Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2484: Buckle Up, It’s CBA Season

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley discuss the initial CBA proposals by the MLBPA and MLB: some specific points of departure and alignment, whether we really learned anything about what each side wants or the likelihood of lost games, and what the rhetoric and rebuttals say about the PR battle to come. Then (50:08) they banter about whether baseball broadcasts could ever get good enough to endanger attendance, why ABS challenge rates haven’t closely correlated with batter quality, a difference between what fans and neutral spectators tend to enjoy about teams, whether ace-type starting-pitcher seasons are making a partial comeback, a threat to baserunners and bat-dog employment, and a mid-start stretching-related mishap. Audio intro: Justin Peters, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Ian H., “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to Drellich on franchise values Link to MLBPA proposals Link to Drellich on the MLBPA proposals Link to Normandin on the MLBPA proposals Link to Mains on the MLBPA proposals Link to Drellich on the MLB proposals Link to Meyer statement Link to Caplin statement Link to CBA math post 1 Link to CBA math post 2 Link to Episode 1542 Link to Passan’s CBA proposals breakdown Link to Hershberger’s 1876 post Link to Sam on challenge rates Link to challenge leaderboard Link to Andrews on Wood’s challenges Link to pitcher-pace leaderboard Link to batter-pace leaderboard Link to George injury article Link to bat-dog suspension article 1 Link to bat-dog suspension article 2 Link to “Pups in the Park” page Link to 2025 bat-dog call-up Link to Pérez injury article Link to Reddit comment about Ben Link to MLBTR on Brebbia Link to MLBTR on Jones  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Give a Gift Subscription  Email Us: [e-mail]  Effectively Wild Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  Apple Podcasts Feed   Spotify Feed  YouTube Playlist  Facebook Group  Bluesky Account  Twitter Account  Get Our Merch! var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source

How can you not be pedanted? A stab blast will keep you distracted. It's a long slog to death, but it's sure to make you smile. This is Effectively Wild. This is Effectively Wild. It's Effectively Wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2484 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters.

I'm McGrawley of Fangraphs and I am joined by Ben Lindberg of the ringer. Ben, I want to whack myself on the head with a rock. Don't do that. But I understand the impulse because we had a blissful few months there where we were focusing on the field mostly. Limer beans. Yeah, lima beans, loose bodies, thrusting in the outfield, how Bryce Harper brushes his teeth of frivolities. And now we are once more forced to confront the CBA negotiations because they are in fact happening. And yeah, you know, we were able to put it on the back burner,

at least the quote unquote trademark looming lockout there. Not that it wasn't still looming, but it wasn't so much a front and center talking point as it has become unsurprisingly this week. So we can get into it a little bit. I would just, my general note, relax, everyone. I know it's hard, but nothing has changed. Nothing has happened. I know it seems like it has. I'm seeing a lot of sky is falling sort of reactions to what has happened here.

But all that has happened is that initial offers and proposals have been exchanged and publicized. and there's very little about the content of those proposals that is surprising in my mind. Mostly each side proposed more or less what we would have expected it to propose, at least directionally. It's not as if the players came out and said, we want a salary cap. And the owner said, nope, not for us. That didn't happen. So if you look individually at each item here, yeah, okay, that tracks. So this was an inevitable stage of negotiations where you begin the negotiations, not just by having a getting to know you meeting, but by actually putting something out there.

And that has to happen in order for everything else to happen. So nothing here was so wildly out of whack with what I thought would be proposed by the sides that I have suddenly moved my expectations more toward doomerism, really, than they were before. So I remain semi-optimistic. There's always a chance that the worst happens, but I remain somewhat optimistic that Major League Baseball will be played, and that plenty of Major League Baseball will be played, and that even all of the Major League Baseball that is typically played will be played next year. And I also continue to think that we will not know whether that's the case until next March or so.

So it is tough to tune this out, and I'm not suggesting that everyone wants to or should tune it out. And we cover baseball professionally. We shouldn't be entirely tuning it out. I'm just saying there's a lot of posturing and there's a lot of exchanging this and that. And none of it means that much until the rubber meets the road. And we actually come down to a deal has to get done. Or if not, games will be canceled. And we're still a way away from that. So pace yourselves, people. Yeah. And I think that like the opening salvos are, they're interesting in so far. as they are an expression of, you know, if everyone got exactly what they wanted,

here are the things that they would prioritize. Because I think both sides understand that you put forth your initial proposal, more detail such as it is in the PA's proposal so far than what has been reported on. The leagues got a little press release from the PAA. No such release from the league as of yet. Yeah, no, we're recording on Thursday afternoon shortly after the cap numbers that MLB has floated came out. And we'll get to those in a moment. But as a sort of statement of intent and first principles, maybe an organizing, animating, you know, sort of spirit to what they are looking for in the negotiations, I think, both interesting and, as you note, unsurprising, right? The main thrust of the Players Association's proposal.

with that word these days. Hey, man, we, why do I have to change, you know? They're the ones who, well, they don't suck, but the, you know, the, are being fastidious, being picky. I don't know how to change. It's me, Meg, you know. But the sort of main driving goal of the PA's proposal, I would sort of break down into two categories, the first being sort of a reshuffling and rejiggering of the revenue. sharing system with the goal of getting lower revenue teams to spend more on their clubs

and to sort of centralize some of those revenues and sort of rework the way that they are going to work from a from a TV perspective, right? And then, you know, to get to, and this is sort of a continuation of a theme for the PA to get more money to players earlier in their careers than they're currently getting by, you know, sort of reworking some of the particulars of the arbitration system, increasing the minimums, introducing some qualified free agency opportunities for players who are older. You know, they have this sort of concept of qualified free agency for guys who have five or more years of service time and have reached age 30. So if you're a late debutante, debutante. A word we've been saying quite a lot lately.

Well, you more than me. I haven't spent my debut town bucks. You've spent yours, but my reserves are still robust. So, you know, trying to get money to guys earlier in their careers and sort of true up the guys who made their debuts later and are going to be approaching that sort of peak and then downslope as they reach free agency. So, you know, a couple of things that I think are directionally aligned toward getting guys more money and being a little less. dependent on free agency and then the league wants a salary cap they want a cap they are allowing conceding the necessity of a floor in trying to get that cap but a salary cap a salary floor it's interesting that they put numbers to that cap and floor because I think

the back of the envelope math that you know Ben Clemens has done that Craig Edward that Craig Edwards too many Craigs Craig Goldstein has done yes Craig Edwards works for the Players Association, so he's definitely not proposing salary caps. But would leave the overall spending level roughly around where it is slightly lower or spot-on, depending on the calculation you're doing in the source. But like in the same general vicinity, I'm sure that wasn't a mistake. But the real, I think, takeaway from their proposal is that they are suggesting a 50-50 split of, quote, baseball revenues, a term that they have not defined yet, which I imagine will be the whole sticking point of the thing, apart from the concept of a cap itself. But what we tend to see in

other cap-constrained sports that have a guaranteed revenue split is that that cap number and floor number kind of end up floating around a little bit, right? Because you don't necessarily know exactly what your revenues are going to be. So a 50-50 split of, baseball revenues between the players and the owners. I think that when this was looked at, you're looking at 12 clubs that are currently under the proposed floor, which is a little over 171 million, nine clubs that are currently above the $245 million number, which would be the hard cap. And so when you rejigger the way that those payrolls are currently distributed, you get to something that's pretty close to what we have right now.

But again, like the 50-50 revenue split, I think is the more important number to sort of keep in mind as you're trying to gauge what this would look like. So it's a pair of opening salvos. Exactly. And you have to keep that in mind because people will read some of the proposals that seem less feasible than others and will say, oh, well, if this is what they want, we're definitely not getting a deal. this is the first offer, the first proposal you make, knowing you're not going to get that, but that's where you anchor it so that when you are forced to negotiate and compromise, then you end up somewhere you can live with. So that's how negotiation works. And so if you read, oh, the players want to double the minimum salary, well, that's not happening.

We're going to see a strike for sure. Or the owners want to impose a salary cap without increasing overall spending one iota, Well, we're getting a lockout. The seasons canceled. Well, look, none of that means that. It just means that this is where they're starting and they start far apart and then gradually bit by bit, they get closer together. And as usually happens, they end up somewhere approximating the middle.

Now, there isn't exactly a middle when it comes to yes, salary cap and no salary cap. You kind of have to end up on one side of the line. But even then, there's sort of, well, there's a soft floor and there's a soft cap, which MLP already kind of has. So there's almost a middle even there. So I think my takeaways here, despite being unsurprised by many of the specifics, I am somewhat surprised by the messaging and just the specificity and the detail that we've gotten here. Because that's not actually typical.

Of course, we get some inkling. We know what the sides are angling for. And things get leaked and they get communicated in one way. another, but for the Players Association to send me an email to say, this is what we want, which is what happened, that I don't think is typical. You don't typically get it all just laid out and put out in public with many bullet points just listing. Here are our demands, our requests. So it is made a little more explicit and public than it typically has been. and I guess one slight reason for optimism maybe is just that MLB responded in a day, right?

Because they've been meeting in New York here. And the last round of bargaining, the PA put forth its economic proposals around this time of year. But then MLB didn't respond until I think August. There were months between those things. Now I'm not saying that that means the whole timeline is going to be accelerated. It's ultimately, I think this is going to come down to March 10th or, you know, whatever the absolute drop dead date when we have to have a deal to start the season on time or relatively on time. It's going to be that. But I guess it's good that they are at least getting these initial salvos out of the way so that they can both kind of get down to business.

So that's part of it. And it suggests to me the fact that they are both putting all this detail out there and seeming to try to win the PR war. That is a bit of a change, I think, from the previous round. And, you know, I would recommend if people have not been with us for years to go back and listen to an interview we did six years ago now. This was episode 1542. And we talked to Greg Boris, who was the director of communications for the MLBPA for almost 20 years. And he had been out of that job for a couple years at that point. But we talked to him about how the players are often fighting an uphill battle when,

it comes to conveying their message and getting the public on their side. And I think, even though that was six years ago, I think probably a lot of it still applies. This suggests to me that the players are trying to be more proactive or the union leadership about trying to get its message out there. And maybe that reflects the fact that they know that MLB's message is a winning one to some people, angling for the salary cap that is persuasive to people. And I think it was telling how MLB framed its rebuttal to the PA's initial proposals here, because they really put it plainly, right? You can tell exactly what they think they're winning messages,

that they are going to be hammering hard in this round of bargaining. So this was the statement from MLB spokesperson Glenn Kaplan after the union's opening proposal came out. And he said, we appreciate the union making a set of proposals. We look forward to continuing the bargaining process and working towards solving the competitive balance problem. Our fans are telling us needs to be addressed. We understand their proposals are designed to benefit players. Unfortunately, they do not address and, in fact, exacerbate the competitive balance problem. Our fans are telling us we must address. The NLBPA's proposal would reduce the amount transferred to lower revenue clubs, weaken the competitive balance tax, and lead to even more payroll disparity than exists today. For example, under the union's proposal, the Dodgers would pay less in luxury tax payments, giving them an additional $70 million to spend on payroll. I haven't checked the math there. But I think the fact that they are actually mentioning the Dodgers, hey fans, what the players are proposing here, the Dodgers would have even more money. You don't want that using the Dodgers as the Buckyman, just hammering the competitive balance, competitive bounds.

It's very much, I mean, it's like politicians and affordability, right? Like, okay, we've done the focus group. We know what the polling suggests about what messaging resonates with people. MLB knows that the winning message for them is not, we want to make more money. It's we want to be the good stewards and responsible stewards of the game. And we want to ensure competitive balance. And hey, everyone other than Dodgers fans who's mad about the payroll disparities, we are on your side, right?

And so that's what we're going to be hearing on and on and on. And I think that message, it can be pretty persuasive to be a lot of people. And I think the PA is aware of that and maybe was trying to look to get ahead of that and, you know, get their message out there first. So I think they realize that they're vulnerable to that line of attack in the court of public opinion. Now, whether the court of public opinion matters that much, ultimately. That's something else we talk to Greg Boris about because we think a lot about, will this be, persuasive to fans, to media members. But ultimately, it's the stakeholders.

It's the people at the table. And we are not at the table. Fans are not at the table. And so does it exert some influence, put some pressure on the parties involved in the negotiations? Yeah, probably. But ultimately, it's not really the deciding factor. But I do think there's something to the fact that players are wary of MLB getting its message out there and wanting to remind people, hey, a lockout, that's initiated by the owners,

and the owner's motives are not pure here, right? They're not just on the side of the angels. They are out for their own interests, as we are, but they're not telling you that. And so that's why I tend to think, you know, I hesitate to just quote the PA's rebuttal to the owner's proposal because it makes me sound like a mouthpiece for one side or something. And I'm trying to, you know, call it like I see it as a party who's not directly involved in these negotiations. But it's hard not to lean toward one interpretation of the facts because I feel like the players ultimately are a bit more honest about what they're setting out to achieve here. And of course, they're going to put their positive spin on it, too, as they should, as one would expect them to.

But when I got the email about the MLBPA opening proposals from an MLBPA press person, the very first quote, the line from interim executive director Bruce Meyer, today the MLBPA presented a comprehensive set of economic proposals designed to advance the rights and benefits of players at all levels. Okay? So he's stating plainly, we want our members to make more money. We want better rights. That's what you do when you're a union that represents one side, but they're not trying to hide the fact that that's what they're doing. Now, they go on to say, of course, that they also want to help competitive balance and everything. And, you know, we want to preserve and improve baseball's market system, rewarding competition on and off the field. He talks about the increased revenue sharing, et cetera, prioritize winning over profiteering.

Our proposals are designed to build upon the incredible momentum and popularity of our sport worldwide. Okay, sure. But they're leaning with, we want to advance the rights and benefits of players at all levels because we are the Players Association. So that's what the Players Association does. Whereas the owners, MLB is not coming out and leading with that. We want to make even more money. They're coming out and saying it's all about competitive balance, competitive balance, competitive, and it's not. It's obviously, clearly not. And so if one says, side is being a bit more transparent about what its actual goals are and the other is completely hiding the ball when it comes to what they want reasonably understandably, which is to make

more money for themselves too. Well, there's, you know, it's not a both sides is some sort of issue. Like there is a bit of disparity in how they are actually admitting what they are up to here, which is, you know, there's a similarity in what they're up to, but there's a dissimilarity in how they are explaining what they're up to. Look, the PA sent their proposal when they did, and you're right, but we historically has waited longer to respond. They decided to respond when they did, though. It does ring a little hollow, right, and sort of puts the, you know, the lie to the statement

when they're talking about the importance of competitive balance. Well, right now, three of the six divisions, in baseball are led by bottom payroll teams and one of the others has a record under 500 and is solidly mid-payroll, right? So it's like if you, if you're just engaged with the sport as it's being played, it's like, yeah, the big, scary Dodgers are still sitting atop the NL West. And it's not like the Braves have a minuscule payroll or anything like that. But, you know, in a season where the rays and the guardians are in, you know, in a season where the race, and the guardians are enjoying leads in their divisions and the brewers have come back and are doing

brewers things again as they are want to do it just doesn't speak to i think a sense of competitive imbalance that every fan basis is going to feel now that isn't to say that there isn't i think real resentment on the part of some fans of the of the notion that the dodgers can just you know pay their way to another championship We know it's harder to do than that, right? And we have talked on this podcast before about the different ways that we could measure the notion of competitive balance and how Major League Baseball does very well across many of those metrics better than several of the salary cap sports, right? So I think we kind of know the reality behind that assertion or the lack thereof on the league's part. But yeah, it's just like when you're going into one of,

of these negotiations, I think that, you know, the idea that, you know, the players are only interested in, you know, money isn't quite right. I think they are interested in competitive balance. They're partially interested in competitive balance as they understand it because it'll help them make more money. Right. Right. Like, those are sympathetic and directionally aligned goals from the player's perspective, right? They know that. that if other clubs are compelled to spend, either because there are, you know, soft salary floors as part of the CBA,

or because, you know, they are incentivized by some of the other mechanisms that they have in their proposal here, well, guess what? The players are going to make more money because one of the ways that you do that is to compete for better players, and one of the ways you compete for them is to pay them more than another team is willing to pay them. So I think that they are,

more obviously directionally aligned on their stated goal and the notion of competitive balance. The owners, I don't know that that, you know, even if we take them at their word, the competitive balance is one of the things that they care about. I don't know that they're quite so cleanly aligned directionally on those things. Because if you don't have to spend and no one else does either, well, you can keep making money. We know it's a lucrative sport. you can put an 85-1 team on the field and see how it goes for you, right? Like, you don't have to spend in order to have a quote-unquote competitive environment

if your understanding of that is a flattened competitive landscape, which is, I think, what they want, rather than a landscape that affords the opportunity for teams to spend competitively in the interest of retaining good players, right? And we know that that's not the only way for them to do it. Just look at these standings, right? the brewers are where they are as a franchise because they draft and develop incredibly well they are good at trading for players and then maximizing those guys they put together competitive rosters through some amount of payroll but mostly like the expertise and acumen of the people

that they have on their staff and their ability to be really good self-scouts right we have given them grief for not spending because one of the limitations of their approach is that sometimes you kind of run out of the juice you need come October because you're up against the Dodgers rather than, you know, the NL Central, which is more of an insults in prior years than it is in this one, admittedly, because that's a good division. Right. So we know some of the downfalls of that approach, but it's not like it can't be done. I don't know.

I don't come away from this more concerned about a protracted lockout. If anything, I think the, you're right, like the line of attack from a PR, perspective, I think is very clearly articulated in the owner's proposal. It's not as strident a notion of a cap and floor as I was maybe expecting. I don't know that they are going to put this forth as like the ultimate issue. They might end up settling for, you know, very minor reasons to the competitive balance tax threshold or more onerous penalties under that system. You know, there are a couple of ways that they can go here. I don't think this really changes all that much. I am preemptively a little exhausted by the discourse, though, because I don't think that we're in

a markedly different position today than we were yesterday, and you would not know that from looking at social media, which, look, we all want to watch baseball. I understand people having a level of apprehension around this stuff, because the last round, it was contentious. It was feisty. I am hopeful that the broader sort of macro questions that face the sport will end up ruling the day because I think one thing both of these proposals recognize is the increasing importance of centralized TV revenue, right? That national TV revenue is at the core of how it is the lever that both sides want to pull as part of this process, right? The way that the union is trying to shift around some of the revenue sharing mechanisms to make it about retaining more of your gate, but giving up TV stuff and sort of moving around some of the TV money, like there is a recognition here that I think that stuff is really important. And that set of negotiations is going to happen right after this one.

And if we lose a lot of games in 2027, what are those rights going to be worth? Yeah. They're going to be worth less. They might be worthless anyway, just by the nature of how TV rights are moving. But if we have learned anything from either their most recent move, trying to sort of find their way through the streaming landscape or some of the other leagues and their renegotiations, you know, MLB can't do what the NFL is doing right now, where they're just like, these are our rights and guess what? You have to renegotiate for them right now. It doesn't matter that we're in the middle of a contract. Tough cookies.

You're just up, you know? but like the TV money is really important and I think that the thing that we've also seen is that as the national TV money gets more and more important, local gate gets more important too, right? The number of teams that are going to be able to sustain themselves on, you know, lucrative sweetheart RSN deals alone, increasingly shrinking, right? That's where the real disparity lies. I mean, it's where one of the disparity lies between Dodgers, resources. and everyone else is that that deal is like a golden calf. That's not the metaphor I want. It's a bear goose. It's a goose.

Not a calf. That's a whole different thing. We're not doing golden calves. We don't like those, but we like golden goose. We like geese. Not geese. I mean, we feel very uncertain about geese. You know, we're sitting here going, I saw them at the gorge and they seemed good.

And now everyone's mad at them. And I'm not super invested, but it feels like a bigger discourse than this little band necessitates anyway. All of that to say that, like, I think that you want to preserve the value of the national TV deals. And simultaneous to that, you want to preserve the commitment of fans to go spend money at your ballpark because as the RSN stuff kind of levels out and tapers, you need butts in seats, man. You need people to go to your games. And we know that when these negotiations turn nasty and we lose games, it dramatically impacts the way that fans perceive the sport. And we had to inject everyone's butts with steroids the last time to get out of it.

Yeah, I think it kind of recovered on its own, but it didn't hurt that there was that compelling race. But yeah, I think that that actually made me slightly more optimistic or at least bolstered my existing optimism, that there did seem to be a bit of alignment on that restructural. You're looking for any sign of common ground because mostly at this initial stage, everything's going to be diametrically opposed. We want this and we don't want that. We want the opposite of that. So when there's any hint of, okay, maybe there's a little alignment here,

maybe they could find some common ground and come up with some sort of framework. So that restructuring of revenue sharing or media revenues. So Evandrelik's piece on the MLB proposal, as you said, they're proposing a salary, cap of $245.3 million and a floor of 171.2 with a 50-50 split of revenues for 2027. And look, 50-50, who decided it should be 50-50, is 50-50 the most fair? And baseball revenue, of course, has been a point of contention because owners are always trying to exclude things from baseball revenue. Right.

And players are saying, well, it's built on the back of baseball. If you have a real estate development that is attractive because there's a baseball game going on. Isn't that sort of baseball revenue? Nope. Say the owner sits entirely separate. Right. The salary figures the league is using, Drellette continues, are based on average annual values or what's commonly referred to in baseball as salary for luxury tax purposes. Player pay would be newly subject to an escrow system, as you alluded to earlier, where players would have to give back or potentially receive additional money once the league's revenues are calculated. As part of the change, all local media revenues in the sport would

newly become central revenue, a major change commissioner, Rob Manfred. has sought. And in Rob Mainz's response to the player's proposal at BP, he wrote, and I'm skipping around a bit, undercurrent revenue sharing teams contribute 48% of all local revenues, ticket sales, sponsorships, local media, etc. to a pool divided equally among all 30 clubs. High revenue teams wind up contributing more than they receive and vice versa for the lower revenue teams. The MLBPA proposal seeks to both expand and tweak this arrangement. Their proposal would increase the amount of local media revenues that are pooled while decreasing the pooling of stadium revenues. It would incentivize revenue sharing recipients to spend more money on their ball club by

including extra payments to low revenue teams that make the playoffs or have a winning record and increasing benefits if players are lost to free agency or if they sign free agents, it would penalize low revenue teams that don't spend the revenue sharing dollars. They receive and create a competitive integrity tax penalizing teams that don't meet a spending floor. So it's kind of the MLB approach is more punitive. It's, hey, you're spending too much, stop spending so much. And the MLBPA approach is you're not spending enough.

And we're punish you for that. And we're incentivizing you to pay more by rewarding you. It's like more of carrot than stick, I suppose. And Rob concludes or continues there. Two significant changes proposed here. First, this would increase the sharing of revenues throughout the league, taking more from wealthier clubs and giving more to lower revenue ones, which in theory would bolster competitive balance. Second, it would shift the basis of the sharing from all local revenues to a focus on media revenues. This would move MLB's revenue structure closer to an NFL or NBA model, where media revenues largely derived from national contracts in the case of those leagues are shared equally among all franchises.

So there's a little bit of a mutual desire to remake revenue sharing there, and obviously there's plenty of daylight between them. But still, there's something there that maybe could be built on. But, yes, ultimately, both sides are out to improve their positions, which is really their mandates here. But when in his rebuttal to the league's proposal, Bruce Meyer says, baseball is experiencing unprecedented momentum and owners are enjoying record viewership, revenues, and franchise values. Billionaire owners are not seeking to cap their profits or asset values, only player salaries. This isn't out of generosity or a desire to protect the game's well-being. it's a play to control costs, increased profits,

and maximize franchise values, all at the expense of players past, present, and future. Well, certainly the part of that where this isn't out of generosity, it's a play to control costs, increased profits, and maximize franchise values.

I don't detect any lies there, really. That rings pretty true to me. Whereas when you have Rob Manfred, going on TV, like talking to Pat McAfee, and is pitching this entirely as competitive balance.

Like that's what we're after here. We're all about the competitive balance. Or you know. Well, yeah, it's not that they don't want competitive balance, but that's not what what Manfred is leading with here, right? And so, and, you know, I guess reasonably so, because saying we want billionaires to have even more billions, well, that's not going to be a winning message either. But Manfred said the lack of competitive balance in the game.

game is going to be the cornerstone issue of the negotiations with the MLBPA. And I don't think that is really the cornerstone. I think the cornerstone is we want to make more money. And the players are admitting that more or less. Evangrelic just wrote a big feature about franchise values. And it's not a secret. It's not news if you're paying attention to this. But it was a good rundown of what is maybe motivating owners here. And there's a little jealousy. you'd think, well, what could MLB billionaires possibly have to envy about other people? Well, the other billionaires in other sports are maybe making even more billions than the MLB billionaires are because the franchise values have appreciated to an even greater degree.

So we talk all the time about how it doesn't seem like there's such a thing as a bad investment in a sports franchise in a popular league and look at how the franchise values have appreciated. And they have. But in other leagues, they have grown by even greater leaps and bounds, and these valuations are even more multiples of the revenue that the teams are taking in. And when you have owners who maybe became billionaires in some part because they have an unquenchable appetite for more money, and they want that. And in the billionaire clubs where they're hobnobbing with other billionaires, I think they're looking at the grass being even greener, though the lawn is lush in MLB as well. It's true that the growth in franchise valuations has outstripped MLBs in other leagues in the NBAs, in the NFL certainly. And they want some of that for themselves.

And they think that getting the cost certainty of capping spending would help. And it probably would. So, you know, from their perspective, I guess it makes some sense to pursue that. And there's all this private equity investment and money flooding into MLB. And the PE people are saying we could get even greater returns. and there's no limit to the returns that they want. And, you know, the piece talks about how some franchises that have been put on the market in MLB, the offers weren't quite what the owners of those teams were expecting.

And we've seen the angels, the nationals, the twins were on the market and then they were off the market. Well, there is a commonality among those teams, of course. And Bruce Meyer pointed this out too. Did he call them dog shit owners? I would have admired Bruce for that. Not in public as far as I know, but behind closed doors, perhaps. But I think there's a difference between those three teams and the Padres who did get more money and did go ahead with the sale. They set a record.

They set a record for MLB franchise values in their sale. And one of these ownership groups is not like the others when it comes to the investments that they have made in winning and making compelling products and getting people to come to the games. So is that an MLB problem? or is it an ownership problem with certain ownership groups? And maybe it could be a bit of bucket A and a bit of bucket B, but it's certainly a bunch of bucket B, or I lost track of which bucket. But when teams are telling you we're not trying

and we're not really attempting to get YouTube purchase tickets and subscriptions to C.S., well, then maybe it sort of makes sense that they're not going to get the offers that they want there. So anyway, this will play out. for a long time. I will say I saw some people immediately dismissing the MLB salary cap proposal as unsurious and unworkable and, you know, this is a joke and everything. And obviously, in its present form, it's not going to work. But it didn't immediately strike me as so far from

the realm of reasonability that it's an insulting proposal to make. Like, obviously the players are going to reject it, they may reject it in any form. But it's better than before, at least, which is a low bar to clear. But the last round of bargaining, it was so far from the realm of possibility because the floor was so low that time. And yeah, of course, you're not going to get the players to accept this if you're not really raising that cap to a level where the overall spending would be increased. If the spending's going to be flat and you're also restrained, the upper bounds. Well, no, that's not going to fly. But to me, at least, just on the face of it, before I did the math or anything, I thought that the floor was maybe higher relative to the

cap, certainly than it was before. And was it high enough to actually get the players to say, oh, maybe they're onto something here. Perhaps not. But I don't know, it didn't strike me as so silly immediately that this. would be like completely dismissed out of hand once there are adjustments and movement. Like I don't think there's going to be a salary cap and floor system in this round of bargaining. I don't think they're going to get there. But to me at least, it wasn't like immediately so laughable. And I had low expectations for like how reasonable it would be or how equitable it would be.

But I don't know. I just, I saw people dismissing it. And I thought maybe like, well, anything they would have said would have been dismissed by some parties. So I don't know. Like, it was probably closer to, like, you know, a band of spending where the floor was close enough to the cap. The cap wouldn't be nearly high enough to get this done. But the floor was higher than I would have maybe expected MLB to lead with when they're just kind of inventing numbers and funny money out of thin air.

I think that they picked a range quite intentionally because as we said, like the, on some level, like, sure, they have to agree to a number, you know, we'll have sort of, if they were to implement this system tomorrow, we would have an understanding going in of like what is the cap and what is the floor. But on some level, that number is just going to change based on whatever the revenues are. They picked, and understanding that, they picked a range where the floor. is not insultingly low. In fact, they picked a number where my first reaction was, you're never getting the Marlins to spend that. You're never getting the pirates to spend that. You're never getting the guardians to spend that, right?

So, you know, they picked a number where the gap is not insultingly large, although the upper bound is not nearly high. I mean, the cap in the NFL is $300 million, right? And you're coming in lower than that. But I don't think that the number matters because the objection to the cap is so fundamental to what the PA, how the PA understands itself and its leverage that I don't think that they would ever go for it. I don't, at least, I don't think that the PA under its current leadership has any appetite for this, right? they have not, they have not positioned themselves in a way that suggests that they are willing to give even one inch on this question. Yeah. And will, will the rank and file all be fully aligned with leadership's position on that? I don't know.

But I don't know either. I do think that this is an area where my sense, at least, is that the messaging internally within the membership has been very consistent and appropriately received, right? This is just so fundamental to what the league is about. And part of it, honestly, is that, you know, Major League baseball players look around at the other men's pro leagues and all of the, if I have to learn about a freaking apron, Ben, I swear to God. And I have a finance background. Like, no, no, no. We have talked about just how much more complex it would be.

And not that that's going to dictate what gets done or not, but from our perspective, boy, it'll be a huge. huge headache to talk about baseball transactions in that world. I think the only thing that would be less appealing to major league baseball players than a salary cap is non-guaranteed contracts, right? Like, that's truly the only thing that I think would make them bolt from the room faster. So we'll see, you know, and I'm sure that other sports unions have gone into negotiations being like they'll never break the union.

So, like, never say never. But I do think that this is something that it has been so hard fought and so hard won by the union. And the way that they have positioned themselves in their most recent negotiation suggests to me a willingness to be more aggressive in service of their goals, not more conciliatory. And I think the thing that they are likely trying to do, in addition to it being like genuinely good for the membership, which is the point, part of why I think they have positioned their proposal the way that they have is also internal positioning. It's internal messaging. When you are putting forth front and center in your first economic proposal signaling that these are your most important priorities going into the negotiation, continuing to get more money to players earlier in their careers to try to make whole guys who debuted later.

and have not made as much money over the course of their careers. And guess what? The Orioles can only sign Pete Alonzo once. So, you know, for the next guy, there needs to be some form of like make good. That is not only positioning to the league, but it is also internal positioning, saying to the membership, hey, we think it's really important to get the young guys' money early in their careers to make this system as equitable as we can and to make sure that you, you know, if you don't, you're going to, we're going to, you know, expand Super 2, we're going to improve the arbitration system.

I think they have stuff in here about like retroactively upping ARBs for cops. Like they have all kinds of stuff in this proposal that is meant to concentrate more money to the younger part of the player distribution. So I think that, you know, that is strategic not only as it pertains to the league, but as it pertains to their own guys. Because we know from the last CBA that the membership accepted the proposal in the bargaining community. and he did not want to. So I imagine that when you combine that with some of the other leadership strife that the union has experienced in the last couple of years, that they are very keen to message successfully internally and present a unit that can bargain in solidarity and, you know, really go to the table when they need to. Yeah. And I do think that it's smart to try to head off MLB's message about competitive.

balance by putting forth your proposals first and playing up the competitive integrity tax and how we're going to get the teams that don't spend to spend. What a nice little bit of, what a nice little bit of verbiage. Right. And ultimately, I think that for most people, for fans of other sports, for kind of casual, mainstream followers of baseball, even, MLB's message will resonate. It has always resonated because for at least as long as we've all known what. the players are making and we don't know what the teams are making. It's just, it's an unequal battle, really, when it comes to the PR aspect of it. And so if you haven't followed this stuff this closely and you don't know the whole history of labor relations in baseball, then you're probably seeing,

oh, look at this, MLB, they're proposing 50-50, what could be fairer than 50-50, and they just want a cap like all these other major leagues have. Why should MLB be the outlier? And look, all they are concerned about is competitive balance. They just want teams to have a fair shot. You know, that that's going to resonate. Now, does it matter whether it will resonate ultimately? I don't know, because clearly it doesn't resonate with the players, and that is what's going to matter the most. It's interesting in the course of the way that the league is positioning this stuff. It's all about competitive balance. And I think that fans do genuinely care about that. And I think that people are, for reasons that sometimes don't have anything to do with payroll, kind of sick to death of the Dodgers.

But here's what I think fans really care about. They want there to be baseball and they don't want, and they want tickets to stop costing so goddamn much. Yes. And nothing in the league's proposal, and the unions either, you know, so that I can, you know, be fair here. But like, nothing about this unless you really can convince people

that their tickets are a direct result of the cost of payroll, unless you can convince them of that, which I think people are convinced of that. I don't think it's true. People are, but they also aren't, right? Because everyone who's gone to a baseball game of a losing team is still like, it costs me how much to get into that game? It's not like losing teams don't charge for their tickets.

They might charge a little less than... Some losing teams are big spending payroll teams today too, but even lower payroll teams, yeah. Right. So, you know, it's, it is interesting for them to be so, focused on this, and I know that this is a legitimate wedge, the competitive balance thing, but it's just interesting that it's like, well, if you really cared about the fans, you'd tell them that their tickets were going to be cheap. But you're not going to do that because the owners want to make money. And how do they do that? They charge the fans. So that part of it, I just always

find a little bit funny where it's like they're having to do this dance around the thing that is, you know, the most, that is actually very important. You know, at the end of the day, Arty Marino was right, right? It comes down to affordability. But it's not an unimportant question. It's just his messaging around that was bad. My second thought has been lost to the sands of time. So we can move on until I remember what it was 15 minutes from now. But here we are. Here we go again. Yes, here we go again. But it won't be wall-to-wall CPA stuff here on effectively wild. We will cover whatever is newsworthy. And this was newsworthy, I think, if only to frame people's expectations or reassure people or put this all into

perspective. But there will be a lot of blow by blow and back and forth. And we do not want the podcast to be just 24-7 CBA exchanges because it won't amount too much until it does. I remember, it didn't even take me 15 minutes. The other thing that I will be very curious to see, and I think some of the positioning in this speaks to it and will be revealing, like, historically you're right. to say that, you know, we know what the players make. We don't have great transparency into revenue. We have sort of a general sense of it through various estimates, but we don't know, like, to the dollar,

except for publicly traded teams, like what they are making from a revenue perspective. And even there, there's, like, counting stuff that makes it a little obscure. So that has allowed the owners to be, like, these greaty millionaires and the players, for whatever reason, have not been able to, I think, counter as successfully as we might want them to, that like, why aren't you mad at the billionaire

who owns the team rather than the millionaire who plays for him? Because it's very often to him. I am curious how that discourse and line of attack plays in our current broader political environment, because I could honestly see it going either way. There's the fact that we, beyond the realm of sports, I think every single day brush up against the reality of worse stuff being more expensive. And I think a lot of people have gotten pretty wise to being able to connect that directly toward billionaires who own corporations, et cetera. At the same time, some of these players are making so much money that I don't know that even though they are workers and they are making significantly less than the folks who own their teams, like, I don't know how credible of a

class solidarity argument they can make with working folks. So I don't have an opinion on how that plays out one way or the other. I know that some of our current great villains are billionaires, so maybe you're able to make some hay off of that if you're the players. But I'm just curious sort of how the broader billionaire sentiment ends up filtering through the public side of these conversations. Though, ultimately, I don't think it matters very much because the fans aren't at the table. So they don't really get a thing.

All right. Let's talk about not this. Okay. Great. So this is one thing that this is kind of semi-related because you were talking about how there is more of a pressure to put butts in seats and maybe more of your revenue is coming from attendance. And also you have to drum up your own business for streaming subscriptions and such.

So Richard Hirshberger, our pal and somewhat unofficial, effectively wild historian, our past blaster he publishes things in our Facebook group, his little missives about what happened 150 years ago in baseball. And he does excerpts from newspapers from exactly 150 years ago. And he published one just this week that I thought was still interesting and relevant. 150 years ago in baseball, the fear that telegrams will reduce crowds. And there was an item here. Baseball, two words, of course. This is 1876.

The Chicago-Hartford game this afternoon will probably draw a crowd to the Hartford grounds. Owing to the new regulations of the Hartford managers, telegrams to the papers are prohibited till the close of the games. And consequently, the current cannot bulletin the game until the result is declared. So Richard writes, this is an early example of what will be a recurring theme. The ideas that if fans can get their baseball fix in ways other than physically attending the game, they won't pay to get in. We see the same thing in later years with early radio broadcasts and then with television. Here in 1876, it is inning-by-inning telegraph reports, which are posted at the various newspaper offices and betting parlors. The actual outcome is always the same.

The fear is misplaced and indeed counterproductive. In-person is always the best way to take in a game. The various lesser alternatives serve to wet the Finnish appetite. What we see here is in this light, also an early example of the principle that baseball is such a great game. that it has survived the best efforts of the owners to kill it off. So that's from the Hartford Current May 27, 1876. And it's true because history always repeats itself in baseball and elsewhere, that every time there's a new technology and a way to experience a game remotely,

the initial inclination is to restrict that and to clamp down on it. Because we don't want to give away the store. That's always the thinking. Oh, if people could read telegram inning-by-inning updates, they won't need to come because they'll just see, you know, the, the, didda-da-da-da-da-da, you know, it'll just come off the ticker. And, oh, this is just like being there, right? And then when radio comes along, you know, that's restricted because, gosh, if they can just sit in their living room and listen to an account of the game, why would they ever come and pay? And same with TV.

And we've even seen that, I guess, in recent years. Maybe this is slightly different, but when MLB at various times has cracked down on gifts, and highlights and everything. And, you know, maybe that's arrangements with broadcast partners and such. But maybe part of it is just, yeah, we want to restrict our products. And it always seems to turn out that it's beneficial to put at least a lot of your product out there so that you can kind of get people in the door. And then they realize, hey, this baseball thing sounds great.

And maybe I should show up in person. So I'm wondering if this will always continue to be true or whether there is ever a point. And have we gotten to that point in some cases where maybe a technology, a way to experience the game remotely, is actually so compelling that you might decide to stay home because it's just not worth the trouble. So if you have 4K and you have your MLB app and you have someday, you know, we're all watching in 3D and VR or whatever the heck, you know, it simulates, oh, we're right there. It's like being there, but I'm not there. will there ever be a point where that at-home game experience, that consumption becomes such an appealing alternative that you won't actually go to the game?

I'm wondering about this because now it seems like there's more of an emphasis on getting people to go to the game. So it's like, have the broadcasts gotten too good has the streaming availability of everything? Because there are certainly times where I have thought to myself, do I want to go to this game? Gosh, I have to commute, and I got to get on the train, and I got to do this and that.

And I could just turn it on my massive TV, not to brag about my TV size here, but, you know, just like. What are you working with these days, ma'am? What am I working with? Is it a 65, 50? Okay. It's, yeah. So it's not taken up the entire wall, but it's, you know, it's large. It's large.

I spend a lot of time watching stuff on the screen. It better be big or playing stuff for that matter. So could we ever get to a point where like, okay, the first few alarms about this were false? But now it turns out that it's just like being there and you don't actually have to be there. Or will it always be? This is just a taste of the real main attraction. I think we're already there and it's not something we have to worry about. Does that make sense?

I think that the in-home viewing experience is, I mean, maybe I'm always. underestimating the appeal of VR, although I don't think I am. But I think this is as good as it's going to get. Like, we're reaching the upper bound of high-deaf for one thing, right? Like, we're not going to be able to tell the difference beyond 4K, it seems. If you're a person who likes to be at home with your snacks and beer that isn't 12 bucks and doesn't come in the big cans, which are a scam, can I just say the big cans are a scam. You think they're not, but they are because the bottom half of that can is, is warm by the time you get to it.

So, yeah. Big cans, scam in the beer context. I can't speak to other big cans. That's none of my business. Get a draft. Don't do the big cans because you're going to go, oh, I'll drink it fast. Why? You're an adult.

You're not 21 anymore. You can't do that. You've worked in the morning. Okay. Like, like, get a normal sized beer. And don't do the big cans. They're a scam. If you've made that determination, I don't think that, like, the ability to suddenly put on a VR headset, like, changes the equation for you.

I think there are two competing sensory experiences and where you fall on them might determine your natural instinct to go to the ballpark. One of which is, how much time do I want to spend watching gambling commercials and how much time do I want to spend watching gambling commercials? and how much time do I want to spend being yelled at by the PA because it's so loud in here. Not the Players Association, the public address. Yeah, yes. I do not mean to impugn the yelling of the PA. Sometimes one must yell in service of a good bargain. Acrociations, they get contentious.

They get a little shoddy from time to time. But I think that like the creature comforts of home and the quality of the broadcasts, we're already there. And it's about your instinct and desire to go be out and about with people. And really, it's about how much does it cost to go? Right. Like, I think that the ticket price piece of it matters way more than like, oh my God, now my TV's 4K. I can see every beat of sweat. You could before. You could see through his pants before now. You don't need 4K for that. There's giving that show away for free. Yeah.

So, yeah, you're right. Yes. If the ballpark experience is not reasonably priced and also they're assaulting your eardrums, then those are compelling reasons not to go. But you don't have to hear, you don't have to hear freaking over under every commercial break and four times an inning on the broadcast either. It's true. You're still seeing signage. There may not be some sort of sports book at the ballpark. However.

Yeah, it's maybe a little less in your face or in your ears at least. is like as a person who is increasingly rankled by the the gambling ads because my doesn't Kevin hard have enough money does he really need more Kevin yeah geez some self-respect anyway um it's just it's constant you're just inundated and then they do the reads on the broadcast and they do the little thing on the bottom and now we have to now we have to watch those ads for the prediction markets where they're like are aliens on the golf course and one of the, is that one of the golfers who was on the live tour? I don't even know which ad you're referred to. I haven't said, but it's one of the Calci ads.

It's the Bryson DeCambeau, right? Oh, Deschambeau, you made him sound so fancy. Yes. Isn't it DeCambo? Come on now. I guess. But yeah, it's, yeah, he was a live guy. Yeah. So anyway, I'm not worried about that piece of it. Maybe I'm underestimating something, But I think that the thing that will drive the instinct to go to the park is mostly the cost of going to the park. And also, it's a social experience for a lot of people, which is tough to replicate in your living room, no matter how big your TV is.

You kind of want to sit with someone, not that you can't have someone to sit in your living room, but it's a little bit different. It's an outing. It's an excursion. And that's a big part of the appeal of especially baseball when even in the pitch clock era, there's some downtime. You know, there's time to chat if you can hear your companions over the drone and din of the PA. So, yeah. Right. Sometimes they have a DJ.

I never have a DJ at home. That's, you know, that is, that is a point in favor of watching. Or I'm my own DJ, so I don't mind. Right. Or, and, you know, at home, you can watch beginning, which is, that, that was a good ad to MLB TV, although I always sound like I'm saying beginning. Yeah. Like, have we gotten to the beginning of beginning? That's the same word. It sounds De Chambot. You made him sound so fancy, which is hilarious, given who Bricon DeCambo is.

Yes. And I might not know what that guy looks like, but I have heard from him enough to be like he's not fancy. Yeah. He's extremely online. He'd always be streaming, always be promoting in some way. Oh, boy. Okay. I meant to mention, though, emblematic, I think, of this maybe, increased urgency to the messaging. And I hope this isn't a humble brag too. But like people on both sides, like people at the union and people at the league, and maybe this is a case for you, I'm sure it's not unique to me.

But like I've had a lot of those folks reaching out to me. Oh, yeah. Like more than ever before, I think. And when they do, and it's sometimes I wrote something or sometimes they just want to be like, hey, if you ever want to, you're writing, so you're talking, we're here. You can, yeah, consult us. So, you know, they're probably doing this with many media members. I'm always like, me?

Do you think I'm more influential than I am? I don't know that I'm changing hearts and minds that much that you need to expend this kind of time and capital selling me on what your position is. Anyway, I don't always take them up on those offers because I kind of have some sense of what they're going to say. But I have gotten much more outreach from people on both sides just wanting to like put forth their message, which, you know, I don't want to allow to influence me, but the fact that they're even thinking that that's worthwhile or that's a priority for them. And if they're talking to me, then how many other people are they lavishing that attention on? So again, that just

kind of, I think, reinforces that they do want to win that PR war, even if that is ultimately not determinative. Okay. Also, Sam Miller just wrote something good. So what other kinds of things, does he write? But he wrote something for pebble hunting about how better hitters are not challenging more. And this was something that we talked about before the season started, and we had the oyster analytics guys on, and we were talking about how it does make sense for the better hitters to use challenges disproportionately because better hitters, their plate appearances are more valuable. And so extending those plate appearances, it is actually more valuable to teams. And Sam ran through that math in his piece. But it's like if you can extend an Aaron Judge plate appearance,

then that is way more beneficial to you than extending, say, a Miguel Rojas played appearance. I'm not picking on Miguel Rojas, but Sam did. So I'm just using his examples. But mathematically speaking, there's just a way bigger difference in how those hitters produce depending on the counts, like Judge is getting a much bigger delta there in his typical production. And so if you can put Aaron Judge in a more favorable hitter's count, obviously Judge is going to be better in pitchers counts than Rojas is in pitchers counts too. But the difference is much bigger. And so I think Sam calculated it's something like on average 65 percent more valuable to a team to use the challenge when Aaron Judge is up than when Miguel Rojas is up. And maybe that's

sort of an extreme example. But point is, there should be a correlation there where teams are more willing to challenge when a good hitter is up. And we wondered whether that would cause discord in the clubhouse if certain guys are allowed to challenge and other guys aren't. And it's just, hey, nope, you're not good enough to challenge. You're not even worth just using possibly expending, risking this challenge on because you're a lost cause. You're not good enough. Like, why even bother? No, we're going to reserve all our challenges for this guy, for the good hitter. And would that then rankle other hitters? Because they're thinking, huh, they're getting another advantage that I'm not getting now and I need all the help I can get. And now I'm not even allowed to challenge because

that guy's too good. And I have to just sit and take it here. And it turns out that that's not really happening, that there is next to no correlation thus far between how productive a hitter has been this year and how frequently they challenge. And there's not much of a challenge on the defensive side either, because it should apply the other way too, where you're more willing to challenge as a catcher or a pitcher, I suppose, when a good hitter is at the plate because you want to get that advantage and neutralize that good hitter. It's more valuable to you, the defensive team, to do that when a good hitter is up. And there's a good hitter. is a very weak correlation, if any, there.

So that's interesting to me because it suggests that teams are not sort of maximizing an advantage there. And maybe they will over time. And maybe, as we have discussed previously, this won't matter that much because all the challenges will just become concentrated among the catchers, because the catchers are better at this anyway. And hitters won't be challenging as much, which seems to be happening. But even then, the catchers could still challenge depending on who's at the plate.

But it seems like teams or individual hitters are not really weighing this that much. And I wonder whether that is because teams have kind of calculated that it's more trouble than it's worth. Or it would be tough to sell players on that. It would be more divisive and that ultimately it would be counterproductive or just no one wants to go into the clubhouse and be like, you can challenge, you cannot. Yeah, I guess that is sort of an. awkward meeting to have, right? You'd have to do like one-on-ones because you wouldn't want to be there's anybody. I wonder, maybe a softer way of putting that is, you know, maybe they just want guys.

It's not that the challenges don't have value and you have to be able to sort of walk and chew gum at the same time as a hitter because there are going to be situations either because of the game state or the, you know, the counter, what have you were like, it's just worth it to challenge and you need to be able to swap into that mode quickly enough but I wonder if some of it's just like hey just focus on what you're doing up there man just like lock in at the plate and be a good hitter

and it'll sort of take care of itself which perhaps suggests like that there's been some assessment that it doesn't change very much not that it doesn't change very much but that you know the relative value of it is small and the big misses are getting caught anyway, right, that the hitters are, I don't know.

Like, it is an interesting thing, though, because you would imagine, you know, like Davy wrote for us today about James Wood, who has great strike zone sense. Terrible challenger so far, really bad, like, has been, now, Davy was quick to note, and I will, too, that when I say really bad, I mean, he has challenged 13 times, you know?

Like, it's not, in terms of the total number of pitches, is he's seen very small. But he has challenged and gotten it wrong, you know? And there have been times when he has had balls called strikes. And if he had challenged, he almost certainly would have succeeded, didn't do it. It's not that he's not challenging. So it's like, what is the interaction between their strike zone sense and their instinctive challenge? I don't know.

It's weird. I don't quite have a grand unified theory of like batter behavior around the challenge system yet because I feel like we're getting competing inputs on it to some extent. Yeah. Yeah. And Sam was highlighting Bryce Terang, who is really one of the best players in baseball at this point. He has not challenged once yet. He is the guy who has seen the most pitches, had the most playing time without challenging even once, though there are other guys who have challenged very sparingly.

And so he was highlighting the difference between Bryce Terang, who is a very good player and hitter. And Gary Sanchez, his teammate, you may not realize that Gary Sanchez still, still trucking. He's still out there. And he is actually hitting well this year. He has a 131 WRC plus. But over the past several seasons, he's been about a league average hitter. And he is challenging left and right. And Bryce Terang has not challenged even once. And the Brewers seem to be a team that does have some team-wide philosophy, as we have discussed, they, like the Marlins, have a real disparity where their catchers challenge often and their batters do not challenge much at all. And that appears to be maybe a team-wide philosophy that, hey, we want to emphasize, even if it's not a blanket ban on batters challenging.

It's just here's the way we want to lean. And yet they don't seem to have that same philosophy when it comes to, say, telling Gary, hey, maybe you shouldn't challenge as much. Or at least telling Bryce Terang, maybe you should challenge more. Right. Because you're a really good hitter and it's beneficial to us. you know, he's had some calls go against him that in theory he could have corrected. It is kind of wild to me to go this far because don't you think, if you were Bryce trying, don't you think you would want to try it at least once?

Yeah. I would want to at least take it for a test drive and say, oh, how does this feel? And I guess I get it if you've been in the big leagues for a long time and you're like, oh, am I an old dog? Can I not learn this new trick or something? I've gotten by without this this far. Sam mentioned that Nolan Aronado just finally challenged. He had gone a while without doing it too.

And he looked like he didn't quite know how to do it or what the signal was. He looked kind of awkward. But Bryce Durang, he's in his fourth season. Sure. He's 26. I'm sure, you know, he played with the challenge system in the minors and ABS in some form. So I wouldn't think that would be so set in his ways. He can't do it.

Maybe he does think it's a distraction and he just wants to focus on his hitting. And if so, that seems to be going just fine for him too. But you would think, try it at least once, right? Yeah. Don't be so set in your ways or single-minded that you can't take advantage of getting a call corrected for you once in a while. So you'd think that the brewers, and for all I know they have, but you'd think that even if they didn't go to Gary Sanchez and say, Gary Sanchez, stop challenging, you're not good enough. They might go to Bryce Terrain and say, you are really good. So to be clear, you are fully empowered to challenge, and we encourage you to challenge anytime you think.

The other thing is that not only are good hitters better at hitting, and thus you would want them to be at the plate longer, but you might think that they might have a better sense of the strike zone, too. Right. Like, Bryce Trang has a really good sense of the strike zone, and he walks a lot, and he's very selective and everything. And that doesn't necessarily correlate like we were talking about. It's not that the good framers are great challengers or that Juan Soto is a great challenger or something. and maybe it's sort of a skewed sample in some cases with the catchers, as we were saying, because if you get more of the calls going your way initially, then there are fewer low-hanging fruit overturns available to you.

So it's just going to look like your worst challenger because you have a higher degree of difficulty on the challenge opportunities that you're presented with. But you'd think Bryce Durang, clearly he has a good eye at the plate, so he might have a good sense of – and Sam even had some gifts of times when he seemed to think that a call had been blown against him, that he was like shaking his head or something. It's like, Bryce, you can do something about this now. Yeah, you have you have the power to change that call that you seem to think is incorrect. So that seems to be surprising to me.

But yeah, on a league level thus far does not appear that that's going the way that you would think it should. And teams or hitters appear to be leaving a little value on the table here. and I wonder if it is because it's just a difficult thing to sell. And, you know, I was thinking this as I was reading and then Sam ultimately mentioned it, but it's not as if there aren't other ways in which teams telegraph two players, we think you're better than your teammate because whether it's the batting order, right? Like that alone, okay, if you are a good hitter, we think you're a good hitter, you're going to bat somewhere in the top of the order.

If we think you're a bad hitter, you're probably going to be at the bottom of the order. Right. So that right there, you're already sort of sorting hitters and telling hitters what you think of them. And things like sacrifice bunting. Certain guys do it. Certain guys don't. Certain guys are too valuable. You want them to swing away.

And so that's always understood. Or the rotation order, you anoint someone your opening day starter. That's your best guy. And so there's always that sort of implicit ranking and hierarchy of players. But maybe it's a little different to just go to someone. and not just drop a lineup card, but have to tell them, like, you're allowed to challenge or you're not. But I wonder whether some teams will overcome that awkwardness because they think they're leaving value on the table.

It's a tricky thing, too, because, you know, maybe we should ultimately think this, but I don't know if we should assume that it's a static skill, right? Like, one would imagine that you could theoretically get better at challenging over time. Maybe. Like, there could be some elasticity to that as a skill. I also think that, like, the degree of, and I'm sure teams are thinking about it this way, they're not simply looking at success rate, but like the degree of the miss and the circumstance really matter, right?

Like, if you're narrowly missing or if you're winning a challenge, But the gap is so tiny that, like, it, you know, it was a reasonable sort of 50-50 ball strike call under the prior regime before we had the relief of challenges, right? Are you really able to draw anything from that player's sort of skill to challenge, right? If it's really basically a 50-50 call and we are able to measure it minutely enough that it can be, you know, overturned in a favorable way. for your team. So I'm just curious sort of how, one, how confident are teams that they know who's good at this, right? Because it just hasn't been that many challenges. Even the guys who I think are making regular use of it and doing it fairly well, we're still talking about a sample so small that like if it were any other skill, would you really say that you could say anything about it?

You know what I mean? And so I'm just curious whether I share your curiosity not only because there's like the, you know, the human piece of it. How do you manage that conversation to say, hey, we just think you're fundamentally incapable of this thing? And so, you know, no tap taps for you. But also just like how certain do teams feel they are about, you know, that skill as it currently stands and how much potential for change do they think there is? because there are skills that guys exhibit

and you think that they're going to stick forever and then sometimes you get weird vacillators, right? You get guys who are like good at framing one year and then they stink at it the next and you're like, what's going on? And then it's like, oh, I was too far back or I was too far forward or whatever. So I just, I am curious about what that ends up looking like

over the long term because I just don't think that we know yet. Yeah. I don't know if teams have more data than we do because they have done drills and simulated it with the trajectory machine or in the cage or whatever, that may have happened. But even then, unless you're subjecting your players to some sort of study where, you know, they're seeing hundreds of pitches and deciding whether to challenge or not. No, I think most of what the weight would be on for me now is just the situation, the leverage,

obviously the location of the pitch and just what inning is it and what's the score and are there base runners and how many outs and all that. And also at least a little bit on the quality. of the batter, but it wouldn't really be much on the skill of the player because I don't have confidence in that now as far as isolating the challenging skill. Okay. Last time I solicited a couple responses from people because I mentioned that the Cubs, who mercifully did win one after the last time we talked. So losing streak snapped, no streak active as we speak. I asked how Cubs fans felt, not just about the roller coaster,

hey, we can't lose, oh, we can't win, but about just the construction of the roster being somewhat nondescript and flat because they have a lot of good players but not a lot of great players. And I was saying that ultimately, I think what matters to fans is do you win more so than is it stars and scrubs

or is it everyone's sort of the same. But for a neutral party for me, as someone who's not especially invested in the Cubs' success, I find myself not tuning in specifically to see the Cubs because there aren't players on that team who I think, oh, I have to change the channel. Gotta see him.

Yeah, right. Is there a starter that I look at the matchup and think, that's the guy, I can't miss that guy start or even a batter for that matter? We got a couple interesting responses from a couple Cubs fans who didn't disagree with that evaluation of the team, but I think provided an interesting perspective from the fans' point of view. So David said, basking in the glow of the Cubs finally breaking their losing streak, I thought I would offer a defense of the Cubs viewing experience. Obviously, a fan's viewing experience is greatly enhanced by their team winning, which hasn't been on tap much lately. But winning and

losing aside, I think the anti-stars and Scrubs brand of baseball the Cubs play is great for the fan viewing experience. I recognize that it may not be as fun for neutral observers, though. I think there is a difference in how fans and non-fans watch a game. Many fans, myself included, tend to hyper focus on the negative aspect of their team, like ruining the upcoming at bat from the player they think is an automatic strikeout, or feeling like no lead is safe with their weak bullpen looming, or mentally penciling in a loss when their least favorite starters turn in the rotation comes up. The Cubs are far from perfect, but when going good, they just don't have a lot of frustrating

holes. The guys at the bottom of the lineup, like Dansby Swanson and Carson Kelly, give pretty good at bats. Their pitching at least was very deep before injuries. They play solid D all around the diamond and counsel avoids most of the bone head decisions. All in all, they just don't have too much of the things that typically enrage fans, even though they have literally Michael Conforto, but even he is good. When I have my neutral fan hat on, though, and I'm just flipping through MLBTV, it makes sense to me to seek out more star power because I'm inherently more optimistic in that mode. Oh, hey, show hey, show he's pitching. He's good. Or ooh, Nick Kurtz is

coming up next. So that's David's take. General baseball fans equals optimistically seeking good players to enjoy. Team fans equals neurotically living in fear of bad baseball players ruining everything. And David said, maybe that's just me, but I don't think it is just him. It's definitely not just him because we got another email from Patreon supporter, Peter, a Cubs fan, who said on the subject of the Cubs having a bunch of perfectly fine players, it feels incredible as a fan. You don't feel like any spot is a real weakness as opposed to a stars and scrubs lineup. So that's interesting. And I think that rings true maybe. So maybe the absence of frustration is the best you can hope for, really, that it's not the ups and downs because it's true that we all have a negativity bias

that's kind of hardwired. We remember the worst things that happened to us more so than the best things typically and it's worse to lose than it is good to win. There's a line in the only rule to that effect. So maybe that tracks that the greatest frustration is just like the automatic out. And so just not having automatic outs, not feeling like you're ever out of it or that there's a non-competitive pitching appearance or plate appearance. Maybe that's the best thing you can hope for as a fan. That's an interesting thought. I think there's something to that. I think that there is.

I can appreciate why it is more a fan's experience of watching a team than just some randos because like, I'm going to watch Shohei. Yeah. Yeah. Man, Shohei. He was really good the other day. He was good

again. Yeah. He's hit homers the last couple times. He's pitched. He was holding the Rockies hit list for six innings. That was, after, after he got hit on the hand the day before and it was like, should you even play? Right. They weren't even sure he was going to hit.

Yeah. Guy's pretty good. Yeah. Pretty good. But this is, I think, why we ranked the Cubs, I think, fairly low on our team fund draft. I forget their exact position. But even though we acknowledge that they were good because it's just, yeah, who's hyping you up?

Right. But yeah, this is an interesting dichotomy. And I think it is well observed by David. I will keep this in mind. Agreed. Yeah. Which is not to say that the Cubs fans would not prefer to have a few superstars in there. Oh, sure.

Like, there's been plenty of frustration about the Cubs acting like they can't compete for top free agents. So, you know, if you sprinkle a few stars in among the excellent to competent all around, you know, good players, then they'd be even better. But maybe it's more about not having the replacement level killers to use Jay J. J. Jaffe's terminology, you know, not having the, the, the, the abysses, the sub-replacement-level guys. Yeah. But yeah, if you raise your ceiling and the downside is good players and the upside is supersars, well, that's even better, I guess. Then maybe you're the Dodgers or something.

I don't know. Right. Okay. And speaking of Shohei, I did want to mention that we are really being blessed by some elite pitching performances this year. pitchers who are on pace for the sorts of individual seasons that we have not seen for some time. And I know part of it is league offensive environment being a bit depressed and scoring not being super robust right now. But even with the advanced stats and war or whatever that adjusts for the league environment,

we are seeing some pitchers on pace for some pretty superlative seasons and heights that pitchers haven't reached recently. because even the best pitchers in baseball, given the innings totals that they tend to accrue these days and barely having any 200 inning guys left, there's just sort of a ceiling on how valuable you can be. And so even though we're still seeing, you know, the odd eight, nine, ten win season from position players, we have not seen that from pitchers lately. And I was starting to wonder whether we just wouldn't anymore, whether individual pitchers were just kind of capped at, I don't know, six war or whatever. And you still need just as many innings from your pitching staff, but it's being distributed more widely among many pitchers, which is part of the reason, I guess,

that the union wants the minimum salary raise so much is because a lot of guys are making that minimum salary. So if you look at the on-paced leaderboard at Fangraphs, though, right now, we have a bunch of pitchers who are on pace to reach some heights that no pitcher has touched for quite some time. And I know you might think, well, sure, on pace, everyone's going to be on pace a third of the way through the season for something that they don't ultimately reach.

But if you look at the batter on pace leaderboard, you have Bobby Witt Jr. on pace for a 10-war season. Well, he's done that before, you know, and then you have Yordan and, okay, the name's Andy Pahas eight war season. I know. Maybe that's somewhat surprising. But the values are not wildly out of whack with what we have seen over a full season. So some individual guys will regress and others will get hot.

But yeah, it kind of looks like if the war leaderboard ended up with the leaders having numbers like this, one 10 war guy and two eight war guys and four, seven war guys and several six-something war, you know, like maybe it's a bit more than we'll end up getting, but it's in ranges that we've seen. Whereas on the on-paced pitcher leaderboard, we have Christopher Sanchez who has just decided that he does not allow runs any longer. So he's two, maybe three starts away from Oral Hersheiser territory. So, you know. Everyone on this podcast who was a Meg was like, oh, you had all sigh-yugs all sewed up. I was like, I don't know.

We should have some respect for Christopher Sanchez. And who was right? Me, Meg, I was right. Yes. Did I say it was also? I don't know what I said. No, you did not say that. But you were, you were dismissive, you were dismissive of Christopher Sanchez.

Well, he has picked up his pace. Yeah, it's true. He's been much better of late. He's up to 44 and two-thirds consecutive scoreless innings. So, yeah, that's not too shabby. So he's, okay, and maybe we're catching him at his height. Yeah. I mean, you would think so.

Yeah, he's very good. He's been good for a while now. But he's on pace for a 9.4 war season. And we have not seen the likes of that in some time. at least, fan graphs were. Right. So last year, we talked so much about how great Terrick Skuple and Paul Skeens were, and they were. But 6.6 and 6.5 war.

And those guys were under 200 innings pitch apiece. And then 2024, the leaders were Chris Sale and Terik's Guble, 6.4 and 6. And then 2023, if we go back, the leader that year, there wasn't even a Six-War guy. Zach Wheeler was the leader at 5.9. And so you really have to go back to 22 was the last time. No, even then, Erin Nola, Carlos Rodon were right around Sixth War, Justin Burlander, Sandy Alcantra. It was starting to seem like Sixth War was sort of the ceiling for an individual pitcher. You had to go back to 2021.

Corbyn Burns was at 7.5, and he had 167 innings that year, but he was just so ridiculously good. And then Zach Wheeler was at 7.2 with upwards of 210 innings pitch. It was looking like maybe the starting pitcher who was seven plus war was like deader than the dodo. And now maybe not. You know, we'll see if some of these pitchers fall off the pace. But Sanchez on pace for 9.4. Cam Schlittler on pace for 8.3.

Yeah. Jacob Izorowski on pace for 8 war. Yep. So three guys on pace for 8 plus war plus. plus Davis Martin at 6.8. Joe Ryan 5.9. Kevin Gossman 5.7. Dylan C's 5.6.

Reed Detmers, my man, he's finally the hype, the prospect expectations. I always believed in Reed 5.5 war. Same as Shohei Otani on pace for 5.5 pitching war. So there's a height and a depth here that is pretty impressive. We have not seen anyone reaching these peaks or even this many. pitchers at this range. So I don't know how many guys will actually end up there. But the fact that it's even in the realm of possibility, again,

some of these guys are just so lights out, so dominant. It is pretty impressive, which I like starting pitcher. Not dead yet. Christopher Sanchez on pace for 229 innings. There you go. I know. It makes you nervous. That's the thing.

It makes you nervous a little bit. Yeah, I'll take the under on that. But, you know, this is. like Verlandarian. Verlandarian. Yeah. That's the next Star Wars movie. Verlandarian.

And Grogu, he's back. We don't know why. He's back. Starting pitchers, also back. Yeah, the demise may be not greatly exaggerated, but perhaps slightly exaggerated. We have engaged in mild hyperbole

on the demise of the starting pitcher. You can see why we didn't call it that. It doesn't roll off the tongue. So get into Aces. Aces are back, baby. In 2026, yeah. And last thing, I think, I am very relieved that Kendall George, Dodgers prospect, seems to have avoided serious bat dog inflicted injury because I was worried about the fine institution of the bat dog.

Because those who didn't see Dodgers outfield prospect, Kendall George, who is a speedster, a slapster. Yes. And, you know, he's going to put it in play. and he's going to run, run, run. And he ran, ran, but a bat dog who is a bit hasty in discharging its duties, his duties. I forget the gender of the bat dog. I don't, yeah, I'm not familiar with the dog in question. But, you know, ran out there perhaps ahead of time, missed their cue.

And George, to his credit, did not steamroll the bat dog. And George altered his trajectory and came up limpid. a little and looked quite frustrated by the fact that this could have been something serious. And it turns out the MRI revealed no ligament damage. So it looks like perhaps there's a second opinion coming, but maybe the worst has been avoided. And that's a relief to me as a dog lover and thus a bat dog lover. That's, you know, all it would take probably is one prospect to hurt himself because a bat dog got in the way. And, you know, bat dogs, sometimes they don't wait until it's time for the bat dog to come out.

And that's part of the charm of the bat dog. Is that the dog's going to do what the dog's going to do. And usually they're pretty well trained and they fulfill their duties. But also sometimes their inner dog takes over and they think, ball, ball or bat or whatever. Got to go get it. Got to fetch. And, yeah, if a player's in the way and that player did suffer a serious injury, well, maybe the charm. minor league institution of the bat dog could come under fire. So I'm glad that maybe we've gotten

a reprieve here. I like her, like, typically I don't like it and I don't want to make it seem like I find it funny. You are talking about it like they're going to kill that dog. No, they're not going to take the dog to the farm upstate. It didn't bite him, you know. No, no. But the dog might be forced to retire. Right. I know. But to be, just put everyone at their ease. They're not going to put down the dog. No. This isn't like a pity that he got away. Like this is, they're not going to, the dog is going to be fine. They're regardless.

It might be unemployed, but it's, it's going to be okay. But yeah, it did, it did, he was trying to get, it's such a sad little video for, for what it is. Yeah, because the dog's so happy. The dog's so happy and Kendall George is trying so hard not to ram into the dog. So like his, you know, his heart's in the right place, but then he, he, you can tell. right away that he is in discomfort and there's not really contact to speak of and those always make you the most nervous especially for fast guys you're like ah guys yes yes a non-contact zoom you know room room guy injury that tends to be pretty devastating so yes it does seem like we have

avoided the worst and just again nothing bad is going to happen to this no but but this is a real concern for the institution of of bat dogging because Yes, because the Tulsa drillers, this was the AA affiliate of the Dodgers, they did suspend at least. I don't know if they terminated their bat dog program, but as reported by Jack Harris of the California Post, who covers the Dodgers, Tulsa did suspend its bat dog program. So the bat dog is at least temporarily sidelined. So, you know, hopefully maybe they'll re-institute it if George is okay. to a dog. I know.

How do you break it to the dog? How do you tell the dog? I know. Like, hey, Kendall George, who you probably like, because you're a dog. You like everybody. Like, how do you explain? Cat, you see, if you had a cat who had that job and how would that work, it doesn't matter. But like, a cat just assumes they're going to get fired, you know, because they're like, I'm a cat, so I'm probably going to be a little jerk at some point.

You know, that's how cats are. Yeah. But if this had happened, then. Maybe it would have spread and other teams that have a bat dog or considering a bat dog, they would have thought, Kendall George. And ultimately, like, the risk, I suppose, is still present. This is judging by the result and not the process. And so the fact that maybe Kendall George was spared the worst case outcome here, well, it doesn't mean that he or someone else couldn't potentially run into the same issue with a bat dog. But the way that we make decisions, it's often like something bad has to happen for anyone to do anything differently.

And maybe this wasn't bad enough to derail the tradition. It's just like a weird freak kind of a thing. It is a weird. I mean, look, I understand it's adorable. It is a weird thing, though. It is. Yes. To have a bat dog.

Because, like, really, the biggest thing you worry about, I would imagine, isn't some injury befalling one of your players because thankfully that hasn't been something that has really happened before and was avoided for the most part here the main thing i'm gonna i'm gonna do a second version of the same swear the main thing you worry about is the dog taking a shit on the field like that's what you really worry about is the dog being like i must relieve myself now i am a dog someone forgot my walk and then they do do on the field that's what you worry about but that's not so bad in the grand scheme of things you know players are spitting out seeds and gum and who knows what else you're right you're Right, but also those are not the same thing.

It's a little different. And like what if you slip on the, or what if, you know, what if a kid slips on it? Like if they're running the bases or something and then it's like, that's disgusting and sad. Yeah. I don't think we're going to get bat dogs in the big leagues. Although I remember the Nationals did briefly promote Bruce their bat dog last year. But it was just their AAA bat dog. But it was more of a ceremonial thing.

You know, they kind of called up. Was Bruce retiring? I think it was like some sort of pups in the park, you know, promotion. Pups and bark in the park? Pups in the park. I think they called it pups in the park. They call it pups in the park. Some teams are doing like a cat at the park night,

and that's the craziest thing I've ever heard of in my entire life. And I say that as someone who... No, I can't imagine a creature that would want to be at the ballpark full of people less than a cat, except maybe me when I have a migraine. That's the only other creature that wants to be at a ballpark less than a cat is smack with a migraine. It's a bonkers thing. It's the bark in the park, I think a friend of the pod and friend of each of us, Emma Bachelary noted that she has a suspicion that there are more bark in the park nights than there used to be. And I think that that's true.

And I find it kind of odd. I like dogs. I'm not anti-dog, but the phenomena of bark in the park is. Well, it's a little strange, isn't it? I mean, like, I understand, obviously making space of the ballpark for, like, service animals, but just your dog? How do you know your dog's going to do at a ballpark? The second time, you have a better sense, but that first time, taking a lot on faith. Yeah, it's true.

I'm just saying. Yeah. Grumpkin would not care to go to the park. I don't think. That wouldn't be her best habitat. Did you just, like, tuck her into your jacket? Yes, I could conceal a mini-ducks. quite easily, I think, but I don't think she would enjoy it.

So then it becomes kind of selfish, perhaps. But many dogs would enjoy that milieu. So you got to know your dog, I guess. And the Tulsa Drillers bat dog is a four-year-old Belgian Melanois. Am I pronouncing that correctly, I hope? Am I classing that up? Am I doing a... I mean, you did put a little extra on it, but I think within the realm of acceptable

extra. Yeah, I'm not doing a dischambo. Dechambe. It's like Rochambeau, not DeChambo. DeCambo. This is the least class you man alive. You can't make him sound fancy. Yes, it's true.

But Achilles, Achilles. Achilles is the bad dog. Wait, Achilles is the dog's name? Yes, yes. Wait a minute. Okay, I didn't know that part. That's bonkers. They named, you can't name.

Well, George didn't hurt his Achilles. It was more his knee. I know, but still. Still, you can't name the dog that carries a bat around. And look, it's not going to wield it like some sort of an ex-murter. Why would an ex-murer wield a bat? I don't know, maybe they lost their axe. But you can't name it after a part of the body that snaps.

Yeah, or one with a fatal flaw. It would be like, here's our dog Tommy John. Like, what in the world? Here's our dog scubel scope. And I guess this was Achilles' Achilles heel that sometimes he might run out and get in the way of Kendall George. And, you know, speaking of another sort of freakish injury, But did you see that Yuri Perez of the Marlins hurt himself stretching? And I'll tell you how I found out about this.

19 people mentioned you on social media. Is that how you found out? I got an email because someone tagged me on Reddit because there was a post on their headline Yuri Perez left his start against the Blue Jays after he appeared to injure himself stretching in the dugout in between innings. And he was dealing, I think. And it was like after four innings. and he was sort of stretching around and trying to stay loose or whatever and maybe stretched a little too far and hurt himself. And it was a hamstring thing.

And he said it was extremely painful. And I'm not sure what the prognosis is. But, you know, sometimes I get that in the hamstring, even as a non-stretcher. It's more of like a Charlie horse, like a fleeting little. But this I found out about because I got an email because someone tagged me on Reddit and I got a notification. And the comment was, Ben Lindbergh's weird agenda. against stretching is finally proven correct. Could have done without the weirds.

It is weird. I'll accept agenda, but weird agenda. And then someone responded and said, Elmau, I forgot about that whole saga. Man's really been vindicated by the baseball gods. No, no, no, no. Maybe, maybe. Just saying, static stretching.

No need for that. No need for that in the dugout. Careful out there, Yuri. Oh, yeah, come on, Yuri. We want to list you. You're young in limber. You don't need to stretch. But is he a limber?

Okay, clearly the Lindberg brand is strong. And speaking of my weird agendas, finally got the news everyone was waiting for. We were all waiting with bated breath on the edge of our seats. John Brebria has picked a team. Or a team has picked John Brebia. He's back with the Rockies. He signed a minor league deal with the Colorado Rockies.

Hopefully, this time it'll take. And we'll get the big Brebia big league come Back. A couple other updates, we did get many more questions about the Cubs various streaks. Patreon supporter and Cubs fan, M. Deegh asked, what is the most separate winning or losing streaks of 10-plus games a team has had before May 26th? Patreon supporter Jeremy determined it's the Cubs with three. 2019 Astros had two 10-plus game winning streaks. The 2006 Royals had two losing streaks. The 1987 Brewers had one of each. And Michael Mountain adds that if you go by within team's first 55 games instead of the date cutoff, there's also a little bit of

the 1876 Cincinnati Reds, three separate losing streaks of 11 or more games, and the 1886 Washington Nationals, the only other teams besides the 2026 Cubs to have both a 10-plus game winning streak and a 10-plus game losing streak within their first 55 games of the season. Cleveland in 1931, one-loss, one-win, one-win, loss, and the 1987 Brewers one-win-one loss. But the Cubs have been in a streaky class of their own. And one other stat-blast follow-up, listener Avery says, Kyle Caro, son of Eric, of the Rockies, in Kyle's case, just hit his third career home run,

granted against position player pitcher Miguel Rojas, and all three of them have come against the Dodgers. What's the longest such streak of a player whose first ex-career homers were all against the same team? Which, as Avery says, is sort of the reverse of the stat blast from the other day, featuring Ryan Christensen, who set a record for the most homers without ever doubling up against the same opponent. And Michael Manton determines,

Bobby Mercer's first six career home runs were all against Washington. That's the Washington Senators that's now the Rangers, not the one that's now the twins, in the era of divisional play, with more opponents to cycle through, the record is four home runs to start your career, which has been done by 10 batters. And some late-breaking news, Jared Jones coming off the IAL to make his season debut for the Pittsburgh Pirates, which means that Carmen Maginsky will move to the bullpen, tough for him as good as he's been. That's how much homegrown starting pitching the pirates have. Many teams would have room for Maginsky in their rotations.

But boy, if Jones is still good, and he has been quite, effective in five minor league rehab starts, then boy, Skeens, Jones, Ashcraft, Chandler, Keller, who that is an enviable group, which is something we haven't had much opportunity to say about the Pittsburgh Pirates of late. But here's something we say at the end of every episode of Effectively Wild. You can support the podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wild and signing up to pledge 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. Matt Gilson, Daniel Alvarez, Pete Cormier 35, Josh Lloyd, and Tyler.

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And you can check the show notes in the podcast posted Fangraphs or Patreon 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, and we will be back to bring you one more episode before the end of the week, which means we will talk to you soon. Baseball is a simulation. It's all just one big math equation. You're all about these stats we've compiled because you listen to perfectively wild. With Ben Lindberg and McRowley, come for the ball, be banter's free.

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