Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2504: I Choo-Choo-Choose You

Episode Date: July 14, 2026

Ben Lindbergh, Meg Rowley, and FanGraphs lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen banter about Zack Wheeler declining MLB’s last-minute All-Star invitation, JJ Wetherholt’s long-term contract extension, and how the Futures Game and amateur draft fell flat as spectator events, then discuss the top tier of draft picks, some surprising picks and revamped approaches by teams under new management, why better data hasn’t made teams much better at drafting, why no team has tried blowing by its bonus allotment, and more, plus closing banter about Bryce Harper’s explanation of his video message for a sports-betting addict. Audio intro: Nate Emerson, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: PJ Harding, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to The Simpsons clip Link to Wheeler article Link to MLBTR on Wetherholt Link to Wetherholt’s draft outfit Link to Baumann on the spectator experience Link to Cooper on the spectator experience Link to Manfred mispronunciation article Link to celebrity golf tournament Link to Futures Game FAQ Link to draft viewing FAQ Link to Brendan on the Futures Game Link to Eric’s draft preview Link to The Board Link to Baumann on big draftees Link to MLB draft tracker Link to FG Day 1 draft recap Link to The Athletic on Schaffner Link to Crotchfelt vs. Titsworth post Link to Angels picks Link to Ball’s draft study Link to Seidler on blowing up the draft Link to Ball on blowing up the draft Link to NBA revenue info Link to Madisynn from She-Hulk Link to Clemens on prospect valuation 1 Link to Clemens on prospect valuation 2 Link to camel case wiki Link to Harper’s Instagram post Link to EW guest appearances Link to Dodgers extra-inning game  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

And welcome to episode 2504 of Effectively Wild, a Fangraphs baseball podcast brought to you by our Patreon supporters. I'm Meg Rowley of Fangraffs, and I am joined remotely by Ben Lindberg of the ringer. Ben, how are you? Quite well. Good. And very directly by Eric Long and Hagan, also of Fangraps, who is sitting next to me in the hotel in downtown Philadelphia. As we get ready to talk about the MLB draft, Eric, how are you? I'm pretty good. You could use some deodorant, though.

We figured that it was probably easier to do this in the same place and in the same room of the hotel. It might mean that the audio quality is a little tinny. So our apologies in advance to our listeners and also to producer Shane, who assured us that this was okay. We'll see if he has conviction in that conclusion when he gets the file. But yeah, it's a beautiful if hot day in Philadelphia. Dude, it is, it's so hot here. Like, I walked from the hotel down 13th Street all the way to the stadium on the day that we picked up our credentials. And it was only like 86 that day.

And by the time I got there, I was ringing wet. I definitely have, like, felt some of the effects of yesterday at the futures game. Like, I was in the sun for most of the game and, you know, kind of nauseous for a little while afterward. Like, it is just a different type of heat here. and it's not even going to be that much cooler, like, Wednesday. You know, it's going to be 100 here. Basically the same temperature back home in Tempe. So, yeah, you know, it's just one of those things,

like a fan graft tradition of trying to get out of Arizona in the middle of the summer and go do other stuff. And he just sort of follows us around. So here we are. We're baking. Or I guess, no, this is more like, what is where it's more? Marinating, steaming. Yeah.

We're in a, we're in a, we're in a, Soup. Well, you know this heat. Well, this is your neck of the woods, Eric. So I'm sure it's like a warm embrace being back there. And you two are hopefully cool where you are recording as you are Paul and Georging it on the same mic. Not Paul Georging it because he's no longer in Philly. But McCartney and Harrison, that's what I was going for.

Sharing a microphone. Anyway, we have lots of draft stuff and futures game stuff and All-Star Week stuff to discuss. And before we do, one person who is, well, I was about to say not in Philly, but I guess probably he is, unless he is on vacation somewhere. Zach Wheeler, we talked about him last time, Meg, about how he was aggrieved, not being appointed to the All-Star team selected. He and his agent went public with their complaints about that. And it turns out that after we recorded, MLB kind of caved to the bad PR and the pressure and gave him. a courtesy invite, sort of a pity invite at the last second on Friday, evidently. He was, in fact, invited by MLB to join as an injury replacement.

But after all that, he refused. He declined the offer and said that he was not going to be the fifth option. They disrespected me. So I'm just not going to participate in that thing, he said. Maybe I didn't earn it from the get-go, but maybe just second choice. Once I feel like they kind of messed that up, I'm out. So the squeaky wheel got the grease and then decided he didn't want the grease, actually. No, thanks, no grease for me, or this was not the way I wanted my grease.

So does this make you more or less sympathetic to his plate that he actually did get a late invitation and turned it down? I just find the whole thing a little bit odd, and it does reinforce my speculation from last time that Zach Wheeler is, is, is maybe staring down the end of his career, feels that that is much more proximate than the beginning of it. I think that's how you end up in sort of legacy mode here. But I am curious sort of what their expectations were, because unless it had been remedied immediately, was there just never a resolution on MLB's part that he would have found satisfying?

I don't know. It does, he does seem kind of sore at this point in a way that might not be especially flattering, but also, I don't know. I wonder if MLB wouldn't have been better off just saying, oh, yeah, like a terrible clerical error, Zach, you were supposed to be on the first round. She handled it how I would have handled it. Seriously. Because there's a certain point where last year, if you're going to do this

thing where Mizorowski makes it last year, because, hey, this guy has a special something that we want in the game, and so we'll put our thumb on the scale a little bit to ensure it happens. I don't know why you wouldn't want to do that for a guy pitching in, for, you know, the home team for the All-Star game, the host team, who is maybe like a Hall of Fame pitcher, who's one of the best pitchers of the last decade. That's the seems like the sort of guy who I'd want to do that for. And there's not like, once you've hurt me in this way, once my pride or whatever, like you can say that any of these feelings are, are foolish. But once that is, injured initially, there isn't really like a way for you to remedy that with me, if I were

Zach Wheeler and was passed over. And then, of course, we have the Philly stuff from last year, too, with their pictures last year being, you know, disrespected, I suppose. It's not, maybe not the verb that I would use if I were complaining. But yeah, disrespect will not be tolerated. You know, that's, that's a persistent Bomani Jones catchphrase that I believe you know, I think that I adhere to that too. So I support Zach Wheeler in complaining and then refusing when the olive branch was extended. If nothing else, it strikes me as a deeply filly sort of perspective. That's fine. You're going to be saying water by the end of this trap. Yeah, you know, like they didn't invite me. This disrespect will not be tolerated.

Yeah, I guess once they didn't have him in the initial round of injury replacements, there was no remedying it to his satisfaction. Though, if what he really wanted was just to have been an All-Star, whether he actually pitched or went to the game or was on the roster or not, just for kind of career accomplishment purposes, then you might as well have just taken it because it wouldn't have made a difference in the long run. No one would really have remembered how and when he was selected, just that he was an All-Star. But there will be no shortage of Phillies at the All-Star game.

There are six Phillies on the roster as it is, which is a lot. And he pitched like an All-Star on Sunday, and he went sick, scoreless, and he out-dued Terrick Scoobble. So actually, if I were a Phillies fan, I think I would be pretty pleased about this snub because it seems like he is powered by Spite now. And spite can be a powerful motivator. And so having Zach Wheeler pitch the rest of the season just still stewing about the fact that he was not an All-Star and wanting to show everyone how wrong that was, I think that's bullish. That makes me feel better about the Phillies probably. And he has been fantastic, his usual excellent self since he returned. The other bit of news that we didn't get to discuss last time because it was late breaking

is that we got another big long-term extension for a rookie signed. So just two years ago, J.J. Weatherhole was drafted seventh overall by the Cardinals. And hey, he's not an all-star either, even though he is leading all NL rookies in war and is the presumptive rookie of the year favorite. He is a cardinal and will be a cardinal for a long time. He signed an eight-year extension, runs through 2034, buys out his first three free agent years. It's 112.5 million, no options.

There's some incentives that can bring it up another 20 million, almost. So we've seen a rash of these extensions. We saw Kevin McGonagall, Connor Griffin, Colt Emerson, Cooper Pratt, Luis Lara of the Brewers. So this is yet another one of those guys and another guy who's looked fantastic this season. So I don't know if you have thoughts on his long-term future or what you've seen from him so far, Eric. Weatherhole was my top player in the class the year he got picked and then for him to go seventh. Well, some of it felt odd like, hey, was I too high on this guy?

But things are going well for this draft class in general. there certainly are for for jj you know a big piece of his war production to this point this season has been from defense i wonder a couple things about that number one is i wonder how real the size of that impact is and i also wonder if it means you know indeed the cardinals believe it to be real if he might just be their shortstop at some point um you know the the notion of of sliding him over there if they think he can do it over the course of this contract, I think would be pretty interesting. I tend to think that he cannot. This is a guy who had like hamstring stuff pretty consistently in college.

And I do think that in the way it just seems to pop up once or twice a year for guys like Citell Marte. It will probably be a thing, JJ Weatherhold, who's just like a really, you know, thick in the lower body, tightly wound kind of guy. He's probably going to have soft tissue stuff here and there. You know, at $14 million a year, average annual value over the course of this deal, you know, he only has to be like a one and a half win player for that to be like more than worth it. And he's doubled that already this season before the break. So, you know, I like the deal for the Cardinals a lot. I like the deal for JJ to some degree, like to have a $100 million contract before your rookie season is over is no small thing.

Yeah, this is just one of those build-around type players who absolutely deserves an extension like this. And it feels less scary than some of the other ones that have gone sideways when they've been doled out even sooner than this. And obviously, like some of those, like Jonathan Singleton and Scott Kingery and such, were not quite this big. So the fact that JJ's been this good, I mean, his ex-world was even better than his actual performance to this point. He's still slug in just a shade under 400 as we're sitting here talking. But yeah, I think really good player, consistent All-Star. I don't think he's going to be like a Six-War player every year. Like he's on pace for this season, but still going to be like, I think, a regular All-Star,

especially given the state of the infield across the game at this stage. And has a lot to do with the fact that the Cardinals are sitting one game out of a playoff spot, which is somewhat unexpected. And even if they don't make it, they've got about a one-in-three chance, according to the Fancraft's playoff odds of making the playoffs still a pretty successful year when it comes to evaluating

what their core and what their foundation is and who's good and who's worth keeping around. What do you think of what appears to be an uptick in the number of these extensions? Because a couple of the ones that you mentioned there

that didn't pan out were years and years ago and maybe that actually dissuaded teams from doing this as often as they seem to now. So are they doing it as much as they always should have been now, are they sometimes reaching for some of these guys where we have these

perception that, oh yeah, pre-arb extension, always very favorable to teams, but not always. And if you start giving them to more and more guys, then eventually that's not really going to be the case. Have we gotten to that point? Or have you looked at all the ones signed this season or prior to this season and said, yep, that makes sense. That's the kind of guy I would want to sign long term. I think it's mostly tends to be players who I'd be enthused about. having an extension with. I think the ones that are, there are definitely going to be some of these that go sideways

because of the length more than the AAV. It's just like who is going to have a weird early decline? We see this all the time where they're just players whose peak is, tends to be at age 24, 25. And something just about doing this every day for six, seven months for three, four years can start to have an impact on your body. Like, I just, there are probably going to be some of these, whether it's Jackson Churio or whoever, that start to feel bad later. And I just don't know how to predict which those are going to be.

I would guess just based on the way the careers of guys like Mo Vaughn and Richie said, like the types of players who take a dip earlier than you want them to tend to be guys who don't really have anywhere to go on the defensive spectrum once those. skills, your athleticism starts to slip for whatever reason. But the guys who have tended to get these extensions are the ones who play up the middle. They play a position of value. Like, there's something to fall back on, even if they stop hitting or stop hitting as well, I suppose, or if they start to slip athletically and have to move from center field to left field or whatever it is. So I guess, like, that's why the Churio one concerns me a little bit. He is not as overtly physical as some of these other guys like a Connor Griffin. He has already moved permanently, it seems, to an outfield corner. Just off the top of my head of guys who have, like, been extended.

But yeah, he's still been, obviously, like, really good to this point. He's a guy whose ex-Woba has pretty consistently been a little bit lower than his observed for the first three years of his career. So that might be the one where if I'm like, take a shot on a guy whose extension might feel bad before it's through, I guess it's just sitting here off the top, I'd say charios. But even there, like, he's shown an ability to course correct at the plate this year after, you know, having kind of a weird tale of two halves in both his freshman and sophomore campaign. I think the interesting thing about Weatherholt is that, like, you know, often these long-term extensions, we're seeing them sort of fit into a long-term payroll picture where

there are already a number of established guys, and the guys who get these deals, obviously, are seen as players who are going to be core pieces for a long time. But like in Weatherholt's case, it's really him. Like, St. Louis's long-term payroll picture is wide open. You know, they moved all those guys this offseason. They have a couple of guys who are in that, like, R. 1 through 3 range. But, like, he is their only long-term payroll commitment at this point. And so it'll be, you know, this one is interesting not only because of what it says about how they value him to your point. Like, does he just become the shortstop in the event that Mason Win moves on? But how do they then supplement around him and seeing what Bloom and company do on that score

long term, I think, is going to be really interesting. And as we've discussed, it's not the Yankees and Dodgers signing these guys to early long-term extensions for the most part. It's a lot of NL Central teams. It's the Tigers. It's the Mariners. It's, it's, It's teams that may have concerns about being outbid for top free agents or not being seen as top destinations. And so it might make sense for them to just take these guys out of free agency and keep them around, which regardless of whether it's good for the player can be good for the game if you're concerned about the top talents clustering too much in the bi-coastal behemoths. Yeah. And like J.J. Weatherholt had the presence of mind and sort of feel for the audience that this is totally anecdotal. But, you know, when he got, the cowboy hat.

Right. When he got drafted, by the way, the last time there were actually players at the draft, which we'll get to at some point here. But his draft was in Fort Worth. It was at the stockyards. We've talked about the objects of that. And he walks in with a 10-gallon hat and a bolow tie. And he was just like ready to go. He had West Virginia stuff on the inside of his suit jacket.

He, you know, thanked God to the uproarie supply. of the crowd. Like, that, that guy clearly knows how to get settled and sort of have a feel for where he is, uh, in a non-baseball sense. And if he feels at home in St. Louis and they think that he's a fit for them long term, like, I, I will say the one thing about his deal, you know, because he was a college player, he's, uh, a little bit older. He is in a spot where the length of this deal takes him into his 30s in terms of the next time he's going to be a free agent. If he is is this good, even not every year, but for a couple of his seasons going forward, he does seem like he is leaving money on the table in a way that might be more profound. But if he also has concerns

about how the lower body health is going to trend over the course of his career, this might be a really nice flush fit for him too, you know? I also wonder if there's like a symbiosis at play here with some of these teams that if we end up with a salary cap and a salary floor, some of these teams signing these deals are the types who in the past might have had trouble clearing the floor. And this is like a big puzzle piece that you can feel good about aiming toward clearing that bar. And then the converse is maybe true for some of these players who might be worried that because of a cap, their long-term earning power might be limited. And so they want to bank a $14 million a year payday, you know, beyond this era that might then include the start of some sort

salary cap. Rather than try to figure out, well, after the cap, what might my value be if I hit free agency in six years, it might not look all that different than some of this stuff. I think if we look at like, you know, this NBA off season because of the sixers of it all and, you know, the Jalen Brown trade and the impact of the second apron and in the NBA and what that's doing to the way teams build and retain players or in this case kind of not, If I'm looking at that and mapping what baseball team behavior might look like in a similar format, then I might be inclined as a player to just say, yeah, give me this deal for this long right now

because I don't know what the environment is going to look like for me when I would hit free agency if, in fact, the system has changed significantly. Yeah, and that might be relevant to baseball come a few years when all the broadcast contracts are up for negotiation again, just because in the NBA, people were banking on the salary cap. continuing to climb by the max every year. And now that's not happening because the revenue growth has sort of slowed down. And people were crowing about how big the most recent national broadcast contract was. But that was a lot more inventory and a lot more games and more networks and less local broadcast revenue.

And so that's actually seemingly having some effect on how teams are operating now because some of those max contracts are taking up a higher percentage of the payroll than they were projected to. So hopefully we won't be in a world where we're caring about aprons and percentage of payroll caps in a few years in MLP or declining broadcast revenue for that matter. But we will see. Other than the declining broadcast revenue, I guess that's the world that MLB owners want. And they're kind of envious of their counterparts in other leagues. J.J. Weatherholt, by the way, born in Baltimore, went to high school near Pittsburgh and went to college, West Virginia, as Meg said. So probably the Black Stetson and stringed. were not a regular part of his wardrobe prior to that event, though.

I don't know. No accounting for personal style. Hey, man, when you're in Texas, you got to go buy cowboy boots and a hat and a bolo. I think they took those draft prospects like to a habadashery. Is it still a habadashery if it's a cowboy hat? Isn't it just hatters? Maybe. Yeah, I don't know.

It's not a habadashery? No, I think habadashry is more like all kinds of different clothing. Oh, it's not just hats? I don't think it's just hats. I don't know. I watch a lot of Taylor-Sharrant shows, but that does not qualify me to weigh in on that. But, yeah, that is a Bryce Harper approach to pandering to the local fans. Just blend in immediately, forget the jersey, maybe get all of the local sports teams logos on one article of clothing, so that you just ingratiate yourself with absolutely everyone and don't alienate anyone.

Seems to have worked fairly well for Bryce, who is around this week as a legend pick in a home run derby participant. So lots of teams are trying to draft the next JJ Weatherholt or tried to this past weekend. So we will, of course, have Eric break down the draft as always. But I do want to ask you about this weekend's proceedings because, according to people who were there, including yourselves and also spectators like myself, it seems like this weekend was an abject failure when it came to actually making a marquee broadcast event out of the futures. game in the draft. And I don't know whether it's chicken and egg and MLB has just conceded and capitulated and they're not trying to make fetch happen anymore with these events or what, but not doing themselves any favors in any number of ways, right? First of all, the futures game timing, which you have rented about repeatedly, Meg, still in issue because it's Sunday at

noon right before a full slate of games and it's a seven-inning affair and everyone always wonders, Well, couldn't they just do it Monday afternoon before the derby when nothing's going on or Wednesday for that matter? And Moby always says no for some reason. So that was its usual kind of buried by Major League Baseball counter programming. And then Saturday and into Sunday, the draft was kind of amateur hour in any number of ways. First of all, very reflective of the times in that we talk a lot about how you have to have seven different streaming services to watch. anything. And this was kind of taking that to its logical or illogical extreme where Peacock and NBC had the first 10 picks. And maybe this is reflective of just where the MLB draft stands in the

pecking order because it's like we can't show the rest of the first round because there's a celebrity golf tournament going on. So that's a bigger draw, evidently. And maybe it is. That was why? Yeah. I mean, maybe there was just no interest anyway. but that was what they were switching over to. What possible celebrity was Taylor Swift golfing? Who was golfing? Charles Barkley. Okay, but we just saw so much a chuck, you know?

We just saw a bunch of Chuck. I think that's okay. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy. It is embarrassing to have like the draft, like appetizer picks basically and that's it. Just apps. Yeah. Apps desserts.

Yeah, right. It's the top 10 and then the rest of it. it. No thanks. I mean, Steph Curry was playing. It was won by Marty Fish, the former tennis player. So, you know, the biggest stars. I think...

The biggest stars. I think Steph was thirds. But, yeah, for whatever reason, if you wanted to watch the rest of the first round, then you had to switch over to MLB Network. And then after that, if you were real draftsico and you wanted to keep watching beyond

pick number 40, then it was just online streaming at MLB.com and MLBTV and MLB Plus or whatever. So, yeah, it was very kind of cannibalized by other things and segmented. And then the actual production values, not great either because instead of dedicated draft heads, instead of having Eric on there to break down every pick, which granted might have run up against time constraints possibly, but Not even Eric's co-author Kylie was leading the draft covers this year, right? It was like generalists. It was WBC manager extraordinaire, Mark DeRosa, and Harold Reynolds,

and I'm sure that they prepped and crammed for the draft in the last week or something and had never heard of these guys prior to that. Not that I can talk, but you know, you'd think that maybe Rob Manfred would have asked how to pronounce Rock Chilowski's name at some point before calling you. him Chalusky with the number one overall pick. I appreciate that you were like, I'm going to, I'm going to. I did my research unlike Rob. Yeah, and I'm going to make sure I get it right.

With the first pick of the 2026 MLB draft, the Chicago White Sox select Rock Chalusky, a shortstop from UCLA. You know, it was not tough to project that he would be saying that name at some point on that day, probably pretty early. So there was that. And there was lots of stuff which you can tell me about, but I've heard about just like, you know, the sky bridge from the hotel was closed and it was tough to get in there. And then they kicked everyone out. And then we're like, wait, you can come back, but everyone was gone already.

And so, like, if you were covering the draft, you couldn't actually cover the draft in person very well. And then, as people heard, if they were streaming subsequent rounds, the whole set was being broken down very loudly as the draft was. still being constructed. And so it's like we were dealing with with roofers on the podcast last week with you, Meg, and I've had construction going on at my place. That was what was happening with the MLB draft, where it was like, all right, first round done, we got to just move this place, I guess, got to get the show on the road. And they're still drafting.

And meanwhile, you're hearing like hammering and drilling and all sorts of sounds as the set just gets deconstructed around them. They just couldn't wait. So the whole thing had the air of we have given up on our quest to try to make this a marquee event. I want to preface all of this by saying that I appreciate that people in general don't care when the media is inconvenienced in the course of doing its job. And so at the risk of navel gazing too much here, yeah, it was a bit of a cluster. there's always an element of chaotic disconnect around All-Star and Draft-related stuff because, you know, you have the host team, you have Major League Baseball. There can sometimes be a gap between what each of those entities thinks is their responsibility, and that can lead to some amount of being told, no, go over there.

And so you expect to have to bob and weave a little bit. But the draft is major league baseball show, right? This is a one entity production, although I guess NBC presents a separate one. And so you would imagine that you would want to make covering the event as easy as possible, because even though it has not gotten the traction that the NFL draft or the NBA draft or even the NHL draft has gotten, the stated purpose or one of the stated purposes, of the owner's recent draft proposal was, well, we want to make the draft a big deal. We want people to feel a connection to these players earlier in their careers.

And so if they are all college guys and we've, you know, had this influx of talent to the college game because high schoolers aren't draft eligible, well, everyone's going to get so amped about it. And if that is true, well, you have a long way to go, buddies, because it was a mess. We, you know, Bowman got in very early and so was allowed to sit there even though his, even though his credential. He was in there on his own like Charlton Heston and Omega Man. Yeah, just for hours. When a group arrived around like 11, which is typically when we have been allowed into the proceedings, they were told media would not be allowed to enter the draft room until 1130. So, yeah, so I walked over the Skybridge to the convention center because I thought, like, we're all in this hotel, right? And the convention center is right there. It's convenient.

Right. Great idea, guys. And then, yeah, I was told, hey, you can't come in this entrance. You have to go over to, you know, so I walked like around the, and again, who cares? Right. It's a block. It's over. I don't really care.

I've done this for long enough now that as much as I try to prepare for whatever curveball, going to be thrown. You kind of can't. There's always something like this that has you sweating. Like you're in the TSA line and your plane is boarding, basically, is how we felt our scanners for our credentials would not work. And we're standing there. You know, I walked up to the entrance I was supposed to use in J.J. Cooper and Sam Dykstra. And, you know, important people who work for major league baseball were coming out, just saying, like, they won't let us until 1130. And I was just like, fine, I'm going to stand here and wait and then 1130 rolls around and our credentials will not scan. And then it took like another 45 minutes or whatever before someone with enough clout said,

just let them in. Just look at their face. And the face on their head and the face on their credential. And if they match, then let them through. Right. And did I have to sit and scramble and do stuff like hurriedly after we finally got to sit down before the draft started? Like, yeah. But it's over now.

I do think that there might be some producer. you know, like Gene Wilder producers element to what's going on where if in fact they do force everyone to go to college, et cetera, like all the stuff that they proposed to change to amateur acquisition a couple weeks ago, could they then actually try to put a little bit more elbow grease into what's going on here and say, look, it worked. We did see how it was so bad before and now there's this. Like when we hired Michael Winslow to do sound effects during in the background of the, you know, the second through fourth rounds of the draft in 2026. And now it's like nice and church mouse quiet and stuff. I do wonder if it would be more popular if they had asked me to go on TV, which I've never been asked to do. Part of me thinks that like Greg Amsinger knows he doesn't want my head of hair on TV next to him. I know. Yeah.

Doesn't want that smoke. Doesn't want that competition. But no, I keyed, I keyed. I keyed. I don't know what the answer is. There is part of me that wonders, I do believe that people care more about the laundry of college sports than they do of like minor league baseball and high school stuff. I wonder if everyone did have to go to college if it were more like the NFL. And I do think college baseball is growing in a way that there might be something to that part of it. As much as I disagree with like, limited. the earning power of kids who could be drafted into a war that might still be going on by the time their high school draft picks next year. And the optics of that are different than football because there's a real safety issue in pro football that you have to guard against. But it wasn't the best. We were not privy to any of the broadcast stuff. A change for us from our perspective in like media row this year was we were not exposed to any parts of the broadcast.

In past years, there have been, like, aspects of the broadcast that we have been able to hear sitting there. This year, there was just, like, a stage show, which I thought they did a really good job. Like, if you were at the draft, it was fun. Yeah. You got cool stuff. Yeah. I think that, like, there's, you know, one of the challenges of this as a broadcast event is that, you know, you have a room full of people. Most of the folks who are there are there because they want to see their team pick.

They, you know, I'm sure some of them. of them are draft heads, but a lot of them are Phillies fans or, you know, insert team here. And so they want to see their team pick to keep the energy up in the room. You got to have the mascots dancing around and karaoke and I will say as an as a historically anti-DJ person, I did think that the DJ was good. She was on her game. But it was very, it was so loud. It was so loud. At one point, I'm sorry, I'm going to do a swear, and you should bleep a chain because it's a pig bone. At one point, I messaged you, Ben, and I said it's so fucking loud in here because it was so fucking loud in there.

But, you know, they need to keep the energy in the room up for the benefit of the broadcast. And so there is this balance to be struck between actual draft stuff and, you know, the T-shirt toss or whatever the activity is. And I thought it went too far in the direction of the T-shirt toss this year, but I thought, I think you need some of that stuff so that it feels lively in there, particularly because, you know, I'm sure that Rob Manfred wasn't the only one who would have struggled to pronounce Rock's last name just by virtue of not everyone in there being a college baseball fan. So there is some of that that needs to go on, but it does feel very impersonal.

This was the second year in a row where there were no players in attendance. I know that the plan under the owner's proposal is that, you know, they will pay players to attend. Why don't you just do that this year? It puts the beats in this weird situation where they're there to cover the team they covers draft. And yet they have to step out of the room to do media availability with senior brass because it's not like the kid is there for them to talk to. That presents sort of a weird wrinkle. And I will say when the event was in Fort Worth, worth, they had, they only had six players there. It wasn't like the entire class was in attendance or the

entire first round, but it, it was, it punctuated it with, you know, with a JJ Weatherholt, with a Braden Montgomery, enough that it did add energy to the proceeding. It was cool to get to see those guys, you know, put on the hat for the first time to see JJ take that giant cowboy hat off. You know, the year that Braden Montgomery got drafted, he had just busted his entire lower leg in the College World Series. He's on one of those little rollers to get up on the stage. But it was great. It made the crowd so happy. They really cheered for him because he was still injured. So I think that there is like a, you know, there's a version of the draft that is good in the room. There's a version of the draft that is good on TV. I think there's a lot of overlap in that Venn diagram,

but they just haven't been able to nail it. And it seems like it has gotten worse lately in a way that even though I don't want to be conspiratorially minded, makes me wonder if there is some of this dynamic at play where they make it, you know, the production value is there for a TV broadcast, but they're not able to really do what the NFL or the NHL does. And then clearly the way that they treated rounds two through four was just ridiculous.

Like, and especially frustrating for the people who actually care about the draft because when the broadcast has transitioned to the later rounds, like they had people on that broadcast who are prospect people who do know these guys, right? It was it was Callis. It was Carlos. It was Lance. And they are very in the weeds on this class. Would have been able to offer tremendous analysis if you could have heard them do it. I was very gratified because, you know, I'm sitting in my hotel room after the fact. I have Norway losing to England. I'm devastated. It's hot. I'm still annoyed that we got kicked out like moments after the first. round ended and in true Philly fashion very rudely by you know conference convention center security

staff who like yeah well what look what I'm just calling it like I see it and I'm sitting there and we get an email to the podcast email account being very annoyed by the quality of the broadcast which was the first that I had heard about the forklift of it all and it was just Michael Winslow it's false flag it was not true there weren't people breaking down the set It was, Michael Winslow doing sound effects. It was tremendously gratifying to see. But anyway,

I think, Sean, I see your email. I appreciate your perspective. You were right. It was a little bit of a catastrophe from a broadcast perspective. But, and here I'm going to very subtly transition us, that doesn't mean that the draft itself was a disaster. Hey, oh.

So maybe now that we have given our media criticism, and we can transition to talking about the players taken because it's an interesting group and some of the strategies that we saw deployed on Saturday were curious. So maybe we can start, though, with the guys sort of right at the top of that class because there was a real bifurcation for you and Brendan, Eric, between sort of the top four who were taken here, who are guys who are 50 future values and above,

will immediately move into the top 100. and then, you know, the rest of the class. So do you want to talk about those four guys and maybe just some of the dynamics of the first round? Yeah, sure. So it was generally assumed that there were like a top four to five or six, depending on who you talk to, players in the class, with the top three being Rock Chilowski, shortstop from UCLA, Grady Emerson, a high school shortstop from Texas.

And then Vaughn Lacky, the catcher from Georgia Tech. And Rock and Emerson had been up at the top of this class, basically the whole time. I had Rock towards the back of the first round when he was coming out of high school. He was Hamilton, a high school kid in Arizona. And then Emerson last summer was generally regarded as clearly the best guy, maybe he had a chance to go first, if not, like, definitely a top five type of player. And then Lackey, when I updated the list, the draft list in January, I had Lackey. at fifth, which was like sort of avant-garde at the time. And now, you know, he pretty clearly moved into this group throughout the season.

And those were really the top three. And then Jackson Flora, the pitcher from UC Santa Barbara, who I had, I think, fourth before the season. Part of why he maintained his status as the top, or at least one of the top pitchers in the class, was because some of the other guys, there was just sort of a war of attrition, really, for the other college pitchers throughout the season. Cameron Fluky, who went later in the first round to Detroit, he was the top college pitcher on some folks' boards, entering the season, and then he got hurt in his first start,

and was just okay when he came back. So Flora just sort of stayed up there the whole year. Rock Chalowski, the first pick in the draft, he's one of the better shortstop defenders I've scouted domestically, like pre-draft, just really acrobatic. He's a bigger, boxier guy. He's not, like, super twitchy athletic. He just has unbelievable body control.

He's very creative the way he's able to contort himself to make some of these plays. I do think he has, like, gold glove type ceiling at short. I don't think he's just, like, merely okay there. Or even just, like, above average. Like, this is a plus, plus shortstop defender who has power. He has that, like, teacherman style swing where there's, like, a very aggressive. attack angle. He has a crazy bat wrap of sorts where it just takes so long for him to get back on playing with the baseball. But when he is, he is geared for launch. Is he going to strike out more

than you want? I think so. I think that's why he was third on my board rather than first or second, although I do have the same grade on him, Emerson, and Lackey. I had rock third just because I felt better, more sure that the other two guys are really going to hit for contact. But as we saw with Jacob Gonzalez, the White Sox have been better at augmenting swings. You don't want to take a guy first who swing you have to augment necessarily. But if things go sideways for Rock, if he ends up vulnerable to fastballs around his hands, I think he will be some, then maybe they could dial things down enough that remedies that. Really, I think that even if you just let things play out as they are right now,

that his production will be similar to Dansby Swanson's, where he's striking out like a quarter of the time, but he's getting the power, he's playing really good defense, it's a really good player, and it's a player who you feel fine about taking first. Emerson, who went second to the raise, the race hit Emerson first on their board,

and with some separation between him and whoever they had second, which I think was lackey. Emerson can really hit. He's left-handed. He's definitely going to play shortstop. He's got a great arm. He's not as good a defender as Rock is,

but he's good enough that he feels like a sure-bed. to stay there. And then the question for Emerson is, this is not a Corey Seeger. This is not a Carlos Correa type of body where you think, wow, and he also maybe he'll have plus plus power one day. He's more like if he's going to hit for meaningful power, it's going to look like Gunner Henderson where he's like 6-2 and he got stronger than we thought he would because this is like sort of a narrow bodied. He's just like really skinny through the forearms and his hips. And he's just sort of like a stick figure like six foot two. So how strong he's going to be? I don't know. Still a really good player, the type of player who in any draft you'd feel good about taking third, taking fifth.

Like, you feel awesome about that. Taking him second feels fine. And I do like him a lot. And he's my second ranked player in the class. The twins at three took Von Lackey, who was my, I had him ranked first. Vaughn's just gotten better significantly so every year for each of the last four years. He is consistently an arrow-up guy. He's an unbelievable defensive prospect. Like, he's not necessarily the framer that Patrick Bailey is yet, but he is the thrower. Like, some of the off-platform stuff that you see Joe Mack and Bailey and some of these guys doing, Von Lackey does that stuff. He's really athletic for a catcher. He's really fast for a catcher. He's a well-rounded offensive player. I'm not worried that this is like Henry Davis or Joey

Bart or anything like that or even like Zanino. Obviously, Mike Zanino did enough other stuff that he was good, but I'm not worried that Von Lacky's going to hit like a buck 90 and then just do enough other stuff to be fine. I think Von Lacky's going to hit like 250, 260 with 20 bombs and be a plus defensive catcher. He's just like really, really good player. So those three guys are great. And then Jackson Flora at 4, really smart, funny, charismatic kid. He blew a lot of people away at the Combine talking to him.

I think it's really good what the Giants did here. help soon. And I think that he is like a rudder of sorts entering a situation that feels rudderless and just like clearly the best guy in the class. And then after that, things were strange? Like, what were teams going to do after these guys went? And the answer was that they either ran to safety or got creative or just took a guy who they were hoping might still be there. And so we saw a lot of teams run toward college bats over the mostly over the next several. picks, safe-feeling college hitters. It began sooner than people would have guessed, I think, like a month and a half ago, some of the high-upside high schoolers that, you know, I wasn't

on necessarily, like, on all of these guys to the same degree as some of my peers, but like Jacob Lombard fell to pick 14, which to me feels fine because I don't think he can hit. I'm really scared he can't. But, you know, two months ago, that would have felt crazy. Eric Booth, you know, just like those teams picking fifth and sixth, ran the pirates and the royals, were just like, let's take these safe feeling college hitters rather than gamble on these high school outfielders for people maybe think on upside should be the next two guys. So it was a pretty deep class, a lot of good players, but it sounds like the cream of the crop, the elite guys were not really at the level that we've seen with.

some previous drafts. Like if Chilovsky is the guy who is basically the number one projected pick from last year's draft to this year's draft, and I don't know how unusual that is for someone to go kind of wire to wire like that and what that portends, if anything, you'd think probably, oh, the guy people maybe have been hearing about for that long and he actually stuck at the top of the class. I don't know whether that is a testament to him or says something about the class in general, you'd think that if someone was kind of the consensus top pick for that long, then maybe he would be sort of a no-doubt-or superstar. And yet you're dropping Dansby-Swanson comps, which he's a good player.

You know, he's probably better than the median number one overall pick, but also maybe is not quite what you're aspiring to when you have the number one pick, right? And she's not exactly a household name, not in the Manfred household, at least clearly, which, which, you know, I suppose speaks to what we were talking about with the Balkanized broadcast and the lack of live look-ins. They actually, they had kind of a montage of, like, guys getting drafted in their living rooms, but without even identifying who they were or anything, like, just collected at the end. It was weird. It was at the end? Yeah.

It was so weird. I mean, like, I just, I don't. Yeah. I don't know, man. We just assumed that those had been shown, because they did show that same. montage in the room. And we just assumed that we, that the people at who were seeing those. No, I don't think so.

I think that was it. It was weird. And yeah, and I was even thinking of the like, he's this trying to tank the draft so that they can get what they want. But I think if they could make it into a major marquee event that got huge ratings like drafts and other leagues did, I think MLP would want that and its broadcast partners would want that. So to some extent, it's kind of conceding or surrendering to the inevitable, which is that

there are just all these reasons why the MLB. draft is not as big an event, just because college baseball players are not as famous as college football and basketball players, generally speaking, and they're further away from being big leaguers, even if the timeline is somewhat accelerated now. And you have Rock Chalaski, who's the number one guy, and that wasn't a surprise. And yet even the commissioner can't say his name right, which, you know, maybe that's more of a reflection on Ram Infred than than the caliber of, you know, celebrity or pedigree that that number one pick has. But you probably wouldn't see that in other sports where that guy's going to be a national

celebrity when he gets selected because you're going to be projecting the number one pick to be a superstar for the team that takes him in the coming season, right? And that's just never going to be the case for baseball. So Chalowski, do you think that the fact that he was just sort of the guy for so long, Does that make you think better of him, even if he wasn't your number one guy on your pure talent board? Or is that more about just the fact that there wasn't some sort of generational prospect available this time around? I think it's a good thing. I think that if we look at recent history, who are the players who, basically since they entered college,

who we've cared about the whole time and they performed the whole time, it tends to be a good group of guys. The way Dylan Cruz has played is one of those exceptions where the rap on Dylan Cruz coming out of high school was, hey, we're scared this guy, maybe he won't hit, that he might strike out more than you want him to. And, you know, his swing is long. And then he went to LSU and he crushed it for three years. And then, you know, he gets to the big leagues and it's like, hey, maybe like some of those

concerns were valid. He still is, and I still like Dylan Cruz. and I think he's going to be a good player, but the type of wire-to-wire, this guy destroyed the SEC for three years. He's got to be great, right? You know, that's not necessarily true. Travis Bazzano was wire-to-wire.

Coming out of Travis Bazzana's sophomore year, he was basically the top-ranked guy in the class. And you could argue that it should have been, you know, Kurtz or Weatherholt or whatever. But people generally thought, hey, Travis Buzana, that guy's good. It would be totally fine to take him first in a draft and he'll be good pretty quickly.

And that's the sort of thing that I think about Trollowski, where he feels, in his defense, that piece of it gives him a floor of sorts. But the fact that he's been good the whole time and seems like a good kid, like I know I was watching the Sox Machine interview that Rock had media availability after he got picked and he was describing, like, walking through Chicago

after he had met with the team and spent the whole, you know, a couple of days there. And I would feel really, good about it. He seems really enthused about the city and being there and, you know, just the year that the White Tucks as a franchise are having, I think I'd feel really good about generally. I don't know. There are just years where the draft isn't as sexy. There are just years where the draft isn't very good or were the best players come out of a place where you wouldn't have expected them to. Because it's 2026, you know, our buddy Keith and I think other outlets,

It's to, like, it's been 10 years since the 2016 draft, and that's the Mickey Moniac draft. And you have to go so deep in that draft before you find players who you'd feel good about taking first or second or third. Like, Will Smith went in the comp round. Corbyn Burns went in, like, the second round, like, and was a two-way player for a while at St. Marys. No, I'm thinking of Tony Gonsola, never mind. They were on the same team. You know, Boba Chet was, like, kind of a doughy high school player. who got his act together between his junior and senior year and was an arrow-up guy,

but not to the degree where you were going to take him first. And maybe since then, 10 years is kind of a long time. The way teams behave and the way teams understand players has changed enough that maybe Will Smith does go second. You know, if you have the 2016 draft today with today's style of thinking and understanding of the data and this and that stuff. Maybe Will Smith and Bobachette, maybe Boba Chet's bat speed gets measured in a way that lights up enough teams,

that he does go where Eric Booth went this year rather than in the second round. But sometimes these drafts just aren't good. There just aren't good players to take. It happens in every sport. You just do the best you can. I had a scouting director last week as I'm like working the phone and working on mock drafts and trying to understand the players

who I don't have a good first person understanding of. I just got a director tell me, yeah, like, one of the other guys and I were talking, and he was just like, I won't make fun of yours at the end if you don't make fun of mine, because there's just a certain point in this draft where, like, the part of the first round where normally teams go,

okay, I don't love anything that's left for me, let's just take a safe player. That normally happens in, like, the middle of the first round. and in this draft, it happened fifth, the fifth pick, where the pirates were just like, give us Derek Curiel, who is a skinny center fielder, who has good contact skills, and that's sort of what he is.

And Zion Rose, who, by the way, as much as we have kind of like shat on, I don't know if that's a bleep people swear, the past tense, chat, do you have chat? But we've like shot on baseballs, this and that stuff. Like Zion Rose, the breakthrough series initiatives, like the and the RBI program, like that type of stuff, Del Matthews and these people who have worked hard to facilitate and foster like the participation of black amateur players in these events. Like Zion Rose just went six in this draft. He's been a guy who was cultivated since he was an underclassman in high school.

Like one of the most excellent young people that come through that program. just went six in this draft because he can hit. He showed it for three years at Louisville. The Royals were long rumored to be a team who might cut a deal early so they could do high schoolers later on. And even though we didn't get like, you know, and get that pick right in the mock, I don't know that anybody did. The fact that we knew the rumor was that the Royals would be the team to do that, like

that turned out to be true. So it just seemed like that type of draft this year where let's, I'm scared. I'm going to take a college player who I feel good about right now, and it started at pick five. Since you referenced a picks that might have been made differently in an earlier era, I read a study that was published this past weekend by Andrew Ball, the former executive for teams, assistant GM for the Astros. And he was trying to figure out whether MLB teams have gotten better at drafting as a result of all of the data and models that they have now. And so he looked at three different periods of time, pre-Moneyball, 1990 to 2002, and then kind of the money ball era, a decade after that. And then a decade after that, when teams all had advanced models,

and you were starting to get real pitch data for amateurs and a little more kind of biometric stuff, maybe not quite as much as they have today, but it's the draft. So you need to wait several years to actually evaluate how picks turned out, at least. So he broke it down. number of ways, just kind of looking at how closely the order of picks conformed to the value that those picks produced and like the bust rate and the success at evaluating stars. And however, he sliced and dice the data, he found that at best there's been maybe modest improvement that it's still kind of crapshooty.

And that's not unique to baseball, obviously. You know, you have a higher hit rate for stars. of course, in the early rounds of, say, the NFL draft or NBA draft, where guys are just going to make that leap quite quickly, but you still have lots of people saying, well, why can't teams draft quarterbacks? And it's still a lot of luck and chance and everything. So I guess it's just the exercise is prone to a lot of variability,

and it's just really hard to project players, particularly in baseball, where you have to look years ahead. But it doesn't seem like the data revolution that has been ushered in by all the new sources and all the new people doing this draft analysis has led to a total overhaul in how successful teams are at picking players. So I don't know whether you think that will change as we get more and more data now or whether that's just kind of inherent to this process and why you think it hasn't become more accurate as a result of the less garbage information, not producing less garbage out.

It's tough to say, there's definitely always going to be some amount of variability just because of people. Like, I have a high-ranked player, like, fairly high-ranked who wasn't, you know, picked in a place where he'll sign, who's going to go to college, who, like, I learned no-showed his team private workout. And that impacted the way the team felt about the player's personhood. And so there's, like, some of that stuff going on. you end up in an organization that's not the right fit for you personally or a coach makes the wrong decision with how you should be doing something and it impacts you maybe get hurt. I'd be curious to know if that study was looking at like the linearity of the production, like, hey, the first pick and he produces like this and then the second pick he produces like

that. And because even as there's a piece of it that is us quote unquote improving our understanding of how to evaluate the player, and then there's the development piece of it, which maybe flattens the curve that you would expect the outputs to show, because if I can make Will Warren or Cam Schlittler as good as they are, well, then the results of the draft are going to be less linear than they would be if I couldn't do that. So I've maybe improved how I can evaluate the player because I know watching Will Warren that I can change him from like a small school swing man to a mid-rotation big league starter,

or I know that I can take Cam Schlittler, who's just this beanpole, who's never seen a weight room in his life, I can add like 10 ticks onto his fastball. But even though, you know, there's a perfect world where all the teams know and understand this, and they know and understand about each other that they all know it, and then Cam Schlittler goes eighth in the draft,

knowing that they can all do this with him. And then there's a version of it where the Yankees are the only ones who know that they can do this. And they know that they can sit and wait and take that guy later and still turn him into something. Maybe not, I'm sure they didn't think like, oh, he's going to be like this. But they know that they can improve him. And so if what the study is looking at is, are we good at knowing that the player who's picked second is, in fact, the second best player, then I would say, like, there's going to be some noise in that. because if you can take Corbyn Burns and the Brewers make him what he becomes,

then there's just going to be some, like, you know, it's not everything is going to be Mike Piazza, but there's, I do think it does cloud our ability to, like, evaluate how teams do in the draft because they are so good at developing through, because of some of the same means, data, technology, applied science, basically, that it's going to make the middle round players better than they would be, if we didn't have that stuff. Yeah.

Another thing he mentioned is that maybe the improvements in player development are producing a lot of what appear to be improvements in drafting. And that could also make it a little less predictable, I guess, because it's going to be the less elite guys maybe benefiting the most from that in theory. And he also said the influx of data also hasn't added much information around health, physical development, or psychology. The most critical component to determine success is player's skill. If a player can't hit a curb ball or consistently throw strong,

there's not much chance for them to provide value for those that can. Things like availability, physicality, aptitude, competitiveness, and ability to respond to failure become separators. And what teams are able to access in those spaces looks much more similar to 1990 than the on-field metrics do. So that's perhaps part of it too. I'm curious, you know, as you think through some of the guys who went later, because Ben noted and you noted in your preview of the class that there is good depth here,

even as there's sort of a donut hole of guys missing in that middle round, the middle of the first round where teams might have historically still gotten really good players, all of those guys are potentially good, but have health concerns or performance red flags. Are there teams that as, you know, they sort of progressed through their draft, you thought, hey, this group had a really good class, even if some of that quality was of the depth variety or guys who came later in the, you know, the second or third or fourth round? Yeah. So there are some teams who had a really good class, in my opinion,

just because of the sheer volume of picks that they had, like St. Louis and Tampa Bay. I think the White Soxed too, like when you have the top pick in the bonus pool that results from that, and you flex that a little bit, like you can have a really good class. Then you have some of the teams who are employing a more, overt strategy to take advantage of the class depth. And the team, we've talked about the Brewers for sure each of the last several years is being the poster child for this thing where they cut some early deals and then they go hard on high school players much, much later. On those last 10 rounds of the draft, most teams are just taking org filler at that point. They're taking

older college players who are, they need a catcher in the lower levels of the miners, or taking a guy who the area scout likes and knows to be just in all likelihood like a mercenary type of org player. And while all the other teams, for the most part, are doing that, the brewers are taking high schooler, high school, high schooler, high schooler, because they've structured the bonus like outlay of their first 10 rounds in such a way that they can negotiate with some number of these guys. They're like two, three hundred, four hundred thousand dollar bonuses, and they know they're good at development, and so why not go wide and access half a dozen high scores in a draft

class or more and start developing them from the time they're 18 and see what you can make of them? And the Brewers did this to the extreme again this year. And then you have the Red Sox and the Braves. who also did a version of this. The Red Sox version of it was more balanced, where they took a probably underslot college player with their first pick, a guy named Jake Schaffner,

a shortstop from the University of North Carolina, who was a small school kid before he transferred to UNC. He was at North Dakota State. Six foot two, back to ball skills, can play shortstop well enough. So there's like some black box, you know, arrow up stuff to him because he was, two years in North Dakota State and then just like thrived in the one year that he saw good

pitching. So I really liked him as like the underslot target for what they did. And then the high school kids who they took later were Jason Matacchinsky, a shortstop from Wisconsin. He is hit to a risk, he is power. He's, you know, sexy high variance shortstop. Martin Scheller, a Georgia outfielder who's like a little Tyler O'Neill starter kit. He's not that like beefy, but he is that style, like his swing looks so much like O'Neill. He's just trying to pull everything with power. He's probably a corner outfielder. Same type of thing. And then Caleb Lefevre from Iowa, who threw at the combine. Another aspect of, you know, MLB's involvement in the draft process that I think is going well is the combine. Like, I know that Von Lacky's not working out there and some of the top guys are not, like,

running 30-yard dashes and whatever, but the combine has a real impact on the players who, players stock. And these guys get paid. Caleb Lefavor, who they took in the 10th round, He's six, seven. He's only throwing like 88 right now, but he moves well. His secondary stuff is really good. His breaking ball and his change up both at the combine in his mound session were pretty good. I liked him. I think that he's a nice, like, target for this type of thing.

And then the Braves version of it this year, where they're employing this strategy, this was the most extreme, where they're like front-loading underslot guys. and then taking a bunch of like the Bravesy type of high school players. So they took A.J. Grasia out of Virginia with their first pick. I like A.G. Grasia. I had him in the top five of the draft coming into the year. And then his season was just okay. He's another guy who transferred from a smaller school. Well, he went to Duke, but, you know, it's, Duke's not a small school, but it's not the baseball school that Virginia is. So he transfers to Virginia. He has an okay season. He just didn't hit for as much power as

you thought a guy who's as physical as he is would. And then, you know, he played center field of Virginia, but it's probably a corner guy in pro ball. So he was like towards the, he was like the last third of the first round. They took him ninth. He's under slot almost certainly. And then with their second pick at 26th,

this is where I would have guessed, and I did like in my mock draft, that the Braves would use some of that savings and take now, okay, here's going to be an overstock guy. Here's going to be like a high school pitcher who wants three, four million dollars. to sign. And instead they took another underslot guy, and this is Carter Beck from Indiana State, who's from like a tiny town in Saskatchewan. He went to a small school in the Dakota's like,

we had a bunch of North Dakota. He went to Mary University in North Dakota and then transferred to Indiana State. And he's this like, you know, super strong 5-11 guy. He's got big tools. Midwest Area Scout I talked to said that it's risky, but he could be like a capital. D dude just on tools. You just don't know how this guy's going to hit pro pitching because he was at a small school and then Indiana State. And then the Braves took two high school pitchers who are 17, Kada McCarthy, who reclassified from 2027. He's from Vermont. He is 17 years old. He threw at the combine. He's touched 101 this spring. He's little. He's six foot tall. I don't know how that's going to go, but the guy who has worked out most who looked like this when he was

in high school is Dillon Cese, where it's just like, boy, this is violent. He's throwing pretty hard. Not pretty hard, really hard. He's maybe not as big and fluid as I want like a Seth Hernandez type guy to be where it's just, hey, yes, this is going to work. I feel really good about this. It's more violent and high effort than that. But it is a 17-year-old touching 101. And then Cole Dennis, another guy who was at the Combine, who performed there. It's more mid-90s with a good curveball. He's 17. He's not as projectable. and then Jensen Hirshkorn, one of the better names in the draft, who had area code games last year,

Hirshkorn, who's 6-7, had like one of the best area code performances where I think he had like a no-hitter after three innings, and I was just like, you know, if this guy keep going, he thinks are like seven strikeouts through three innings or something like that, and just like slider command, six-seven guy. And then they kept going, like, they took Jack Brenner from Fondulac, Wisconsin, high school catcher, really athletic,

can really run, maybe play some center field in pro, ball. And then Ryan Barker, a shortstop from Arizona, a Castile High School in Arizona. When the spring started, he wasn't even the top prospect on his own team, but it's like, again, a kid at the combine, projectable, six foot one shortstop, who, you know, the Braves take these guys and they are good at the development. And from a couple of drafts ago, Eric Hartman was a guy like this, where we were saying at the time, hey, it's a mid-six-figure high schooler. he's fast. Let's see how strong they can make him, et cetera. And now he's the top 30 prospect in the game two years later. So this is what the Braves are doing. This is what the, you know, there are other

teams who have had good classes who have a more traditional looking approach. But those three teams took this approach where let's cut under slot and they go a ton of high schoolers, you know, in volume. It sort of cuts against what that NLB proposal we talked about was where, hey, if the smart teams are doing this. Why is it you want to stop them from doing it? These are small market teams most of the time who feel like this is a way that they can compete with the Dodgers and, you know, the Yankees or whatever. This is the approach they're taking. Why are you taking this out of their their kit to be able to do? I don't know how many teams could conceivably employ this strategy before there's like a game theory piece of this that becomes a problem for the teams who are doing it.

There are only so many teams who could do this before we reach sort of a critical mass. You know, But those are the teams who took that. You know, I have like other, obviously, like so many other teams who I have liked their classes. But the strategy and the talent combined here, I thought, made this, like, those couple of teams I thought knocked it out of the park. This has nothing to do with the strategy employed by anyone. But you talked about the great name. And that's like a great name and an interesting name. I feel compelled to point out that the Phillies took Drew Titzworth in the 11th round.

And then the Mets took Z. Zach Kroschfeld in the 14th round. Pick number 420. Are you serious? It was 420? It was 420? And I'm just saying that like sometimes the stars align such that you have not only one of the better combos of names, but that they would fall, that they would fall as. You have to unwind before bed.

Look, that they would fall as 420, Crosfeld. As they would between division rivals who hate each other with the power of the sun that is currently destroying the city of Philadelphia and much of the eastern seaboard, we need to take moments to have little treats and enjoy ourselves. So my all name. Titzworth versus Crutchville. My all name group. So the brewers took a guy named Aidan Knack, who also threw really hard at the combine. And then they took a guy later whose last name sounds like My Shirona. It's like Myerana.

So they took NAC and My Sharona. Amazing. The Rockies draft class is like the Scrabble winning draft class. Okay. So they had Tanner Segoospe, Mackiah Negretti. They have Ryan Needswides, Nidesideswides. They have like guys with multiple Zs. They have a lot of guys with Zs.

And Ws. And Ws in their name, Josh Swink. Yep. And Gavin Swartz. Yep. We have a new brewer in the mix, Garrett Brewer, who went to the Rockies, just because we always need to have one guy in the league

in affiliated ball. We're like, well, the team has to acquire that guy so that he can be a brewer. And then Macon Winslow, the catcher from North Carolina, who has been a guy since high school, like Macon Winslow has been around. But it's just like a scary baseball name

to draft a guy. who's making wins low. Yeah, yeah. And the Phillies did him in the sixth round. And I just, at some point, I will conduct an actual study into this. But the sheer number of Cades and Caden's, and Cades spelled the way you'd think, and also Caden's spelled with Cays and Y's AIs. They're just a real, a real surfeit.

But also the Bradens and Braylins, they're out of control. They're out of control. It's just like, and, you know, and all of that. And not just, sorry if it's crass, it's not just white kids anymore. Yeah, that's true. One of my favorite players in the draft was the Blue Jays 11th rounder, Brayden Martin from Maryland, who's like the Chandler Simpson type of guy where he just does not strike out in college at all. And the other tools, and he's pretty, he's not Chandler Simpson fast, but he is fast.

but the other stuff is like he's got 20 power you know like it's about trying to make him swing Ernie Clement is the other guy like this where it's just like bat to ball speed and you have to try to figure out everything else Brade Martin from Maryland was that guy in the 11th round the Marlins had like an international flavor to their draft they took a kid named Fabian Bundy I've seen it Fabian and Fabio oh he's he was born and raised in Switzerland oh cool and he was at a junior college in California he was committed to UCLA he was supposed to be at UCLA this year and it didn't have i don't know why that didn't happen but he stayed at the junior college so they took him the 11th round they took a kid from panama who went to georgia premier academy for high school uh and rintaro sasaki oh that's right the marlins took all three of those kids so they have a panamanian kid a japanese kid and a swiss kid yeah so yeah a pretty interesting group for them too yeah a lot of

unpredictable names it's like uh madison from she hulk attorney at law a show that i'm sure you too enjoyed. It's spelled M-A-D-I-S-Y-N-N and she says Madison with two ends one-Y, but it's not where you think. There's always some unusual and predictable spelling. Then when we do our next Patreon pod, we got to talk about Widows Bay. Okay. Okay. Sure. I'm, I'm, I've finished Widows Bay. Good. And so I'm ready to, I'm ready to talk about one of my favorite shows. I tapped out of it. I didn't finish it. Wow. It was too, it was too derivative of other stuff for me to enjoy. I was just like, if I were Steven Spielberg, I'd be pissed at this.

Stephen King. And Stephen King. Well, it's Spielberg too because of all the jaws. Yeah. All the jaw stuff. But the sound design was amazing. Yeah. Okay.

We can discuss that. And I think that, I think, and I hear him where I's great and I think Katie Dipole that is a very promising prospect. But this was too much like, hey, you know, you can do your own work rather than, you know, as soon as, Stephen Root had like, there's no Patreon pod for Eric. so he's just going to go on this. You're just going to talk about it now. But there was a point where they're on the boat and it's just like, okay, like, hey, I've seen this before, you know.

Like, I've seen Steam Root's about to have some harrowing, like, monologue where he talks about some traumatic thing. But we know he wasn't on the Indianapolis. Yeah. It was certainly a synthesis of familiar things, but lots of things that I liked. And it was its own thing enough that I enjoyed it. I might agree with you. I agree. was slightly overhyped, just because there was so much hype, even though not incredible viewership.

It was one of those very big online, not huge in the actual audience size, but that's Apple TV for you. Anyway. Yeah, anyway. Sound design, though, like, whoever, the sound design, David Lynch would be proud. You guys, great job. Jiro Moray and Dipold, whoever had to do with that. Yeah. I love that part of it.

So lots of tragedy names, unusual spellings in the draft. Also, lots of large guys. You kept saying 6-7 and you weren't trying to do tired memes. You were actually just describing guys' height. And Bauman wrote about that too. 6-7 was not the biggest. They came bigger than that. You're going to need a bigger boat for some of these MLB draftees.

Sorry, Sam's Billberg. Any different plan. Yeah. I've heard it before. Yeah. So I did just want to ask you about a couple surprise picks or at least differences in draft strategy. People were wondering what the angels would do, having now dismissed perimenetic. who seemingly was running their drafts,

and they, of course, had their super aggressive strategy of let's get close to the majors guys, and then it turns out they're closer to the majors than anyone anticipated, because we'll just promote them whether they're ready or not. So with John Mosellak overseeing this, but seemingly largely deferring to scouting director, Tim McElvane, the Angels did break their streak of seven years selecting a college player with the number one selection, and they took a high school outfielder number one, though they did, then take college hitters with their next few picks.

So that's interesting. I don't know whether that'll turn out to be better or worse, but it is different. And I guess if you're the Angels, different is more likely to be good than bad. So that is kind of, I wonder whether you noted that with some teams with new regimes, the Rockies, right? New people running draft rooms, whether you noticed any difference there. And then also I saw a lot of buzz about the Red Towers. Sox pick, Jake Schaffner, is that how you say it? He was there, their number one at number 20 overall, and it seemed like the consensus was a lot lower. So people were sort of surprised. I guess they took

a couple of UNC left-handed hitters who had been roommates with their first two picks. So maybe there was a theme there too. Yeah. So on the Angel stuff, the way it was put to me is that Now that Manazian is no longer there, and Mozeliac's M.O., even when he's been in an org for a while, is to be sort of laissez-faire with the draft stuff, was that the Angel Scouts were going to be the ones who got to make the pick. Jared Grindlinger reclassified. He was originally going to be in 2027. He reclassified, I believe, in January, which is sort of an awkward time for a hitter to reclassify because ideally we would have seen you against the other good pitchers from the class. the summer before, and that helps, like, make you feel good that the players that can actually hit. So, Grindlinger had to be evaluated based on stuff he had done against underclass pitching,

and then stuff that he did this spring playing high school varsity ball in SoCal, which as far as, like, places to try to evaluate whether a guy can hit, that's near the top of the list of places that you can feel good about doing it. I like Jared Grinlinger a lot. He is a real prospect both ways, and it sounds like the angels are going to let him do both for at least a little bit, the ceiling is higher as a hitter. He's big and projectable, 6-3190, left-handed bat. Kind of has like a Tyler Soderstrom look to him swinging, and just depending on the event that he was seen at last summer by mostly like agents and some of the scouts who, like where teams care more about getting a track, like having a track record with kids before their juniors and seniors, like, you know, towards

the end of last summer was when power started to show up. So he's really exciting. The Angel's second pick, Jaron Advuncula, he's going to be your favorite, Ben. He's the most Astudeo-ish player in this draft where it's just totally absurd barrel feel. And he swings at absolutely everything, like one of the more chase-prone players in all of college baseball

and also one of the more difficult guys to strike out. I agree with you, Colorado. It's different. When I was doing my mock and trying to figure out what to do, with Jacob Lombard, normally the Rockies are where I would have put him, because I'd just be like, who has done this in the past, where they're just scouting the physical tools, and they're not really as concerned about the contact red flag piece of it as I am?

And that has been the Rockies, and that's been the Rockies with Zach Veen, and that's been the Rockies with Benny Montgomery, that's been the Rockies with Ethan Holiday. But now that Josh Burns is in charge, and Tom Tannis is there, and it just felt better. Now, some of this was like Tyler Bell was sitting there, shortstop from Kentucky for them, who I think is like a top, you know, six player in this class.

So it was just great value, like a no-brainer I thought for them to take him at 10. But then they just did like a bunch of college guys. Daniel Jackson from Georgia won the Golden Spikes. He had an insane ear at Georgia. Like a lot of Georgia players, he's got kind of weird, home road splits around like chasing sliders and such, super weird. like his misrate against sliders on the road is double that what it was at home really strange. He's tooled out.

I don't know if he's going to hit. I kind of don't think so, but he's got Enormo tools. So to get him at Pick 37 was, I thought, good value. And then Logan Rediman from UCLA, he got hurt towards the end of the year. His stuff was down at the combine. He's more of like a by-low, fourth starter type. Jack Nettili from Cincinnati, catcher who can really frame and has power. So definitely a different look to the Rockies draft than years in the past.

I mean, the Red Sox draft I touched on when I was speaking on the like Brewer's style high school go wide strategy. I like Schaffner. Owen Holder's second pick is the one I don't like. He's just so long to the baseball. It's just an extreme oppo-oriented spray profile. He's big. He's six-four. There's, you know, college big conference performance there, as you said, North Carolina.

But he was one of those guys who I didn't rank. I knew to watch him. He's, you know, one of those people where you ask other folks. hey, who's not on my board, who should be, and they're like, Owen Hull. And just, you know, in my opinion, he's a no for me. But I guess we'll see the Red Sox have done positive things with swing augmentation in the past. Although not all of it has been sustainable, Christian Campbell. But yeah, Owen Hull was not my speed, but Jake Schaffner was.

And then other new regimes, just like looking off the top of my head at who else has, like, changed. The giant's situation was interesting because of the timing of everyone joining. They had their first draft class last year, but they had their first full draft cycle as a group this year. It's the timing of when Manassian got hired and stuff like that. Like, it was in the winter. So this is the first draft where those guys have had a chance to, as a group, collectively, start from scratch with the high schoolers, rather than just have the recency bias of the college guys. They went college heavy last year,

and this year was more balanced where they took, like Carson Bowman and Caden Wector, who were high school pitchers, who they took at 29th and 55th overall, before they took Peyton Bonds. But there was a change there with the Giants where they felt more comfortable, it seemed like, with high schoolers this year

than they did last year in their first draft as a group. Speaking of the Giants, a couple months ago, Jared Seidler at Baseball Perspectus, suggested that the Giants should blow up the draft. And someone suggests this about some team basically every year, right? And it just never happens. The idea that some team should just blow through all the slots and just go way over

and use up its whole pool and do the overages and get penalties and just eat the draft pick and spending penalties for future drafts. And this relies on uncertain conditions. being satisfied, and maybe you have a lot of top picks in that year's draft, and then other things down the road. But people have been suggesting this for about a decade, and it's just never really happened the way that everyone always says, oh, this would be a competitive advantage. And I guess it's even less likely to happen now because of NIL, with college being a better financial proposition for players, so you're not going to just

get guys to sign for any old number at this point. But why has this never happened? why did this never happen, even though there's been a chorus of people saying, oh, this would work, you could just go get all these guys in one big spending spree? It was, I think it was in our bold predictions post before the season when I was also like, hey, this is maybe the year to do this because of, at the time, it was still just like whispers about this sort of thing. But because maybe high school players won't be a thing in future drafts. And if indeed that's the case and that starts next year, then the talent pool for the next couple of draft classes are going to be worse. And so some of the pick penalties that you incur as a

result of blowing through your pool don't feel quite as bad because their picks in worse, less talented drafts the next couple of years. Like this did feel like the year, if anyone was going to do it, that they should have done it. The NIL money running around college baseball is not so, so big that the most talented high school players are going to be tempted to go rather than sign. The NIL money that teams are throwing at players is often in the like 300 to 700K per year range. And we're like the 700K type thing is so on the high end of what we're talking about. and it's almost always given to players who are already on campus, who the school feels good about in a way.

So like this year, the guy who that applies to is an Oklahoma State outfielder named Colin Ritchie, who did not go in the first day of the draft and told teams yesterday, hey, my number's still 800K. I don't know that that means that he got like 700K to stay at Oklahoma State for another year, but you can kind of make the inference that that's what happened is for him to stay in school. him about 700k, it is more in that fifth, like beyond the fifth round, really, range, where the bonus slot amount that the team can offer without going over is fighting against what the colleges are willing to give some of the better kids. And maybe if you're like a million dollar high

schooler and a team wants to give you 400K per year and you're going to go to school for three years, then that number can maybe compete with if a team wants to give you like 700K. But I think part of the problem is if other teams catch wind that you're doing it, you can get screwed by them taking those guys. You have an eye on taking and just blowing through your spending pool. Even now, while no one is doing it, there are picks on day two of the draft that are just big name high schoolers who aren't going to sign, whose name just gets called for whatever reason,

either because teams want like another name to negotiate with or just to like talk to the kid more or whatever it is. Like they don't really think they're going to sign the player. They know the player is going to school. The kid wanted, you know, four million or whatever it is and wasn't going to get it. And still you draft him. And there's just a point during some of these last 10 rounds where you don't have enough space in your minor league system for all these picks. And so you just call a kid's name. and because of if the draft happened all in one day,

maybe it would be possible for teams to like sneak one through everyone on everybody else because there's just not enough time to communicate and adjust. But even as the draft shifted from three days to two, the fact that we have like an overnight period where teams would get hip to what you were doing soon enough that they could kind of undo it on you. Like it's just too risky for teams to want to do it. But I think you can tell that like if you're trading a con, pick for Alex Claudio straight up.

Or if you're, you know, like, look at that, the White Sox Pirates trade from a couple days ago where, hey, it's basically a comp pick for a guy who you're swapping like middle relievers and a player who had a swing change and maybe is better now. And the pirates thought enough of Jacob Gonzalez to, like, give up a first round pick essentially for him. You know, the value of a draft pick is not so. great to teams that they wouldn't, you know, sacrifice one via penalty, you would think. But yeah, for whatever reason, no one has tried to do it.

I just think that it's a house of cards strategy in some respects because there are only so many really good high schoolers worth doing it with and a bunch of them are going to get drafted either because teams think they can actually sign them or they'll do it out of spite to undo your strategy. Okay. Well, we will link to all of your draft coverage. and I assume you will be doing some mid-season prospect rankings, updates, and farm system values, and Ben Clemens recently helped refresh your Fangraph's prospect valuation model,

which Craig Edwards had put in place several years ago. And so now there are new values based on outcomes of various picks and prospect rankings. And so that's already reflected, I suppose, on the board. but you'll be coming through. You'll be doing some mid-season updates and verdicts on who had the best draft and where the farm system stand. Yeah, we're going to pull the graduates off. We're going to have some post-mortem on the grads. The farm system values will change as the grads come off.

Of course, like, the preseason farm rankings are just going to stay on. You'll be able to look on the farm value page of the site and see, hey, before Connor Griffin graduated, like, this is where the Pirates. system was valued and then yeah like there will be a ranking update we'll have a sweeping top 100 update here pretty shortly and then we're going to be doing like buyers guides basically for teams who we expect are going to trade prospects at the deadline between now and the deadline those are the farm systems who brandon and i james fegan as well are going to be updating those systems and writing pieces that are just like hey here's like if you're shopping the cleveland

and Guardians farm system. Here are the aisles that you want to walk down. Here are the players who are improving and put a fresh coat of paint on, you know, Milwaukee and L.A. and the teams who you would think. And that's all in the offing. So, yeah, folks, if you're just listening to this but aren't visiting the site, come on over. Like, we have a lot of draft coverage and futures game coverage as well.

So, you know, it's a great time, I think, to come to the site. There are colors now on the board. All the team, this is like a big deal to me as a guy who's, colorifies his spreadsheets in the background a lot of the time with like the team colors and the hex codes you know and all that stuff like a huge dweeb um that's you know you'd be able to enjoy some that stuff like it's more visually arresting now the board the presentation of the board now that the team colors duke the colors are are all on there that's exciting all right check it out and before i let you guys go to uh take in the home run derby and brice harper and then we will

reconvene in a day to talk about the new slash old derby format. Bryce Harper did release a statement on Instagram, I believe, while we were recording. So just to close the loop with our discussion about Bryce and his video that was sent to a fan grafts, to a fan duel. Very different. We don't know if he was a fan grafts member. It doesn't change how well I wish him. Yes.

He's losing over a million dollars. No, I feel bad for you. Yes. And his family, mostly his family. And now we have heard about the circumstances from Bryce. And if this is accurate, then it's more or less what we expected. So Harper said, in response to a recent article in the Philadelphia Acquirer, I wanted to provide the following facts.

I joined Cameo to engage with fans through paid personalized videos. What happened here went beyond anything I knew about or approved. in November 2024, someone identifying themselves only as Brittany. And this is, speaking of two ends and a weird why, this is, it's actually Brittany, not Brittany, but it's B-R-Y-T-T-A-N-N-I. Anyway, that's not the point. Submitted an order through Cameo for a personal holiday video for Terry. Cameo had a separate category for business video requests, and at the time I did not know this video would be used for commercial purposes.

The request included a short script. it in good faith. Fandall then put its own logo on the video and used it as a gambling promotion. I did not know Fandall would do this. I did not consent to it, and Fandul had no right to do it. Had I known Fandul's true intent, I would not have made the video. The same is true, had I known anything about Terry or his situation, or about any alleged partnership between cameo and Fandle. Contrary to the Inquirer's suggestion, I did not know the cameo video would be used for a Fendl VIP promotion, and I have no affiliation with Fandall whatsoever. Counsel has directed me. not to comment to any further at this time.

He also included a screenshot of the request from Brittany for this. Again, the text of the message did say it was from your host, Brittany, from Fandul. So, I mean, you know, probably he was just reading a bunch of scripts and didn't think much of it. Or just didn't realize that it was, I don't know, in a business capacity. Maybe should have known and flagged it at the time. But look, it is a lot to ask. Yeah. I think.

I'm not surprised. So that doesn't shock me. I mean, either way, it's just part of this predatory practice by the company. So it doesn't shock me that maybe they would have done this in sort of an unofficial shifty way. Yeah. Yeah. Where maybe they knew that they couldn't get an official message like this.

And so they went the cameo route. So that seems to be how it happens. So, yeah. Wowzers, man. And that's so shifty. It is. Oh, my God. Yeah.

So I won't say fully exonerated, but yeah, cleared to some extent, certainly. Yeah. Makes it more understandable how this could have happened. Yeah, certainly. Well. I wonder what the timeline was between the Inquirer running. Like, I'm sure the Inquirer reached out to Bryce for comment before they ran there. Yeah, they definitely reached out to Boris and the Phillies and MLB.

So, and they all know commented, but they were probably trying to get. their ducks in order and figure out, yeah, maybe how this happened. He probably didn't even remember, so. Yeah. Yeah, when there's, and especially with pending litigation, and I think I saw a headline that the Pennsylvania Gaming Board is going to be looking into it as well. So like, you know, I think this largely lines up with what we thought had happened, as you said, but I can also understand there being, you know, a beat taken to like dot eyes and cross-tees, just given that there seems to be some amount of actual jeopardy here. All right.

What's the funniest fan grafts version of this where we can't, we pay for a cameo and someone unbeknownst to them is like inadvertently? Is it like, is Mike Wilbon on cameo? Yeah. It's definitely, it's definitely having someone who is famously anti-analytic sing the praises of like fit-based war. Congratulations, Eric, on your 10th year with fan graphs. Right.

Yeah, or something like that. Yeah, something like that. By the way, if anybody still listen to this, knows Wolbon, like, I'd love to have it bury the hatchet, a cup of coffee with him in Scottsdale somewhere. You can pick the place. To be clear, he and Eric do not have specific beef. He just has beef with the concept of analytics more broadly.

Right. And I know he's kind of playing a caricature of himself because Stephen A. Smith probably convinced him it would be good for his pocketbook to do so on TV. But, like, you know, like, Wilbon's part of the reason that I am here, you know? Like, so it would be nice to be like, hey, dude, like, we're not, we're not all. I mean, I am sort of troll-like in some ways, but like as soon as you see the hair on my

shoulders, you're going to guess that's true. But, yeah, like, well, Bon, I would like to have some sort of, like, peacemaking with him. Yeah, that'd be nice. If we could make that happen. Yeah. Other than that, I guess all that fangraphs and fendl have in common is fan and camel case or Pascal case or whatever it is, because they do do that. So that at least, I'm sure you respect, Meg, that they capitalized the D.

My understanding is that Pascal case is a subtype of camel case, that it is a, it is a camel casing. It is just a particular form of it, you know, not that I had to remind myself of that when we got an email to that effect. Well, congrats to Eric on pulling back into a tie with Ben Clemens for most appearances ever on Effectively Wild. The two leaders now nodded at 38. Right after we finished recording, I got a message from Medley.

Eric just realized Smoltz would be the funniest. That is, for the cameo style message praising fan graphs. Yeah, that might not be bad. Someone ambushed John Smoltz with a cameo script about how great Fancrafts is. The personal video price for Smoltz on Cameo, $200 plus. A business video, $1,400 plus. Bryce Harper, by the way. It's $899 plus for a personal video.

$99.99 plus for a business video. So he's probably especially upset that Fandul got a business video. from him for, I don't know, 11th the price of what he typically charges for those. As I look at his cameo page, it says only four left. So maybe it's a going out of business for price sale. Maybe he doesn't want to make cameos anymore after he's been burned. Or maybe the supply will be replenished. Our supply of podcasts will continue to be replenished as long as people support Effectively Wild

on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash Effectively Wilde. And signing up to pled some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going. help us stay ad-free and get yourself access to some perks, including personalized videos. Today's five shoutouts go to Brittany Bentley, not an abnormal spelling of Brittany, by the way. Not that it matters, to each their own. Happy to have people with non-traditional spellings, support us on Patreon. Also, Drew, Tim Childs, Isaiah Enochson, and Deep Space Trace, thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to the Effectively Wild Discord group for patrons only.

Monthly bonus episodes, a third complete, unrestrict. episode every week, exclusive live streams, membership in our Discord group for patrons only, the aforementioned personalized messages, prioritized email answers, fan graphs memberships, shoutouts at the end of episode's potential podcast appearances, and more, check out all the offerings at patreon.com slash effectively wild. If you have already signed up for Patreon, you can contact us via 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 group slash Effectively Wild. And you can find the Effectively Wild subreddit at our slash Effectively Wild. You can check these show notes in the podcast posts at Fangraphs or Patreon or the episode description in your podcast app for links to the stories and stats we've cited today. Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. More coverage from Philly and Afar coming to your podcatcher soon. We will have a home run derby breakdown next time along with lots of other banter. Talk to you then.

Oh, baseball, what have you done? Something's never been seen. Something factually fun. Oh, there's so much of you, but there's so little time. So thank God for effectively wild.