Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2432: What Stars Deserve

Episode Date: January 28, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley share their responses—and the baseball world’s response—to the events of this month in Minnesota. Then (17:26) they banter about deboned Carlos Rodón, the latest pseudoscientific pursuits of Bryce Harper (and Mike Trout?), and the Giants signing Harrison Bader, before (48:06) discussing José Ramírez’s new extension with the Guardians, Andrew McCutchen’s quarrel with the Pirates, and what teams and star players owe to each other, if anything. Finally (1:26:22), they bring on data scientist/writer Zach Gozlan to Stat Blast about whether baseball is overrrepresented among sports clues on Jeopardy! Audio intro: Jonathan Crymes, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Justin Peters, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to Calhoun info 1 Link to Calhoun info 2 Link to Calhoun info 3 Link to Ben on Calhoun in 2018 Link to other athlete statements Link to more athlete statements Link to Wemby comments Link to Ober post Link to Strider post Link to Woods Richardson post Link to Klein repost Link to political affiliation data Link to Rodón interview clip Link to Rodón interview article Link to Harper post summary Link to Harper clouds repost Link to Harper’s TikTok Link to Harper’s mat post Link to Harper’s mat Link to Harper and Dombrowski Link to Trout’s reply to Rooker Link to Trout’s sponsored post Link to Trout’s “chamber” Link to Goop article 1 Link to Goop article 2 Link to Goop article 3 Link to FG post on Bader Link to BP post on the Giants Link to FG post on Ramírez Link to Ramírez interview Link to Ramírez’s FA value Link to McCutchen post Link to Cherington comments Link to McCutchen article 1 Link to McCutchen article 2 Link to Defector article Link to Zach’s website Link to Zach’s data Link to baseball crosswords research Link to crosswords wiki summary Link to Jeopardy! football questions Link to Jeopardy! Big Dumper question  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Give a Gift Subscription  Email Us: [e-mail]  Effectively Wild Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  Apple Podcasts Feed   Spotify Feed  YouTube Playlist  Facebook Group  Bluesky Account  Twitter Account  Get Our Merch! var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source

Hello and welcome to episode 2432 of Affectively Wild, a fan graph, baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraphs and I'm joined by Ben Lindberg of the ringer. Ben, how are you? Okay. I could ask how you are, but what a question these days. Yeah. Yeah.

So we're going to do a normal. show here. It does feel weird to single out today as like a day in the horrors that needs recognizing because candidly they've been unfurling for a while. But, you know, before we started recording, I said to you that it feels like it is necessary to acknowledge the world and how it stands. And I was thinking about what I would want to hear from a baseball podcast in January when like the big news of the day is former twin Harrison Bader signing with the giants. And I think, you know, if I were living in Minnesota in the Twin Cities right now, like I might want to hear about how different baseball would be if it had a pit or if the outfielders

had an extra arm growing out of their head and what kind of hair that arm would have. And I think I'd welcome a distraction, but I think I'd also appreciate knowing that I was seen. that what ICE and DHS are doing in my community was being seen and was being understood clearly. So we'll get to Bader and Jose Ramirez, and we have a fun guest and a guest stat blast. But before we get to any of that, I just wanted to say that we see you. We see you protecting your neighbors. We see you delivering groceries. We see you trying to make sure that folks aren't getting snatched off the street

and that kids are getting home safe from school. And we see organizing and documenting and bearing witness to all the horror that's going on in your city in the hopes that someday the people inflicting these harms might face some kind of justice. And that in the meantime, we actually know what happened to Renee Good and Alex Preddy and Liam Ramos and all the other people who have been affected by this occupation. We see you doing that even though we know that that can come with very grave cost and consequence. And so I just wanted to say that we see you. And your courage gives us courage because these people want us all to feel afraid and alone.

And we aren't. We aren't just like the people in L.A. weren't alone and Chicago and in Maine and in Arizona and Seattle and everywhere that they are trying to scare people and rip apart families. So we aren't alone, and neither are you, and we see you. So I hope that you're staying warm and keeping well, and this provides a little bit of respite for you, and I know that's a meager thank you, but it's a sincere one. And so, yeah, I hope that we can be a port in the storm, however briefly. Well said, and glad you said it.

And yeah, it's always awkward to segue from something like that to baseball. I never know whether it's more jarring to go from acknowledging that the government is gunning down citizens to baseball banter or not acknowledging that and just going straight into baseball banter. Either way, not ideal. But, you know, there's a fine line, I guess, between a useful distraction and an actual distracting distraction. And I don't think we here at Effectively Wild have the power to distract society from the actual ills that are befalling it here. And clearly attention seems to be increasingly focused on what it should be focused on and hopefully productive and efficacious ways. And hopefully whatever you are doing to sort of soothe yourself in the other moments because it's very difficult to be fixation. on these things at every moment of the day.

I know for some folks, it's unavoidable. It's almost a luxury to be able to tune out for any stretch of time, of course. But many of us find ourselves in that situation where you just need some sort of respite from the horrors. And maybe it's a baseball podcast. Maybe it's something else. You know, don't let it distract you from contributing, helping, pitching in, in various ways.

But if while you're doing that, you enjoy. whileing away some hours by listening to us banter about baseball, then that's great. Happy that we could help in some small way. And whenever something like this happens, people as sports fans are interested in any kind of tangential sports connection or baseball connection. And everyone does the thing where they sort of scour social media to see who has said something and who hasn't said something. And baseball and baseball players take a lot of flack for not being very very very much.

You know, relative to athletes and other sports. And I mentioned on an outro last week some research that was published recently about the demographics of baseball fandom and how people are registered, you know, according to the public voter registration data in MLB compared to other sports. And there's nothing surprising there about the political skew. But even apart from that, just, you know, baseball tends to be pretty quiet about things relative to other sports. if you're, you know, paying attention to the NBA, the WNBA, and you're seeing people like Brana Stewart and Carl and Thinney Towns and Tyrese Halliburton and everyone put out statements and then you're sort of, did anyone in baseball say anything about this?

And yeah, I know the NBA is in season. MLB is not. Baseball players aren't being asked about this the way Wembe was, for instance. But there's just a tradition of more vocal activism in some sports compared to baseball. You know, a few people put up post. and I know Spencer Strider did and Bailey Ober and Simeon Woods Richardson and, you know, I don't know how helpful it is

to sort of parse everyone's social media and just like, did they say something? Why didn't they say something? Or, you know, celebrating people who did say something. I do think it takes some small amount of courage in the baseball ecosystem to say something. You know, I mean, putting up a post on Instagram

or whatever is like the minimum that someone can do. but I guess the actual minimum is nothing. Right. Most people at baseball do nothing. And, you know, what effect does actually posting something have? I don't know. Maybe it's minimal. Maybe it is just making someone feel seen or heard or feeling like the thing that they love

and the thing they lavish all this attention on, the sports that they pay so much attention to, that there are some like-minded people in that world. And maybe that's kind of comforting on some level. And I did just want to shout out. one statement from a somewhat surprising source. You could have given me a thousand guesses, and I would never in a million years have thought that this would be the guy.

And if you don't know who I'm referring to, then you can pause the podcast right now, and you can make a thousand guesses and see if you come up with the answer. But Cole Calhoun, Cole Calhoun, put up some statements on his Instagram stories that honestly, probably the most vocal statement of anyone because other people put up images and that's all well and good.

But Cole Calhoun put up a lot of just well-thought-out messages and statements and clearly this was weighing on him and he wanted to say something and get it off his chest. And yeah, I felt almost bad for being surprised that Cole Calhoun because I don't really know very much about Cole Calhoun and, you know, maybe you make assumptions about Cole Calhoun and whether he's the sort of person who would be putting up statements about this. I saw a lot of reactions like, oh, Cole Calhoun wasn't familiar with your game. Like, did not know. Like, woke Cole Calhoun based

was not aware. But it was a really thoughtful statement. And it was interesting because he kind of put it in the baseball context. And he talked about being a baseball player and how, in baseball, a lot of people just aren't well informed about politics. And he said, by his own admission, he wasn't. And so he would have been reluctant to say something because, you know, you could put your foot in your mouth and you just haven't studied the issues. And then, of course, you know, he didn't really get into this. But because there is sort of a political skew in baseball clubhouses, maybe it's sort of frowned upon or maybe, you know, you might feel a little isolated if you said something. I don't know how often that becomes a big deal.

inside clubhouses, but there might just be kind of a culture of not speaking up about stuff. And he likened it to his baseball experience where he talked about how he's in baseball with people from many different countries, different backgrounds, different nationalities, different socioeconomic origins, et cetera. Lots of people, his best friends in the game, their first language wasn't English. They didn't look like him. You know, they built lives for themselves in this country around baseball. That was their dream.

always the mechanism. Lots of stuff along those lines, but then also just, you know, kind of not pulling punches. And he said what this administration is doing when it comes to immigration is blatantly racist, targeting people based on the color of their skin or the sound of their last name. And I'm sure that there are people who say that and think, oh, now you're saying something or, you know, anyone else who's sort of speaking up for the first time, oh, this is what made you do it. Because as you said, you could put up some statement about some, you know, you're saying, you heinous thing every day, you know, just pick a day and you'd find something. And so it's like, oh, well, now that the victim is a white guy and a gun owner, that's the last draw. You know,

there's a lot of that kind of reaction. And, you know, fair enough, I guess, like if you're someone who's more plugged in and has been aware of things going on for years and years, then you might look at the Johnny Come Lately's and say, oh, this is the thing that pushed you over the line. But when it's sort of put the way Calhoun put it from, you know, sort of a perspective where he's acknowledging his own, just like lack of schooling on certain issues, I guess, but just sort of coming to this and realizing that this violates every principle he holds dear, that he thinks is integral to the country and everything. You know, I think people like that speaking up, that's needed too, because that can sometimes. be the most persuasive messenger, and sometimes that can more clearly send the signal, you know, coming from one group instead of another group, that, hey, this is really beyond the pale, so much as beyond the pale if you're pushing Cole Calhoun to say something, right? And I don't

know much about Cole Calhoun as a person. Like, you know, like, I talked to him one time for about 15 minutes for an article I wrote in 2018 about his swing changes and how they had not gone well. and he was trying to do like a flyball revolution thing and it backfired and then he had to go back to his old swing and he had a historic slow start to the season and then he got hot after that. So, you know, we didn't touch on politics in that brief conversation. So I don't want to presume too much. I'm just bringing that up because he himself acknowledged that background in his statement. But, you know, when the Cole Calhouns of the world are coming out of the woodwork, then maybe that says something. and maybe other people could be persuaded by that.

So I appreciated and applauded that statement. Yeah, particularly within the context of baseball and the players who, you're right to say, we don't know Cole Calhoun, right? We don't know other than what he offers himself about his sort of previous political orientation. We don't really have a sense of him. And so I don't want to praise him overly, but I don't want to impugn him either, right? But I think that, you know, within the baseball context, there are players who you might expect to say something given prior activism on their part,

and some of those folks did say something. And then there's like a whole swath of players who, I think the stakes of them being vocal given the posture that this administration has taken toward people here on visas who have been critical of them. Like it's quite dangerous, right? And I don't know if, you know, I don't even want to pick a hypothetical guy, but like if a foreign-born player here on a visa were to be very vocal, you know, I think the chances of him getting his visa revoked are probably pretty low just given the political pull of major league baseball, but they're not zero, right? And so I appreciate Calhoun, recognizing that he is in a position of privilege relative to many others and using that to speak his. mind. And I understand the frustration that you can feel when you feel like, okay, finally, people are

catching up. Like, let's go. Where have you been all this time? But I think that any time people find their way to their voice on issues like this, you know, who see suffering and have an empathetic response and say, I need to do something about that. I mean, that's part of what we're seeing with some other folks on the ground in Minneapolis. Now, that's a community that has a history of activism, that has a well-actualized community network. Unfortunately, this is not a new experience in some ways for folks in Minneapolis.

But how many news stories have we seen over the past couple of weeks? They're just, you know, comfortable white folks from the suburbs come in and saying, I saw this on my TV and it's wrong. And so here I am. I'm showing up today, you know, And that has a that has a lot of value because having having strength in numbers, having people who are demographically privileged willing to put themselves on the line understanding the stakes because the shi's dangerous. And they're going anyway. So I, you know, I'm not saying the Cole who I'm posting on Instagram is the same as someone willing to show up with a whistle and try to prevent ice from grabbing someone off the street.

but we need all kinds and it needs to come in all forms. And that can come from a red-headed, retired out. I could have knocked me over. And part just because, like, Cole Calhoun, you know, Cole Calhoun's retired. He was never a guy who seemed like he was particularly interested in, like, being famous, you know? Like, he and I thought he and Trout were sort of complementary in a lot of ways, not the least of which is that they seemed dispositionally similar.

Yeah, it's, it's, it's, like he's clout chasing Cole Calhoun. I don't think. Yeah, no, that's not. And, you know, to the extent that I've ever heard anything about Cole Calhoun, it was that he's like a good teammate. But like, you know, I just, again, didn't know his game. Yeah, Cole Calhoun, the embodiment of the vibe shift, I guess.

But yeah, I mean, and maybe the fact that he is retired as a player. Right. emboldened him to say something, you know, would he have if he was still active, if there was kind of a cultural disapproval of that, or if he even just, like, had less time on his hands to pay attention to anything other than baseball if he were still playing. Because, you know, to be a big leaguer, often, you know,

like your development, it's different in a lot of ways from the average person or, you know, any non-professional athlete. It's like you're so hyper-focused on this thing that you are among the very best in the world at and you are from such a young age and you're just associating with the select group of people who also do that thing and in certain circles

and it's just kind of head down, you know, focus on your career, and you only have so many years to kind of make it count before the skills give out and everything. So it just takes precedence over a lot of other considerations. Not for everyone, obviously, but just for a lot of folks. So you can kind of understand how that happens

and just the background of baseball players and everything else. But, yeah, that was, a heartening thing. So we've said our piece and, you know, probably I don't have a whole lot else to say and express that many other people haven't also said an express. But if you're feeling those things, we're feeling them too. And we will now talk about baseball somehow, I guess. Okay. So we do have a couple transactions to talk about. We've got a stat blast and in fact a guest Stap Blaster, who will join us a little later in the episode. A couple non-political statements that I just wanted to highlight from baseball players because

they kind of caught my eye. One, so, okay, so this one, this made me do a bit of a double take in the baseball players, they're not like us kind of category. Because Carlos Rodan, who is recovering from elbow surgery, he was at the New York baseball writers gala he was on foul territory and he was giving an update on the state of his elbow and he was talking about how he can touch the top of his head now and he can button and unbutton his shirt congrats carl's rodd on it seems like his quality of life has improved post-surgery but here's also something he said been throwing a lot lately just uh trying to i guess loop up this elbow

joint and get it going for the season um so it took a lot of bones out but it's It's better now. The surgeons took a lot of bones out, but it's better now. What? They took a lot of bones out. Wait. Yeah, they took a lot of bones out, but it's better now. So don't worry about it.

They took a bunch of bones out. And now it works better because the problematic bones are gone. And we just remove some bones. And now his elbow is functioning. So nothing to see here. Great news. Thanks for the medical update, Carlos. Did he have extras in there?

That's what I... Did he have... Did he have bone spurs? Did he have a... So he had like loose bodies removed, you know? That's my... I love it. It's my favorite medical description.

I got loose bodies in there. It's like... Loose bodies. I always imagine that if they like shook their arm, you'd hear like... Just rattle. Yeah, like, yeah, exactly. Like, yeah. It might be kind of like that.

But yeah, he's, you know, he's, you know, he's like, lubing up the elbow. He's got some loose bodies. And I think there was a bone spur that was shaved down. But the way he said it, he said like they took a bunch of bones out there, which I guess is true. Like if you're just removing bone chips or fragments or something, I guess that is actually true. But he didn't say bone chips or fragments. He just said they took a bunch of bones out of there. And I was just picturing like is this some sort of R.A. Dickey situation, but for bones where it's Well, he just doesn't have a... He has no bones anymore.

Yeah, it's just, you know, it's better now because the bones were the problem. So we just removed the bones. And now he's just a very, like, you'd have an especially loose body, I guess, if you had no bones. By my bones. It'd be extremely loose. But, yeah, it's just like, they went in there, you know, they took out the radius. They took out the ulna, you know, I didn't need my humorous anymore. So we just remove those and it's just sort of a skin sack now.

But it's better because I... I can touch the top of my head and button my buttons. So all good. I'll be back on the mound soon. I was just thinking over the weekend as I was watching football, go hawks, that, you know, they do all these post-game interviews. And these guys are just media trained to within an inch of their lives. And I understand that on balance, we are spared from some probably true depravity as a result of them all being media trained within an inch of their lives. And there are guys who I am fine not hearing from even as we are.

we sit here and praise, you know, the great communicators among us like Cole Calhoun. But I do wonder if we'd have more fun, even if we'd have lower lows, if these guys, like, shot from the hip a little bit more. And I feel like, I feel like I now have further evidence to this, to this thesis, you know, it's bolstered by, took some bones out. Like, what does the PR staff think when they hear that? Are they like, wait, bones, like plural? Like, multiple bones? They're gone now. Yeah, turns out I didn't need him. Better off with Adam.

So that's how cross Rodon's elbow is doing, if anyone is wondering. It's newly boneless, fewer bones. Not boneless. Not bone free, but just less bony than it was. And all looped up. So good news, I guess. Now I'm imagining like a little mini pit crew and he like puts his elbow down and then like two little guys, like maybe they're mice.

Yeah. Yeah, maybe they're like a little elbow mic. And they come out and they're like, room, room, room. And then he's like, okay, ready to go. I know how racing works. And I think I'd rather have a health update from Carlos Rodon than from Bryce Harper because I can't avoid. I don't follow Bryce Harper on any channels. I'm not seeking out anything.

Free me from this man's Instagram. Free me from it. His Instagram and his TikTok are all over my feeds, despite the fact that I did not sign up for that. I did not subscribe to that. Uh-uh. But he's been on his BS again. And he's gone from, I'm trying to, you know, some people don't like it when we swear. I'm trying to do better.

I don't want to make Shane bleep all the time. I'm sorry. He's good with a bleep. It's okay. No, people, most people appreciate it. I know, but it doesn't need to be done to excess. I understand. I understand.

Some people, they got kids, tender years. I get it. I suppose. If you want to hear just full on meg. Full-on Meg Workin' Blue. Oh, yeah. That's what the Patreon. Yeah, that's what the

bonus buds are for. We don't bleep, baby. We don't, we don't bleed. Yeah. So, Bryce Harper, last time we talked about him was about the blood circulation

outside his body and the ozone in his blood and this pseudoscientific treatment that was happening and you were quite disturbed by the volume of blood that was being cycled

in and out of his bloodstream. And of course, we've talked about the raw milk. But the latest is that I think his TikTok reposts, which I guess we can distinguish between reposts and posts, but it's not the old standard Twitter bio-discllaimer. Right. Retweets are not endorsements.

I think probably they are endorsements most of the time, which is why people felt the need to put that disclaimer on their bios sometimes. But he had one TikTok reposts, which was some conversation from some show where some man was expressing the position that a five-year-old boys got no business being in school. What? That five-year-old boys should just exist in some sort of Mowgli in the Jungle Book, like state of nature, basically,

just to get it out of their system and not confine them to book learning. They should just be out there wrestling or whatever, which, you know, sure, sometimes you got to get that out of their system. It doesn't mean that it can't be combined with schooling and other kinds of formal education as well, you know, case-by-case basis. By all means, get physical activity, but it doesn't preclude being educated in other ways. But that was one. And then the other one with some kind of cloud-seeding chemtrails conspiracy, just asking questions, musing about how, isn't it strange that snowstorms are always on the weekends or something along these lines.

I only dip my toe into this because, you know, I wanted to limit my own exposure, but this is what I gleaned, you know, someone just wondering, why are all the snowstorms on the weekends and is that because someone is making it so. Oh, wait a second. Sorry. I know that this is like not the point. They're not all on the weekends. I'm sure they're not.

I have not done a study of that, but I'm quite confident that, snowstorms are probably pretty randomly distributed on weekdays. But maybe a meteorologist out there could stab blast that for us or we could have Brent Rooker back on now. He's been diving deep into meteorology Twitter. We noted this that Trout responded to him, right? Yeah. Well, I mentioned, I hadn't actually seen that. When I brought that up when Rooker was on here, I said he was like the new Mike Trout and I was joking.

But Mike Trout actually replied to Rooker. And it was, I think, Trout's first Twitter reply. In like 18 months or something. in a really long time. Yeah. So he was just brought out of his shell by Brent Rooker. He's like a kindred spirit, another baseball player, obsessed with weather. Someone's talking about the European model?

Yeah. It's just, well, true to himself. Yep. And the other Bryce Harper, I think this was on his Instagram stories. Again, hard for me to keep the social media straight. But he posted a picture of him, like during the snowstorm, he was inside in, And what looked like sort of like a blanket of some sort of, like a, it looked like he was, you know, taking a nap in this gizmo, this device that was all lit up with red light. There's a gizmo bag.

Yeah, it was like a sleeping bag sort of. I don't know if it's actually for. I'm sorry that I am now the one exposing you to this and all of our listeners. But yeah, it's what is it? It's not like I even want to give promotion to this. I know. I know. And you're just like, and you're just like, my algo is going to be messed up.

Yeah. It's, uh, it's like a red light thing. Oh, they do the, those face, they do those face masks too. Yeah, it's like a infrared PEMF mat, I think is what it is. It's, it's like, you know, it's supposed to improve various things like infrared technology. It's supposed to, you know, ease pain and. very vague claims and just like... What happens when you have too much money?

Yeah, like pulsed electromagnetic field therapy. And from what I could glean, this is probably not actively harmful. So that's good. Well, that's good. It's probably better than the blood's ozone stuff. It does seem like it's probably a waste of money. Like there could conceivably be some small benefits, but this thing costs like thousands of dollars and, you know, other therapies would probably be better.

Like, there's just, doesn't seem to be strong evidence that this is, you know, very effective as a wellness device. But it's like, you know, low frequency electromagnetic fields and then infrared heat. And also, sometimes there are gemstones. You got to get the gemstones involved. And it's, you know, this sort of like reduce inflammation, stimulate cellular repair, you know, make you relax, whatever. which I guess if it makes you relax and just go to sleep in this thing, then maybe it could be therapeutic. And maybe there's a placebo effect, but, you know, not the best bang for your buck, but that probably doesn't matter when you have as much money as Bryce Harper. Anyway, he has cocooned himself and cased himself in this thing.

I saw a lot of people jeering that because he was wearing clothes in this image. Yeah, doesn't it not work? Like, isn't the whole thing, like the red light to your skin? So from what I read, this particular thing at least claims that it works through clothes. I mean, it may not work at all, but like to the extent that it works, it's designed so that you can wear some light, loose, comfortable clothing while you do it. So I don't think he is actually doing it wrong. Maybe it's wrong to be doing it, but I think he is following the instructions more or less. So that's one thing that we can, I guess, not knock him for, but all the rest of it.

So I don't know. It's, look, clearly this and the hydrogen water and just like everything he's into and the raw milk, I mean, it's of a piece, right? And clearly he has people in his life who have influenced him in these areas. And I just, I wonder, you know, for all I know, he's always kind of been wired this way. but I do, it's hard not to psychoanalyze and say like, well, when you start getting up there in years and you've been a phenom, your whole life, and you've been an MVP and you've been so good, and then maybe the health starts slipping a little bit, and you're not quite the player you were, even though you're still really good. And you've got Dave Dumbrowski coming out and, you know, factually stating that you are not performing at your peak, or at least you haven't of late and sort of challenging you in a way or, you know, hoping that you get back to your best. Like, even though you're signed long term and you have all the money in the world and your place in baseball is pretty assured, then I could see how maybe there would be some sort of insecurity or you might just start reaching for anything out there.

And someone says, oh, this will help with whatever it is, whatever ails you. And you say, well, sure, why not try it? I can afford it. And what harm can it do? You know, in the blood case, maybe some, actually. In the Matt case, maybe not that much. But, yeah, he's, I dread really just Bryce Harper coming across my timelines because you just, you both never know what, what it's going to be about.

And also, you very much kind of do know. We didn't even get to the cloud seating one. These reposting cloud seeding nonsense. Is this just, this is a polite way of saying chemtrails, right? I guess. I don't even understand the distinction. Ken trail sounds conspiratorial, let's call it cloud seating. There was an image of what, you know,

looked like a trail, a con trail, as some might call it a chemtrail, in this post that he reposted. So, yeah. I don't know what they do about this. I think you're right. If you're a woman of a certain age of a particular socioeconomic demo, probably know a gal pal or two that has one of those red light masks. I don't know if they work.

I'm like, I put, I put potions on my face, Ben. You know, I do. I got skin care. Does it do anything? I don't know. Yeah. Feels nice. You know, these claims has not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration.

But, and so I, we're all dupable and being duped, I guess is my point. But, but also it just, it just the sheer volume of things in the, space, again, suggests that he is swimming in an information ecosystem that is pretty bad. And you're right, this is relatively harmless compared to, say, the blood thing. I don't think he's going to go on the aisle because of this, but if he does the blood thing more, he could, you know, it might. But I don't know the effective way to have a conversation with him about it. I think that if the Phillies figure that out,

they, like, kind of have an obligation to tell the rest of us. Because I think everybody has a friend or a family member who's, like, kind of in the space. And you're like, oh, oh, oh, how worried do I need to be? You know, I'm from Seattle. So, like, there's a fair amount of woo in the air. Yeah. But, like, where are we in the woo? Yeah.

And Mike Trout, by the way, not immune from this because his most recent post, aside from retweeting weather stuff and also replying to Brent Rooker is a sponsored post about his partnership with a company called Amortal. That's A. M. M.O.R. T.A.L. Why would you do it like it makes you sound like you're amoral? It does make you sound like that. This is like the this is like the man pill they sell on like late night TV where they're like it's new genics. And I was like, no one was in that product meeting and was like, did you say eugenics?

Yeah. Is that, no, new genics? Okay. Are you hearing it? Are you hearing it when I say it out loud? They're hoping that you'll say it quickly and it'll sound like immortal and you'll say, oh, it makes me immortal? Where do I sign up?

Okay. But it's, yeah. So anyway, he's like an athlete ambassador and investor in this company. And it appears to be sort of the same kind of thing as the thing that Harper was, using except, I don't know, maybe fancier, but I went to the website and says used by health professionals, wellness clinics, and pro athletes nationwide. And then it shows the logos for Major League Baseball, the NFL, the Denver Broncos, the U.S. Olympic team, and Goop.

Of course. Of course. Goop is in here. Yes. And providently listed on the website on the homepage is a quote from the senior science editor of Goop. Our minds were blown, which I feel like the senior side senator of Goop is

not editing enough, maybe. I feel like their minds are always blown and that's part of the problem. Sort of like if you're, if you see a dog and you shake keys in its face, they're like, whoa, never seen that before. Yeah. It is, it is funny.

I'm sorry to, I'm sorry to bring up football again. And I don't think that his exposure to whatever David Cronenberg asked like device this is is why it happened. But it is kind of funny

to have the Broncos go up here like we can have after their quarterback devastatingly broke his ankle. Yeah, they should have the 49ers. Maybe they should get these like infrared mats to deal with their substation radiation

injuries. John Lynch was asked about that and then it was like, oh, we're going to look into it. And I'm like, no, John, you need to stand up there and say no. We looked at it.

into it and it was nonsense. I just looked into what this Mike Trout endorsed product costs. Would you care to guess? So I think the Harper thing is like $2,000 or something like that. Okay. Something along those lines. This is like a... This product is called the chamber.

It's enormous. Yeah, it's not actually a chamber by all appearances. It's not enclosed, but it's like this slab that you lie on and it, beam stuff at you. It is, it's very, you know, like Prometheus kind of. Oh my God. You just looked at that. Okay.

So we gave people a thousand guesses to come up with Cole Calhoun. I'll give you a thousand guesses to come up with the price for the immortal chamber. And maybe I should give you 159,000 guesses because that's what this cost, a hundred fifty nine thousand. $500. It costs $16,000 for a deposit. Why are they all, I don't love how they all have to be wearing oxygen. You know, that seems bad. I'm not a doctor, but neither are these people probably.

Ozone filled. But yeah, like this website, it says, you know, 95% of users experience full body relaxation. Well, so do I when I lie down. But a glit of massage. Yeah. Like when I go to sleep, I generally also experience that. increased clarity, 85% of users experience increased clarity and a quieting of the mind with increased focus. 90% experience energetic restoration, which again, like I experience energetic restoration when I sleep or eat or anything.

So it's all very vague and it's a bunch of different supposed therapies and quote unquote modalities. and it's just kind of like it will increase your health in all sorts of unspecified and very general ways. I love you three of the four women in the testimonial section of this look like they shop at PCC

or the Seattle Headstone I'm talking about. Anyway, Mike Trout is hawking this thing and he said that he discovered it mid-season while working through my injury, which won, I guess. But he says it's become an integral part of his recovery program and how I approach performance. And look, he needs all the help he can get.

And if lying on this slab with red light helps Mike Trout stay healthy and play better, then great. And if he has 159,500 bucks to spend, I'm sure they cut him a deal as an athlete ambassador and investor. But I assume this is more for like teams and facilities than for the individual market, aside from extremely wealthy people who, might also be the people who are in the market for this sort of thing. But yeah. They want you to do this three to four times a week. Yeah. Can't look anywhere without running into a future Hall of Fame outfielder

whose rookie year was 2012 who is endorsing some sort of suspect expensive product. But that's the latest in Bryce Harper and also maybe Mike Trout. And will I be confronted with more things? that I will learn against my will and then inflict on others, I wouldn't be surprised. $159,000. Yeah.

I mean, look, on a dollars per war basis, man, if you could just keep Mike Trout in another few games, it pays for itself. I just, you know, I would just would say, I still don't support a salary cap, but there are lines of persuasion that I feel like the owners haven't tried yet and keeping...

Yeah. I'm kidding. It's a fine line between like, it's great that athletes are into taking care of themselves and that teams are and that they've invested in all sorts of technology and new age products, some of which actually are beneficial and tested and proven. And that's good. You know, it's certainly a lot better than when athletes and people in general were all smoking and not taking care of themselves and not exercising or whatever else, right?

So good, invest in your body. It's going to make you a lot of money as a baseball player, sure. But also, you might get taken advantage of by some people who are just like praying on athletes, you know, talking them into these things. So look, if anyone has great scientific literature here that demonstrates the efficacy of these products beyond all doubt, I will stand corrected and feel free to pass that literature along. But for now, I will just continue to Marvel and jeer. Okay. So a couple transactions. One, yes, the Giants signed Harrison Bader.

And it's a very giant sort of signing, you know? That's about as exciting as it gets for the Giants these days, Harrison Bader. I like it too. Yeah. I mean, two years, $20.5 million with some incentives. I'm sort of surprised that he didn't get more than that. He too. Yeah.

because he's coming off a really good year. And I guess probably teams looked at that year as something of an outlier and Babbit inflated and thought, well, he's probably more like the Harrison Bader he was before that, which is, you know, a nice platoon player, role player, defensive substitution, etc. And he's 31. And so, sure, I guess I get why you're not going to be, you know, paying him with the expectation that he's going to be a three to four win player again. And if the Giants are expecting him to start every day,

then maybe he could be a bit stretched in that role. Because I think historically it's like good glove. You know, once you start getting into your 30s as a center fielder, can you remain an elite glove? I think given their other options, he is superior in the pasture for sure. And then, you know, I think he probably, if you can hide him against some righties and have him split time with someone,

then that's kind of the ideal way to deploy Harrison Bader. And so maybe he took this because the Giants offered a path to playing time. And good for him and probably an upgrade over what they had. And maybe he's kind of miscast as an everyday player. Or who knows, maybe he was underestimated. And last year he proved that he should get a little more playing time. and now he's getting that opportunity. But yeah, I was a little surprised.

You know, I guess the fact that he got two years because he's been kind of a year-to-year guy. But even so, it felt a little light, given what guys are going for this winter. I agree. I think particularly given the remaining center field options, which were scant on the free-jure markets to begin with and quite scant now.

But I agree. I think that he gives them a much better option defensively than Zhang Hul-li, who looks stretched there. it's a big, you know, it's a lot of room out there to patrol. So I think opting for the superior defender, even if his bat really only justifies, like, the strong side of a platoon makes good sense. He didn't hit well over the course of the entire season, but he's a very aggressive hitter. He was rewarded for that to some degree last year with a career high in home runs, but, you know, it's not like that park is going to

play particularly well for that. So, but with all, of that said, like, I like the signing for them. I think that it bolsters an area of need and we know how I feel about center field defense. So I'm about it. I like it. And, you know, Bader has just like,

this is harder to quantify. We do not yet incorporate this into war, but just seems like a really good vibes guy. You know, we talked last year when he was traded to Philly. I mean, I think the thing that they probably most appreciated about Bader was that they suddenly had a 129 WRC plus hitter.

in Center Field, which market upgrade over what they'd had previously. But that clubhouse had seemed kind of unsettled at times, and he just seems like a good vibes guy. As Michael Baumann noted in his write-up of the signing, I think

that he and Vitella will get along splendidly. So, yeah, is it a small move relative to some of the other moves that have been made in division? Yes. But, you know, I think it's a it's a pretty inexpensive way for them to improve their club in a meaningful way in like $10 million for a capable center fielder.

Something, you know, even if he ends up playing kind of a part-time role. So I like it. Yeah. Yeah. Hopefully it won't affect his access to low-frequency electromagnetic fields now that he's moving on from Philly or maybe it will and maybe that'll benefit him even more. Who knows? Maybe that's why he had a great year last year. He got there or he got there and he was like,

what's going on around here? What? That could be. Are you guys up to? Yeah. You know how like you, you don't have siblings. So this might not be the best example for you personally, Ben. But it's like you have experiences with your siblings and you sort of understand how the world works.

And then, you know, many comedians have joked about this. Like you get around other people and you're like, oh, that wasn't normal. Okay, cool. Noted, noted, noted. Do you think the Phillies were like that and Bader got there and was like, hey guys? It's with the raw milk, you know? Were we doing that? Yeah.

You need an outsider to be the Phillies clubhouse ombudsman or something or Surgeon General or I don't know what. Yeah. But it is, you know, it fits in with the Giants offseason, which is a bunch of sort of, you know, making moves on the margins. I think a lot of teams could have used Harrison Bader, at least in a part-time capacity. But you look at the headliners of the Giants offseason, and it's not super exciting. It's Harrison Bader, it's Adrian Houser, it's Tyler Malley, it's, you know, tinkering, I guess. It just doesn't seem like it's really going to move the needle from just the stubborn 500 setting where it's been for that team for the past four years now.

Yeah. And I know that there's been a lot of focus on them missing out on some major free agent targets and then getting some of them, but, you know, not always the number one guy. Sort of rude to Tyler Miley, but sure. Yeah. Yeah, but I think Grant Brisby has made this point when he's joined us for giant season previews and probably will again when he joins us again. But they just, they kind of need that core. They just, they had a generation of prospects that failed to launch. And so, yeah, it hurts if you miss out on arson judge or whatever.

But like, it's hard to construct a perennial winner when you aren't really developing from within. And they've just had so many guys who have just. fizzled and many of them have moved on and some of them are still around and maybe they'll make something of themselves, but they just have not really developed a lot of homegrown blue chippers. Just, you know, a core you can build around. And of course, from a team perspective, an inexpensive team controlled core that you can build around. That just, it hasn't happened for them lately.

And I don't know if it's happening now. It will be interesting to see, like, what is a full? hopefully drama-free year of Devers look like, what version of Adomis are they getting, what version of Chapman, does Lee take a further step forward? Like, I think that there are spots on their roster where you can have some optimism that, like, the ceiling hasn't been fully realized or that they might produce better than they did last year. But yeah, it doesn't, you know, there's like a healthy dose of Drew Gilbert here.

Is that going to work out? You know, so I just, I think that there are places where they could still improve. They always have to contend with L.A., so that's kind of rough, you know. Yeah. And then the mean thing that I wanted to ask about is sort of inspired by the Jose Ramirez extension, the latest Jose Ramirez extension. Yeah. What are we up to? Three now, I think, with the Guardians.

And also some comments that Andrew McCutcheon made about his non-invig. to a Pirates fan event, because I was kind of thinking about these things in the context of what do teams owe franchise legends and what do franchise legends owe teams and what kind of accommodations should each party make? So the Jose Ramirez extension, I mean, that guy just loves being in Cleveland. He just loves being a guardian. They love having him. The fans love him.

Why wouldn't they? It's a mutual love him. best. It's beautiful. I'm happy for him. I'm happy for them. I'm happy for guardians fans who just get to enjoy that guy from start to finish. His whole career, like, this seems to have just been about ensuring that he is a guardian for life, essentially, though I have not yet received a push notification about whether he plans to retire when he's 40 and seven years or so. So, you know, get on that. Maybe. But... They're saving that for Super Bowl weekend, Ben.

Come on. They got to strike when the iron is hottest. Yes. But the terms of this latest pact. And it's an unusual one because he didn't need to sign an extension yet. They didn't need to sign him to an extension yet. But obviously they just want to continue to be in business together and remain one big happy family. And so this will take him through his age 39 season in 2032.

And so he had three years and 69 million remaining already. And this restructures those years and then also adds 106 million in new money, which covers the 2029 to 32 season. There's also a lot of deferrals here. It's kind of complicated. Yeah. And maybe I'll just quote Davey Andrews because he dug into it for his posted fan graphs and laid it out pretty. clearly, but it's a little different from the past Ramirez extensions, which were extremely team-friendly.

And this one is a little bit, it's not quite as much of that just because of the unusual circumstances, basically. So he had the $69 million over three years comment to him. Now, over the next seven seasons, he's going to get $25 million a year with $10 million per year deferred. And then each of those deferrals last 10 years and then pays out a million a year for 10 years. So he's going to be getting million dollar annual payments until 2051. So that's something to look forward to for him and for Guardians fans. Instead of Bonilla Day, you can have Jose Day and everyone can just celebrate Jose Ramirez. And that'll be fun. And he also got some perks and incentives and an extra hotel room on road trips, very swanky. and some private jet trips and some bonuses for high finishes in the MVP voting. Wouldn't it be something if he finally won one instead of having the highest MVP vote share of any non-winner ever? But it's basically like 25 million or 20.8 for present value purposes because of the deferrals.

And then like it reduces the amount of money that the guardians will have to pay him over the next three. seasons from 69 million to 45 million. So he's like kind of getting more but eventually, but later and like in a different shape essentially. So it seems like he wanted to sign this just to get additional safety and security and just commit to being in Cleveland for the rest of his career. And I'm sure the Guardians also wanted that, but maybe also wanted additional financial flexibility in the short term in the next few years.

while Ramirez is still a very productive player that maybe it makes it easier for them and their penny-pinching ownership to put a contender around him. So that's the thing, basically, but it's not such a, like, basically, you know, sweetheart deal, hometown discount the way that the previous extensions were

because he is already 33 years old and this extension doesn't kick in for a few years. So it's like, you know, not only will they now be signing him to his late 30s seasons. And there's just not a lot of precedent for people remaining productive in recent decades at third base or, or anywhere he might move for that matter. And there's also just the fact that they're committing to him a few years before his contract would expire. So there's, you know, they're taking some risk that something happens to him, of course. You know, anytime a team signs an extension long before that. They're pricing in some risk that's, well, something might befall that player.

He might decline. He might get hurt or whatever it is. He might get stuck in his immortal chamber or something and be unable to get out. But, you know, there's kind of a discount because of that. But it mostly amounts to Jose Ramirez just loves being in this city and playing for this team. And there's something really nice about that, you know. You certainly appreciate it as a fan when a guy, especially in a sports city that has had hard times. That's probably an understatement.

And also a lot of your legendary athletes have gone elsewhere. And Jose Ramirez has positioned himself to be the greatest player in Cleveland baseball history, you know, in Guardians franchise history. and we'll have statues and monuments and people singing his praises for the rest of his life. And that's worth something, you know? And yet there's a part of me that looks at his career as a whole. And, you know, whether he's underpaid or not in this particular portion of his career, as a whole, he has been dramatically just because he's been so good and did sign undermarket extensions. And, you know, I saw a quote from him, which was before he signed this extension, or at least before it was announced.

This was, he was doing an interview a couple weeks ago in early January, I think. And he was talking about signing a previous extension. And he said, this is translated. We went through a year and a half of negotiations. And when I finally signed, I got a significant salary bump. I knew it wasn't fully reflective of my market value. And plenty of people made sure to point. that out. But I'm a veteran. I understand how the game works. Cleveland is a small market team,

and they simply can't pay me what I could command on the open market. So I told them, let's find a fair agreement that works for both sides. I spoke directly with the GM. There were real trade discussions and offers from other teams willing to extend me at my full asking price, but my heart was set on staying in Cleveland. First and foremost, my children were born here. My wife feels comfortable in Cleveland, and so do I. I owe this city a lot since the day I arrived. I've never once been booed by these fans. I've seen how crowds and other stadiums treat players when results don't come quickly, and that's never happened here. What kind of monster would boo Jose Ramirez anyway in any city? You know, everyone has slumps, of course. But how can you begrudge him that? Okay, like he loves it,

his family loves it, everyone loves him. He wants to stay there. He should get to stay there if he wants to. I guess I can on the one hand be happy for him and think, what a great guy and it's great for fans and everything. And yet also be kind of frustrated that the Dolans get their way like that, you know? Yeah. Because it's like, in a sense, he's playing right into their hands, you know. And he's getting hundreds of millions of dollars. Yeah, he's doing fine.

And he seems to genuinely enjoy being there. So I think that he's doing well financially to like get exactly what he wants, which is to stay in Cleveland. Yeah. So I'm not really crying. for Jose Ramirez in his financial situation. He's set. But still, like, his hand is forced or he feels like it's forced because the Dolans, who have much more money than Jose Ramirez even has, you know, whatever money he is giving back,

they are pocketing, basically, right? And they need it less than he does. And so it's sort of just playing right into that scheme of like, well, if we just constantly kind of cut corners and keep our pay. roll low than someone like Jose Ramirez who likes playing here feels like the only way he can possibly do that is to take a pay cut and therefore line our pockets further relative to his value. Whereas someone else, you know, Francisco Indore, whoever it is, like someone who wants to just

get what they're worth feels like they can't do that in Cleveland, or at least it's been shown that they can't. And so in a way, it's like Jose Ramirez's large ass and. love for the city, which I applaud, also just like enables the Dolans to keep doing what they do, basically. He's basically like funding, you know, their, their parsimonious way of operating that team. Like, it's only, it's possible for them to keep contending as they have, you know, and that's another thing. It's not like they've been perennial losers during his career. They made the playoffs most of the time. They've been one of the...

In the World Series. Yeah, they made the World Series. They've been one of the, I was kind of cringe at this word, but winningest, winningest teams over the course of Ramirez's career or at least, you know, his peak. And, you know, he had a couple like slow start seasons. Like when he was, you know, in his early 20s just kind of catching on, he was not great immediately, at least at the plate. And so that's probably what he's referring to that people didn't boo him at that time. But, you know, it's not as if he's, it's not like a Mike Trout situation either where he's, where he's, He's signing up to stay with a team, even though that team seems to be pretty poorly run and never gets him to the playoffs.

The guardians have gotten to the playoffs. Not every year, but most years during Jose Ramirez's career. And he's had a lot to do with that, obviously, but still. And, you know, they have some developmental acumen and trade chops and all the rest of it. So it's a well-run organization in some respects. It's just part of me that, like, wants the Dolans to have to pay market value. just to like force them to spend some money. Yeah. So that's the only conflicted feeling that I have about any of this.

And I think that, you know, the idealized version of analytics of money ball, once it moved from a team that was as cash-strapped as the A's role, is the idea that like you would find underpriced value. And then you could reinvest that money that you weren't spending on the underpriced value into the rest of the roster, right? And so when you don't see the second piece of it, it can feel, you know, like there's a bait and switch going on. I mean, I'll say this, and I don't mean to defend their owners by any stretch.

I do think that, like, once you've passed a certain threshold of wealth, like Jose Ramirez is doing fine, he has not been paid his market value over the course of his career, but I do think that, like, part of players getting to have power and agency in their own careers is saying like I have enough. I've made what I need to to care for my family, probably for many generations. And this is where I want to be. And so I'm going to be here.

You know, I think one way that you could like face God in this moment is to think, if they weren't giving this money to Jose Ramirez, they probably wouldn't be giving that amount of money to anybody. Yeah. So he is extracting. probably more from them than really any other player would be able to because the sort of value proposition is just so obvious and he has been so good for them. And we talked about the value of sort of Jersey guys to be distinguished from Jersey boys and Jersey men, but Jersey guys, you know, and they could be from anywhere.

And Ramirez gives your franchise one of those. And I think that for teams like the guardians who are so transactional who, you know, are one of these clubs that sort of fits in this bucket of we're talented and smart and we develop well and we have acumen and we are good at extracting marginal value. And we are forced to play on hard mode to a certain extent because of the financial constraints that our ownership group puts on us. they're one of those teams and I think particularly for those clubs like it is good to have a jersey guy because it can feel so transactional like the experience of the team can be so ephemeral otherwise and it's not you know they're not engaged in roster churn I think their reputation rather for roster churn is a little different than like it is with like the raisin relievers for instance, or, you know, we, we spent a good amount of time talking about the brewers and their

construction proclivities, but, you know, they engage in a lot of churn. And when guys get expensive, they tend to get shipped out. And so having someone like him who is so good, and also, you know, kind of a grounding force in your clubhouse, you know. So I'm not trying to praise the way that they do business, because I think that, you know, as I have said in the case of the raise and the Brewers, you know, these are good organizations and think about what their staffs could do with even just a little bit more wiggle room on the financial side. But I think it's, you know, if I were a Guardians fan, I would be thrilled about this. He's a good player. I think, you know, like a lot of extensions that end up brushing up against the back half of a guy's 30s, you know,

is he going to be this version of Jose Ramirez by the time the deal is on? I mean, almost certainly not. But I do think that he has a skill set and a game that will age pretty well. And he's so reliable. Like he's just, you know, he's always on the field. So I get the ways in which it's a weird deal and in some ways out of character for them. And in other ways, like, so in line with their character. But on the whole, I think, like, I'm just in favor of the people of Cleveland getting a good player.

seemingly a good guy to root for. And I do think that, and this is a, this was a non-enforceable preference. I mean, all of my preferences are non-enforceable. The guardians don't have to listen to me. I do like it when teams, and I don't think they would necessarily articulate their, their justification or rationale for extending Ramirez in these terms at all, and probably didn't even internally. But maybe the presence of the Jersey guy is like particularly important when, when part of your like men's pro sports fates are tied up in the browns. Like, I'm sorry.

Guardians and Cavaliers, you just, you do. And I think they have, do they have a pro soccer team, Cleveland? I'm not trying to be, I'm not trying to be rude. I just genuinely don't know the bounds of MLS these days.

But, you know, it's like, sorry guys, you're going to have different expectations heaped on you than a lot of other cities that have the kind of sports culture you do because you're getting weighed down by these goobers down the way. I'm just like, sorry, I'm not trying to disrespect Chador, but.

Especially Miles Leaves. He's a pro bowler now. So, and I know that because I know about football. I love sport, general sport, Ben. So nice. Yeah. Can we talk about football on the Patreon pod? I want you to know, and part of this is because, like, we led with something that's

genuinely important and very serious. I have been so restrained about the Seahawks on this episode. And I'd like to be unencumbered if that's okay. But I appreciate the ways in which me fanning out about anything is not fun for some. And I know we pressed the boundary a bit with the posies. And so I'm aware, you know, I want to be respectful of our listeners' preferences. But I had a fun Sunday. I'm sure you did.

Yeah. And you've got another, hopefully, fun Sunday in store, probably even, I would say. Not to jinx anything. So Ramirez, if you look at his fan grass page in the value section, of course, there's the dollars calculation, which is just the going rate for wins on the free agent market. It's just that times the war that player produced. It's a simple sort of thing. And he's at $461 of value produced over the course of his career in his 58 war. or so. That's just a shorthand, and it's an estimate. And of course, he was not a free agent all of those

years and wouldn't have been even if he had signed no extensions. So it's, it's, you know, very much just kind of a, you know, rough, rough thing. And, you know, at the end of this contract, I mean, he's already made about $100 million, and then, you know, he'll be over $200, I guess, by the time this contract is done. Obviously, like, the surplus value there will probably be in the hundreds of millions, maybe. Oh, yeah. And he has decided to make that decision. And he's happy with it.

He's like, he's going into it with his eyes open is the other thing, you know? If he were swindled, if he were bamboozled, if he had gotten bad advice, if he was unaware of what his market value was, that would be one thing. But, no, he's well aware of what he's doing and he's voluntarily doing it. And to him, it's worth it and understandably so. And maybe there's some obligation to maximize your earnings for the betterment of your baseball brethren in the union. If you take an undermarket deal, does that increase pressure on another superstar to take of a low market deal? You want to look out for the interests of other players while also looking out for your own. These can be complicated considerations.

He's just, he's such a perfect player. He's just like, you know, he's not the best because he is. had the misfortune of overlapping with Aaron Judge and Shohei Otani. But just metronomic production year in and year out. He's just pencil him in for that six win season or so. And yeah, you're right. He probably won't be producing like peak Jose Ramirez when he's in his late 30s, but he's still producing like peak Jose Ramirez in age 33, age three. He hasn't slipped one bit, really, you know? He's just so good from both sides of the plate.

He's power, the speed, the patience, like, you know, walks almost as much as he strikes out, good glove, like good clubhouse guy, amazing at Mario Kart, just like everything. He's just so aesthetically pleasing and just no holes in his game whatsoever, so dependable, so durable. You know, any of this is subject to change and will change at some point in any player. career, but what a thrill, what a joy and privilege it has been to watch him even from afar, let alone if you're a Guardians fan. Oh, yeah.

And, you know, this isn't, you know, you talk about him sort of going in with eyes open. This isn't like, you know, I feel bad that part of Ozzy Albee's legacy as a player will be that his is the contract we just always point to when we talk about a guy who's like, agent should have been run out of town for getting him to sign that deal. but, you know, it's not like it's such a dramatic underpay that you're like, oh, something, you know, nefarious went on here. And I think it, you know, it's perhaps a useful reminder that for as much as players are certainly aware of the posture of ownership and in a place like Cleveland, probably more even than average, I do wonder if guys think about these things more in terms of, you know, long-term competitive potential. And to your point, like, the guardians have held up their end in that respect during his tenure, which doesn't mean that, like, them not winning the World Series wasn't disappointing for them

and that we don't get around to October every year and be like, God, it would be nice if they had another bat or two. But, you know, he's playing October baseball with really consistent regularity. And so I just think that he seems like he knows what he wants and he's getting it. And that's good. Yeah. It's a lovely thing. when a player can spend his whole career in one city with one team, be beloved and loving of the team and the city and all the rest of it. And, you know, I don't think players owe a discount to

their team or to the fans. I don't think they owe anyone anything. But when everyone is kind of on the same page and it works out that way, it's a special situation. And that's why I was tying this into McCutcheon. So McCutcheon is 39. He is essentially at the point in his career that Jose Ramirez will be when this extension runs its course. And he is commensurately diminished as a player, but also means about as much to that franchise and that fan base as Ramirez does to his city and organization. And so this past weekend, there was a Pirates Fest event, you know, fan convention. and Andrew McCutcheon wasn't there, wasn't invited. And Ben Charrington was asked about him.

I think a fan asked, where's Andrew McCutcheon? And he had a long response, but the upshot was, you know, Andrew's meant a ton to the franchise. Our approach this offseason has been laser focused on what gives us the best chance to win more baseball games than we have in past seasons. And there were other things. You know, he also paid other compliments to McCutcheon and what he's meant to the team and the fan base. And he's had an incredible run and his legacy as a pirate is secure. And we want to maintain a really good relationship with Andrew well into the future. But he is drawing a distinction between that and his role on the current roster because Charrington is saying,

the job is to build a team that gives us the best chance to be winning games, et cetera, et cetera. And that's what we're trying to do. So much respect to Andrew, the relationship is important, blah, blah, blah. So he was essentially saying thanks, but, you know, it's over. Like it seems to be that they're not interested in bringing him back, that they're grateful for everything he's done, but that at some point they feel like they have to move on in order to prioritize winning. And Andrew McCutcheon quote tweeted a portion of this tweet by Charrington and said, I wonder, did the cards do this with Wainwright, Pujols, Yadi, the Dodgers to Kershowell. the Tigers to Miggy, the list goes on and on.

If this is my last year, it would have been nice to meet the fans one last time as a player, talk to them about my appreciation for them over the years, shake that little kid's hand or hug the fan that's been a fan since Clemente. You see, this is bigger than baseball, bigger than looking at a 40-man roster and cherry-picking numbers that fit your agenda or prove why your opinion matters. The fans deserved, at the very least, to get that opportunity. I don't know what the future holds for me at the present moment, but what I do know is Though I am 39 on the back end of my career, I still work every day to be better than I was the year before.

If there wasn't a burning desire to continue this journey, I would be home surrounded by my family in which no one would judge or be surprised, but not yet. There's more work to do, and I'm not done, no matter what label, you try to stamp on me, rip the jersey off of me, you don't get to write my future. God does. So clearly, some feathers ruffled by not being invited to Fanfest and Charrington in so much. many words saying that there's probably not a place on the Pirates roster for Andrew McCutcheon anymore. And this always tends to be an awkward situation too. You know, you get to the end of the road with a player who's meant a lot to a team, but is not the player he was. And that's happened with some of the players that McCutcheon listed. Like, you know, the Tigers didn't do this to

miggy, but that's because Miggy signed an enormous extension of his own and had a huge contract coming to him, you know? And so, yeah, like, they were sort of stuck with him and kept him around to the end

and had some milestone moments and everything, but it wasn't exactly analogous. And, you know, maybe Pujols and Yadi, Pujols, obviously, was great unexpectedly in his return to St. Louis. But, you know, late career,

Yadi, I guess, maybe could be kind of comparable, even though such defensive catching powers were ascribed to him, even at that late date. So I see what he's saying, but it's like what is he owed essentially due to his past contributions to the team and the franchise and the city and it's very much a business and what have you done for me lately and not even what have you done for me lately, but what will you do for me? And Andrew McCutcheon, absolute delight and credit to the game and the organization and everything. but also a replacement level player this past season. And so that's the kind of player who tends to get replaced. So I don't know what the pirates owe him.

I sort of see both perspectives in a sense, but it's hard when you have a long relationship like that. It's tricky, and I'm trying to remove some of the pirates of it all. Well, yeah. Well, I say that because I think it would be a difficult situation and navigate sort of regardless of the financial piece of it. You know, we have this view of them as being so tight-fisted, and at times, you know, there have been some PR issues, this and that.

But I don't know if they're always bumbling. And so I think it's just a really hard thing because if everyone could have an honest conversation, you know, and maybe they did. I don't know what the behind the scenes were between them and catch last year. but, you know, I would have been like, so hey, this is this the last ride? Because if it is, you were so important to this franchise and you're so important to this fan base. And we would like to honor the contributions you have made. But you have to be willing to say, yeah, I'm going to be done after this.

And I think it's, you know, on the other side of it, very difficult for guys to get to that place. you know, I always think about David Ortiz's final season where we knew it was going to be his last ride, you know, he went all around the country getting cowboy boots and chair, you know, like stadium seats and all kinds of,

I always wondered like, how much all that stuff that he ended up keeping, you know, and like, what did he? And he had a 163 WRC plus and was a four and a half win player. Most guys don't get to go. out like that, you know? Most guys, even if they get to have sort of the pre-planned retirement tour and they get to have these moments, it does tend to feel more like MIGI, where, you know,

you get to a point where you're like, this is kind of a slog, man. Like, you were such a great player. Yeah. And so fearsome as a hitter, but like, that's just not the guy who's coming to the ballpark every day anymore. And that's not anyone's fault, but age, you know, that's not, That's just the way this goes eventually. And so I don't know if, you know, if the pirates got caught flat-footed by, like, you know, sort of the state of McCutcheon's game or if Cutch did. You know, I also think that, and this is the part where I will maybe criticize the feel piece of it on Pittsburgh. Like, he's a franchise icon. He's a franchise legend.

He can just come to fan fest, right? Yes. Yeah. Does he have to be on the roster to be? be able to come to fan fest like surely you would need to have a conversation with him in advance to be like hey like we are still figuring out our roster and we love you so much but we just we don't know if if you're going to if we're going to be able to to find room for you as we're trying to you know launch into a new you know they'd say all the things that you're supposed to say as

we try to launch into a new era of competitive pirates baseball and he'd have to be okay with that and you'd have to have a plan for like the inevitable question you're going to be you're of are you retiring and if you're not, are you resigning with the pirates? But surely that could have gotten worked out. So like that part of it does feel a little like, come on. Yeah, because his statement started that way where he was, if this is my last year, it would have been nice to meet the fans one last time as a player. So, so yeah, if that's all it was, if he just felt snubbed and slighted that he wasn't

extended the courtesy of an invitation to this event, then absolutely they should have done that. Although then the second half of the statement is more about still thinking he can play and wanting to play. And so I don't know, would he take that the wrong way? If they invite him to the fan fest without extending an invitation to play, then is that a slate or does that send the wrong message about their intention to bring him back? So yeah, you'd have to handle that diplomatically, but it seems like they didn't handle whatever they did do very diplomatically. So yes. And sure, yeah, if it's just about the meet and greet, and by all means you would want him to be in that role,

whether he's a player or not. But as for the playing part of it, and I never begrudge a player, their desire to keep playing, and if they're still enjoying it and they still want to be out there, then they absolutely should, as long as they can.

And I don't really believe in legacy tarnishing so much. I think people remember the good times, unless, you know, it's a super extreme, like, Pujolzian kind of decline, where it lingers for so long that's just a whole generation of people never even saw the guy when he was good and they just remember the diminished poohls or

Mickey for that manner but those were unusual circumstances because of the length of their contracts and the steepness of their decline and everything but it really was the best part of that last year for poohels where we could all just be like see we weren't crazy this he was like this isn't even the best version of him but like he was a dude yeah somehow some way he was good again. Yeah, like this was, this is just a glimpse of what we got in the early days, man. Yep. And McCutcheon in this last hurrah with Pittsburgh, he's had three years. So they've had time to kind of write something on the wall, see the writing on the wall. I just don't get why this is, this just feels like such a unforced strange communication breakdown that this is a problem. Like,

how is this a problem, you know? Yeah. And yeah, you know, he's been in a more diminishing. role. And when he first came back, he was still an above average bat. The last couple years, he's been closer to replacement level. And if you're the pirates and you're not winning, then it is a roster spot at such a premium that you can't just bring back Andrew McCutcheon for $5 million a year, which is what he's been making just for the good vibes and the warm memories and being an ambassador and a mentor to young players and all of that. Now you do get to a point. where if you have competitive ambitions, then maybe you can't carry that kind of player

just for the memories and the legacy and everything because you really need to devote that roster spot to someone else who's going to help you win games. Are the pirates at that point? I'd like them to be. I think they could be, maybe should be, but it would be easier to give them a pass on this, I guess, if they had kind of backed up the big words

about how much spending they would do by spending more. I know they got some guys. eyes, but, you know, they didn't exactly blow everyone out of the water this winter. So. Gotta go good. E. Oh, man. Yeah, he's still out there.

So they have an opportunity to do that. If they sign Suarez and say, well, this is why we couldn't bring McCutcheon back. Well, maybe I'd be more understanding about it. But, yeah, it is kind of a mutual negotiation. Like, you do have to have some self-awareness as a player and say, you know, what I have done entitles me maybe to some sort of status and role with this organization, but not necessarily in uniform or on the field the way that it was, because that time ends for everyone, no matter how good you were and how long. So there is such a thing as kind of, you know, trying to cling to

that too long or feeling too entitled to it. I don't know if McCutcheon is, but that it happens. It's an awkward thing to navigate at the end of so many careers because people want to keep playing and they're not the same guy and you don't want to disrespect them, but you also can't kind of keep guaranteeing a roster spot in perpetuity because it's a competitive sport. So it's tough. Yeah, I mean, there's an argument to be made that, you know, I do think that particularly when you're in like a fallow period as a franchise, it's easy to extend to icons some amount of deference because seeing those guys, on the roster does bring your fans a meaningful measure of joy.

I think, I feel like I'm defending two cheap out franchises back to back here. I think three years is like maybe an appropriate level of deference. Yeah. Now, to your point, you got to turn around and then do something with that spot. You can't just be like, and then we signed. Yeah. I'm just going to say Tommy fam. You know, like you need to do something with that.

I think that a mark of a franchise that is in transition but headed in the right direction is one that is giving opportunity on the roster to younger players that is maybe using their churn to go through guys who have washed out other places, but maybe could, you know, with an opportunity and some runway, like be a complimentary role player or this, you know, the short side of a platoon or what have you. So you need to put that roster spot to work. And it does feel like this is maybe just the results of poor communication on one or both ends. But these things pass.

That's, I mean, that's what special assistant roles are for, right? Like, what are we doing here? Just make the right part of the front office. I say that, like, you know, they may well have approached him with that. Or maybe he doesn't want to do that. Or maybe, you know, he thinks he's going to catch on some more out. I don't know. But it's an odd, it's sort of a sour note if it's part of the end.

And, you know, I hope that they're able to reach something else for the fan's sake and for catches sake, too. He deserves that at the very least to have, you know, his tenure in the big leagues, if this is the end of the road, and on a triumphant note. Because he's had a triumphant career. And he's had a career that's been really meaningful to a lot of people. Yeah. And sometimes it's a fleeting, feather ruffling. It's a fleeting affront. And then, you know, there's a little bit of bitterness, some hurt feelings.

but then it passes and there's a reunion and everyone remembers the good times eventually. And I'm sure that's what will happen at some point, hopefully. And hopefully this won't be a preview of the end of Jose Ramirez's stint in Cleveland because his tenure will last forever and he'll just be a six-win player at age 39 and he'll have to sign a fourth extension at that point. He'll just like immediately go into a front office role and... Yeah, or he'll just ride off on his... Mario carts into the sunset or something. So there you go.

Okay. Well, we've established that I am a football knower and a sports knower, but our jeopardy contestants, football knowers and sports knowers, and most importantly, for the purposes of this podcast, baseball knowers, we are about to find out after the stat blast song. They'll take a data set sorted by something like a A-9 or OBS plus. And then they'll tease out so interesting take it, but discuss it at length and analyze it for us in amazing ways. Here's to taste a blast.

All right, we are joined now by Zach Goslin, who is the author of a defector piece that was published last week, entitled Are Jeopardy Contestants Really That Bad at Questions About Sports? And Zach answered that question in the piece, but it inspired another question in me, which was, does Jeopardy rely more heavily on baseball questions than questions about other sports? Is baseball overrepresented when it comes to sports on Jeopardy? Zach, welcome to Effectively Wild. Thank you. Good to be here. Now, I know you're a data science person and also a sports fan, so did it sort of touch a nerve the perception that one can't be both than?

that the widespread belief that Jeopardy contestants are inept when it comes to sports because they're all nerds and they're not jocks. And thus, there's this great societal divide and people can't possibly be interested in both of these subjects. Well, it was definitely like a worry because I built all of this because I was in the contestant pool kind of throughout 2021, wound up going on in early 2022, and was worried that like, okay, the stuff that I'm actually good at, which is like the sports, the pop music, TV, that sort of thing. Like, do they even ask about that? And so I did this whole analysis of, like, what's the sort of cost-benefit analysis? What's the, like, you know, what's worth knowing for jeopardy purposes? And, like, while it is sort of a lot

of literature, history, geography, they do ask about sort of pop culture more than they ask about sort of, like, the high culture arts, classical music stuff. But the big difference was, and I mentioned this in the article that like they really shunt the mass culture stuff for the most part into like the first round which is just worth a lot less money so even though it comes up more it's just usually not as it's still not really worth it to learn by jeopardy standards yeah and you linked at the top of that piece to a viral video by jeopardy standards football 200 your choice do or don't name this play in which the quarterback runs the ball and can choose to pitch it to another back.

It's an option play. Ryan? Football 400. I can tell you guys are big football fans. I mentioned this as well. There are a lot of examples of this, and I think that's where the stereotype comes from is it's just not a big deal

if they don't know the capital of Mozambique, but when three ostensibly very smart people who are pulling all sorts of very, very obscure operas and art and, you know, world leaders just like off the time. top in like, you know, two seconds flat, and then none of them recognize like Bo Jackson, it's going to, it's going to make some headway. It's going to, it's going to circulate a lot. It's going to be just a much more interesting thing to watch.

So you answered the initial question in the piece, which we will link to, and I encourage people to read, but would you care to summarize your conclusions about whether the stereotype is true, whether Jeopardy contestants are actually not ball-knowers? Yeah. So what I found was, and this is, I have to shout out my friend Colin Davy, who provided me with the actual, like, sort of, he has a lot of his own sort of Jeopardy projects and trivia projects and was able to provide me with the data about, like, what questions were answered correctly and incorrectly, and I just joined that to all the labels and stuff that I did. But what I found was that it lines up with, like, what you'd kind of expect of the general population, that the more popular things are better known, the less popular things are worse known. And the sports was, I, pure percent of questions answered correctly the third best subject in the data that I created, you know, up with like mixed pop culture, food was probably the strongest topic. A little bit of that is correlated with the fact that there are, like I said, like they don't really throw hardballs

about sports too often. But I do break it out by like the dollar value that they assign, and that is fairly consistent. These are not massive differences. It's like in the 80%, 83, 85% correct for some of the easier questions versus like high 70s for some of the art and classical music and stuff like that. But it is still pretty persistent where like there's certainly nothing to be, nothing that says like, oh, like that's their one weakness. That's the Achilles heel that like you show them a picture of Stan Musial and they'll, they'll just stare quietly for like 30 seconds or whatever. Just flop sweat. Yeah, just the deafening silence, not even crickets, just absolute silence. And then the doodoo sounds when nobody buzzes.

is it. Somebody did ask me a good question on Blue Sky, which is like, are the sports questions easier to account for that? And that's just kind of... I wondered about that too. Yeah. It's tough because they are definitely,

like, disincentivized to have, you know, 30 minutes of silence. Like, as much as they want the questions to be challenging, it also, like, the hope is that three relatively intelligent, relatively prepared trivia nerds are going to know who this is. But, you know, from my experience, like, I mean, this is where I have to default to my own abilities, my own experience.

It doesn't seem like they're like especially easier, especially soft. And I think it has a lot to do with, like, Jeopardy is a very, the material is meant, is like the thing they say is it's a mile wide and inch deep. Like, if you have depth of knowledge on baseball or football or whatever, like, those questions are going to be hilariously easy because, you know, it's meant to be sort of general knowledge. And this gets into like, what you ask me is like, well, what's general knowledge about baseball. What is the sort of thing where even if you don't know, if you don't follow the sport,

but like need to kind of brush up on the big points, what are you going to know? All kinds of sports, 600. Referring to his physique, it's the nickname of Cal Raleigh, the new record holder for home runs in a season by a catcher. Melanie. What's Big Dumper? He has a big dumper. I saw that Big Dumber was an answer just this month, in fact, on Jeopardy, which I guess is a good example, right? Because if you know anything about baseball, you've been hearing about Big Dumber so incessantly that, you know, you could answer that one in your sleep. And this contestant nailed it, got the answer. But, you know, to even ask that question in January of 2026, it's like old news, but, you know, not for the general population necessarily. I was going to say,

I wonder how much of that is Ken Jennings at work, right? It does help when you have a Seattle sports fan as the Jeopardy host. And there's actually just a Seattle sports reporter on to who I think missed that game, but was, like, ended his run with Bring Back the Sonics on the Final Jeopardy, the Final Jeopardy screen. I actually did. I wanted to make an example of, um, who hasn't been asked about on Jeopardy yet? Like, I do this whole thing about, man, they've asked about Samuel Pepys like a million times. And I wound up going with Christian Pulisic, but like, I had Cal Raleigh in there as a maybe until that happened. And still, I looked for other ones. And, uh, Tarrick Scoubel's never been asked about. Francisco Lindora's never been asked.

about, I don't think. Juan Soto has because of the giant contract, if you can't tell them that's found. But it's still this question of like, you need to be fairly well-known or it's got to be like a double jeopardy baseball category for some of these deeper cuts, which just doesn't happen that much. Yeah. So I wondered whether baseball would be overrepresented in the sports in games category or among the sports specifically because it seems to me that there is a common theme of baseball being overrepresented in pop culture, even if it's less omnipresent than it once was. The notion of the national pastime has lingered long after it was actual fact, right? Long after baseball got bodied by football, you still constantly see baseball in movies and TV shows.

You don't get baseball movies quite the way that you used to except by the effectively wild definition where everything is a baseball movie. But you do still see baseball scenes, baseball references all the time in a way that I think sort of overindexes on the actual popularity of baseball just because of all. the associations with the sport and the American mythos and all the rest of it. And so in pop culture and in certain types of pop culture, too, I think this is true. And people may remember more than a year ago on episode 2243 and also on Hang Up and Listen, I shared some reporting and research about how baseball has been dramatically, drastically, overrepresented among sports in New York Times crossword puzzles. It just dwarfs other sports, really, in a way that.

it's sort of out of step with how prominent and popular it actually is. And so I wondered, you know, Jeopardy, crossword puzzles, different types of trivia. Like, I don't know, maybe there would be some overlap here. And so I suspected that maybe baseball would be overrepresented in Jeopardy also. And so I emailed you to ask about that, which I know was not part of your dataset. But while you were snowed in this past weekend, you did some digging. Yeah, and it was, I mean, I had already. label all these sports clues

and so it's just kind of repeating the process that I used of like, well, trying to identify sort of big groups of categories that use similar language to get into sort of the, I don't know how nerdy your audience is, I assume fairly nerdy. Yes. Don't hold back. Doing that sort of thing,

doing some manual labeling of just like, okay, questions about the Yankees or probably baseball questions about Michael Phelps, I'm going to call the Olympics and go on from there. And so I was able to, it wasn't too big a lift to try to like sort it out further. It's just that already just kind of has a caveat, like already sports questions are only about, you know, two or three percent of all the questions,

which is still a lot. Jeff, this data goes back to like the mid-80s, so it's thousands and thousands of questions. I think it's like 20,000 questions I had to work with here. But like, we do get into like fractions of fractions very quickly. I'm like, but I can go through it if you like. Please. So I did listen to your crossword puzzle analysis. I will tell you, baseball is probably pretty consistently really the most represented sport. It's not nearly that bad. It's not nearly the sort of 60, 70% that you saw in terms of crossword puzzles. It's closer to like 20, 25%, 1 in 4, 1 out of 5 sports questions are about baseball as far as I could tell. At least the ones I was able to pretty confidently label. And then, and so that's actually been pretty consistent throughout the history of the show. I did notice in the article, like when I was writing that, that like, they've kind of settled into a pretty reliable pattern of like, this category about this, this category about this, starting in the 2000s. It's been pretty steady. But like kind of going back to its early's history, and we talk about like, you know, the Trebek era, early, you know, mid-80s and forward baseball's been a close first, but certainly first. Number two is football, not that far behind. The most interesting thing for me, like when I looked into this was that third was, and like sometimes second, sometimes fourth, but like overall third was not basketball, it was the Olympics.

I have a kind of a pet theory about that, not just like, not just that like maybe the most famous Olympians. Is it like the 15th most famous Olympian more famous than the 15th most famous basketball player? I don't know, but like the thing to remember with Jeopardy in the way that like crossword puzzles have to incentivize words of a lot of vowels is like jeopardy questions are very quick. Like you don't have a lot of time to think about them. You don't have a lot of, there's not a lot of words that they can use in the clue to get their point across and narrow it down to one person or one event. or whatever. So I think in the way that, like, there's a lot of reliance on, in jeopardy circles, on

these things called Pavlovs, which are like two word phrases that get you to someone very quickly. The example I like is, like, if they say Welsh poet, it's always Dylan Thomas. There's really just not another notable Welsh poet. In the same way, I think with the Olympics, it's very friendly to

the question writing style of, like, you can do a nationality in a sport, or just the sport, and that will narrow it down very quickly. where honestly, if they say gymnast, it's, you know, unless they give you reason otherwise, it's probably Simone Biles. If they give you swimmer, it's either Michael Phelps or Katie Ledecki in a lot of cases. And then you can throw into nationality as well, and that'll help. And then you could also just ask about describing a weird sport. And that's a very sort of jeopardy question, as is like mentioning the Olympics and then mentioning something about

the city that isn't sports related. So there's a lot of avenues. And then basketball, which, as you can imagine, rose in popularity kind of over the history. of the show into like a pretty consistent fourth. And then just kind of everything else. And when we talk about the fraction of the fraction thing, it's like, you know, you're going to get a category about tennis or hockey or combat sports or golf. But like already we're down to a rate of like, you know, a category a year, a couple,

you know, 10 to 20 questions a year at that point because there's just such a breath there. And that's kind of the one of the points I make in the article that it's pretty hard to study. Like, there's a lot there to study. And it's like just not that likely on a day-to-day basis to come up. Okay. So baseball is indeed number one, not a distant first, but first. And this is, as you said, the period during which the NFL was ascendant and already supremup popular. So I guess it makes some sense just because of the history of baseball, how far back it goes, and just how interwoven it was

with the cultural fabric of the country and all the stats and the statistical milestones and maybe the age and demographics of the Jeopardy audience vis-a-vis baseball. Oh, for sure. It's almost like a... I mean, I'm lucky enough to know a lot of Jeopardy contestants and, you know, sort of compare stories about the audition process. And from what I understand, 30 parks and 30 days is a very common... What would you do with the money, answer?

Because you're not supposed to... I mean, you're not supposed to say taxes and student loans or whatever, although that's a lot of it goes. Yeah, something fun. I always worry that if I were on Jeopardy, I would get sports. questions and then completely freeze, right? That I would get something wildly easy, totally within our purview on the pod in my role at Fangraphs and just not be able to deliver.

And then it would haunt me for the rest of my life. I'm fine for getting like the capital of Mozambique. I can live with that, I think. And that's something, that is something where unfortunately I have friends who study like, you know, you study what you know just in case that happens. It's hard to know what will happen to you up there. I definitely like refreshed on this sort of stuff just in case, even though like on the couch, I'm going to get it 100% of the time.

Sure. Until you get up there for the weirdest experience of your life where you're watching Jeopardy from inside the television, you don't exactly know how your brain's going to react. Yeah. Speaking of which, how did your brain react when you were in that situation? Because you were on the show. Yeah. Oh, right.

I was. So weirdly fine in terms of like, I think after the, you know, the advice I give to people is like, It's almost like a calming thing where you're actually up there because you cannot study anymore. There's nothing else you can do except to play the game and just kind of, you know, I'd done a lot, as you could imagine, I did a lot of like, what's it like up there? How does it go? How did the day go? That sort of thing. Didn't win Jeopardy when I played it. Didn't win Mainline Jeopardy, but I'm putting it that way because a couple years ago, a couple years later, me and a couple people did the team-based Amazon streaming spinoff. I think it's actually Netflix now, but the streaming spinoff popular. culture Jeopardy and that we won the whole thing. So it's almost like when I had my intuition of like, yeah, I'm good at the stuff that usually doesn't matter. Well, if you make a whole show out of that, you know, that and also when your friends can help you too. It's like, it's a lot easier when

multiple people can answer for you. I tell you that much. I enjoyed pop culture jeopardy. I haven't finished it, which is why I don't feel bad that I didn't realize you're extended wrong. You're fine. I'm so sorry about the spoiler. Yeah. That's okay. You ruined it. I don't have an expectation. of not knowing what happened. I just want to know if I know the things that the people on the show know. Oh. That's really the fun of it.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the whole thing. I think Alex Rebecca's always said, the real stars the game or the contestants. I don't remember. And I should. But it is really the contestants earth the game and not necessarily the contestants

versus each other. Did you glean anything about the most common questions asked about baseball or the most common baseball figures asked about? Yeah. It's, I mean, again, when we talk about, when we talk about like what's general, It's pretty much exactly as you expect where if you just do the most common baseball figures, it's going to be, you know, Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Pete Rose, kind of just like the greats of the greats are going to be the top.

I think you have to get a little bit of this as advantage by the fact that like it helps for what I'm doing here if you've been asked about since 1984 when the data starts. You do have to get to like pretty deep down there to get to like Mark McGuire, you know, who's been asked about, you know, a dozen, two dozen times because you weren't going to ask about him before the mid-90s. I looked at it because, like, you, I think at this point we could say that, like, Shohay Otani is going to get asked about as much as they can or is, like, is effectively like a top row as easy as it gets baseball question at this point. And you're still only asking about him about once a year, you know, because you don't have to repeat stuff that much. It just doesn't come up enough that, like, you can rotate through the various big sports figures or the sports themselves.

and not have to go back to the well that quickly. And especially now that people have this data in the way they didn't before. I think they used to repeat questions a lot more. But now there is sort of an expectation that people are able to watch the show consistently. If they're getting ready for it, you don't want to be like, oh, you asked about that a month ago, so I know what it is. Yeah, right. Most asked about teams are like, again, it's like Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, etc. Actually, the Pirates for some reason are, I have them next, which is very, very, you know,

curious, but I think at that point it's kind of like, it's really Yankees, Red Sox, and then everybody else. And then, yeah, I mean, you see that same pattern across the other sports where, like, the most asked about basketball player is Jordan than everybody else, Gretzky and then everybody else. One thing I thought was interesting is that like when I looked at just kind of all sports figures is that Martina Navajovo was asked about quite a bit. And I think as much as she is an extremely accomplished tennis player, that some of that is just like, what I was saying before is you can say check tennis player and you don't need more information. you should just be able to say Martina Navajovo.

So you're saying that listening to Effectively Wild is probably not the best preparation for any aspiring Jeopardy winners? No, I don't think so. They do keep the guy, Michael Davies, who produces the show is also known for Men and Blazers, is a very avowed sports fan, has been talking about bringing Sports Jeopardy back for a while. And it would be excellent prep for that, I think, if they do bring it back, like that's the thing where the hard pop culture questions on Pop Culture Jeopardy. were way out of range for like regular Jeopardy.

So if they bring Sports Jeopardy back, I think that's where they'd trust you a bit more to know who Dinard Span is. Yeah, if there are any questions about Williams Astadio or John Brebio or, you know, any players of that caliber, then effectively wild listeners will be ready to buzz end. I'm sure the contestant pool will be rife with your listeners, yeah.

Yeah. Well, thank you very much for digging into this further. And I recommend the article. I will link to that piece and to your website. If anyone else wants to pester you with questions for their podcasts, they can. And if anyone is wondering what the capital of Mozambique is, what is Maputo? So now you know.

See, I didn't get that far on the flashcards. That's why I lost the regular show. Thank you, Zach. Thanks, guys. All right. We will have more stat blasts. tomorrow and more baseball banter and maybe some email answers. But that will do it for today. So thanks as always for listening. And special thanks to those of you who support the podcast on Patreon,

which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to 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, Roheleo Vega, John Gattermeier, Peter Bonnie, Duncan Regan, and Kevin Brotsman. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only, monthly bonus episodes, playoff live streams, personalized messages, prioritized email answers, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, discounts on merch and ad-free Fangraphs memberships, and so much more,

check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash Effectively Wild. If you are Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can contact us via email. Send your questions, comments, intro and outro themes to podcast at Fangraphs.com. You can rate review and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook.com slash group slash Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild.

And you can check the show notes in the podcast posted fan crafts or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We'll be back with another episode very soon. Talk to you then. pedanted A stab blast will keep you distracted It's a long slog to death

But the shore to make you smile This is effective in wine This is effective one This is effective one This is effective one