Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2421: The Stories We Missed in 2025 (AL Edition)

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the potential risk to sports prediction markets pose and then (24:00) discuss at least one listener-nominated topic about each American League team that wasn’t previously covered on the show in 2025. Audio intro: Justin Peters, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Ted O., “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to MLBTR on Rendon Link to Bloomberg on prediction markets Link to The Athletic on prediction markets Link to FoS on the Blackhawks Link to story about MLB memo Link to Slate on prediction markets Link to Slate on prediction markets 2 Link to Royals stadium story Link to 1922 article on Fowler Link to AL stories spreadsheet Link to Ella Black series  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

Hello, how can you not be pedanted? A stab blast will keep you distracted. It's a long slog to death, but they're sure to make you smile. This is effective in wine. This is effectively wild. This is effective in wild. And welcome to episode 2421 of Effectively Wild, a Baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg.

Hello. Well, not much news in the baseball worlds, nor should there be in this week when most people are taking it easy. Only the angels are making headlines and they're pretty small print headlines. They signed Kirby Yates and also they did indeed restreferving. Anthony Rendon's deal. So he is done. And I'm disappointed. Not that he's Rendon, but also that the deal, they have restructured it such that the

deferrals will only run for three to five years, I think. And I was anticipating the prospect of Rendon Day running for decades, hence. And sadly, half a decade at most. I mean, not sadly for Angels fans, probably. But I was planning to savor Rendon Day every year. the rest of our natural lives, but they worked it out so that it will not linger that long. I think that's for the best, you know. Sometimes it's just, it's good to be able to move on.

You know, you want to be able to get on with it. Yeah, especially from a contract like that. I think probably both parties have some incentive to move on with their lives. It just didn't work out the way anyone hoped or anticipated and has gotten increasingly burdensome and nasty. and it's good for everyone to be able to part ways. Well, we have a whole other league's worth of missed stories to get to. The only thing I wanted to say, I'm concerned about Kalshi. Are you familiar with the various prediction markets, poly markets, Kalshi, etc.

They are places where you can go and you can bet on the outcomes of things. You can wager money based on whether you think something is likely to happen. It's sports, it's politics, it's everything, really, these prediction markets. And I found myself drawn initially to the idea because I'm a data-driven sort. And so I find it handy sometimes to see what the consensus opinion is of the probability of something happening. Not that I will agree necessarily, but just to sort of see where the baseline is. And, you know, it's people putting their money where their mouth is. actually having something on the line.

So it can be handy from a data-centric perspective sometimes just to be able to cite, well, here's sort of the stock answer for how likely this thing is to happen. Not that it's infallible, far from it. But it is now encroaching into sports in a very big way. And it is essentially sports betting, but is not regulated like sports betting and is not treated legally like sports betting. And this seems potentially problematic. So, you know, not that the actual legal regulated betting that we have talked about

as if that hasn't caused problems enough. You also have a separate Pandora's box of Polymarket and Kalshi and all of these other services where you can bet on the outcomes of sporting events. And yet you don't have to do it through some sort of legally. regulated, or at least the same regulation that other sports betting operators are subject to. And in fact, they had not really waited into this space until earlier this year, really, until the Super Bowl. That was kind of the big debut for these services just to test the waters and say, can we actually

get away with this? And it turns out that they can. At least so far, they are able to. And it's sort of scary, I think. what could come of this possibly. So there's lots of ongoing battles with state regulators who want to make this illegal or at least subject to the same sort of protections,

quote unquote, that other things are subject to. And so lots of state regulators have issued cease and desist's orders and there are a dozen lawsuits about these things and potentially a class action. But as of now, it is very much this. sort of wild west, this kind of no man's land, where these popular prediction markets and others just keep popping up and offering people the ability to wager on these things without the same sort of tracking that ostensibly will prevent or at least mitigate the risks of

manipulation via various other channels, which obviously have been far from foolproof. So these prediction markets are federally regulated. by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the CFTC, yes. But it's not the same sort of regulation, really. And, you know, this wasn't even allowed in the U.S. for a while. And the sports betting, again, just it wasn't really a thing until they just kind of did it and got away with it and have continued to get away with it. And so the sports leagues have had to now decide, are we going to go against this? or are we going to embrace this or partner with these services?

And there has been some disparities. So the NHL has reached a deal with Kalshi, has partnered with this prediction market platform, as have the Chicago Blackhawks, who I think became the first North American pro sports team to partner with the platform. And the idea is that each party can use the others' intellectual property for co-marketing purposes,

and they'll kind of cross-promote each other, and you know, you'll see ads for this stuff if you're going to Blackhawks games or watching Black Hawk games. And, you know, they say, like, again, they will kind of couch it as, well, you can kind of trust it and the data will be reliable this way

because you have official league partners and all the rest of it. But that is not a universal stance, fortunately. And I don't know which way. this is going to go because MLB, to its slight credit, at least, has thus far taken a stronger stance against this and actually issued a memo. It was reported by front office sports that MLB sent teams a memo to make clear that players are prohibited from using these things to essentially bet on, yeah, I guess they wouldn't call it betting is the thing. That's what all of this hinge is on, right?

But trading baseball event contracts on prediction exchanges, right? So MLB sent teams a memo to say, just to be clear, you can't do this either. Like, this is not a loophole or something. Now, you know, sometimes the league will send out a memo and that memo will not be communicated or it will not filter down or various parties will say, we never saw the memo, we never got the memo. But they have at least stated their position that you're not supposed to do this. And MLB has also, I think, and the NBA wrote public letters to the CFTC expressing concern that there's no framework or you don't have to send information with monitors. Like the sort of services that could flag suspicious betting activity when there's a lot wagered on, say, a pitch being a ball instead of a strike, that's just not really in place here. And so MLB's legal counsel did send a letter.

in March, I believe, to say that these protections are lacking and they need to be applied. And there was supposed to be a roundtable on the prediction markets with the leagues and the CFTC, but then the CFTC canceled that roundtable. That was in April. And so, since then, there's just this vacuum where everyone is just kind of rolling with it until told otherwise, essentially. So it's this legal gray area, or I guess it's permissible for now. And that just seems like the sort of environments in which nefarious activity might thrive. Yeah. I'll say that I have concern about it. In terms of the stakes, I find them to be more alarming in the election context, candidly, or potentially alarming in the election context than I do

the sports context. But yeah, it seems bad. It just seems bad. I don't care for it. even one little bit, you know, I don't, enough with, and why, why, what, I guess you just have to cover your basis by saying this also is disallowed, but it just seems so obvious that it would be disallowed, like within the spirit of the rules. Yeah, right. You might as well make that clear, though. Yes, you might, right. Yes, precisely. Like, don't leave any doubt in the minds of, dopes. Assume everyone's a dope, even if that is a little infantilizing because they sure act like that sometimes. Assume everybody is a boob, just to be safe. Assume a boob.

The platforms will say that they, of course, scrutinize the behavior. And they have an insider trading framework to try to prevent people who know too much from making money on it. And also that people in sports leagues are not supposed to be able to use these services to bet on games in their own leagues, et cetera. But yeah, sure. Yeah, I don't really know if because who's really holding them to account. Everyone's just kind of making it up as they go along. And so this was very much a case of, I mean, this is something that initially I did find

kind of compelling, whereas sports betting, I just never really had any interest in at all. That's interesting to me. Yeah, why people do. And I guess that speaks to the – it's a slim, thin distinction between – I was going to say, it just seems like it's part and parcel, you know. It doesn't wash over me as appreciably distinct, I think, a distinction without a difference. Yeah. To be clear, yeah, I'm not actually using these things. I'm not actually putting money on anything because predictions are not my metier. But I do find it kind of handy sometimes. guess maybe it's because, well, with betting, with gambling, you actually have to understand,

like, all the gambling stuff. You have to understand, like, what are these lines mean? What are these odds mean? What's the Vig? You know, you have to do all these calculations to kind of back out what do they think the probability of this event is, whereas on these websites, I mean, you know, you don't have to use an app or anything. You can, but you don't have to.

You can just go and it'll just present the probability, and you can track that over time to see how it's, it's risen and fallen. And it's just available for a lot of things that maybe you wouldn't see at a sports book, for instance. It's not just, will Team A win this game, but it's just, you know, all sorts of things across culture and society and everything. So that idea of just, okay, I'm taking the pulse of what the populace thinks is likely to happen. I think that's kind of handy, but then, you know, there's all sorts of ways that that could go wrong. And, you know, they're, they're kind of spammy and scammy, like the marketing of these things. You know, they've partnered with accounts on social media that are kind of like

parody accounts, but not acknowledged as such. And then they will end those sponsorships when those accounts brand themselves as parody. But for a while, they're just making stuff up and also promoting these platforms. And that was seemingly fine for them as long as it was leading to attention for them. So, yeah, there's just a lot of lobbying going on. here and I guess I'm I'm glad that the major North American men's sports leagues NHL aside seemed to be aligned on just kind of pumping the brakes here or exercising caution or at least signaling publicly that they are. Would it shock me if there was an about face on this and suddenly we get an MLB partnership with Polymarket or something? Absolutely not. No, not in the slightest

because MLB will sponsor anything and everything. And so I would not be. shocked if they fail to resist the temptation or if there's some sort of regulation, at least some sort of fig leaf to propriety that is put in place here to give them cover so that they can partner here. But yeah, it's very much like it's called trading, but, you know, everyone knows what it is. It kind of reminds me a little bit of the daily fantasy debate. Like, is that gambling or not? And that's obviously a game of skill to some extent, but there's so much. much randomness in it that it's it's it's poker i guess basically but yeah there were a lot of legal battles about how do you classify these things that just chance plays an enormous role so

i don't know you know it's just uh i guess another sign of the dystopia that we find ourselves in potentially it seems rife for manipulation i hope that there are some regulations put in place And maybe there is a world where this could continue to provide some insight into what people think about things, but not ruin the integrity of said things. I hope that they're able to thread that needle somehow, but who knows? This is such a, this is a much longer conversation and certainly a bigger sort of project than we necessarily have time for right now. but I just wish that we could kind of reorient people's relationships to these sorts of things. And I'm going to sound like probably overly moralistic here, and I don't know that I necessarily mean to, but it's, I think fundamentally, part of why it has never been appealing to me, the sports betting of it all, and I really wouldn't draw much of a distinction between these two activities here. is that it's just not how I relate to sport.

I don't know that mine is like a better way. I'm embarrassed by the things I said at the Seahawks-Rams game, but you know what? No one knew about them because I didn't put them on social media. Between me and God and the couple of fans who were right around me. But there are a lot of ways to sort of engage with sports or art or culture or what have you. And there doesn't need to be. a constancy to that relationship right like you can find different things valuable about the sport

at different times and it can activate different stuff in you depending on you know what's going on in the sport and what's going on with you as a person but i just wish that we could make the the joy of the thing or the excitement of the thing or the frustration of the thing enough in and of itself you know and that there wasn't this a seemingly instantaneous first move toward like secondary profitability, a secondary thrill. And, you know, people have bet on sports for a long time. It's not like this is a new phenomenon. I think the mechanisms are obviously new and have some parts of them that are maybe uniquely

dangerous. But getting your kneecaps whacked by a loan shark also dangerous. So, you know, there's been issues throughout time. But I just, I wish that we could, like, take everybody like a snow globe and shake them up and then, like, have a new reality settle when it was all sudden done. Because I don't care for this one. And, you know, like I said, the parts of it that I find, and I don't think that we have any evidence that there have been integrity issues as a result of these betting markets existing, like, but the election context is more concerning to me. Because, boy, that's not what that's about. Yeah.

But I just, you know, it doesn't all have to be about this. Or it doesn't have to be so much about this. And this seems to be like the first move now. I wish we could go back to a simpler time, you know, where the postseason was sponsored by large construction equipment. Nobody needs, you know. Right. can have that be our move to profitability.

I don't know. It just kind of bums me out because it's like I watched a lot of football over the last couple of days. And Ben, you know, I know you're also watching just so much football now. Boy, are a lot of these guys really great, you know? And the things that they're able to do with their bodies are so amazing and completely foreign to me, just like really, really foreign to me. uh the capacity to be so agile or so strong to have such precise control to have your hands

be that strong ben i'm just sitting there watching jackson smith and jigba being like do people just constantly bring this guy pickle jars to open like this should this is nothing to you this is so simple you know whereas i'm sitting there like having to grab the glove and twist the thing to get leverage on it and so you know like that's so cool this world series it was so great It doesn't, I don't know that it needs this extra layer. And again, I'm acknowledging the part of this that is me being like, well, if only you could relate to sport the way I could. But can't some of you relate to it that way? Or like a couple more.

Because I feel like if we had a broader consensus around that as like the primary mode, that this other stuff could still exist. But it could be sort of tertiary to the main thing, which is like the wow of it. So, anyway, I found myself exhausted. Funny that you mentioned pickles. Pickles will come up later on this episode. And not in the baseball context you might expect. Like actual pickles? Actual pickles.

Do you like pickles? I do. Specifically half sour. Those are some of my favorite foods in the world. I can't wait to talk more about this in the later context then. There was an effectively wild arc years ago. I think predating your time as a host where I pickled my own pickles or I pickled cucumbers cucumbers and they became pickles.

but I, DIY, I did it myself and it was sort of satisfying. So, yeah, big pick of person. Anyway, yes, I'm generally with you. I mean, I would imagine you'd agree that it's nice in theory that people can appreciate things in different ways and on different levels. And in fact, you do, right? You consume football differently from the way you consume baseball. And Jeff used to talk about how he watches hockey differently from how he watches baseball.

And he kind of turns off the analytical. side of his brain and just has sort of fan brain, you know, and just enjoys it in the moment. He wanted to be as dumb as possible about the whole thing. Right. And so, so I like that there are many ways that one can come to appreciate and enjoy sports. As long as those ways don't damage the integrity of the game and also society and yourself, to some extent, I guess you're entitled to damage yourself if you feel like it. but rarely is it only damage to you and no one else. So yes, and there are probably also people who are listening to this and saying, I mean, they would lodge the same complaints against us and the way that we talk about baseball,

which is often, though not always, through sort of a statistical lens. Sure. And we talk about the Saber metrics and we want to know the numbers and we want the projection systems and all that stuff. And I'm sure, I mean, I know there are many people who couldn't care less about that stuff. And in fact, find it to be. an impediment to their enjoyment of the game and are saying sort of the same sentiment that you're expressing just, hey, why can't you just watch the game and enjoy the green of the grass and the crack of the bat? And we do enjoy those things. But we also like that ancillary layer of

insight that the data grants us. And there is, I suppose, a distinction between that and betting and what we're talking about and something that can potentially affect the sport itself. But yes, As of now, the state of play, at the end of 2025, there is very much a spectrum of along which leagues are embracing or rejecting these services. And so on the one end, you have the NHL, which is embracing it and saying, you know, the NHL's president of business, which is kind of a funny job title said. president of business sounds like the title that like a child gives themselves if they're like playing bank you know they're like I am the president of business I am the biz pres that's my job what is the po I mean it's I don't know but but yes there is a president of NHL business and said back in October when the NHL struck these deals these partnerships with Kalshi and Polymarket said that integrity was paramount to the league and said that it was better

to partner with the platforms to establish protections, you know, almost a not exactly a keep your enemies close, but kind of, you know, we can keep an eye on them this way. And also said that the NHL and these services are looking at using integrity monitoring services. So again, they're paying lip service to the idea that actually this will be better and safer for everyone. So that's one end of the spectrum. Then you have. Charlie Baker, president of the NCAA, and also maybe NCAA business, but back in December, wait, we're still in December. Speaking of distinctions without a difference. Yeah. Earlier this month, Charlie Baker came out more strongly against it and said,

this whole thing is going to get worse unless somebody does something about it. Your basic talking about no rules, no oversight, no nothing. And that just feels catastrophic to me, not just for us, but for everybody. So that's one side. The NHL is the other side. And then you have Rob Manfred, sitting in the middle, essentially refusing to take a position aside from that public letter that the league sent in November when asked whether the league's thinking had changed since its letter to the ECFTC, a spokesperson for MLB, I'm quoting from a Bloomberg piece here, pointed to Commissioner Rob Manfred's comments to reporters at owners meetings in November, quote, we're in the process of looking at the predictive markets. We're well aware of the issues, the different regulatory framework, but not in a position where I want to articulate. publicly a position on it. So not in a position to articulate a position. So we will see if that changes in 2026. Happy New Year, everyone. Okay, let's look back a bit at 2025 and some other things that we overlooked about each American League team this time. We did National League last time. Let's

start with the Angels going again in alphabetical order. We've already talked about the Angels, but we're going to talk about the Angels again. We didn't get a ton of submissions for Angel's overlooked stories, perhaps unsurprisingly. So I supplied one myself and then also another one will supplied. But my main story that we didn't really talk about was Logan O'Hopi, what happened? I've been high on O'Hopi for a while now. I've just been a... Would you say you were hopped up on O'Hopi?

I would, and I should have, and thank you. You should have. Yes. So I was hopped up on O'Hopi, also O'Hopi, perpetually. high on Otani, but also hopped up on Ohopi. I just, I thought he was good for a while for whatever reason. And I've probably overrated him. And I maybe should adjust my mental model of Logan Ohopi. But when I had to rank catchers over the past offseason, last off season on MLB network, I didn't rank Logan Ohopi in my top 10, but he was like my first cut or they asked me for

someone who wasn't on my list, who I thought should have been, or I had regrets. about or thought would make me look bad or something. And I shouted out, Oh, Hoppe, because I still sort of believed in him. And he started great. And I was kind of kicking myself for not ranking him. Not that anyone cares or remembers who may rank. But he started off really well. And through the end of May, he was tied for the angels.

Well, that's not quite true. But he had a 122 WRC plus and 14 homers in 50 games, 184 plate appearances. You know, that was a pretty hot start to the season, and at least minimum, let's say, 120 played appearances. He was tied with Zach Netto for the Angels team lead in WRC Plus. And then he just completely cratered and was arguably the worst player in baseball after May. And he was playing most of that time. But from June 1st on, he was at negative 1.6 war, which was... Yeah, tied with Jack Caglione for the worst figure in the majors among any position player.

Negative 1.6. Yeah. As a catcher. As a catcher. And it wasn't close. No one else other than Jack and O'Hoppy were below one. That's so bonkers. And this is just June 1st to the end of the season.

Yeah. So he just crammed a lot of really sucking into that compressed period. Yeah. And had a 37 WRC plus over that span. And also, his framing is not his strong suit, but he at least looked like he was competent. And last year, he was kind of like an average-ish framer. Real bad this year. Yeah, one of the worst in framing, too.

Wow. So just absolutely everything fell apart for Logan Hoppe. And that's concerning because he seemed like, you know, they got him in the marsh trade. And it seemed like it was a smart pickup. and that he was going to be part of that core and a real, you know, leader of the pitching staff type. And it started out well, you know, he had lots of injuries in recent seasons, but then this year started hot and just completely fell apart. And I was not aware of the depths to which he had sunk.

And there was just an article this week headlined why the angels believe O'Hoppy can turn into an all-star catcher. This was at MLB.com. and the angels are still buying it. I don't know what other choice they have than to run him out there and hope for the best. Perrymanazian GM said, Logan had a tough year. There's no sugar-coding that.

He'd be the first one to stand up here and tell you that it was a rough last four months on offense. That's he had a rough time on defense. Receiving was not where it was the previous year. He's just like listing all the ways that O'Hopi was bad. I do believe the game calling improved significantly, okay, which was... The one part we can't measure. Yes, exactly.

Exactly conveniently, I guess. Anyway, he said, not making excuses, but tough position, second full year of catching, breaking in a young catcher takes time. Oh, that's true. And, you know, Kurt Suzuki, who's now the manager, former catcher, and, in fact, teammate of O'Hopi himself briefly thinks he can help O'Hopi and that he's special and he's going to get better. And I still sort of believe on some level. So I hope that that's the case. But, and actually they hired Max Dossi, another former angel as their catching coach. So he's- Wait a second.

Max Dossi is a coach now? Yeah. Uh-oh. Is this going to prompt another existential crisis for you? Yes. Oh, no. What? Yeah, that is, yeah, I liked Max Dossi.

He was, really I liked him because he was a good framer and it helped when Otani was throwing to him instead of someone who was not quite so good back there. But, yeah, anyway. Oh, no, that feels so bad. It's just, it's tough to pinpoint. He was in AAA last year. Yeah, well, I guess that was a sign that it was time to hang it up. But anyway, O'Hopi, hard worker still has supporters in the organization.

But there's no one thing you can pinpoint exactly. It's not like, oh, it was this injury or it was this mechanical thing. And so, yeah, I don't know. Because he had a concussion, but it was very late in the, year. Yeah, that was after. Yeah, right. You know, it was like in September. And so, you know, you can't even look at it and be like, oh, he's got, I don't say that, like, it didn't affect him negatively. But, you know, sometimes guys, like, particularly catchers, that can be sort of an underreported aspect of their struggle as if, like, they're dealing with post-concussion and stuff. But that doesn't seem to have really, can't account for it at all. Man, all of the defensive metrics just hated him last. Good grief. Yeah. So he's turning 26 in February, and, you know, that is still young-ish for a catcher. Hopefully he puts it together. But, yeah, he completely fell apart late in the season.

Not even late, most of the season, frankly. Yeah, most of the season. Yeah. The other Angels tidbit, this was mentioned. Let's see, Peach and Kyle contributed this on the effectively wild Patreon Discord group. Actually, former Fangraph's writer, Kyle Kishimoto, Angels fan, wrote in. to shout out Bryce Tiodosio, who was at least on defense, a little, you know, silver lining, little high point for the Angels.

Not on offense. Don't look at the offense, but purely with the glove, Teodosio was quite good. He was 26. He is 26. And he came up, I guess he briefly debuted in 2024. But he got 50 games in from August on this year. and he batted 203, 248, 304. So not so hot.

However, he was arguably the best defender after his debut, at least according to the Fangraph's defense stat, which takes into account your position and also your defensive performance relative to average. Only defensive savant Patrick Bailey had a higher defense rating at Fangraphs from August 2nd on. That's when Teodosio debuted.

So he's another standout defensive center fielder, kind of a Denzel Clark, you know, kind of like just another AL West Denzel Clark equivalent who couldn't hit at all but made fantastic plays. And Kyle noted that he led all non-catchers in FRV, that's the statcast defensive metric, FRV per inning, minimum 400 innings, which is a cherry-picked number specifically meant to exclude Denzel Clark. Among centerfielders only, Pete Corr-Armstrong had a higher percentage of five-star catches made. So, again, will he hit? I don't know. But at least they have a defensive find. And that's something. It's something.

Yeah. You appreciate center field defense. Ideally, that would be paired with offensive competence as well. But, you know, you can always take a fourth outfielder, I guess. Well, and the floor is low for, you know. for center field, especially if you're really an impact defender there. Yeah, they're talking about running trout back out there again sometimes, and I wouldn't dare at this point. That seems like a really bad idea. That seems like such an obviously bad idea that they will absolutely do it.

Yeah, maybe so. Maybe that was just meant to mollified trout's ego or something, and they're not seriously considering. But then again, it's the Angels, so you never know. Okay. You never know. Elsewhere in the AL West, this is not exactly a. the story that we didn't talk about, but we didn't talk about it in these terms. This was submitted by listener Jules, who pointed out that the Astros lost the most value in the majors to injury of any team this season, the most projected value, that is. So Jules was specifically citing

the Zips projected value, which Dan Zimborski published in mid-September. So as of mid-September, Dan projected that the Astros had lost almost 18 war purely from injuries, and that was, yeah, that was the most in baseball. And if you look at the baseball prospectus, injured lists, ledger, warp is on a different scale, a different baseline, so the numbers, different replacement level, the numbers tend to be a bit lower. But in terms of ordinal ranking, they also had the Astros number one or, you know, first, loser when it comes to most value loss to injury. So at BP, they had it as about 12.5 wins above replacement player. So this is just taking all the players who missed games and projecting what they would have been worth had they been on the field and uninjured.

So they lost a lot of value. And that's not news. You know, we talked about the fact that they were hurt. But I hadn't realized, I guess, fully that they were number one. clearly, whichever war warp you look at, because the Braves were up there, certainly, and the Rangers were up there, and the Dodgers were up there, and the Orioles were up there. But no one could top the Astros value lost. And I guess as a Mariners fan, you're not entirely broken up about that.

I mean, I never want people to be injured. I'm not advocating for injury. But you are advocating for the Mariners winning the AL West. Well, sure. I sure am advocating for that. But, you know, if they can do it through their own prowess, more satisfying, I would argue. And it was a combination of their prowess and the Astros both depriving themselves of some players through some moves they made on purpose and then also being deprived of players in a way that they did not intend. And isn't that always the way, you know? That's always a factor, the degree to which it's a factor. The degree to which it's a factor can vary year to year, but the injuries on other teams always have something to do with your ability to beat them.

So there you go. This is the way I thought it was pretty impressive that the Astros came so close to making the playoffs and were even in contention for the division title until late in the season because they were really doing it with smoke and mirrors late in the season. They sure were. They really just ran out of guys. So I thought it was pretty impressive that they lasted as long as they did. And I guess if you want to be bullish about the Astros, you could imagine better health, better injury fortune next year and maybe they'll bounce back.

It seems like they're sort of just a franchise roster in decline and in gradual decline. But if you want to hope that they can keep contention going for at least one more year, then I guess that might be part of your optimist's glass half full case. It's funny. I was looking at the remaining top free agents, and it's just like all ex-astros. It's just Kyle Tucker, Alex Brickman, from her fault is. Anyway, all right. And I assume, you know, as a Mariners fan, I mean, you'll take what you can get. You know, it's not as if, yeah, you're not rooting for your division rival to get hurt.

But if they do and if that plays a part in your team making it, you don't look at that as like there's an asterisk on this title or something, right? I mean, it's, you know, every team has. as injuries. Everybody hurts, as R.M. taught us decades ago. So, you know, there are gradations, degrees of pain in any given season. But that's the way the cookie crumbles, I guess. It would be particularly challenging for me to say, oh, there's an asterisk on this when they, like, advanced to the ALCS. You know, it's not like they won the division and then they got bounced. No, they arguably came real close, made us all very nervous. But, like, they went farther in

their playoff round than they ever have as a franchise. So I'm not inclined to second guess that. It is nice to be able to say like, you know, they've gone so far. It'll be nice to be able to say they've gone farther, but you know, this far is

nice too. Okay, for the A's, we've talked up some positive aspects of the A's, but this will not be that. This was submitted by listener, patron, supporter, wikikeeper Raymond Chen, who suggested How about how the A's shot themselves in the foot by setting season ticket prices too high?

They couldn't drop single game prices below the season ticket price because they promised that the season ticket package would get you the best prices. Plus it would just piss off the season ticket holders. So despite low attendance, they couldn't lower the prices, but they did anyway and pissed off their season ticket holders who were now underwater. Lawn seating officially sold for $10, but you could find them on the secondary market for just $3. And I guess that was the upside if you found yourself in West Sacramento and suddenly a major league team showed up in your backyard and you could go ball on a budget. You could get cheap tickets and walk up and see those games. So I'm sure that was nice. But if you took the plunge and bought the season tickets because you thought that buying in bulk would get you the best deal, that did not turn out to be the case because attendance was not strong after the initial surge of interest.

It was not really maintained, and they ended up with the worst attendance, which was not surprising, but, you know, given the capacity, but they weren't even selling out the low capacity. And then all those tickets just were on the secondary market for a pittance, and you just couldn't get rid of them for anything close to what you paid if you couldn't go to the game. So there was an article in SFGate piece about this from the summer that I read, and some people were pissed about this. We're just like we're getting pennies on the dollar for the investment we made here. And other people said, you know, I look at it as I'm just giving it away to friends and family. And it's almost philanthropic, I guess, that I'm just sort of the ticket fairy. And I'm just distributing tickets to A's games to other people. But yeah, like, you could get A's tickets cheap.

And so if you bought in early thinking that that would get you a good deal, it did not. it turned out to be a bad deal, at least monetarily. Woof. And you had to watch the A's, but there were some saving graces to that. It's just, you know, they did play worse at home, which I guess is understandable, despite despite home field advantage. Homefield advantage probably presumes that you have major league quality facilities and such. And that was not exactly the case.

But we did talk about that plenty. So that was not an over-elect story this year. They ended up going 36 and 45. That's a 444 winning percentage. And 40 and 41, 494 on the road. So, again, respectable road records. There's reason to root for this team, I guess, not to have any loyalty to this organization,

but to root for the members of this roster, at least. You might see some exciting baseball. And maybe if you don't buy season tickets, you won't have to spend as much to see it. Here's a team. Things went a bit better for this year, the Blue Jays. I think we might have touched on this briefly because I remember that we had a conversation about Max Scherzer and his demeanor and how we give him a pass for getting all ornery and agro on the mound and why that is and why it might rub people the wrong way if it were someone else and how, you know, it's kind of that he's a relic from an earlier era. but also that he doesn't really seem to take it out on others. You know, he's steaming. He maybe has some words for his manager,

but as far as we know, he's not taking it out on his teammates to any great extent. It's not like abusive or turning into a toxic workplace or something. But they did play a prank on him publicly that gave the impression that actually it was like that, that he is just busting chops and busting lips. if you talk to him on his throw day. So this happened, we can perhaps play some audio.

Shane can drop it in. But Eric Lauer, this was, I guess, back in July, he heard his lip. He had kind of a busted lip. And he went in front of the press, and he was in front of the cameras. And he accused Max Scherzer of giving him six stitches for messing with him on his start day. there's kind of this like known thing to not mess with Scherzer on his start days especially when it has his headphones in and I broke that rule I tried to talk to him a little too early so you know he wasn't very happy about that

and uh you know six stitches is what you get for that he kind of played it straight and some fans took this seriously this this was kind of a thing I believe the Blue Jays fit face kind of questioning, wait, is he serious? Did Max Scherzer actually pop at one? Because he had the audacity to talk to him on his start day. And then eventually

Scher cleared the air and said, I did not punch Eric Lauer in the face. Eric had something wrong with his lip and he had to go to Dr. Ford or something like that. And so I guess Bass and him were sitting talking about it and Bass is saying like, dude,

you can't go to the media and say that you have something wrong with your lip. Like, we got to come up with a better story than this. So they come up with the idea, the blame this, and they're good teammates. These are veterans that you're doing with it. And something that I would do, like, all right, blame another teammate. And so they say, all right, well, let's blame Max. And thus they did. And briefly, at least some people fell for it and thought that Maxxor actually might have taken his fiery start day demeanor too far. Why can't he just say something is wrong with his lit?

I don't know. I don't understand the impetus for the misdirect in the first place. Like, couldn't you just say, was he doing something? Was he, like, engaged in behavior? He was worried was, like, going to get him in trouble with the team or something? I don't know. So odd. I could come up with any number of reasons why someone might have to get stitches in their lip,

But I don't know if they were, they didn't want to disclose the real reason or the real reason just wasn't that interesting. And maybe Bassett thought, oh, you're passing up a perfect prank opportunity here because you can pin the blame on someone and see if you can get gullible folks to fall for it. Bassett does have that vibe, you know. He has made some statements in the past that, yes. Those were stories we discussed in earlier years, probably. So, yeah, do your own research on that one. Probably Chris Bassett does too. So that was submitted by either Mike or Marcus. And then there was one other that was kind of a follow-up because, you know, we talked about Addison Barger to no end, of course. And his unwillingness to pay for a hotel room. And I think, yeah, we may have sort of speculated, well, maybe it was his upbringing. And, you know, if you're brought up in an environment where money. He's tight, and even if, you know, you get a lot of money later in life, old habits die hard. And so you could be kind of, you know, stingy or just a little, you know, tight with money because that's the way you were raised and you had to, right?

Well, that doesn't appear to be the case with Asin Barger. So Ascent Barger, there was a story about his origins. This was back in May at Sportsnet. And basically, Asen Barger had a field of dreams to himself. So, yeah, so I'll quote here. The tale begins with his parents, Adam and Leah, who started a successful software business. Okay, well, already probably, you know, not struggling to make ends meet seemingly. No kidding.

Yeah. Had their four sons in the Seattle area before moving to Florida to pursue Bible studies. The family bought a, which is you have like, can you not study the Bible in the Seattle area? No, it's banned because of woke. Yeah. People go to church in Seattle. The family bought a large piece of land northeast of Tampa, another indication that they had some disposable income. And before a house was even constructed, Adam, an avid baseball fan, built a full-size diamond on it.

So, Barger was also homeschooled. And from a very young age, his routine revolved around baseball. Adam hired Luis Arsano, a Dominican former catcher and first baseman in the Phillies minor league system to work every day with his son developing his body and advancing his skills. So yeah, he had his own personal baseball field. He had his own former professional player to be his daily coach. So, yeah, I don't think money was particularly tight at that time in the barger household. So I guess we can't chalk up the desire to sleep on the cot in someone else's hotel room to not having any money. So I guess we will have to continue to plumb the depths of Addison Barger

and figure out exactly why and how that happened. Plum the depths indeed, my goodness. There was also a garage that was outfitted, not with a 6,000 gallon aquarium. That was Ozzy Albies, which we discussed yesterday, but a gym

and a kitchen and just like a whole, oh my goodness, they, okay, so they've worked to find another way for Barger to level up. This time they created a travel ball team. This was when Barger was a teenager, I guess. They created a travel ball team and invited 15 Dominican teenagers from the prospect showcase

to live and train at the Barger household while competing with him in tournaments against top teenage talent in Florida. And also they converted the garage into a gym with a kitchen and could be an apartment for the team. Adam estimates he spent roughly $30,000 over eight weeks on food travel and administrative costs and blah, blah, blah. So they had some money, is the point. way. I guess this just reinforces the idea is that sports, there may be more of a meritocracy

than some endeavors, but also it does depend who you know and who you are and what resources you have to a great extent in any professional sport. If you had, you know, if you're, you have the genetic gift of, of maybe having a parent who was a professional athlete, or just someone who had the money to coach you. I mean, that's, you know, the whole nature, nurture. Obviously, If you have a big league dad or something, then they're coaching you and giving you some genetic advantage potentially. But in this case, it was just we have money and we're going to devote it to basically constructing a perfect baseball laboratory in which Addison Barger can become the best barger he could be. So it's not entirely a level playing field is what I'm saying, even if I'm sure the field in Addison Barger's backyard was level because they probably spared no expense. Well, sure, yeah.

Okay. So now we know. All right. Next team up is The Guardians. This was submitted by Adam, and it's just Gabriel Arias's batting profile. Okay. That's it. So it's a little more detail. Adam says, I wanted to submit Arias's batting profile. There have been a few fan graphs posts about it, but I don't think it was discussed on the pod. This year, Arias has been standing further back from the plate than any other hitter and whiffing at more high. fastballs than any other hitter and by further back from the plate he means like you know standing off the plate not back in the box but uh just standing way out to the side and that is uh appears to be true that he was way out there and it's not like he has some massive reach or something that would

seem to make that make sense so that's just uh his feel and and his game i guess but I don't know how well it's working for him because he did bat 220, 274, 363, which was roughly in line with where he had been in the preceding two seasons. He's just sort of a 70-75 OPS plus WRC-plus kind of guy. And there were a few, a surprising number of fan graphs posts about him this season. There was a post in March by Ben Clemens, Let's Dream on Gabrielle Arias. I guess those dreams did not really get fulfilled or they turned into nightmares of some sort, but the potential not fully realized there.

And then there was also a post later in the year. This was from Esteban Rivera in June that was headlined, wait, Gabriel Arias is standing where in the box? And then there was a final mention of Arias in a post, I believe, by Davy Andrews just recently because Davy did the Kit Keller Award for 2020, inspired by Dottie's scouting report on Kit in a league of their own, having trouble with the high cheese, the high fastballs, and indeed, Arias fit the bill. And I'll just read what Davy wrote here.

In 2025, Arias swung at just under 60% of the high fastballs he saw, which landed him 21st on our list of 308 players he whiffed on just. under 54% of those pitches, which ranked fourth on the list, put those two numbers together, and 32% of the high fastballs he saw, he turned into whiffs. No other player was above 29%. Arias also topped the list if you focus only on pitches above the strike zone, turning them into whiffs at a 29% rate, et cetera, et cetera. So, yeah, he's not great.

Eric Long and Hagan, his scattering report on Arias back in 2020 was, Arias looks like a stud at 5 o'clock when he's taking batting practice and infield, but his in-game swing decisions have been a problem. So it appears that they are still a problem. And he did strike out in more than a third of his played appearances. Oh, boy. Yeah, not the best, really. And this was frustrating for him, but also, I guess, frustrating to watch because our listener

who submitted this, Adam, said, this leads to some uniquely infuriating at bats, where he flails at a high fastball that he almost never hits, then flails at a slide. that he cannot physically reach, despite it being only an inch or two off the plate, because he's standing so far away from the plate, he cannot pull the ball in the air and still hit 11 home runs, pretty much everything else was pounded into the ground, probably the least aesthetically pleasing plate appearances I have seen in a while. So I guess he's kind of the Blake Snell equivalent for batters, basically,

and that's, well, except that Blake Snell is actually good. Right. Right. Other than that, though. But, yeah. Also, not pleasing to watch in addition to not being good, at least thus far. I agree with that part, yeah. Yeah. Okay. Mariner's. Is there possibly an overlook story? I was going to say, I feel like we gave them their appropriate to, appropriate. Yeah, I would say we did justice to your mariners these past several months.

But we did get some submissions from Sean and Mark and Brex. One of them was just about the mustaches, the fact that the Mariners were very mustachioed late in the season. Yeah, toward the end especially. Yeah, which was one of their things. Like, we talked plenty about the Etsy Witch, of course. But the Mariners, they did have multiple bits, right? There was the Etsy Witch. There were lucky Cheetos.

That was a thing that was happening, right? It was like, it was. Oh, I don't even know about that. I think that was fan-driven. I'm looking at a... So was the Etsy Witch. So is the Etsy Witch. It's true.

Right. It was not top-down. This is the thing. Yes. It was grassroots. Yeah. There was like a rally shoe on the head that was happening. There was the Etsy Witch.

There was like fans wearing sailor suits, eating Cheetos. They are the Mariners after all. Yeah. There was a lot going on. But one thing that was going on was the mustaches. And that was something that the Mariners themselves. ourselves we're doing or at least some of them. And it's not particularly unusual, I guess. You hear about the playoff beards these days. So many players are bearded by default that I guess

you have to have a mustache if you don't already have one. So Mariners mustaches. That was a thing late in the season, just concocted to try to rally the team to success. And there were some good looking ones, I would say. A couple other little ones, Casey Lawrence, was designated for assignment six times by mid-June. Yeah. He just got stuck in one of those cycles. Then just kept pitching in AAA. He threw a complete game later in the season.

He has already re-signed with the Mariners for 2026. So just wants another go-round, I guess. Just, I don't know, likes Tacoma, too. I don't know. But a pretty weird year for a guy who won the USA baseball performance of the year in 2024. He pitched well in the sub-world baseball classic tournament, the Premier 12 last year. So, yeah, sorry he got sort of stuck in the spin cycle this season, but... Clearly wasn't bothered by it.

No, I guess not enough to seek another employer. And then also there was a shout out for Casey Legamina. Am I saying it? Yeah. Correctly, hopefully. Yeah, so he made his Mariners debut in Cincinnati this year. He made his MLB debut in Cincinnati in 2023 when he was a member of the Reds. And evidently, he got a tattoo of the Cincinnati ballpark. Mark's big smokestacks on his arm honoring the MLB debut.

Oh. Yeah. And I guess that's nice. You know, he's no longer on the Reds, so he's not pitching there anymore. But I guess it remains a special memory where you make your MLB debut. Yeah. And then when he goes back and now he makes his debut for another team in Sincere, and then he can brandish the tattoo.

So, you know, he could repurpose it, I suppose. And then the last story, and this was nominated by. a couple listeners over the period of a few weeks, I think. But the Mariners, they wanted to ban the megaphone preachers at Teahoga Park. Maybe this is why you have to move to Florida to study the Bible because the Mariners are trying to stop the preachers. I want to be clear that the preachers are annoying in a special way. It is not the way that everyone who branches their religious beliefs there. But those guys do big swear. fucking suck.

Well, I'm the worst. Yeah, quoting here from your old haunt lookout landing. This was published in September. The Mariners want the megaphones gone too.

Mariners Deputy General Counsel Christian Halliburton briefed the ballpark public facilities district on Monday on a plan to stop, quote, a small army of megaphone wielding preachers

from verbally assaulting fans outside T-Mobile Park. The preachers have long accosted crowds at venues across Seattle, but Halliburton noted a recent uptick in both volume and aggression before Mariners games calling them dangerously

loud and frankly unreasonable. We're seeing more of the coordinated actors showing up. We're seeing louder and louder messages. And unfortunately, they're becoming more and more aggressive and really singling individuals out with truly hateful messages. So Mariners have been working on a bill that they hope that the Seattle City Council will pass, which would ban amplified sound before and after events at T-Mobile and other high traffic venues in the city. Yeah, and I can't speak to the specific constitutionality of that or whether it's the best approach. My favorite way of dealing with the megaphone preachers actually came outside of a Seahawks game where one of those guys was there posted up doing his thing.

And there was another guy standing there with a sign being perfectly quiet. And the sign said, this guy fucking sucks. And that was his approach to dealing with the megaphone preachers. But yeah, they've gotten, they were always obnoxious. and have gotten, as the story said, just increasingly hateful and targeted with their rhetoric in a way that is like really seems like it is going beyond sort of the normal bounds

of free and even disruptive speech in public. So I wouldn't miss them because, boy, they must be able to find special off-market megaphones. You know, you're like, I have an understanding of how loud a megaphone can be. No, you don't. No, you don't. Not until you heard these guys.

This one goes to 11, the mega-megaphones. The mega-megaphon. Yes. You have a megaphone on this podcast every episode, but you use a reasonable volume level. Most of the time. And I never say the thing. Even about the Rams, Ben, I've never said the things those goos to say. We will not ban Meg preaching on this podcast.

Megafone. It says the city already regulates. in public space, the team believes the volume generated by the megaphones to be illegal. There was a report from Fox 13 Seattle that showed that the megaphones reach 122 decibels. Yeah. It's very wet.

Yeah, and they're probably going at it from the right direction, right? Because you can see how them trying to make it about the content of the speech might get a little dicey. Yep. But the sound, that's a content neutral

restriction, I would imagine. Yes. Yeah. Usually the ballpark environment is very pleasant and convivial and, and, you know, obviously amped up, but in a good way that gets you hyped, the energy is contagious. Devoid of slurs. Yes. But every now and then there's something that goes beyond the bounds. And this just, this reminds me of a Met story we didn't talk about. But there's been some concern about a dressed up dog that is posed essentially outside of city. field and you can take a picture with the dressed up dog and it has like metzotire on and a

cowboy hat and a little like pipe in its mouth and stuff. Is the dog okay? Well, that's what people are worried about because the dog has been there for a while and it's a photo op but people are concerned that there's animal abuse happening here, that this dog is you know, unnaturally posed or that the owner is making money by mistreating this dog. Sam Blum wrote about this for the athletic back in August, so I'll link to that too. But, you know, you want the ballpark to be a friendly place where no one is yelling at you or mistreating pets. So ideally.

Okay. All right. Next up on our cavalcade of teams is the Orioles. Well, we certainly talked plenty about the Orioles this year. But one thing, I don't know if we really, we dwelt on this. But Danny submitted that the Orioles. Orioles ran out seven different catchers. And I've verified this.

Seven? Seven different catchers. Adley Rutchman, Gary Sanchez, Chadwick Tromp, one of my favorite names in baseball. Jacob Stallings. I honestly forgot that some of these guys had spent time with the Orioles. Of course, Maverick Handley. I mean, man, the names, Chadwick. Amazing.

I approve of having this many catchers if you're going to have Maverick Handley. and Chadwick Trump. Right, yeah. Stalling's Samuel Bessayo, of course, came up, and Alex Jackson. And then emergency backup catcher David Benuelos also got a plate appearance, but as a DH. Yeah, but it was that kind of year, Danny says. And, yeah, it was, I guess. Again, it's a theme of these episodes that when you use, like, a record number of guys or more guys than any other team does,

then it's usually not great because, you know, if things are going well, then you don't mess with success. You stick with what works. So something must not be working. And I did check to see whether any other team used this many catchers. I didn't look at past years, but no other team used more than five catchers this year. So the mean and median for catchers used by a team was four this year. so that was standard. There were plenty of teams that used three.

No one got through the whole season with just two catchers, but plenty of teams did get away with just three, lots of four, a few five, but the Orioles just out on an island, two more than any other team. And this, again, was not really a strength in numbers situation because collectively those catchers did not perform particularly well. Not especially well, no. No. So hopefully they'll straighten that out.

and Rutchman will write himself somehow, or Pesayo is the catcher of the future, and maybe he'll be good. I don't know exactly how they'll split the playing time, but you would hope that those guys will take the lion's share of the playing time back there. They were 24th in Catcher War in 2025, 1.2 War, and it took them seven guys to produce that 1.2 war. Yeah, not great. Wow. Another thing that I think we did note at some point was the hydration station, right? They started the year without one because last years got moldy. And this was, you rejected the term hydration station.

I did. Yeah, you did not want them to use the sanitized name, but also. It's a bone. Yeah, the hydration station itself was maybe not. Well, and this was my concern. And I was like, how often are they cleaning that? Right. How often?

Yes, exactly. And sorry to interrupt you. This is your reminder, friends. If you're listening to this right now and you can't remember the last time you clean your water bottle, it's time to go clean it. Do it right now. You don't have to put us on pause because what's a better time to listen to a podcast than when you're doing the dishes?

But go clean it right now. If you can't remember, it's been too long. Yeah, bacteria builds up. Stuff grows in there. Yeah. It can grow in there. Mm-hmm. Okay.

So the Homer hose, the bong, whatever you call it, it had much more colorful names than the hydration station. But it was-hydration station, it doesn't, okay, so, sorry, we have to linger on this for a moment because you end up having to do so much talking in these episodes, and so I have to carry my weight wherever I can, which is to say hydration station doesn't work, not only because it is a sanitized version of what it is. even homero host is, but it's at least kind of winking because it sounds funny. Hydration station isn't descriptive because the hydration station, there's a certain musicality to hydration station that I find pleasing, but hydration station makes it sound like they have like a place in the clubhouse where, you know, the big water jugs are and maybe they have those, you know, those powder mixes that people like to put, that have like electrolytes or whatever and I never know how it feels like bunk to me but people like them so that's

fine maybe you have a little jar of those at your hydration station but this is like an apparatus you know yeah and and it looks like a bog so just have the courage of your convictions I don't know if maryland is a legal weed state or not but just call it what it is homer hose I mean you do need a like a what do you what would you you can't call it a a home run bon because that doesn't have any I believe it was labeled by son the dong bong. Dong bong. Dong bong is perfect. Perfect.

That also has lovely musicality to it, dong dong. Yes, yes, yes. It's a little hard to say, but you do have to slow down a little bit on the second word there to really articulate it, or at least I do dong bong. But dong bong, call it a, be an adult, you know. And here I am saying we, you know, and you are, the ballpark should be a place of, you know, of peace and It should have a certain amount of family friendliness. But, like, you know, you can have a little, you can be a little naughty, you know. You can be a little naughty and call it a dong-bong.

But you can call it a homer hose and then have like the unofficially. But hydration station doesn't describe it because it's an apparatus. Right. Also, wash it. Just. Recreational cannabis use legal in Maryland's good news, I guess. Well, then what's the problem? Yeah.

I mean. And Major League Baseball has an official CBD partner, you know? Right. Yeah, speaking of family friendliness and also cleaning one's mouth out, we were also informed that there was a hot mic moment back in April around the Dongbong shortly after a Ryan O'Hern, former Oriole home run, where he was caught on Mike. Well, we'll play the clip. And the hydration station. I guess a foul should get cleaned out. Filed away.

That happened. Okay. Next up, we have the Texas Rangers. And this is where the pickles enter into it. Yeah. So this was submitted to us. So excited. Tell me.

Yeah. The Patriot, Border, Wondering, Winder. He submitted a few minor ranger stories. The team broke the ALNL record for fielding percentage. Not the MLB record because there was a Negro League team with 16 games and zero errors. But, yeah, the modern ALNL fielding percentage record, which that's one of those where it's rising tight with sawboats because the fielding percentage, you know, errors, rates are down, classification changes. So that tracks, I suppose. But still, it's a record.

Also, Chris Martin repeatedly getting injured and re-injured within the first plate appearance of return. or at least once in his warm-up pitches before he returned. That stinks. We have talked about how deflating it can be when you work your way back from an injury and immediately get hurt again. But the headliner was the story of Kumar Rocker and the pickle juice. And in fact, we got an email from Wondering Winter about this months earlier. And there was a question, which I suppose we can now answer. And the question was, there was an incident in the White Sox Rangers game on Sunday.

thinning, ranger starter, Kumar Rocker, apparently has cramps. This was inferred. Not sure I've seen it firmly reported. So between a couple pitches, the manager, pitching coach, trainer, infield, ump, et cetera, all come to the mound to figure out what's up with him. They talk for a while. Then first baseman Jake Berger runs over to the dugout, haulers, and someone, another trainer, grabs a couple small bottles, energy drink size-ish, and tosses them up to him. Report is pickle juice. He drains a couple of those, throws some practice pitches, and continues. But after a later batter, the bat boy runs out with another one and hands it to him, and he downs that as well. And then the trainer come back out again later in the inning, at which point, actually before then already, I as a Rangers fan am getting surprised about how long the umpires are letting this go.

So a couple of questions, have you ever seen something like this before? Should the Rangers have been charged a mound visit for the Bat Boy, as I think they were? Is there some point at which, although a player safety is priority, the umpires can or should just say, we need to play the game. You need to pull this guy. So, yes, he was just downing, chugging pickle juice to try to stay in this game. And I can read a little bit more information here. Rocker had not been slated to start.

I think Tyler Malley was supposed to start against the White Sox. This was in June. And then Malley went on the injured list with shoulder fatigue. So they called up Rocker from AAA. and he threw five scoreless innings, but he also had to just quaff plenty of pickle juice. And reliever, Luke Jackson jokingly called it the pickle juice game after Rocker downed five bottles of pickle juice

while suffering through cramps in the fifth inning. Yeah. So this is like Michael Jordan has the flu game and Kumar Rocker has the pickle juice game. Yeah, so Bruce Bochie said, Kumar had good stuff, but the cramping thing, he just couldn't get rid of it. I think he broke the record.

on how much pickle juice you can drink. I just thought he really was under control today and calm out there, et cetera, et cetera. He bounced back. He persisted with the help of pickle juice. Because it's, I've heard of this as a solution to cramp it before. This is not a new, but five. So, okay, now I have questions again.

Sorry, I have to. So are they buying jars of pickles? eating the pickles and then and then holding on to the juice can you purchase pickle juice alone right i've never tried to do so but uh i bet i bet you can or maybe it's some sort of yeah synthetic uh pickle juice pickle brine or yeah i think i think you can i'm just searching quickly yeah you can buy pickle juice i've i've never been seized with that urge but um and i don't know if people just drink it for pleasure or for cramping. So, like, if we go through a jar of pickles, I will keep the juice because it can be nice

in cocktails, you know. Okay. You can, like, like, make a nice martini, but with, you know, if you like a dirty martini, but instead of doing all of the brine, you can do pickle juice. Yeah. And that's nice. And some people like picklebacks, although I've aged out of picklebacks, you know, like by quite a margin because that's a young person's game.

Not an almost 40-year-old's game. So I just wonder, like, are pickles a common rangers clubhouse snack? And then they're like, you know, what this is good for? You know, is the trainer like, huh, I can, you know, every part of the cow. Is it like that? I would guess that training staffs keep it on hand if it's really so effective that you might want to have it as a preventative measure. I assumed that this had something to do with electrolytes, but I'm learning that it

It might not be because of that, but because perhaps the strong taste triggers a reflex in the back of the throat via acetic acid that calms the misfiring nerves causing the cramp. That's interesting. So there might be more than one mechanism of action here. Somehow that feels like less real science than the electrolyte thing. But I. Right. And here, you know, here I was impugnium. the the good name of those electrolyte powder.

So, who I know? Works in multiple ways, but, and mysterious ways, evidently. But there was some disparity in the number of pickles juice bottles consumed. Yeah, so I was, right, so Bochie said five, but then an ESPN story said three, but I've realized that accounting for the disparity is that he had already consumed two in the dugout and so then he had three. So he was already cramping. Yeah. So he had three during that fifth inning. But he had already been chugging a couple bottles. So that's a lot of pickle juice, boy. That's just fine for me. I have a briny palate, you know, like all the Molly Baz heads out

there. I'm like squarely in my wheelhouse. Yeah, let's get it briny and vinegary. I guess it's mostly for therapeutic use and not something that people drink for fun. I'm sure there's someone out there who likes pickle juice. But if it works by shocking your system such that it makes you stop from cramping, then I don't know, maybe it's not so fun. But, yeah, plate umpire Marvin Hudson, the crew chief huddled with the other three umpires, and they ruled the rangers should be charged with a mountain visit for the ball boys trip. Because, yeah, this was the third bottle of pickle juice.

Yeah, that seems reasonable to me. Like, if you're going to say he's staying in, then I think you have to, at a certain point, you know, pay the piper, as it were. Yeah. And you can't keep everyone waiting all day. Like, if someone has to have a pickle, just a swig of pickle juice after every pitch or something. I mean, you have a limited number of mound visits now. Right. Prior to the limit on mound visits, I guess you could have just kept bringing pickle juices out there indefinitely until the empires put a stop to it.

But they would eventually put a stop to it. put a stop to it and just said, look, if you can't function, then you need to be removed for this game. Yeah, it seems reasonable to me. It really does. Unsafe or inconsiderate or both. This is delay of game. Yeah. Right.

To lay of game. For the raise, this is another one where we didn't really get nomination, so I sort of supplied my own. And it's a player we've talked about plenty in the past, but really may not have mentioned it all this year. And that's Yandi Diaz. Yeah. Old Ground Beef himself. That nickname didn't quite catch on beyond this podcast, though I'm still sort of fond of it. But, Yan Diez, he's underrated.

Maybe this isn't that greatest story. Yandi Diaz, underrated. But I think he is because we really didn't talk about him. And he kept it up. Like, he had another strong offensive season. Now, he's not going to be high on any war leaderboards because he's de-hching a lot. And, you know, he's not given you much defensive value. even when he plays the field, and he's not giving you anything on the bases or anything.

And he's not a huge power threat, despite being a big, beefy guy, because he hits the ball on the ground so often. That's the making. Yes, that's why we dubbed him ground beef. And he still does that. And there have been various flirtations with hitting the ball in the air and times where he seemed to have gotten the launch angle up and everything. But he's just sort of settled into, this is who I am. I just more than half of my batted balls will be. be on the ground. It's not, you know, 60%, as it was in some seasons, but it's still like 54%.

That seems to just be his range. But he hits the ball hard. And despite hitting tons of ground, he batted 300 this year. Yeah. He didn't have as, like, we talked about him a lot, I guess, in 2022, 2023. Like, you know, when he came over from the Guardians and then it seemed like, oh, the raise fixed him. Like, he was very good in 2020. 20, and then there was a time where he seemed to be hitting for more power. And, you know, he hit 25 homers this year. That's, that's not bad. That's a career high for him.

Like when he was with the Guardians and even early in his tenure with the raise, he was barely cracking double digits. And so now he's 25. That's not so bad. But still sub 200 isolated power. You know, he hits for average. It's kind of odd because he's like this big, beefy guy, but he doesn't hit that many dingers.

But he makes tons of contact. like he struck out only 14% of the time there are very few true talent 300 hitters but he basically is that he batted 330 two seasons ago he batted 307 in 2020 he batted 300 on the dot this year 135 wrc plus this year and he's kept it up for for quite a while now to the point that I just, I looked 2022 through 2025, so this is the past four seasons, and I just looked for weighted runs created, not weighted runs created plus, but weighted runs created, which takes into account how productive you were on offense, but also your playing time, because he's been durable too.

Here's the top 15 hitters in baseball. Aaron Judge, Shohei Otani, Juan Soto, Freddie Freeman, Matt Olson, Kyle Schwerber, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Jose Ramirez, Bobby Witt, Jr., Pietalanzo, Rafael Devers, Francisco Indoor, Mukhi Betz, Yandi Diaz, Mani Machado. So he's comfortably in the top 15 most productive hitters in baseball over the past four seasons. And I would say that all of those guys I listed there are like household names among, you know, baseball fans. Like, people know them.

They're sort of stars. And I'm pretty sure that if you asked people to. list the best hitters in baseball over that span, you'd have to go way more than 14 names until people started mentioning Yandy Diaz. Or like if you had some sort of sporkle, like fill out the top 15 hitters by WRC over the past four seasons, I think all those other names would come to mind much more quickly for most people than Yandy Diaz. And, you know, that's partly a product of the market where he plays and just like the weird offensive profile and him kind of you know, being a late bloomer, but just also he was an all-star one time.

And he has gotten MVP votes in a few other seasons, including this past one. But it's just a, it's an odd offensive profile. And so he doesn't really, like, lead the league in anything. And I think he's just kind of under the radar. And, you know, not the most well-rounded player. But still, unsung by us this year on the podcast deserves to be sung. because he's still, like, an elite bat, and that's pretty impressive. I agree.

I agree. And now he's, like, overshadowed by Junior Camerro, and he should be. Like, yeah, they're young, exciting prospects and talents. But, yeah, do you know, still doing his thing. Okay. Red Sox, elsewhere in the A.L. East, we got a submission from Keegan, and it is a prank played by Roman Anthony. Baseball players, they love their pranks. They sure do.

Yeah. So, here's the... Dicey territory sometimes. Yes. This is the headline. Jen McCaffrey wrote about this at The Athletic in March. How 76 coffee orders turned into a morning of chaos for two top Red Sox prospects. So they had to deliver 76 coffee orders to Boston Red Sox teammates, coaches, and staff.

At the end of February, Anthony was in the training room with Walker Bueller chatting about coffee, given a chance to rib the number, one prospect, Bueller decided Anthony would buy coffee for the team the next day, the whole team. I thought it was a joke, Anthony said, until it wasn't. Bueller made sure the rookie included all of the coaches and clubhouse staffers making for several dozen orders. A slightly overwhelmed Anthony started keeping track on his phone of every specialized syrup request.

This is like Jonah Tong chiming in, I need Canadian syrup in my coffee, not Vermont. Cold foam addition, non-fat milk, whole milk, splash. of this or that, but he soon recruited his teammate Marcella Mayer for help. And you know, people were probably embellishing their orders for this, right? Probably trying to make it as complicated as possible. He's like, we have to get coffee for every single person in the org, Meyer recalled. And I'm like, what are you talking about? He shows me a list.

There were 40 coffee orders already. I don't know how Meyer got drafted into this. Like, it seems like Walker Buehler was picking on Roman Anthony specifically. And Anthony's like, we have to do this with. Meyer could have said, we, how did we enter into this? Yeah.

Like preparing for the next day's opposing pitcher, they had to develop a game plan. They picked a Starbucks on a Lico road about six miles from JetBlue Park and the night before they drove there and asked for the manager. I'm like, you better bring your A squad

tomorrow morning at 5 a.m. Because we're ordering 76 coffees. This is like some sort of, I think you should leave sketch, 55 coffees. This does preemptively answer my question Because it was like, this is being put in terms of a day of chaos for Roman Anthony. But the people who were really having to endure.

Right, exactly. Yeah. So they woke up at 4.30 a.m. to get to Starbucks right when it opened, the four-person staff was well prepared for the Thursday morning madness. But making the process more chaotic, Anthony had to read off each individual order and pay one at a time. Oh, because that way each cup would have a player's name on. it and they could keep track of who had which coffee oh man okay not a more efficient way to do yeah I'm sorry there's now I think that the the Starbucks employees and to be clear I support them and their decision we're having a little

bit of fun at Roman Anthony's expense yeah even though keying in each individual order would be kind of burdensome but surely they do group orders yeah there needs to be some some batching that goes on here one would hope because even if you don't have 76 usually you know, there might be someone who's making the run for the office or something, and you're not paying eight times, are you right? I guess I've never been the gopher for the Starbucks, but that doesn't seem like the way I would do it. I don't know.

I guess you don't normally require in that instance, like the name, you just put the order, like the drink order itself on. So maybe this was like an additional requirement the Walker Bueller imposed, but then here's the thing, Anthony. you lie is the thing. You bring a Sharpie and you do it yourself after the fact. So this is an amateur move on Roman Anthony's part potentially.

Maybe they're just with 76, there are so many of them that it would be hard to find without your name on it. I just refuse to believe that the employee, if they aren't trying to take the piss out of Roman Anthony

would sign up to, I think you would say, hey, buddy, let's ring them all up once and then I'm going to sit here with a Sharpie and I'm going to take your business after the fact. Yeah, you could do that. Oh, man, it gets worse because after about 20 orders, Anthony's credit card was declined

because they suspected fraud because who would be buying 76 coffees. This is like when you used to have to call your bank when you were traveling to be like, hey, I am in fact going to be in the state of California, and this is not someone having stolen my card. Yes. He needed to call. Meyer had to take over and pay for the rest, I guess. Oh, my gosh. Anthony said they did a very good job of pumping them out.

You'd think they did that large in order every morning. They were really good. And there were a few unlucky customers who came through the drive-thru while the Red Sox coffee crush was happening, but no one came into the store at least. So that was good. The bill came to more than $600. Meyer and Anthony split it,

making sure to leave the baristas a hefty cash tip for all their efforts. I would hope so. It doesn't specify this story what that tip was, but it better have been big. I know these guys are still making league minimum. Or, you know, I guess they're extensions in the works. I mean, yeah, you've got to make it worth a while for the poor baristas. As I said to my brother when he was a teenager, if you can't afford to leave a tip, he can't

afford to go out. Yeah. Anyway, Meyer forgot amid the chaos to use his Starbucks app to pay so he didn't get credit toward future purchases. He said, I would have had free coffee for a month. And then they realized, oh, they realized the deal. day before that neither of their cars was big enough to transport 76 coffees and fit all the trays. So they asked fellow minor leaguer Max Ferguson for help because he had an SUV. So they loaded

the SUV up with 19 trays of coffee. Anthony sat in the back and held it to prevent spills. Well, yeah. He's got good hands. So although you don't want your prospects scalded with 76 coffees. So that's a little risky. That is so funny. Yeah. Anyway, then they, they, they drove extra slow for the six-mile journey, like 15 miles per hour. We went 50 miles per hour with our hazard lights on because we had 76 coffees in the back. Yeah, if you were in line the drive-thru, you would be like, what's going on? And then the question becomes, if you're Starbucks, you're not supposed to have non-employees behind the counter, but if you're the barista, do you say to Roman Anthony, who, granted, this was during spring training, right? You said?

So who knows? But if you're a Red Sox fan, and was he in uniform? Because often when they make them go to the Starbucks, they have them go in full uniform, like with cleats and everything. I would say to the, I would say to Roman Anthony, hey, buddy, like, can you pop your head out the drive-thru and be like, hey, we're so sorry. Because then if it's a Red Sox fan, they're like, oh, my God.

But you might get in trouble because then that person's not going to be able to resist telling the story of how Roman Anthony told them, And thanks for being patient. And then you've invited them behind the counter, and that's a no-go, although it's Florida. So maybe there are no rules, you know? And then there's the last mile problem. You get all these coffees to the park, but then how do you distribute them? So the clubhouse manager met them in the player's parking lot, loaded the trays of coffee

onto a rolling cart to push them to the clubhouse, and then they set up a folding table, like a little lemonade stand sort of situation, I guess. and they had all the hot coffees there, and then they put the iced coffees in the fridge. Smart. And then they got on the team bus, but before they left, they made sure that everyone got their order

and every drink that didn't make the trip stayed in the place and was refrigerated. They didn't even get coffee for themselves, which I guess... That's so funny. They had enough coffee to handle. They almost pitched a perfect game with the coffee. They went 75 for 76.

they screwed up Garrett Crochet's order. He wanted hot coffee, but instead got iced. But not bad on the whole. Not bad on the whole. I will say, of all the people's order to goof, like, Garrett Crochet is maybe a suboptimal one to have gotten wrong, just given his importance to the franchise. But that's a pretty impressive hit rate, candidly. Yeah, that's not bad at all. I guess they did also forget Garrett Whitlock's order entirely.

Oh, I guess what happened. Oh, I see. So in typical Garrett Whitlock fashion, he decided not to tell the prospects they had forgotten his order, assuming they mixed him up with crochet and got only one Garrett coffee. And Whitlock said, I felt pretty bad. They worked hard on it. That's lovely. I will say, I think, you know, and we talked one maybe, I think Ray's story we did talk about was the dress-up day.

Yeah, yeah. But in general, I feel like we have had, you know, a little bit of gentle ribbing to the new guy, I think can build camaraderie rather than making someone feel bad. I think that, you know, there's balance to these things, but that tends to be on the right side of it. And I think the coffee thing is like a good way to kind of keep the generic and sort of less harmful version of the traditional life. But it is nice when people kind of roll with it. Like, hey, you just probably forgot. It's not a big deal, buddy. You know, that's nice.

Don't crack down too much. Right. So, yeah, it's a little light hazing, but not in an abusive way, I think. You know, 76 coffees, though. That's a lot. That's a lot of coffees, man. Yeah. Okay.

Anyway, good spring training story. I'm glad that I'm now aware of it. The Royals, Robert, submitted a few possibilities here. They were the only team this season not to lose a game in which they carried a lead into the ninth, which is, you know, it's a nice little distinction. Yeah, so. Ah, that's pretty cool. Yeah, Royals review mentioned this to the bullpen had just 20 blown saves, third fewest in baseball, and the Royals were the only team that did not lose a game in which they went into the ninth with a lead. Huh.

And that's nice because it stinks to lose a lead in the ninth. So if you can go a whole season without doing that, then bully for you. That's fun for fans to feel like we've got this unlock when we get to that stage. Yeah. I guess their bullpen as a whole, let's see where they ranked. They ranked in terms of bullpen war 14th, nothing special. And then in terms of bullpen win probability added seventh. So it wasn't like they were some historical.

historically elite all-time great bullpen in particular, but they just happened, yeah, happens not to have a game go awry and lose one in which they carried a lead into the ninth. I guess they could have blown one, but then won the game anyway. But yeah, that's interesting. I wouldn't have, I mean, credit to Carlos Estevez, I guess, for mostly doing his job. Robert also mentioned that the Royals this season had two teammates reached 30 home runs and 100 R. for the first time in club history when Salvador Perez and Vinnie Pasquantino reached that mark.

Yeah, that sounds like something that should have happened before. Yeah. It doesn't sound that impressive. But, I mean, there was that fact for a long time that, like, the Royals hadn't had someone hit whatever number of home runs it was

since Steve Bye-bye Balboni hit 36 in 1985. And, like, there was a long stretch where the Royals just, didn't have great power hitters, didn't have great on-base guys either, you know, still don't sometimes. But Kaufman, you know, it's a tough place to hit homers, obviously, big outfield there. And they have had a dearth of power hitters over the years. But I still, I probably would have thought, I mean, I haven't checked to see if any other team has a drought this long. But 30 and 100, it's not like that high a threshold, really.

It's just like, you know, with the PD era and with the juiced ball and all the rest of it, we've had record home run rates. So, but I guess the RBI these days with the batting averages being low and all of that, that's maybe not as much of a formula for being a big RBI guy. Anyway, congrats to Salvi and the Pasquatch. The Tigers, we must mention. I think this was a self-nomination, but the Tigers extremely successful, minor league record.

So, yeah, we talked plenty probably about the major league team, but the Tigers had the best record across the minor leagues in 2025 of any organization. Baseball America wrote about this when the minor league season ended in late September. J.J. Cooper documented

this. The Tigers collectively, their minor league affiliates, had a 589 winning percentage, which was the fifth best of the past 20 years. Detroit's Farm teams won championships in low A, the Florida State League, and high A, the Midwest League. AA Erie played for the Eastern League title.

I don't know offhand whether they won that, but that had not been decided as baseball America went to press. Got to figure out, did AA Erie win the Eastern League title? Maybe you can Google that. I'm just very much in suspense here. But impressive minor league winning percentage. Also, the Tigers farm teams plus 650 run differential. the seventh best of the past 20 years.

And that's good. You know, it's good to have your minor league teams play well. I think I've looked at this in the past, and it's like less predictive than you would think. They won it. It seems in 2023 and 2024, but not in 2025. Ah, okay. Binghamton won it in 2025.

Yeah. I remember talking about Tigers minor league teams at some point this season because, of course, They had the moon mammoths, the John Oliver experiment. Yeah. That was a tiger's affiliate. That was Erie. And yeah, they had some other like historic performances in the miners, despite prospects being promoted.

I vaguely recall either finding a study or doing one myself and learning that this wasn't super predictive of how good your major league team was going to be down the road. Like, you'd probably rather know of teams' farm system ranking than its minor league winning percentage, because that could go either way. It could mean that you have a ton of great prospects, or maybe it could mean that you have a lot of, like, minor league veterans hanging around who are good for that level, but are not going to bolster your big league roster. And, you know, of course, like in development teams typically are not prioritizing winning, number one. So, you know, I'm not saying that they were trying to win at the end. expensive development or anything. I'm sure it's correlated with good things. It's better to be good than bad. Yeah. Bold take by me. But yeah, I'm not sure that it presages, you know, historic performance in the future. Yeah. But, you know, tigers do have prospects coming along.

So salute to them in their minor league affiliates. Okay, the twins. This was, we had a story submitted by Andrew and J.D. And a big one was James Outman and Ryan Fitzger. Gerald being lookalikes. So one email we got for as much as you two have discussed look-like players in the past. Yeah, of course, we talked about Dansby Swanson and Charlie Culberson with the Braves, right? Well, they are pretty similar looking. Look at that. Yeah, yeah, they are.

Wow. Yeah, there have been some other funny instances, you know, separated at birth kind of big league players. But I was surprised you two never mentioned James Outman and Ryan Fitzger. for the twins this season. In fact, they look so similar that not only were they displayed during a Target field celebrity lookalike segment, but also a Twins beat reporter later revealed by Bobby Nightingale Jr. to be Phil Miller accidentally interviewed Ryan Fitzgerald after James Outman hit his first home run as a twin.

No way. That's so funny. Oh, my gosh. Really? That's really good. Yeah. So. Wow.

They are so similar looking. I mean, I think part of it, part of it. part of it is definitely we had to talk about Dan Sbee and Charlie Culbertson because they were on the same team and so you were just sitting there

going no that's not two boys that's one boy moving back and forth very fast to create the illusion of two separate boys but it's one boy and then they weren't on the same team anymore and our long national nightmare was over So these are different team boys.

Yes. I mean, they're young men. They're men. They're just dudes, guys being bruce, you know. Wow, they do look so similar. Yeah. Are there ages and builds? Because they're facially, they're very similar.

So let's see. Well, Ryan Fitzgerald is 31. So James Outman is a little younger, right? Like he's late 20s, yeah, 28. Fitzgerald's listed at 5. 10, 186, and Outman 62215. So Outman, much larger and younger. So, yeah, maybe if they're standing next to each other.

But if they're sitting down in the dugout. Yeah, there's a photo of them sitting on the dugout bench. And it is pretty much, yeah, they look very similar. It's not quite, it's like the Brady's Figel. Remember Brady Fygels? The two Brady, the red-haired pitchers who had all sorts of similarities and looked similar and had the same name but weren't actually related. was a fun story for a while.

But, yeah, Fitzgerald and Outman did not notice how much they looked like each other. I guess we also talk about the many similar-looking guys, like, on the Orioles. On the Orioles, that's true. Yeah, and I guess, yeah, they called up Fitzgerald after the trade deadline, after they traded their entire team in August, and they called him up then. And then Outman was acquired in one of those deals for Brock Stewart. it and then called up. So they sort of arrived at the same time, too, which is kind of funny. And they're mistaken for each other, even within the clubhouse.

I'm reading a Twin Cities.com story. At a hitter's meeting, Fitzgerald said bench coach, Jace Tingler kept pointing in his direction while talking about Outman. So it's not just the beatwriters, it's actual team personnel. Outman said, when I was on second base on Wednesday, I saw him standing in the box, and I was like, oh, that does look like me. But the first time I ran into him, I didn't think much of it just because I don't really see my face too much. Well, yeah, I guess good points.

And I want to be clear, I'm aware that they were eventually on the same team. But like for much of the year, they weren't on the same team. Right, yes, yes. And they're both left-handed hitters. And Fitzgerald says their swings look somewhat similar and that they also have the same resting face. Fitzgerald said, I've seen him before, but just being so close to him now, I can't stop looking at him. Yeah, I mean, this is literally like looking in a mirror. Yeah, which I guess Outman doesn't look in a mirror that much because he said he doesn't see his face, but Fitzgerald evidently does.

So, yeah, okay. Fitzgerald said he's been getting the Outman comparison since at least last year because both spent spring training in Arizona when Outman was with the Dodgers and Fitzgerald was in the Royals organization. Right, yeah, he was a royal first. Confused fans would approach him. I would be out to dinner or I was at Top Golf and people were. like James Outman? Is James Outman that recognizable? I was just about to say. I'm skeptical of that being a true story because that seems like you can't be real because I'm sorry, James Outman is not that distinctive looking. I don't mean that as an insults to James Outman or even as a comment

on his relative level of fame. I'm just saying he is like baseball player pro athlete anonymous, you know, where it's like you or I might recognize him in street clothes, but maybe. Maybe not even, you know, because he's just not remarkable looking. And again, this is not a knock on James Outman. And isn't that notable a player in particular. Yeah, right. So anyway, that's a fun little story. And yeah, they did the Celebrity Lookalike, Cam, and then so it says Outman was pictured

as the celebrity and a live shot of Fitzgerald came on the screen. The crowd had little reaction seemingly thinking they were just looking at two photos of Outman. that kind of defeats the purpose, I guess. They looked too alike. And then the next day when Fitzgerald was at the plate, the fun fact that accompanied his photo on the scoreboard simply proclaimed is not James Outman. That's funny. Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. Well, that's something to watch. Yeah. We learn so much when doing these things. It's a fun time. I like these episodes. Okay.

So that's Outman and Fitzgerald. And J.D. also submitted Ryan Fitzgerald for non-outman-related reasons. just his journey to slash debut with the twins. Nightingale wrote a good column outlining his path from minor league journeymen to his debut,

a 31-year-old who went undrafted out of Creighton University, never gave up on playing in the big leagues despite remaining stuck in Class AAA for the past three seasons.

He was set to play in Mexico this year after playing in the Dominican Winter League before the twins offered him a minor league contract in January. He was briefly called up in May when Carlos Correa

was on the seven-day concussion injured list, and then he was recalled after Correa was traded to Hughes. Houston got the call again in August after the twins' deadline apocalypse. And then, yeah, he got the started third on August 10th. And in the third inning, he hit a two-run homer for his first big league hit.

Super cool moment. And Fitzgerald said the window is closing. The older you get, the less chance you have of making it, et cetera, et cetera. And then he made it, and he found out that he had a doppelganger in the same clubhouse. And everyone seems to like him. seems to be a good dude from all accounts. And then there was the outman factor. Okay.

That's so funny. I wonder, would you, like, would you feel like you were in Black Swan? Maybe so. I mean, I guess as long as you don't have an evil, bizarreo version of you running around, if, if you like your look-like. Yeah. And also, there's the potential for hijinks, I suppose, having a look-like in the same clubhouse, which seems like they didn't exploit the potential for hijinks, but hijinks happened. anyway, just of their own accord.

So you end up with some silly situations. So that would be fun. Yeah. Okay. All right. Last two teams, the White Sox, this was submitted by Corey. And it's just a general appreciation of Lenin Sosa and his career year. Now, what's interesting is that Lenin Sosa is the longest tenured member of the White Sox roster.

He's been there for not that long, frankly, but there's been a lot of turnover. on the White So he came up in 2022 and still was there this year and just the entire roster turned over essentially. And he had himself a solid season. And, you know, he's been a utility guy and half-glove will travel and plays a bunch of positions. And he still did that this year. Yes, he played first and second and third. So, you know, he'll play most of the infield positions, at least. But usually he wasn't going to give you that much with the bat. But this year, he held his own offensively. Not bad, Lenny and Sosa.

He had a 100 WRC plus in a full season, qualified for the batting title for the first time and everything. 140 games, 544 played appearances. And he did okay, you know, sub 300 on base, but 264 batting average, which in this era is solid and a little bit of pop, too. He had 22 home runs. Lenin Sosa, who knew? Probably plenty of Whitehawks fans, but not me. So he didn't walk, you know, he's, he has a 3% walk rate every year. But, and I guess he struck out at roughly a league average rate too.

But, you know, decent speed, decent babb, and just made it to an average offensive performance coupled with positional flexibility. And war-wise was actually worth playing and valuable for the first time in his career. So, so, yeah, a socks machine or south side showdown called it. an emergence, not a breakout, but an emergence, which I think is appropriate. And, you know, it's a measured term for what happened here. But he's 25. He's about to turn 26, age 25 season, and got to be a starter, got to be a regular, and really rose to the occasion. And so now, according to this South Side Showdown post, the White Sox have an impossible decision to make about Lenny and Sosa this off-season. I'm not sure it's impossible. But yeah, they do have to decide where he will

play and if there is more within him or if they want to ship him out somewhere. But it seems like there was a general appreciation for Lening Sosa this season. He also had a socks machine post back in August headlined Lening Sosa refuses to relent. So James Fegan did justice to Sosa as well. So good for him, I guess. I wonder how often the longest tenured member of a team. And this is potential Stapblast territory, Michael Mountain, Ryan Nelson, if you're listening. But how often the longest tenured member of a roster would be as unaccomplished as Lenin Sosa?

I guess that's a – I'm trying to compliment the guy, trying to flatter him. But, you know, not only is he not that long tenured, but also he's not a great player. So I wonder how often that's the case, you know, if we don't have like some expansion franchise or some unusual circumstance. I guess probably there have been a bunch of fire sales in history, so it's probably just like post-fire sale, whoever's still standing the longest. But I would guess that it's often at least someone a little more, I don't know, acclaimed accomplished than so-so.

Although then again, maybe it's like the last man standing after the fire sale is someone who didn't have a lot of trade value. So maybe it is the guy who just kind of people forgot he was there, you know, like office space style or something. Anyway, good for Lenny Sosa for getting an opportunity to play more and making the most of it. And lastly, this comes to us from Jessica. We're up to, down to the Yankees. And it's basically home run fun facts about the Yankees.

The one submitted by Jessica was that the 2025 Yankees hit four home runs in an inning three different times this season. They did that on March 29th. I guess that was back in the beating up on the Brewers with the Torpedo Bats days. They did it a month later, April 29th, and then they did it on August 27th. And according to Jessica, they are the first team to do so thrice within the same season. Four home runs in an inning. They did it three different times. And I guess, relatedly, they made some other sort of similar history where they hit back to back to back, homers to begin a game.

twice this season and you know we've discussed the terminology of back to back to back to back yeah and should it be back to back to belly etc i've kind of copied john sterling there but if we just go with the terminology that was used they began a game by hitting three consecutive homers and they did that twice and that was apparently unprecedented they were the first team in a l annual history to open multiple games with three consecutive homers in a single season. And they did it again on March 29th and then a month to the day later. So Bronx Bombers, hidden bombs in sort of a historic way. The homers came in bunches, as they say, for the bombers this season. Okay. Well, we've come to the end, hopefully, assuming I didn't leave out any teams there.

I'm sure people will let us know if that happened. Yeah. to mention for the royals also that it seems like the royals stadium situation is kind of coming to a head because the chiefs have now resolved their situation and they're getting a sweetheart deal and it's just race to the bottom cross state lines get billions of public funding to leave arrowhead and relocate and now the pressure's on I guess the royals can kind of hold that over the head and say well we will follow them out of state if you do not give us a similarly sweetheart deal so that's something to monitor but that'll be a story to discuss or fail to discuss in 2026 and beyond.

So thanks to everyone who nominated, couldn't do this without help from everyone else. And I'm sure there's plenty that we still did not discuss, but we tried to be quasi-comprehensive, at least. And that won't do it for this week, but that will do it for this year. Yeah. That's the last effectively wild episode of 2025. and we will ring in the new year with a fresh new podcast at the end of the week. But for now, thanks for listening in 2025 and supporting the podcast. And happy new year. We will talk to you in 2026. Happy New Year, everyone. And actually, you'll hear me talk to you a little bit more in 2025 because I have to do the outro after all. What a journey that was from 76 coffees to the twins on the twins and beyond. And what a journey 2025 has been. We tried to catch up with some of what we missed on the podcast this year. If you're trying to catch up with anything you missed on the podcast, may I remind you to check out the Only a Woman Ella Black Lost and Found series, the three-part narrative historical

series that I did earlier this year. I really loved doing that. It seemed like a lot of people enjoyed it. But if you missed it at the time, maybe you skipped it in the moment and said, I'll come back to it. It was the beginning of the season. Well, this wouldn't be the worst time to check it out. It's pretty evergreen. That was episodes 2309, 2310, and 2311, something a little different for us, but I hope we can do more like it someday. I will link to it on the show page for this episode, but it would please me very much if you check that out if you haven't already, and let me know what you think. It is the story of the first woman known to have written about baseball for a national publication, and we dug into her history to try to find out who she was, hopefully somewhat

successfully. Also, thanks to all the Secret Santa participants who have been posting the gifts that they've given or gotten in our Facebook group or our Discord group. Always brings me some holiday cheer to see those gifts. My Secret Santa sent me an autographed card of Nick Johnson. One of the players I had an affinity for in my youth and still do. Although I love Christmas, I'm not religious, but I am always happy to celebrate OBP Jesus, which was Nick Johnson's excellent nickname. Oh, speaking of nicknames, more info on Boob Fowler. When we discussed yesterday, I dug up an article on the origin of his nickname and mentioned it on the outro. But listener Dennis found another article. And even earlier one, this was from the Cincinnati Post, March 17th, 1922. headline how Fowler received name of boob. And the first sentence, well, it's very matter of fact. Chester Fowler got the nickname of boob by being a boob. Quote, when I answered to the baseball call at Texas Christian University three years ago, I was making my first effort to play the game, he says.

I sure was green. Kid Nance, the university coach, immediately called me a boob and the name stuck. All right then. Fowler is one of the best built boys in the country. One look at him and it is easy to understand why he has the reputation of being a great football player. And also a reputation for being a pretty good baseball player, and, unfortunately, a reputation for being a boob. Last time we talked about Dodgers pitcher Jack Dreyer and his expertise in all things Rubik's Cube, got an email from listener Ben Zimmer, who is a linguist and lexicographer, and a big crossword puzzler, both a doer and a designer of crossword. And Ben notes another one of Dreyer's nerdy passions emerged later in the season, Crosswords.

And he doesn't just solve them. He also makes them, as Sonia Chen reported for MLB.com's Dodger Beat newsletter in August. Dreyer's crossword featured in the newsletter is not a bad effort from a rookie constructor. He's no crossword boob, but honestly, I'm just as impressed by his penmanship. It's true. It's very regimented. I will link to the story. Also, speaking of crosswords, got an email on Tuesday from listener Patreon supporter Daniel Carroll, who said, well, you're about to get a ton of messages about the Tuesday New York Times crossword if you haven't already. 48 down, the clue was making a plate appearance five letters.

At that, of course, being the response they want. Daniel says I would get annoyingly pedantic about this one, but I'm a little tired of the PA versus A.B. discussion, and it's worth noting that plate appearance was not capitalized in the clue. We actually didn't get that many messages about this, so maybe other people weren't that bothered by it. But I did put this to Ben Zimmer, who sometimes constructs New York Times crossword puzzles. And I said to him, I suppose this is kosher in that an at-bat does constitute a plate appearance. And maybe making a plate appearance doesn't imply that at-bats and plate appearances are synonymous. And as the listener says, it's probably not really referring to the same. stat. And other, other band agreed, yeah, I'm willing to give that one a pass, especially since it's cluing the phrase at bat, i.e. in the batter's box equals making a plate appearance, rather than the noun at bat. It's certainly not as egregious as the no-one goof in October. As you'll recall, that puzzle had the clue what every baseball inning starts with, and the solution was no one on, which of course no longer applies to every inning, thanks zombie runner. A couple people wrote in to add another name or another couple to the list of

MLB NWSL romances. This came up when Declan Cronin was on the pod. He just married an NWSL player. Densby Swanson, of course, is married to Mallory Swanson, NWSL star. And Jeremy Pena just got engaged to Julia Grosso. Also, Julio Rodriguez is or has been in a relationship with Jordan Haidima. I don't know their relationship status at this moment, but they were together at least until fairly recently and may remain so.

Important email from listener Scott Holland about mozzarella sticks, which we discussed on the last episode, Scott writes, love that your Cubs story in episode 2420 was the Boog J.D. mozzarella sticks episode, a truly delightful happenstance that would have been the unquestioned highlight of a less successful on-field season. That said, I remain upset. The record remains uncorrected. What the corner taproom calls mozzarella sticks are not the breaded slash fried string cheese delicacies, Meg referenced during your discussion, but rather what the rest of the Midwest would just call cheese bread. It's basically a sauceless cheese pizza with a sauce on the side is a dip. As a native Midwesterner who lived in Northeast Iowa about 10 years ago for college and

work, I remain confused as to how any local establishment can make this error. Both appetizers are delicious in their own right, but we need to know what we're ordering. And another message from Patreon supporter Daniel, who says on the subject of mascot families referencing episode 2420 and the San Francisco Giants, we discussed Lucille. It seems to me that at least several mascots have mama versions who appear on Mother's Day. There's a Mrs. Fanatic in Philadelphia for sure. In fact, I just learned that her name is Phoebe. Phoebe fanatic. There's a Mrs. Moose in Seattle, though I don't remember her name. Google suggests it's just Mama Moose. I'm not sure if it's common for mascots to have father mascots for Father's Day. I have no problem with mascots having

families. I don't see why they shouldn't. And finally, we talked about the idea of a free agent signing that's supposed to set the tone or change the course of an organization, make a place a more desirable destination for future free agents. We talked about a few examples of that and solicited some others. And this is a good one from Stephen, as a Tigers fan, Pudge Rodriguez, signing with the Tigers after the 2003 season, in which they lost 119 games was the first example that popped into my head of a team paying above the market rate for a free agent and subsequently changing the narrative surrounding the franchise. Three years later, the Tigers made it to the World Series, losing to the Cardinals in five

games. That's a good one. That one should have come to my mind the way that Jason Worth going to the Nationals did. Kind of a classic example. So that will do it for today and this year. Thanks, as always, for listening. thanks to those of you who support the podcast 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, David Perry, Helix, Ben Shibbauer, Izzy, Hirstrit, licked, and Daniel Sanchez. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, December episode coming, soon-ish, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers. potential podcast appearances, personalized messages, shoutouts at the end of episodes, discounts on merch and ad-free fan graphs memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site.

If not, you can contact us via email, send your questions, your comments, your intro, and outro themes to podcast to Fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcast, 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 in 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. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week in 2026. For now, we wish you a happy new year. Lindbergh and Meck and Riley I want to hear about show Hale Tani Or Mike Trout with Three Martin