Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2423: The State of the Stove

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Daniel Vogelbach becoming a Brewers hitting coach and coach-hiring trends, analyze and phact-check Tommy Pham’s pitch for “PhamGraphs,” react to the Kazuma Okamoto signing and the Blue Jays embracing their big-market potential (in contrast to the Giants), and take the temperature of the pretty tepid stove (phollowed by a phollow-up on Pham). Audio intro: The Spaghettis, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Ian Phillips, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to Vogelbach news Link to Brewers coaching staff Link to last year’s Vogelbach hiring Link to Vogelbach promo Link to article on PhamGraphs Link to negativity bias wiki Link to team batting LI Link to batter opp_DRA- Link to team batter opp_DRA- Link to lineup construction study Link to DRA- explainer Link to DRC+ explainer Link to Canha’s BP player card Link to Pham’s BP player card Link to August Pham incident Link to EW Episode 2363 Link to PH PA leaders Link to Eric on Okamoto Link to NPB HR since 2019 Link to MLBTR on Okamoto Link to MLBTR on Takahashi Link to FG payroll page Link to FG post on Mahle Link to team SP projections Link to FG top 50 FA Link to Ben on pennant complacency Link to Harbaugh firing Link to latest Hang Up and Listen Link to Albies TikTok  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

How are you? I'm okay We got so much to do delay Break it in balls And blaking snows And those stats won't blast themselves Effectively wild Effectively wild

Effectively wild Effectively wild Effectively wild Hello and welcome to episode 2423 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. How are you?

I'm fine. Sounds so convincing. I'm glad that you're doing so well. So if you are thrown for a little. loop and rocked on your axis by former players becoming coaches shortly after they were playing, then you must have been flummoxed indeed by the news that the Brewers had hired Daniel Vogelbach as a hidden coach. Was that...

Is he really? Okay. Well, you hadn't heard, but I hope this doesn't ruin your day because you were doing so well as we just established, and this might endanger that sense of security. Daniel Vogelbach is 33. He is. See, that's the thing. This doesn't make me feel old exactly because he is the same age that he was before.

He didn't get older because he's a coach. But he is recently retired. He's 33. He turned 33 just recently in December. And, of course, he was playing for the Blue Jays as recently as 2024. So it's sort of sudden, although I saw a lot of reactions to this, like, wow, Daniel Vogelbach, he's a coach. already. He actually was last year, which I didn't realize. I don't think it was, yeah, he was working for the Pirates. He wasn't, I guess, a uniformed member of the Major League staff. So maybe

that's why it wasn't quite as salient. And I may not have noticed. And also, it was the Pirates he was with. So maybe, maybe, you know, if you're like a hitting assistant for the Pirates, you probably don't want to publicize that because your assistants just didn't do enough, evidently. He was a special assistant to the hitting department for the pirates last year. Okay. Needed all the help they could get, I guess. But I think he was kind of roving in that role. He wasn't solely with the big league club.

I don't know if I'm doing a better job articulating why. Because it does make me feel old. It puts me on tilt. And I think that part of the issue here is that you're, like a coach is a position of some authority, right? It's a position that is founded on an expectation and understanding of expertise. And so if a 33-year-old can be judged to have that expertise, I'm not saying that they can't be, but if they are, and then I'm older than them,

it feels, I feel quite old. I feel quite a bit older. And so, again, it's fine. But is it, you know? It doesn't make me feel older, but it does, it is jarring. It just, because I have a mental image as someone who is still a player and of an age where they could be an active player. Right. And then they cross that divide into coaching.

Right. And that feels almost more final than if you just retire. You could always unretire. I don't know if it happens. often or ever that someone has retired as a player become a coach and then unretired. Sometimes you retire as a player, you're away from the game, you realize you don't like being away from the game, you go back to the game and you try to play again. But maybe it's also that just our mental model of coaches in general has to be changed

because we do think of coaches as older and wizened and experienced. And I would guess that coaches on the whole have gotten younger. I don't have the data on that. There have always been guys who go straight from playing to coaching. I mean, that's a time-honored tradition in baseball and other sports, too. But I would guess that on the whole, yeah, there's a little less of the just old coach who's been bouncing around forever because teams actually care about player development at the major league level now. Sure. And so the old idea of the coaches just being the manager's drinking buddies and they're old timers together and they're not really expected to do all that much coaching.

It's more just about, I don't know, keeping people in line or whatever. That has kind of been phased out and you are expected to actually coach and make people better. And maybe there's also more tolerance for coaches themselves developing as coaches at the big league level, even as they are developing players. at the big league level because you might expect someone like Vogelbach who's recently out of the game as a player to go down to the lower levels and work his way up again.

That is traditional too. I guess there are fewer lower levels now with the contraction of the minors, but you still don't have to skip straight to the big leagues, I guess. He did have the one year apprenticeship where he was at multiple levels. I was just reading the story

of how he got that Pirates gig. And it's funny. I don't know that baseball our professional sports is any different from any other industry, but it so often is just your connections and who you know, and that's how you get the job. That's just how it happened. Because when Vogelbach was with the Blue Jays in 2024, Matt Haig was an assistant coach with them then, and he suggested to Vogelbach that if he wanted to get into coaching, he should reach out to him. And then Haig was named the Pirates Hitting coach right after that. And then

Vogelbach, who had already been in Pittsburgh as a player once, also just neatly transitions. You know, it's just like he had a buddy as someone who coached him and vouched for him, I guess. And that's kind of all it takes. Like you hear so much about, oh, so many rounds of interviews for managers and front office folks. And with coaches, sometimes it really is just, oh, yeah, that guy was a player. And I played with him. And I know him from back in the day. I'm sure it's more than that.

You have to have a good reputation and you can't just be friends with someone, but, you know, other people will vouch for you. And you probably have some aptitude toward coaching or you've expressed some interest in it or you think about things in an analytical way or whatever it is. But still, even in this era where it is far from a prerequisite that you have to have played professionally to become a coach or have been a big leaguer, it still helps quite a bit to have been a big leaguer. Yeah, I think that, you know, I don't want to speak too broadly about it because I'm sure that there's there's differences from org to org, you know, I don't want to say that every guy who gets a job after playing without having done a lot of coaching is like undeserving of it. Like playing is valuable experience to that. And some of these guys, you know, I'm thinking of some high profile examples maybe, but sometimes guys get hired and you think, oh, they're like, you know, Barry Bond. didn't last very long as a hitting coach just because you're able to do it or do it really well doesn't mean that you're going to be a good instructor and even guys who you know maybe have a more

mixed track record of big league production can still have valuable insight even if they weren't able to necessarily execute it themselves in the course of their careers but it is funny when they kind of cycle back through like this or it's like how do you know daniel vocal back's going to be able to instruct well. But, you know, not say you can't. I don't know. Yeah. And he didn't skip straight from playing to coaching. He kind of had that apprenticeship where it was kind of a quasi-coach and player development person at multiple levels. But I guess part of it also is that there are just so many coaches. Yeah. Because he's a hidden coach for the Brewers, but he's not the hidden coach for the Brewers. He's a hidden coach for the Brewers. They hired another

one at the same time, and there's another one, a returning one who's the lead hitting coach, so they have three hitting coaches in the majors, the lead hitting coach, and then two other hitting coaches, and Bogelbach is one of them, so he can be kind of the rookie hitting coach. Because when I go to the Brewers

roster page for coaches, they have 16 people listed, yeah, including manager Pat Murphy, and that's including a couple of bullpen catchers, but even so, and the bullpen coach, but you have like two major league game preparation specialists, and you have the pitching coach and a pitching coordinator and

an assistant pitching coach, and you have a major league field coordinator, and you have an offense and strategy coordinator who's different from the hitting coaches. So it takes a village, and that makes sense, I think. I mean, you know, it's probably cost-efficient if you can actually coach and improve someone and help them in any kind of measurable, tangible way, then And it probably makes sense to pay for another coach. And some coaches, I wonder whether former MLB players command higher salaries as coaches. Oh, yeah. Just because some of them aren't doing it for the money.

They just kind of want to stay in the game or they want to help the next generation of players. But also, if they made a lot of money, then it's kind of a different proposition for them than for someone who never had a big league salary. So I wonder whether it takes more to sign. a coach like that to sort of persuade them to go along with the grind and everything. Maybe not. I don't know if you have enough desire to coach. Maybe, yeah, it's not really the salary that's doing it for you. If that were the case, then maybe we would see ex-players phased out because you could get cheaper coaches.

Sure. But I guess that's a way that you could sort of break someone in. And if you have three hitting coaches, maybe it's even more beneficial to have someone like Vogelbach who's the same age as a lot of the players. and played with or against some of them and they know who he is and he could kind of be that conduit almost. You know, I guess it's odd because, like, you wouldn't want all the players

to go to Vogelbach because he's the guy they know and ignore the lead hitting coach and there might be, like, you know, interpersonal issues to sort out there, but as sort of like the friendly face of the hitting coach triumvirate than maybe having a former player there whom other players are comfortable confiding in, that could help, I guess.

You are still limited to, I think it's seven uniformed coaches who are in the dugout during games, not including the manager. So even if they're 14 or 16 people listed, they're not all on the field at any given time. There, but they can play some parts pre and post game and be around and it makes sense, I think. you know, probably teams just underutilized coaches for much of major league history and it wasn't as big of business and the budgets and the payrolls weren't as big. And maybe they just couldn't help as much. They didn't have as many tools at their disposal and it was all just based on experience and received wisdom as opposed to technology and data that you could help people

apply. Anyway, Daniel Vogelberg's Hidden Coach, we can all just get used to that idea. Yeah. Well, and one final thought on this, it's not surprising to me, and I think we've maybe talked about this a bit in the past that, you know, a team like the Brewers where maybe you are meaningfully payroll constrained would find value in investing in additional coaching resources so that you can really try to maximize the development of your players at the minor league and big league level. because sure, maybe I don't know what Daniel Vogelback is making this year maybe though

you know Daniel Vogelback commands I don't know a number whatever that number is even if there is

a premium because he has big league experience it's going to be less than even like one year

of a reliever on the free agent market so if you if you are able to say with any

amount of certainty that that person is providing value and that the role is providing value to the club. It seems like pretty inexpensive value relative to the cost of a

big leaker. So it's not surprising to me that the brewer should be in on that sort of thing. It would be tough to stab last this, but I wonder whether former players tend to become coaches, if they become coaches for teams they played for, which I think is, you know, not always the case, but often. Yeah, but I wonder whether they, in addition to becoming coaches more often for teams they played for, they become coaches more often for teams they played well for. Because Daniel Volgobach, he had a short stint in Pittsburgh, but he hit quite well there. And he hit pretty decently in Milwaukee as well. Whereas with the Blue Jays, for instance, Volgabach had a 59 career OPS plus, you know, in 84 plate appearances. But he like got designated for assignment or, you know,

that was the end of his career. So even though that was the most recent. recent place he played, it was not the first place he coached or even the second place he coached. And I wonder whether that's a coincidence just because, you know, I guess if a team kind of cuts you, maybe they're hard feelings, even if he didn't really play well enough to stay, or just you don't really impress people. He had two separate stints with Toronto once very briefly in 2020. But like if you don't hit for that team, it's not as if your career numbers or any different, but if the decision makers in charge there didn't see you

hit, and like you, you know, are they going to hire you to be a hitting coach if you really needed a hidden coach when you were there? Yeah. Not that, you know, successful hitting coaches are always good hitters, in fact. See the Barry Bond's example. Right, often just the opposite. So, so yeah,

was Bond's bad or was he he just, he wasn't long tenured? He wasn't long tenured. Yeah, he didn't last that. Yeah, I am taking the, the, the, the, the, the, of his stay as an indication that he was not able to sort of translate his skill. But I don't know. I haven't seen reporting on that one way or another. It's an assumption that I'm making. But I could see, and again, it's a speculation on my part, but, and we've maybe talked about this

on the pod before even, it's like if you're that sort of exceptional at something, and I don't mean to suggest that Barry Bonds was only a good hitter because of like natural ability. like he worked very hard and I'm there and blah blah I know famously not but right like you know yeah but but the distinction I'm trying to draw is that like sometimes we assume that there is just like this like gift from God kind of aspect to guys who are that preternaturally gifted hence the you know it's sort of preternatural but you know I can imagine that if you are are that skilled if you are that much better at doing something, then not only your average hitter, but then the vast majority of hitters, that being able to articulate in a useful way to someone who is like replacement level, what they ought to do to be a viable big league hitter, that there would be something just maybe lost in translation there, right? It's like the story about the guy who asked Zach Rankie to watch his bullpen,

and at the end, he's like, what can I do better? And he's like, well, you could throw harder. And it's like, well, can I? You know, and well, now he may be good because we train for Velo. But it's like, well, yeah, yeah, okay. But like, what else do you have for me? And I wonder if some of the very best guys can actually struggle to break through and say what tweaks need to be made, what change in stance they need to do because there is something about it that is intuitive to them.

They obviously marry that sort of natural skill and maybe intuition for how their body ought to move and what have you with a lot of work and reps and instruction of their own. But I just wonder if you were like, I don't know, just like be really good. Have you considered being better than you, is that helpful? Is that a helpful piece of you back for me to be like, hey, what if you hit better than you do? So yeah, thanks very. Well, I wish him well in this next phase of his career. Surprised you didn't go to the nationals. He'd fit right in there age-wise.

But to answer your question, I'm sure that how you performed has something to do with it. But I also, it doesn't surprise me when those guys end up working for teams they know because it's like part of being a good teacher, I think is like having a nice way about you, right? like being able to be socially adept and know how to communicate with different kinds of guys and hopefully different skill levels and, you know, what better way to have a sense of that in someone than to have had like a big league season with them and to observe them in a clubhouse and know what kind of teammate they are. And like, is this guy able to talk to different demographics of players and sort of get along well? And there's more to to being a good. good teacher than like getting along with people right there are times where you have to like be stern

and all sorts of stuff but i would imagine like that can be sort of invaluable vetting to be like yeah we we had Daniel for a year and what a time we had with him it was great the only thing that i'm upset about is that this further cement that he will never steal a base in the big leagues and i just feel like i was lied to but what if he ends up being what if the what what if his trajectory takes him to being a base coach and then he can tell other people to steal. Would that be satisfying to you?

Would that become the running, base stealing coach too while he's at it? What if he's just like hyper aggressive sense all the time and they're like Daniel you shouldn't be doing that and he's like

but that guy's so much faster than I was surely he can steal a base. I just feel like I was sold a bill of goods. It's still... You were sold a bill of goods. You should be mad about that. Yeah. Class action suit.

that promo from when the rules change. It's still on the MLB YouTube channel, and the title is Daniel Vogelbach stealing a bass. It's possible with the new bigger bases. And I guess the fact that he didn't do it does not disprove that it was possible. It still, it was possible. He just didn't do it.

But I'm upset that he didn't do it because I really think he could have. And maybe if he were still playing, just seeing all the slowish guys who are prolific base dealers, Now, you know, just seeing what Josh Naylor did and Juan Soto and all the rest, I just, I absolutely feel like he could have stolen a base and he wouldn't have even had to get caught trying that many times to pull it off. So that's one disappointment for me. I know.

Oh, well, all right. While we are talking about experience players, should we discuss fam graphs? You know I was going to bring up fam graphs. So for anyone who didn't see, there's some. an article on Monday at the Athletic by Will Salmon and, you know, Saris. And it's about Tommy FAMM's tips for improving advanced stats. And his dream model, he has come up with a name, and it is fam graphs. And he says, in the article he's quoted as saying, it's pretty self-explanatory of the name's origin. And I guess it is. I do appreciate, I'm sure you appreciate that

they camel-cased or Pascal-cased fam graphs. Sure. So they did capitalize the G. I don't know whether FAM himself specified that or Eno and Will or athletic copy editors did, but that's much appreciated. Anyway, he has some suggestions. He is finding some faults and some advanced stats. And that's not unusual for a player or former player to have some notes for the stat heads, particularly when they're unemployed. Well, I guess that's true too, but yes, he is a free agent. He is looking for work. And perhaps that's part of the grievance that he has here, the gripes, although, as we know from past discussions, Tommy Fam, no shortage of gripes and grievances and altercations. But this time, he has more of a point than he has in past times that we've talked about, Tommy Fam. I'm receptive to his thoughts here. I would say that usually when,

a player or especially a former player has some complaint about a stat or some critique for saber metrics or something. Often the thing that they're saying the numbers leave out is not actually left out. They'll just be like, they don't account for this or that. And then I read it. I'm like, yeah, but it does though. And so sometimes they're just under-informed, I would say, about what the stat actually does. I guess there's an element of that here, depending on which stat you're talking about. Yeah, but I think in general a better, a more accurate description of some of the gaps than we often see.

Yes, I think so. Yeah, this was more on point than usual. And I think especially when it's a former player who's been out of the game for a while, they're less likely to be really clued in to the modern states of advanced analytics. And so, you know, players who are playing, they are steeped in this stuff and they tend to have a better sense of it than a talking head who's, you know, on some studio show and has been out of the game for a while and might not have kept up with things. But, yeah, it's often either kind of ill-informed, like they want it to include something that's already included, or it's just sort of a niggling point. It's kind of, okay, yeah, maybe there's something to that, but it's probably not a big deal.

And I guess the fan complaint falls into that category, kind of. Or sometimes I just completely disagree with the idea that a stat should include. the thing that the player says it should include or it's just like impossible because how could you possibly measure something? But anyway, the main complaint here that the article led with is about adjusting for opponent quality

and specifically the quality of opposing pitchers. So I'll just quote from the piece here at the heart of one matter for fam is the chasm between playing for a winning or losing team. Fam who has been on both sides of that equation says that playing for a powerhouse means a chance to feast on lesser pitchers when your team is leading comfortably.

Alternatively, playing for a non-contender sometimes means facing high leverage relievers more often as superior opponents close out another victory. And then Pham is quoted as saying it was just so many guys like that where I'm like, damn, rather than facing the mop-up guy where you know you can tack on another hit or walk, whatever it is, you're losing so many at bats.

Or plate appearances, but yeah. Yes. I think you should write him a letter and be like, I don't want to address any of your sabermetric concerns. I'm more concerned about the ab bat versus played appearance discrepancy throughout. Yes. So he's saying that the quality of your team

dictates the quality of pitchers you face and that if you're playing for a team that's really good, you're going to be blowing out your opponents and you're just going to be facing a lot of low leverage arms. Whereas if you're playing for a non-contender, then you're going to be facing better pitchers because the opponent is going to be putting in their high leverage guys to close out a victory. Now, on the surface, I don't know that that completely holds water. Right.

Because if you're bad team and you're facing a good team and you're losing, you're going to see their lower leverage arms. You're not going to see their higher leverage arms. Why would they put their higher leverage arms in against that bad team? If they're winning, that doesn't make sense. Yeah, it should work both ways. So if you're, yeah, if you're a powerhouse, then you're feasting on lower pitchers because you're lower leverage pitchers because you're blowing out your opponent. But if you're the bad team, then you're the one being blown out and you're still going to face a lot of low leverage pitchers. So I don't know that that is completely consistent and maybe that's kind of, you know, an example of negativity bias, right?

It's like when something good happens to you or something bad happens to you, you're more likely to remember the bad thing and dwell on that. And there's probably an evolutionary advantage to that because you want to stay away from the thing that was life-threatening and the thing that was pleasant. Well, if you forget about that, that's okay. It's not necessarily going to get you killed or something. Sure. So maybe, yeah, he's remembering the moments where he was downed. The Pirates were losing and the other team is bringing. bringing in their closer to shut them down or something.

But I'm sympathetic to the idea that advanced stats showed or could account for opponent quality. We've talked about this plenty of times. And some of them do, in fact. Baseball reference does OPS Plus does. And DRC plus baseball prospectus metric does. It's not displayed publicly anywhere, I don't think. I don't think you can easily look up the quality of opponents that someone faced. Baseball prospectus used to display that, but doesn't anymore.

Yeah, so I do wish you could look that up, but it is baked in under the hood. It is not for WRC Plus. And we've talked about the merits of that argument. I think on balance, if I could snap my fingers and make WRC Plus account for opponent quality, I guess I would. I probably would prefer it that way, but it's not a big deal. And there are arguments against it, too. Just, you know, you're getting more and more abstract,

and maybe you just want to know the value of someone's production without factoring in opponent quality. We are factoring in, like, league quality and ballpark. And so it's always a matter of where do you draw the line before it gets, you know, kind of theoretical. in a sense, or it's so adjusted that people start thinking it's some sort of imaginary number as opposed to what actually happened, which is a critique that gets leveled against baseball prospectus's stat sometimes. So it's kind of a balance. I don't consider it a big drawback of

the stat or anything, but I think it might be worth accounting for, I don't know, where you stand on it. I tend to think two things. One, I think that in general, this stuff sort of balances itself out over the course of an entire season, right, where, sure, we're not accounting for opponent quality per se. There are questions about, like, well, opponent quality, when? Like, average opponent quality? Because it's not like guys' performances the same over the course of an entire season. So there's that part of it. Like, again, how abstract do you want to get? But I think in general, like, these things sort of balance out to something resembling average. I also, let me see if I can articulate the sort of broader philosophical issue I maybe draw from this.

He's not wrong to say that like if you, if you're a hitter and you happen to just by luck up the draw get a bunch of not good or lower leverage, so maybe we'll call them less good opponents because they're all big leakers, right? Maybe not all of them for the entire season. But like in general, like big league caliber pitching. Yeah, by definition, if you're in the big leagues, yeah. Right. But like maybe you just by luck of the draw are hitting on days where your team is a big and you're seeing more lower leverage relievers.

You're seeing more fifth starters. You're seeing, you know, just like a less good version of the majors than other clubs are. You play in a division with poorer competition across the board, right? We talk about this within the context of the central is a good bit. And you kind of feast on that less good pitching, whereas a bad team and a good division, maybe you get beat up on by better pitching, even if you're able to sort of square the circle that Tommy Fam is talking about where you're probably actually seeing lower leverage arms because you're a bad team and you're maybe getting blown out.

But, you know, the average opponent quality is just better on a better team than is on a less good team. Well, okay, you're right that those hitters are getting credit, quote, unquote, for performance against less good arms. But you really want to stand on the notion that, like,

you aren't able to beat up on better arms, and so you should get credit for that, right? There's just sort of a, like, philosophy of offensive crediting and value that I don't know that I quite can square there. So I think that,

in general, these things don't really end up making that huge of a difference, right? The thing that's probably going to make the bigger difference is, like, what is your innate skill level as a hitter? But even if it did, I'm like, well, I don't know, be a better hitter then. And I'm sounding a little sassy toward Tommy Pham, and I don't mean to because I think that, like, having a very granular understanding of the real shape of a hitter's production is valuable. I think the reassurance that I could maybe offer big league hitters is like teams aren't looking at our version of war to decide what guys to sign, right? Like it might be an input into their system, I guess, but like they have their own models and those models have many more inputs and those inputs are more granular than what is necessarily going into war.

Now, I am sympathetic to the idea, and here, you know, I get entirely where the frustration can come from. War does shape popular perception of the quality of players and more simplistic inputs like, you know, the version of war that is used for, say, the arbitration bonus pool, that is used in making arbitration cases. those inputs do matter in especially in the early parts of a player's career in terms of how much they're paid at a time when like getting paid more means a lot more to you as a player because you've been making minor league money or the league minimum so I totally understand when players are like what the heck with this you know like I'm out here producing and I'm trying to get credit for that so that I can win an arbitration case. so that I can inform the public's perception of me,

which can have knock on effects for your ability to, you know, sign endorsement deals and all sorts of stuff. So I'm not saying it doesn't matter. That would be a weird claim to make about the site that I spend so much time working for. But I do think that when it comes to the way that teams are sort of both evaluating and valuing players, that the models are much more sophisticated. Now, having set up, all of that. I do think that like it is incumbent upon players and particularly their representation to be able to make compelling cases of value that maybe tell a more nuanced story of the

player's production than just simple public facing metrics would. And so having sophistication around that stuff is I think valuable and really important to you getting paid what you're worse. So I'm going to let you talk and then I have more say about it. Yeah, Fem did say that he's talked about this with his agency when he was looking for a job before the 2025 season to try to dig up some stats. There is a quote here from an unnamed NL executive who corroborates some of what FAM says and says in the example of worst teams facing more higher leverage pitchers, he's right. But even over a full season, we're not talking about a ton of plate appearances. Thank you. Played appearances. So the

impact is probably a few points here and there. Still, though, I would guess 90% or more of the models that teams use incorporate all these factors, even if the public does not get the view. So that's what you were saying. Now, his actual contention here, so FAMM says a 100 WRC plus on the Pirates is not the same as a 100 WRC plus on the Yankees or the Dodgers, the best offenses in baseball. I don't know that that's true, broadly speaking. So the article does note that maybe the pirates are a perfect storm for facing high leverage opposing pitchers because they did have good pitching and they did have a terrible lineup and they played in a park that somewhat suppresses offense and so maybe you play lower scoring games and closer

games potentially because your pitching is holding the other guys down and your bats are bad so sure so maybe and as they note the authors according to things. photographs, the Pirates hitters had the highest average leverage index of any team in 2025, 1.05, where average is one. Again, there's not that much spread around the average. But the Pirates were tops. So that sort of supports what he's saying. On the other hand, I did get some data from baseball prospectus because they do have it behind the scenes. And it's an input into DRC Plus, deserve runs created. And so Robert Ow, who's the director of operations at BP, set me a spreadsheet with the opposing DRA minus for every hitter in 2025. And then he also aggregated it by team.

So DRA minus is the BP equivalent of, say, FIP minus or ERA minus. It's the same idea. It's just an index stat for pitchers, lower is better. And so this just gives the close. collective DRA minus of every hitter and every team. So if you look up by team in 2025, the pirates faced dead average opposing pitching. So the average, for whatever reason here, after he did the aggregation that made the average 100.5 instead of 100. But the pirates were at 100.3. They actually were just almost exactly average. I guess they face the 10th hardest opposing pitching.

There's pretty much nothing there. And if you look for any kind of correlation between how good a team is and the quality of opposing pitching, there isn't one. So vastly, I think, overriding whatever might be true based on like the quality of the team or the quality of the offense or any of that stuff is just like what division you're in and which teams you're playing more often. you were just saying, if you're, you know, in a weaker division, then you're going to be facing weaker pitching staffs. So the hardest pitching was faced by the Tampa Bay Rays batters last year, which makes sense, right? Because they're in the A.L. East, and a lot of A.L. East teams were pretty good. And so they're facing the Yankees and the Red Sox and the Blue Jays all the time. And so, and again, the numbers, there's not much of a spread here, really, because it's a long

season and it evens out, and because DRA and DRC, like, these things are kind of heavily regressed, and so there's not that much of a difference. But the raise, you know, a hundred is an average DRA minus, or maybe it's 100.5 here. The raise were at 98.7, and that was the hardest pitching anyone faced. And the Yankees were at 99.2. They were next. And on the easy end, it was AL Central teams. It was the Tigers. At 102.1, they faced the easiest opposing pitching followed by the Royals and the White Sox were up there too. So to the extent that there is any difference here, it really seems to be dictated much more by the opposing teams you're facing and the division you're in

than the particulars of how good your team is or your offense or any of that stuff. So it actually appears that the pirates were basically smack dab in the middle. And Robert also sent me this by batter. So, you know, I could look up not just the pirates, but fam himself. And it turns out that Tommy Pham faced almost exactly average opposing pitcher quality, according to BP, 100.1. That's as close as you can get just about. It's a tenth of a runoff. Actually, O'Neill Cruz, fellow pirate, was 100 bang on.

So, yeah, there does not appear to be anything to this, at least last season, specifically for the pirates. The hardest pitching, according to BP, was faced by former Ray and now current pirate Jank Mangum. So he was at 97.3 opposing DRA minus and the easiest opposing pitching. I just said the tigers on the hole face the easiest opposing pitching. And the easiest for an individual batter was a tiger, Carrie Carpenter, at 104.3. Well, sure, because he was always shielded from. the worst side of his platoon split. But this is the thing, right?

It's like he shouldn't, he, he did well when he was shielded, right? Like that still counts, you know? I'm not trying to, yeah, I'm not sure if this would account for platoon advantage or not. This might just be quality of pitcher regardless of platoon. I'm not positive, but I guess. It would be baked in there a little bit, right? If you're only ever facing opposite hand. my point is like he you know his splits are so dramatic that they deploy him strategically as well they should like he he had a last year he had a 122 WRC plus against right handed pitching and a 71 against left handed pitching right like he's they are they are quite thoughtful in the way that they deploy him and that works out great because then he he hits you know he it's like a legitimate skis

that he's demonstrating it's just that they are thoughtful and how they deploy him so i you know i just yeah it's it's in there a little bit right yeah so i'm sympathetic to the overall argument that stats could account for opposing player difficulty and some of them do and i might even prefer that they do but it doesn't make that much of a difference and also for fam specifically it doesn't seem to have made any difference last year if you did adjust and baseball respectis does adjust and there would be next to no adjustment for him. He also goes on to say that

that sets should consider the quality of lineup. So if a pitcher has to work through a strong lineup, then that might tire them out. But also the way that he's looking at it from a batter's perspective, he's saying that if a pitcher is working through a strong lineup, then having to grind

out those played appearances against those guys then makes it easier for the next batter so he's basically saying that say Jose Ramirez who is not in a strong lineup but is good

like that's even more impressive because the pitchers are having an easier time with the rest of the lineup and so yeah he's suggesting like they'd be worn down and they'd be easy prey basically if you're in a strong lineup

which I don't know I mean maybe that also falls into the category of could be, but it's going to be like on the margins. I'm almost positive because it's not even like, you know, we don't have a AL and NL where one has DHS's and one has pitcher hitters where you get that breather. You know, it's still like real hitters for the most part top to bottom. And whenever someone says like lineup factors, it's always just on the margins.

Like the idea that, oh, I have a bunch of good on base guys on this team. So it would be more beneficial to add a power guy who could kind of cash in those runs. Or if you have a bunch of power guys, then it would be better to get an on-base guy to go with them to sort of set them up. And that's true, but it's also like it's such a small factor that it really only matters at the extremes. And generally, you just want the better hitter. And the shape of that production is almost irrelevant, not completely. but you need like a, you know, advanced simulator over the course of seasons to be able to detect the difference. I, okay, let me, let me try to put this thought out there in a way that doesn't sound like I'm

nagging Tommy Pham because I don't, I think that the places where this stuff makes the most difference to the player is when that player is more in the, complementary role player bucket than the like true everyday starter bucket because you're right. It would be wrong to say that this stuff doesn't make any difference at all because it absolutely does. And, you know, teams are to some extent in the business of like stacking marginal bits of value to something bigger. So, you know, teams care about that. they like to be able to take the big swing and pencil in like you know, eight war next to Otani's

name, but these marginal differences can make a difference when they accumulate over the course of a season, right? We spend a whole, got a whole industry around this stuff, right? But at the individual player level, I think

that that makes the most difference for the guys who are themselves sort of looking at accumulating value in part-time or platoon or complementary roles. And so, you know, we might dismiss half a win out of hand, but to them, that might be a big, big difference, right, in the way that they are perceived in the way that their rosterability is perceived. Tommy Fam himself has sort of been different versions of this guy over the course of his career. There have been times where he

has been an obvious everyday guy. There have been times where he has been more. complimentary sort of role player guy. And so I want to be sympathetic to how personal this stuff can feel when you are a good season for you as maybe like a two-win season as opposed to like a five-win season or a 10-win season, right? Where you're going to sweat the small stuff more when you're on the margins of a big league roster versus sort of firmly entrenched. And that sounds like I'm being rude and I don't mean it to, but I can hear myself. So I get how it does. And I do think that, you know, there's part of what we're always sort of pushing and pulling

against in this conversation is like, what do we think the value of the metric is? Like, what is the purpose of the metric, right? And I want war, our version and every other version, to be like thoughtful and rigorous. And I want it to have like a coherent theory of value in baseball, right? Like, I don't think that we should be indifferent to that stuff. I do worry about us, and we've talked about this a lot on the pod in the last couple of years, sort of like overselling the precision of war as an industry. Now, you and me, we're perfect.

But, like, I do worry that we have sort of oversold its precision. And so maybe we should be focused more on incorporating more and more information so that it is more and more precise. and we sort of approach something closer to the version of war that fans think we have, even if we don't. But also, I think there's value in the simplicity of something like a war that doesn't necessarily stuff more and more into it, because I think it's easier for fans to understand.

And if what you're doing is trying to, like, communicate what's valuable in thoughtful, but sort of generally broad strokes to the public side, well, maybe that's good enough. But also if you're a player and you're looking at your fan graphs page every day and you're like, well, no, surely I'm better than this and you're not accounting for the numerous ways

that I add value, I would guess that's very frustrating. So I want to have a sort of generous spirit about the whole thing. And like, yeah, camel casing's good. And I do think that there's a lot that sort of can affect the way that a player's offensive production ends up playing that we could be more precise about. I think the weather stuff is like a really interesting wrinkle that could lend greater precision to our park factors, right? As we think through, how do we really think about the way that these parks play? and are we debiting or crediting guys in the way that we should?

You know, the thing that we have talked about internally, and I've definitely mentioned before, it's like our positional adjustments are definitely due for some sort of overhaul here. Overhaul is maybe too strong. But, like, you know, I'm sympathetic to the idea that we are debiting DHS in first baseman maybe more than we ought to,

that that positional adjustment is overly harsh. But I think a lot of this stuff sort of washes out over the course of an entire season and again that's why a guy why guys who and Tommy fam you know fam graphs how how fun a thing he's not the first person to have some notes and I think you're right that like his his handle on this is pretty good and certainly better than many of the former players who grossed about advanced metrics but yeah I think that when you're like when you hear someone say well yeah over the course of full season this this all balance is out. If you're a guy who's like the weak side of a platoon, you might be like, well, I don't have a

full season. Right. Yes. You know, this matters. It matters more to me. Yeah. Or if you pinch it a lot also, I guess Carrie Carpenter does that too. That's added difficulty, so that should be accounted for also. Sure. Sure. That's a separate effect. Right. You know. Yeah. And so I'm, I find that some of the original sins of Sabromatrix is like the overconfidence and an indifference to how it impacts real people in terms of like guys keeping or losing jobs and some some players they're like this is great finally people understand how valuable i've been you know so it can cut both ways but i want to be mindful of the the fact that this is like something that impacts real people and i don't want to have an indifference to how that can wash over them but you know like kerry carpenter's maybe a

good example of this stuff like kerry carpenter in in 87 games in 2024 in less than 300 plate appearances, plate appearances, not at odds. He was a 158 WRC plus hitter, right? He was a two and a half win player. He was pressed into greater service in 2025, and he was a 115 WRC plus hitter. Now, that's still a valuable hitter, right?

That's 15% better than league average. He was a one and a half win player. But when he had to do a little bit more, you know, maybe we understood why he was shielded to some degree. So it's, it's, And, you know, Tommy Pham's a grown-ass man. And I can say stuff about his performance, and he doesn't need to be coddled, but I don't want to be disrespectful either.

You know what I mean? Am I making any kind of sense here? Like, they're doing a really hard thing, and they don't all do it equally well. But they are doing it better than I could, and they're doing it generally better than a replacement level player. Yeah, and there are plenty of times that a player will point out something from their own experience that could be instructive to a Stadhead, even a Stadhead who understands the game well in an abstract, less personal way.

So, yeah, and he seems to have thought a lot about this. And I'd much rather have him talking about this and thinking about this than some other times that have caused us to discuss Tommy Fam on this podcast. But, you know, he's been mindful about it. He's, like, thinking through, even if I have nits to pick and even if I might think that his sort of on balance, he is, like, putting. in some parts of this conversation and it's like a long interview and um you know again like parts of it are i think more sort of meaningful than others i think you might be putting the infastis

on the wrong syllable at certain points as it were but like you know he's clearly a thoughtful guy as it pertains to this stuff so yeah i'll put the data that robert sent me online if anyone wants to peruse it and yeah to be clear last year at the team level the correlation between team winning percentage and opposing pitcher quality as measured by PP was literally 0.0.0.0. So there was no correlation there. So you do have to kind of take it to its logical conclusion. I guess if you want to do this, then you can't just account for how good your team was or how close their games were, but also who you played and how good those teams were. And maybe you won't like that answer. Of course, you can also do these calculations.

for opposing better quality for pitchers which I didn't ask Robert to send me but that's there and that's factored into DRA minus and whatever else and the other thing that you alluded to, the weather, that was another component of this piece that FAM was talking about how

statcast should factor in more environmental factors. He was citing one specific ball that carried because of the wind and so he then gets docked because of that. He thinks unfairly. He says it's a really flawed system, but it's getting factored into our value.

I guess I would quibble with, I mean, really flawed? Yeah. Yeah, compared to what, though, I guess, compared to... Right, we do have park factors and like... Right, compared to perfect knowledge of everything. Yes, it's flawed. Compared to everything that's gone before, I think it's way better. And this is another kind of on the margins and yes, individual plays, there might be something missed. And, And, you know, he's talking about, like, with the sun. Sometimes the sun gets in your eyes and the wind and, you know, lights and catwalks and all these things. I don't think anyone's opposed to the idea of accounting for all these things. I think, I mean, Tom Tango, who works on that stuff has acknowledged that that's, like, on their roadmap or they'd like to, but it's just, it's difficult.

And there is a company called Weather Applied Metrics, and you've probably seen on broadcasts or there are, you know, adjustments for home. runs and the wind effect and what the carry was. And so in theory, you could have that applied to every batted ball and every fly ball. It's difficult because the wind sometimes changes mid play. And so you'd have to account for it not just with a single point measurement, but just like every instant, what was the wind at that second and the direction and the light? And, you know, it's kind of computationally difficult to account for all of that. And maybe the data doesn't even exist or isn't gathered that way. But ultimately, I'm sure someday, and maybe not even in the distant future, there will be some more complete accounting of these things. And there have been flaws with like wall balls, which I think is being addressed now. You know, there was like if you are making a play going back on a ball that's accounted for. But if it's near a wall, there's kind of like a wall adjustment, but it might not actually take into effect the height and the difficulty. And so, you know, bit by. By bit, these things get incrementally better.

He's not wrong about any of those things, and I don't know if anyone would disagree. I guess I would maybe differ on just the magnitude of the problem, but I get why, you know, you remember a specific batted ball where the ball took off on you, and maybe Stackass doesn't account for that, and you're thinking, oh, unfair. I was wrong. the issue was more that Carrie Carpenter was just less good versus righties. He did face lefties more. 63 plate appearances

versus 32. But also he just faced righties more and instead of having one. He was good against them but not otherworldly. Not transcendent. Not a 175 WRC plus hitter or a 122 WRC plus hitter. So sorry? I don't know.

Okay. Well, we have one more signing to discuss. Yeah. The Blue Jays stay in busy, making moves. They have signed Cosmo Okamoto, who is, I guess, the last Japanese player to come over, the last prominent one at least. And his posting deadline just passed. The Blue Jays signed him. It's a four-year, $60 million deal.

No opt-outs, unlike others. And it's a $5 million signing bonus and then a $7 million salary for him. this year and then 16 million in each of the subsequent three years. So that's actually pretty simple as these things go. So we can kind of close the book now, I guess, on the NPB posting period. And we talked a lot about the deals that Murakami and I got and how far short of expectations they fell. Not the case really with Okamoto. This was more in line with the predictions for him. Yeah. I will mention that IMA's teammate on the Sebu Lions

Kona Takahashi, another pitcher, he opted not to sign with an NLP team. He went through the whole 45-day posting window. He had offers reportedly from a few major league clubs, but evidently they weren't to his liking. And so he's saying,

Sike, I am going back to NPP. This is not the first time this has happened, but I guess you could throw that in as another data point for, oh, the Japanese players as a whole collectively underperformed expectations for them this offseason. But Takahashi was a more marginal case. He's also fairly young, but just in terms of the performance and the stuff was not

quite of the caliber of I and his numbers don't compare. And the strikeout rate is nowhere near. So that's not shocking that teams didn't bite or weren't enthused about him. As for Okamoto, he's a really good player. I like this signing, I guess I've kind of been bullish on all of these NPP players, especially the ones who signed for a lot less than they were predicted to. But Okamoto, even though this was more in line with the consensus, I think it's a good deal. I think just given how great he has been. He's like going back to 2019, I think Eric mentioned this in his blog post about the signing.

But only Murakami has more home runs in NPB over that period than Okamoto. And it's not a big gap power-wise. And that's the big calling card of Morikami. For Okamoto, he has power, but it's less light tower power. It's more, you know, hitting 30-something bombs or topping out at 41 in NPB and probably won't be that impressive in MLB. But, you know, he's not going to get the bat knocked out of his hands or anything. But he is just a really well-rounded hitter.

And so all the faults that people found in Morikami's offensive profile don't really apply to Okamoto. Because if anything, they've had opposite trajectories, really, because Morikami has gotten more and more strikeout prone in recent seasons. And Okamoto has actually cut down on his strikeouts. He struck out 11.3% of his played appearances last season and walked the same number. So he actually had a two-tenths. 10 WRC plus in NPB, and Morikami was in the same range, but just like a much more problematic profile in terms of the projections for how that will translate. At least, that seems to be the consensus view.

So it's kind of, it's interesting because they have like similar production, like couldn't be any more similar. Okamoto was a 210 WRC plus, Murakami was 211. They both had partial seasons because of injuries, but there are just fewer flaws in Okamoto's game. And also, he can at least play a passable third base, which that makes a big difference, too. He is older than Morakami, but he's not old. He's 29. He's 29.

Yeah, I mean, I think that you can wonder, like, from a positioning perspective, like, what is the optimal place to deploy him? And obviously, you know, it's not like you can slide him over to first. If you decide he can't play third base, that spot's occupied in Toronto for quite a while. But I also think that my understanding from everyone's, like, you know, time watching his defense is that he's not unplayable in the field and the bat is stout. I think that we, you know, we were pleasantly surprised by the sort of advances that the Blue Jays lineup made as, a whole in terms of contact quality and strikeout rate in 2025 relative to 2024. But I think that people reasonably wondered, like, how sticky are those gains going to be? And so bringing in a guy who is a good power hitter and also has sort of sustained his own

contact gains is a nice sort of fit and backstop there. I don't think his ceiling is quite as high as Murakami's if Murakami is able to make adjustments that better stabilize the contact part of his profile. But I think that from everything that we've seen, like Okamoto is just like a much more stable offensive producer. And I think that it's a nice addition for them. And particularly if they're of the opinion that he can play third, that's a good spot for them.

So I like it a lot. And I also just think from like a, from an overall offseason perspective, I really like the philosophy of like, let's be aggressive, let's bolster this group, let's put ourselves in a position where we feel like we're just better able to compete in this. We're not satisfied with, you know, being a couple outs away from winning a World Series. We want to go win one. And there's an interesting sort of mix here where it's like, I think that, you know,

they have some guys who they've added who are stable, producers, they have some guys who are more kind of like upside plays. And then I think you have Okamoto, who's like an interesting combination of the two, right, depending on what the defensive profile ends up looking like, how the power gets actualized in the majors. So I like it for them a lot. I think that their approach this soft season has been really exciting. And I think that, you know, the guys they've brought in are a nice fit. And it's also just nice, you know, they had this sort of always a bridesmaid, never a bride thing with some of the, you know, big marquee guys. And they've been one of the most active teams on the, on the market this winter.

Yeah. And, you know, the combination of being able to sign guys, showing that they're willing to spend money, and we're really going for it. I think these things can have kind of a snowball effect where, you know, you become an attractive destination for free agents. I don't know that's just the money piece of it, but some of it is the want, right? The demonstrated like, we're going to, let's go get it. You know. that I think that does resonate with guys and yeah I like it I think it's good they could who knows who like are they done I don't know yeah I don't know yeah I don't know if they're they're certainly in a spot where like they on the one hand they are at least by our estimates of the luxury tax like they are over the top threshold and so they are getting into like very sharp penalty territory but I think we only have them like a little bit over the threshold. told and I would argue and it's not my money so it's very easy for me

to argue that but it's like if you're gonna do it like blow it out buddy like go get Kyle Tucker what do you care like you're already paying penalties just go just go just go do it yeah go get one more what if you wouldn't go one more thought on Okamoto Eric had the

the VLO numbers how he has performed against the best hardest throwers that he has faced in MPB and he's held his own against them in contrast to Moracami. It's not the biggest sample, but hasn't shown itself to be a weakness. So, yes, I do like him and he does seem to fit that mold of guys who can make contact, but also still have some pop that Blue Jace really perfected last season. And yeah, it's been an impressive offseason for them coming off of a pennant and nearly winning a World Series. And they have not sat on their hands, rested on their laurels. They go get Dillon Sees and Co. Rodi Ponce and Rogers and Okamoto. I mean, they've been busy and, yeah, they might not be done.

And I've documented in the past, as has Sam, that the World Series loser is often more active than the World Series winner in terms of remaking their roster that the World Series winner, either they just say, well, what more can we do? We're perfect. We won so we don't have to do very much. Or they just, you know, it's good feelings and let's just bring. bring back our guys and keep the gang together. Whereas the World Series loser, there tends to be a bit more turnover and maybe it lights a fire under you and you feel like, oh, we're so close. But we have moves to make.

And you wouldn't think there'd be that much of a difference because in terms of team quality, the pennant winners are generally equivalent over the long haul. So that's playing out here, I suppose. And they might not be done because, yeah, the way they line up now, if you have Okamoto and Vlad on the corners and then maybe that moves barger to the outfield more often and you could just put

Ernie Clement at second base and you could play Andre Samenez at shortstop he gives you flexibility because he could play either middle infield position but they could bring Bobichette back if they wanted to I mean they'd be a better team with Bobichette

at second base and Clement I know he was just a postseason and world series hero but It's, you know, he's not exactly that kind of player. So having Clemente's a backup and a utility guy, that would be a nice luxury. And if you had Bobeshett at second and Jimenez, it's short, I mean, that's pretty fantastic. So I don't know if they will break the bank like that or get Tucker or whatever. But, but yeah, they could if they did want to.

There's room at the end, as you say. Yeah. There's much less room in the outfield. So, like, Kyle Tucker is a weird fit for them roster-wise. But yeah, like, they could be. bring Bo back. They could bring Bo back and be like, hey, here's our starting second basement and Bo Bichette. I think that they should play Ernie Clement every day, though, because I finally figured out who he looks like. And so... Right. That's right. We talked about that.

It's like, put Dominic Monaghan in the lineup every day. Yeah. It's so satisfying when you, when the pieces fit together and you're like, oh, I got it. Now I don't have to keep asking this question on the couch every time I watch a blue cheese game. Like, who does he look like? Yeah. And then, and then we figured it out. And then I forgot, and then I was kindly reminded again by our lovely Patreon live stream, where I was like, someone was like, oh, he looks like, was he Mary or Pippin? Which of it? Dominic Monaghan was Mary, right? Mary, right. Yeah, yeah.

So the other more sharp featured guy was Pippin. Yes, yeah. So I do think that we should start thinking of the Js as the powerhouse they are, Billy Boyd, by the way, Pippen. Billy Boyd. The Js over the past year, you know, they signed Vlad to the mega contract, of course. And they were trying to sign guys to big deals before. They were just missing out on many of them. But now look where their payroll is because because they were going up against the Dodgers, I think some less informed followers of baseball saw that as.

Not us, though. Not us. We were clear as crystal on this question. We were crystal clear. Yes, even the brewers were playing up the David versus Goliath and big spenders versus small market and all of that. And that was true. But in the World Series, yeah, compared to the Dodgers, they are the big behemoth and so everyone's smaller. But the Blue Jays had a top five payroll last year.

Now they are second in terms of projected luxury tax or competitive balance tax payroll. They are directly behind the Blue Jays and ahead of the Phillies. And we're saying they might have more room. to spend and and that's appropriate i think because they have a whole country to themselves it's not a high population country but still disproportionately the people there who follow baseball follow the blue jays and they have a big market toronto's big their broadcast situation they're reaching tons of people they have just a corporate parent that has a huge bankroll behind it rogers like you know they should be playing in those waters and and jumping into the deep end spending wise

And they are, to their credit. They are. Yeah, but we should think of them that way, you know? Yes. They're just like the big powerhouse. And, yeah, in terms of like track record, they're not the Yankees or the Red Sox. But in recent years and now and their financial resources, they're bigger than those teams. They've shown more of a willingness to spend.

They have those resources. So we absolutely should be thinking of Toronto as a titan of the sport when it comes to resources. and fortunately they seem to see themselves that way now. I agree. And it's like such a, what a beautiful international group, you know? You had so many different countries represented here. I just think it's, I think it's nice. But yeah, they are acting like the top five payroll that they were,

who were disappointed by the outcome of their season and want to be in a spot to say, we're going to we're going to go do the damn thing again and i think it's great so yeah i think so too okay and uh and it has benefited the world series losers because i've mentioned you know there's kind of like a complacency that sets in perhaps if you are a world series winner obviously the dodgers repeated you know they made it back just fine and they didn't rest on their laurels they spent tons of money again last off season but on the whole in the past the world series loser has been more likely to return to the playoffs the next year than the World Series winner,

which might be counterintuitive, but it does seem as if they are more likely to just be aggressive and make additional moves. So good addition, bodes well for the Blue Jays. Not a whole lot of other high profile moves have happened. It's just the Giants signing Tyler Mallee, I guess. Man, the Giants, they're so 500. Like, they're just the most resolutely 500 team. It stands in such sharp contrast with the Blue Jays, too, because you're talking about, like, we have to view them as the powerhouse. Like, their narrative is so different now than it was 12 months ago, 18 months ago. They were kind of grouped together because the Giants were the other team that perennually kept missing out on the top targets, some of the same targets the Blue Jays had. But the Blue Jays now have nailed it, and they've gone to the World Series, and they've started signing those guys and the Giants.

I mean, it's just not an inspiring collection of transactions that they have had this offseason. You're talking about, like, coming off yet another 500 year and you're picking up Adrian Houser and Tyler Malley and it's just yon, you know, it's just like a snooze fest. I mean, it's fine. Those are like, okay, you know, mid back rotation arms to pick up, but it's not an imposing rotation. So it's just boring, you know, it's not going to get anyone excited for the. season these these moves they're making it's so funny because like i don't want to i don't know i think that tyler mallee like kind of i always want to call him tyler molly i know that's wrong but i do want to call in that yeah it's because of that that h there it's just you want to say

maha it goofs me up every single time i'm just like what are we i think james fegan wrote the yeah james wrote the sort of player notes for because tyler molly was on like the back the back part of our top 50 free agent post which you know does that have something to do with the constitution of this particular class i mean sure but like you know james kind of ran through the issues that he's had there have been these there have been injuries there was a tommy john his velo dipped and as but as james noted like in between all of those things he kind of carved last year like he when he was on the field he was or on the mound rather the mound is on the field yeah anyway you He was very good, you know?

So do I like signing Tyler Malley? I'm going to get it wrong. Now I'm psyched myself out. Now I'm all twisted. But do I like it as like an upside signing for San Francisco? I do. Like, if you told me that he was healthy and had a fully, like, intact season and was, like, a three and a half win guy, I'd believe it. But you need the home.

run signings, too, right? Now, I don't dislike parts of their roster, but it is pretty mid, considering the division that they plan. Now, like, hopefully you get, like, a full, normal season from Willie Adomis, and, like, Raphael Devers can settle in, and we love Matt Chapman, and, like, you know, like, yeah, things went better for Zhang Hou Lee in his second year. he kind of got a nice mulligan and now it's like a real

you wouldn't call it a mulligan but like a second full healthy season okay like there's stuff to like here and Logan Webb's is I just think that they should try to get back to the postseason while Jesse Plemons can play Logan Webb in a movie I think

I think that's the way they should mark time you know it's like based on how Jesse Plemons is aging is that a weird marker for a major league team yeah I'm open to that is a piece of feedback. But I do think, I mean, Adrian Houser, I'm always going to have such affection for Adrian Houser now. Because of your minor league for eachie draft pick. Yeah. Yeah. Like he really, you know, he really, um, carried the torch for me. He did, that was a big,

it was a big, good effort on his part. I think that I talked about it at an appropriate amount at an appropriate level. I didn't go on and on about it, unlike some people. Well, but. Yeah. It wasn't quite as impressive in accomplishment. I still, I still, I already said this on our episode where we talked about it, that I, in my brain, he just has Colin Ray's face. And it happened again just now. It happened again just now, Ben. I'm like, oh, that's what you look like? Yeah. Still does.

Still doesn't look like Colin Ray. I don't know. I don't know. What a specific wire to be crossed, you know? It is. Yeah. Well, I would like them to swing for the fences and also connect. It's not that they haven't signed anyone to a big deal.

They signed Willie Adamas a year ago, and they signed Chapman to that extension. But, yeah, this offseason specifically, not inspiring stuff. However, there are major moves yet to be made, and that was the last thing I wanted to ask you about here. Just sort of a state of the stove taking a temperature check on the market because, you know, we're several weeks away from pitchers and catchers reporting now. But we're in the new year. And usually most of the big business. is done in December, and there remains much business to be done. And now that the posting periods are over, I don't know whether that will make things start to move, whether there were some

teams that we're waiting to see, where will Morcomi and I and others go before, you know, like, will we get Okamoto? And now other dominoes will fall. By the way, it is refreshing, I think, that these NPB players have gone to teams that you don't associate with signing NPP players. Yeah. Not just the Dodgers, though, yes, it's not the Dodgers, but, and, you know, even am I saying that he wants to take on the Dodgers and take down the Dodgers? Great.

But the fact that they didn't go to the Dodgers, they didn't go to West Coast teams, they didn't go to the Mariners, they didn't go to teams with, like, long histories of signing Japanese players, they went to the White Sox and the Astros and the Blue Chays, you know, even East Coast. And so it's good to have a little variety, I think. It might be better for MLB, which is making a big deal these days out of the Japanese fan base and the audience over there. You know, you already have plenty of people in Japan watching the Dodgers, right? So adding yet another NPB player on top of Yamamoto and Otani and Sasaki, I don't think that's going to add any marginal viewership, really.

But now you're given a bunch of people a reason to watch. White Sox games and Blue Jays games and Astros games, you know, new reasons. So you could get people more invested there in other fanbases and other teams in market. So another time zone. So that probably benefits baseball as a business. But I think it's also good for MLB fans to think, hey, we're not out of the running when one of these players comes over. Now, is that just because the Dodgers didn't seem to really want any of these guys or pursue any of these guys all that stretch? Maybe. Maybe it is that the Dodgers just sort of set out this posting period. But even so, you know, they, they aren't hogging them all. They haven't kind of cornered that market. They don't have a monopoly on NPP players. So that's good, I guess. A little variety helps. But yeah, so here we are. And usually most of the big free agents are off the board by now. But we still have four of the top five and six of the top 10 on other Ben's.

top 50 out there and that's that's a lot i think at the stage i haven't really compared to past quote-unquote normal off-season's not you know lockout off-season covid off-season etc but tucker bregman valdez bellinger still available and and bichette as we mentioned and ranger Suarez so you know these are big moves to be made on hang up and listen we kind of did a check in on hot stove season this week and my co-host Alex Kirsner asked me why things are moving so slowly and i guess i hadn't really internalized that i hadn't thought of it as so slow i don't think that they're moving that slowly it's not it's not like yeah it's it's not uh unprecedented it's not like what's going on here you know but he was wondering like does this have something to do with

impending lockout or whatever and i don't really think so i think you know sometimes it's just the vagaries of of a market and maybe we'll see things start to move now as the np players have signed but it it does mean that's like we can't close the book on this offseason and that there are teams out there that right now look lacking and lagging and they're fans that they're fans are rebellious and discontented, but by the end of the offseason, they still have the opportunity to deliver a big fish.

So, I don't know, maybe next time we could even go guy by guy and say, where does this player fit and who would be the best team to sign? You know, where would they make the biggest difference? But there are certainly some teams that the pressure's on, I think. Because, like, if you look at the most improved teams

this offseason or the most aggressive and active, probably three of the top five at least are going to be ALE's teams. It's going to be the Orioles and the Blue Jays and the Red Sox because they've all made major moves and multiple moves. And even if you

don't love the Orioles moves individually, collectively, they've done stuff. They've gotten better, certainly. And the Blue Jays have gotten better and the Red Sox have gotten better from high baselines. The Orioles had more of an improvement to make after their disappointing season. The Blue Jays

made the playoffs, went deep into the playoffs. The Red Sox made the playoffs, and they have still made moves. The Yankees have still done nada, almost. So, you know, it sounds like they really want Bellinger back, and maybe they'll get Belanger back, and if they don't get Bellinger, then, you know, maybe they strike for Tucker or something, like maybe they have a big move to make. But if you're a Yankees fan now, you're more upset than usual because your division rivals in a tough division who started the offseason looking quite competitive.

They have gotten better, and the Yankees have just stayed in place. I know they're going to get Garrett Cole back, presumably, but, yeah, like, they have not done much. So I don't know who else, like, the pressure is on right now, but they'd probably be number one on my list. I think that's probably right. Red Sox might not be done either, and the Orioles might not be done. Right. Those are two teams that you can point to and say, oh, they might still have a big addition to maybe Bregman goes back to Boston. Maybe the Orioles sign a top pitcher finally.

that puts the onus on the Yankees even more because, yeah, those guys might be getting better. I think the part of why this offseason has felt slower is that there haven't been as many big trades. So that's part of it. And I think that we do a bad job of separating those in our minds. And so we're like, oh, my God, that offseason was so busy. And I was like, was it or did Juan Soto just get traded, you know, or signed as the case may be. Three off seasons in a row or it was like very Juan Soto forward. Or two.

Two, two. Two and a half, I guess. Two and a half, where it was very one-soto-y, the soda of it all. So, to, I think that a lot of this might just be explained by the midness of this class. I also think that, like, I don't know, remember the year where Bryce Harper and Mandy Matrato signed in March? Yep, it has happened. like after pitchers and catchers had reported by by a good beat and i wonder if like you know in a lot of years it feels like the biggest name on the market like holds up the

whole market and then that guy gets signed and da da da da and i think that this year that's probably not happening to the same degree but there might be like unrealized trades that holding stuff up? Like, is Cotel Marte going to get traded? If he does, that probably changes the dynamic for some

of these clubs. Right. Or, you know, Freddie Peralta, which is likelier than a Marte trade. Yeah. I know.

But I don't know. I keep talking about how Marte is going to move. So I think he shouldn't, but what do I know? What do I know? Nothing. So it's not that I think

that this has been like a particularly busy hot show of period. Like last year was very busy and it was like super concentrated around the winter meetings right because we had soto go quick and then we didn't freed sign right after that right they pivoted immediately i remember potting about both of those guys from dallas right they pretty quickly yeah it was freed and and bellinger and yeah they made a bunch of moves so it's like okay well we're we're

moving on and devon williams yeah right and williams and so So there was a lot of activities. So maybe this is just like the Yankees being being super busy or not super busy and feeling like they needed to be busy quickly after they tried to be busy and failed, which sounds like they like, you know, got disappointed at a bar or something. But anyway, it's not that it's been fast, but it also hasn't been slow. It's been mid and the class is mid. So maybe that makes sense.

I don't know that the like prevailing wins of a potential work stoppage next offseason really have a lot to do with it. And I am still deciding what I think about the particulars of any of these contracts and whether it says anything. Mostly I just don't think that this offseason is saying anything. I think that's where I've landed where it's not that it's fast. It's not that it's slow. It's not that it's any particular way. It is it is all of those things and none of those things. And it's mostly just, I think, about.

the particular guys who are available to sign and how some of those guys' markets might be interacting with trade guys who may or may not move, and if they move, it's going to start sort of a domino. Like if, you know, if Catea gets traded, I imagine that we start to see like infield dominoes fall in short order after that. But maybe the teams that are potentially in the market for Marte just are like enough already. I got to I got to know who my second basement is right. Like if Bo Bichette is a second baseman, which I think he is, then like I imagine some of the teams that might see themselves as being in the Bo Bichet business are also in the potential Cotel Marte trade business. And if they get bored of waiting or frustrated of waiting

or decide screw it, we'll just spend the money, well then, you know, they'll get going. But maybe they're waiting to see if they can trade for Marte. So some of this stuff is like the particulars of how the trade market, which has been slow, I think, objectively, relative to prior years, is interacting with some of the guys, but also it's just kind of a mid-class. But you know what? If I'm the Orioles, I should just go sign another starting pitcher because I still think you need some. I still think you're not done. I still think you, I still think you need another starting picture. I think I might actually say that those three ALEs teams are the three most improved team.

or have upgraded the most or have added the most or projected war or whatever and the Red Sox because I don't know who else would even be in contention I guess the Padres have been somewhat busy

the Braves the pirates kind of though they've talked a bigger game than they've actually managed to make modes They've talked such a big game they have talked such a big game man how long is it going to take me to remember that Wilson Contreras is on the Red Sox.

At least another week. I just hope I get to the point where I remember how to spell Wilson because I, the two Ls jam me up every time. It's not, I know that there are two something, but it's not just the regular Wilson, but sometimes I do two S's. I, every Garrett and Jarrett and yes, double consonants in a name always goof me up because I always, I'm like, which, which consonant is it that's two, that are two, you know, what's up with that?

You all should just get together in a room and decide, you know, like all the Wilson's and all the garrets and all the Jarrett's and all the, yeah, all of you, just, all the Emmets, you know, come together as a collective and you should just submit to majority rule because it is exhausting. I always, I'm getting it wrong. be conformists for our benefit and convenience yeah i guess the cubs probably another team that has the pressure on right now just because speaking of teams that need to sign a starter my god yeah or other things too but also a starter but yes Colin ray Colin ray though you know they're like hey we remember what Colin ray's face looks like it looks like the face of our fifth starter yeah and speaking

of a team that is not really flexing the financial muscle that it has not that that's new in recent years for the cubs but because Kyle Tucker they were losing presumably it's embarrassing though yeah and it's just like no one ever seemed to think that they would resign Kyle Tucker I mean unless they pull a rabbit out of their hat here like before the offseason even started there were reports you know maybe leaks or whatever that now he's not coming back and I don't know that anyone even got their hopes up that he would come back which is so odd because why should Shouldn't they be contenders for Kyle Tucker?

You should feel embarrassed by other people's low expectations of you. You know, like not all the time. Sometimes those low expectations are unearned. But then I think especially when they're unearned, you feel a defiance. You feel like you must challenge those low expectations and overcome them. No embarrassment about the collective low expectations, which is a bummer because there's so many fun players on this team. And yet there could be more. and all it would cost is money, and you have that.

And we're all going to remember that Kyle Tucker was a cub because of Ryan Johnson, you know? He's not going to let us forget. And so you're immortalized on film. Yeah. Right. You should introduce ambiguity into our understanding of what year that movie is from by resigning Kyle Tucker. It's true. Yeah.

As of now, it could only be from 2025. But they have the power to make future watchers of. wake up dead man wonder what season that was yeah right and for anyone who's wondering as as alex kershner was on hang up so i mentioned this there too but guys who tend to sign late in the off season and what that means for their financial expectations and production other ben did a couple of posts on this last off season yeah and others have researched this as well and it is true that guys who sign late in an off season they tend to do worse relative to pre-offseason expectations than guys who sign early.

And so there has been a line of thought that, oh, well, teams could or should just wait them out because they kind of, they have them over a barrel. If the season's about to start, well, the player has more to lose because if the player doesn't sign, then they don't play. But if the team doesn't sign that player, they still play. They might not play as well, but they still play. So the player really has more pressure on them to sign somewhere. And so the thinking has been, oh, well, teams could just wait them out and get more and more leverage the later it gets.

And that seems to be a bit borne out by the idea that or the actuality, the reality, the finding that guys who sign later in an offseason, they do do worse relative to expectations financially speaking. But as Ben pointed out, that's not necessarily because teams waited longer. That might be reversing the cause and effect. Right. They sign later because they are less productive players. Yeah. Right. Yeah, there was less demand.

There was less interest in them. Or there was some red flag that showed up in the proprietary projections or something and not in the public ones. There was some reason why teams weren't all over them. So it sort of makes sense. The, yeah, the guys who signed soon, they're probably the guys who there was a feeding frenzy. There was a bidding war, you know, because MLB free agency is nothing like other sports with salary caps where everything is kind of compressed because there's a finite number of dollars that can be spent and everyone's sort of squabbling over those dollars. It's more protracted in MLB, but it's a little more like that if there's a free agent everyone wants and, you know, they're just lining up to throw money at that guy. and you might have robust offers early in the offseason, and so why wait?

But, yeah, if there's not as much interest, then you might linger on the market. And so that might be why it's more of a symptom than the cause. The other interesting thing is, and also late in the off season, there are going to be fewer fits available, right? Because other teams will have done their work already, and there will be fewer roster spots to go around, and, yeah, fewer potential suitors and everything. But another thing that Ben found is that those late signers, even though they might be cheaper relative to expectations than the early signers, that does not mean that they are a bargain, that they're a better deal, because they actually tend to perform worse by dollars per war or whatever than the early signers. And so it might be bad for a player to sign late, but it might not be good for the team either. which is interesting it's almost like a lose-lose

and that could be because of those red flags or flaws in some cases it's also because if you sign really late then you're ramping up late and you're rusty and you might not even start on opening day and you know a pitcher particularly that can impact your performance

so for all those reasons it is generally better to sign early but if you can't just force it you know it's not like well I'll just sign early and therefore I will do better. No, it's, you know, is the market there, is the demand for you there. But if you can sign early, great, because then you can get settled and you can plan for everything. And it's better for teams too, because then they can market that they signed you. And you can

be on the cover of the media guide and they can use you to sell season tickets and they can send out an email blast to say, hey, we got so-and-so. Aren't you psyched for this season now? So, you know, you do that in spring training, then it's a little late to generate the same amount of hype. But I would imagine that, you know, all or most of the guys that we named earlier will be somewhere before spring training or before spring training games start. So we will have many major moves to discuss over the next several weeks. Yeah. Which is good for, for podcasters, you know, because, yeah, everyone who always says, like, let's have a signing deadline or let's, you know, compress or whatever. And aside from the, the, the, the,

labor considerations and how that might give teams more leverage and everything to have a deadline by which everyone has to sign. Also, like, yeah, that would be exciting for a day, for a week. Right. And then what are we going to talk about? And yes, baseball would be a big story for that week, but then it will be completely out of sight, out of mind for the next several months. It's a long offseason. So I actually prefer the trickle. I prefer the steady drip of transactions as opposed to just you know the the orgy of signings okay why did you gasp a moment ago oh uh because the ravens fired john harbaugh oh i thought it was going to be this that there was a big baseball signing and everything we said was suddenly obsolete i would have interrupted

more forcefully had that been the case but much like um the you know wake up dead man i want to fix this episode in a particular moment in time and it is the moment in time when we all learn that after 18 seasons, the Ravens have fired John Harba. So there you are. But Mike Tomlin still going straw after a miraculous win on Sunday, which I am aware of

because I am a sports snower. I'm a sports snower now. Do you think that my Seahawks are going to win in the divisional round? You can wait until you have more complete information like who their opponent's going to be. They are Super Bowl favorites at this stage, right? That's insane.

Not, you know, overwhelming favorites, but kind of like consensus favor. It's just a weird season. NFL, yeah, it's a weird season. That defense is legit, though. That is a good, that is a good group. And, and also Sam Darnold plays for them. Yeah, yeah, right.

They can score sometimes, too, because the Browns had a great defense, too. But they didn't have anything else. And that went to their coach me. The CIRs have more than the Browns. For NFL firings. Okay. More football talk on Hangup and Listen, if you want my football opinions. Sorry. I'm just thinking about it all the time, you know.

It's just like, wow, wow. You know, and then it's like, it's on Saturday. They play on Saturday. I mean, now the Seahawks, they're the one seat. They don't have to play this weekend. They get to rest. All right, one follow-up on FAM for you. That's follow-up with a pH because it's about Tommy FAM.

I got some information that I didn't have when we were recording earlier so I can address one other claim FAM made in this piece. Actually, a couple of claims. The article says, FAM, a free agent, actually discussed his philosophy with his player agency before the 2025 season when he was looking for a job. mentioned that earlier. In 2024, FAM posted a 674 OPS-92-OPS plus. One of his contemporaries in Free Agency that year was outfielder Mark Kana, 690 OPS-97 OPS-plus. Quote, I'm like, look, with all these other hitters, we're not going to win this battle, Fam said. We're not, because I don't

have better numbers than them. But I went from the White Sox to the Cardinals, and I played 23 straight games against playoff teams. Then I go to the Royals, and I play something like 15 games straight against playoff teams. Go make the argument that I faced the top tier pitching for most of the year. Then when they looked it up, they were like, you're actually right. Well, when I looked it up, or at least asked Robert at baseball prospectus to look it up, he doesn't seem right. According to BP's numbers in 2024, the opposing pitcher DRA minus for FAM's opponents, 100.4, where again, 100.5 is the average. So yet again, right on the average, Mark Kana, 99.5, about one point lower, which again, means better pitchers. So Kana was facing superior pitchers in 2024, according to BP's stats.

Now, BP's offensive stat DRC Plus is kinder to FAM relative to Kana than OPS Plus and WRC Plus are. DRC plus shows just a one point difference between Kana and FAMM in 2024, 99 for Kana, 98 for FAM. But it's not because DRC Plus thinks FAMF faced harder pitchers. And if we apply some scrutiny to what FAM said about the teams he played, he's claiming that he faced such difficult competition when he was on the Cardinals and the Royals, although those were both winning teams, so I don't know how to square that with the claim that a bad team like the Pirates would face more difficult pitching. But regardless, first of all, he played 23 games apiece for those two teams and 70 games for the White Sox, so most of his season came for the White Sox. But also,

he didn't play 23 straight games against playoff teams when he went to the Cardinals. By my count, he played 11 games against eventual playoff teams as a member of the Cardinals, 11 out of 23. That's fewer than half of the games that he played as a cardinal. And then when he went to the Royals, he did not play 15 games straight against playoff teams. In total, he played 12 of his 23 games for the Royals against eventual playoff teams. There were some decent non-playoff teams in the mix. But yeah, that's a little misleading, a little exaggerated, some selective memory, perhaps. I don't know, the last time we talked about fam on the podcast, I believe, was in August,

episode 2363, when he had had a run in with the Blue Jays that mostly seems to have left them confused because he got upset that the Blue Jays catcher had question an umpire's call on a borderline pitch while Pham was at the plate. And for some reason, FAMM took that extremely personally and said that it was disrespectful not only to the umpire, but to the hitter as well. And then he went on to walk and he flipped the bat. I don't know, between that and the fantasy football altercation, there seems to be something of a victim mentality or just kind of feeling like Everyone and or everything is out to get him. And granted, he had a hard upbringing.

I can understand how circumstances could have conspired to make him feel that way. But I don't know. I am not aligning myself with Blue Jays manager John Schneider, who after that incident this past summer, said he wasn't worried about Tommy Fem's opinion on anything, really. His critique is valid, but he doesn't seem to have faced uniquely difficult pitching, or even more difficult pitching than average. So says BP's data anyway. So there's a little fact check.

Fact, spelled with a pH. All in all, fan graphs, baseball reference, and baseball prospectus with their different war and warp models are aligned on Tommy Fam, producing between 2.0 and 2.7 war or warp over the past three seasons. So even if they're a little off here or there, and of course, they could be too high as well as too low, but even if they were off by 50% or something, which is a lot larger than opponent quality or the occasional ball getting lost in the sun or character. by the wind would account for, he still hasn't been that productive a player on the whole during

this stage of his career. And that might be a tough truth to swallow. We did the minor league free agent draft last time and Meg and I mused that the field seemed a little light, that there was a little less talent than usual in terms of players we thought might get significant major league playing time. And we wondered why that was. To be clear, we didn't quantify that in any way. Perhaps we can after the season. It was just a general feeling we had. Anthony wrote in to say, I couldn't help but think, the reduction in minor league free agent talent could be due to the contraction of minor league teams, the reduction in the number of draft rounds and COVID, all being around six-ish years ago, which could have contributed to a massive pruning of talent. And so if you're starting from a smaller pool,

fewer players will even reach minor league free agency and fewer former major leaguers will be kept on minor league teams because the teams need those roster spots for development. That's an interesting hypothesis. I don't know for sure if the timeline matches up or if if that would be sufficient to explain it. Again, assuming there even is a real reduction in talent there, but if and when we revisit that question, we can consider Anthony's explanation. Also, on the stories we missed episode for the NL, we talked about Ozzy Albies and his new 6,000 gallon aquarium.

Well, he has a YouTube channel. He has a TikTok. He makes content about the aquarium. And his latest is about making some repairs to the aquarium by diving in himself. After we go inside the 6,000 gallon, Baku, Piranha, Sharana, Sharana. tank, whatever you want to call it, these are moss officials.

To fix the tube that is made for the air pump, it's leaking air inside the water. I've just got to tie it. And one of the rear and line fell in the tank also, it's on the bottom there. So I'm going in there to fix that problem. I'm trying to take a little bit. I'm going to feed them, then we're going to go in. All right, first step, let's feed the fish. Ooh.

Hang on I'm not I'm feeding first. They look like the super hungry. He seemed to be a bit apprehensive about immersing himself in the tank while it was full of fish. But he did survive and repair whatever ailed the tank. It's a fun watch. Obviously, he's a hands-on owner. Finally, just letting some of our non-patriot supporters know, we put up our 50th bonus episode for Patreon supporters on Sunday. 50. Big round number milestone. Discussed several subjects, answered AMA questions from listeners. If you have not yet signed up, access to our Patreon Discord group, and those monthly bonus episodes, probably the most

compelling perk. If you sign up now, you can get access to the that entire archive of almost entirely evergreen bonus episodes. It's like gaining almost four months' worth of Effectively Wild. Instantly. Think about it. We have very much enjoyed making those episodes, and it seems like a lot of people have enjoyed listening to them. Good way to get to know us a little more in our thoughts on things other than baseball.

Speaking of which, here's the call to action. If you would like to support the podcast, you can go to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and sign up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. help us stay ad-free and get yourself access to the aforementioned perks and others, as have the following five listeners, Eve Gillison, Ezra Axel, Mark Stubblefield, Hannah, and Tom L, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include not only access to the effectively wild Discord group and monthly bonus episodes, but also playoff live streams, personalized messages, shoutouts at the end of episodes, prioritized email answers, discounts on merch and ad-free fan graphs memberships, and so much more. No discounts on FAMGraphs memberships for now. But still, check out all the options at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site.

If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro, and outro themes to podcast at 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. can check the show notes in the podcast post at Fangraphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his

editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode a little later in the week. Talk to you then. Yeah Yeah Don't hear about Pitcher winds Or about gambling Ones

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