Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2428: Scalded by the Stove

Episode Date: January 17, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about a flurry of transactions and a three-team-trade dilemma, then break down the J.T. Realmuto, Bo Bichette, and Kyle Tucker deals, plus talk of baseball economics and Emmanuel Clase’s roosters. Audio intro: Moon Hound, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Nate Emerson, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to FG post on Castro Link to MLBTR on three-team trade Link to Passan on Tucker Link to Passan on three-team trade Link to two buttons meme Link to Passan meme Link to FG post on Realmuto Link to FG post on Bichette Link to FG post on Tucker Link to Ben on Tucker Link to Cohen tweet 1 Link to Cohen tweet 2 Link to FG quarter-zips Link to over/under draft results Link to Ben on free agency Link to Passan on free agency Link to offseason FA spending Link to bad Tucker swing Link to Ben on Yordan’s slump Link to Roberts comments Link to owner floor proposal Link to floor proposal analysis Link to Walker comment Link to champion complacency Link to FA fits episode Link to team hitter age Link to team OF WAR Link to MLB execs poll Link to Tucker persona story Link to Tucker cWPA Link to Teoscar in RF Link to Teoscar in LF Link to team depth chart projections Link to team payrolls page Link to Dodgers CBT tax spending Link to 2006 team payrolls Link to 2005 team payrolls Link to 2003 Onion headline Link to Kershaw WBC news Link to Clase roosters story Link to more on Clase roosters Link to quotes about Clase  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Give a Gift Subscription  Email Us: [e-mail]  Effectively Wild Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  Apple Podcasts Feed   Spotify Feed  YouTube Playlist  Facebook Group  Bluesky Account  Twitter Account  Get Our Merch! var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source

Hello you calculate whore Does it come from the heart Should we use defensive unsafe Or follow the always Gone with their quips and opinions It's effectively wild Hello and welcome to episode 2428 of Effectively Wild

A Fangraphs Baseball podcast brought you by our Patreon supporters I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined by Ben Ringer of the Limb... That's a new one. Is that an accident? Wow. Ben Ringer of Lindberg. I say we leave it in. I think that's pretty...

I think that's pretty funny. You're Ben Lindberg. You work for the ringer. Which we are rebranding as Lindberg. That's Lindberg. People are going to be like, what is the Lindberg? And you're like, well, It's been.

People still wonder what a wrigger is after all these years, so why not? Do they really? They don't know what a ringer is? I mean, it's a movie. It's a thing that no one really activates on their phones anymore because it's always on silence. Yeah, but you bring in a ringer, right? Like, that's what it's... Is that not what it's in reference to?

I don't know. Oh, my God. We are falling apart. We are crumbling at the seams. We're turning 10 as a company this year, so I will make it my mission to find out what the ringer refers to. I thought it was like, oh, we're bringing in a ringer. I thought that that was what it was in reference to. Maybe, but doesn't, I guess, I should ask someone who knows.

If anyone knows, it's open to interpretation, you know. Once it's out there, then the reader can draw their own conclusion. But I like that you're innovating in intros after all these years. You know, it did fall apart. did kind of break down for me there, but it is amazing how smooth that was for a moment. I know. That's what I thought you were making a joke about how scrambled our brains are, but it was sincere scrambling. I am, Ben, I am sincerely scrambled.

I am all mixed up over here. Me too. We're tuckered out. All tuckered out. So we have a lot to discuss. We have so much to discuss. We have a. I'm concerned.

Cascading crash outs. I know. Yeah. Domino's knocking over other dominoes. A cascading crash is a crash of a system of internet. Now, Siri's getting it on the action. What is happening? Siri, stop.

True Friday show chaos. My goodness. I don't even have a, I don't even have a beer. I should. It's only 1.30. But if ever. We can take a break. You can run to the cooler.

No, no. I'm going to really. feel like I've earned it by being done. Oh, boy. Sorry. Wow. We should start talking about transactions or we'll never finish, but I'm concerned that we might not have enough time to devote to the Rocky signing Willie Castro. I just, I don't want to give short shrift to that signing.

Under normal circumstances, we could lead in episodes with Willie Castro. That's a solid 15-minute move. But today, it's going to have to take a back seat. Because we've got signings, we've got a trade. We have the stove is scalding right now. Piping hot. I think we should save the trade because I haven't thought about that trade for even one second, Ben. I, I, that trade, which is a three-teamer that sees Gavin Lux's on the road again, you know, and everyone getting to spend a moment.

Josh Lowe on the move. Right. I was just going to say everyone getting to spend a moment trying to remember if it's, you know, it's low or Lao, broke moments before the Tucker signing. And so I was like, that happened, bye. That was my sequence, you know? It's really disrupting my mental image of the Reyes as a team that has a low and a Lao.

And I had straightened out in my mind which one was low and which one was Lao. And now neither. Neither one is a Tampa Bay Ray. They've been a low budget team for years and a Lao budget team. And now no room in the budget for either. So, yeah, that was a raise, Angels, Reds, three-team tree. We might not be able to talk about that either. But if you're interested, I'm sure you can look up the details.

So Josh Lowe went to the Angels and Gavin Luxe went to the Reyes and the Reds got Brock Burke. So that's the headline news for this episode. Actually, what I wondered about that because those transactions broke in such. quick succession. Actually, Jeff Passon, I don't know if he, if he broke the three-team trade, but he tweeted and cited sources the three-team trade literally two minutes after he broke the Tucker signing. And so I wondered about the sequence of events there on his end. And I texted him and I sent him, you know, the, I think it's called the Daily Struggle meme, but it's the two buttons meme. You know, it's like the sweaty guy.

with his finger hovering. Is he a superhero or is he? It's like a web comic tumbler thing. So I guess like he's costumed. He has a superhero chin, you know? Yes. And build. Yeah, he's got the very gigacad kind of jawlined.

But he is, has his finger hovering over two buttons. The beginning of this episode is incomprehensible to like 90% of the country's population. Well, more than. That I'm not listening to Effectively Wild, unfortunately, though. Get on it, guys. Especially if they support us on Patreon. But I asked Jeff, you know how you can make the meme, like you'd find the meme generator online. So I did a little mock-up of Jeff Passon situation around 9.50 p.m. Eastern on Thursday.

Break the Kyle Tucker signing or break the three-team luck slash low trade. And I sent it to him and I said, was this you last night? and he said it was literally within seconds. I mean, not exaggerating, I'd been waiting an hour on the trade, too. Because one thing he said when he was on the podcast recently is that he does not like to break news on Twitter if the player has not been notified. Or sometimes he'll tell the player, but he just, he wants the player to know and be informed somehow before he puts it out there for the public. So he'd been waiting an hour on the trade because apparently Gavin Lux was at Reds Fest. And he had not been...

He was at Reds Fest? At Reds Fest. Amazing. To learn that you've been traded. What do you do if you're at like fan convention for the team that you no longer play for? It's like, can you just change uniforms and go to Ray's Fest or something? It's like when a player gets traded between games of a doubleheader or something. So anyway, he was busy at Reds Fest.

And so I guess no one had told him that he had been traded. So Passon was waiting. and he considered calling him but relented and didn't. And so he just waited. And I don't know whether someone scooped him on the three-team trade or not, but I don't think it matters very much because he did break the Kyle Tucker siding, which was slightly bigger news in the grand scheme of things. And somehow we have managed not to talk about it yet because so we've just been on a bunch of nonsense since then.

I've been trying to, I'm looking at the performance of those two tweets sent at 951. 1 p.m. Eastern and 9.53 p.m. Eastern or something like that. Yeah, let's see. It's 19,000 retweets or quote tweets on the Kyle Tucker News and about 24,000 faves and 7,000 replies. And the three-team trade has just under 2,000 retweets slash quote tweets, under 10,000 faves. And, about 600 replies, which always amazing me. I know Jeff has like a million-something Twitter followers, but like 10,000 people likes that. There are a lot of people who like baseball, I guess, and that's ultimately a small percentage of his followers. But I think he made the right choice, is what I'm saying, breaking the Tucker signing prior to the three-team trade based on the

performance of those tweets. But the Tucker signing has caused subsequent transactions. Because there were other teams that were in the running for Kyle Tucker. And when the Dodgers signed him, by the way, we buried the lead. The Dodgers signed Kyle Tucker in case you were just waiting, you know, 10 minutes into this episode, waiting for us to tell you who signed Kyle Tucker. It was the Dodgers. I know you're shocked. Sorry to be the one to break that news and maybe be the bearer of bad news to you. But because other teams were waiting to hear what would happen, including the New York Mets.

And so when the New York Mets did not successfully signed. Kyle Tucker, they then pivoted to Bobachette. And when Bobeshett signed with the Mets, then the Philadelphia Phillies, who were in the running for Bobachette, they then pivoted to J.T. Real Muto. I mean, I don't know exactly the sequence of events, but I'm assuming that this is more or less the way it went down. Yeah. So, you know, it was kind of contingent on either or, right? The Mets probably were not going to sign both Boba Chatt and Kyle Tucker and the Phillies. It had been reported.

we're not going to sign both Bobachette and J.T. Realmuto. So once Tucker signed somewhere, once the smoke went up, as Steve Cohen's tweet referenced, then that everyone else took their cues from that. And suddenly a whole flurry of free agents had signed. And I guess we picked the right time to do our Free Agent Fits episodes last week. I guess, yeah. If we had waited until now, we would not have many more Free Agent Fits. agents to fit into teams because as we record here on a Friday afternoon, we're a Frumber

and a Bellinger away from most of the dust having settled on the free agent market. I mean, you know, apologies to Ehueniwes and Zach Gallen and. Oh, dear. Yeah, some other significant free agents are out there. But the top 10 types, you know, there are two more of those guys left. And maybe it won't be long until they signed too. perhaps they have by the time you're hearing this. Who knows?

But where do we even begin? Should we save Tucker for last, even though it's maybe the most significant, just because we might have the most to say. And also, people might be sick of hearing us talk about the Dodgers and they could just check out at that point if they want to. We can take them in whichever order. I want to make a broad point here before we do, which is, and I know how far. when it is to hear people sort of read their posts from social media. But are we sure that the NL East isn't like a sci-op? You know, like I, again, we can, we can, the crashouts from Mets fans last night that I was seeing Ben.

And then when Bichette signed with the Mets, the crashouts from Philly's fans that I was seeing, both in response to the news that Bichette was not going to be a. Philly and would thus, you know, thus suggesting that, say, Alec Bone will remain one, and that there appeared to be a maybe potentially slightly panicked signing for Real Muto, who was, I think, always in Philly's plans for this off season. But if we came to find out that Real Muto's people reached out to Philly in the moments after the Bichette news broke and was like, so one more year? So one more year, though?

And they were like, yeah, there's no time. Yes, one more, one more. Yeah. It was people. Look, and again, as I said to Liz Rocher on Blue Sky, it's not that the posts, I mean, many of the posts are very funny, but they are also suggestive of a population of people who have been made deeply unwell by the proceedings of the last 24 hours, really the last 12. Yeah. So let's start with the beset of it all. We can also take a moment to say that, as Michael Baum has, as Michael Baum has.

and put it in his Bichette write-up. If you're worth as much money as Steve Cohen, if you have $500 million, you should just not be allowed to be on social media. I'm not going to say that the reason that Kyle Tucker ultimately signed with the Dodgers was because of Steve Cohen's posts. That's ridiculous.

Or at least if it was in the soup, I imagine it was a minor ingredient, the flavor of which one could barely detect. But Steve. you're embarrassing yourself sir and and i say that as someone who is familiar with um the alleged financial shenanigans that steve cohen has um gotten involved with i don't say that like i have special inside knowledge but simply as um as someone who was an observer of sat capital at one point so i i'm just like someone needs to take steve's phone away you know it's not the worst billionaire

posting we've seen in the last year no certainly But it might be some of the most embarrassing sports billionaire posting we've seen. And I say that as someone who's been observing Mark Cuban crashing out for quite some time. So take his fun away. But let's... I hope they don't because I enjoy it. I'm not saying it reflects well on him. It might, you know, it could be a useful corrective because there have been times when Mets fans have really, in a way that they like to pretend as ironic,

but seems to be quite sincere leaned into the Uncle Steve stuff. And I appreciate that Steve Cohen appears to want to put money into his ball club. You know, as we have noted, a quarter zip and a hat. This guy is serious, but also. Hey, Fancrafts is selling quarter zips now, right? You can't make fun of quarter zips anymore. I can't wait for mine to come. Speaking of being embarrassing, I'm going to wear that to a degree that people are like,

should you be wearing it that much? How do you wash that? Okay, so Bo Bouchette, third baseman. This is, I, okay. Do you want to talk for a minute? Because I feel like I've talked a lot already. I was just going to say that the contrast between owners is clear in that when Mark Walter, Dodgers owner, wants to make a public statement, which he doesn't do often, he

does it through at Dodgers. And there's a whole mock up with a graphic and a background and text on top of it. Whereas Steve Cohen, he's just hunting and pecking out his. interesting syntax, which, you know, billionaires, they're just like us, except with worst spelling grammar and the billions. I guess there's a possibility that he had just watched Conclave and was, you know, interested in the conclusions of Conclave, you know. Yes, I like that he followed up.

He clarified for anyone who he said, let me know when you see smoke. That was at 6.57 p.m. on Thursday. and then at 7.56, for those who don't understand the Pope election reference, we are waiting for a decision. That's all I know. Clearly, people were flummoxed by the first tweets and he followed up. Anyway, yes. So, well, I guess, you know, the real muto move is probably the least interesting and consequential and surprising of the three. So we could... Yeah, although, wow, that's a long time. Well, yeah, but we could more quickly dispense with that, I guess, because it's just player remaining with team where he has been for some. time and, you know, not entirely unanticipatable that the Phillies might bring back J.T. Realmuto. So it is $45 million over three years, yeah, with some incentives to, yeah. So, yeah, I mean, gosh, 15 million or whatever. It just, it sounds like chump change now, you know, now that we're dealing with 40 plus 60 million plus all the CPT taxes that basically double those

$15 million. That's a drop in the bucket. I mean, who could even, it's a rounding error, who could measure that amount of money. But it is true that Rio Mito is 34 years old and coming up on 35. He will be 35 during spring training. And he is coming off a year when he was a below average hitter for the first time, really. He's been a really good, productive hitter for a long time, by catcher standards. And was at one time a good defender, not so much now, and had some speeds at one point.

Not so much now. Yeah. You know, he's lost some steps, let's say, and some frames along the way. Who hasn't? But they are committing to him for quite a while now in that role. So, I mean, he was still, I don't, I guess when you factor in the defense, like baseball reference, not considering the framing has him as a 2.5 war guy this past year, and even Fangrass has him as a 2.1 war guy.

So, okay, that's playable. That's fine. But not a lot of room to slip further before he's not really someone you want playing 130 games a year. And then you're paying 15 mil or whatever for a backup catcher, presumably. If he's prepared to transition into that twilight of his career, It's not like you'd really want that bad at another position at this point. And where would you play him anyway? You have Bryce number.

Yeah. Right, exactly. Yeah. I mean, you could deach him. But, yeah. I guess. Yeah. Bad doesn't really support that either, though.

Yeah. Yep. So you're hoping that he reverses the decline and arrests the decline at least and stays well preserved. And, you know, he's been there for a long time. They've had a lot of success with him. pitchers are used to him, you know, clearly they're comfortable with him in the clubhouse and all the rest of it.

But yeah, I don't know what plan B or the future successor will be for Real Muto because it seems unlikely that he'll be at 37 going on 38 and still the starter. It's a funny one because they needed,

on some level, you know, they probably needed Real Muto, at least in the short term, right? Like they, the catching market it is quite thin. He was the best available free agent backstop, certainly, and you probably don't want to go into the year with, like, I don't know, Raphael Marchant and Garrett Stubbs. And so it made good sense on some level for them to bring him back, but I just don't know that I'd want to be in the real Muto business for as long as they're going to be. But I mean,

you had to do something, you were panicking, you know? You didn't get any of your boys. I mean, they could trade for a catcher, I guess, but it's a very thin system. And so part of their problem is that, like, they really, their best available options were on the market, and those aren't good options. So you pick the best of those ones, which is a guy you have a relationship with, and I guess you're just aware of the fact that you're going to probably eat your three. and feel not awesome about it, but what are you going to do? I mean, you got to do something. You're in your crash out here.

I'm worried about saying that word because Siri's going to be like, I have a lot to say about crash out. It's in for a penny and for a pound, I guess. It's just you're the Phillies. You're getting older. You're getting pricier, but you're pretty pot committed at this point, right? Like you're in your window. You don't know how much longer you will be.

And so you've got to bring back the guy who will be the stopgap at least and whatever. If he falls off a cliff or something, figuratively speaking, then you could kind of just write that off, I guess, at that point. You know, you were prepared to hand a haul to Boba Chet. So it's kind of comparatively not a ton of money, I guess. And they're the Phillies, you know, they've shown some willingness to eat money and spend money. So that's one of the things that a bigger market, higher payroll club can do.

Yeah, can't advise anyone eat. money. It's quite filthy as the case may be. I do feel for them because they are in now. I think they were anticipating having more of an infield surplus to deal from and have that further some of their pitch and goals. So I will be curious to see, okay, you're not spending money on Boba Chet now. So do you do you go after, you know, for? romber and try to shore up the rotation that way. I mean, it's not a bad group, but it's a shallower group than it was before Rangers Svarez became a red sock.

Also, Red Sox, what are you going to do now? All kinds of problems. I guess you're going to make a trade with the cubs in all likelihood. Yeah. In the most recent edition of pebble hunting, Sam referred to a white socks player as a white soccer. And I kind of like that. I might steal that because I always, you know, we struggle.

It's a nightmare. Yeah. And so I don't. care to say a white socks, which some people do. So you always end up sort of writing or speaking around it and you say a white socks player or, you know, Chicago or whatever it is. But white soccer, I'm kind of into that. I might adopt that. We'll see. I'm thinking about it. Okay. So I was wonder what it's like to be a free agent in a situation like this where it's clearly either or. It's like obviously a behind door number one,

behind door number two. And you know that if you're real meudo that they were choosing between you and Bichette, presumably, I mean, I don't know. I guess they could have signed both of them. I think, yes. I read some report that it was an either-or thing, but it didn't have to be necessarily. So maybe that's less clear cut. But then if you're Bo Bichet, for instance, and the Mets are very much in the running for

Kyle Tucker and everyone knows it and then, you know, Tucker sides with the Dodgers. And then suddenly, I guess, you get a call from the Mets or whatever. They up the offer. It's, you know, it's very clear that you were the backup. You were the consolation prize. Yeah. And I guess that's fine because they're paying you an enormous amount of money to be the consolation prize. And it's no shame to be not the number one free agent on the market.

Kyle Tucker's really good. So, yeah, but I always wonder, you know, egos, competitive athletes. Oh, sure. They never want to think that there's someone's fallback playing. in their safety school, right? So I always wonder about that dynamic. But yes, so when someone offers you as much money as the Mets did, which was $126 million over three years, there are optouts, multiple optouts, opt outs after this coming campaign.

The first and second. Yeah. And after 2027. And this was an interesting little wrinkle that if he opts out, he gets a bonus. So not only does he get to test the market again, but he gets an additional five million bucks if he opts out. Wow. Tacked on. Yeah.

You don't see that every day. There's a full no trade clause, but no deferred money in the Bichet deal. And by the way, I guess, you know, at some point we should consider the Blue Jays implications of all of this because that's a blow to the Blue Jays to miss out on both of those guys. I mean, you know, they've done well for themselves. Yeah, I think more a blow as it pertains to Tucker than it necessarily does to Bichette. They seemed like they were moving on, you know, from, they seem like they were moving on from Bow. A lot of Blue Jays fans are sad to see him go. But yes, perhaps the front office was ready for that.

And maybe they'll make another move or they'll just content themselves with all the moves that they've made already. It's a little bit different than previous times that they have lost to the Dodgers, whether that be the World Series or, Sasaki or Otani or whatever. In those cases, they didn't necessarily already have multiple birds in the hand the way they do this offseason. And I think maybe still have committed the most money of any team this offseason. So they have plenty of prizes. 26 birds in the hand, as it were. Exactly.

So the Mets signing Bobichette is... Third baseman. Third baseman. I guess. I mean, that's what they say. First baseman Polanco That's less An eyebrow raise butt yeah

Yeah it's all Because they were at one point Talking about run prevention And wanting to tighten up the defense And everything And I guess this could have that effect Because both of these guys Are moving down the defensive spectrum

From more challenging positions To less challenging ones Bobichette was a shortstop So he's sliding over to third Presumably in Jorge Polanco He's played second he's played other positions. He could slide over to first,

and presumably he could pick that up. And it's not like a mid-season move. You have spring training to prepare for this. So for all we know, they might be defensive pluses over there, but it's a little uncertain just because Bobeshett has not played third base professionally. Right.

And Polanco has played first base for one pitch. So I guess this probably isn't the way they drew it up. Right. But it's one of those things where players fall into your laps and other players are on other team's laps. And so you just do what you can to get your lap dance, I guess, even if it's from a position that you would not have penciled that player in to that position when you drew up your off-season agenda.

Congrats. Immediately. You should have them immediately. Yeah, I do. But it's just odd. Like they are sort of stacking second baseman, but just playing them at other positions. I mean, Beau hasn't been a second baseman, really.

He maybe should have been, but wasn't, but could have been if he had gone somewhere else. But they're just betting on the bat. And that seems like a pretty safe bet because Bobichette can hit. So from Beau's perspective, I like this for him. Playing out of position is always risky, but I think the odds of him kind of giving reassurance to potential suitors next winter. from third are better than they would be if he had been playing short or even second.

I think that given sort of what was going wrong for him at shortstop, which was a lot of range-related stuff that makes some sense to play him at third. His arm seems fine. So you're kind of getting him, not off his feet,

but minimizing the impact that the lower body injuries have had for him over the years. I think their lineup is more interesting and dynamic now. You do feel bad for some of their more junior guys. Because, you know, like, you know, I joked about the, surely the Red Sox are going to trade

with the Cubs. The other thing that they could trade, the other team they could trade with is the Mets and go get, you know, Vento or Bady or what have you. Any number of guys. Yeah, it's just like, one of, Los Angeles. And hell, Acuna, want to Ronnie Maricio. Yeah, you want to runny about. Infielders just, yeah, everywhere.

But being able to go Lindor, Soto, Bichette, Polanco, Semen, even the diminished version of Semen that we saw last year, that'll play, that's pretty good, you know? That's a really potent lineup. I like the Bowman notice this in his write-up of the deal, but I really like the contrast that they're going to be able to draw between Soto and Bichet, because Soto is so patient and methodical and Bichet is so aggressive.

and so that seems like a fun dynamic to get to play with. I like it. It is very much not where I expected him to end up. I mean, positionally sure, but just team-wise. Like, if you had given me 10 guesses, I probably wouldn't have gone with the Mets. It is another example. I'm going to try something.

You tell me if this is, I think that we might be in a period of maximalist, roster design. Ooh, explain. Well, it's just, you know, the teams that are adding guys are adding a lot of guys. And in many instances, although not every instance, they are adding a lot of guys such that they are creating positional surplus on their own rosters. I don't know if my understanding of maximalism is accurate.

But, you know, we're not doing clean lines. We're not doing black marble. We're doing bold colors all at shorts. Or all in the rotation or all in the infield more broadly. I don't know if it works. We're going to give it a try. Maximilist. Kind of like a positionless baseball sort of idea.

Just like we like the bat. We'll find a fit. It's not positionless. It's position full, you know? It's, yeah. Anyway, I'm playing with it. So all that to say. I don't know. It's certainly not where I thought he would be.

Somewhere I thought he would be. But I appreciate the ways in which it might end up being, like, surprisingly elegant, despite the logjam that has been created. Here's a question for you. And this is less about Bichette's specific fit. So if you'd like to put a pin in it for a moment, feel free. But I am trying to decide what I think these multi-year, multi-opt-out deal. mean, it's particularly interesting in Bichette's case because I understand, like, someone

like Ami, right, and you have to pay a posting fee, so maybe I'm drawing a distinction without a huge amount of difference, but with someone like Am I going to the Astros, you're at least not contending with the qualifying offer of it all, but you do have to do the posting fee, but that doesn't come with like draft picker bonus pool implications for you. It's just money. But with someone like Bichette, you know, Bichet got tagged with a qualifying offer. And so signing him comes with draft hit compensation and the Mets will have to pay it because they're a payer. They're a luxury taxpayer. And so it's just interesting to combine those things because one year of Boba Shed is not inexpensive. You are paying potentially additional money on top of that from a luxury tax

perspective. And then you are also forfeiting draft pick compensation. And he might be gone in the year. And so I'm just, I'm fascinated by that contract structure. Like, is it a vote of confidence? Is it we just love this guy so much? We have to have him. Is it desperation, right? Is this, again, just the symptom of crash out? Like, or, so anyway, I'm trying to decide what I think of it, because we think about contracts. The, the most straightforward. way to think about sort of the value trade that teams do when they sign a free agent is they are anticipated to generate this much value, we are paying them this much, is there any surplus in that value, is there a clean fit from a dollars per word perspective? That, you know,

that's sort of the most straightforward way to do it. But when you involve a qualifying offer, it's the cost of the contract itself. It's the potential luxury tax implications for teams like the Mets and the Dodgers, et cetera. And then you're also forfeiting draft picks. So it's like when you're putting all of that together into your value model, how are teams sort of thinking about this stuff? And I'm not saying it's bad. Like this Mets lineup is better with Bichette in it than without him.

And it could be that Bo has a great time and decides to stay, right? Or maybe he opts out, but they get a new deal done or whatever. Like there are any number of ways in which he might remain a MET. but you got to think he thinks he won't be a met this time next year, right? That he will be, you know, inking a five-year, seven-year deal and able to do sort of the Bregman two-step, right? So I'm just, I'm interested in it as a data point in terms of how teams are thinking about sort of those value tradeoffs. And is it worth it, quote-unquote, to, get guys into these short-term deals with optionality versus just giving them a longer-term commitment,

albeit at a lower A-A-AV. So I just think it's an interesting little, and we've seen a couple of them this off-season. Yeah. And having Tucker and Bichet signed sort of similarly structured deals and Tucker breaking the record for average annual value, even after accounting for the deferral, yeah, how could you not ponder that? I was doing some pondering myself. It's interesting from the team's perspective, also from the players perspective. Sure. Because historically, guys often have a preference for signing the longest possible deal they could.

And it's not as if that's gone entirely out of vogue or something. The Mets signed one Soto to a 15-year contract last off-season. Just last off-season. Yeah. So that still happens quite often. But we have seen shorter-term deals for the most part this off-season. And maybe that's. because of the caliber of player that was on offer on free agency this offseason.

Maybe you'd think that if there were concerns about a work stoppage that could lead to a shortening or a bridging of the 2027 season, that if anything, players would want some security, not that they're going to get paid if there's a strike or a lockout or whatever. But, you know, if like baseball loses a season, if there's no MLB season and the final finances or a wreck after that, then they probably would have been happy to have signed a long-term deal in the pre-cratering era. Yeah, although a deal like Bichette's or Tuggers is sort of an interesting in-between on that stuff, right?

Because, you know, they would be, like, let's imagine the worst-case scenario comes to pass. We lose the entire 2027 season. Well, you just, you don't opt out. And then you're going to make the, particularly if you look around and you, you know, you see the market as depressed, well, you just keep opting in, right, and not exercising the opt-outs. Now, for someone like, you know, Amai, it's a little bit different because you have one less year and certainly a lower A-A-A-V, and maybe you just decide, hey, I'm going to, I'm just going to roll the dice and opt-out anyway. But it's interesting because it isn't, again, like,

there isn't, like, super definitively clear signal on this stuff in terms of being able to interpret how the different camps are thinking about that season. So anyway, it's just fascinating. Part of it is the specifics of these two, because as good as they've been, they could be better. They could have a better season to build off their free agency

because I guess, you know, Tucker, well, we'll talk a little bit more about him, but both he and Bichette are coming off seasons that were marred somewhat by injuries. You know, Bichet didn't. missed that much time, but he missed much of September, and then obviously was far from fully operational in the playoffs. I assume that the Mets and teams are fairly confident that he won't show any ill effects from that, but it's true that the last time everyone saw him, he was just kind of hobbling around,

which probably doesn't help your value as excellent as he was prior to the injury last season. So he could be saying to himself, if I just hit like I did last year, but finish. healthy, then maybe I can do even better. And maybe Tucker, same thing. He had the hairline fracture in his hand. It wasn't immediately diagnosed. And then he had the calf issue and missed much of September. And so maybe he's thinking.

And then, you know, of course, he had the, he fouled the ball off his shin in 2024 and had the fracture and confusion about that too. Just so much uncertainty surrounding fractures of various body parts of Kyle Tucker. Would you think it would be the easiest part to be like, yeah, that's what that is. Yeah. Yeah. And I guess there's like, is it a bone bruise? Is it a fracture?

Are those ultimately the same thing in certain parts of you anyway? But you missed a few months there. And so maybe he's thinking if I can just really have a full healthy season where I'm hitting as well as I was when I was healthy in those years. And they're both young enough that they could hit the market again in a year or two. Right. And still sign a gigantic deal if they wanted to. because Boba Shet is 27.

He turns 28 in March. Kyle Tucker turns 29 on Saturday. Yeah, tomorrow. Happy birthday to him. I'm sure it is. Yeah, what a, what a. Do you think that his, sorry, I want to continue to be very serious because we've been so serious so far.

Yes, unfillingly. Do you think that his party plans have changed at all? Do you think that there was like two versions of the party planned and now they're like, go get the sushi trees from Costco. No, every single one they have. Now that I got the 60 million. Yeah, now we can really just pull out all the stops. Yeah, yeah.

Dexter, cakes and candles. Who's sushi trays? Just Cop Tucker doesn't seem to me like the sort to just have like a real rager. But I don't know. Maybe he'd surprise me. Who knows? But because they're young enough, yes, they could hit the market and they could conceivably be coming off an even better year and they can cash in. So that's a consideration for them.

And yeah, for the teams, I think maybe this just goes to show. We always say it's kind of a cliche. There's no such thing as a bad one-year deal. These aren't literally one-year deals. Obviously, they might turn out to be, or Bichette's might turn out to be a two-year deal or something. But the idea, I think, applies, which is just the shorter, the better, as far as teams are concerned. And I don't know if this is just the new normal now. And I don't even know which side is really pushing this.

I assume the team side more because we certainly have seen teams be more reluctant to dispense long-term deals, especially to players in their 30s and there's certain, you know, it was like, oh, the Red Sox actually gave a five-year deal to a 30-year-old. How about that? And the Giants have sort of signaled that they don't want to do that, at least for pitchers. So teams have kind of held the line more on that sort of thing. But maybe it's what we were talking about yesterday, players betting on themselves, right? we were talking about, well, you could just go year to year. And if you kept having good years, you would profit.

You would make even more money. But I do think it's that the shorter, the better. And teams just, they have higher tolerance, I guess, for the high average annual value than they do for the long-term risk. And I guess what we've seen historically, the linear relationship between spending and wins, it's kind of, it's always broken down a bit at the extremes. Because, you know, typically if you study spending, it's like teams will spend twice as much for a two-war guy as a one-war guy or whatever, and it kind of tracks. But at the extreme upper echelons, it doesn't really because, you know, if you have an eight-war guy, not that there are many true talent eight-war guys, but historically speaking, they haven't really made what they're worth on a per-year basis. There was sort of a soft ceiling there. And you could get more and more years and you could get more and more dollars, but on an average annual value basis, there was kind of a compression of the range of possible salaries.

Maybe that's just changing now because you look at what these guys are getting and because it's the Mets and the Dodgers. Now, maybe because it's the Mets and the Dodgers, we can't actually extrapolate to other teams with fewer resources or less willingness to spend because these are the two top spending teams. in the game and the two that seem to have the highest tolerance for incurring penalties and surcharges. But you look at what they're actually spending for these guys, not just the draft picks they're forfeiting and everything, but they're basically paying double. I mean, you know, once you're in the highest tax bracket, once you've been a serial repeater and you're, you know, at the highest, highest tippy top threshold, then you're paying like

110% on every dollar above that threshold. And so the Dodgers, you know, forget about the deferrals for a second. Like, I mean, you can just double basically the 60 million or more, or even accounting for the deferrals. They're essentially, effectively spending 120 million per year on Kyle Tucker because of where they are. Right. And the Mets, too, are spending like 100 million on Boba Shedd, basically, at 4,000.

42 million per or whatever it is. So that's a lot of money. I mean, even for the Mets and the Dodgers, even for really excellent players. But I guess that just goes to show that at least these two teams, they will make that tradeoff. They're just willing to fork over almost any amount of cash, I guess, when it's not something that's on the books for a decade or more. I think that the Dodgers and the Mets, obviously,

would strike you as teams that aren't in support of a salary cap, like a hard cap. I do wonder if they're looking around and sort of putting their finger to the wind and going, we might get one, though. And so they're like, let's get it while the going is good. Right. That's another thing. Yeah, because even if there's no cap, there could very well be steeper penalties. Right.

Yeah, it might end up with more punitive penalties. In fact, I would imagine that the. the little, you know, two-step swap-de-do that the league tries to do in the course of negotiations if they get to a point where they realize that the union is just not going to cave on a cap is they are going to push for more stringent luxury tax threshold penalties. Yes. And so as expensive as this is now, they might figure that this is the best deal they're going to get for a while. The other factor that I meant to mention. So I wrote something for baseball prospectus 12 years ago, and the headline was farewell to free agency.

I think it was possibly premature. But I did have a question mark in it, in my defense, farewell to free agency. But the thesis was essentially that maybe the available talent on the free agent market was going to dwindle because teams at that time were signing so many young. players to extensions. And it really seemed like if you just extrapolated from that, and they were signing them to earlier and even more aggressive extensions, and it really was starting to seem realistic that there just might not be that many free agents out there technically.

And there was actually a quote at the time from John Mazzalak of the Cardinals, and he said, I think the toughest thing facing all of us is the future of free agency and the limited resources that are going to be out there. And so there was this prevailing idea that free agency was just petering out because the teams were just going to lock everyone up and they would just never hit the open market. And, you know, I did some math and I looked at projections and retrojections for previous years free agent classes. And I seemed to find some indication that the upcoming class or classes were weaker than the past ones. and it's always a risk to just extend that treadline forward indefinitely. But I thought of that old argument or thought experiment of mine

because Jeff Passon, just this past week at ESPN, essentially made the same case. He was doing sort of a state of the offseason and who needs to do what and everything. And he wrote, quote, the reality, particularly for teams playing at the top of the market, is that this might be their last opportunity to land a front line bad.

in free agency for years. And this was giving me deja vu of what I wrote way back in 2014. But neither of the next two free agent classes features a hitter as attractive as Tucker, Bichette, or Bellinger. And remember, this is especially striking because we talked about how this winter's free agent class was kind of lackluster. But Jeff, looking forward, says this is the best it's going to get because he writes the best of next winter, Nico Honer, Jazz Chisholm, Jr., Brandon.

Lowe, Dalton Varsho, Randia Rosarena, Sayas Suzuki, Trent Grisham, Hassan Kim, J.P. Crockford, and Glaber Torres. The top following the 2027 season, Jeremy Pena, Adley Ruchman, Issock Paredes, Muneitaka, Murakami, Luis Robert Jr., and Freddie Freeman, who will be 38 at that point. And Jeff wrote, It is Grim. And with the acquisition cost for trades enormous, it reinforces the leverage the remaining bats hold, miss out on Tucker, Bichette, or Bellinger, all of whom cost only cash in draft picks, I guess, because it qualifying yours, but, you know, basically. Yeah, if you're the Dodgers, you're like, I haven't thought about my draftics in years. Yeah, you're not sweating.

They still do all in the draft, but you know. I know, but not that those guys ever play for them for the most part. I know a few of them do, but not often. And the ability to recover could be severely mitigated absent breakout seasons from any of the above. So that's an important caveat, I think, because I think if you looked at previous classes and how they were shaping up two years or even a year prior to the actual free agency. I wonder how predictive it actually is because we might be looking at the class of a couple years from now and saying, oh, there's not a lot of appealing players here,

but maybe some of the guys that Jeff just listed will have big bouncebacks or breakouts, I hesitate to use the term, or someone who's not even on the radar, someone who Jeff doesn't even list there because they don't seem like a marquee free agent. Maybe by then they will, you know. So I don't know. Maybe that's a mistake that I ran into in 2014 when I'm looking ahead and thinking, oh, this is a pretty slim pickings. But then by the time free agency rolls around, baseball, tough to predict.

Some guys get good. You never see it coming. And one way or another, it seems to work out. So I don't know. Either I was about 15 years early with that take and I was just super prescient. Or maybe people have been saying this for a while and it will continue not to be true. because another thing that I mentioned in that piece is that, like, well, if everyone does sign extensions, then the few free agents who don't, they're going to make bank because they're going to be the only ones out there. I guess, granted, there might be fewer opportunities and landing spots for them because teams will have signed their guys already.

But in theory, teams, if there's scarcity on the free agent market, then they will be making more. and then that will convince future players not to sign those extensions because they'll look at what players are making free agency and say, oh, why would I take this massive discount? Look how well these free agents are doing. So it could be sort of a cyclical thing. But if that's in the back of these team's minds, A, yes, they might crack down on us and impose even stiffer penalties. Or, B, we just don't really like a lot of what we're forecasting for future free agent classes. then maybe it makes sense to splurge now. Yeah, I think that one thing we have seen smart teams or even, I don't broaden this out to say that there are dopes in the mix.

But, you know, teams that are really serious about contending soon, even if the season isn't this next, very next one, is to be opportunistic in free agency, even when they are maybe kind of punt. a year of value from the free agent contract because the rest of the roster isn't ready yet, right? If you think that Corey Seeger or Manny Machado, those are ones that come sort of immediately to mine for me are going to be difference makers for you and you want them on your squad, well, guess what? You better sign them now because they're not going to be there a year from now. So even if you're not able to fully maximize the value, you're going to be really happy you have them when you do. And who knows, maybe a couple of guys on your roster, sort of take a step forward or outperform in other ways, and you're ready sooner than you

would expect. We saw this sort of at the beginning of the Astros window of contention, right, where they brought guys up, and it was like, oh, well, those clubs are actually going to be a wildcard team. So that dynamic is always at play. And then you look at a team like the Dodgers, and I thought Fabian wrote about this well, where it's like what they're trying to stave off is not, you know, they're not saying like, oh, gosh, our window of contention is finally open. And they're saying to themselves, we're just going to be a perpetual motion machine. We're never going to have a cliff. We're always going to be moving, right?

And if Kyle Tucker opts out in, you know, a year, well, guess what? Then Zeyer Hope's going to get a chance to prove whether or not he's actually a really good prospect. So there are redundancies and contingencies, but also they just want to maximize the core they have. And on some level, even though it means spending a lot of money, I get the prevailing logic of it. Because it's like if you're already spending as much as they are on Otani and Betts and Freeman and Will Smith, and you have this rotation that's, you know, really coming together and stacked. And part of that is because you gave Yamamoto a bunch of money. And then you sign snow.

There's an argument to be made that it's like, well, you should just keep spending because your odds of being able to not only win the West, but to dominate in October, if all those guys are healthy and productive at the same. time means that you're really maximizing the value from each individual contributor. It's a very expensive way to do it, but also think about how much money the Dodgers make. They just make a stupid amount of money. They're printing money, right? You know, I'm talking about Steve Cohn's potential financial shenanigans in the past. They're printing their own money. No, I'm kidding. But, you know, there's value in that. And I think that one of the things that we've seen with them this offseason, and now we can finally talk about Kyle Tucker's

fit on the Dodgers, is that they have, you know, what have been their big signings this offseason? Edwin Diaz and Kyle Tucker. Remember when they gave Edwin Diaz a contract? Yeah. A record reliever AVAV contract. Yeah. Right. And we were, and we were like, but as long as they don't do anything else. No one's going to freak out about the Dodgers this off season. What a fool I was. What a fool, Ben. Right.

Yeah, they're paying Edwin Dio's $21 million a year. But I think what they did was they're at a point in their roster construction where they're able to build, like, I'm sure that they did not put it to themselves this way. But based on what annoyed them in the last world series, like that is the vibe of these two decisions. So like, what did we want? We wanted a real, shut the door, screw you guy at the back of the bullpen. We didn't have one. We had to throw Yamamoto out there on zero days rest and it worked out, but it was terrifying. So how do you address that problem?

You go get Edwin Diaz. And then you look at their lineup and you're like, this is so stacked. Where could they possibly need help? And then you realize that like their outfield wasn't super productive last year, right? they made a bad signing with Comfordo or a good signing depending on how much you want Craig to be personally tortured by watching his favorite baseball team. So, like, your mileage might vary on that. But he was terrible and was just left off the postseason roster. I'm sure they were like, well, we can never watch Tay Oscar play right field again because that's an adventure we don't need to relive.

I have bad news for you about Teosker, the left fielder also. Sure. Not much better, honestly. but he is essentially stationary. I know that Tucker did not have great range last year either, but Teosker is just glued to the ground. People are going to be like, wow, he moves so well out there. Look at, look at Tucker go.

Graceful, like a gazelle. Yeah. Yeah, gallivanting around out there like Iqabughey on his horse. I'm going to make this visual comp stick. I'm going to do it. You're all, now that he's a Dodger, I'm going to be more. annoying about it. He looks like Iqabod Crade from the animated Legends of Sleepy Hollow,

which, as an aside, is it the light? And you should watch it in October as you're watching Kyle Tucker play postseason baseball for the Dodgers. But, you know, they looked at it and they're like, we want to minimize the, the bad parts of our outfield production. Well, what do we

do? We go get Kyle Tucker because we think that Andy Pyes is productive enough as a center fielder and a good enough center fielder. What do they go sign Harrison Bayer? I think they're done. I think they're done. You've said that many times.

It's never true. But I actually, but actually, surely now they're done. Surely now they're done. But again, this is a team that is so stacked and so good. It's like, well, what do you do? Well, you try to deal with your last little annoyance. Honestly, it's not a bad way to conduct oneself at work. What if you could just eliminate all the little annoyances?

I don't have any because I work with perfect people who are the best. but every other job. Yeah. At Lindberg, your website famously called Lindberg. Yes. So this one, first of all, I called it. I don't feel particularly proud of it because I didn't call anything else. But when we did our free agent fits last week, I said he's going to the Dodgers.

Also, you should love this deal because Kyle Tucker won you the free agent over Underdraft. This is not the number one implication of this signing. but I think it's a done deal. I think it's game over right now. And I thought it was for you. I know. But I've staged a comeback here because, yeah, it's quite a margin now because we haven't actually mentioned the terms, which we probably should do here. But this is a $240 million deal over four years with opt-outs after the second and third seasons.

Right. Plus, or including a $64 million. signing bonus. And it's the Dodgers, so there are deferrals, but not big deferrals in this case. Only 30 million is deferred. So, yeah, that takes the average annual value down from 60 per to net present value of 57.1, which is still a record by 6 million or so over one Soto, who of course got a $15 million deal. So that accounts for that kind of. But yes, for free agent contracts over underdraft purposes, this is a big, blow to your hopes because he was at $400 million for MLB trade rumors. And it'll be interesting if we continue to do the over-underdraft, whether MLB trade rumors

and other prognosticators will adjust their predictions to account for what we were just talking about. Yeah, yeah. I mean, not even just the deferrals, but just, you know, if everyone's predicting suddenly short-term high A-AV deals, we'll see. But yeah, I took the under on 400 and that's a lot of money my way. So I am now 238 million to the good, and you are at 139 million, which is a respectable showing. Oh, sure.

But it would be tough for you to catch up at this point. I am happy, and I'm going to be so magnanimous in defeat as a... Magnanimous. Right, as an invitation to some people to be gracious in victory. I won't gloat about this one. This is just a regular run-of-the-mill routine type of victory, not a one-in-a-one. million miracle. But, but yeah, you still have unders on Zach Gowan and Suarez, and I have an under on Justin Verlender, but it's pretty tough to concoct a scenario where I blow this leads, but we'll see.

So anyway. But I was going to, no, but I was going to say, I'm happy for you. And I'm, I, I like that for the second year in a row, a victory is being assured to someone because of an, of an over bet as opposed, right? Did I take the over? I took the over on Snell, right? You, yeah. But I, well, I took the under on Tucker, but it's, you know, he did quite well for himself. He just had a different.

Oh, you took the under? Yes, because it was 400. Oh, 400. Oh, well, then never mind. I'm not happy for you at all. Disgusting. Yeah, I guess. Have solidarity.

Where is your spirit of brotherhood, you know? Eight for what you will, Ben. management here. Yeah, just growing about poor Kyle Tucker and his measly $240 million. Disgusting. Yeah, so I'm not surprised, and it's not like I was, you know, the lone voice in the wilderness saying, Tucker will go to the Dodgers and everyone else said, how could you be so bold and a visionary? No, plenty of people were saying that.

And Kylie, at the beginning of the offseason, when he did his free agent preview and talked to his various sources, he said the Dodgers were the most often native. and Jeff Passon in his preview said it was a longer shot, but said it was a longer shot because the Dodgers would love a short-term high A-A-V deal, which is exactly what they got. So, I mean, it just made all the sense in the world because insofar as the Dodgers need anything, they did need Kyle Tucker. They really had a desire and a need for him.

And, you know, it's all relative, obviously. Sure. There are teams out there that would be happy to upgrade to the Dodgers pre-Tucker outfield situation, but it wasn't good. They were 18th and outfield war last year and projected to be about the same this year. And so now they add Kyle Tucker to the mix, and that's going to be a pretty big upgrade for you. So they obviously show a willingness whenever they have a hole like that and there's an elite talent. That's why I just would never bet against the Dodgers getting a guy who makes that much. sense for them. And, you know, Tucker needed to, I guess, accept this structure of deal. And as of now, we

we don't know the full array of options that were available to him, I guess. Like, we know that the Mets offered a similar deal, which was when you add it all up, I guess, maybe slightly below the Dodgers offer. Yeah, like 20 million, it sounds like. Yeah. And we know that the Blue Jays were in on Tucker hot and heavy too, but I haven't at least seen their max bid, but it seemed like they were maybe willing to go longer. But, you know, I'm sure that if he had wanted to maximize the years, then he could have gotten many more years and more total dollars. But this is what he chose.

And we haven't heard his rationale yet as we are recording. So I don't know how much of it is the Dodgers are wanting to play with the Dodgers stars or winning world series or whatever it is or whether he just. liked the terms of the offer, but yeah, it made a ton of sense for them, unfortunately, for everyone else. And, you know, the Dodgers, they will not be complacent. There are a lot of World Series winners who just content themselves with, we're going to keep the gang together. How can we improve upon a World Series winner? That's the best you can be. So we'll just keep everyone here and we'll just run it back. But the Dodgers don't do that. And

everyone's sick of it and understandably because, you know, it was like two winters ago was Otani and Yamamoto and Glassnow and Tayasker. And that worked out. They won a World Series. Then, rather than rest on their laurels, last offseason, they signed Snell and Sasaki and Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates, et cetera. And now Edwin Diaz and Kyle Tucker. And it's not like they've lost anyone, really. They're bringing back everyone except.

Quaten Kershaw, who was not an insubstantial contributor to them last year. He actually threw the second most innings on the Dodgers staff in the regular season. But by the time October rolled around, their actual top starters were healthy, and he was way down the depth chart. Very rude to Enrique Hernandez, but yes. It's true, yeah. And, of course, Quayton Kershaw, not actually retired because he's going to be at the BBC, which is very funny. I mean, I think it's kind of nice, I guess, because I remember that he wanted to play in the WBC last time. And then there was like an insurance issue and he couldn't.

And so I guess it's a nice way to ride off into the sunset after a long accomplished career. Just like get to play in the WBC and, you know, maybe do well there. But it does set up some like sort of hilarious tragic comic scenarios where like, you know, we've talked about how great the pitching staff of the WBC. team for the U.S. is this year, and yet they're also carrying Clayton Kershaw, which, you know, has to be mostly kind of a career achievement award recognition. You say that, but think about who manages that team, Ben. You think that, you think that? Well, yeah, no.

You think he's not going to end up playing? No, I do not think that. I do think he will. Even though Dave Roberts is not at the helm here, I think that Mark DeRosa is fully capable of of putting Clayton Kershaw into some high-levered situation and having him just blow it. Maybe we'll get different management of that team then. Maybe it'll serve a purpose. Maybe it's service blow up actually.

Yeah, maybe. But yeah, you know, they're not really losing anything except Kershaw from that roster. And meanwhile, they're getting Diaz, they're getting Tucker. And there are other ways in which they should be better in theory because... He signed Andy Bonias. How dare you? Of course, yes. But also, they had so many pitching injuries last year.

Now, they very well may have a lot of pitching injuries this year, too, because they're the Dodgers. And look at the pitchers on that staff. Right. And pitchers are pitchers, yeah. Yeah, they're not going to have a 2025 St. Louis Cardinals, like, one pitcher on the IL sort of season. But it would be hard to rack up more IL days by pitchers than the Dodgers did last year. I believe in them. I think they could do it.

I mean, yeah. The odds are probably against them. And even if they do, they do have now sort of a backstop because they have a trio of returning starters who missed basically all of last season. That's the nice thing. They just have, it's like goes in waves sort of. It's like, here are our pitchers who are out for this season. They'll be back next season when other guys are out for the season. So now they can pencil in at least River Ryan and Gavin Stone and the very on the nosedly named Kyle Hurts.

Yeah. And so, you know, that helps. And, of course, Otani, who transitioned back into two-way play last season. Maybe people are right. Maybe this team is too much. Maybe. Maybe it's overkill. But, you know, they have fully operational, presumably, hopefully healthy, stretched out Otani from the start of the season,

instead of basically at the very end when they finally got him up to speed. And then presumably, Muky Betts will not be a shadow of his former self because he, He has all of his strength sapped by a virulent bug of some sort on the eve of the season. So that's probably not going to happen. And, you know, maybe some of what went wrong last year with the bullpen and Scott and everything else and trying to know my goodness and, you know, Kopeck and just whatever else. Like maybe some of that actually goes right or goes better this time for them. And, you know, other things could go wrong too, of course. But it just like last year was probably a sub 50 percentile out.

come for them in the regular season. All worked out just fine in the end for them. But, you know, the path to get there, they were not nearly as dominant as everyone expected them to be. And it was pretty shaky. They had, what, like the fifth best record in the regular season? They edged out the Padres by three games or something. I'm guessing that's not going to happen again.

So, you know, I think that because they are so good and so deep and so talented and have so many resources and don't hesitate to use them, it has seemed like the only thing that could stop them is age that maybe trying to build this perpetual playoff machine by just importing players constantly. Maybe that gets harder and harder to do and guys get older and they get less effective and maybe they get more injury prone and it gets more and more expensive to build a team that way. And so they did have the oldest average hitter age of any team last year. And you start looking at the ages of some of these guys.

You know, Freeman and Muncie and Betts and Hernandez, they're all well into their 30s, if not they're mid-30s. And so you could have forecasted maybe just a collective collapse or decline, at least. You know, maybe they all start to feel the effects of aging, and it happens all at once, and it hits them. hard or something. But I don't know, as long as they're willing to just keep spending more and more, which it seems like they're willing and able to do, they might just be able to spend their way

past that problem because they can keep patching. And, you know, Tucker is about to be 29. As we said, he's not going to make the Dodgers young. He and Pahas, who's 25, are the only projected regulars under 30. but it does help hedge. And if you can keep filling in with basically prime age free agents, if you can just keep adding Tucker, Otani, Yamamoto, Sasaki, year after year after year, I guess you can keep this going as long as you're willing to just pay through the nose,

which clearly they are. I do find it encouraging that, and maybe the degree to which this is encouraging on sort of a macro level, is diminished by the fact that the team doing it is literally the Mets. But it's nice that like, okay, so Tucker signs, and the Mets are despondent, and Steve is like, oh, my God, it was the tweet. It was the tweet. Someone take my phone away. It's like when I tried to make you guys excited about modern art.

How embarrassing. But then they immediately pivot, right? And I feel like a lot of the response to the Dodgers and their approach in the last couple of years has been a fair amount of like, well, we're going to take our ball and go home now from other teams. And so seeing, you know, the runner-up sort of immediately pivot is good. Seeing the Phillies then pivot to a third year of Rilmuto and that deal is. I'm saying pivot, like I know for sure that it was two and then he called.

It just feels that way to me, right? Like, that's the version of it that I'm imagining in my. mind. But, you know, it's good to see there be some sort of push and pull. In general, I find this market kind of inscrutable and I think it doesn't really like offer us very many like broader themes to draw from it. But man, so many of our top guys that are signed now. That's so nice. Yeah. I'm pretty tired, Ben. I got to tell you, I'm pretty tired, you know. Busy and won't any, won't anyone think of the editors, you know, when they're doing this. Don't they want to? Don't they want I do appreciate them being like, hey, it's a long weekend.

Let's get some of our business concluded before. Yes, that was nice. This had all the makings of like right after we finish a Friday recording, all hell breaks loose. And no, it was actually before we recorded for once. So that was very considerate. Yeah. No questions about what will we talk about today.

Yeah, I was like great. Yeah. This is great. This had been by Dodger standards, a somewhat quiet offseason. And of course, the dastardly Dodgers. were just lying in wait, and ultimately the sequence of signings doesn't really matter. They still got their guys. But there have been a bunch of teams that have been busy and active in free agency.

And yes, they are mostly bigger market teams and historical high spenders. But, you know, I'm just looking at, I'm scanning the list of teams that have spent at least 100 million in free agency this offseason or, you know, committed 100 million. And it looks like at least nine teams. So you have the Dodgers, the Js, the Mets, the Phillies, the Cubs, the Orioles. Nice to see them get in on the action. The Red Sox, the Braves, the Mariners are right on the cusp. The Padres made some moves when people feared they might not.

So, you know, there have been other teams that have been in on things. And that's nice. It's not solely the Dodgers show. They let some other teams sign some. some NPB posted players for once. That was very, very kind of them. But, you know, ultimately, I don't know that that makes anyone less upset about the Dodgers doubling down or trying to triple down on World Series here.

But what will make you, I think, even more mad if you're not already about the Dodgers is that they have their cake and eat it too, which is that they win all the time. They're going for a 14th consecutive playoff appearance, and it would take an improbable series of events for them not to extend that streak. And because of that, they haven't drafted high in who knows how long. Right. And they forfeit draft picks to sign all these top free agents. And sometimes they trade prospects to get established major league guys.

And yet somehow they have arguably the best farm system in baseball, certainly on the short list. Or up there, yeah. I mean, it is a stacked group. It really is. Yeah. And that goes along with the, well, they don't just spend money. They do everything well, which is true. It doesn't make it any less frustrating for anyone.

It maybe makes it more frustrating for some. But somehow they have managed to keep things moving along parallel tracks so that they never get bad at the big league level. But also, they are perennially the strongest or among the strongest in the minor leagues as well. And MLB.com or MLB Pipeline, Jonathan Mayo did a survey of front office. about various team tendencies and how they handle prospects and who has the best farm system and all of that stuff and who hoards their

prospects the most. It's the guardians, evidently, every front office person agrees. But the most common response to who has the best farm system was the Dodgers. Now, several of the Dodgers' top 10 prospects, including I guess their consensus top three,

the consensus top three, according to fan graphs and pipeline, Jose de Paula de Paula is maybe number one. And then Hope, you mentioned already. And Eduardo Cantero, these are all outfielers. They've got other outfielders. And so if they have to replace Tay Oscar, whose contract runs through 2027, or Tucker, who could opt out, then in theory, they should have someone ready to take their spot.

Maybe. Who knows? Because by then they may well have traded those guys for something. something else. Like it's pretty tough to crack that roster. As, you know, Pahas found out, he finally did it, Dalton rushing, struggling, fighting for playing time. And often, you know, they end up trading some pretty decent players because they just don't have room for them. It's like, actually hope they acquired in the trade when they sent Michael Bush to the Cubs. Because he had no path to playing time in L.A. after they signed Freeman. And so I guess,

That's one way in which the Dodgers just... I hope it was far enough away that it didn't, you know, wasn't going to, like, be a problem. Yeah, so some Dodgers, you know, both the penalties that they pay, part of that gets distributed to everyone else and revenue shared, but also the talent sometimes because they have such a surplus. It's like, you can take Michael Bush because we have Freddie Freeman. What are we going to do with Michael Bush? And then he becomes a pretty core contributor for the Cubs. So that happens sometimes, too. So it's kind of like, you know, will they act?

actually need to promote these prospects at some point, or will they just continually fill holes with established superstars and never actually need those guys? I don't really know. But they have optionality, as they say in front office circles. They can do either, I guess. So now one thing that's interesting to me about Tucker and, you know, why would he want to opt out ever, right? if you're getting 60 million a year or even 57.1, it's possible, I think, that as good as he has been, that he has not peaked, that his career year is still to come. Because he's been war-wise just as consistent as they come. The past five seasons, he's been between 4.2 and 4.9 FanGraphs War. And over that span, he has amassed the 10th most fan grafts war of any position player.

And so it seems like it would be hard to improve upon that. And he's got so much going for him. You know, he's, he, if you look at discrete seasons, which is not the way this works, then he's been a 30-30 guy in that he has hit 30 homers and stolen 30 bases in different seasons. He's been a 400 on base guy. Like, he can do it all. And he's not maybe the most sensational or scintillating or glamorous. And maybe that's partly because of his generic.

name and public persona. And because when he came up with Houston, he was sharing a lineup with a lot of infamous former teammates, right? So who knows? You know, I don't know whether his national profile will be more prominent now that he is with the Dodgers because the Dodgers just get a ton of attention and because his salary, I think, will earn some headlines and has. Or less because he'll just blend in because they got so many superstars there who even has

time to talk about Justin, not Justin Tucker, wrong Tucker, wrong sports. That's a terrible Tucker. This is a better Tucker as far as we know. Wires crossed. See, this is the hazard of now knowing about other sports and other athletes sports I can now misspeak and cite some other player who I'd rather not think about anyway. Anyway. So as good as he's been, I think he could be better because of the lack of durability that I noted the last couple seasons. And if you do kind of play not arbitrary endpoints exactly, but selective endpoints, then you can come up with a scenario where he is better than he has been. Because, okay, so June 3rd, 2024 was when he fouled that ball off his shin.

Yeah. Through that day, he was fifth in hitter war and on pace for a career year. And then, you know, didn't play for three months, basically. then last year through the end of June, he ranked sixth in hitter war and was once again on pace for a career year. And that's when it seemed that he started to feel the effects of playing with the hairline fracture. Yeah, because it doesn't line up perfectly. No, yeah, because the fracture came on June 1st. He slid and that happened, but he played through it and hit well for a while.

But then that seems to have taken a toll. And maybe there were mechanical issues. and then that led to his brief benching in mid-August. And then after that, he came back and he raked for 12 games. And then he had the calf strain, and he was out for most of September. So if you kind of added out, it's like a tale of two seasons in back-to-back seasons, basically, because through June, if you just add up his wars through June in each of the past two years, seven war. And so after June, those two seasons combined 1.7 war.

So I know we could play this game with anyone well if they've just, you know, erased their worst period of the season and we're just, yeah, just extend their hot streak to the whole year. But in his case, I feel like it's a little more valid because it was clearly pretty injury-related and no one really doubts his skills. So I feel like it's possible. Like he has that in him where he just has that great June, but he doesn't get hurt, you know, not that health typically improves with.

age, but if he gets a little bit better luck, then maybe he could be that kind of guy, his healthy stretches that he had over the past two seasons, but combine that with playing 150 plus games, which he has done. He did that in 2022 and 2023. So if he could combine that past playing time with his performance in his healthy stretches of the past couple years, easy MVP candidate, or at least he would be if he were not now teammates with Shoio Doni. But, you know, if it would be otherwise. And in fact, if you look at his performance just on a rate basis, it's pretty comparable to Soto.

Like per 600 plate appearances over the past five years, Soto's at 5.3 fan graphs were and Tucker's at five. So, you know, they've kind of been like roughly as productive, but Soto has played 222 more games than Tucker over that span and, you know, 668 played appearances. So just saying, like, there's maybe more. more in there. If you believe that the true talent Tucker is the guy he was when he wasn't hurt the last couple years and he manages to be that guy for a full season, then yeah, maybe it might make sense for him to opt out because he'll only be, you know, 30, 31 or whatever. And he'll be

coming off an even stronger year. And I thought it was interesting. I noticed that at baseball reference, the most similar batter to Tucker through age 28 is Larry Walker. And I thought that was a really interesting comp because, you know, another oft-injured all-around talent who was fairly low profile early in his career, at least for a future Hall of Famer, you know, he was in Montreal and everything. And then he went to the Rockies and he had that year where at age 30 in 1997, he played 150-something games for the first and only time in his career. And he led the National League in all the wars and he won a well-deserved MVP award. And that probably ultimately is what gets him into Cooperstown.

So, you know, Tucker's not going to have the surface stats that Walker did playing on the moon in prehumidore cores. But he has the capability to have that kind of just, you know, I'll say it, break out season and be even better than he's been. I think he'll break out from a national attention perspective, although I do wonder if part of the appeal, and I say this not knowing him, is that he doesn't have to be the star, right? if that is part right because he's i think that the folks who covered him in houston would disagree with this as like his true personality because i think it did start to emerge over time but like seemingly purposefully blank um in terms of how much we know about him or um how much he cares to engage on this stuff i wonder i'm thinking more about the opt-out stuff and what it means for the possibility of a lockout.

Because with Tucker, for the guys who have an opt-out after one year, which is not Tucker, because his comes after two, you're in an awkward spot, right? Because you have to make a decision about that before we'll know if what the results.

I mean, I guess we're counting on there not being a resolution in time for them to just have a new basic agreement by December 1st or whatever it is. But you have to make that choice early and then hope, I guess, that you've concluded your business before the lockout starts, which, God, we're going to be spending so much time reading T-Leaps going into that day and, like, oh, my God, there weren't enough deals done.

And so that means they think they're going to lose the whole season. Or there were so many deals done. So surely they think they're going to play. It's going to be such an anxious winter, Ben. Yeah, I know. It's going to be anxious time. Let's pretend that that's not looming for the moments. We'll have plenty of time to fret about it for sure.

I can't wait for the lockout photography of people walking in various directions across parking lots. I do love it when they do that and I'm like, oh, it's Craig. Yeah. The one way or one way in which Walker and Tucker's trajectories are different is that Walker had not appeared in the playoffs or he didn't make the playoffs for the first time until his age 28. season, whereas Tucker has never played for a non-playoff team. That's true. And maybe he wants to keep that street going. That's true.

Yeah, but the interesting thing is that he has not distinguished himself in postseason play. No, he hasn't played particularly well in October. And maybe that's another part of the low profile and the being overshadowed because, you know, he's teammates with like George Springer and Yordaun Alvarez, like a couple of the best postseason hitters of all time. And meanwhile, he has hit 233, 317, 376. It's a 95 WRC plus in almost 300 career plate appearances, which is a negative 33.1% championship win probability added. And talk about the power of first impressions. Like my – because remember, he came up in 18, right? And then played that postseason.

And then didn't come up again until September of the following year. Am I getting that sequence right? I think he came up in 18. I think he didn't play in the postseason in 2018. In that postseason, it was the next postseason. Okay, sorry. I do have a whole website just at my immediate disposal to answer these questions. Okay, you're right.

So it was the 19 postseason. Yeah. I have such a strong memory in 2019 of him swinging through a high fastball. And Ben, it was three feet above the strike zone, I swear. You know, and that's my, this is such a goofy. It's, you know, this man is a great player. And even though to your point, he hasn't produced particularly well in October, like, the idea of me having doubts about him is so silly. But also, I'll just never forget.

I'll never forget it. I'll never forget it because he swings through this high fastball and then they cut to the crowd. And there is a guy in the crowd gesturing. with a smirk on his face being like, look how high above strikes on the wall he just swung through was. And it made such a profound, strong impression on me. So anyway, that's a story about me having a very specific memory. Yeah.

I'll never forget when rookie Yordon in the 2019 ALCS struck out 12 times in 24 play appearances. So happens to the best of them. Oh, sure, sure. He transcended that. Anyway, if Tucker wanted to go somewhere where he could continue to get play, playoff reps and eventually burnished those numbers. He chose the right place, I think. So it's just a ridiculous, preposterous lineup.

Like the first seven hitters in whatever order, Otani, Betts, Freeman, Tucker, Smith, Muncie, Hernandez. Like, it's nuts. Craig messaged me after the signing, the aforementioned Craig Oldt's seen in baseball prospectus. And he's like... He'll distinguish the Craigs because there are so many. Yeah. And he said, remember...

a couple years ago or whenever it was when you had me on the podcast to ask what it was like to be the villains. It's like, yeah, that was a long time ago. And they've gotten only more villainous, I suppose, from many people's perspective since then. I didn't even know, like, where to go in my piece, because I wrote a piece a year ago after various other Dodgers signings about how they had gone from villains to super villains in the eyes of the sport. And so where do you go from super villains? I don't know. But that lineup, even just those, seven guys. I said to Craig, it's it's like a 10-team fantasy league lineup, although he then said maybe it's more like an 8-team. It's like it's even a 10-team, it might be a little too good.

So yeah, I understand why people aren't thrilled with all of that talent being consolidated in one place in a 30-team league where you would want things to be spread around. Because look, they do have, they're projected to have the best position players, the best bullpen, the second best rotation after the aggressively revamped Red Sox. They have the highest projected war total of any team. There's an eight-war projected gap between them and the second best team, the Blue Jays, which is as wide a gap as the gap between the Blue Jays and the Rangers who rank 15th. So, you know, it's all projections and projections aren't destiny, but they are getting

close to lapping the league at least when it comes to forward-looking prognostications. Do you think, do you think, do you think that Kyle Tucker has a SpongeBob shirt like Larry Walker? I think probably not. It would be the most personality forward thing he's ever done. I know, that's why I don't think so. Yeah, it's, it would be too. Is he a SpongeBob guy? Yeah.

I know something about Kyle Tucker and his personal interests. Something. I love that. Do I know something? What kind of something? I don't know something. Something. Well, look, I'm tired of writing reactions to Dodgers signing and winning things. So I get it. Like I'm, you know, I am well aware of the fact as a former fan of a particular team that I am no longer a fan of a particular team. And I view the sport through a different lens than most people. who follow baseball. And so it's not as personally dispiriting to me when the Dodgers are great because it doesn't mean that my team is not going to win, right? And I do understand, though, having been in that position how people feel. And, you know, you pile on one siding after another and one title after another, and it gets

more and more tiresome and intolerable and predictable, basically. And, you know, it's just like once more unto the breach. It's, you know, put on your hard hats. We're venturing into the content minds. It's time to talk about another Dodger signing and a record contract to boot and really what is there that's new that you could possibly say. Right. So we've probably said it all in previous Dodgers discussions, but it all gets reared and rehashed every time one of these things happens. Yeah, maybe.

It is just a, it's funny to you. Because we have all this, there's all this gnashing of teeth, right, and consideration. And I, I understand why particularly given the labor stuff we're about to go through. I just don't know that ultimately the perception, I think it matters how ownership feels about this stuff and the Dodgers of it all. But I don't know that it really matters that much how the fans feel about the whole thing. I really, I just really am. I'm not sure that it matters. No, I've heard that it doesn't from people involved in these things. That it's just like if you don't have a seat at the table and you're not directly involved in bargaining, it's noise really. The public perception, you know, maybe does it move the needle a tiny bit? Does it weaken someone's resolve or strengthen someone else's resolve or undercut messaging from your leadership or make it harder to band together and present a united front? maybe, but I don't think it really has a huge impact.

It was Kyle Tucker against Emilio Paghan in the ALDS. Okay. That's what it was, Ben. It was Kyle Tucker against Emilio Paghan when Emilio Pagan was still. I'm sure he's still haunted by that. He has nightmares. I mean, it was, Ben, to be clear, an ugly swing. I mean, this gift has degraded to the point of looking like an impressionist painting.

But you're going to, I want you to scroll down and I want you to look at the swing I just sent you because I'm going to tell you, it's bad swing. It's a, it is a, it's like, where is that swing? Oh, it's way up there. And then there's the guy. I love the guy. How high is this high up? Oh, yeah. He's, he's a tall man.

He's a tall man. He's a tall man. He's a neck high at the very least. Yeah, that is a, that is quite a swing. I guess is a fairly wide range when you're talking about Kyle Tucker, but it's up there. So, yeah, I'll link to that if anyone wants to watch that and console yourself with the thought that that's the guy the Dodgers are getting, but not exactly. So, yeah, anyway, I get it.

I understand the frustrations. I sympathize. I guess my one little silver lining, not that this will make anyone feel better, but it's been worse. There's been an even bigger imbalance in the past, because I'm not. going to suggest that there's no imbalance here. When you have the Dodgers, you know, and spending is different from what teams could afford to spend and everything, but we know that no other team is quite in the same situation as the Dodgers. And so when you have the Dodgers at the top

end of the payroll scale without even accounting for the penalties and everything, which they paid something like $169 million last year just in the CBT taxes, the overages, and it'll probably be more than that this year. But when you have the Dodgers at what, 429 or whatever their projected payroll is right now, and the Marlins at 69 million, which is not nice. And that's barely enough to cover the cost of one Kyle Tucker, right? And, you know, when you have one team spending six times more than another team, it's probably not ideal. It's certainly not ideal for the perception, at least, of whether this is, you know, a fair balanced to playing field, not that it ever has been.

Of course, even if you concede that that's a problem, there's the question of, is the top end the problem or is the bottom end the problem? And I would suggest that the several low payroll clubs, even some of the successful ones that are just stubbornly spending below their means and cashing checks from teams like the Dodgers and not putting them toward their payroll, that bothers me more than one well-run team with institutional advantages flexing its financial muscle, but both extremes could be problems to differing degrees. Now, it has been even more lopsided than that in the past, and 20 years ago, the Yankees were outspending the Marlins,

who then as now, were the skin flintiest team in baseball. The Yankees then, in 2006, were outspending the Marlins by a factor of 12. So they were, you know, more than doubling, I guess, the difference, the ratio. that the Dodgers and the Marlins have right now. So, you know, baseball survived and thrived. And those mid-2000 Yankees were outspending even the Red Sox, their closest payroll rivals by like 70%. And the Dodgers are a mere 28% over the Mets or 52% over the Jays, right?

So it kind of has always been thus to some degree. That's not that much of a consolation because the Yankees made everyone mad back in those days, too. and The Onion would have headlines about how they signed every single player. And, of course, the Yankees did not win a World Series in their peak sort of drunken sailor spending period, the like twilight of the boss bombers years, like between 2001 and 2009 when they won again. So, you know, you can spend and not win. And that's, again, where you kind of depend on playoff randomness to bail you out, basically, and stop the juggernaut.

but it has been like that for a long time, which it doesn't mean that things couldn't be maybe better, you know. It's like payroll is not perfectly correlated with regular season success, certainly not with playoff success. But, and, you know, even in salary cap leagues, there are dynasties in salary cap leagues. I mean, the Patriots, the Chiefs, whoever else, right? You know, and I think I've drawn my exhaustic knowledge of other sports.

I could name a third football team, but I don't want to. Yeah. And, you know, some leagues caps are harder or softer than others. But the point is, you can absolutely have dynastic teams in salary cap leagues. And they don't make anyone less mad, I don't think. You know, it's not like anyone hated the Patriots less because they were doing it in a salary cap system. Now, maybe the Patriots were bending the rules in other ways. But still, like, it's going to piss you off regardless.

And you can argue that that's good for a sport to have a heel and a villain. You know, most fans who are upset probably would not argue that. People are sort of saying, you hate them, but you don't realize you actually love to hate them. It's almost kind of condescending. But maybe it's true sometimes. But, you know, I think that it does at least create the perception that when you do have a dynastic team in a league where the band of spending is not as wide, then it maybe makes it a little less likely to people that that team just bought titles, that they kind of like earned it through smarts or acumen maybe, which the Dodgers have

done clearly also, but they also outspent everyone by a lot. So, and to be clear, I'm not advocating for a salary cap here just in case anyone's confused. But I have come around to the idea that, like, with the approach. appropriate floor, I personally as a fan would accept it. I'm not saying that it would behoove the players necessarily, but even Dave Roberts endorsed the idea of a cap with a floor, right? And it's almost sort of a non-starter because it's like, would the floor be placed at the level where it would be at all equitable? Probably not, right? But like, you could if you were just a neutral arbiter and you came in and said, I will do the thing that is most just for everyone and best for the sport and everything.

In theory, you could design a system with a cap and a floor that was sufficiently high, that you're not overly punishing the competitive teams for trying to win, so there's still some leeway to invest in your roster. And you're also not just giving the cheapo teams free rein to just prioritize profit over talent, and you're holding them to account too, and you're also not drastically shifting the league's revenue in the owner's favor. Right. This is the thing.

Yeah. Could you thread that needle if you were not one of the stakeholders? Probably. I think you could design a system like that. I can't really envision that scenario actually being enshrined in the next CBA with or without an extended work stoppage because the player's understandably reluctant. to restrict their ceiling on earnings. The owners, obviously, have historically been reluctant

to make it worth their while to consider a cap because, of course, the owners half-heartedly floated a floor in the previous round of bargaining, but it was, like, laughably low. And the players were just, like, get out of here with that nonsense, and that was that, right? So, you know, odds are that will probably be what happens again. and, you know, they'll just all kind of kick the salary cap can down the road again because hopefully they all have so much at stake that they don't want to lose a season.

But, you know, I'm not ruling out the idea that a cap could be good for the sport with the appropriate settings and conditions, which are very unlikely to be implemented anytime soon. Right. It's like if you were willing to relinquish your authority to an outside neutral party. and then you were able to precisely define all of your terms, right? Because part of the problem is, like, what is baseball revenue? You know, we're going to have so much time to talk about this stuff. But my point is, like, I don't imagine ever, like, presenting my wallet to the wallet inspector. And it feels like that's what you would be doing if you were the union agreeing to a cap. Because the precedent for ownership having a couple little rules.

and then figuring out a way to conceal revenue or whatever to, you know, try to obfuscate those rules fast. So I would be fine with, you know, it's like you come in and you're trying to, like, I don't know, veil of ignorance in baseball and design a system where you, you know, everybody's happy, you know, you design a system where you design a system where you wouldn't be. disadvantaged because you don't know what your position in the society is going to be. I understand the problems with veil of ignorance from a theory of perspective. We don't need emails on this. Like, I don't need to be rules explained. I don't need a theory of justice lesson. That's not what we're doing

here, but I'm just, I'm grasping it as a metaphor for this, right? So you might be able to conjure a world where it's fair, but that's not the, that's not the reality of the negotiating table that's in front of either the union or ownership, right? Like, it is an adversarial system and they're going to try to get theirs. And so until that changes. I don't know, man. Yeah. I have seen the take out there that a salary cap wouldn't hamstring the Dodgers

at all, that it might actually benefit the Dodgers. I think this is kind of galaxy brain. I don't think this is because the idea is that players are not solely choosing to play for the Dodgers because the Dodgers have the most money or have offered the most money. True. yes, absolutely. There are other reasons that players have gone there because of their success as a team, because they're perceived to be a good player development organization, you know, classy organization, whatever it is, like for how players are treated and the conditions and all that stuff, sure. But there comes a point where it's still going to restrict them because players are not going to like play for league minimum just to have the privilege of playing for the Dodgers. I mean, sure, maybe. will they do a deferral here or there or something? Okay, yeah.

But, like, you know, if the Dodgers were at the cap, it's not like Kyle Tucker's going to say, oh, play for you for free because all I care about is winning a World Series or something. You know, where they are now, they would absolutely be hamstrung when it comes to making moves and other teams would be able to sign players because the Dodgers would just be maxed out. So, yeah, like all else being equal, they might still have some advantage in recruiting, but all else would be equal from a payroll

perspective, too, and that would hurt them more than the other thing would help them, I think. And, you know, at a moment when there's like a real effort being made on the part of other owners of the league to sort of rein in some of the other places that they would spend where they could press a different advantage, right? Like all of the, you know, it's not like we're going to suddenly see a more expansive data policy than the one that's being proposed and that the league has sent teams memos on. So there's, you know, there are other places where they are doing more or at least spending more, right? And I'm sure that there's a conversation to be had about like the, you know, marginal utility of some of the stuff that they do, but certainly spending more in those areas

away from the field to try to press an advantage on it. And the league is saying, well, not so he Don't be so hasty. You know, we want to make this equally accessible as if other teams can't, like, I don't know, sign a Kinnatrux contract. Like, what are we doing? Yeah. Okay. Well, we have gotten real about real muto. We've talked Tucker.

We've put a bow on bow. We've done it all here. And I'll leave you with one little moment of Zen, which I was reading right before we started recording. Did you see the latest in the defense of the betters? who were embroiled in the Emmanuel Class A, Luis Ortiz scandal, because this amused me. So this detail came out. There was an update, I guess, to the filing, and there are some text messages, and there's a defense. And the defense is that they weren't actually texting Class A and the Betters about rigging pitches.

They were texting about Class A's cockfighting. operation that he was running in the Dominican Republic, which, you know, apparently is a real thing. And morally speaking, I guess for a U.S. audience, it probably doesn't play well. Oh, I wasn't pitch-fixing. I was merely operating my rooster fighting combat ring. But, you know, I understand that's a popular thing in the Dominican Republic. But in this affidavit, the better who's not identified, said that, you know, he became friends with Class A and that they were just talking about the cockfights. And all of these messages that the prosecutors that the government interpreted as back and forth about fixing pitches, actually about the cockfights and only the cockfights.

And they are innocent. Everyone is innocent here. And so this document says, while I never discussed baseball gambling with Emmanuel in any way, I did discuss betting on rooster fighting with him. In the Dominican Republic, gambling on roosters is completely legal, and Emmanuel has a rooster operation. At times, I watched these legal rooster fights on Facebook and placed bets on which rooster would win. At times, I paid money to people associated with Emmanuel in the Dominican Republic who run his rooster operation,

either to cover bets or expenses related to the roosters. This money was only related to rooster fighting and had nothing to do with gambling on baseball. This was said back in August, and the government, the prosecutors have said that this was before the criminal filing and that at least one of the betters involved has recanted the statement since. So if you believe that, then perhaps they were spooked by the filing and didn't think that the rooster fighting defense would fly. But this is what they're going with. You know, I can't disprove it. maybe it was all just one big misunderstanding, one big rooster-related cock-up. But I would never have guessed that this would possibly be the justification.

Because evidently the better was dating someone who lived in Cleveland and saw Class A because they had met in Boston in 2023 through a mutual acquaintance and they bonded over baseball and being from the DR. And so when he was dating someone in Cleveland, he'd stay at Class A's home sometimes and run errands for Class A's family and had Dominican food shipped to Class A from New York because you can't get good Dominican food in Ohio. The affidavit's words, not mine. And so Class A would pay him for this. And some of those payments were that. And the man placed legal bets, entirely legal bets on Class A because this better used to be a pitcher. And he knew Class A and knew

that Class A threw only two pitches and believed that he just had enough of an inkling about Class A's tendencies that he knew when he would throw certain pitches. But Class A never tipped him off to anything. The Cout de Grace is that he used Chatte-PT in an attempt to analyze Class A's and others' pitches. And here's a cautionary tale about trusting in LLMs. He said he lost thousands of dollars betting on Paul Skeens because he couldn't predict which pitches skeins would throw. But Class A, innocent. All roosters.

All about roosters. Oh, boy. And right after we stopped talking, Victor Caratini signed with the twins. Not today, Victor. This is not the right time for podcast coverage. Meant to mention, by the way, in retrospect, how weird was that 2024 bobbashette season?

I know he was banged up, but 70 WRC plus and then bounced right back to the kind of hitter he'd been before, if not better, career low strikeout rate in 2025. and just about as good in every other respect. It's such an outlier. It's such an exception, such an eyesore on the player page. All those 120s and 1.30s and 140s in the WRC plus column. And then that's 70.

Probably stat blastable if we haven't already blasted it. Fleeting mid-career slump seasons. Not at the beginning or the end of a career, but mid-peak prime period, just total off here. And it turns out just a blip. That reminds me I got a message earlier from a Mets fan friend of mine who was a little slow on the uptake. Baseball fan, but not quite as plugged in as your average effectively wild listener. And so he heard about the Bichette news almost immediately and message me, Bo Bichette?

Damn, LFG. And then five minutes later, if we get Tucker, we are going to use a somewhat crude expression. I'll leave it up to your imagination. But the upshot was if we get Bichette and Tucker will be unstoppable. Unstop-bobble. Hmm. Anyway, this was 13, 14 hours after Tucker signed, but that news had not reached him. And then seconds later, another message, ah, it seems Kyle Tucker has left the building. Yeah, sorry, buddy. You get Bo, but not both. And you'll be happy to have Bo. He is such a good hitter. And yeah, there might be a defensive adjustment period in that Metsonfield, but Lindoran Semyon should be solid up the middle. You could do us a solid and support us on Patreon. That would be swell. You can go to patreon.com slash effectively wild and sign up to

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and the Tony Send me erratically Last, class and better for me