rise slash run, fastball, and sweeper. Both play is average due to Davitt's ability to hide the ball. And that's what you were just talking about, I guess,

with the deception. And I'm always fascinated by deception. And people mean more than one things sometimes when they say deception and it can be just the way your pitches move relative to your release but that ability to hide the ball i always find really fascinating so is that something that you hear from hitters that they don't see the ball that well is that just because i don't know is it coming out from behind your back late or something along those lines that's funny because they're what i've always heard i think deception is basically just being weird or like having something weird right so when i throw people have told me it looks like you're going to throw from a pretty normal slot and then all of a sudden it's coming out of your armpit

i was like oh okay that's an interesting way of thinking about it but that's that's how people have described it to me so it's it's essentially if you can get somebody to expect a certain release point and you're two feet away from that release point you're probably in pretty decent shape at that point because you're not picking up the ball quite as soon. And that's going to put you ahead as a pitcher. And I assume that wasn't intentional. It wasn't as if you crafted this release to maximize the deception. It was just sort of natural.

So I always wonder how teachable that is. Do you think that you could have just developed that if someone had said, hey, we need you to be a little more deceptive? Like once you get to this stage, are you sort of locked into that kind of characteristic? Or can you tinker with that even after you're pretty established? You know, I'm not really sure because I will say the slot and some of the release stuff is kind of a side effect of some mechanical work I did as a freshman or between my freshman and sophomore year or college. I had a massive elbow hike at the time, which is obviously very dangerous. So they spent a summer fixing it, and this is kind of the release that ended up coming out of it.

So I'm not sure how much you could teach somebody to do it. I'm not sure you would teach somebody to do it. But there are big leaguers you can point to nowadays that have that similar low-slot carry, like you have a Max Scherzer. Obviously, Brian Wu is the famous one now. You had asked earlier if I model people for writing, well, these are the guys I model after for baseball because we're kind of in the similar release heights, similar arm angles.

So what they do is something that might work for me. But, no, I don't think I would try and teach a 12-year-old to throw like me. I think I'm a little too weird. Well, I guess it's good that that kind of thing can be quantified now, where maybe if the radar gun reading, which isn't even really a radar gun anymore, but if that doesn't blow people away, then you can still figure out, why does this work? Why is this guy having some success? And you could always have a scout just say, oh, you know, hitters have a hard time hitting off of him or something. But when you can actually say it's because of the slot and the way the pitches move and you can kind of identify it in a more objective way.

And maybe that gives you a better opportunity. For sure. I think that's one of my favorite parts about baseball is that there's a million and one different things that are being tracked to understand why something works or why it doesn't. So that's one of my favorite things to understand, especially coming from Iowa that did a really good job of doing their analytics stuff as well as. as well as the raise, but obviously on different budgets. But kind of getting to see those two high-level analytics departments go to work is always, it's fun for me because you get

to understand a little bit more than you maybe would have. And by modern pitching development standards, you're kind of an iron man. You threw 152 innings this past season. That was third in minor league baseball, and you were less than an inning behind the leaders. So what do you think of pitcher development these days because there are a lot of people who think, gosh, these guys coming up, they never go deep into games, they never have an opportunity

to really build their arms up. And, you know, it makes them sense because then you get to the majors and guys aren't going as deep into games there either. But sometimes you have never seen the seventh or eighth inning, you know, by the time you get promoted to the majors and then are you conditioned to do that?

Do you know how to work through a lineup multiple times? So do you think, that it's a good way to prepare people for that ultimate assignment, or is that impulse to protect pitchers? Is there a downside to that? I think that you maybe lose some of the fun, like, oh, you went nine or like you went eight and two thirds or whatever. You lose some of those stories. But I think in the grand scheme of things, like your goal is to win as many games as possible. And if the best way to do that is to have your first, second, and third starters pitch as many games as possible and then just get it to your bullpen arms that you're paying

an exorbitant amount of money to to win you baseball games from the sixth inning on i feel like that's the way that it would work normally um and then you start getting into the analytics part of it but essentially my thought is it's like if you run your first three starters out and just run them down and they're all throwing a hundred like there's only so many pitches you can do or you can throw throwing a hundred right at some point your your body's just not going to be able to take it so that's why we see a little bit dip in workload as far as like the volume yep i would almost argue that the the workload itself isn't necessarily changing it's just changing from the volume to i guess the intensity of it where you're just putting all of it

into one pitch rather than expanding it over a hundred if that makes sense but then you start talking about analytics and the third time through and putting your guys in the best situation to have success. And that kind of factors into it as a lot as well. Yeah. There's still some old school sports writers around who hate to talk about and think about this stuff. So you're ahead of the game when it comes to your second job, I think, just being aware of these concepts and interested in them. Yeah, I think that that gives, I think my first job gives me an interesting perspective on that sort of stuff. So in the aforementioned profile, the register, Paul Janish, who is a former big leaguer, director of player development for the

White Sox, is quoted, saying, I do think he gets the chance this year. That is the call to the big leagues. I'm sure it's exciting and encouraging to read that. Probably also causes some nerves, I would imagine. So when you see that, how does that make you feel? And, you know, of course, it's going to come down to both your performance and the opportunity, just like that start you mentioned in the minors, where someone had to get hurt for you to. to get that assignment. But what are you thinking that you're going to be doing and working on to make Janish's prediction come true?

Yeah, I think that there's a lot of just be where your feet are at. You know what I mean? Like, just execute what you can control, just do your best, and whatever happens is what's going to happen. There's only so much you can control with that stuff. So for me, it's just show up, throw my innings, the limit the runs. And if the team wants me up there,

they'll have me up there and nothing I do beyond be successful is going to get me there any faster. Unfortunately, sometimes that's just the way it works. And I've come to terms with that. I think that that's the way baseball is, is if you don't like it, play better. So you play better and the team, you make the team make the decision. And so for me, I think that comes down to improving some change of stuff, improving execution within the zone to better location. in the zone and better execution of two strikes and those sorts of things. So if I can execute and manage those things, I think things can go my way. And I assume you'll be in Big League camp when spring starts this year?

Is that, have you gotten the invite? Right. So the 40-man players are always invited to Big League camp. Right. So that's exciting. Yeah. It's my first one. So I'm pretty excited about it.

One thing I was wondering, you know, it was easy to contact you, which was a relief. Because when you want a player on the podcast, sometimes you, You've got to go through the team media relations folks and, you know, or maybe you can follow them on social media and hope they follow you back or something. But you have your email address on your author page, which is handy. I wonder whether that will continue to be the case because, you know, we hear so much from players in baseball but also other sports about just the abuse that they get online from sports betters, right? And, you know, some parley goes wrong and they take it out on them and just death threats and the most heinous. stuff. I wonder, have you gotten some of that even in the minor leagues? Does it extend down there? You know, I haven't. That's good. Yeah, which I mean, if somebody's placing bets on

minor league baseball, they need to probably have some help. But no, I've been fortunate enough not to have any of that abuse. And like you mentioned, like, if I do make it to the big leagues, that email may have to go. Which is unfortunate. It's one of the ways that some of the people, people that read my column are able to interact with me. And I enjoy that interaction because I get to answer deeper questions. I get to have suggestions for future columns. So those sorts of things will be missed, obviously, but I'd prefer not to have more stories or more war stories I can trade with other players who have had similar threats in the locker room. So we'll see what happens. Hopefully people are gracious enough and I can keep the email there.

if it doesn't work out, it doesn't work out. Yeah. And how did you find out that you were traded? Were you expecting that on any level? Not really. It was funny. So I was in Durham and we were playing Inguinette at the time. And we obviously all knew the trade deadline was coming up.

And one of my teammates was kind of looking around the room. We're all predicting who's going to get traded. He points to me and goes, you're going to the Cubs. And I'm like, me, the Cubs. Yeah, yeah, sure, do. Close. Yeah, which, of course, this guy ends up getting traded anyway, as well. But, no, the actual stories I find funny because the trade wasn't announced until maybe

15 or 20 minutes after the deadline had already passed, I think, something like that. So I had been sitting in the training room, we were in a rain delay, and I was sitting in the trading room watching the race game, and they had a little ticker of the trade deadline falling. And it's like, okay, like, trade deadline's over. We're like, I'm sticking around. And then next thing I know, I'm looking at Morgan Insberg, poking his head around the corner, giving me the come to your finger. And I was like, I look at somebody.

I'm like, did he point at me? And the guy just shrugged. So I'm like, you're super helpful. Thanks. And then walked in. And he told me the news with myself and Ben Peoples. And from there, we packed up our lockers and we're on a flight the next morning back to Durham to pack up our apartments and drive over to Charlotte.

Do you have to disclose that you are a sports writer, either to your teammates or to the team? I mean, we're way past, you know, Jim Bouten and Ball for and it being controversial to write about what happens in the clubhouse. But I wonder, just to sort of be on the safe side, did you ever run this by anyone and say, hey, what are the ground rules here? Or is there anything I can't disclose? You know, I talk to people or I tell people when they ask what I do in the offseason. I really don't write a whole lot about what goes on. specifically in the clubhouse and if I ever did I would say hey I'm planning on writing this and I'm going to include a story that involves you do you care if I write this I'll leave

your name out of it kind of a deal but I've never had issues when people find out that I'm a sports reporter they kind of just laugh and they're like oh that's interesting like I've never heard of that job in the off season but I've never had any any issues of like sitting down with an HR person saying, like, you can't write about this, this, this, and this. And I like to believe I have enough discretion not to write about things that people wouldn't want in the newspaper, if that makes sense. Yeah, okay. Can I ask you a weird one?

Go for it. Okay. This is a listener email we got a while back, but I've been waiting to spring this on a player from a listener, Patreon supporter, Sam, who apologized and said, this is a weird one. Can't even say I'm high this time. What percentage of pitchers wear hard cups while pitching? And the question continues, I recently spoke to a guy from my hometown who was in the Philly system. He mentioned it was frustrating because all pitchers were forced to wear cups while pitching.

Has there been any reporting on forced cup usage in MLB? Not to my knowledge, but maybe you can make that your next column on a more general level. Is there an incident you can recall where a player has ever publicly blamed an athletic cup for something related to on-field performance? I'm mostly interested in that first question. Yeah. How common is the cup for pitchers? I would say exceedingly rare. I don't know if I'd know any pitchers that wear one.

I'm sure that there are, but I don't think I've ever been on it. I don't think I've been on a team with a guy that wears one. I did back in high school because I also played a position. So if for whatever reason my pitch count was a little bit lower, I would go play a position afterwards. So I'd wear one in high school. Since as soon as I got to college, I was like, man, this thing sucks. So I stopped, I stopped wearing it at that point. And I think I'm definitely a majority of people that don't wear it.

I would imagine that it's, it's a pretty small number. I couldn't give you a percentage, but I would imagine it's a very small percentage of professional pitchers wearing protective cups. Interesting. So I don't know how closely you observed this, but what do you think the positional percentages are then? I mean, if you're an outfielder, I'm sure you're going cupless, but the closer you are to the action, if you're on the corners, if you're a middle infield, like, is everyone other than the pitcher cupping up on the infield? You know, I don't know. I know the catchers do. Thank God.

Yes, of course. I don't know about the infielders. I know that it's definitely more common than the pitchers. Yeah. But, yeah, I certainly have not been keeping a list of, okay, this guy wears one, this guy wears one. this guy wears one. This guy doesn't in what position they are. So I don't think that's a study I think I'm going to do either. I think that that one might cause some issues. Yeah. You definitely have to anonymize that one. You'd see you have to keep the names out of it. Certainly. Yeah. Because I would

imagine, I mean, I don't know if you've had any close calls, but you are, you're quite close to the action. Now, if you're a pitcher, of course, you're worrying more about just like being hit in the head or something by a comebacker. You know, that's actually dangerous, life-threatening even. So maybe you're worried about that more so. But there's room to worry about both, I guess. It's just that maybe you can't be conscious of that and perform well because, you know, it would just make you kind of tentative. And I suppose the discomfort factor, which is something that, you know, people ask us all the time, well, why don't pitchers wear more protective headgear? And there are cap liners, but, you know, there are also other things. I mean, you could have sort of a softball.

style mask of some sort, but pitchers in baseball, they just generally don't do that. And, you know, people wonder, like, is this a macho thing? Is it just old habits dying hard? Like, is it going to have to take someone getting seriously hurt for pitchers to embrace

that? So I assume with the cup, it's just that there'd be some chafing or something. You know, you're doing a full windup. It might impact your mobility, perhaps. So I assume that comes into it. But with the protective of gear in general is is it that you feel like you're invulnerable out there or is it just that

well you're playing the odds and you're hoping that you will perform well and that nothing bad will happen yeah i think it's probably more so on that last part the not you really don't think about it like yeah i've known a couple players that have been hit and uh in the heads and and one of them i was playing summer ball with it back in 2020 and he had some lingering health issues with it. So it is something that people need to understand like this is a real danger. But at the same time, like, if you're walking out on that mound, like, you can't be thinking about this. You can't be thinking like, what if I hurt my arm? What if I tweak my elbow? Like, what if I do this thing? Like, if you're thinking about those things, you're not, you're certainly not going to have a good

day. Yeah. Because your mind's not in the right place. You're, like you said, you're going to be tentative and scared. I don't want to get hit. So I'm not going to throw this ball in the strikes on, I don't want them hitting it back at me, those sorts of things. So it's not something that ever really crosses my mind. And I would imagine that's the case with most players. Now that said, I think that if the league mandated some kind of headgear, I think that people would have a pretty big issue with it just in terms of whether, oh, this is so uncomfortable or wow, I feel like such a, like such a wussy kind of a thing.

I think that you would have both of those as reactions. But for me, it's just something I try to. or I really don't ever think about. Lastly, this is the week of Christmas, so it may be atypical, but take me through a typical day or week in the offseason of Duncan Davitt as you're trying to balance your, you know, gym time and pitch prep, and you're going to be ramping up for spring training fairly soon, but you're also covering high school basketball, so how does that all work? Yeah, so before the basketball season, we put together a whole spreadsheet of these are all the games,

we're going to cover or we think that we're going to cover with some room for adjustment based on how good a team is. So that helps. But a typical day I would usually get to the gym or get to go throw or wherever, typically around between 10 or 11. And then if I have a lift that day, I'll get the lift in afterwards. I'm usually done by one or two, depending on how long everything takes and how much talking I do with people around.

And get back, eat, shower, do all the good things. And then games don't start until six, so I usually have a little bit of downtime between working out and the game that I'm covering that night and usually drive over there, wherever it may be, whether it's in Indianola, which is about a couple of minutes from where I live or further out, which I'll have to like 20 or 30 minutes. But it's usually pretty easy of a balance as far as like within the day. The week to week, it's a little hectic sometimes because we do a short write-up every week on how the team's faired in the previous week. So Sundays can get a little bit hectic just because that's a little bit longer of a story.

Well, I will be reading your writing and watching your pitching and rooting for you as a writer and a pitcher. I hope both of these dreams come true and that you hit your word count targets and your pitch count targets and your deadlines and all the rest. So good luck with all of it, Duncan. Yeah, I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on. All right, thanks to Declan and Duncan, and also Patreon supporter Luke, who emailed us recently to Flagg Duncan as a potential future meet a major leager subject. You know, this is relevant to both Declan's and Duncan's interests.

I was reading a recent edition of David Laurel's Sunday Notes at Fangraphs, and he writes, Derek Shelton is now managing in Minnesota after being at the helm in Pittsburgh for four full seasons and parts of two others. He was asked at the winter meetings what he learned about developing young hitters during his time with the pirates. Quote, I learned the AAA does not prepare you for the big leagues, said Shelton. I think that's the biggest thing. It's why we're seeing, as an industry, so many young players come to the big leagues and struggle, they just don't hit.

The pitching is just too good here. The distance between the talent in AAA and the big leagues is probably the greatest it's ever been. Well, I'm not sure I would apply the Pirates' struggles to the rest of the league. I have harped on this before. I've written about this topic twice. You hear this a lot these days. Buy it? And I just don't buy it.

I mean, maybe the gap is the greatest it's been, but barely. It's not much bigger than it's been before, if at all. I wrote about this in the spring at the ringer with some help from Dan Simborski of fan graphs, and we looked at the statistical translations over time, how did players fare in AAA and in the majors after being promoted, and we looked at an almost 50-year period. And I wrote, the strength of AAA relative to the majors, has fluctuated within a fairly narrow range from about 76% of MLB to about 86%. It's certainly at the low end of that range now, so it's fair to say that the AAA to MLB leap has never been more daunting.

The thing is, these effects are subtle, which is why I said it's sort of true that moving from the minors to the majors is harder than ever. It is, but only by a few percentage points, probably not by enough that anyone would make much of it. If not, for the much more salient, albeit superficial effects of offensive flood tides and eb tides, lifting or lowering all bats in leagues across multiple levels. And that's what I thought was the real reason why you hear this refrain frequently these days and why you heard it often about a decade ago when I first wrote about this for Grantland. The level of offense is just higher in AAA relative to the majors than it typically is. And so on the surface, a hitter's stats do tend to take a pretty big hit post-promotion, but their performance relative to the league doesn't actually change that much.

And for the article earlier this year, one front office analyst told me, I went poking around and could never really find especially compelling evidence, that rookies are struggling to a disproportionate degree, it feels like they are, but they aren't. And maybe we just notice more when they struggle because they're more young players and fewer veterans than ever these days. The pitching gap has definitely widened between AAA and MLB, and that does have an effect,

but said effect appears greatly overstated. And actually, just now, I found an article by Baseball Perspectus co-founder Clay Davenport, which was published this past September. And Clay did some research as well and concluded the gap between AAA and the majors, at least in terms of same-year transition, is essentially unchanged since 2006.

You could say that it has gotten little more difficult in recent years, especially compared to the 2010s. So again, the gap is not as enormous by historical standards, as you sometimes hear these days. And I guess that's good news for Declan and Duncan. Also got another email about a baseball show, Abbott Elementary. It's an ABC mockumentary sitcom set in a Philadelphia public school. There's a good chance you're aware of it.

It's quite popular. My wife and I watched it for the first three seasons. And we drifted away. For me, it falls into the modern family zone of being pleasant, likable, very bingable, but rarely makes me actually laugh. Anyway, because I haven't been watching it much anymore, I missed an episode that aired this past October, season five, episode three, ball game, about which, listener Andy writes, in August, the cast and crew of Abbott Elementary shot an episode live at a Phillies game, and they

picked the night that Kyle Schwerber hit four home runs. Incredible luck. Congrats to them. It really was because Schwerber was featured. in the episode. And it just so happened that they were there on a huge night for him. He actually makes a cameo in the episode, and he does quite well, mostly because it just seems like he's not that conscious of the cameras. He's just acting like Kyle Schwerber would act. Doesn't sound like he's reading off a cue card or anything, or like he memorized his lines. Kudos to Kyle. Anyway, Andy

writes, not content with that magic, they piled another rarity on top of it, inserting a fictional triple play into the game. One character narrated it as Sosa to Turner to Harper. And yes, that's Gregory, by Tyler James Williams, and here he is narrating that play. Oh, no, this other team hit the ball. And it is stopped by Sosa. Sosa fires to Turner. Turner fires the Hartford. Oh, my God, the two of us!

Andy continues, another character later described it as a 6-4-3 triple play. And here's that clip featuring Janine, played by Abbott Elementary creator, Quinta Brunson. I just wanted you to love baseball as much as I did, but I forced it, and now you... I love it. You what? Yes, I mean, look, I might not know what a 643 triple play is or how to read a scoreboard or where we even parked, but I do know this. I'm going to walk out of this ballpark with stories I'm going to tell forever and even more love for my city. Now, as Andy notes, 643 triple play means Trey Turner would have been playing second base, something he hasn't done since 2021, and the triple play would have been started by Edmundo Sosa, not in the game at the time, from the shortstop position, nope.

In an article on MLB.com about the creation of the episode, a league executive takes credit for nailing the details. Do you think we could shoot the episode at a game, the show asked? Absolutely. Both parties got to work. Quote, they're pitching story and characters. We're pitching how to make it baseball authentic, says Nick Trada, who is MLB's vice president of global media programming and licensing. Okay, so it's kind of a gotcha.

MLB tried to make the baseball authentic, and here is the description of the play by Janine, not matching the narration of the play by Gregory. Not only is there narration of the play, but we actually see it briefly. There's a clip of actual game action. And I'm here to sort of support what Andy is saying, but also to say it's okay.

So here's the thing. They're inserting a play that did not happen, a triple play, into a game that did happen, the Kyle Shore before Homer game. So already we're departing from authenticity somewhat. And maybe they didn't need to do that. But when we do briefly see the play that they are saying is a triple play and Gregory references Sosa,

Well, as Andy said, Sosa was not in that game. And you can see Bryson Stott at second base. So if anything, it would have been Stott to Turner to Harper. And it's not clear where the third out is coming from in that exchange. So yeah, the whole thing is fairly unrealistic. And so Janine describing it as a 6-4-3 triple play, when if anything, it was a 4-6-3. Well, whatever, I'll let it slide, especially because you can defend it in universe on the basis that Janine is not supposed to know anything about baseball.

As she says, she doesn't know what that means. And actually, later in that exchange, where she references the 643 triple play to Gregory, she says this. 40,000 people watching the same game, eating the same snacks, waiting for a fumble. Strygo. I get why they call it the beautiful game. Soccer. So that's the running gag throughout the episode that she does not know anything about baseball. And so for her to say 643 instead of 463, you could say that, if anything, it supports the pre-established character trait.

Now, I suspect that this was sort of a small mistake. in the script that they didn't realize that their description of the play as Sosa to Turner to Harper was not consistent with her description of the 643 triple play because it's not something that most people would notice. The comedy tends to be a bit broad. She's referencing fumbles and the beautiful game. I doubt the 463 to 643 was also added in there to reinforce how little she knows about baseball. But this one is at least defensible on those grounds. So not a big deal, especially if we're allowing for the fictional triple play in the first place. It's fun though. It's quite cool that things worked out that way with Schwaburber. So we've gone from AAA to triple play. And it strikes

me, by the way, that the conversation we had earlier this week about Unitaka Murakami actually is kind of related to that idea that I just discussed about the gap between AAA and the majors. Well, NPB is generally appraised to be about AAA level, if not kind of quadruplea. And the Murakami detractors are essentially calling him a quadruplea player. That idea that someone can produce prodigiously at one level, but then completely get exposed at the next level of. up. That's something that I talked to Brent Rooker about on this podcast, because he was sort of seen as a quadruplea player at one point until he proved that, no, actually, he could be a quite successful MLB player. So we'll find out whether Murakami is really that kind of talent. I tend to think that the quadruplea archetype is a bit overblown that if you give a player enough chances, the performance will translate somewhat. Also, thanks to listener Brock and some others, I believe, in our Discord group for notifying us that effectively Wilde was mentioned in a recent online survey. by Major League Baseball. Rock says,

Effectively Wild was name dropped in an MLB survey earlier this week, and the question in one of these MLB fans at bat surveys was which, if any, of the following baseball podcasts

do you listen to regularly? Please select all that apply. And it lists several, most of which are either MLB productions or MLB affiliated, but it also includes Effectively Wild. So for whatever reason,

MLB is interested in learning whether it's fans listen to this podcast. If you're hearing these words, then I know that you do listen to Effectively Wild. And if you'd like to continue to, perhaps you'll consider supporting EffectivelyWild on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free, and get yourself

access to some perks, as have the following five listeners, Kyle S, Nick Fontaine, Josh Eisenberg, and Catherine Sobelow. Thanks to all of you. Remember that you can give gift subscriptions to Effectively Wild's Patreon, and Patreon Perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon

site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcast of Fancrafts.com. One more reminder to submit stories we missed from 2025. You can rate, Review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook.com slash group slash effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes in the podcast posted fan graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. That will do it for today and for this holiday week.

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