Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2482: The Trade Not Taken

Episode Date: May 23, 2026

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, please visit our Patreon. Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Mason Miller’s recent “struggles,” whether the Tigers will trade Tarik Skubal, and how different baseball would be if the Angels had traded Shohei Ohtani, plus (44:05) more than a dozen Stat Blasts. Audio intro: Beatwriter, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: PJ Harding, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to previous Miller banter 1 Link to previous Miller banter 2 Link to Miller sample 1 Link to Miller sample 2 Link to article about Grogu promo Link to Grogu promo Link to Triton Ballpark wiki Link to Yaddle at Wookieepedia Link to Ben on The Mandalorian and Grogu Link to Kimbrel blog post Link to MLBTR on Kimbrel Link to Heyman on a Skubal trade Link to Murray on a Skubal trade Link to Olney on a Skubal trade Link to Skubal bullpen sessions article Link to trade deadline date article Link to playoff odds Link to Clark quote about “the pant” Link to Rosenthal on 2023 Ohtani talks Link to Rosenthal on 2022 Ohtani talks Link to Seidler wiki Link to MLBTR on Boras/Seidler/Soto Link to Blum post about Johnson Link to team pitcher development rankings Link to “If baseball were different” wiki Link to Mains on regular-season splits Link to reverse records Link to post about three-team combos Link to Marlins/Cardinals/Twins candidates Link to Marlins/Cardinals players Link to Marlins/Twins players Link to Cardinals/Twins players Link to 2025 Sánchez game Link to 2003 Clement game Link to 2023 Thompson game Link to 1968 Roseboro game Link to all-hits-after-oh-fers list Link to McGwire Simpsons clip Link to Hill homer Link to Hill PED admission Link to Hill transactions Link to post-trade improvers Link to 2024 Ray slam game Link to 2025 NL Cy voting Link to 2021 AL Cy voting Link to 2011 NL Cy voting Link to 1986 NL Cy voting Link to 1971 O’s rotation article Link to Maxwell defensive game Link to Sandberg defensive game Link to McAuliffe defensive game Link to team run differentials Link to team runs scored Link to team runs allowed Link to Mets extra-innings game Link to most blown saves in game Link to 2021 blown-saves game Link to 1995 blown-saves game Link to 1983 Rangers-A’s game Link to 1901 Bernhard game Link to Bernhard’s 1901 game log Link to Bernhard’s 1901 opponent splits Link to 2025 Pressly game Link to most hits by sub Link to 1902 Danny Murphy game Link to Murphy game info 1 Link to Murphy game info 2 Link to Murphy game info 3 Link to Clerks quote Link to listener emails database Link to 1991 Phillies game Link to Griffin video board fun fact Link to list of ballpark claimants Link to “Fever” song wiki Link to article about White Sox collision Link to article about Hawk’s call Link to video of collision/call Link to photo of collision Link to comment about Boone’s signals Link to Boone’s flapping signal  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

Room, room. Here's your primer on Beef Boys, Baseball's Inn, Roger Angel, and Super Pretzels. Williams Astadillo and Mike Trout hypotheticals, waiting for the perfect bat from a volcanic corruption. Ladies and gentlemen, the Effectively Wild introduction. Hello, and welcome to episode 24, 82 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraps, and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of the ringer. Ben, how are you? Doing well. Congrats on the flawless intro.

First tech, Meg. Never doubt. Never doubt at all. I have some bad news for you. I have some negative news, although actually, I suppose it's positive news from one perspective. And that is that Mason Miller no longer has a negative FIP. He's in positive territory now. Just like everyone else, just a pedestrian positive FIP, run of the mill.

run of the miller that's what they call him mason run of the miller and he now has a a point one phip on the season point one that's almost that's almost funny sorry i underrated or overrated point three two fit uh skyrocketing washed yeah unsightly point three two phip for mason miller yeah he just went into positive territory this week because he had a couple by Miller standards rough outings in a row, at least from a fit perspective. And so he was when this week started still in negative territory. And now point three two. Ugh.

Yeah. Regression has hit him hard. Look, he wasn't going to have a negative fit the whole season. No. And in fact, there are only three pitchers remaining with a negative fit on the season and none of them has more than three innings pitched. So it sounds right. It's pretty impressive that he defied gravity for as long as he did.

But ultimately, regression comes for everyone. And if you divide his season in two, so he has pitched 22 games, if we just take the first 11 games and the second 11 games. The first 11 games, he had a zero ERA, of course, famously, and a negative 1.16 FIP, and even a negative X-FIF. 5.75, and he was striking out almost 22 batters per nine innings, and he was walking fewer than two. And now, if we look at the second half of his season, the second 11 games, which is one more inning than he had pitched in the first 11 games, 1.59 ERA, 1.78 FIP, 2.4 X-FIP, a mere 14.3 strikeouts per and he has walked 5.6 per 9 over that spin. Yeah.

Wow. Yeah. He's still getting grounders on 62.5% of his batted balls, even more than he was in that first set. But yeah, he has still been excellent, obviously, but no longer the Mason Miller we were obsessing over at the start of the season. My main takeaway from what you just said is that people started listening to me. And they were just like, I'm not going to swing.

I'm just not going to operate. at this. We did have that conversation. Should you just go up there not swinging against visibility? This suggests to me that some appreciable percentage of the major league population listens to effectively wild and was like, you know, those two, they got great advice. They said, just see if he's throwing you strikes. And yeah, that's a notable uptick in the walks.

Oh, yeah. Do you have an explanation for that other than? than my own self-aggrandizement. I will look to see if the swing rate has meaningfully changed or his zone rate or anything else. But it's 11 innings or so. He probably doesn't mean that much. But that's the thing.

We were all obsessing over the small sample. And obviously he's been good before. He was great for the Padres last year. He's been good in full seasons before. But he did seem to have reached some superhuman level and wasn't allowing any runs and barely anyone can make contact. And we said, well, is this just the best any pitcher has ever been on a per inning basis? And quite possibly that was true. But he can't maintain that forever. We talk to Brad Lidge about this, just about sometimes you have that run where everything's

clicking. And it's not necessarily that you get hurt or anything. It's just things get a little out of whack or you have a little worse luck or whatever it is. Like no one's, that. As good as Mason Miller is, he's not perfect, obviously. And so all it takes is a slight slippage. And suddenly you go from being completely unhittable and untouchable to still elite, still excellent, but more in the realm of typical pitching performance, at least where you're not going to be the subject of many articles and headlines and hypotheticals about can he be the MVP? Can he be the Cy Young Award winner? Could we still give those awards to relievers?

That was unlikely to sustain itself that sort of performance. Right. This is recognizable excellence, right? This is something that we are familiar with and know how to categorize as opposed to what we were seeing previously, where we were like, we need new FIPMath, maybe? Like, this is a version of this profile that is so extreme as to be, again, like kind of unrecognizable, which is generally a good sign that something is about to regress. Yes, exactly. And probably he will now get the walks back under control and he'll look a little bit better.

But yeah, the just pristine stats that he had going at the start of the season, just a little bit marred now by being a mortal and a mere human like the rest of us, you know, just like us, Mason Miller, really. It's really relatable that he has sunk so far. Well, you also hang out with Grogu, so. It's true. Yeah. Yeah, maybe that's what happened because you're alluding to a promo that was done to promote the Manilurian and Grogu. And it implied that Grogu was hanging out in the stands and was using the force to influence the trajectory of Mason Miller's pitches. And perhaps that reflected the influence of Grogu.

Right. He's been abandoned. Yeah, Grogu has forsaken him. and this is just Mason again. Sorry. Allow me a quick pop culture digression. Have you seen this movie? Oh, I have. Yes, and I've reviewed it.

Oh, and I imagine you didn't care for it. I didn't particularly care for it. It's okay. It's not aggressively bad. It's just pretty forgettable. Wow. How the Star Wars has fallen. So a question I have, though.

I was fascinated by that promotion because when did they shoot that promotion, Ben? Oh, yeah. Because Mason Miller, to your point, good in the past, right? You know, there's a reason that the Padres traded for him. And boy, did they give up a lot to do it. But if you were designing, you're sort of sketching out a Star Wars ad campaign where you wanted to have partnership with Major League Baseball. And Grogu has force powers, I assume, because he's like from the Yoda's race of,

Yoda is a Yoda? Is Yoda the, Yoda's his name? Yes. Yes. We don't know the name of the species. It's a mystery. Oh, wow. And Yaddle.

Don't forget Yaddle. What is that? You don't have to tell me. I didn't, I didn't watch, I didn't watch the Mandalorian. Okay. I'm sorry. Yaddle's from the prequels. Oh, from the prequels?

Yes. A fellow member of the Jedi Council, but a female member of Yoda's species. Yoda and Yaddle? Man, he was really phoned it in by the end of that. wasn't he? Again, Mason Miller, very good reliever, excellent reliever, all-star helper reliever. I just, why did they pick him, you know? And does it suggest that that promo was done kind of into the season where they were like, well, look at, he's got a negative fibs. So clearly, we have to use force powers to explain the kind of season that he's having. Because the, the funny thing about

that promo, which is dumb, is at the beginning they say San Diego Padres practice fields. And I'm like, all right. So someone who, again, you can just call us, right? Like, it would be a modest fee. It wouldn't be a crazy practice field. Why wouldn't you just, why wouldn't you, because they couldn't shoot a Peoria, presumably? Why wouldn't you say like spring training facility or practice field? What? Well, it does, it says May 4th, which is Star Wars Day. So, I, I don't know whether it actually was, but... Why wouldn't they shoot it at Petco? That part's confusing.

You know, they don't have to actually have shot it on May 4th. They can just pretend that it's May 4th. Because they're also pretending that it's the San Diego Padres practice facility. And I was like, that doesn't look like Peoria. It's like, if you're going to say practice facility, say backfield. Again, just like, why don't they ever call us? But also, how did they arrive at Mason Miller? Because Grogu could do anything.

Grogu could, I mean, I don't know if there are bounds to Grogu's force back. Like, is he not as powerful as Yoda or what was her name? Yaddle. Yaddle? I don't know about that. George. Depends on the midichlorian counts. But we don't know.

But presumably any pitcher would be effective with force powers controlling their pitches. Right. You could have a higher profile pitcher because I think Mason Miller is known to baseball fans, certainly known to Padres fans. I don't know what his like Q rating is beyond Q rating is beyond like beyond baseball, right? Yeah. So my question is, did they try to get Otani first and then they couldn't? Because it's also weird for Star Wars to pick a Padre. Like why a Padre?

You know, father's famously a frot category in the canon. So that's weird. But also why wouldn't you pick an L.A. team because you're like adjacent to that. I mean, they should have picked an angel. really? Because Disney's right there. They could. Okay. So that, yeah, that's actually my question. Why is it an angel? Then you'd have to find a good angel's picture who anyone had heard of. You could do my trout. And there's a convenient. Or Jose Soriano also had a noteworthy start to the season.

You could have done it with Jose Soriano. I mean, you would have done Trout because no one knows who Jose Soriano is. I mean, like we do, but like he's not known beyond baseball. Yeah. So and Trout's having this resurgent season. And they could have, they could have had it be, you know, know, they could have had Mike Trout playing center field trying to rob a home run, but he's older now, and Grogu helps him do it. Yeah, or he hits a ball and Groku force pushes it over the wall. Right. He knows maybe that's why the ball was flying so well several years ago. It wasn't lower seams.

It was force users stationed in the stands. It's a weird problem to consent to participate in because it's pretty insulting. It's like, oh, Mason Miller, you actually suck. It's Grogu. You're cheating or Grogu is. This tiny baby of a species we don't even know the name of. Yeah. It's a 30-second spot.

So I assume that this was a quickie made to capitalize on Mason Miller's success to start the season, which was a big story. And probably they just had him go to some generic field. Yeah. You know, Grogu could have been anywhere. So they probably just had to sink up. Actually, after further research, it appears that this was Triton ballpark on the campus of University. of California San Diego, where the UC San Diego Tritons play.

And in fact, at the end of the clip, when Miller and Grogo do a fist bump, you can see the Triton ballpark and the UC San Diego text and logo on the scoreboard, which perhaps should have been edited out. But they didn't film this thing on the volume. They really should have done this with my man Matt Waldron, because the force influence could explain the knuckleball flutter. But then you'd have to explain who Matt Waldron was to everyone. I kind of, I enjoyed it.

But now that Mason Miller is. returning to being in the realm of regular pitcher performance, albeit still excellent, then yeah, maybe this is a time capsule. We'll look back and we'll remember this was the moment when they were promoting that movie and also when Mason Miller was absolutely untouchable. So I just looked up the two samples of his performance, the first half and the second half. So in the first half, the swing rate against him was 49.7%. So almost half of pitches. he threw were inducing a swing. In the second half, 42.8%.

So a significantly lower swing rate. So perhaps some hitters took our advice and said, you can't beat him, just try to take. Maybe that's it. He also had a slightly lower zone rate, 44.5 down to 43.3, which makes sense with the walks. But maybe it was that he was having such success, getting guys to chase, and a lot fewer chases.

That's noteworthy too. 46.5 o swing rate, that's chase rate. That's the rate of swings on pitches outside the strike zone. Yeah. 46.5 in the first half, 34.4 in the second half. So it could be that his stuff just was not as enticing and he was not getting people to swing at it. Or it could be that they went in there with a game plan and they said, well, look, we can't hit this slider. And maybe we can just try to take it and force him to throw a strike.

And if so, that has helped. So maybe the code has been cracked, kind of. He's still really good to be clear. I love the idea that you think that anyone will remember anything about Grogu at all. Well, Grogu, no one will ever forget. But the Mandalorian and Grogu, maybe not so much. Anyway, I wrote several thousand words about the movie. If anyone was screwed.

You had to write several thousand words. I didn't have to, but I did. Was it just that much of an abomination to you? had that many thoughts. Wow. It could have been worse. It's just, you know, it's the first Star Wars movie in almost seven years. And what a way to come back to the big screen.

Anyway, I will link to that if anyone's interested in additional Star Wars thoughts for me. I just got jump scared by a headline at one of those Sports Illustrated blogs while we were talking about Mason Miller. Craig Kimbril could help four bullpens right now after Mets DFA. Could he, though? That's such a funny sentence. It sounds like a threat. Right.

Watch out. He's lurking. Yeah. Craig Kimbril was contained to the Mets. And now he has escaped containment. And he could go anywhere. You never know where Craig Kimbril could show up next. This blog alleges that Craig Kimbril could help the Reds, the Dodgers, the rays, and the Phillies.

I beg to differ. I don't know that what evidence is there that Craig Kimbril could help any bullpen, especially the bullpens of good teams at this point. I don't know. The Mets decided that they would rather have Jonah Tong. I mean, I'd rather have Jonah Tongue too. Maybe that's the reason that one time that Tony didn't specify which handedness because he was like, I can't risk it. I need to know for sure he's not out there before I signal. You know, I got to be confident. He's not out there. Yeah, you could raise your hand to call it a reliever. And next thing you know, Craig Kimpril is trotting in uninvited, unbidden or

Kroku. All right. Speaking of fit merchant since we talked about Mason Miller, the drumbeat is building for a Terek scoble trade because the Tigers have lost six in a row and nine of ten. They just got swept in a four game series by the Guardians. Their playoff odds are way down. We talked about them earlier this week, but playoff odds are down to 23.6 percent. They're 20 and 31 on the season. And yes, it's A.L. Central, but it's kind of getting late early. Meanwhile, Terrick Scoopal is making Scott Boris look prescient and that he does seem to be ahead of the typical timeline for the loose body cleanup. He did a bullpen session. He threw 37 pitches and he got close to whatever his VLO target was. He didn't specify, but it was a little

slower than he throws in a game, but he said it was high-end velocity for a bullpen session. So he's pretty close to being back to full strength, and he's going to have to either have a rehab start or a sim game. Yeah. But he's getting there. He's obviously just the fact that he's throwing it close to full strength just about two weeks after the procedure that does seem to support the idea that the scuple scope, the nanoneal scope, will actually produce a material difference in how,

quickly he can come back. So scooples on the comeback trail, the tigers are flailing, and thus the Skuple trade rumors have recurred. And John Heyman, who, as we know, seems to be pretty plugged in with Terek Skuple's agent, Scott Boris, and was the one to first mention that there was one single, relatively small, loose body in Skuple's elbow. Haman says, Terek Skuple trade chances are rising. Tigers have lost 14 of 16. I could have gone even further back. Five games out in the wildcard race. Tigers have five starters on the IEL.

And Scoople is progressing since the elbow scope. Tiger's chances to extend him are nil. So does it make some sense? And this is not just Haman, who may or may not be in conversation with the Scoopal's agent about Scoopal's situation. But Robert Murray at Fanciated, he did a piece where he spoke to executives about. what it would take to land scoobble and Buster only did something at ESPN. So everyone seemingly got the memo at the same time. It's Terrick Scoople trade talk season.

And one evaluator said of Scott Harris, Detroit's head of baseball operations, he's fairly objective. He's never struck me as a window guy. In other words, the table read on Harris is that he's not going to go all in on a long shot effort to make the postseason if he thinks he doesn't have a good enough team. but Scoobel could have enormous value at the deadline, and if he can get more than the value of the qualifying offer, then there's going to be an opportunity there, one ALE evaluator set. Well, obviously he could get more than that, I think.

But Scoobel has about 11 million or so due to him over the last couple months of the season. So not every team probably would be willing to take that on mid-season when you'd have to go to ownership and say, hey, I know that this was our budget for this season, but can we go get Terrick Scoobie? unless the Tigers decide that they want to pay down that salary to get better prospects back. But the consensus seemed to be from Murray's piece that someone like Dave Dembrowski or AJ Preller, they'd be all for it.

Someone also said he thinks Andrew Friedman would go get him, which, oh my goodness, the Dodgers discourse that would result from the Dodgers acquiring Turks, please, anyone else. Yeah, literally anyone else. I opt out of that new cycle in advance. But people are talking about just what it would take to get him and maybe a couple top 100 guys and one high top 100 guy and maybe a throw-in. It would take a significant package even if it is just a couple months and even if he does have a significant salary because he's Derek Scoobel. And if he does come back and reestablish himself as the typical Scoobel, well, that's obviously a difference maker down the stretch or. in October. One immediate thought I have is that I'm really just not convinced that the Padres have the prospects to make that trade. And I know that we've underestimated. I know. I know that we've

underestimated AJ in the past at our peril. But like, and I guess it depends on how, who you want to talk to. But I think the consensus in, in the public space is that like they are lean at the top. I mean, Ethan Salas is their only top 100 guy, at least for us. And I think that's true. And I think that's true for most of the public sites, unless I guess you're, like, really stoked on Cash Mayfield. So they have very limited sort of minor league options there. And, you know, not that you can can't, like, further consolidate and find value there, but it's like, if you're the Tigers and you're sort of thinking about how you configure your roster on a going forward basis, like, I guess it depends how you feel about Lorenzo, but, like, is as, as, it's a lot of,

catcher really what you think you need there? I don't know. So, but setting aside the specific fits, it is an interesting sort of value balancing act for, for Detroit to pull off because, you know, the qualifying offer piece of it does matter here, because they would certainly QO Scoobel if they held on to him. And then do you think that you are getting adequate return such that it exceeds and probably in an appreciable way the draft capital you would get from him signing elsewhere, which I think you could probably pull off without too much trouble given the quality of scubel.

The timing of it would be really interesting to me because I know that he's making this like miraculous recovery, but if I'm a GM and I'm about to ship a couple of top 100 guys for a rental, I want to see what that looks like coming back, right? Like he has to make, God, his first rehab start is going to, the scout section, back there's going to be bananas. I guess that if I'm Detroit, one of your main projects, and I don't think they'll struggle to do this because there are smart people in that front office, but one of your main projects

is to not be like swayed in either direction by the last two years of your team and like, what has happened to you in the second half? You know, you'd be forgiven for being like, I don't know, maybe the rules don't apply to us. We seem to vacillate wildly and it's one extreme or the other. but I don't know what the the answer is there because I think that if you're a club, if you're a contending club

and you're like, look, we're going to just, we're going to do this. I think you do it early. You try to do it early. And then it's like, is Detroit really willing to give up yet? But, you know, for a guy like him

where there's already been an issue, you want to ramp him back as fast as you can, but you also have to be mindful about how you're deploying him because the whole point of acquiring school isn't even really what he does for you in the regular season, although boy, is that helpful. It's like, hey, you know, it's fun. Terrick Scoobble in the postseason, just like stick that guy.

Like, how many, how many teams that are playoff contenders right now have a better number one starter than Scoopal? It's not many, because there aren't many guys who are better than him. No, there's one at most, maybe. Oh, my God, what if the pirates traded for Terrick Scoop. They won't. fun. That would be so fun. Scoopal skeins. Scoobel skeins. Also, I feel like I need to

acknowledge that when we were having our initial conversation about scubel and the scubel scope, I was, I think, appropriately a little bit mean to John Heyman, but I was also a little bit mean to Scott Boris and expressed surprise that he would want to popularize a procedure like this by sort of tagging it to one of his clients. because, you know, that's a potentially fraught space. Like, you don't want to associate your dude with a procedure. You want to associate him with his pitching. But if this works the way that it seems to, I was wrong.

Like, this is sort of miraculous. The fact that he's, like, back in pitching to the extent that he is so soon is bonkers. That's—it's bonkers, Ben, you know? So I was wrong, Scott. I was wrong. It's premature because there's more than two months until the trade deadline. Well, and he hasn't actually thrown a rehab assignment yet. So, like, I, as, you know, incredible as it is that he is this far along in his, you know,

throwing program, having just so recently undergone surgery, like, I do think that the responsible parties in the rooms should pump the brakes and say, like, we don't actually really know what it looks like yet. And hopefully it looks great. And this is very promising and exciting. But we should probably let it play out to live batters before we go too nuts, you know. It's not preposterous to have the conversation now given the Tiger's recent performance. And obviously, trade rumors were swirling around Scoobble, even heading into the offseason, which I didn't think he would be dealt.

And he wasn't. But we did talk about it on our Tiger season preview segments. Hey, if things go south, if the Tigers are out of it, would they consider? or dealing him. And I think the answer was, yeah, you'd be silly not to consider it at least. So it would be tough if a team came calling as soon as Scuba returns, say he's back in a couple weeks or whatever. Right.

It would be early enough. And the Tigers probably wouldn't be far enough out of it that they would be willing to pull the plug on their season at that point. But you would have to think about it. So, yeah, if they take it down to the wire, then it completely depends. Maybe the tiger season will turn around by the end of July. But if it doesn't, then, yeah, they would certainly have to strongly consider it. I think, of course, it's just two years since the Tigers got a case study in how a team can improve after the trade deadline.

Of course, that was after dealing guys. So maybe they think history will repeat itself. Well, trade scuba. And then somehow will profit underpants gnomes. I don't know. It will work out for us. But, yeah, you could get such a good haul for him that if you don't think that you have. have a shot, then it would probably be malpractice not to consider it. But you kind of hope for the

sake of their fans that they make it a clear cut call by then one way or another, because even if the playoff odds say they're unlikely to make the playoffs, it's just not that hard to make the playoffs these days, whether you're in the A.L. Central or otherwise. And so if they're just trailing Cleveland or Chicago or whoever at that point by a couple of games or something, well, then it's really tough. Then any move you make, you'll go down in history as the white flag trade as another AL Central squad knows. So yeah, it's always tough in those situations when we might look at the playoff odds and say low chance that they'll make it, but you don't look at the standings and you're like a good series away from maybe being in playoff position. It's really, it's tough to

make that kind of call. So maybe the tigers will make it easy for them one way or another, either by being so bad that they're out of it or being better and being so in the thick of contention that they wouldn't consider trading him. Underpants is an underratedly funny word. It is. Yeah. Underpants. It's just very descriptive.

That is what they are. Underpants. They're pants that go under other pants. Other pants. It's true. The universal concern is the pant, is the underpants. On that note, they're still so sure. Also, can we briefly discuss, Ben?

Yeah. Why is the deadline on a Monday this year? Why is it, it's on Monday, August 3rd. Huh. What? That's the late one. Yeah. Why?

Why? Well, they like to do it so that games aren't going on during the deadline, right? Okay. I don't know if the deadline falls on a day game or something, Sunday or whatever. Sometimes it's been early August when they haven't wanted a lot of other action to be taking place. It's very strange. Yeah, that is quite. late in awkward timing.

So on the one hand, from an editorial perspective, there's some benefit to being on a Monday because then, you know, you have a whole week where you're already publishing and you can just keep reacting if you need to, right? Like if it's a super busy deadline and we don't get to everything on the day and it bleeds into Tuesday or Wednesday, well, that's fine because that's, those are working days anyway. But also, the deadline is exhausting. It is so, it's such a big lift for everyone. And then you got to keep working.

Yeah. When it was announced, the MLB.com piece said by setting the trade deadline on August 3rd, MLB will avoid the possibility of a player being traded during a game. There's at least one day game scheduled each day from July 29th to August 2nd. While all eight games on August 3rd start at 640 Eastern or later, MLB also generally prefers a weekday deadline rather than a weekend as you were just saying. So, yeah, I guess it's because of a quirk of the schedule and there being some day games. And I know the sickos at least like it when there's one day game at minimum just so that they can watch or follow baseball during daylight hours. So, yeah, it is kind of late, though. That's unusual.

But that gives the tigers even more time to evaluate whether they're in this thing or not. I guess that's true. I wonder where that unforgettable quote, the universal concern is the pant will rank in Tony Clark's legacy as the head of the MLPPA. Universal concern is the pant. I will never forget that phrase. I'll never forget, you know. It probably is, well, depending on how various federal cases go, maybe even not even like the top five. But for me, definitely top five.

Well, and the funny thing is, is you know who I hadn't thought about in a hot minute? Tony Clark. Yeah, yeah. That's, I guess, why he resigned. It was maybe bad for people to be thinking of him for the PA, at least. Yeah. Well, I do have several stateless to share, but I also have one note about another player who could have been traded and would have been an impact acquisition at previous deadlines, but was not, in fact, dealt. And that is Shohei Otani.

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