Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2487: A Time to Canseco and a Time to Leap

Episode Date: June 4, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about the duality of Jo Adell’s defense (after the FARTBAT low that followed his triple-robbery high), Spencer Arrighetti and MLB’s monthly player honors as the last bastion of old-school-stat-based awards, whether a team with a losing record could make the playoffs this season, Paul Goldschmidt’s pleasing platoon role, how much credit the Brewers deserve for Kyle Harrison’s success, Louis Varland’s value, the Tigers’ rapid plummet out of contention, the twilights of Nick Castellanos’s and Andrew McCutchen’s careers, and (1:15:01) whether the CBA negotiations merit horse race-style coverage. Audio intro: Alex Glossman and Ali Breneman, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Jonathan Crymes, “Effectively Wild Theme 2” Link to Adell’s FARTBAT Link to Adell quote Link to Adell’s three robberies Link to dramatic robbery photo Link to EW robbery discussion Link to Adell’s 2020 FARTBAT Link to Canseco FARTBAT Link to May’s Pitchers of the Month Link to Pereda nut shot Link to Pennywise quote Link to Desk Set wiki Link to Player of the Month Award wiki Link to past PotM winners Link to THT article on the award Link to pitcher WAR leaders in May Link to Sportico on the unbalanced leagues Link to MLB.com on the lower October bar Link to Jay on the Tigers Link to Skubal rehab update Link to Rosenthal on Skubal Link to lowest-win playoff teams Link to Curt on Harrison Link to Location+ leaders Link to Brewers WAR leaders Link to reliever WAR leaders Link to four-seamer velo leaders Link to MLBTR on McCutchen Link to MLBTR on Castellanos Link to Clemens on the opening offers Link to Drellich on Meyer/Caplin quotes Link to Drellich on Manfred quotes Link to The Athletic on open books Link to story on Sánchez’s streak  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Give a Gift Subscription  Email Us: [e-mail]  Effectively Wild Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  Apple Podcasts Feed   Spotify Feed  YouTube Playlist  Facebook Group  Bluesky Account  Twitter Account  Get Our Merch! var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source

Hello, it's effectively wild, it's effectively wild, it's effectively wild, it's effectively wild. Hello and welcome to episode 2487 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of The Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Well, we must discuss the duality of Adele, the, a duality. Joe Adele, who earlier this year had one of the greatest successions of defensive highlights that has ever been seen, three robbed home runs in the same game. That's about as good as you

can be on defense. We did a whole discussion about what that was worth, how valuable was it, and we concluded that regardless of how you slice and dice the stats to determine what it was worth. It was super cool. And everyone knew that just from watching it and seeing the highlights and seeing the photo that was taken of him. Rob three dingers in a single game. Amazing. We did discuss at the time that he was sort of an unlikely candidate to do it because he's not an elite outfielder. He's got some skills. He's got some tools. But on the whole, the defensive metrics don't love his work. And we saw on Tuesday one example of why. Not that he's a serial offender when it comes to fartbats, not a serial fartbat offender, but he went full Kansako on Tuesday. Adel giveth and

Adele taketh away to everything. There is a season, a time to sew, a time to reap, a time to a time to Kansako, a time to leap. And those are both a time to Joe. Those two seasons, they're the same season for Joe Adele. He had the full Off the dome, just boink off the coconut or bonk. Maybe boink. Maybe not boink. Boing off the coconut is a fantastic turn of phrase. Yeah.

Well, whatever we call it, there was a home run that was hit because it bounced off his head and it went over that yellow line at Angel Stadium. And boy, that was, well, we talked about the most embarrassing baseball plays. and we did mention that that could be one of them, the fart bat. And this is what we saw. The fielder accidentally rewards the batter a tater. And so it's the ultimate highs and lows of outfield defense, I guess. We saw the best that an outfield defender can get,

and we saw the worst that one can get. And it's the same guy. So in this case, T.J. Rumfield's of the Rockies benefits from the largest of Joe Adele. So there's something sort of poetic about that that this game can humble you. You can make you a star and it can also

make you completely incompetent on any individual play. And so you can't get too comfortable because then this could happen. Well, and as we noted on the occasion of his three robbery game,

a feeling that he has familiarity with. Right? There precedent in Joe Adele's past. In fact, I think when he accomplished the three home run robbery game, I noted a relief for

him that this would be the sort of new prevailing memory that we would have of him after the home run he gifted in his rookie season. Yeah. I do think a boink off the head feels less

like your fault, you know? It It does feel worse because, hey, you got boinked on the head, you know, and I feel like that can't feel good, no matter what else happens in the game. It's like, ouch, I have been bopped on the head. You want to avoid little bunny foo comparisons, I think. Yeah, and maybe we should avoid boink. I like boink. Why?

Doink. Why do we need to avoid boink? Well, Boyk has other meanings. That's not my problem. That's not my fault. Okay. It is the most on a monopoetically accurate sort of thing to describe it. He got, doink isn't right, you know, doink.

Well, because in football you do the doink and it's just off the goal post or something. And you could have a doink off a foul pole maybe. But to my mind, doink is a. were deployed when the object ricocheting off the improbable because of its relative slimness in space object is a pole or a goalpost. We know what doink means because it makes a noise. The sound of a ball, whether it's a football or a baseball, hitting the foul pole or the goalpost, it makes a distinctive sound, you know?

Yes. The sound of the ball ricocheting off Joe Adele's cranium was not as audible from afar. Right. It was a, it was a boink. And I just invite everyone, get your minds out of the gutter. And you might say, hey, don't you invite us to live down there? And I would say on occasion, but have versatility being adults. We all boink down here. Well, there's the episode, though. Anyway, as you were saying. down here. We all point down here. Happy Friday. I would just say that if we are doing home run gifting or robbing math on Joe Adele's behalf, he is still ahead, you know? Yes.

Whatever his head might have to say about the matter as of yesterday. And so I would just say, don't worry about it, young man. But I would also say, what's going on with you, Joe? You know, it does seem like you're at the center of this a lot. And that's just a funny coincidence, surely, but it is a funny one. I would also offer that if I were given the opportunity

to choose between the kind of night that Joe Adele had, where, oops, boink, ball, home run, or the night that Johnny Parada had for the Mariners, where the balls that were getting points were his own. And then he was hitting home runs. I think I'd take Joe Adele's. I was worried that Johnny Parade his ability to bear children. I mean, he wouldn't be bearing them, presumably.

But to have them was compromised by the nutshot he took yesterday. Yeah, I said it, a nut shot. But then he hit home run. That was exciting. Yeah, recovered quickly. Yeah. So Joe Adele has had a replacement-level season, according to fancrafts.

Can only be ourselves. At the end of the day, all we can ever be is ourselves. Yeah, but you might think replacement level is just kind of boring, mundane, just generically bad,

unproductive most of the time. But he has bottomed out and he has, gosh, I need to be careful with all of this terminology in this context. I just want to point out

how often of late it has been you and not me. Because I think that if we were to compare our reputations for working blue, as it were, that mine would exceed yours. And that's not what it's been lately, folks. Check the transcript. I've been an instigator. You have been.

We have to be wary of overusing our horny intro theme. But it's so often fitting. But, yeah, ADWRC plus negative point to war, you might think forgettable, but it has been anything but that. Exactly. So which highlight do you think will prove more enduring? The three robberies or the – because Kansako, that's an all-timer. That's still an all-time baseball blooper. You still see that all the time.

And Konseko had a long accomplished career, putting aside the steroid stuff, which I know in Konseko's case is kind of an other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play situation? He had a lot of highlights, actual highlights. I can think of some other Kansako clip, some of the master's. of home runs, bashing with Big Mac, when he went 40-40, when he pitched and heard himself. But his header, Bingbunk, easy number one. It was a more satisfying boink or doink or whatever we're calling it, I think, in Canseco's case. I don't think we know that unless we ask them. Well, yeah.

He had a huge melon. Maybe that was part of it. But I think also it was just, I don't know. This one. This one was, I don't know if it was understandable. forgivable, but it looked like the ball just kind of got lost in traffic or something. It looked a little less silly maybe than the Canseco example. But that highlight has proved to really have legs.

And the three, that's a problem because you're in for three highlights, really, because the individual catches, only one of them was really so spectacular, which we talked about at the time. Altogether, it's an amazing super highlight. but you kind of have to watch all three to get the full sense of it, whereas this, it's more efficient. You just have to watch the one to see him brought low. So I wonder, years down the line,

I think in a way the three robberies is a more noteworthy achievement, and it is unprecedented, at least for now, whereas the Konseko, the fart bat, is not unprecedented, but I wonder, just because there's some assembly required when it comes to conveying the full majesty of his three robbery game. I see why you say that, but I would also offer that the photo we have from the three homerun robbery night is, I think, going to be an enduring stand-in for all three, even though it is only capturing the moment of one of the robberies.

So I think you don't need to do quite as much work to get at that night as you might expect because of the quality of that photograph. Yeah. So he had a quote about this misplay that I thought was funny. He said, it's one of those things where how it happened looks crazy. It looks like I've never played in the field before, which is disappointing because it's beyond the truth. But it is what it is.

I'm the only one that really knows what happened. Wait, what? I love that. I was out there and it happened to be. So it is what it is. I've got to just keep going and as a team we've got to keep going. This was emblematic of the angel's recent performance. But I love that line.

I'm the only one that really knows what happened. It's like there's some secret conspiracy. Like we were all watching. We could all see it. Yeah, the ball balked off your head and went over the line. So that's what happened. What do you mean? It's really the word we want instead of boink.

Maybe. But I'm glad we used boink temporarily. It led to some fun boink banter. Boink banter. if what he means is like there was a difficulty to the play that doesn't translate to the highlight. Maybe he lost it in the lights or in a fans white shirt or something. He could just, he could explain that. I guess then we would all know what happens.

Right. But he wants to keep it to himself. It's like I'm taking the secret to the grave of what really happens on this ball that I misplayed into a home run. I guess, I don't know. I sort of know what he means, but also he makes it seem like some grand conspiracy or something. Right. You didn't like receive mystical wisdom in a secret room or something. As far as we know, but he's the only one who knows what happened. We just have a bunch of angles of that play. Yeah, a ball, hit your head and became a home run. That's what happened. It balked or boinked

depending on how you're feeling about it. But it did. Anyway, that's, I think, a good go-to example of highs and lows and feeling good about yourself and feeling bad about yourself. And, It's not unique to baseball. We've all experienced this. And our lives are our lines of work. But, yeah, this is a really memorable example of that. It's like the old, you know, you're never as good as you look when you're going great and you're never as bad as you look when you're slumping or whatever.

Yeah. This is a pretty clear-cut example of that. So Joe Adele, he will never cease to entertain us one way or another. He's really something, you know? He really is. Also, I think we found maybe the last frontier of awards that don't directly correspond to advanced stats and war, because we got press release in our inboxes, I assume yours as well, about the Player of the Month award winners for May. And you find out about the AL, the NL, the rookie ones, the reliever ones. So the pitchers of the month in the respective leagues were Christopher Sanchez in the National League.

Yeah, makes sense. I mean, you know, could have been the MIS, I guess. But it helps that Sanchez has not allowed a single run in that month. So they're pretty close. And if you need a tiebreaker of making a run at the scoreless innings streak record, then I guess that'll do it when it's close. but in the American League, the winner was Spencer Aragutti of the Astros, your Italian-American brother. And this was maybe a little more controversial, as if anyone particularly cares or pays attention to this stuff. But if you did, that could have gone either way.

I mean, the NL Award could have gone either way because Ms. Ravski actually led the NL in, Pitcher war led all pitchers in war in May. 2.4 versus 2.1 for Sanchez. But again, So close. And Sanchez has the sparkling zero ERA. Whereas Spencer Arredetti, he also has the sparkling ERA, but not so much the war or anything else, because he kind of did it a little with smoke and mirrors maybe in the month.

Not that he was bad, but he was not great. He wasn't exactly my idea. Where is he on this leaderboard? I know. You have to expand. The default is not enough players to get there. You got to keep going. Where is he?

You got to set it to infinity in order to get Arigetti to show up. Where is he? Wait, is he invisible entirely? I did see him. Now he is entirely eluding me. I don't know what's happening. 96. 96.

There he is. Okay. Okay, so just to clarify, because, like, I want to make sure I'm not doing something doofy with my splits here. So I'm just looking at pitching all leagues. I mean, I could do, I just did all leagues. I could do American League because that's, they split it by league, don't they? Yeah. Okay.

So then he's not 96 anymore. But where are you, Spencer? I see him. I see him. I see. Okay, yeah. So in both leagues with a, with a zero minimum innings pitched. Yeah, I put the minimum to 10.

Okay. Yeah. I figured that would be low enough. With no minimum, he's 99th, the 99th most valuable pitcher in May. That's in both leagues. And I guess if we want to do AL only because we're talking about a league-specific award, then, yeah, 54th with no innings pitch minimum. So that's 0.4 war in May. Okay.

He had a 4.51 FIP. he had a 5.27 ex-fip. No, sorry, that was his XERA was the first one. His FIP was not quite that bad. His FIP was merely 4.19, but his ex-fip was like 5.3 or so. So it was, you know, he definitely excelled in the run prevention department. So he had a .93 ERA for May. but he also struck out fewer than seven batters per nine.

He walked about 5.3 batters per nine. He barely had more strikeouts than walks. Yeah. What are you doing? He had a 197 babip and he had a 3.2% home run per fly ball rate. So it was very much every luck indicator going his way. He had about a 90% left on base or strand rate. So when guys were getting on, they weren't scoring.

The fly balls weren't turning into home run. the batted balls weren't turning into hits. And that's how you get a .93ERA with a 5.27 ex-fit. And that's a .4 war pitcher of the month for April. So this might be the last holdout. I haven't done any kind of comprehensive study of Player of the Month awards to find out whether they are more or less correlated with war or whatever than full-season awards have become.

But I have to think that Spencer Hergeti would not be winning, say, the Scy Young, if it were the end of the season. No. Now, if he had a .93 ERA, if he had the lowest ERA ever for a full season. I think a down ballot votes at the very least. I wonder, like, where's the limit these days when it comes to just be the war leader? Like, if he ran a .93 ERA for a full season, you know? Yeah, I think we'd maybe make some exceptions. Yeah, would that be enough?

Because right now, poor Davis Martin, who led all A.L. Pitchers with 1.4 War in May or Brian Wu also had 1.4 and, you know, just like lots of pitchers who were lapping the winner Spencer Getty here. Yeah, read Dettmers. Read Dettmers. Trey Savage. Kevin Gausman. Payton Tolly. Yeah.

Shane O'Callaghan. Yeah. Gavin Williams. Joe, I'm just naming. I'd name 53 names if you want before you get to Spitz Parenthood. Right, yeah, it could just be so many guys. Yeah. So he's actually, we're recording on Wednesday afternoon,

and he is starting later today against Paul Skeens, no less. So we will see whether the pitcher of the month in the American League can keep this rolling in interleague play here. But yeah, I actually, I realized when I saw this that I did not know or wasn't sure how this award is awarded. I was just about to ask you that, Ben. I was just about to say, who decides this and does, are we to take from this mostly that, like, Petriela was, like, on vacation or something? Yeah, well, good question, which I have anticipated. And it turns out that this award, which has been handed out since the 50s, and I think more or less the same way. So it's beat writers and broadcasters for each team vote on this.

and I was texting with former beatwriter Zach Buchanan, who is a past voter for Player of the Month awards. That's so funny. He said that they just pass out stat sheets for each of these awards, and you basically just pick a guy. And I don't know whether they cook the books and they give you only a certain number of candidates or if it's like an all-star ballot

where they give you some names and you can do a write-in if you want or what. But yeah, it's sort of strange, I guess, because it's an MLB award, but it is voted on by media members, but not, I guess, exclusively BBWA members, because broadcasters are involved as well. Yeah. So that's how it happens, but there's, I guess, a lot of overlap with the BBWA and the people who...

Sure. You pull from that pool to do full-season awards. But, yeah, I have to think that maybe, I don't know, it would be interesting conversation, I guess, if someone like Spencer, Eric Eddy, had a .93 ERA over a full season without the peripherals to match. And we would test our tolerance for the old school stats because at some point when people do vote for full season awards,

some people still default to, well, I look at the runs allowed and more of the runs allowed or baseball reference model of pitching war. And I always say, well, yeah, but we have things that more accurately isolate the pitcher's performance and isn't that what we're doing here? This is an individual award, and some of run scoring or not has to do with luck or defense

or things that are happening or not happening while the pitcher's on the mound, but the pitcher's not directly controlling. But yeah, I wonder if this is sort of an exception. Not that there are that many eyebrow-raising choices for Player of the Month or Pitcher of the Month. I haven't noticed. I always get the press release, and I open it,

and I say, yeah, okay, I guess that checks out. So I'm not normally bringing up the winners of this award as Bander, which I guess suggests that this was the exception where I read it. And I thought, huh, Spencer Erigetti, really. I knew that he had had some successful starts, but I didn't think of him as dominant or anything. And indeed, he wasn't. So. Checks out. I don't think I have thought about this.

This is the most I have ever thought about this award. I guess is what I would say. It's like Employee of the Month award and you put a little framed pack on the wall by checkout or something and maybe you get a little bonus or something. I don't even know what you get if you're the player of the month beyond pride.

Do they get a little trinket of some kind? Is there a player of the month chotchky? What is the actual award? I think the part of this that I'm actually the most struck by is I'm looking at it, unless I am misunderstanding or missing its placement in the press release, I think this is the rare unsponsored designation of this kind. This is not the Chevy Truck National League pitcher of the Month award, which I think means do a better job.

This is, you can't, you know, look, when, when awards go sideways and it's a sponsored sort of a bit of business, you understand that you're, it's not real. You know, it's like it's, it's a goof-ass thing that you're doing. And, and you could say, look, the good executives at Chevy voted and they really like Spencer Erigetti, so, you know, what are you going to do? Sometimes they don't know who Davis Martin is. But this is the league. This is the league with no special logo, no, no bizarre official earth mover of major league baseball.

This was not presented by the official CBD partner of major league baseball. Yeah. And MLB usually has no filter, no standards when it comes to attaching a sponsor to an awards. An award, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so maybe that suggests that no one cares about this award. No sponsor was...

Well, it's funny, though, because most of the other, most of the other selections here, and I do like that they differentiate between starters and relievers, sure, sure. But like, most of these are fine. Yeah, oh, yeah. You know, Kate Smith was good in the month of May, and Mason Miller was good in the month of May. And Kurtz and Murakami. were good in the month of May. And J.J. Bladay,

I don't understand J.J. Bladay. Okay? At some point, we got to get to the bottom of J.J. Bladay. Because I don't get that. I don't understand how this is happening. And it's very funny because, you know, who the NL rookie of the month was, you know, the, I was about to say the boinker himself, which is casting the whole thing in terms that I don't mean to. But the bonker himself, T.J. Rumfield.

That's right. And that guy, that guy. that guy he's having a great very bad bit fuel time but a great time that was in June though I guess

his gift from Adele that didn't count toward his May award he did it legitimately right it didn't it didn't influence the it didn't influence the award but I just I just mean to say

like the other decisions here defensible the graphic design work on this announcement is spectacular anyway I don't understand and I how many people people vote? How many of the beat writers and broadcasters vote? I don't know if it's all of them,

but I guess it's every team, every market. And maybe they just pull all of them. So yeah, it's interesting. And MLB has had no qualms about attaching sponsors to storied name awards, like, you know, Clemente, Aaron Robinson, like they all have some sort of sponsor generally. And when there's a press release about who won, it's always very awkward because it's like the prestigious award named after a luminary of the game. And this is the sponsor and it's always like you're obligated in MLB copy to show the sponsor and attach the sponsor to it. And so, yeah, if this is unsponsored, because MLB will sponsor absolutely anything and everything.

So that, I guess, gives you some sense of the reach of this. It's like maybe they couldn't convince any sponsor that this would actually be good exposure for the brands. Like, yeah, we couldn't find any takers for players. of the month because, you know, everyone withdrew when they found out that Spencer Ergetti won. They're like, oh, that's not our brand. No, Spencer Ergetti's fine.

It's just, you know, picture of the month. I feel like we're being a little bit mean to the young man now. Yeah, in his moment of triumph. But yeah, like, come on. Spencer Arroghetti's like, I'm just standing here trying to, you know, help this bottom dwelling Astros team. Excuse me, the angels are worse, but not by a lot. So, you know, he's just like, I'm just trying to do my job in these two podcasters, an unsurious profession.

Yeah. And it is, it's sort of arbitrary because it's like a calendar month. And so if your hot streak doesn't happen to conform to that span of time, if you were hot from the middle of one month to the middle of the next month, well, that was just as valuable maybe, but you're not going to win that award. There was a hardball times piece about this in 20. And at the time, at least, that piece noted that an engraved desk set used to be the award. More recently, it was a flat screen television from Sharp. And as of 2019, apparently it was a plaque from Budweiser. It feels like we're downgrading.

So soon it's just going to be a pat on the back, a certificate. Was it sponsored at some point? I guess it was, maybe. They should just give them a case of Budweiser. Like that would be a... Yeah, sure. Crack a cold one. Your player of the month.

You're the player of a desk set. That's delightful. Oh my gosh. Something all players needs a desk set. And then what size of flat screen was it from Sharp? Yeah, that I don't know. Yeah. But yeah, desk set.

Good movie, kind of. It is a good. Yeah. Look, it's of its time. You know, it bears the mark of its. time and all its limitations, but I'll always defend a good, a good Hepburn and Spencer Tracy romp. Yes, yes.

And, and Ephron's, not your favorite Ephron, but the elder Ephron's wrote the screenplay for Phoebe and Henry. But yeah, I wonder whether the voters for this award are a little more tolerant of, well, fluke seems unkind. But we're being so mean to Spencer Arrigetti. He's just sitting here going, it's a Mia, the picture of the month. I'm allowed to use that voice.

Good fortune. Yes, not me. You're not. We need to venture in two typical exaggerated Italian accents than I defer to you. But yeah, yeah, I wonder whether because this is a low profile award and because it's inherently a fairly small sample award. Sure.

that maybe voters are thinking, sure, give Spencer the player of the month. Give it to win. He's not going to be in the running for the... Sorry, Spencer. Mean. Oh, my Lord. I got to cut him down to size, you know.

He's going to get too big for his britches. His head's going to be too big because he's thinking, ah, I was the best pitcher of the whole month in this league. Right. Yeah. Not so fast, Spencer. But, yeah. But I, if,

I were a voter, I'm not saying I would vote based on just ERA or something if I were, but I guess I would stress about that less. I'd be probably looking at war leaderboards a little less than I would if it were a full season award, because it's not that telling anyway. And if you had a month where you barely allowed any runs, sure. I'll give it to you. I probably wouldn't have given it to him, but it's there. Ben's here to let you know that his unsponsored Lord Jess could be yours, maybe. Yeah, someone's got to stand up for the sanctity of the Player of the Month award. It's got to mean something.

We can't just be handing these things out willy-nilly, you know. It's got to really reflect who was the, and I guess you could say, well, player of the month, maybe that doesn't mean most valuable player or most valuable pitcher. Maybe it just means you were the player who most stood out in that month. You were talked about. You were notable in that month because no runs were allowed while you were on the mound. So you were a player of the month. You weren't the best, but you were a player of the month.

You were one of the players of that month, you know? One of them. We've devoted a shocking amount of time to this conversation, but here I go again. Like, would you imagine, for instance, that you had a player, a person, starting pitcher relevant to this, again, very long conversation we're having about an award no one cares about. And imagine for a moment that he like threw a no hitter, not a combined one, one of his own. And then his other starts that month were just okay. Would you think him worthy of being the player of the month because he threw a no-no? Yeah, I'd give a little bonus for

that, I think, just because I have to uphold my high standards. Got to maintain my intellectual rigor and consistency when it comes to the Player of the Month award that is extremely important. But yeah, I think in the sense that maybe it's just an award for who had a memorable month. Yeah. It's kind of like not to damn Cal by comparing him to Spencer Ericketti last year, but just the idea that he was the player of the year. Was he the most valuable player? Was the MVP? Eh, maybe not.

But he was the player of the year. that's for sure and we will always associate that year with him you could say that about a no-hitter certainly a perfect game just like well he kind of owned that month we will associate that month with him and it's more convincing if you're christopher sanchez and you aren't allowing any runs and also you like are as dominant as christopher sanchez has been but even if you're not allowing any runs and maybe it's not entirely you're doing to the extent that it has been with Sanchez, then it still, it was your month. You had yourself a month, so you can't take May of 2026 away from Spencer Arrogatti, even though I'm doing my best too.

You are talking about the month that Spencer Arrogati had sort of in the same spirit as the It's Your Birthday period sign from the office. Okay. Well, I did want to bring up another pitcher who had a very fine may, although he was not eligible for the AL Awards because he is a National League pitcher. But Kyle Harrison just seems to be getting better and better. And I've alluded a couple times to, oh, the Brewers did it again. And he's the new Quinn Priester, except maybe even better where you're taking a prospect who kind of failed to launch with his original team. And then just got handed off to the Red Sox.

And then they quickly said, you take him. and the brewers did, and then he suddenly got a lot better. Kyle Harrison was sixth in the majors among pitchers in May. So unfortunately, he was overshadowed by Mizraowski and Sanchez and some others, but he was excellent. And he has been excellent all season long. He is the third most valuable brewer behind the Miz and Bryce Terang. He is, I think, the 13th most valuable pitcher period in the majors this year by Fangraphs were.

So he's been great. And in my previous couple mentions of that, dare we say, breakout, I credited this to some extent to the brewers. Oh, here they go again. They're doing it again. Sure. And then I read a piece by our Brewer's preview guest, Kurt Hogue, at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. And I questioned how responsible the brewers are for elevating Kyle Harrison. Because a big part of his success is a new pitch, which is always satisfied.

fine when we can connect the dots from a new pitch to improvement. Not that that's all it is, but he has a new change-up, a kick-change. And it turns out that the Brewers didn't teach him this pitch. He showed up at Brewer's camp with this new pitch. So, quoting from Kurt here, the 24-year-old left-hander revealed after his outing that he entered camp this year throwing a kick-change, a change-up thrown with a spiked middle finger that generates splitter-like movement vertically with change-up spin. It was all the rage, I don't know, a couple seasons ago.

Everyone was talking about the kick change. It was the it pitch of that spring. So he showed up with this thing, and it's good. And it turns out that he got it from Giants right-hander Hayden Birdsong, who was a friend and former teammate of his. Nice. Yeah. And he had messed around with this pitch before the Red Sox tried to.

get him to throw one and throw a better change up. And it just didn't click for whatever reason. They were trying to get him to use Connolly Early's grip and movement to model his pitch movement and grip on. And it just didn't really work. And he was messing around with it in bullpen sessions at Worcester. And it just didn't work. But then this offseason, for whatever reason, he tried the grip that Hayden Birdsong showed him.

and ah, voila, Eureka, Epiphany, okay, it's good. And it was starting to move the way that he wanted it to move. And the stats were showing the stats that he wanted to see. And so he showed up when Harrison arrived in Phoenix following the trade in early February. So it makes it sound like the Brewers weren't even aware that they were, well, buying low on Kyle Harrison. I guess they knew that, but that maybe he was about to appreciate quite suddenly because of this new pitch. He didn't want to make a big deal of the kick change to coaches Chris Hook and Jim Henderson

just in case his new team wasn't as fond of a new pitch when it came time for his first bullpen though the pitch did all the talking I told them it was new but not that I had struggled with it Harrison said from the first bullpen they just told me to throw it with conviction they were like it doesn't look new you're throwing it with conviction

that's just something she was very convicted in that pitch that's just something that they do a really good job with is coming in and letting you do you. It's let's see what you do. They're obviously going to tweak and change some things, but I just love how open they are. And it's kind of like my show. Okay. So some credit to the Brewers for accepting it and for letting him debut this new pitch and being open-minded and saying, yeah, let's look at it. And it looks good.

And he's throwing it with conviction. And the numbers check out. So yeah, by all means, if you feel comfortable with it. Yeah, so that's good to be malleable because there are some teams that might say, oh, well, this hasn't worked before. I guess they didn't know the full backstory of the pitch because he selectively, I guess, relayed the origin story here. But still, they didn't know he had one. He shows up with one. They might have been closed-minded and said, oh, no, this is not what we evaluated or it's unproven or something. Now, if you're Kyle Harrison and you haven't really lived up to the hype and the prospect potential than both you and your team

probably more willing to experiment than they would be otherwise. But some credit to the brewers for that. But not as much credit as I was giving them, I think. Because if they had come in and said, hey, we think you should throw a kick change and here's how to do it. And then suddenly he perfected the pitch.

Then I would say, oh, all right. Well, some credit, obviously, to Harrison for throwing the thing. but a lot of credit to the brewers for recognizing that he would benefit from that and then teaching it to him. But now, how much credit do we actually give to the brewers for Harrison's success to the extent that it's driven by this pitch that he picked up before he became a brewer, before he showed up on the scene? I will admit that I've been trying to come up with a Connolly early, better late than never joke for the last like five minutes. And so my thoughts on this might be underbaked as a result. Still working on it?

Well, I just, you know, there are obvious ones where it's like, but no, it's not quite there. You know, it doesn't. So you need to talk to Hayden Bird's song about it. Right. And then it will click suddenly. I mean, okay. So I think that you have to give some amount of credit to being open to, like you said, like letting the guy try stuff out and do his thing and maybe persist in a attempt at a pitch that

wasn't working for him before and giving him the space to find like a grip that worked or what have you. I suspect knowing what I do about the Brewers that this was probably not the only change he made and that all of these things are interconnected and helping him to sort of optimize the mix more generally, probably something that they deserve some credit for helping him with, that he deserves some credit for being able to execute and be open to. I think mostly the opinion that we have of this that perhaps ought to change is the one you've identified, which is, this is, it sounds like not an example of the Red Sox being stodgy or not open to add.

or even necessarily bad at identifying the general shape that that adjustment should make, even if they weren't able to get him to sort of hone in on the particulars. And as we have talked about several times on this pod before, long, storied, proud tradition of guys just having a breakthrough, taking a step forward because they were, forgive the phrase, dicking around in the bullpen one day, and some other guy was like, well, have you tried this thing? And then that thing being the thing that unlocks it.

Like we spent time on the last episode discussing how, you know, development isn't linear. Yes, exactly. You know, you can take big steps forward off a seemingly mundane, sometimes small adjustment, which isn't to say that like, you know, there isn't also plenty of precedent for guys doing like a wholesale tear down, reworking of the repertoire and emerging like a new guy. That happens too. But sometimes the, you know, the path to success is paved with minor tweaks and small changes.

So I don't know that it changes my opinion of the brewers, not because this speaks to, you know, a, you know, a non-examined. example of their capacity to work wonders with pitchers, but because, like, you know, I bet they, I bet they did help help the guy kind of move things around, but I'm open to a more positive read of his time with the Red Sox. Now, having said that, if you really had conviction in, not that you're convicted, but if you had conviction in that as a mode of improving a guy who did have, you know, a meaningful prospect pedigree and, you know, who you went out to acquire and whatnot.

Well, why are you trading them? You know, that part, I do wonder about the, just feel like they kind of gave up a little bit, you know, they gave up on him a little bit. And it's like, you were willing to get this guy as part of the Devers deal. Like, come on, come on, right,

giving up on. And not that much time, right? They traded for him last June, and then they flipped him in February. And for Caleb Durbin. You know, like I feel like I'm being so rude about Caleb. I am being rude about Caleb Durbin, who was on my rookie of the year ballot, the way that you're being rude about Spencer Argeti. But I don't think either of them listen to this podcast, so hopefully we can kind of get it in under the wire and not be thought less of.

I was higher on Caleb Durbin than 47 WRC Plus and replacement level. So I'm surprised that he's been this bad. I'm surprised that he's been this bad too. I just, what I mean is like you don't have to think that Kyle Harrison is going to be almost a two-win pitcher to maybe be like, are we giving up on this guy a little too quick? Yeah. Yeah. And I don't want to oversell the kick change because he's throwing the change up about 10% of the time. Right.

So it's not like that's the only difference. Now, maybe sometimes you have a pitch that unlocks the rest of your repertoire in some way, even if you don't throw that individual pitch all that often. but Kurt did mention that that's not all they've done. They've made some other minor tweaks at least. They've honed his slider shape a bit, as well as trying some new experiments with his sinker, trying to get more separation with it from his foreseamer. The pitch has been a hurdle for Harrison

because it requires him to sequence his body and arm ever so differently from his foreseamer. The constant drilling of up and away four seamers makes it more difficult for him to get in the proper spot to hit a glove side sinker. Sure. Yeah, that makes sense. His command seemingly has improved his control, his walk rate has, but his location plus, at least, he's actually, he's leading the majors among all pitchers with more than, well, 11 innings at least. He is a one, I know. There's Jake Bennett of Boston with 10 and a third innings is leading the majors in location plus minimum 10 innings pitch.

But minimum 10 and 2 thirds innings pitch, Kyle Harrison is leading the majors in location plus. So, yeah, I think certainly partial credit to the brewers. But sure. It does speak to the fact that development is, it's often kind of confusing. And sometimes it's the team and sometimes it's the player. And sometimes it's some other facility entirely. And often it's some combination of more than one of those factors as it is in Harrison. So give some credit to the brewers, but assist to Hayden Birdsong as well.

And the Giants are probably thinking, could you not have? have taught him the kick change when he was still here, though? Right. Would have been nice if you had done this when we could benefit from it. But, okay, I guess that's nice. And then they could say, you can never be, I don't know. Gosh, I was so close to having a commonly early joke around that. Sorry.

Couldn't he have been early for, no, that's not right either. Yeah. There is the branch Ricky better to trade him a year too early than a year too late, Maxim, which I guess the Red Sox, they did trade him too early and that was bad.

In this case, I don't know that it applies. And now if you're the Red Sox, it's getting late early. Nailed it. Yeah. That doesn't even, I mean, it makes sense within the context of the Red Sox,

but it doesn't make sense within the context of Kyle Harrison. Yeah. Furious. All right. Here's another. question for you, how much hand-wringing do you think there will be if and when a team makes the playoffs this year with a losing record? Because that could happen. Like the AL is threatening.

We just don't know what to be mad about right now. We're so confused. The AL is threatening to do that because it's so lopsided in terms of the number of winning and losing teams by league. Hey, the Mariners won in a row. They're trying. Yeah, the Mariners, they're doing their part lately. Yeah. Yeah, but we've gotten some questions about the biggest mismatch between the two leagues, and we answered one in terms of run differential in interleague play. But we've also gotten questions about just the most lopsided number of winning teams in one league or the other. And others have delved into this. There was a Sportico piece the other week when the AL had four teams over 500 and the National League had 11. Yeah.

Wow. And as the piece noted, those are the fewest and most teams from either league, respectively, to be above 500 as of May 28th. That's when this was written since MLB expanded to 30 franchises in 1998. So, yeah, it's weird to have. And it's more feasible for that kind of mismatch to happen these days because of just changes to the season structure. and if the more balanced schedule that we have now where you have more interleague games and you have fewer games within the division and everything.

So if there is an imbalance between the leagues and we talked about why maybe there is a bit more in the NL's favor these days, then that's going to show up more in the records. But still, it's weird. And because of this, if it doesn't correct itself, because if the season, ended today, which would be weird and bad and surprising,

then we would, I think, have a team with a losing record. The Texas Rangers, as we record, are in possession of the third wild card slot in the AL with a 30 and 31 record. Yeah, and the A's are half a game behind the Rangers, 29 and 31. The Orioles are a game back, 29 and 32. The Blue Jays are a game back, 29 and 32.

The twins are a game and a half back, 29 and 33. So there are all these teams that are bunched up within a game and a half of that third wildcard spot and they all have losing records as of today. So if this were to persist, then we would get a team just sailing into the playoffs with a losing records. And even if we don't get that, we're seemingly almost down to get a very lackluster, mediocre record by that last team in the AL probably.

So do you think that people will concern troll about this or be legitimately concerned about this? Is it any cause for concern? I mean, it's not great. It isn't great within the context of this as an individual season. I think the place where we might classify the reaction to it as hand-wringing would come if, you know, we suggested that it was sort of indicative of a broader and more meaningful. meaningful trend. And I don't know that I think that. I wonder if this is just, you know, a bit of, of weird, fluky nonsense, which isn't to say that I think that the- Like Spencer-A-Gettys May? Right. It's exactly. Like, don't, don't make of it more than a Spencer-Ari-Regetti-May. That's what we're always saying, you know? Or it's, it's early. It's Spencer-Aragettie's May. It's, now, it's not good. It isn't. good for, you know, I think for the obvious reasons, which it makes you nervous that the World

Series will be kind of a bust in terms of its entertainment potential. It's a bummer for fans of NL teams that I think are deserving of playoff run that likely will not get it in deference to AL teams that might not be very good. So it's not good for that reason. It would be interesting to me to sort of see how it gets latched onto by either side in the upcoming CBA nonsense? Like what does it do to the narrative of, you know, competitive, I mean, I guess we're more likely to get a Dodgers World Series 3P if the AL field is that weak. But the NL field is quite strong, so maybe they don't even get there. True.

And I guess the AL champion could still be a. a good team even if the league is not so good. There are at least a couple of good teams in the Yale probably. Yeah, like I think the Yankees are a legitimately good club. Now, it's going to depend at least somewhat on how hurt Aaron Judge is. And if he is actually hurt, well, that is a less compelling offering. But you have Ben Rice, who, you know, is good. And you have Paul Goldschmidt, lefty masher.

There you go. I'm really enjoying. I like a, it's not a pure platoon, but he is, it's like last year he raked against lefties, but he still faced righties mostly. And this year, I think it's about even, which, because there are many more righties than lefties, that's pretty pronounced platoon role. And that's what he was brought on to do. And he is doing it.

And I like that, you know, he's, he's 38 years old. And he still got at least that limited skill set, which can be quite valuable. when there's a roster fit. So he's got a 152 WRC plus overall. I want that. Yeah. And against lefties, he's totally just, he's killing him. So.

Killing him. Yeah, versus lefties. His WRC plus this year is 253. So 62 against righties. So yeah, you want to hide him. He used to be an equal opportunity masher to a greater extent. Obviously, you always had a platoon split. But now maybe he's reduced to raking against lefties.

But still, I just find that very satisfying when you have that roster fit and you have playing time for that guy and he has that skill set that, okay, I can't do what I did before. I can't be an everyday player and star the way that I once was? But boy, can I still absolutely crush Southpaws and they're still scared to see me coming? That's quite satisfying. Yeah, it is satisfying. Oh, the mirrors are losing now. After you talk them up and everything. I have to go back to being mean to them.

When I've been mean to them, they've been winning because bullying works. But I think we will get a lot of hand-bringing about it. And some of it will be legitimate and some of it will be a little bit silly and perhaps overblown, making more of this as sort of a statement about the game. But, you know, this is part of the danger

you run into when you expand the playoff field too. Yes, exactly. You're always in position to have to grapple with this a little bit more than you would be if you were more selective in who you led into October. So it's not great, but it'll probably be fine. I mean, or it won't. We'll find out.

Yeah. I think, well, probably there won't be a losing team that makes the playoffs because one of these teams will have to be above water the rest of the way. Whichever one ends up claiming that wild card or those wild cards probably will play well enough because they're just a bunch of teams that are within a few games of 500. And most likely one of them will break through and manage to be more than, say, three games about 500 the rest of the way. And then they will take that spot.

But they could very well be an 83 or 4 or 5 win team or something as opposed to a more respectable 87 or 88 or whatever. So I don't know. I think, yeah, you do have to draw a distinction between how the overall format. affects the playoff field and then how any individual season shakes out because we always have those crises where just depending on the playoff matchups and who upsets whom then we think oh do we need to tear up this playoff format right and and sometimes there's a real lesson to be learned there and there's an action item that can come from the way that a playoff field is composed. And sometimes it's just, well, that was one year. And whatever structure you settle on,

some years, it's going to work out better than other years. And you can't overreact to just getting a bad draw because then you'll just constantly be adjusting every year and you'll just end up with undesirable outcomes anyway. But you're right. That is the bigger takeaway that it becomes easier for a pretty mediocre club to make the playoffs when more clubs make the playoffs. So we We've known that, and this might just be, no, I guess it could the people who think too many teams in the playoffs. Not that I think we're putting that. Pandora's box closed again. I think that, what is it, genies out of the bottle, Pandora's box, whatever kind of container.

The thing has been released from that thing. And it's going to be tough to get it back in there. And if anything, but maybe there will be more resistance to expanding the playoff field. Sure. Because there already is some, but of course, teams want it, the league wants it. And it is a bargaining chip that players have in CBA negotiations. They can always concede because the owners are always going to be pushing for more, more playoff revenue, more playoff teams, especially if and when there's expansion. And players can say, okay, we'll give you that if you give us this.

Maybe there will be a bit more resistance to further expanding the playoff field in the short term if there's kind of. of an embarrassing situation where some teams that just don't seem playoff caliber become playoff teams. I don't imagine that we are going to see much in the way of demands for playoff expansion prior to league expansion. I think that we're going to, that's going to be a back burner issue until we have, you know, 32 teams. Hope so. But, you know, I've been wrong before. A thing out of the bottle, this just proves my point. point that the hardest part of writing science fiction is the nouns.

Yeah. Coming up with the nouns, man. That's rough. The proper names. Yeah. Forps. Like, what are you doing? Oh, yeah. Place names, people names. Oh, yeah. That's challenging. Yeah, rough stuff. Yeah. And it's not as if this couldn't have happened before. And like the 2006 Cardinals, one 83 games, they've won the NL Central. They won the World Series. So, you know, it could happen under earlier systems, obviously post wildcard, but pre this many wild cards. And now it's just a little more likely.

And so, yeah, the league split, though, I guess it's true that because of the conditions and the more balanced schedule and everything, if there is a bigger disparity between the leagues, then it can show up more in a disparity in the quality of the playoff teams. But we tend not to see, well, sometimes, those league disparities persist

for years or decades at a time. Eventually, things swing the other way. But yeah, I don't know. I guess for the time being, it seems like the NL is ascendant and maybe you could continue to get something sort of lopsided like this, but it does depend on just a lot of unlikely occurrences

and a lot of disappointments. I guess one of the, I mean, it's kind of depressing that for the AL, some of the teams that are winning are themselves surprises. I don't think people expected the raise to be this good, and they've certainly had some good fortune when it comes to outcomes in close games,

or the White Sox who are improved, but did people expect them to improve quite this much this year, perhaps not? So it's taken some surprising performances even to get to this point. I guess it's slightly, instead of 11 to 4 now, it's merely 10 to 5, because the AL now has 5. winning teams. So the NL is just doubling the ALs total because we've got the Ray is, the Yankees, is the Guardians, the Mariners, and the White Sox. And then they're 10 winning NL teams plus the

nationals are 500 as we speak. But it fluctuates because there are teams that are at 500 or a game or two above or below. Anyway, yeah, this will probably be something that people will be talking about and fretting about. And I think there's a slight reason for a concern, but that's just kind of doubling down on some of the longstanding concerns that some folks have had about prioritizing the postseason over the regular season and lowering the bar. But we have entertained suggestions, questions. I think we've answered an email about, well, should there be a minimum number of wins?

Like, should it be, you must be this tall to ride kind of for October, just because It's just kind of embarrassing when a losing team. And in other sports, in the NHL, like sports where they let in an even higher percentage of teams, then this has been happening for a while. But I don't know that anyone loves it. They're just used to it or resigned to it. But we have fielded that question about should you have to have this many wins?

But it's just it's sort of tough with the way things are set up. Well, and it's funny too because, you know, the AL definitely, is not good this year. And we noted coming into the season that we were just sort of projected for a lot of mid in a lot of spots. But it does feel like this year we have avoided, you know, we don't have like a team that's on pace to be historically bad. So maybe it only seems better to me because of where we sit relative to some prior seasons. But, you know, I mean, even the, even the giants aren't like bad relative to like the way that the Rockies or the White Sox have been in recent season. So I don't know, man.

It's sort of a tricky weird thing that fluctuates year to year. What are you going to do? Well, it's something we will remember at least if a losing team manages to make it. But it probably won't happen. Yeah. Famous last words. Yeah, speaking of bad teams, since the last time we talked about the Tigers and whether they will be in the market to Terek Scoobel, that seems to be almost a given now.

When we talked about it, they had been bad for a while, they'd lost seven consecutive series or whatever it was, and they were tipping over into the territory where, huh, you really have to consider offering him up if someone gives you something good. Well, now they're 24 and 38, as we speak. They are a game ahead of the angels and the royals are right around there

for just like worst record in the AL. they're only, they're tied with the Rockies in record right now. The Tigers, they're only three teams worse. So at this point, they've just been so bad since Scouple got hurt, not entirely because Scouple got hurt. They've missed him, of course, but it's been the bats as much as anything as Jay J. Jaffe just wrote about, right, for Fancrafts. But yeah, the offense has disappeared even more so than the pitching.

And suddenly, they're just kind of out of it. it, sort of. I hesitate to say that about an AL central team, but the playoff odds are down to about 16%. So at this point, you kind of have to count on a scoble trade, right? I mean, it's not a given, but it's edging towards a certainty. I think that the way to think about it is that the thing that's going to be the barrier to them doing it is finding the inappropriate prospect fit, which was, which is like always a barrier to getting a deal done, but in prior seasons, you could have been like, well, that's ridiculous. Like, this team is competitive and good.

And it wouldn't matter what they were being offered. And now it's like, well. Yeah. And it's, of course, contingent on his return at full strength, but it does seem like the Scoopel scope is doing what it was advertised to do thus far. He's getting close to coming back. Okay. Also, we must give credit to someone who was not.

I guess the relief pitcher of the month, but might be the relief pitcher of the year, at least in the American League. We've got a comment really from Harry who said, we know that Mason Miller has the ability to use the force for his pitches. But Louis Varlane is full on Darth Vader this first half. He has an ERA of 0.29 and a crazy ERA plus of 1509, as has essentially been unstoppable since becoming the J's closer. Is it possible to keep this up? Well, you know that. the answer to that, Harry. Yeah. A 0.29 ERA.

I mean, it's more possible for a reliever than for a starter, but probably not. And is he low-key having the best reliever season this decade, maybe ever? Whoa. Okay. Well, we're getting maybe a little hyperbolic about Louis Varlane, but we're just correcting for our snubbing him thus far. We've mentioned him, but we have not fully given him his due this year after he rose to national prominence by being used in every single postseason game last year.

He's used every day now. Slight exaggeration only. Yeah. He has now taken the Major League lead in Reliever War. Now he is tied with Mason Miller out to one decimal spot, 1.5 a piece. I think he's tied with Kate Smith also. That's true. They are all at 1.5.

But Varland is first among equals. He is number one on the leaderboard and Fancraft's leaderboards. they do actually sort by additional decimal spots that you can't even see. But if you export them, yeah, then it goes out to more decimal places and you can tell the difference. So he is technically leading the majors in Reliever War. And yeah, 28 games. So I guess he's only pitching in every other game or so. And 31 innings, 0.29ERA.

And the peripherals are not too shabby either. I mean, he's not a Spencer Errigan. or anything is 1.25 FIP. And it doesn't, it's not as eye-popping as Mason Miller, obviously. The strikeout rate is lofty, but not as extreme. And he has a 33-Babbat Farrant, which is pretty impressive given the 0.29ERA. Now, he has not allowed a single home run, so there's a little luck with the flyballs not going over the fence. But on the whole, he has truly been fantastic.

And Mason Miller, you expect that. And Cade Smith even, you expect that. And he's been just nails since the very beginning of the season. But he's been great before, as has Mason Miller. And Varland, wow, if anything, I might have expected some sort of hangover effect, some fatigue, perhaps from last year. Because he was a good, solid, reliable reliever last year for the Blue Jays and for the twins before he changed teams. On the whole, he was not that degree of elite.

It was almost sort of surprising that he was used as prolifically as he was in October, because it wasn't like, oh, Louis Varlane, yeah, shut down October flame thrower or something. But the Blue Jays were not blessed in the bullpen department. Right, they just needed. Yeah. And so they just kind of rode him as hard as they could because he was pitching pretty well. And he was one of the best guys they had. But, you know, during the regular season, he had a 2.970.

ERA a 3.14 FIP. He was actually a bit better with the twins than he had been with the Blue Jays during the regular season. And so he has really leveled up even from there from his postseason performance. So pretty impressive. Don't want Mason Miller to get all the press. Plus, as we covered, he's washed now. And he's got just a positive FIP and, you know, no fun anymore. So, yeah, 0.49 FIP.

really. It's just, I mean, it's sad that he's falling that far. But yeah, Louis Varlant, most valuable reliever in baseball. I have a couple of things to say about Louis Varlane. First, and I have perhaps remarked upon this before. I feel like I've watched Louis Varlane pitch for the Blue Jays more than anyone else who pitches for the Blue Jays, including all of their starters. Every time I turn on a Blue Jays game, there's Louis Varlent. I just am like, does this man, ever get a day off. Is Louis Varland like the pitching equivalent of the bus in speed where if he doesn't appear in a game, he explodes? Like, what's going on? Why are we seeing so much Louis Varland? And clearly the answer is he's been very good.

Yeah. And he's been quite stable. And sometimes that hasn't been true for the Blue Jay's bullpen. So hats off to Louis Varland. But my God, I feel like I am always seeing Louis Varland. Also, Louis Verland has that thing. the other example of this that I can think of most immediately in the major leagues is

Brandon Fott where their faces get very red like they always look like they've just had like a wing on hot ones like one of the later wings on hot ones not one of the early wings where we're like this is a baby wing this is a baby wing but one of the ones where like what's going on with Sean's gut is he okay that he is always eating that wing and I think the answer

know. I think there we're going to learn that that guy's not okay. And Louis Varlane, much like Brandon Fott, always looks like he just ate that spicy wing. He just, he ends up with a very red face. And then third, I feel like, you know, we should have more louis. Yeah, I agree with that. I'm probably, yeah. I think it's a good name. I think that it has had some turnish lately. And so it would be nice to have a good, more good louis, you know? Oh, so Louis's a great name for a cat. You know, there should be more cats. Louis.

I got it pretty early to finish the Pirates list today, so you're feeling the effects of that, or at least I am. Sometimes I second guess myself when I see a Louie, because you never know for sure if it's a Lewis or a Louis. Right. And often the Lewis will be spelled E-W-I-S, but not always. You can't always tell. Right.

You don't always know. It's not safe to assume. Yeah. Right, because that makes an ass out of you and me, and Louie, potential. And Louie, yeah. And by the way, Varland, he throws hard. I don't want to give his stuff short shrift. We're all just so blown away, as are the batters by Mason Miller and the Miz and everyone else,

that we're not as impressed by a mere Louis Varlane. But he's top 20 in the game in average four-seamer speed, minimum 10 innings pitched. and he's sitting 98.5, you know, that would have been seen as witchcraft at one point. So the fact that Mason Miller is sitting 101.2, okay, that's a meaningful difference. But nonetheless, we should not be blasé about that. That's fast. Yeah, don't take that for granted. Don't.

Don't you do it. You know, sometimes it's sort of sad in a way, but also in a arrested development, well, I don't know what I was expecting since. when, because the Padres just cut loose Nick Castiano's as the Rangers did with Andrew McCutcheon. Now, with Andrew McCutcheon, yeah, we're all sort of sadder about Andrew McCutcheon. Not that I have anything against Nick Castellanos, but Andrew McCutcheon, he's just a general fan favorite, not even a Pirates fan favorite, but just a baseball fan favorite. Who doesn't like Cutch? Who doesn't? Sometimes, well, they were kind of who their previous team thought they would be.

You know, it's just like there was all the drama about the pirates, parting with Andrew McCutcheon. And granted, perhaps they didn't handle that in the most diplomatic way. But there did seem to be a bit of it. Have we had recent examples of them being unable to do that that you might be thinking of? Maybe. But there was seemingly a pretty irreconcilable difference there. Correct. It was just that they were ready to move on from Andrew McCutcheon as a player, if not as a personality.

And with good reason, I think it was understandable that maybe they thought that he didn't fit on a contending Pirates team. Now, to be fair, they did evidently think that Marcelo Zuna fit on that team. And that has not been borne out. So the Pirates' offense has been pretty productive, but Marcelo Zuna is not why. he has a 61 WRC plus and a negative 0.8 more. So I guess if the standard was Marcel O'Zuna or Andrew McCutcheon, well, even by that standard, I guess he had a 57 WRC plus for the Rangers. Right. Even that, but at least better vibes and so favorite factor with McCutcheon.

But point is he was sub-replacement level and 57 WRC plus with the Rangers and maybe he's just done. And, you know, sad to say it. but he's turning, well, I was going to say he's turning 40 this year, but that might be loaded for both of us because, you know what, Cutch has company, because we will be too. We're not washed just because, but, you know, as podcasters, hey, I've got months. I'm still clinging to my 30s here tenaciously, but, but yeah.

So quick to throw me under the bus, just like such a, like, wow. Yeah, it's a little bit different for a professional baseball player than a professional podcaster. you can call us professionals. But Kim and then Nick Castellanos, who was also cut loose by the Phillies and sort of soft benched and, you know, that didn't go well. Because a lot of players, they think, no, I can still do it. There's still a place for me.

And then maybe another team takes a flyer. And we kind of thought, oh, okay, Padres, you're taking a chance on Nick Cassie. All right. Okay. Well, 53 WRC plus for him, even worse than. McCutcheon, even more sub-replacement level right down there with Ozuna. So sometimes it does just turn out that guys are out of gas and the previous team. And it's tough.

Like, parting can be such sweet sorrow, but also it can be a bit bitter, you know, because when you're with a team you have starred for and then suddenly they got to break it to you. We don't think you're that guy anymore. And, hey, we still like you, but we don't like you as a player the way that we once did. And sometimes you need a change of scenery or further struggles to come to terms with that as a player. And sometimes there's a rebound. And that player is proved right. And it turns out that, hey, they did have something left.

And their old team gave up on them, stuck a fork in them too soon. And that's probably pretty vindicating. But, yeah, not in these particular cases. It doesn't seem so. Maybe this is the end of the road for their respective big league careers. We will see if they can find another taker. Yeah, I mean, like sometimes you pull the fork out and you're like, wow, having the fork in there was really causing me issues. Yeah, that could be the problem.

Could be the problem. Their performance was impaired by that giant fork. By that big fork. Get that fork out of there. Yeah, I mean, like, I think that you can't blame anybody for trying to see if you can kind of recapture the magic. And then I think it's good to move on when it becomes obvious that that's the right course also, you know, Now Nick Castellanos, he can go drink beer wherever he was. That's right.

No one can say anything about it except maybe his family. Okay. And last thing, and I have saved not the best, probably for last, but I wanted to just ask you how you are approaching CBA negotiation coverage. And I've saved this. I've backloaded this because, again, we're going to be willing to talk about it when there's news. when there are new developments, but there haven't been, really, and yet that doesn't stop people from covering it. And so there's sort of this horse race coverage of bargaining in baseball,

which is understandable, and yet nothing new has happened, really. There's just a lot of sort of negotiating through the media. There's kind of posturing. There's this side said that. Here's the other side's response. So I wonder to what degree, we should feel obligated to cover those things. And it differs, I guess, if you're someone who's just on this beat, like Evdrelic, for instance, at the athletic, and that's kind of your wheelhouse, and that's your main assignment, then, yeah, okay, it makes sense for you to be writing about this regularly, whereas we might check in a little less frequently when there's really something new. But we had something new last week, and so we talked about it, which was that

the sides actually publicized some aspects of their proposals and exchanged those wishes. And then we got to talk about, okay, where's their common ground and where do they differ and what are they asking for and everything? And with the appropriate caveats about how this doesn't mean that much and it's a marathon, not a sprint, and we're a ways away, and these are just opening positions and they won't reflect where the compromise actually ends up, et cetera. But in the days since then, we've gotten additional. news cycles where each side responds to what the other said and then the side responds to what the

side said about what the other side said. And this is deemed newsworthy at least in some quarters. So, for example, the owners put their proposal out there and they put a much less detailed public proposal out there. They just sort of... Public proposal. Yeah. We don't know what they shared with the union. But all we know is some details of the, salary cap and floor that they had in mind, whereas the Players Association sent over a point-by-point long wish list of things that they're aiming for. And so then Bruce Meyer comments on what the owners proposed and says the union's analysis shows that this is going to cost players money. And Meyer says on a conference call with reporters, I thought they would try harder to make it

look good and they didn't even do that. Whereas my initial reaction, was that they made it look a little bit better than I was expecting. I'm not saying it's good, but it made it look. And also, I think it depends on what the audience is, because I think it probably did look good to a lot of people, much to Meyer's dismay, but to do what the owners did and say, oh, this is all about competitive balance and tying the Dodgers hands a little bit.

Yeah, I think that message probably pretty focused-grouped and probably resonates. But anyway, so Meyer comes out and questions that interpretation and said that using MLB's definition of revenue and player share has set force in their proposal and their presentation to us, player share under their proposal would go down. Player share for this season is projected to be well over 50%. Using MLB's definitions of revenues, blah, blah, blah,

had MLB's proposal been in place in 2006, players, we estimate, would lose over half a billion dollars. And so Evendrelic reports this, and I'm sure other people did too. And then, of course, you have to go back to the other side. side and say, well, what do you say? Do you have any response to this response? And then Glenn Kaplan, MLB spokesperson, has a statement of his own and says, our salary cap and floor proposal addresses our fan's concerns by leveling the playing field while sharing baseball revenue with the players 50-50 like the other leagues. Under our proposal, Major League players will receive more compensation

in year one of the system. Then in 2026, we're ready to listen if the MLBPA wants to counter our proposal at the bargain. So, Meyer says, this is costing us money. Kaplan says, this is giving you money because we are so generous and we just want to make the players richer. So this is going to be happening for the next, what, nine months or whatever it is until March. And so to what degree do you think reporters should be covering it in this kind of horse race way, where we know that nothing will be resolved for months to come? And also, nothing will really be resolved through the media either, probably, that ultimately it's going to come down to them talking to each other and mostly behind closed doors. So what do you think?

Where do the responsibilities lie when it comes to how we should present this information and the competing claims? Well, okay. So I have like sort of two buckets that I would put this in. I think that there are developments in the negotiations that are. newsworthy and thus, regardless of how someone, how much someone on staff wants to write about them, we should write about them. So like, for example, last week, the union and the owners presented their proposals, such as the owner's proposal was. And that was the opening salvo for both. I think that as we discussed, it's sort of indicative of like if you could get everything you

wanted, what would the ideal version of baseball's economic system look like? for you. How far apart are they? Obviously worthy of some amount of analysis. I think particularly because so much of this is going to be sort of hashed out and litigated in the media. And so putting some numbers behind what this would actually mean to the extent that we can at this juncture, I think, is useful as like a, you know, like a baseline setting exercise for our readers, right? So we were going to cover that. Ben Clemon's dip. We haven't written anything about Bruce Meyer's response to ownership, I think because it didn't really tell us anything particularly new since we haven't seen the specifics of MLB's proposal to the union. And when Ben wrote about

what we saw last week, he noted some places where the league's math didn't quite math out in a way that made sense. And so we didn't write anything. about it. I think that there will be, you know, if we had gotten more information about, say, the aspects of amateur talent acquisition that were going to change per the league's proposal as opposed to what Bruce was alluding to, which was the math doesn't make sense, that money has to come from somewhere. It seems like it's coming on the amateur side and the way that talent is sort of going to enter the market. Okay. If someone had wanted to write about that, you know, if Bowman had come to me and said, hey, I want to take a swing at this. I would have let him.

Because one of my guiding principles as an assigning editor is that people, you know, within reason, should write about the stuff that they find interesting. And then part of my job and Matt's job is to help mold that in something that will also be interesting to our readers. But it didn't rise to the level of newsworthy in a way where I felt like we as fan graphs needed to have a piece on it. So I think that it's going to be sort of a combination of those things. There are going to be developments in the negotiations that are just obviously in themselves worthy of coverage because in order for our readership to understand the landscape of baseball, we need to say something about that, which isn't to say that we're the only people who can offer quality analysis of it. But, you know, it wouldn't be any different than, hey, when Kyle Tucker signed, we needed a piece on that, right? the new cycle demands its answer. And then there, I think, will be plenty of pieces from our staff where they have something

to say about the quality of the negotiations, the tone and tenor of them, the specifics of the proposals, the baseball world that those proposals, if they were adopted, would berth. And so it's going to be, you know, a matter of sort of bopping back and forth between those things, satisfying our obligations as an outlet, sort of our, you know, desire and need to offer quality analysis on the news of the day, our desire to satisfy the interests of our staff. And also, I think having some amount of appreciation for the potential for fatigue on the question, I think that my standards for what do we write about the negotiations this early are going to be a little more exacting because this is going to be a long process.

Yeah. Taste yourself. And so I think that we do have a need to sort of balance that. While we have baseball to watch and analyze and enjoy, let's focus on that and certainly bring people up to speed and offer our opinion and bring to bear the sort of analytical work that we are good at where it's necessary. But I'm not looking around being like, hey, we need it. We need it. Now, if Bruce had walked through in specific detail aspects of the MLB proposal that we had not previously been privy to, that might have merited some coverage just because there's so much about what they have actually put to the union that we don't know. If the proposal had leaked, you know, and we could fill in some of the particulars, if we knew, for instance, what their definition of baseball revenue was. well, that might be something that we would want to say something about,

because that's going to be a central sort of issue at stake in the CBA negotiations. But based on what we had, I wasn't like, oh, we must. We must. So we're going to try to apply good judgment. I think that, you know, I want people to view the site as one that helps them understand the landscape. I think I want them to come away from our CBA. negotiation coverage, feeling like they have their arms around what different modes of talent acquisition are going to look like, what the overall payroll situation is going to be like,

you know, I think we're lucky in that because we have the resource of roster resource and the expertise that's present not only in terms of our ability to like do the math around this stuff, to put this stuff within the context of the broader history of labor and baseball to speak to some of the particulars of, you know, roster mechanisms and mechanisms that we are positioned, maybe not exactly uniquely, but maybe uniquely to help illuminate some of that stuff. But I don't want to wear anyone out either. Yeah, right. And yeah, it's it's not a bad day two, second day sort of story. Okay, they put the, the big proposals out there and then the dust settles and you try to make sense of, well, what would this mean and everything?

Sure. And then, okay, you go to the sides for comment. Sure. And then obviously one side comments, then you got to be both sides when it comes to this. You got to be fair and balanced. You got to give the other side an opportunity to respond. I think the important thing, and Evan and most people do this, hopefully, is provide as much context as you can.

So when one side does make a claim that's kind of a howl, and seems inconsistent with the facts, then you've got to call them on that. Now, one of the frustrating things here is that we can't always assess it from outside. And so we have two contradictory positions here. One side is saying this will cost the player's money. The other side is saying this will make players money.

And we don't really know or it's hard to assess because we're not privy to as much information. Right. So it's not that valuable, I guess, if you're just being a mouthpiece, even if you're being an equal opportunity mouthpiece, just sort of a stenographer, this side said this and that side said that. You want to provide some context and say, well, who's closer to accurate here or what can we tell? But our hands are kind of tied in some respects because, yeah, we don't know what will be defined as baseball revenue. And also, as always, the owners aren't going to open their books, so we don't know. Which must be frustrating, I guess, if you're the Players Association, and you think that it would meaningfully change people's perception of these issues if owner's books were open, if we knew exactly how much money they were making or losing as they claim.

And it's almost impressive in a way. I guess every now and then there have been leaks when it comes to team finances. but it seems like there's so much incentive because the Players Association gets some of that stuff. Maybe not everything, but a whole lot more than we have in the public domain. And it would seem like the incentives are really aligned

towards making more of that public because if you think it would strengthen your argument, then just a judicious little leak here or there. But that would be such a transgression, I guess, of the vow of secrecy that you're taking in bargaining. and you could get in trouble with the NLRB or whoever else if you're divulging stuff. That could really jeopardize your negotiations as well as just the perception that you're acting in good faith and the mutual trust and everything. So there are a lot of reasons not to do it.

There are profound incentives in that direction that I think sometimes folks fail to appreciate. Yeah. But you can see why they are advocating for more transparency. I don't think they're going to get it. But that is one thing that the union is pressing for here. they want the total transfer that each team receives in revenue sharing to be publicized, which might change the conversation if you knew exactly how much certain teams are getting and presumably pocketing if it's not showing up in the payroll.

And other things, the supplemental commissioner's discretionary fund, the money that gets paid into that bucket when a team runs afoul of the competitive balance tax and is paying the overage charges and then is distributed to different teams and then the competitive incentive fund that the union wants to create, they want that stuff to be transparent and I'm sure the owners will say,

thanks, but no thanks, because we like the way things function now. And so it's kind of tough, I guess, if you're Meyer and you're like, if you could just see, you just got to believe me, you know, we have these secret numbers that we can't share with you, but boy, if you could only see them, you know,

and meanwhile, the owners can point to the salaries that everyone sees on every website and the payrolls and everything. So there's really an imbalance there. It's a bit of a mismatch. I do wonder how much it would change the conversation. Do you think that would be? Would that really reframe most fans' understanding if we had full visibility into the books? And we're not all accountants who are capable of parsing those things. But if it were reported in a easy to digest way, the way that salary and payroll and contract details are, do you think that would change things? Or do you think it would just inherently be kind of too abstract or complicated or, I don't

know, owners are just so rich that they're just so far removed from anyone else's experience that people would still default to greedy players they're making so much to play a game kind of thing? I do think it would matter. I don't know that it would completely reverse the instinct to, you know, side with the laundry, as it were, in part because, like, we, we do a pretty bad job, like, conceptualizing how much money billionaires have. So I think the gap isn't instinctive to people in the way that it would probably need to be for it to completely turn the tide.

I do think the notion that, like, teams that are not putting big money into their payroll are getting checks as a result of the desire of the doctor. or the Mets or whomever to spend, I think those numbers would horrify some fans. And I think that that could matter. I also think a couple of other things, though, first and foremost among them being that like the sort of instinctive and reflexive ick that a lot of fans seem to be getting in response to

not even the notion of big payroll teams generally, but the Dodgers specifically does not appear to be completely tied to like a rational presentation of the facts, which isn't to say that you can't kind of recoil at the Dodgers in their payroll in a way that is like grounded in reality. I don't want to impugn that reaction unfairly. But I do think that some people are just pissed at the Dodgers, you know, they're mad at the Dodgers. And they want to see the Dodgers sort of reined in. or brought low, depending on how strongly they feel about it. And I don't know that like a rational presentation of the, you know,

the transfer payments from the Dodgers to the pirates is going to alter their perception of that or change the way that it feels to them. Yeah, because we can talk all we want about competitive balance and break that down every which way. And yes, by some measures, certainly baseball is quite competitive when it comes to competitive balance. in relation to other sports. And obviously part of that is just the inherent randomness and structure of baseball relative to other seasons and leagues. But still, that might explain why. But also it's still the case that competitive balance is what it is for whatever reason.

But I think even if you could convince people that there was pretty good balance and a lot of teams had a chance and everything, there would still just be a perception that it's unfair because on some level it is. I mean, as long as there's a big payroll disparity, even if some of the low payroll teams win, then the deck is at least slightly stacked against them. And so some people are going to look at that and say, well, this team's spending X and that team's spending Y. And maybe they should focus more on the team that's spending the small amount and could be spending more. But even so, there's going to be a disparity. And that will strike some folks as unfair, especially because it is kind of mapped to geography in a way that it isn't in every least. league where it's not a coincidence that many of baseball's big spenders are big market teams,

too. And so, yeah, you might have dynasties and other sports, but they're a little less tied to the geography and the market, I would think, on the whole. So when Manfred and MLB says, well, we're responding to fan perceptions, like, they're not even so much arguing these days that there is a competitive balance problem. They're certainly implying that there is, and they have said as much many times. But these days it seems like the message is more about fans think there's a competitive. Yeah, we're responding to our fans, which is not untrue.

It is a concern for fans. Obviously, they're not getting into how that benefits the owners in other respects, too. But it's not untrue that fans are concerned about that and probably always will be, no matter how much, well, this many champions in this many years and this many playoff teams and blah, blah, blah. So, you know, sometimes I see that. and I think, well, fans think this is a problem. Perhaps that has something to do with the fact that you have been telling them that it's a problem for decades. But that's not all it is.

Fans can see bigger market teams being bigger spenders and in the long run bigger winners, even without MLB hammering that point repeatedly. That's something that it's tough to combat, which I think has some bearing because really the two sides. Each side is sort of trying to argue that it is advocating for the status quo, in a way, because the players, they're not arguing for any great overturning of the MLB system. They are arguing for tweaks and things that will make it more beneficial for them, obviously, in many respects. But they're not really out here overhauling the system and trying to just have a complete reinvention of how baseball economics have worked for decades. MLB is with the salary cap.

And so it would seem like the burden of proof is higher for MLB. Hey, if you're arguing for this massive change, you better really make a strong case. Yeah, but MLB is trying to frame it as MLB is the outlier. Every other league is doing it this way. We're the abnormal ones. And so in a sense, the status quo in sports, it's like MLB is kind of arguing from, here's the norm in sports. And we're trying to move more toward that where there is a salary cap.

And the MLBPA is saying we're trying to stick with the norm in our sport because that is more relevant in this case. But I think from a PR perspective, it can be pretty persuasive to say, hey, every other league is doing it like this. Why don't we? Well, and I think that you have a, you know, you're also getting, I think, a part of this that is important. Part of their insistence on, and I don't mean to imply this is like an altruistic thing. where if they, if, you know, if Manfred could, he would pick the other option, but his hands are tied by virtue of his role. It is easier for the league. If what you view as the problem to be the gap in spending between the big market teams, between the Dodgers and, you know, the white socks or the Dodgers and the pirates, the lever that is most immediately available to Major League Baseball is to curb. the Dodgers not to force the pirates to spend more. They could, you could architect a system where

that's what you do. And I think that that's- Players are kind of trying to. Right. That's what the players are moving toward or trying to move toward with what is effectively a soft floor with no cap in their proposal. I think it is what, you know, people who view the labor landscape of baseball, the way that we tend to would tell you is the biggest. problem that the real issue isn't the, you know, drive that the Dodgers have to spend, but the refusal and unwillingness that a team like the Pirates has, not even to spend like the Dodgers, but just to spend like the Mariners, right, that that's where the real imbalance comes. But from Rob Manfred's perspective, it is easier for him to curb the big spending than it is

for him to force recalcitrant owners to spend more. And I know that the idea of a cap and floor system would suggest that there is, you know, going to be a crackdown on those teams. But I think that

they are picking levels such that like what you will get from central revenue, which will be basically everything, is going to make it much more palatable to the nuttings of the world to sort of adopt a system like that. So they are in a spot where like they can pull that lever more easily. They want to pull that lever anyway,

right? It's such a shiny, pretty lever to them because it allows them to cap what the players can earn. It refocuses the revenue objectives of the league on increasing franchise values. It is strongly owner-in-line. So I'm not saying like, oh, he's just stuck in a corner, poor guy. That's what he wants to do. He's getting everything he wants with this proposal. I don't think that this is like him being put upon. But that is part of the dynamic that's at play here also. Is there some potential for fracturing the owners from each other? Sure. But ultimately, you know, as as Michael Bowman will tell you, like, ain't no solidarity. Like the solidarity of the billionaire show to one another. And I think that part of the problem is like, okay, I'm going to say something. And I just want everyone to remember

everything else I've ever said about labor in my entire life. Okay? So just like, everybody keep that in mind. Before you write an email, get mad at me. The notion that there is some amount of gap between the average baseball fan and the most well-earning baseball players isn't wrong. I am sensitive to why it is difficult to generate like class solidarity between me or Meg and Juan Soto. Okay?

Now, I think that the union holding is important for the project of organized labor in this country, full stop, period. I don't want them to cave. And if you are making me choose between those sides, it is an easy choice. And as I have said before, the universe where we, we. have an honest and challenging conversation about the value of work and labor in this country. And then we back that up with redistribution. Doesn't end with Juan Soto having his contract.

And it doesn't end with Steve Cohn having the money to pay it to him either. Right. But that's not the conversation we're having. And that's not the conversation we're interested in. And so, you know, I want to be clear about, like, where I stand in these things. but like it's it's not wrong to say that like at this moment the the amount in common that some of the top earners in this league have with the guys who employ them versus the guys who go to root for them in the stands like I appreciate why there's a solidarity gap there and ultimately that solidarity gap doesn't really matter because the only solidarity that matters is the solidarity within the union yes and as we discuss part of why they, I think, are being so focused on early career earnings as one. It's good for the membership in like a genuine way.

And also, you have to do internal messaging when you are doing these kinds of negotiations because you need to hold it as a bargaining unit. So like they are being strategic in that too, but they do have a, they have a messaging problem. They have a messaging problem. They've always had a messaging problem. I think they do a good job of talking about the various ways in which they want to have the best players on the field, that they should make their fair share, that they are providing greater entertainment value than the guys, and it's mostly guys, who employ them. None of that is dishonest. But I do think that like we, you know, among us girls, we can acknowledge the messaging problem that they face.

And this is why it's important that they get charismatic, popular players who can talk about this stuff, who can articulate, even if the numbers are really different than like what they would be if you're on the assembly line at Ford. The numbers might be different if you're on the Ford line, but the concept is the same, right? And we need to understand it within the broader project of labor. They should do all those things and, you know, get Vinnie out there and get Bren and get the various guys. But they do have a, they do have a little bit of an issue. And to go back to your initial question and then I'm going to have to mute my mic because there's a leaf blower outside my window. When I am thinking about our obligations as a website, I want us to be honest in the way that we are describing these proposals. I want to make sure that what we are saying can be backed up by good and rigorous analysis to the extent that the numbers we have access to allow us.

I am also mindful of the fact that it is important for non-league affiliated media to give an honest breakdown of these things because a lot of the voices that are going to be brought to bear on these questions are going to be employed by Major League Baseball. And we're already seeing that. Yeah, it's true. And I guess the better job the players do, the stronger their position, the more effective they are at advocating for themselves than the less sympathetic their position becomes to Joe Public because they're further and further removed from the average fans financial situation. And we will see whether the owners and the billionaires have solidarity because some aspects of this negotiation might pull the owners apart too. They might be at cross purposes at times. anyway, we have covered the coverage, I suppose. So ultimately, we're talking about this from a sort of journalistic responsibility and what is newsworthy perspective.

Also, it's just, are people clicking on these stories? Are people subscribing for these stories? Are people listening to this podcast and supporting this podcast for this kind of coverage? That's part of why people pursue things. It's not the only. Sure. It's certainly part of it. I want to make clear that, like, I think that, you know, I think the work that,

Evan is doing, for instance, just to bring up a name that you mentioned, like, we need a dedicate, we need someone on that beat. Yes, for sure. And Evan is doing a very good job, I think. And he's not the only one doing a good job, but he's doing a very good job. I don't think that the coverage that I have seen from non-league outlets has been particularly irresponsible or hyperbolic or like clickbaity. So there's that. I think that like the coverage that we got the last time, around from non-league sources was really strong. I think the coverage we got from

league sources had a obvious skew. I haven't written anything about the role of Patrick Mahomes and the Kansas City Chiefs being able to be a dynasty. You'll need to go to MLB.com for that. Well, we will continue to cover this in moderation. He says after an extended discussion on this subject for the second time in a week or so. But we're just kind of calibrating our approach to this topic because we've got a long way to go. But not a long way to go in this episode. It's over. Well, after we recorded, Christopher Sanchez had another excellent start, though not a scoreless one. Close. He made it through seven, but in that final frame, he did allow one and only one run

to the Padres, which brought an end to his scoreless innings at 50 and two-thirds innings. Philly's pobo, Dave Dombrovsky said, well, it doesn't get any better than that, but it does get slightly better than that in terms of scoreless streaks. Sanchez's was the fifth longest since the advent of the modern pitching distance in 1893. It was the longest since Oral Hersheiser's record 59 inning streak from 1988. And it was the longest ever for a lefty. So heck of a run for him and his strong May continues into June. As for Spencer Erigetti, just to complete the pile on,

he pitched four innings against the pirates, allowed four runs all earned, which is one more earned run than he allowed in all of May. so he'll have to start a Sanchez-esque scoreless streak and blank his opponents for the rest of June if he wants to merit consideration as a repeat pitcher of the month. Those four runs came on a fourth inning grand slam by Henry Davis of all hitters. You can support Effectively Wild on Patreon.

And if you're not Spencer Arreddy or a member of his family or friend group, we hope you'll want to 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. Adam Chapman, Donacha, Matthew, Thomas Kinney, and Allie. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the effectively wild Discord group for patrons only, access to three full episodes a week, including unfettered access to our next episode, monthly bonus episodes, exclusive live streams, plus prioritized email answers, personalized messages, shoutouts at the end of episodes, potential podcast appearances, fan graphs, memberships, and more.

Check out all the offerings at patreon.com. slash Effectively Wild. If you are Patreon supporter, you can message us through the Patreon site. If not, you can still contact us via email, send your questions, comments, intro, and outro themes to podcast at Fangraphs.com. You can rate, review, and subscribe to Effectively Wild on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube music, and other podcast platforms. You can join our Facebook group at Facebook.com slash Effectively Wild. You can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. And you can check the show notes in the podcast posted Fangraphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats.

today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. We will be back with one more episode before the end of the week. Talk to you then. I want to know about baseball.