Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2430: New York, New York

Episode Date: January 23, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the best point in the podcast at which to talk transactions, how a salary cap would affect the kind of conversations we have about baseball (based on the way we discuss other sports), the notion that a particular signing would drive owners to pursue a salary cap, and (25:09) whether a fielder’s proclivity for diving catches tells us anything about how good he is (inspired by the belief that Andruw Jones never had to dive). Then (44:32) they break down the latest Mets moves (for Luis Robert Jr. and Freddy Peralta), the team’s extreme makeover, and why the Brewers dealt Peralta, plus (1:29:08) the Yankees’ Cody Bellinger deal, their lack of roster turnover, and Belli’s up-down-up career. Audio intro: Jimmy Kramer, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: The Shirey Brothers, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to MLBTR on Gore Link to Young trade news Link to Young trade rationale Link to Rosenthal on the cap Link to Drellich on the cap Link to Calcaterra on Jones Link to Sheehan on Jones Link to Jones highlight reel Link to possibility space wiki Link to Ben on Harper’s dives Link to Hannah on dives Link to Rocky quote Link to FG on Robert Link to team CF projections Link to Robert CF rank Link to Robert’s sprint speeds Link to 2017 story on Robert Link to 2017 EW episode on Robert Link to FG on Peralta Link to FG on Peralta prospects Link to Brewers defense ranking Link to Peralta defenders ranking Link to RA-9 WAR leaders Link to team SP projections Link to Tong’s grilled cheese Link to BP on Peralta Link to Brewers payroll story 1 Link to Brewers payroll story 2 Link to team payrolls page Link to Mets team ZiPS post Link to FG post on Bellinger Link to Belli’s celebration injury Link to Belli on changing his celebration Link to team WAR projections Link to Domínguez defensive stats Link to team BaseRuns Link to political registration research Link to EW wiki on car recording  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

Number one, Fanggrass baseball podcast. The stat cast is that blast. T OPS Plus when its stats need contrast. Zips and steamer for the forecast. Hello and welcome to episode 2430 of Effectively Wild of FanGrafts Baseball podcast brought to you our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of the ringer. Ben, how are you?

I'm anticipating all the trade talk that we're about to have. Trade trade trade trade trade. Not quite that many, but at least three. Just a ton of trades to talk about. Trades are wild, effectively wild. Both New York teams have been busy since we last spoke. And Texas, too, not to be left out of the action. I'm not forgetting about you, Mr. McKenzie Gore, neck and neck with Freddie Peralta in

Fangraph's War over the past two seasons. So that is not a slight. But last time we had very few transactions to talk about. The time before that, we had too many. transactions to talk about today, we might too. So the stove, it giveth, it taketh away. It really depends on the day. I always wonder, by the way, this is more of a meta musing here. But when I have non-transaction-related, more general thoughts, and also have transactions to talk about, which would be better to begin with, which would be the better lead? Are we burying the lead?

if we make the Mets and McKenzie and Cody Bellinger wait, or is it better to ease into that with some more general interest talk before we get to the transactions? I don't know. After all these years, I don't know what our audience would prefer. So I'd be happy to hear from our listeners if they have a preference. Maybe if you're pot committed and you're going to listen to the whole episode regardless, it doesn't matter to you, which order we do it in. But I wonder about that because the big news is the transactions, right? Oh, Mets, Mets, Mets, McKenzie, Bellinger.

And yet that kind of transaction talk, it's kind of a commodity good, right? You know, you can get that on any baseball podcast or any baseball site anywhere you're consuming your content about baseball. People are going to be talking about those trades. And we're going to talk about them too. And hopefully our transaction talk will be entertaining and informative and fun. but it doesn't distinguish us, I think, as much as some of our more off-the-beaten path topics, perhaps. So, you know, that's the effectively wild difference. Yeah, you're going to get all the baseball news that's fit to podcast about,

but you're also going to get some stuff that is perhaps not fit to podcast about, but we will podcast about it anyway. Yeah, what do you have in mind, Ben? Yeah, do you have an instinct about which way is preferable? I just, I don't know, because I always wonder. You know, because baseball, lots of fans, they consume the game regionally and they followed their team. Now, if you're listening to this podcast, you probably have at least some interest in the sport on a national level. Or you'd probably be frustrated a lot of the time just because if you're here for one team talk, then you're not going to get that much of the time.

But also, are people interested in hearing more about Mets moves? If they're not Mets fans, have we not talked about the Mets plenty already this offseason? and maybe people have reached their Mets quota. Who knows? I don't know. And I always note that we get much more reader response or listener response and engagement seemingly when we do the weird stuff.

You know? And when people recount their favorite effectively wild episodes, it's never, oh, that time they broke down that signing. You know, it's never that. Like the Pantheon podcast that we've done, it's always something weird. It's, you know, emails. it's interviews, and I like to think that we do a little bit of everything.

That's what you get here in effect. Sure. It befits our name. And we're going to give you the meat and potatoes. You know, there are some podcasts that are ostensibly baseball podcasts, but barely talk about baseball. And then baseball is just kind of the premise. Right. You know, it's the hook.

And then you get in there and there's not that much baseball talk and maybe that's part of the appeal. And then there are baseball podcasts that are just all about baseball business, you know, and rarely range far afuel. from that. And here, I like to think that you get a little bit of everything, and that's the appeal of the podcast. But when I have a bit of both, I never know where to start. So I guess instead I started about not knowing where to start. That was probably the worst possible way to go. Well, and particularly because my question was more about what non-transaction-related stuff do you want to talk about. And then we talked about the lack of talking about either. I would

offer that. I think it's fine to start with non-transaction-regulation. related news because with very rare exception, our podcasts are coming out several hours and sometimes days after transactions have taken place. And so the lead is already buried. Why not just buried a little further? Right. Yeah. We might not be your first stop. We want to be the one stop shop. But yeah, if you need the instant details and breakdown, you can probably get there elsewhere. So, okay, well, now that the naval gazing is out of the way, I have one insight. Well, I hope it's an insight about outfield defense as it pertains to Andrew Jones and some data that I could bring to bear. But I also, now that I am, of course, an all-purpose sports pundit, I had a musing

about how baseball is discussed and followed vis-a-vis other sports that have salary caps. Oh, sure. And kind of be careful what you wish for. I'm not suggesting that this should govern or will govern whether baseball will have a salary cap at some point that will not be determined by how much fun fans have to talking about the sport. This will be something that is hashed out at the bargaining table, obviously. But since I follow other sports more closely now, the tenor of the conversation or the kind of conversations that you have about MLB versus other sports, especially when it comes to trade speculation and signing speculation and everything, salary caps make that much more complicated and arguably less fun.

Oh, I agree. And so part of me, independent of all the other virtues and vices of a salary cap and, of course, a salary four in MLB, I do dread having to become a capologist of sorts if MLB ever does adopt a salary cap because it's just kind of a headache. You know, it's, it really is. And there are, you know, pluses and minuses to talking about this stuff in the various sports. But I was chatting with my friend Zach Kram, formerly of the ringer and currently of ESPN. And I thought he would be a good sounding board for this because he used to cover baseball primarily for the ringer and then shifted to doing baseball and basketball. And now is basketball only at ESPN. So he has been on both sides of that.

And he did agree to an extent. with me that MLB's lack of a salary cap makes it more fun to talk about in some respects, because in the NBA, for instance, everything is just the trade machine. You know, it's like, is this even an allowable trades where this work under the cap? And it's so complex that you basically have to outsource that calculation to someone or something, whether it's some kind of trade machine algorithm or, you know, it's it's Bobby Marks. It's some sort of subject matter expert capologist type whom everyone takes their cue from.

And it's so complex in terms of what's allowed and what's not and so much discussion of aprons and second aprons. And in baseball, we have it relatively easy, I think. And, you know, we talk about signing bonuses and deferrals and competitive balance tax thresholds and taxes. And that stuff can be kind of complicated. but we might not fully appreciate how easy we have it. Because if suddenly there's cap and a floor,

then we're going to have to do a lot of learning and it's going to be a lot of math. And it's just, it's going to be tough to kind of off the cuff weigh in on trades or just sort of do speculation about transactions because so much of it will be limited by this arcane knowledge that most people don't possess. Yeah. And I don't want to overstate the case. The financial component of it is obviously incredibly important in baseball. And we do talk about the numbers game quite a bit. And there are teams that, while they are not technically restricted from signing someone, do view the competitive balance tax thresholds as sort of hard caps on their spending. We end up having a little bit of both. But we're never, you know, you're never seeing a team really

recruited from doing something. You might have an appreciation of their desire to sign a guy when you have a situation, like, say, the Dodgers with Kyle Tucker and you can appreciate just how expensive he is going to be when you factor in the amount they will pay in luxury tax on his salary. But it isn't, you know, it isn't a matter of, well, they can or can't do it. And I've had the apron stuff explained to me a couple of times. And I don't know how hard I've tried to understand it, but I need to try harder because I still find myself somewhat flummoxed by it. And you can tell that a lot of people do because if you watch the NBA draft, they spent like 15 minutes just reminding people. Here's the deal with the apron.

Yeah, it's a full-time job to understand that and translate it to everyone. Yeah. So that's tough. And yeah, as Zach pointed out, so there are some similarities and it's kind of just a difference of degree, not kind. because, for instance, in all the Janus trade talks and speculation in the NBA, because I said to him, you know, it doesn't seem as if there's any great shortage of NBA trade speculation. Like, that's out there. Maybe more of it is misinformed because not everyone is clued into all this stuff. But a lot of the discussion, there is maybe as much discussion, but a lot of it centers on what is allowed technically and what isn't. So basically, these are the teams who could conceivably trade for Janus. And, If they did, these are the players they'd need to include to make the cap math work or else it's just not even feasible. Right. But maybe the equivalent of that in MLB, it's not that a team legally couldn't acquire someone.

It's that in practice, they probably won't, right? Because, yeah, teams do treat the CBT as a soft cap or they don't even get close to the CBT because they're super cheap, right? And so you don't get, I get the tiresome, you know, Dodgers are ruining the sport. Mets are ruining the sport, maybe to a slightly lesser extent. Yankees are ruining the sport, whoever it is, right? Because there isn't as much of an imbalance, financially speaking. And so we have our own tiresome and tiring talking points, perhaps. They're just different ones.

Yeah, but I do think that there's, on average, a greater ease if one is inclined to keep the focus on the player and what they contribute. to a particular team or what a team might be losing by trading them away. And again, I don't want to say that the other stuff doesn't matter. Like, how much time do we spend talking about team control and what have you? These things are clearly part and parcel with the way that rosters are constructed. But I just appreciate the fact that it's less of a consideration, even as it is always a background concern. Yeah. And I also, I kind of appreciate that we don't need to constantly keep in mind several years of future draft pick considerations. I know that there are people who think that draft picks should be more tradable than they are in MLP,

and in fact, that might be fun. But also, it's a lot to remember. It's like, oh, you know, they have their 2027 first rounder and their 2028 first rounder and all these just years that don't even really seem real, but they help facilitate these trades and everything. Now, as Kram pointed out, maybe trading draft picks and trading prospects and, amounts to sort of the same thing in the sense that if you're not Eric Long and Hagen, if you're not a super prospect nowhere, then those prospects aren't really any more real to you

than the draft picks are. And so you kind of have to read Eric or some other authoritative source to understand the value of those players or how they project. And so it is still for the vast majority of people kind of beyond their grasp, what the value of those players are and the particulars and everything. So that's sort of similar, I guess, also. And, you know, also it varies by sport because even though the other major sports tend to have salary caps, they differ in how stringent they are. Sure.

So there's some leeway in some of these leagues, you know, especially the NFL, right? You can do various things. You can manipulate salaries. You can get under the cap in the NBA. There's a luxury tax. And so it's, you know, would this team be willing to spend that much and go into the luxury tax? Whereas in the NHL, for instance, it's a pretty inflexible cap. Right.

And so, you know, maybe that makes the cap considerations all the more overriding and has historically led to a lot of cap shenanigans that have also manifested in baseball to a certain extent. And then you get things, you know, as Kram pointed out with the Tray Young trade, the trade recently in the NBA, where, you know, the Wizards did it, not really because of the cap, but because of the floor. Right. Because the Wizards were going to be something like $75 million below the salary floor next season. And so even if Trey Young wasn't quote unquote worth his salary, the Wizards just needed to add pricey players just to get to the floor. And so in baseball, you don't see that so much. And maybe it would be better if you did.

I don't know. But the only real equivalent to that is occasionally a team will spend some money. so as to avoid a grievance. Yeah, so like, you know, the A's signing Luis Severino or something is kind of the closest equivalent to that, basically. But, yeah, I just think it would be opening up a bit of a Pandora's box. And, you know, if it happens at some point, then we'll all adapt to it. And it'll start to seem routine.

And, again, I'm not suggesting that anyone will or should take this into consideration when actually deciding on baseball's economic system. I'm just saying that there are some merits, I think, to the way it's done just in terms of being able to kind of shoot from the hip in coming up with trade proposals, which are, you know, usually silly and unrealistic, but at least in baseball feasible, you know, because they could be consummated if the teams were willing. As long as we don't use the word consummated. I'd be, just from an entertainment perspective, I have not gamed out what I think about this from a labor implication perspective. But I would be in favor of trading draft picks. I think that would be great fun. I think it would be.

And you remember, you remember fine, Ben. You really do. And then you have these moments where you're like, oh, my God, like, this team sucks and their first rounders going to a different club. And as a fan, terrible. And we do have some, you know, it's not like there are no picks in baseball that can be traded. Like compensation picks can move and what have you. But I think having, I think having a little bit of intrigue. And on draft day, oh my God, can you imagine?

Can you imagine how much fun Eric would have waging the draft if picks could move? My goodness. Yeah. And if you want to make fun of the Mavericks and you can point out that they don't have their own first rounder until 2031 for whatever it is, then that gives you even more ammunition. Not that you need even more. Not that you need it anymore. It says Ben, the Mavericks nowhere. How bad do you think Trey Young feels where it's like, it doesn't matter if you're good or not.

He's catching strays out effectively wild of all places. Yeah, he's just like, what's doing? What are you talking about my hair line next? Yeah, I guess we tend to outsource these just little idiosyncrasies and things as it is. You know, just because, you know, if you have a Jason Martinez who just has this. Sure, you have John Becker. Like, let John Cook. Right.

Have their finger on the pulse of. all the transactions and all the depth charts, and then that becomes a resource for everyone to rely on. And so that's the way that we make this work, because nobody can know everything about everything and everyone. So, yeah, we already have specialists, I suppose. But, yeah, in a cap world, things would get complex. So, yeah. And, you know, speaking of that and the possibility of it actually coming to fruition, I just have one little media. critique maybe about the way that the cap speculation is presented. So, you know, we've talked about this plenty of times and we will talk about it plenty more times, I'm sure, the potential for a

cap and a floor, because, of course, you wouldn't get one without the other and everything. But I do have a slight bone to pick with, I guess, the way that it's been presented in recent days in the aftermath of the Tucker signing, where there's been a lot of reporting about just like how angry owners are about the Kyle Tucker signing and, oh, this is going to guarantee a salary cap or something, because everyone is upset about this now. And I just think that tying that potential to a particular transaction is very unlikely, frankly, because, you know, for instance, okay, at the athletic, Ken Rosenthal, Evangeloic, respect a lot of their work, have them on the podcast. They broke.

the banging scheme, et cetera, et cetera. They've done a lot of great things. I'm sure Evan will be back on the podcast to talk about labor matters because he's probably the best at covering these things. But in recent days, so after the Tucker move, Ken Rosenthal wrote a column headline was Dodgers splurge on Tucker, will increase calls for a salary cap. Well, you know, that happened. I guess it increased calls, right?

And then Ken also had one. He reported that in the wake of the Dodgers signing Kyle Tucker, MLB owner, will push for a salary cap no matter what. Or I guess that was an Evan piece. That was the headline, at least. MLB owners enraged by Kyle Tucker Dodgers deal will push for salary cap no matter what. No matter what. Yeah.

And, you know, maybe this is partly a packaging, a headline issue. Obviously, Evan knows and would acknowledge that, you know, a cap isn't going to come about because of one particular piece. Right. But owners are going to push for a salary cap no matter what, no matter what, you know. It does that no matter what, I think that tells you that it's not really about any one move. And, you know, it's been previously reported ad nauseum even in the last year or two that owners are very much in favor of a sour cat. Maybe not every single owner, but a lot of them. And so it's not really that, yeah, okay, some of them might be frustrated by the Kyle Tucker signing or something or a Mets move or whatever it is.

We've certainly heard that refrain before about Steve Cohen spending, et cetera. But there's no connection, I don't think, between owners pushing for a salary cap and the Dodgers or the Mets signing one particular player. It's not like, oh, this is the straw that broke the camels back when it came to salary cap resistance or something. And now the floodgates are open. No, I think they've been hoping for a salary cap for decades. I mean, you know, they would love to offer salary cap. They've been consistent on that point. They have pushed for it before.

They will push for it again. I guess you could argue that maybe it will strengthen some of their resolve or something. But to me, it seems more like kind of capitalizing on the public sentiment, which is maybe smart for the owners. You know, if you have a bunch of fans who are up in arms about the Dodgers signing another superstar, then sure, why not seed another story that says, oh, this is the last straw. you know, now we're going to push for the salary cap because of this. And some fans will see that and say, yeah, I'm on board. I'm upset about the Dodgers signing another superstar too. We're with you.

So I get it. I get why the owners might kind of capitalize on that moment or try to pander to that fan's sentiment. But I guess, you know, we don't have to be too credulous about that, right? Or, you know, we can kind of provide the appropriate context that sure, the owners might seize on that opportunity to further their desire. Right. But their desire is longstanding. Right. I think that putting it within the context of strategy rather than some sort of genuine and new emotional reaction, some offense to their sense of fairness is important because if you position it as, well, we have no choice but to be,

but to call for a cap, look at what they're doing, these Dodgers. They're undermining. the competitive integrity of the sport. That suggests, to your point, entering a new condition, whereas before the owners would have liked a salary cap when the Dodgers were bankrupt. They literally bankrupt, right? They would have liked a salary cap when the Wilpon stole on the Mets. Yeah, they'd like to bring back the reserve class. Right, yeah.

They'd like to do away with free agency entirely. Yeah, they'd like a lot of things. I'm sure that if you were to ask a couple of them and feed them truth serum or whatever, they'd be like, well, I don't know how seriously do we think the current administration is going to take collusion? Could we just do a little collusion as like a treat? I agree with you that many of the people who have written about this, like they are expressing, they are accurately reporting what is being said to them. And I think that they are very often layering in the appropriate context, right? But I do think that, you know, reminding your readers, like, this is a steady state, you know? Like, water is wet and owners want a salary cap.

So, you know, here we are again. They wanted one last time, too. They wanted one during the last CBA negotiations after, you know, arguably the union and the prior one had kind of gotten their clock clean. So management given the opportunity to set a hard. cap on labor salaries will always jump at that opportunity and they're likely to do so again here. And I don't think that they are going to find a union that's any more receptive to the notion if for no other reason than like when sports leagues agree to caps, you know, the union tends to get broken not long after that. So I just don't think that we're likely to see it get

much traction or purchase now does that mean that they will ultimately you know sort of persevere in their negotiations i suspect yes because you know and perhaps i'm just feeling optimistic today but i do think that the the stakes are very very high for the league and for ownership they're high for the players as well they're high for everybody everybody has plenty of incentive to get a deal done and i think the the question is just how much pain and consternation are we going to have to go through before everybody comes to their census on that score. So yeah. And I guess the other question is sure, I'm sure most of the owners, the vast majority of the owners, would be in favor of a salary cap. But if that comes with a salary floor,

which it would, then how many of them are still in favor of it? Right. If that floor is sufficiently high, then I assume they would balk at it. But yeah, it doesn't make for a very hooky headline to say owners still pushing to make more of the. revenue in the sport. Owners still hoping to suppress player salaries. Owners still in favor of a salary cap. I guess you could just republish that piece every day, you know? Nothing has changed. You could just have one of those websites that's just like our MLB owners in favor of a salary cap.com. Yes. And it just says yes. So yeah, nothing do. Okay. But more fuel for the fire, I suppose. The other observation, which is about Andrew Jones, so I don't really have anything else to say about

Hall of Fame results because the projections were dead on and there were no surprises really when it came to the results being announced, which I did confirm in the outro to last time. But one observation about newly elected Hall of Famer Andrew Jones. So one thing you hear about Jones all the time, I mean, obviously people praise his defense. He was a great center fielder. But specifically, it seems that they praise how easy he made everything look. they don't really talk about how he was making these incredible plays you can't believe what you're seeing. It's more about how he made everything look routine.

Yeah. And specifically, one frequent refrain about Jones is that he didn't dive because he didn't have to dive because he just he got there. And, you know, I can't say that I watched baseball during the entirety of Andrew Jones's career. I obviously was watching the 1996 World Series with Great. interest as a Yankees fan at the time. You know, I was nine. And so I remember his heroics there. I was not watching his team day in and day out.

So I can't say that I have a firm memory of how often he dove relative to other center fielders. But people seem to believe that he didn't dive all that often. For example, in the cup of coffee newsletter this week, Craig Calcutera, who is an Atlanta fan. And so saw a lot of Andrew Jones. He repeated that too. He said, as someone who watched 120 plus Atlanta games a year during Jones's Prime, he's the best I've ever seen.

He didn't have as many web gems on SportsCenter as some other guys, but that's because he made difficult plays look routine. He didn't have to dive for balls because he was always where the ball was with plenty of time to spare. Okay. So that was Craig's take as an informed party who watched a lot of Andrew Jones. And then Joe Sheehan said something very similar in his newsletter. So he said Jones had the whole package, instincts to get started in the right direction, a first step that got his body moving there, and footspeed to cover ground quickly. The combination meant he didn't fill highlight reels. The standing image of an Andrew Jones catch is him under the ball, maybe slowing down as he gets to it and making a double into a boring F8.

I never saw Joe DiMaggio play, but that's the one guy in history who had a rep of never diving. I can't remember ever seeing Andrew Jones dive. and I know I never thought, oh, he should have had that. Okay, so this is the legend, maybe the myth of Andrew Jones. I don't know which, but it has taken root that he was just so good out there. He got to everything. He made it all look routine. Now, I wish that I could fact-check this in some sort of rigorous way, but I can't really.

I reached out to Alex Vigderman and Mark Simon of Sports Inflow Solutions, effectively wild listeners and Patreon supporters as it happens. And they just, they don't have info on that going back that far. So the first year they have data on dives by fielders is 2013, which is the year after Andrew Jones retired. So that is no help to us. However, it is not unheard of for him to dive or it was not. I looked up, there's a video, a highlight reel online from the MLB Vault account on YouTube. It's entitled Andrew Jones' best defensive plays.

And it has, I think, nine catches that he made. And on three of them, he did dive. So I can confirm that he did dive in his career a minimum of three times. So it did happen. It is quite possible that he didn't dive as often as other outfielders, however. But here's the thing. Do you think that it makes sense that a good centerfielder, a guy with great range would never have to dive in the aggregate.

Because the way that I was thinking about this is, okay, on any given play, then this makes sense to me because we say that often. We watch someone who had to go all out to make a catch, and then we might say, oh, well, it's only because he took a bad route or he got a bad jump or whatever. And someone else, a better outfielder, might have made that look easy and wouldn't have had to dive. And so that absolutely applies on a per play basis, I think, when you're talking about

individual batted balls. And in fact, that's a part of the value, I think, of advanced defensive stats is that, you know, the eye tests can't always capture that aspect of things, especially if you're watching on TV and you don't even see where someone started or, you know,

how good a jump they got. And so it might just look like, oh, that was an easy play and you wouldn't give them full credit. So it's good that we can actually track where they were when the play started and where the ball was and how hard it actually was to get there. But I was thinking that wouldn't there always be balls within the potential diving range of any fielder? Because, you know, if you're Andrew Jones and you can get to balls that would force other outfielders to dive to catch them, and you can get to them standing up, okay, I'm sure that happened plenty of times.

but wouldn't there still be balls that were at the edge of Andrew Jones's range, where it would make sense for him to have to dive to get them? Like, they would be balls that other outfielder wouldn't even get close enough to have any hope of catching it. And you wouldn't even think they had a play on it, maybe. But he would still have some incentive to dive, I would think. It would just be on balls that are farther afield from where he started. Does that make sense to you? because it doesn't necessarily logically track in my mind that having great range results in fewer dives

or that not diving is an indication of a good fielder. What do I think of that? You're like, I didn't talk long enough for you to arrive at a conclusion while I was talking. Well, I'm thinking about it, Ben. I'm sorry. I'm thinking about it because I do often. find that when my enjoyment of a guy, enjoyment is wrong, especially given the player I'm about to offer as evidence of this, when my assessment of a guy, when my degree of, wow, around a guy's

defense differs, it's because I am noticing the misplay that necessitates the spectacular throw. Yeah. And the spectacular throw is what makes SportsCenter. And I don't say that like I'm, you know, some special savant in terms of assessing defense, but like a lot was made over his career over the spectacular throws of Yuan asbestos. And many of them were spectacular, and some of

them were necessary because you goofed the ball in the first place and this played it, right? And that doesn't mean that he was a bad defender. It just means that, like, we have to put those spectacular throws within their context. I think that if I am trying to construct my mental image of like a

the sort of platonic ideal of an outfield defender the vast majority of the time I would say that he is making it look easy that you are not stressed that even if there is effort involved like he has to run very fast he has to scale the wall what have you

there is an ease and a grace to that action that suggests he's got it, right? And that's like 90%. But I do think that ultimately I agree with you. And the way I put it is like, and 10% needs to be you going, well, how the hell did he get to that? And that often involves a diving catch, right? Him lunging for it.

It's funny that you say, like, I don't have any memory of Jones doing that because I think that literally one of the only photos I was able to find of him playing defense to use for his Hall of Fame profiles he is diving forward to get. He did dive. There is documentation of dives by Andrew Jones. What do you mean he dives? It's right there. It's right there in the photo of him.

Joe DiMaggio, hard to say. Can't look up highlights quite as easily. I was like, I don't know. I see Andrew doing it right there. Yeah, I bet if we looked in the newspaper archives, maybe we could find some documentation of Joe D diving to. But Andrew Jones, not ancient history. We have video.

But I do think that that 10% is important to at least our understanding of that player, which isn't to say that if we had like a perfect defensive metrics or even just like imperfect but more precise than they had ones, we we wouldn't say that some of those dives weren't unnecessary. You can untangle that double negative. But the way I'd put it maybe to use a cross sport comp is that there was a player, this was before you were a football knower. So forgive me for explaining this to you because I know that now you wouldn't need this kind of. of explanation. But the Seahawks used to have a safety named Earl Thomas. Speaking of guys who ended up playing for your team because your team has a draft pick from another team anyway. But Earl was a fabulous football player in his prime, kind of fell

off toward the end. And one of the things that I didn't fully understand about Earl Thomas until I had the chance to go to Seahawks game in person and sit up so that I was essentially looking at the field from the All-22 angle was just the precision of his reads and routes and the speed he had in executing them. And the way that it would, that it played while I was watching in person was just like this appreciation of the skill. It's so amazing. The way it looks on TV is where did that guy come from? He wasn't even in frame. Like how did how is he there to make a pick? I didn't even know where he was on the field, right? And, and I think that there's a sort of baseball equivalent to that for outfielders that is important to our sort of mental model of them

as defender. So I don't think you need no dives. I think you need, ideally, you get dives that are spectacular and not the result of, you know, initially misreading the ball and taking sort of a bad route or going back when you should go forward. But like that are truly necessitated by conditions on the field. And then you are able to sort of rise to that occasion. So. Yeah. So first, I think there is something to be said for the spectacular recovery, which we talked about. You can you can screw up and then you can do something spectacular after that, sort of the

and a sispitist. Yeah. Right, because there are plenty of players who can't do that. They just get an error and no hours made, right? And so the recovery is a good thing to be able to do an impressive in its own, right? Sure. Yeah, the ball bounces out of your glove and then you make an incredible bare hand catch or something. Right.

And sure, someone else might have just caught it without babbling it in the first place, but also that was pretty impressive coordination to snag it at that point. Yeah, and those plays are quite fun and entertaining. And, you know, almost every outfielder dives sometimes. Sure. I wrote a piece, the 2018 to 2019 offseason. I wrote a piece about dives using some data from SIS or BIS, as it was called back then. And they...

Back in the day. Yeah, they gave me data. Actually, they were already SIS at that point. Anyway, I wrote about Bryce Harper because he had been a diver early in his career and maybe dove too much, dove dangerously. And then the year before his free agency, he kind of conspicuously, in my mind, stopped diving. He almost never told me. And I think if that was a calculated decision to keep himself healthy and cash in in free agency, it worked out quite well for him. But yeah, the data that I had at the time was that most outfielders averaged one dive per 60 opportunities.

And Harper had had one dive in all of 2018 or something. So he was sort of an outlier, Harper and Nick Castiano's. but it's not uncommon for outfielders to dive. Anyway, so I'm just thinking that the possibility space, to use a fancy term, I guess, of any outfielder's catches. The possibility space. Like the possibility space of potential catches for Andrew Jones

was a lot larger than for a typical outfielder. Sure. But there would still be some balls at the edge of his range where it would behoove him to dive if he wanted to make that catch. assuming dives are beneficial sometimes. And so unless you think that his range was so great that he essentially covered every possible bit of ground that was not already covered by a corner outfielder, just like he had it so unlock that there was really never a ball that was out of his range that was not clearly someone else's ball, then there would definitely be times where even his range would be stretched.

it would just be farther from his starting point than it was for most fielders. So that's why I kind of doubted the idea that not diving equals great range or that those things are even correlated. And I did get some data on this. And I am pleased to say that it confirms my suspicion, I think. So I'm pleased. So this came from Alex Victorman at SIS. And I asked whether there is any kind of correlation and inverte. correlation specifically between range and your dive rate how frequently you dive.

You know, if your range is greater, do you dive less often? And Alex found that there's pretty much no correlation, although it's somewhat interesting that it is fairly consistently a slight positive correlation. So more range equals more diving. And he says, among players since 2013 with at least 600 innings at a position. in a season, the correlations between defensive runs save per inning and dive rate range from negative 0.14, that's at third base, to 0.19, that's at center field, which is the position Andrew Jones played, with samples ranging from 240 to 370 player seasons. So those are very

weak correlations. Sure. One is a perfect correlation. The two variables move in lockstep, and zero is no correlation. They're completely unconnected. And this is like a 0.1 to 0.2 or negative 0.1 to 0.2 kind of correlation, which is very low. But it suggests, you know, the correlation is actually strongest for center fielder's that the better they are defensively, the more often they dive. And that is actually not the case for third baseman. They're at the opposite end of the spectrum, which is kind of interesting because I could see how, you know, the quick reactions over there. Like maybe if you get an extra step, like there's just not a ton of time and dive. I guess slows your momentum, and, you know, I could see a case for why that would make some sense. But Alex concluded, the best I can say in terms of the strength of the relationship is that outfielders have a stronger positive correlation between range and dive rate than infielders, where all outfield correlations are stronger positive than all infield correlations except shortstop. So for outfielders at least, and maybe centerfielder's most of all, it does seem that the better you are to have. the more often you dive.

And, you know, I don't know if that's because of the diving. The diving makes you good, or it's just like you have more balls that you could potentially dive to get because you could reach so many in theory. I don't know. But the point is, you know, it could still be true for Andrew Jones specifically. I don't know. Maybe it is true that he didn't dive all that often. And maybe that was a reflection of how good he was, at least sometimes.

I'm sure on particular place it was. But on the whole, I don't think that that's actually a great indication or it seems like the perfect way to illustrate how good he was. It's like he never had to dive. But I don't think that that actually tracks that that specifically is a good thing just like in the abstract. You know, for him, maybe it was. I don't know. I think that the more apt way to describe it would maybe be that he very rarely had to dive. And I think it makes some amount of sense because

Sunnirfield selects for speed. And if you're fast, if you're a fast guy, and you maybe, for instance, have slow guys in the corners, maybe you dive because you feel the need or vulturing balls from the corners and you have the speeds you get there, but you have to dive to make the catch, right?

That strikes me as pretty consistent with the typical skill set of a center fielder. But some dives, yeah. A lot of dives, what are you doing out there? Like if it's a lot of dives, then you might think to yourself, I bet your routes are kind of weird. I bet you're taking bad routes sometimes, right? That would be my instinct.

But I don't think that all dives are the result of bad routes. Yeah, and I wouldn't want someone to dive just purely for show. That would kind of be like the false hustle or eyewash or, you know, kind of like sprinting all out to try to beat a ground ball out when you have no chance to do it and you might increase your injury risk or something. You know, Hannah Kaiser has written about the toll it could take on you to dive and fall on the field constantly. You know, you could get a bit banged up doing that. So if you don't have to dive, then don't. But sometimes I think it would benefit you and your team no matter how good you are at defense.

And in fact, the good defenders, they might dive even more often. it's one of those things start just very briefly and then we should get to these transactions but I find it to be an area where the gap between my

understanding of my own body's limitations and a big leger's understanding of the limitations of his body is perhaps a chasm because these guys dive and they hit the ground hard and presumably sometimes get the wind knocked out of them

and very often just get right back up again. And I would be like, I guess I live here now. How could I ever move again? So in that respect, perhaps the most impressive part to me isn't the dive, but the getting back up, you know? Yeah, right. There's a rocky Balboa quote along those lines. You know, it's just not how often you get knocked down.

It's whether you get up again after. I didn't deliver that very well. But then again, does Sylvester Salome. So, okay, so welcome to those of you who skipped all of that banter and said, no, actually, I'm only interested in transaction talk and you just hit the timestamp in your podcast player. That's an option too. But let's talk trades, including one, four, and NL East Sender fielder. I guess we should begin with the Mets and then we can move to the team across town and then we can talk about Texas. So the Mets, now we, in a way, we anticipated.

This and Bellinger. It's, it's, we did it. Yeah. All of these transactions, not all of the specifics, obviously Bellinger, we had some sense that he might return. But the Mets needs, you know, we foreshadowed the need for these trades or the desire for these trades at least. So, you know, prescient as always. Always. Yeah.

Yeah. But the Mets, they struck. They made two major trades. They acquired Luis Robert Jr. from the White Sox filling their hole in center field. And then they acquired Freddie Peralta. to top their rotation from Milwaukee. So these were two needs, especially the outfield need.

We talked about how poorly they projected in both left field and center last time. And that looks a little bit different now with Robert out there. They were one of the bottom teams. I cited the exact number last time. You know, they're 19th now, which is certainly better than they were in terms of projected centerfield production. And it's interesting because Robert feels like a good get and a big get. And I think he is, you know, it's a smart move and it's a good fit for this roster. Robert is the 24th most valuable centerfielder since the start of 2024.

And, you know, doesn't project to be an elite centerfielder this year either. And, you know, that's because he's been sidelined a lot. He's had a bunch of injuries. So he's lost playing time to those injuries. And also maybe those injuries have taken a toll on the performance. But, you know, this is a guy who, as was discussed on Effectively Wild at the time, that anonymous scout quote about how he was maybe the best player in the world when he was still a prospect. Like better than Mike Trout, we wondered.

And it turns out, no, not really. But when he came up for the White Sox in 2021 and was in his age 23 season, he looked like a superstar. I mean, that year, you. He had come up in 2020, of course, but in 2021, 68 games, 296 player appearances, 155 WRC plus. He could do it all. He had speed. He had defense. He was a three plus win player in those 68 games.

And then 2022, 2023 continued to play at a high level when available. 2023 is kind of the career year where he put together the production and the availability. And then it's been downhill since then in terms of both availability. ability and production. And so this does sort of assume that he will return to his earlier form because, you know, if he plays the way he did for the White Sox the last couple seasons and as often as he did, then it's not that pick again. It might still be better than what they had, but it's not a huge boost. But he's only 28 and he clearly has that kind of talent or did. and it's not hard to envision some rebound or better health than him being a productive player out there.

And they just didn't have anything, you know? It's like, okay, he might not be great. He might not be his old young self, but he will almost certainly be better than Tyrone Taylor, you know, assuming he's healthy and playing probably and better than trusting Carson Benj to come up from AAA, where he was struggling and immediately hit the ground running. So I like the trade. It's a smart move for them. I think it's a smart move.

I think that ultimately they didn't give up very much. I mean, that isn't to say that there's nothing here, but compared to what I think, if you had asked us two years ago, what the return would be for Robert, we would have pegged it much higher than this, you know? and so I think that it is a savvy kind of move particularly given the sort of misshapen roster that they had that we noted last time I do think it's it's reasonable to have some concerns about even what a fully healthy version of him looks like now after being dinged up for a while but I also think that

as long as the defense plays I don't know that you really care how he hits right like you you have other boppers at the top if you end up slotting this guy in ninth like whatever you know I just think that particularly with Soto

there you need hey you need a guy who might be able to go dive for the ball you know maybe he's going to have to go die for the ball and the folks who skip to the this they don't know I'm talking about, but if they go back and listen to the first 20 minutes of the pod, I'd say 20 minutes like I was like 45, but, um, yeah, given his entry history, I'd say stay on

your feet, you know, discretion is the better part of valor, but yeah, try not to, but if one needed to, if one needed to, in theory one could. So, and, you know, they also, his deal comes with a club option for 2027, so they can deal with as much of this as they want or sign up for another year, right? Like they have that like literal optionality in terms of what they do with him. And in a year or two maybe Benj is ready or something else presents itself. Yeah.

They dealt from two positions where they arguably had real strength and particularly given how far away Polly was and now they backfilled the rotation like the big league rotation backfilled with Freddie Peralta. You know how you normally refer to trading for Freddie Peralta's. I guess. Yeah.

Backfilling. But they had more infielders than they really knew. what to do with and Okunia never really took the leap. Like he had been sort of in and out at the top 100 at various points in his prospect of him, but hadn't really established himself as like a dude at the big league level, which isn't to say that he won't be one. And who knows, maybe with, you know, the kind of run he's likely to get in Chicago, he'll have an opportunity to prove he can, like, be a difference maker.

But I'm, I'm skeptical. That's true. I did see that Chicago says that they're going to try him in the outfield, like, that that will be sort of the primary spot. So he'll get plenty of opportunity. But I think it's a meaningful upgrade for the Mets. And it brings their roster into much better balance. Yes.

So, yeah, I like it. Yeah. And it's, you know, 20 million is what he's making. He had a team option for this season and next season, both 20 million with a $2 million buyout. And these days, I mean, Hassan Kim got a $20 million deal coming off of injuries and, you know, inconsistent performance. That was before he hurt himself, but even then I was like, huh, 20 million for him.

That's what a player like that costs now. And so Luis Roberts seems like a perfectly fine deal at that rate in this term. And, you know, I guess for the White Sox, certainly you could look back and cry over a spilt trade return and say, well, they could have sold higher on Robert and they could have really gotten a haul for him if they had dealt him a couple of years instead of carrying him during a lot of losing over the past couple seasons. I don't know that you could have anticipated the turn that his career has taken. Maybe you could have anticipated the turn the team took.

And there's something to be said for keeping some recognizable name brand player, even when your team is terrible, even though he turned out not to really be the highlight of those down years. But yeah, I'm sure that if they could do it over again, then, you know, they would have preferred to move him when they could have got. and much more in return. But it makes sense to move on from him now, probably, and open up space for other players.

And I did say one of our last pods of last year when I was talking about stories we missed and I was talking about how Lenin Sosa had himself a solid season for the White Sox last year, I mentioned that he was the longest tenured member of the White Sox. And people pointed out that, no, actually, Luis Robert Jr., predates him on the big league roster.

Now, it was true from a certain point of view in that Lenin Sosa was signed by the White Sox before Luis Robert was signed by the White Sox. He'd been in the org. Yes, exactly. But now, I guess we can also say that he is the longest tendered member of the big league roster, too, unless I'm forgetting someone else, in which case, I'm sorry for consistently overcrediting Lenin Sosa and sliding other players. But, you know, it was just pre-true, you know.

It was not quite true when I said it exactly by the strict definition, but I sensed that it was about to be true. And I was just getting ahead of things, I guess. And, you know, I guess Acuna will have a better path to playing time than he would have had with the mats, although not at shortstop, I suppose. You know, I have to update my mental model of Colson Montgomery, because for whatever reason, I just, I don't conceive of him as a shortstop, which he very much is. He is a shortstop, but I think of him as corner Colson. He doesn't scan as a shortstop to me. I don't know if it's just like he's large. You know, he's a big fellow, but that doesn't, you know, short stops are often large these days.

I think it's more about the offensive profile maybe that he just like doesn't have the offensive profile of a shortstop, which is probably also a meaningless thing to say. But like, I don't know, the power and the all or nothing. the swing and miss in his game and everything. It just doesn't really read as a shortstop to me, but he very much is a shortstop. And apparently a pretty good one. He grades out well there, the metrics like him. So he will continue to be that. But Acuna can slot in elsewhere in that middle infield, specifically second base.

I suppose that would be the other middle infield position, as people know. Yeah, although they've said they want him in the outfield, at least to try. Yeah. And Robert, he hasn't actually lost a step. at least in terms of pure sprint speed. I don't know if, you know, he's lost anything when it comes to applied speed in the outfield, but his sprint speed last season was essentially identical to what it was in 2020. He's still like a 90th percentile sprint speed guy, even with all the leg woes.

So that hasn't actually slowed him down. So that bodes pretty well. But, you know, I could see him being good again or at least good enough to be better than what the Mets had. Sure. And they then made an even higher profile move a little later this week by acquiring Freddie Peralta from the Brewers. And this was for prospects Jet Williams and Brandon Sproote. So another infield and pitcher combination here, though Sproote has been a big leaguer and arrived last year. So I guess we can talk about the Peralta side of things first and what this means for the Mets and everything.

and namely it means that they now employ Freddie Peralta, who is a very good pitcher and improves their rotation. I know that's just amazing, you know, groundbreaking take by me, but this does strengthen that group considerably. Yeah. Because, you know, like they had some solid options there, but they were lacking a clear top of the rotation type unless, you know, you really think that Nolan McLean could be that

immediately or you think maybe Senga could have a big bounce back or something, but Freddie Peralta is about as close to a consistent sure thing as you can come by among pitchers these days. Yeah, man, that's really good. I like it a lot. I like it. I like it for what it does for them right now, which is they get to have a Freddie Peralta in their rotation.

And that sure seems good because, you know, he's quite excellent. Even in years where he's been a little less effective than last year, he has been quite, quite good. And, you know, you saw his 2024 was sort of down for him, right? Like his year, he was in like his 368 and he had a FIP in the Fours. And then there was a real course correction. I will be interested to see sort of what they do with him from a repertoire perspective because he has made changes throughout the years, you know, sort of very, very, levels of dependence on his slider.

And so I'm just, I'm curious what they're going to do because we've seen him make pretty dramatic changes, right? Like he threw his slider like 21% in 2024 and only 9% last year. So clearly a guy who's who in the face of struggle wanted to, and struggle being a relative term here, obviously, was like, well, I'll just, I'm just going to throw that slider a lot less and prosper. So I'll be curious to see where they land on him from a, with him. from a repertoire perspective, but I think that it gives them a guy who has been quite durable,

who has been very good, and is able to front that rotation, which has its obvious benefits in terms of what he brings. I also really like the sort of breathing room that this gives to some of their younger guys. I think that Nolan McLean is going to be a superlative big leaguer and is incredibly impressive. And also, he has... has made eight big league starts and thrown 48 regular season innings and was going to be like their front of the rotation guy. And so having him be able to take on the number two spot instead, it gives them flexibility of some of their injured guys. Like, who knows what they're going to get out of Kota Isanga this year. But now they can kind of get whatever they get. And it's fine. They don't

have to, you know, push some of their other impressive prospects who have been good at the minor league level, but maybe need a little more seasoning. Like maybe Jonah Tong just gets to cook a little more. That might not be a bad thing, right? So I really like what it does for them. It's particularly good if they are able to work out some kind of an extension with him. The one knock you could have here is that they did just trade to top 100 guys. And we'll talk about Sprout and Williams in a second.

They're not like, you know, they're not going to be at the very top. of our top 100, put it that way. But there are two top 100 prospects, to your point, Sprope with Big League experience. Trading those two guys for one year of Peralta might seem a little heavy, but also I think Freddie Peralta is about to see contract numbers he could have only dreamed of in Milwaukee from an extension perspective. So if they're able to get that done with him, then it's like, it's surely a no-brainer. I love when GMs are like, I'm going to go get my guys. You know, I just, I want my guys back. I'm going to go get him.

Yes. David Sturns. I missed you. Yeah, Freddie. I missed you, Freddie. Come on down. Right? And I bring that up, not just to have a funny about David Stearns, who reportedly traded for Freddie Peralta literally on his wedding anniversary.

So think about who you love more, I guess. But also to say that, you know, if part of how we end up grading this when it's all sudden done is their ability to retain Peralta beyond this year, you have to think that the existing. relationship he has with Stearns might be useful in that in that project. So I like it a lot. Yeah. If Jonah Tong keeps cooking, do you think it will be with his Canadian maple syrup that he applies to his grilled cheese, which is another. I mean, like, I think that creative chefs deploy ingredients in places you wouldn't expect them. And if we can make all of our jokes about him be about maple syrup instead of tongs, which is so easy, then I'll be thrilled. I could have gone for the do you think he'll keep cooking with tongs?

But I didn't. No, I went for the callback to another story we missed that we ultimately did not miss because we talked about it at the end of last year. Yeah, I think Peralta has maybe been at least until this last season a little underrated just because he kind of came up as the third

wheel of that rotation. I mean, not the third wheel, like he was still contributing, but he was the third guy, the number three starter, and he was sort of overshadowed by Corbyn Burns and Brandon Woodruff, and then Woodruff got hurt and Burns got traded and suddenly Peralta was the stalwart, the lifetime brewer, the guy who was fronting that rotation. And then he had himself a fantastic season. Now,

you know, it wasn't markedly different from past Peralta seasons. If you kind of look under the hood at the peripherals and everything, you know, it was a low babb of year. It was one of those that'll happen sometimes. But, uh, but he's really solid. And, you know, there are knocks on him. I mean, he gets a lot of strikeouts. He is not super efficient. No. You know, people have comped him to like cease and snell. He's not exactly that, but he does throw a lot of pitches to get through the

innings that he gets through. But really, like, what are we even comparing him to at this stage? Because if you think he's not super heavy workload guy, okay, but who is in this era? He is over the past three seasons. he's 15th in the majors in innings pitched. So there aren't that many guys who have thrown more than he does or, you know, have combined going deeper into games with his availability. So he's going to give you that and he's going to give you good efficiency on a perning basis.

And yeah, I have no no knocks on him, really. He's exactly the type of guy you would want at the top of a rotation. And he makes that group look mighty fine because then you don't have to count on McLean just sustaining his late season performance. You don't have to count on Sean Manaya bouncing back from injury and being really good. And Senga coming back and being what he was when he first came over and Tong being good and Clay Holmes holding up. And David Peterson having a better season than he did last season. Any or all of those things could happen.

Right. But now they don't all need to happen for this to be a strong rotation. And it still projects as sort of a middle of the pack rotation. but I think has upside that other middle of the pack rotations don't. I like what I'm seeing here. And by the way, we didn't, I don't know if we buried the lead. We buried Tobias Myers because the Mets also acquired him in this trade, which is not nothing, you know? It's not nothing.

Yeah, that's a solid addition too. Like just a good back of the rotation depth slash swing man who has been pretty darn good for the brewers over the past couple of years. Like, you know, maybe the ERAs overstates how good he is, and maybe that's why the brewers were willing to get rid of him. But really, like, I mean, he was sort of a godsend for them in 2024. He bailed them out big time and then had a reduced role last year. But still, definitely the type of guy that you want to have around to lengthen his staff. So, and he's only a couple seasons into his big league career. So a lot of control left for him at 27.

So, yeah, you know, I don't think it was too high a price to pay. It's one of those things where it's like, well, when they get Peralta, they don't really need Sprout. And when they get Pichet and they do everything else that they did in the infield and Semyon and everything else, then they kind of don't need Jet Williams. So they kind of cut off the paths to playing time for those players. And so in a sense, they're not really missing much by giving them up. Now, you know, will those two come? to produce more war for Milwaukee than Freddie Peralta does in this last season of team control for the Mets?

Yeah, maybe, probably. But that's not exactly the way that one has to grade these things. Right. And I think the fact that that isn't how one has to grade these things is maybe a nice segue into talking about the Milwaukee side of this. Yeah. Okay. Let's talk about the guys first.

Yeah. Jet Williams is like, I feel like I made this exact joke when we talked about Caleb Durbin, but I'm going to make it again. Remember that part in The Shining where he's like, you've always been the caretaker. That's sort of how I feel about Jet Williams. Like I hope to one day love anything as much as the brewers love of this kind of guy. Yeah, they do not have a quota for diminutive middle unfilters. They'll take them all. Now, as Brendan noted when he wrote up the prospect side of this for a,

us today. A little more pop in the bat than some of those guys who are up and down the brewers lineup already. Yes. Although also, you know, sort of small and doesn't like hit the ball that hard. More of just like maximizing his power because he, you know, hits it out front and pulls it, that kind of guy. But yeah, not a ton of pop, but also like, yeah, I guess does pop apply to people who don't

actually hit the ball that hard but do hit a fair amount of home runs? It's a form of pop. It's a applied pop. It's not raw pop. Applied pop. I like that. I like applied pop. And fitting for a guy whose first name is Jet.

He has some speed to him, which is nice, an unsettled sort of defensive future. I encourage people to check out. Brendan's post, but, you know, a guy who has done work sort of on the middle and field, in center field, is developing at both of those spots. Is that where he'll stick at the big league level? I don't know. Gives them some redundancy or backup with Joe. Roy Ortiz if the bat doesn't rebound there. But, you know, Jet Williams.

He's a very brewer's kind of guy, and he joins a lineup full of other brewers kinds of guys. Not all of them, but a lot of them. Well, I guess they're all the brewers kind of guy since they're on the brewers. But you know what I mean. Yeah. I am relieved that Jet is, in fact, speedy because there have been some blazes who aren't actually blazing, and it's just kind of confusing. So, yeah, the nominative determinism works here.

Right, especially since, you know, MLB refuses to lean into the obvious marijuana jokes with those blazes. And then Sprout, like, you know, it's going to, on the one hand, you know, I think we know some of the limitations here, like the four seamers shape isn't great. He has so many pitches. I will be very curious to see what Milwaukee does with him. I think that the Mets have emerged as like a pretty good pitching dev organization over the last little bit here. But I think the Brewers are better at it and certainly have a longer tracker. record, do they pare down the repertoire, try to get him to focus? Is he able to make gains with

his command? Will people remember to say sproat instead of trying to say like sprout or something? Don't know. Will he regrow the mustache? I think the mustache was better. But like, you know, he's a like a, seems like a number two or three starting pitcher who I have confidence that if anyone can maximize, it's Milwaukee. And I've said a bunch of nice things. And now I'm going to let you say whatever you want to say. And then I'm going to say some less nice things. But why don't you offer whatever your thoughts are on these individual guys? Well, one observation is that Jet Williams's given name is in fact Jet.

That's not a nickname or anything. That's not his birth certificate. Is it his first name or is it a middle name? Yeah. Wow. Jet Michael Williams. Yeah. Jet Michael Williams.

Wings is playing in my head, which is always a pleasure. But yeah, it's, you know, it's funny that you've mentioned like. the Brewers being a good pitching development team. Because the Mets, like if you go back a decade or so, when they had DeGrom and Cindergarde and Mets and Wheeler and all those guys coming up, that was the strength of theirs seemingly. But that kind of reputation turns over quickly, I guess, because players leave or they get hurt or the personnel changes. You know, it's a whole different regime administration. So, like, is there any continuity there? Who knows?

So those, you have to constantly update those reputations. And I never know really how merited they are because. it's like it could just be dependent on, well, this guy happened to work out. And is that because of the team's development or what do you have worked out anyway? And then it's sort of a small sample of players who have to pan out to lead to that team getting that reputation is good. And then by the time they get that reputation, often like people have been poached from their development staff or their front office. And so like, is it the process or is it the people and the people aren't even there anymore? Anyway, it's hard to tell who's good at what on a team level.

But yeah, I agree with that you said there. One other point about Peralta is that so if you look at him just like war-wise over the past few years, he is, it depends, I guess, whether you give him credit for soft contact, how much credit you give, whether he's like elite or just merely very good. Because by Fangraph's War, he is the 23rd most valuable pitcher from 2023 through 203 through 20. 2025, which is also quite good. But if you go by RA9 War, just runs aloud based, also available at Fangraphs, then he is the eighth best and most valuable pitcher over that span. And that's quite different. And, you know, he has a 265 BAPIP over that span. And he does induce softer contact.

He tends to have 80th percentile or so exit speeds elicited from batter. so he does get softer contact, but also over that same span of 23 to 25, the Brewers are tied with the Blue Jays for the best fielding run value in baseball. So that's a big part of it too. And in fact, on Baseball Savant, you can isolate that not just at the team level,

but on the pitcher level and look at the defensive performance behind a particular pitcher. And only three pitchers over that span have a higher fielding run value behind them than Freddie Peralta has over that span. So his fielders collectively have been 22 runs above average while he has been on the mound over the past few seasons.

Only Kevin Gossman, Merrill Kelly, and Logan Webb have exceeded him. And, you know, that's going to be partly based on just workload too. But the point is he's had good Brewers defenders behind him. And maybe the Mets defenders won't be quite as adept. And maybe the numbers will take a little bit of a hit superficially because of that, even in City Field, but he's very good. So yes, that's that. Okay, you have critiques of the brewers and I might share them, but go ahead.

So I don't dislike these two players. And we've already talked about how they are very brewers, Jet Williams in particular, but Spro, sort of fitting a type of starter who Milwaukee tends to do a good job of, like, helping to optimize and maybe exceeding. expectations. And so I don't dislike it in a vacuum of those two guys, but I do wish that they had the latitude as an organization to not play on hard mode so much, you know? And it might feel a little uncharitable to sort of nitpick the organizational approach of the team that ended up having the best record in baseball last year. Yeah, seems to be working out for them on that level.

Yeah, and they were the number one seed in the NL, unsurprisingly, based on what I just said. Yeah. But who played in the World Series, Ben? Right? It was not the Brewers. No. It was not the Brewers.

And they have a lot of players who are very talented. I think the people who work for the club are super smart. I think that they help their guys really improve and play well. I also think that the fact that they go into every off season, seemingly with the mandate that they offload, almost anyone who has any sort of trade value and less than two years of team control, just puts them on their back foot constantly. You know, I understand that they are in a different sort of category of budget than the Dodgers. I'm not one of those people, pro-labor though I am, who says that like every team can afford to spend the way the daughters do. That's not true. I think every team in baseball can probably afford to spend more than they do, but not every team can afford to spend the way the Dodgers do for a number of reasons that we've talked about before and we don't have to go into again.

And so my expectation of Milwaukee is not, oh, well, you're going to sign Kyle Tucker. You're going to be in for Amber Valdez's market. It would be so funny if they sign for Amber after I said. you know, you're going to, you're going to go get Cody Bellinger. Like, I understand they're not playing in that end of the free agent pool, but to be this penny pinching with their own dudes, particularly when, you know, Peralta has already signed an extension with them. Yep.

Like, forget about being able to afford the $8 million that he's due this year. And, you know, my colleague, Michael Baum, and I say that, like, our listeners have never, heard of Bowman before, was making this point on blue sky, like they can,

they can afford that and, you know, they can probably afford another extension with him too. Now, it takes two

to tango on that, and maybe Perlton has said, I'm, I'm ready to be done. I'm ready to test the waters and, and get more money,

and maybe he'll maintain that tune. If that's his tune, maybe it's one he'll maintain in Queens. Who knows? Yeah.

And the first extension they signed him to, that was early 2020, and it was five years, 15 and a half million. Sure.

You know, obviously he's, he's come up in the world since then, and he's not going to be signing that sort of extension early in his career now. So it would be a much bigger number. It would be a much bigger number, but there's, you know, there have been productive contract conversations between these two sides before is the point that I'm making. And so, you know, I want more for the organization from a budgetary perspective than what they have. And I find it very frustrating.

and I don't think that it's necessarily the thing that, you know, is specifically going to hold them back this year come playoff time, but you've conquered the early part of October, you know, you've checked that box. And I wish that they had, you know, sort of permission from ownership to have greater ambition when it comes to how they put the roster together. and that isn't to say that they don't have good guys on their team, right? And watch, this will be, you know, this will be the year that they go and, you know, make the World Series or win the World Series. And then what a fool all look like, you know, they'll put this up and they'll be like, this is our bulletin board material.

But they have signed one player to a major league contract this. off-season, and it's literally Akil-Badu who is not guaranteed to make the roster, because I'm sure I think that's a split contract. Right now, you know, they traded for on-Hale Zerpa, and they've made this trade, and they, you know, they have guys on the farm. And, you know, you could say, well, hey, you know, they also brought back Brandon Woodruff. Okay. They did do that. Yeah. But in terms of additions from outside the organization, It's literally a kid. But, too.

Yes. I was also sort of frustrated by this trade conceptually. And I guess it's kind of like what I was talking about with the salary cap conversations before. In baseball, you don't have teams that are prohibited from acquiring someone or signing someone to a certain contract. But you do have teams that just are largely unwilling to. And maybe that amounts to the same thing because in practice, they're just not going to do it. And it is frustrating when it's a team like this.

Now, it's frustrating. I've expressed some frustration with the Marlins this offseason trading Edward Cabrera and Ryan Weathers and just continuing the treadmill of players like getting good or starting to get into arbitration. And then the Marlins trade them. And then it's just the churn never stops. Now, it's one thing with the Marlins who are usually bad. Right. And it's another thing with the Brewers who are usually good.

there is some commonality in that they're both run by X-rays executives. And this is the way that the rays have historically operated. And for the most part, they've been pretty good, too. And they've punched above their weight payroll-wise. But you do wish that they could just be weightier when it comes to the payroll. And when the brewers have had this track record of success and making the playoffs and get an extra revenue from that, and they're taking themselves out of the market, it's not that I expect them to be signing Christian Yellich-sized.

extensions willy-nilly and left and right, but they didn't have to make this move, you know. Right. This was not urgent, right? It's like, I mean, $8 million. That's all he's making for this season. And anyone could afford that. There's tons of surplus value there. So I would like teams not to want to make moves like this, I guess.

I would like the system in MLB to work such that teams would not feel incentivized or would not feel pressure or ownership would not want to make moves like this because, yeah, you can make the case that it will benefit the Brewers long term, but it's hard to make the case that it benefits them now or gives them a better chance to win the World Series in 2026. And this is the way they operate, and it's mostly served them well. And you could say they haven't been that active this offseason because they had so much depth and so much development done already. And, you know, they had a whole wealth of talent. They basically rebuilt and retooled on the fly without ever bottoming out. And it was really impressive. So, you know, they know what they're doing. And like there was a time in

the middle of last summer where everyone was singing their praises and they're a model organization. And, and yeah, there's a lot of merit to that. But this particular, they could still do all that stuff that they do and not make a trade like this, I think. Now, you know, like they did this with Corbyn Burns. They did this with Devin Williams. Hard to say that that they shouldn't have in retrospect or that they would have been better just seeing how they've performed since then, how those players have performed since then. And it is the old, you know, Branch Rickey Maxim about like trading someone a year too soon instead of a year too late. You don't hang on to someone like the White Sox did with Robert. And maybe they just develop someone else who takes their place. And it's like

next man up and maybe you don't even notice the difference ultimately. So that moderates my position and how hard I'm coming down on them just because, you know, if you have to. the best record in baseball. How much can I fault you? But yeah, it is also just, yeah, from like a fan spectator standpoint, you have someone who's been with your organization, the whole career and has improved

and taken on this prominent position in your rotation. And then, you know, it's just like kind of nickel and diming or you're constantly looking over the horizon at what comes next and your payroll picture for years down the road and having to sort of rob Peter to pay Paul like that. Yeah, it's, I don't, I want to be careful to distinguish, you know, the brewers from the pirates, right? Where I believe that everyone in that organization, including the owner, wants the brewers to win.

And that they do have real strengths, right? They have built the infrastructure and they have the personnel to punch above their payroll weight. and they are committed to doing that, you know, and there's a lot to be said for a lot of winning baseball and delivering a lot of winning baseball to your fans, right? So I want to be measured in my criticism, and I think you're right that, like, they have a lot of guys on their roster

who are really good big leaguers, but, like, they're also set to start Jake Bowers, right? Like, there are places on this team where you can, upgrade and you can upgrade meaningfully and they just don't have the the permission to do that and i find that frustrating in in the same way that i you know when when the raise have been at their best i have found it frustrating on the raise behalf right because it's like what could you do how far could you go if you are able to leverage all of this infrastructure and institution

knowledge and expertise with a middle of the road payroll, right? Like, that's the thing. This isn't like a matter of, this isn't like when I get frustrated with Seattle for not spending more and then you look and you're like, well, they have like a bang on major league average payroll. This is, this is, you know, dip in below that. Now, their payroll is the highest. It's been in a little while.

And they are ranking 19th, which I am surprised by, you know, so they're different from the pirates in that regard, too. But I just think that at some point, you need buy-in from the very top level for that extra bit of ambition to manifest itself. Because everyone in the organization is doing their part, right? And this approach, I do think hamstrings you, right? Because, and God, I'm sorry to bring everything back to the Dodgers, but just one more time, right? You look at the way, when we talked about the Diaz signing and we talked about the Tucker's, signing. They are at a point where they are like, what are the things that annoyed us in October?

Let's sign guys so that that particular thing doesn't bug us anymore in theory, right? If everything goes the way that we want to do if everybody stays healthier for everyone kind of plays the way we expect them to. What were our October annoyances and how do we throw money at them? And the brewers cannot say that they have done that. So that sucks. Right. And that doesn't mean that they can't draft and develop like homegrown hitters. And we've seen that they are, you know, they're making strides on the hitter dev side that I think kind of go unnoticed based on how good their pitching dev is. But it's just you're you're attaching.

What is that thing called with the ball and chain on it? But what's the actual thing? A manacle? Is that the word? A flail. A flail? Is that a flail? Oh, boy.

Delightful. Is that what that's called? It's not a manacle? Because a monocle is what you wear on your eye. A manichle is like if it's, yeah, if like a prisoner has the ball on the leg. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Flail is more like a weapon that has the ball on the chain at the end of it. I meant it as like a hindrance, not something you wield against. Right. Right. Because they're hindering themselves from having something to wield, right? If they could break the manacle off and then. They should turn the manacle into a flail. Right.

Exactly. Right. This is, this is, I'm so glad that we made this clarification, not just because it's going to head off emails, although also for that reason. But I just think you don't get extra wins at the end of the year playing on hard mode. And it sure makes it more difficult to win a World Series or even go there. Yeah. And I do think that when you've had a World Series allude you the whole time, you need to have a different sense of urgency as a organization, at least, again, at the ownership level.

And I think there's an important distinction to draw there because a lot of whip smart folks over there doing their darndest. But it would be nice if they hadn't. It's like an extra $8 million and then what's it going to cost to extend Peralta, you know? Or even if you can't, guess what you get Peralta? Yeah. Or if you can't, you get a draft pick. Yeah, you know, it's, I agree with everything you said, except for your denigration of

Jake Bowers, my two-time minor league drafty. he can do no wrong as far as... I'm not saying he's bad. I'm just saying that, you know, you want to... He is a two-time minor league free agent draftee. So that does speak to the caliber of the player. But, yeah, he served me well. Last year, I was happy to see him get as much playing time as he did.

Sure, yeah. And, yes. And, you know, this is, I think, this was kind of a criticism of David Stearns for a while there that maybe he was still operating with this Milwaukee mindset, that he did not adapt or adjust the way that Andrew Friedman did after leaving Tampa Bay, the race, and then goes to the Dodgers and figures out, hey, look at this, I can do all these other things, but also I can splurge and outspend everyone. And Stearns, there were some criticisms, despite the fact that he just signed Juan Soto to a record contract a year ago. That was fun.

But early this offseason, as we noted, there were a lot of people who were upset and impatient with Stearns because the Met spent much of the first part of the offseason divesting and parting with players. and then it wasn't clear what they would do to make up for that. Well, ultimately he delivered. So I think this past week is kind of a vindication of Stearns playing the long game in this offseason. And it is a long offseason. And, you know, like the books aren't closed until the season starts. And yeah, a lot of Mets left or were shipped out or departed for various reasons. But he managed to fill those holes and probably improve the roster on the hole.

And maybe he didn't do it in the most, I don't know, elegant or efficient. way, but he doesn't have to care about that that much anymore because he's, he's now the Mets pobo. He's not running the Brewers. He doesn't have to win the dollars per war championship. He's trying to win the championship championship, not that the Brewers aren't too, but Stearns can afford to pay a premium and, you know, import a bunch of players and not have to think about the long term as much. And the players he signed, a lot of them have like opt-outs or their contracts are expiring soon. So it's not as if he's really locked the Mets into a a long-term anything with some of these big-ticket items that he has delivered, but this speaks to the

difference in the way the teams operate, and he has, I think, adapted his tactics accordingly, which makes some sense. And I do think that the Mets are better than they were last year. There's been a whole lot of going and coming, and now I think they stack up better than they did entering last year at the end of last year, even though some of the individual moves or the sequencing of them was kind of confusing at times. I would think, I'd like to stat blast this at some point, but I would think that this is an unusual amount of turnover for a team year over year that was already decent.

You know, they had a winning record last year and is still good and probably better going into this year. Right. They're not in a tear down. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like there's precedent if, you know, teams in fire sales situations,

like the 1914 to 15 A's or the 97 to 98 Marlins or something. something, but for a team that was already decent and now is probably better to undergo this kind of remodel, this makeover in a single offseason, I think is probably unusual anomalous. So I hope to have some stats on that at some point. That takes us to the team on the other side of town that I think we will have a lot less to say about because the Yankees are the polar opposite approach. They make for really a study in contrast this offseason because the Mets have turned over much of their roster and the Yankees are just running it back.

You know, they've barely made any additions at all, but they did pretty crucially end up resigning Cody Bellinger. It's a five-year, 162 and a half million dollar deal. There are opt-outs after the second and third seasons of the deal. There's a $20 million signing bonus. There's a full no trade clause. But Belly is back and so is just about everyone else on this team. So that makes for kind of a boring offseason because,

It feels sort of like table stakes. And, you know, free agent is a free agent, whether you're signing or resigning. You still have to convince that guy to come back and pay the player and everything. But it sort of feels like you do a bunch of stuff and then you end up where you were the previous season and when the offseason started. And so it's a little less exciting, I guess. And the Bellinger signing is, you know, not super exciting either. But I think it was an important one for the Yankees, certainly, when it came to. placating, appeasing the fan base, having seen the Yankees sit on their hands for much of the offseason.

But yeah, you look at almost all the moves they made with the exception of trading for weathers. And it's basically just bringing guys back. Yeah. Yeah. But as I said on our last episode, had to do it. You know, it would have been a disaster of an offseason. I don't know. I suddenly started to sound like Jimmy Stewart that.

Excuse me. I don't know. Like, it's so funny. We know exactly how it'll play, right? Like, we've seen Bellinger hit in Yankee Stadium. It goes pretty well. I think that he was sort of uniquely well-suited to come back. I agree with Ben Clemens' analysis that I think that they, as a team, they being Bellinger and Boris, did better here than you might have expected. Like, there's clearly a premium being paid over a pure like dollars per work. calculation because I think they were like, hey, we got to get this done. And by we, I mean, you got to get this done, buddy. You got to do it, Brian, because if you don't. Yeah. Although by the time he actually signed, I guess a lot of the likely landing spots for Bellinger had been filled. He would have ended up a Dodger again somehow. I'm joking. Including the Mets, who we identified last time, would have been a logical spot for Bellinger, but then they traded for Robert. Not that they couldn't have also signed Bellinger to play left, I guess, but that probably wasn't going to happen.

It probably wasn't going to happen. But it was such a clean fit. His positional versatility is so useful to them. His bat plays so well there. You know, they need to bolster the group around judge, right? You can't waste even a single year of Aaron Judge, right? Because at a certain point, you're going to be like, oh, my God, he's 37, right? He's almost 34.

So, you know, you need to have a really good group there. I think that defense has been something that has plagued this team at points. So having Bellinger around as like a solid defender, although the position he's the very best at he would be wasted on and Ben Rice plays there anyway. But yeah, I think it made a tremendous amount of sense. I also think that I agree with Ben's assessment, other Ben's assessment, that for all the,

purported flexibility that the opt-outs offer and they do have value, it's probably more useful to think of this as a true sort of five-year deal with like a couple of little escape patches if he goes like super supernova. But, you know, by the time he is into the first year he can opt out, he will be going into his age 32 season. Right. So it's just, you know, he's going to start to age into a point where it's like opting out is a diceier proposition for him. That assumes that he has played a relatively full season in 2027 to bolster an opt-out decision, right? Which, who knows? So there's that. But yeah, it just makes it just makes too much sense, you know. It just make too much sense not to do. It is very different from the first time they acquired Bellinger, which was more of a salary.

dump and a short-term arrangement. And so this time, obviously, they're not kind of getting him on the cheap like that. But then again, last year he was coming off a pretty meh season for the Cubs in 2024. And in light of all the ups and downs, there was still some question about how good he would be. And now you've seen it in practice, and he actually had his best season by war since his MVP year. So you feel a little bit more confident about the production that you're getting here. You could also say that, you know, they did have a player, at least nominally at every position that Bellinger plays. Like if they hadn't signed Bellinger for whatever reason, then they would have gone into the season with Ben Rice at first and Trent Grishamette Center and Judge and Right and Stanton D-Hing and Dominguez out there and left, I guess.

You know, so like there would have been someone who could have slotted in without Bellinger. And so you could even say, well, this creates kind of a roster logjam. And I guess in theory it does. But his versatility, his flexibility, like he can not only play all the outfield spots on first base, but he can play them pretty well. And you know he's going to get time, whether it's because Stanton gets hurt inevitably and that frees up the DH spot or maybe, you know, Ben Rice continues to do some catching from time to time.

And you give other guys a day now and then and other people get. her, like, you'll have room for Cody Bounder one way or another. And that creates some depth and some roster redundancy and some safety nets. And that's good. It does make their lineup or continue to make their lineup extremely left-handed, you know, it leans all the way to the left with the exception, a couple big exceptions, you know, physically large exceptions in Aaron Judge and Stanton. And I guess Jose Caballero as well. Yeah, although Bellinger's been pretty platoon neutral in his career. And if you're leaning one way or the other in Yankee Stadium, it probably makes sense to have a bunch of port siders.

And there was even criticism of the Yankees in prior seasons that, like, they had abandoned their identity for some reason as a team that had a lot of lefty sluggers in Yankee Stadium. And they had forgotten that. Well, they have compensated for that now, I suppose. And I guess my main takeaway is just like what a long, strange trip it's been for Bellinger. What a career, man. What a weird little career he's had. He's only 30. And he's had so many highs and so many lows.

It's like. So many highs? Yeah. Well, I refer not to his appearance, which may or may not correlate to. We have no idea, but just saying. Yeah. He has high face, resting high face. But like if you could look at, I don't know, him in 2018 or something and then freeze frame that and then show someone his 2025 season, they might say, yeah, okay, that that is more or less consistent with what early career Cody Ballinger has led us to believe.

You know, good to see that he has kept it up all this time and has not deviated from the pattern of the first couple of seasons. but he had the expectation raising season of 2019 when he was the MVP and he hit 47 dingers and all the rest of it. And then that looks like an outlier in retrospect. But then, of course, after that, he never has come close to that high again. And he had the extremely low, just the bottoming out, the Nadir of 2021 and 2022. And now in retrospect, that looks like an exception to that period because he had a lot. all sorts of injuries during those years and then maybe the injuries led to mechanical difficulties and everything. So I don't like, I guess who he is is more like 2018 or 2025 Bellinger than

2019 Bellinger or 2021 Bellinger. But he's been all of those Bellinger in like a fairly short span of time and it's just been so hard to pin down exactly what kind of player he would be in any given season or long term. So good for him, I guess, that he, you know, after having been non-tendered by the Dodgers, you can envision a scenario where he stays with the Dodgers and he writes himself and he has been good for them. They would never have had to sign Kyle Tucker because they just signed Cody Bellinger long term

and they've had him this entire time. But yeah, to go from getting non-tendered by the team that you had won an MVP award with just a few years earlier to now getting a $162 million deal, that's quite a rebound, quite a salvaging of the career trajectory. It's so amazing.

Because I remember before he got non-tendered, we were talking about it. And I was like, I think Cody Pellinger might be a non-tender candidate. We were like, no. And then we were like, I think he is. And then he was. And we were like, wow. It's just a profoundly strange career trajectory.

And you do have to wonder, like, if his home run celebration is different, is he making $300 million on a contract? You know what I mean? Like, so much of his situation seemed to have been derailed by that one dumb leap in 2020 where they, and guys still do that. That shocks me. People should look at Cody Bellinger's career and be like, you know, I know it worked out for him, but this was, this was dicey.

Remember, because he jumped up and, like, whacked his, and then it was all downhill from there for a while. And then it was uphill and then down again and then uphill again, you know? Yeah. Yeah. When it's all said and done, I want to. how his career will shake out and how we will evaluate it in retrospect, just with perfect hindsight about the player he turned out to be. But yeah, it's just like his floor and his ceiling.

They've just constantly been rising and sinking. Unreal. Yeah. But, you know, he didn't get the seven-year deal, I suppose, he was seeking, but he did quite well for himself and has the opportunity to reenter the market if he continues to play well and wants to. And, you know, I think I am left wondering what will befall. Jason Dominguez and how the Yankees envision his role.

And they should probably just trade him at this point. I mean, maybe they want him as a fallback option in case of injuries. But it would probably be best for him to go somewhere, you know, change the scenery. Absolutely be best for him. Yeah, get locked into a particular position. I'm just, I'm confused by his whole, I mean, he seems so promising, both as a prospect and when he came up. And then it's like he would say center fielder throughout his, his time as a prospect. and now he's been a negative 10 defender in left field in about 900 career innings.

That flummoxes me. I get that like it was a new position and okay, there might be a bit of an adjustment period, but if you could play center before, and I know he had surgery and everything, but to go from being able to play center field somewhat competently to being like a way below average left fielder, just really weird. I wonder if there are other cases of someone who like really could play center field but couldn't play left for whatever reason, like just incapacitated by that angle. I don't know if he needs more reps or whether he's just slipped out there, you know,

not physically like actually slipped, though that has happened sometimes too. But in terms of his potential and talent. So, yeah, I hope that he gets to show what he can do somewhere at some point because he's, he's pretty blocked now. Yeah. I do actually, I wonder whether the Yankees are happy that they extended the qualifying offer to Trent Grisham because that did kind of. kind of lock them into a particular path this offseason.

And I guess they kind of had to. It's this weird thing where, like, by extending the qualifying offer to him, they, like, if they hadn't. I was assured he'd take it. Yeah. But if they hadn't extended the qualifying offer to him, then he probably would have gotten a good deal because he wouldn't have had the draft pick compensation attached. It was like he's in that sort of bubble where probably the qualifying offer would have hampered his market. and he probably concluded as much. But if they hadn't extended it and he had left,

then maybe someone would assign him to a deal that might have made it seem like they should have offered him a qualifying offer. But yeah, that kind of, you know, him coming off a big year and perhaps a career year, maybe I don't know whether they expect him to repeat that or whether they're happy that he stayed or what. But anyway, it's a little bit of a logjam,

but it will work out one way or another. Yeah, I think that they kind of needed to do it. And I know that his, you know, his defensive metrics since I don't know what they used to be. But I think that he's a more reliable everyday option at the position than Bellinger is, although Bellinger can definitely spot and center. And that's part of the appeal for them is they have this redundancy and can kind of mix and match their lineup and not have to worry about a defensive downgrade depending on where they want to slot Bellinger in. But I think they kind of had to do it. I think you want him there, him being Gresham every day more than you want. belly there.

Does he go by belly? Do you think he likes belly as a nickname? Belly. He's okay with it as far as I know. But yeah, and I think that the Yankees' boring offseason makes some sense. You know, it's a little deflating because you want to see you guys coming in. But it makes some sense because they had a higher baseline than the Mets did, certainly after their, you know, collapsed last season. The Yankees had the second best run differential in the.

game last year and the best base runs record. And they, you know, by record, ended up tied atop the A.L. East and then lost the division title on the tiebreaker. And, you know, all the other teams are good and maybe got better aside from the race, I suppose. So it's going to be a tough competition. But I get why they saw what they had and thought, well, given what we had and given what was out there in this somewhat weak free agent market, what was it that we could have done? And, you know, they could have gotten Peralta or something. They certainly talked about getting Peralta too.

They ended up getting Ryan Weathers, but not that many free agent fits for their roster that would have made them that much better. And you look at the projected team war, according to Fangraphs, and this doesn't take into account schedule, but they are second only to the Dodgers, a somewhat distant second to the Dodgers

and projected team war, but a hair ahead of the Mets who have done all of this stuff and have brought in new players and have ended up being basically equivalent in terms of projected talent on the roster. Yeah, they're definitely not there. And I just got done saying, you can't waste a single season, a judge,

and I think that's right. I do think that when the time comes for the Yankees to retool, quote, unquote, is going to be pretty painful. You know, I think they're going to be, and they should not entertain that now, right? This is a good, this is a good ball club. Of course.

They have good players. You're getting Gary Cole back in. Right. They should have championship ambitions befitting the roster that they have. So I don't think that they should start shipping guys out or anything. But when the time comes for them to do that, it's going to take a while for them to rebuild absent, like, pretty serious spending on the part of ownership because it is an old group. And the guys who are near Big League ready and the majors are like volatile, I would say. I don't mean, like, personally, I have no idea on that score, but, like, you know, you find someone who knows exactly what, like, Spencer Jones is going to do and then you found someone who's lying. But, you know, he could go supernova.

He could bust just as profoundly. So I think it's going to be a bit. But hopefully it'll be a bit before they have to entertain that, you know? Okay. Well, it turns out the opportunity costs, the downside of backloading our banter about transactions is that we can't actually talk about the McKenzie Gord trade without this being a two-hour point. episodes. So we will save that for next time, which is fine because it's a long offseason. And we will get to it just like David Stearns got to the transactions that he made. We will get to the transaction that the Texas Rangers and Washington Nationals made and give that its due and do justice to that significant trade rather than squeezing it in at the end here.

And, you know, with that move, it's really just Fromber is the last top 10 free agent domino to fall. All the obvious big pitcher trade candidates have now been dealt. So it's just, you know, Framber, pick a team and we'll call it an offseason for the most part. There are a couple more guys who need to sign. But, yeah, he's the most notable. There are other. It's out there. Yeah.

Orioles, just, you know, your former Astros folks running that team, just go get Framber. Just go do it. We'll just call it a winter. All right. Well, that was more than a New York minute on the New York teams. We will have some McKenzie minutes next time. Couple quick follow-ups. We have on occasion touched on MLB players' political leanings in the aggregate.

We have certainly received many email questions about that topic. But there hasn't been much good data on that. And some was supplied just this past week in a piece published by Vote Hub and authored a political science student at GWU and who has scoured public voter registration information for players in five leagues, MLB, the NHL, the NFL, the NBA, and the WNBA. And it's not comprehensive. The methodology section says that they were able to use publicly accessible voter file data from 24 states and the District of Columbia. So this covered only about 40% of eligible players because some big states like California and Texas don't make this information publicly accessible.

This was for athletes who were active in 2024. There's not that much to say about it because the findings weren't especially surprising. If you have followed these sports, you'll be shocked to learn that the WNBA player pool is skewed much more toward debilers. Democratic voters, whereas Major League Baseball is skewed much more toward Republican voters. Of these five leagues, MLB had the highest percentage of Republican-registered voters and the second-lowest percentage of Democratic-registered voters after the NHL. Again, nothing shocking, given the demographic makeup of these leagues, where these players tend to come from, and they estimate that only about 75% of the league is eligible to vote. Lots of international players, non-U.S. citizens, of course. So it's not perfect, but it's probably directionally right. I don't know. why it would be especially skewed by the composition of states here. But in terms of the right-left lean of these various leagues, from more left to more right, it goes WNBA, NBA, NFL, NHL, MLB. They don't have the data for the PGA tour, but that might beat even baseball when it comes to the right-leaning composition of the player population. Anyway, I'll link to it, but I always appreciate when someone

takes a database approach to a tricky problem, even if the methods are imperfect and even if the results largely confirm our pre-existing understanding. Also, one more email about coaches who unretired to become active players again. This is from listener Eric Enders, who says, I'm a little late on the coaches on retiring topic, but I have one more example for you that I believe is a very notable one. In August 1940, the Reds, who were coasting to the pennant lost both of their catchers. Hall of famer Ernie Lombardi sprained his ankle, while backup catcher Willard Hirschberger, sadly died by suicide in his hotel room during a road trip in Boston.

and one of the team's coaches Jimmy Wilson had spent 17 seasons as a big league catcher before retiring a couple years earlier. The 40-year-old Wilson was activated on August 16th and became Cincinnati's regular catcher. During the World Series against Detroit, Wilson batted 353 and was widely hailed in the press as the MVP of the series. Long before such an award actually existed, he never played in the major leagues again. Shortly after the Reds defeated the Tigers four games to three, Wilson accepted an offer to become manager of the Cubs. The last few games of his career were by far the most notable ones. That info came, Eric noted, from a book he wrote a few years ago called The Fall Classic. Finally, email from listener Taylor in Meg's rant on episode 2429 regarding guys sitting in cars talking,

this was specifically on the show Fowel Territory, she failed to mention the originator of this. May I point you to the first episode of a podcast called Effectively Wild? In this episode, Sam Miller sits in his Honda fit and doesn't ever say why. He offers no explanation of why he wants to or has to sit in a car to talk ball. I have no idea when all this other car sit and content started, but in my mind, Sam Miller is patient zero. It's true. Sam did often record in his car in the early days of effectively wild for improved sound quality. It's a comfy, private, semi-sound-proof space. And if that's why other players are going on shows from their cars, that's understandable. Maybe like Sam at the time, they have a kid. The house could be noisy, so you sit in your car. The difference is, of course, that Sam was not on video in those appearances. So you couldn't see him sitting in his car. An important distinct. You could sometimes hear crickets chirping in the background, though. That was pleasant.

And when someone made a bad joke or we had an awkward pause, we already had an authentic cricket sound effect playing at all times. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and signing up to pled some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. Help us stay ad-free and get yourself access to some perks, as have the following five listeners. Sean Tacker, Danny, Francisco Dominguez, Jenna Gardner, and Allison. Thanks to all of you.

Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, prioritized email answers, personalized messages, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, discounts on merch and ad-free fan graphs, memberships, and so much more. Check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you are a Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro, intro, themes to podcast at Fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to EffectivelyWild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube

music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook.com slash group-effectively wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes in the podcast posted fan graphs or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKean for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with one more episode before the end of the week with McKenzie Gore trade talk and I hope a couple of cool guests.

which means we will talk to you soon.