Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2513: Abandon Zyhir Hope, All Ye Who Enter Here

Episode Date: August 3, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley break down the Dodgers’ trade for Tarik Skubal from multiple angles: the Tigers’ return, expectations for Skubal and the Dodgers, why other teams let the trade happen, and the significance for the sport. Then they discuss a smattering of other moves (including deals for Freddy Peralta and Luis Castillo) before closing banter about a shampoo disclosure in the Baltimore booth. Audio intro: Andy Ellison, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Dave Armstrong and Mike Murray, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to Ben on the Skubal trade Link to Other Ben on the Skubal trade Link to Longenhagen on the Skubal trade Link to Sheehan on the Skubal trade Link to Paine on the Skubal trade Link to Dodgers discourse article Link to Friedman quote Link to FG’s pre-deadline top 100 Link to SP RoS projections Link to Baumann on the Brewers/Rays Link to FG playoff odds Link to San Andreas meme Link to payroll/winning correlation Link to more on payroll/winning correlation Link to Rosenthal column Link to Dodgers playoff improvement Link to BP on competitive balance Link to Sheehan on rentals Link to Clemens on rentals Link to Paine on deadline impact Link to Cooper on prospect trades Link to FG farm rankings Link to FG on the Peralta trade Link to MLBTR on the Castillo trade Link to FG on the Twins trade Link to FG on the Brewers/Guardians trade Link to FG on the Atlanta/KC trade Link to MLBTR on the Doval trade Link to Queens vs. Heights gamer Link to The West Wing scene  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

A baseball podcast. EffectivelyWiW. Hello and welcome to episode 2513 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from FanGrafts, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer, joined by Meg Rally of Fangraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. We find ourselves conducting a second straight Sunday recording of the regular Effectively Wild episode. Not due to jury duty.

That's done. Or because I couldn't wait to debrief, so to speak, about your colonoscopy. Obviously, I asked you about that off air on Friday. I wasn't going to wait a whole two days. No. Or even because I couldn't wait to talk about the WPBL opener on Saturday night, though I was watching with some dismay as the New York Heights squandered their early lead. Though that was not the only thing that I was paying attention to on Saturday night.

Saturday night. And that is why we're here. We're here to talk about more than one trade. We'll catch up with all the pre-deadline activity that has happened as we speak here on Sunday afternoon and then we'll catch up on the rest post a deadline. But there's one particular trade that summoned us into emergency Sunday recording territory. And you even suggested it. I did press you into Sunday recording service. I did not. So, you know, I'm not a Dodgers reactionary. I don't have Dodgers derangement syndrome. But excuse my rare swear. Okay. I'm sort of sick of this shit. I really am.

Not again, beg. Yeah. The Dodgers, they acquired the best player available, despite already being the best team. They did it again. This is well-past pattern. This is entered predictable territory. I don't know if you felt the same familiar foreboding that I did on Saturday because a little after 7 p.m. Tulsa time, it was reported that Zaire Hope, the 21-year-old outfielder for the Dodgers' AA affiliate, though maybe the third best outfielder for a footballer for a. the Dodgers double a affiliate, but nonetheless, a highly rated prospect. It was reported that he

had been scratched from the starting lineup at the last second. And that didn't prove anything beyond a reasonable doubt, a mindset I'm still in. He could have been scratched for any number of reasons. Maybe he had a little injury. Maybe he just needed a day. Maybe he was going to wind up in some other trades. Or maybe there was a possibility that he would wind up in a trade, but it wouldn't actually come to fruition. But no, I had that tinkle. I knew that it was that time that Dodgers discourse was rearing its ugly head again and that the Dodgers were about to trade for Terrick Scoople.

And indeed, they did. They did. The two-time defending champs have acquired the two-time defending Sy Young Award winner for three prospects, Zaire Hope, River Ryan, and Brady Smith. And all hell has been unleashed yet again. I wouldn't say that the discourse is in great shape. I want us to think about this trade through a couple of different lenses. Maybe we can start with sort of assessing the quality of the return relative to expectation,

because I think that that might end up being the shortest part of the conversation. I do want to spend a bit of time also thinking about sort of Scoobles fit, because I think that'll also be relatively brief. And then I want to spend some time sort of thinking through the broader, like, health of baseball part of the conversation. And we don't need to overdo that because we're going to have a lot of time in a potentially very long offseason to sort through whether the Dodgers are ruining baseball. But I am not, I am also not a certified Dodgers hater, and I am a certified salary cap hater. But I want to spend time having sort of a good faith conversation about the Dodgers being the ones

that did this deal versus a team like, say, the Milwaukee Brewers or the Tampa Bay Rays, and where we might apportion responsibility for that, because I think that it's a worthwhile conversation and as much as I find myself sort of worn out by the outrage around it, I think the volume of that outrage suggests a very real problem for the sport, even if I find it the solution to that problem to be misaligned with what I would prefer and with what I think will actually advance the quality

of play for mid and smaller market teams. Yes, and I'll let you continue, but I will interject, and this won't be a surprise to you. I'm not jumping from this sucks to, therefore, a salary cap is the solution. And I don't even think that this particular Dodgers acquisition is even the best time to invoke that. Yeah. But I think it's possible to both bemoan the Dodgers' tendency to acquire almost every single great player that the team tries to acquire. Yeah. Without then saying, therefore, the answer is X, right?

There may not even be a great answer or the solution, quote unquote, may be worse than the problem in this case. But I do think it's a problem. Okay. Continue. I think because we have gone round and round. on this so many times. I am mindful that I can come off a bit snarky when it comes to the concern of fans of teams that aren't the Dodgers. So I want to make sure that we're like really digging in on it in a way that that does justice to those concerns because whether or not you believe a cap to be

the solutions, all of this. And I agree with you, I think it's not, not only is it not in the general sense, but in terms of the specifics of this acquisition or acquisitions like it. But it isn't great for the game we love to have this many fans, this dissatisfied, to the point that they're like taking the side of Bob Nutting, you know, that suggests something is very, is potentially quite broken. And so I want to engage with that in a serious way because I know I can be a little flippant about it sometimes. So, but let's start with the return here because I think that sort of dialing in the way these particular prospects are reviewed is useful to understanding why Detroit sort of went the way that it did potentially because you're right to say, you know, River Ryan and

Zaire Hope are generally very well regarded. I think we should start with Ryan because that's where I think the divergence in both evaluation and valuation is probably the greatest because, boy, it sure is a little weird that a guy who is like only, what, two years younger, Derek Scoobel is the headliner here. And, you know, I know that there are outlets that are a good bit lower on Ryan than we are in our most recent top 100. I would say most places would have hope as the headliner, but it varies. It varies. And I know that, like, I believe that, like, BP just left him off their midseason top 50. River Ryan, yes. They are, they are, and I think remain the high publication on Hope, which I don't see to ding them. They just, they have been sort of in on Hope for a long time. But I think they made the decision not to include Ryan. And I think their justification, as Jared Sidler articulated, it was his age relative to his prospect status. Because he is, you know, He is a guy who, when he debuted in 2024, looked like a big league ready starter. Like he was going to be an important part of that rotation.

Like he was going to be a guy who exhausted his rookie eligibility at the earliest opportunity. And then he needed Tommy John, right? So he had Tommy John in August of 2024. And then this year, just when he was sort of looking like he was ready to return, particularly for a Dodgers team that had a lot of their star. are guys in the rotation on the shelf. He suffered a hamstring injury. It was the second of the season. He's currently on the AAA I think our understanding is that he will be back in time for the stretch run, but like he was not available to be of assistance to the Dodgers as they are trying to

navigate their way through the absences of Glasnow and Snell and now Otani, at least from the rotation. His age certainly complicates the way you think about him, as does his injury history, right? Because he is going to be at his peak, you know, assuming continued good health, which is something that I think we can't safely assume here, though it is reassuring, I guess, to some degree that the injury that has him currently sidelined isn't another arm injury, right? But he is going to be sort of peaking during his team control. So I think that reasonable minds can kind of disagree about how you might want to deal with that. I will say that, like, his stuff plays at the major. league level based on what we've seen and I think we'll continue to play. He's a very impressive pitcher. He's got a lot going for him. But where we have him as a 55 future value and the 22nd overall prospect and baseball, he is much lower for other publications. Conversely, there are other pubs that are higher on Hope who is a 50 for us and in the 50s from an overall rank perspective, really incredible raw power and swing and miss that he will have to deal with and sort of overcome

to actualize both that power and, you know, his potential at the major league level, right? His contact rates have been worryingly low at times during his minor league career. They are trending better and have been better this year. But there was a time where he was running a contact rate like in the 60s, which in, at his level was like quite concerning. I also will say that like the general industry consensus, and I don't think this is purely blowing smoke, is that like this is an impressive young person who works really hard and who the Dodgers think very highly of as like a human being. And so, you know, if you're a Tigers fan wondering what you're going to get here, I think that there's a lot to like about Zaire Hope. And they have an unsettled outfield picture, at least in one of the corners, right? They just called up Marks Clark who did Homer. So good job Max. And, you know, they have Riley Green. but is the combination of like, you know, McKinstree and some of their other utility guys, the answer on left, probably not. They have green also, of course.

Right, but in the other corner, presumably, right? Yeah, I guess Clark can play center, right? I mean, he can. Yeah, that's an outfield of the future, I suppose, at least a short-term future, medium-term future. But, yeah, in the piece I wrote for The Ringer, I looked up the mid-season updates, the farm refresh. from eight sources, which was probably more than I actually needed.

But everyone had Hope ranked. And as you noted, BP was the highest on him at number 20 overall. Fangraphs was the lowest at 57 for Hope. And then for Ryan, six of the eight sources had him ranked somewhere. BP omitted him, as you said, and also Baseball America did. And I think Fangraphs was the highest, unless you count, Well, Keith Law had him higher even than fan graphs, Ryan, that is. The lowest was MLB pipeline had him at 68.

And Keith had him, 19th, FanGraphs had him 21st. So, yeah, the average ranking across those eight sources for Hope was 35. And then Ryan, it really varied because there were a couple sources that left him off entirely and a couple sources that had him higher than Hope. Right. And so I think that, you know, depending on how you parse through those differences, it certainly informs what you think of the return that Detroit was able to muster here. There's a reasonable conversation to be had about how they sequenced

this trade, for instance. This getting done Saturday night when the deadline is Monday evening maybe suggests that they had firm nose on whatever their asks were of Milwaukee and Tampa just to name the two teams that were sort of apart from the Dodgers most frequently mentioned with these with Scoobel just because of the quality of their farm systems are farm system rankings which should be fully up to date here well yeah because Tampa and Milwaukee wouldn't have really changed so we have Tampa first in baseball with the rurers not far behind them and now Detroit yep and the Dodgers fourth even after the street right yeah right and so So, you know, the sheer depth of L.A.'s system and the concentration of outfielders that you noted, I think, put them in a good position here.

It would not surprise me, and I do not say this with inside information, but it wouldn't surprise me if Detroit went to Tampa Bay and said, one Theo Gillen, please, and went to Milwaukee and said, one Jesus Mare, please. And both of those teams were like, no, and hung up. Or even Luis Pena or someone. Right. Yeah. Right. In the third segment. so put a pin in that.

I'm trying to structure this, so we stay on task. If they knew or felt confident that they were not going to get what they wanted from Tampa and Milwaukee, and if they worried that the Dodgers would say, hey, you know, use it or lose it,

we have other business that we can conduct here. You know, Redembers isn't as good as Scoobal. Jose Soriano isn't as good as Scoobal. Freddie Peralta is really not as good as Google, but like we'd like another starter and there are other options here that might bolster our postseason rotation. Well, maybe they felt like they had to make this deal now so that they could get what they wanted in a return that they were excited about. There's maybe an argument that waiting would have yielded a better return, but we will never be able to know that one way or the other. I think that for a rental, depending on how you've,

particularly depending on how you feel about River Ryan, Shre did pretty well here. Would they have done better if they had waited? Maybe. Would they have done better if they had dealt him last off season? Absolutely. Like I think that if they had decided this was their path forward last November, that they are getting multiple consensus,

not worried about being dinged up top 100 prospects for a full year of scoble. But I think they made the reasonable decision that they had a competitive team and that they were, you know, going to be Chipson for October. And I give them credit for that. Oh, yeah. I don't fault them at all for not trading him earlier. I fault them more for trading him now than I would for not having traded him before. Because there's an argument to be made and we've had this conversation a bunch and like it doesn't help that they've been kind of losing lately. but given how soft the AAL field is,

even with the other teams that they would have had to either leapfrog or whatever, like there is an argument to be made that they should have just stood Pat and held on to him and seen what they could do with one more ride. Absolutely. Entering Sunday, they're two and a half games out of a playoff spot. And I know that there are four teams between them and that third wildcard spot. And a couple of them are AAL Central teams. Right, and there's some ties in there. Yeah, and that's hardly in Super Bowl, especially because I do think Detroit's the best team in that division.

In terms of run differential and just underlying talent, I do think that that's the case. And actually, I would not be at all surprised if the Tigers still make the playoffs. If they do a repeat of 2024 and they trade a starter to the Dodgers at the deadline, it was Jack Clarity that time. And then they have a surge subsequent to that and make the playoffs. It wouldn't even surprise me nearly as much if that happened this time as when it happened the first time. Obviously, it doesn't help their chances, though, that they just traded arguably the best pitcher in baseball. I'm just saying that's how much I believe in them that I think that that's still well within their range of possibilities, though obviously it would have been easier with scuba and they could have perhaps gone deeper had they made it if they still had scoble.

But what you're saying is, I think true, I agree that this was a, a reasonable, a substantial return. Yeah. I know that for a lot of people who are not prospect hounds and are just seeing Terrick Scoobal traded for a few prospects, none of whom is like elite blue chipper household name type of prospect. And we didn't even really talk about Brady Smith, who's a 21-year-old righty. Yeah. He is surgically repaired already. He had Tommy John surgery, as so many Dodgers pitchers do.

And he's pretty promising, but also like Ryan or maybe even more so, just totally boomer bus could go either way, right? I mean, he's younger. He was their third round pick in 2023. He's just in high A. Like, he's got some good strikeout stuff and everything, but who knows? So, yeah. Yeah. So that's the package.

And relative to what teams get for rentals these days, it's not bad, which makes sense because Terrick's scouple is about as good a rental as you're going to get. Right. So, but we went through this recently. Just there's not a lot of history of teams trading anything of substance or giving away some highly, highly rated prospects for someone who is under team control for two to three months. It's just not going to happen these days.

Teams are just too aware of the calculus and they know that adding one player, even if it's a superstar, only affects your odds so much, and you're giving up a ton of long-term value there. And at some point, you do have to kind of forecast that and add up the wars and do a dollars per win sort of thing. And it would be one thing if you could trade for that superstar and be assured that you were going to get a flag that flew forever from that, but you can't be assured of anything.

Maybe you trade for Curtis Mead and he fractures his wrist in his debut for the team or whatever. or it just doesn't make a difference. Most deadline deals don't make the ultimate difference, right? It's just a lot has to happen for you to make the playoffs by a game or something, and you can trace it back to, oh, we acquired this guy, or we barely squeaked through in the postseason, and it was this guy we acquired at the deadline who came up big and we wouldn't have won without him.

It's just pretty rare that you can do that. And the Dodgers are living proof of that because they've made many a major, deadline deal and they didn't win the World Series in those seasons. And by the way, the same goes for the prospects you trade at the deadline. Most of them don't pan out. Most of them not only don't turn into players as good as the guy you gave up, but many of them you just never hear from again. Yeah.

They provide marginal value, if anything. Yeah. Like run through the history of the Dodgers, 2017, they traded for you, Darvish, right? 2018, they traded for many Machado. 2021, they traded for Max Scherzer and Tray Turner and other guys, Bix and Bobbs in those years as well. They didn't win the World Series in any of those three seasons. And the guys they gave up for those marquee players, for Darvish,

it was A.J. Alexi, Willie Calhoun, and Brendan Davis. For Machado, it was Dean Kramer, Zach Pop, Breivik Valera, Rhinelan, and U.S. Neil Diaz. And for Scherzer and Turner, it was Josiah Gray, Cabert Ruiz, Herardo Carrillo, and Donovan Casey. I mean, you know, this is like the Dodgers aren't crying over spilled prospects in any of those trades. And it's quite possible that they won't in this trade either. And that just kind of goes with the territory. So my overall takeaway, I mean, the headline of my piece for the ringer and part of my frustration here was

that this time teams could have stopped the Dodgers because it's not that I think the tigers got fleeced here necessarily. It's just that I think there are other teams that could have prevented this from happening that could have just said, no, we wanted more. And in so many cases in recent years, where we have had the same Dodgers discussion, it's because either the Dodgers outbid everyone

or it was because maybe they matched the highest offer and someone chose them because they're the Dodgers and they have the competitive track record and they have the developmental acumen and they have the creature comforts and they have the favorable location, whatever it is. There was some differentiator. Maybe it was money, maybe it was money plus other stuff

that stymied other teams. And so when the Dodgers got, well, this past off season, Kyle Tucker, the best player available, or so it was believed, and Edwin Diaz, the most coveted closer. Those guys have combined for less than one win above replacement so far. So nothing is guaranteed, obviously. But people are upset because they went and they got the best guys. Or the winter before that, it was Tanner Scott, Best Reliever available, who's looking more like that now.

And at least two of the top three starters, right, Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki. different circumstances. Sasaki wasn't so much about the money, but nonetheless. Then the winter before that, they got, I guess, the two best guys, Shohei and Yamamoto, and they traded for Tyler Glassnow. And then each year before that, there was some major marquee acquisition. 2022, it was Freddie Freeman, right? 2021, it was Scherzer and Turner and Trevor Bauer, by the way. In 2020, Mookie Betts. Like, it's just name after name after name. And credit to the Dodgers for always going after those elite guys. Like when they do dip into free agency and when they splurge, it's usually on a guy that no one has any doubts about.

Right. I mean, there are some exceptions. Bauer again. But in a lot of cases, they're sort of shopping at the top of the market. That's not to say they don't sign some mid-tier free agents, too, but they really zero in on those elite guys. It's like Andrew Friedman gave a quote last week. There just aren't that many star level players in the game, which, by the way, makes it more frustrating that so many of them play for the Dodgers. And he continued, anytime one is available, we're always going to participate in those conversations.

We've shown to be very aggressive in the past and the present, unfortunately, for everyone else. So that's the thing, though. When it was free agents, people could say, well, this was inevitable. We couldn't possibly beat the Dodgers. They were always bound to outbid us, or at least their pitch would be more compelling for other reasons. And tie goes to the Dodgers, basically, and it wasn't always tied. In this case, though, that didn't really apply because the Tigers certainly weren't out to do a solid for the Dodgers or anything, like the Tigers

were trying to get the best deal they could. And Terrick Scouple had no say in this matter. He had no trade clause. He couldn't block a deal or orchestrate any particular destination. And so it was purely just who is going to give the Tigers the best prospect package here. And the Dodgers did. And other teams at least conceivably could have. And I understand why some of them didn't. But they could have.

Or the Tigers, for that matter, could have said, you can't have Terik's Guple. We're keeping him because we believe in our same. So this was a case where the Dodgers could have been beaten. They could have been stopped. And no one stepped up to stop them. And we can get into more maybe why the Dodgers advantages made them more likely to do that. But this is one of the times that just makes me question, does anyone want to win as much as the Dodgers do? Yeah.

I think that that's fair. I want to keep to our script, which I did not share with you in advance. But before we move on so quickly, I mean, we should just say, like, this did move, and this is not going to help my argument later. This did move their playoff odds, like kind of appreciably, at least in the way that a, in the way that a individual transaction can. And if anything, and again, I'm going to, I'm going to say this in the interest of being honest, lest I, be accused of being a Dodger head. Like, if anything, there may be underselling the playoff specific impact of this in the World Series odds because our World Series odds don't really handle exactly the way that

pitching in particular is deployed come October. I mean, it's in there some, but like the, it's not perfectly accounting for usage. So the fact that it moved them like five percentage points this way to underselling it. That's nuts. that might not sound like a lot, but that is, that's a huge when it comes to World Series. And by the way, and you could say the saving grace is, well, the Dodgers still are given a less than one in three chance to win the World Series, which I believe because it's baseball. And there's only so much you can play off proof a team or rotation, though the Dodgers are pulling all the stops out to do just that. But 31% or whatever it is, that's a huge number.

when it comes to work serious odds because of that randomness and because of the 12-team playoff field, that's more than three times higher than the next highest team. So, like, yes, they're still, the field is favored over the Dodgers, but the Dodgers are like lapping every other team. I mean, by multiple laps maybe. And just going up from 25% to 31 or whatever it was-ish, as you said, five, five-and-a-half percentage points.

Yeah. Just that marginal increase, which for the Dodgers is about a 20% uptick in their World Series odds, that's about half the total World Series odds of any other team. The Yankees, the Brewers, whoever's next like 5 percentage points is like half of their whole chintzes that the Dodgers just got by getting scuba, which you're saying might even undersell it. I mean, it sounds like a lot because the Dodgers aren't really even helping their odds of making the playoffs by getting scoble. because they're a lock. I mean, they have a double-digit lead in the N.S.

Yeah, they can't really do any. I mean, it would take a, I'm going to say unprecedented, and there might actually be precedent. But it would take like an unprecedented collapse. Yeah, I mean, I guess last year's A.L. Central exists. So maybe when it comes to blowing a division lead. Yeah, but that's a, that's, you got to take that in A.L. Central, adjusted terms, right? That's an entirely different animal than what we're dealing with here.

It would take something, I mean, like, I hate to put it in these terms. It would take something catastrophic happening to the team. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So the Dodgers didn't even need Terrick Scouple to get to October. There are plenty of teams that are kind of on the bubble or maybe their playoff berth isn't entirely assured where Scouple could have helped improve those odds and then also upped their odds if they made the playoffs the Dodgers. This is purely a playoffs play. I mean, they did not have to lift a finger to make it to October. So, yeah, it's wild.

And I think that the change in, and maybe we can use this to transition into the conversation about sort of what this means for baseball, I think understanding the lens through which they see their roster building relative to. maybe not the entire rest of the league, but much of the rest of the league helps to explain some of the difference here, right? This team is so good that they're not planning for the regular season. The regular season, it's, you know, it's obviously important. You do actually have to get results on the field.

But they have so much redundancy baked into their organization, you know, depth that is unfathomable to most teams, they're set up to weather, Snell being on the shelf for a couple of months and Glassnell being on the shelf for a couple of months. They're built to weather, Otani, you know, being unable to pitch for however long. They're built to do that. And so they're, the way that they orient their roster, and I think part of the reason that they are so aggressive when it comes to top end talent and sort of not that they're indifferent to the results of the smaller deals they do because they care about those deals right like they were fine to let Michael Comforto walk they also will get you know have guys who they just like and even if the

production isn't like so stellar that they couldn't afford to to see them go they'll they'll sign them to extensions right like they didn't need to make sure that Miguel Rojas was like a dodger for a long time, but they like that guy and they like what he brings to their team. And so here he is being on their team for multiple years. You know, they love, they love Kike Hernandez. They love that guy. Play off Kiki. Got to happen. Right. And I was just about to say, I don't, I am very confident that if you were to ask Andrew Friedman, like, do you, do you think there's anything to this that he would be like, no, of course not. But like, I don't know, there's an argument to be made that their continued attachment to, you know, a utility player who has been

good for them at times and, you know, certainly seems to thrive there relative to other places, is like them being October oriented in their roster construction, right? I think Friedman might even say as much. You could say that he's been a bit complacent with the benches sometimes, which maybe doesn't matter that much because they have just such stars at every other position. It's almost like an afterthought. But the fact that they they keep bringing back certain guys and those guys have gotten huge hits or even have a pretty impressive track record of doing so in a not insignificant sample in Kike's case. I would think that they might actually subscribe to something like that or just the pure kind

of clubhouse presence or whatever it is, right? I think they would say that there's a little more to him than meets the eye during the regular season. Right. So that's the way that the Dodgers understand their progress. and they are bolstered by a tremendous resource advantage in pursuit of that project. And let's talk about that as we transition into sort of the broader concern here. Because I think it would be insincere to say that the Dodgers do not have an advantage relative to the rest of baseball.

The contours of that advantage, one of them could arguably be, addressed quote unquote, although I still both don't think that it really guarantees the parity that the league is purporting and is bad for players and is anti-labor, but only one of the advantages that the Dodgers have can be poked at via salary cap, and that is the payroll advantage. And that's a big advantage, right? I think every team in baseball can afford to spend more on their club in an on-field capacity than they do. I am not going to tell you that the Pittsburgh Pirates or the Milwaukee Brewers or the Tampa Bay Rays can spend as much as the Dodgers can. I think that's insincere. I don't think that that's true. I think they can spend a lot more than they

do. And I think that their sort of return on investment in that payroll expansion would be profound given, I mean, maybe less Pittsburgh, push them out of it. We're going to talk about the brewer's in the raise a lot for the next couple of minutes. Okay, so like, leave Bob nutting aside for a second. But, you know, I think that their return on investment would be, would be profound because they

can compete to a large degree, even if it's not, you know, a complete one for one match with the other advantage that the Dodgers have, which is all of the people and infrastructure that they have invested in away from the field. The Dodgers don't pick

the top of the draft. They haven't picked at the top of the draft in a long time, in a long time, right? And so some of their ability to do deals like this, right, to be players at the deadline for these big marquee names and outbid other people is that there's, you know, there's a lot of talent in the draft. You don't have to be the number one overall pick in the draft to be a good minor league or an eventually really good big leaguer, right? But the top of the draft, it helps. There are really good guys out there. And that's not where LA is picking. And so some of it is that they are really good at, you know, identifying guys in the area of the draft where they are picking. They have a comfort level with guys who they know to be dinged up and particularly guys who they

understand to potentially be in need of major surgery, right? They're not afraid. to take a guy they know needs Tommy John and say, eh, we got a number of years with him. We'll figure it out, right? We think he can bounce back. We like what he shows on the mound when he's healthy. We're going to take him anyway, right? So there's a risk tolerance there that is absolutely borne by the depth that they have and their faith in their player devs.

So like these are all related. I don't mean to completely like disaggregate this advantage that they have. But, you know, they draft really well. They develop really well. They are good at the creature comfort stuff that you're describing. And it puts them in a position to be able to say, hey, even though we haven't drafted at the top of the draft in a long time, we're going to turn Michael Bush into Zyre Hope and we're going to turn Zyreier Hope into Terrick Scoobo.

And we're going to turn Matt Bady into River Ryan. It's just a, yeah, a treadmill. It's just let's recycle guys. We don't have positions for. This is our perpetual motion machine and we're going to go and go and go to their credit, even though we sometimes give Milwaukee and Tampa Bay the business about what they spend on payroll or what their ownership groups will let them spend on payroll. They're really good at drafting and developing too.

And they have a good strategy that is specific to their market. And Milwaukee is really great at this like go wide approach. and they find all these dudes and their hitting dev is obviously awesome. And in the last, you know, five years, they've had great luck with hitters who have been like post-hype guys or even dudes in their own organization like Bryce Tereng, who they're able to help actualize finally because it's like, oh, now he hits for power.

He's one of the best players in baseball. We're going to take Andrew Vaughn and we're going to turn him from a guy who Meg makes jokes about not being able to see the, ball well enough, because eyes are really close together on his head, to a dude with a 143, Andrew Fon has a 143 WRC plus, Ben. Sorry, I'm just like, I knew he was having a good season. And I know that he's, he's had some injury stuff. So like, this is 66 games and 207 played appearances.

So I don't want to make too much of it. But also, Jesus Christ. Yeah, I know. 143 WRC plus, right? And seemingly another example of what I talked about on episode 2,500, the phenomenon of players just sort of deciding to get better all of a sudden and then just doing it or getting some seemingly simple advice or instruction and then immediately being better. When Von went to the Brewers, they were just like, stop chasing. If you chase like that, you're not going to

play. And he was just like, oh, all right. Okay. I mean, it's always more complicated than that, but boy, it sure seems a little like it's that. Jake Bowers, how, how on God's greener, Do you explain Jake Bowers? Because he's played in 100 games this season. He has almost 400 played appearances. And he has a 141 WRC plus. What? Is that business?

Right? So they have had success with this. We know about the raised player dev and their pitching development and what they've been able to do with guys. And, you know, both of those clubs are sitting at the top of their respective divisions right now. The Brewers have the best record. in baseball technically because they have the same number of wins as the Dodgers and one fewer

loss. Their run differential is second to the Dodgers. If you look at their base runs records or like a game or two off from one another. So like that's a quality club in a mid-market team in a mid-market, you know, payroll situation that isn't spending a lot and is really good. They have been able to, with investment in their infrastructure and player dev, and a kind of ruthless approach to their roster, which we often fault them for, but often works for them, right, have been able to be competitive during the regular season and advance far in the postseason. And yet, they haven't been able to get over the hump, although the pitching hasn't been the problem for Milwaukee.

Typically, it's been an inability to score runs. And if there's any pitcher in the world better than Terrick Scoobal, he's a Milwaukee brewer. And his name is Jacob Mr. Rossi. Right. So if you're Milwaukee or you're Tampa and your business mom, is predicated on we draft and develop really well, we keep these guys, and the minute they get expensive,

we ship them out of town, a couple of exceptions, then if Detroit comes calling and they want Theo Gillen or Hazus Made, maybe you do say no, because the way that you do business doesn't allow for the risk tolerance that the LA is just able to absorb, because, look, obviously Terrick Scoople's going to have a big impact on their postseason roster, assuming health and availability and all those things. He doesn't guarantee them anything. And if it doesn't work out for them this year, well, they'll just spin up again next season.

Possibly with Terrick Scoople still. Right. We can talk about that. But, no, it's true. Again, it's potentially quite different for Milwaukee or Tampa. if they move their very best guys. And then they're looking around six months from now because camp is starting.

That's too soon. But you know what I'm saying. They're looking around in February because camp is starting. She says optimistically. And all of a sudden they're like, we really could use hazy to spotting. Right. So I understand the approach that Milwaukee and Tampa are taking here.

And now I'm going to say something that might surprise. based on how I've wound up so far. I do think on some level it sucks. It doesn't suck in so far as both of those teams have played really good competitive baseball for a long time. Both of them have postseason success to point two that is really exciting. I think that Milwaukee is going to be a problem for the NL field come October, even with the Dodgers the way they are.

But they haven't been able to get over the hump. And like you are so stacked. in the farm. And I don't know that I would be given up Jesus Made either, but as you noted, it's not like he's their only top 100 guy. Louis-Spanes is a 55, you know, he's 26th in baseball. Logan Henderson recently graduated. Not that you want to give up Henderson either. I know they have the best rotation in baseball by Fangraphs were just edging out the Dodgers. So they have plenty of pitching, but that didn't stop the Dodgers, who have even more maybe. And there is part of me that wants those teams to be uncharacteristically aggressive and just go yolo and just say,

like, we've gotten close a number of times. Maybe what's holding us back from getting over the hump is being a bit too disciplined or conservative or however you want to play it. This one time, we're throwing caution to the wins. We're going to go get the best guy. I would like that. That would be fun. And I think it would be good for baseball if you didn't have the predictable outcome of the best guy going to the best team so many times. Not every time. There are occasionally times when the Dodgers miss out on someone. Sure. Bryce Harper, Juan Soto, Max Scherzer, when they tried to resign him or they decide they don't want to keep someone, Corey Seeger or someone. Yeah. But in many of those cases, it's like, well, did they go all out though? Or were they kind of okay? with not wanting them. But yeah, they don't get absolutely everyone.

But it would be nice if the talent were a bit more democratically distributed here. It's never going to be perfect parody and all the players are just spread out, doled out. You know, every team gets a great guy and it's just all even. But it's so concentrated now. I looked at the rest of season projections for FIPP by starting pitchers at Fancrafts according to the depth charts. so Zips plus steamer. The Dodgers now have the numbers one, that's Scobble, 12, Otani, 16, Yamamoto, 21, Glassnow, and 23, Snell starters in baseball. So they have five of the top 23.

And I know that three of those guys aren't currently pitching, and who knows how many of them will be come October. But then again, that doesn't even include Justin Rebleski, who is an all-star this year. Emmett Sheehan, Rokie Sasaki with his huge glove. You know, if they don't need those guys, they'll move him to the pen like they did last year, except unlike last fall, they actually have a half-decent bullpen now. And they have Tanner Scott and everything. So it's just—and he's good now again. And so it's just a total embarrassment of riches. So obviously they're just kind of coddling these guys to some extent and just trying to make sure that they're all healthy.

and that rotation peaks at the right time. And so it's almost like Scoople's insurance, which sounds ridiculous, but I mean, he's the best guy they have probably. But it's almost like, you know, if they have the other four guys and whoever else healthy, then they hardly need him. But they can't quite count on having. So now, basically, if they have those guys healthy,

which is a big if, but even if one of them's hurt or something, it's not like it's a huge step down. And you don't even need five starters in the posies. really. So they're going to have basically a top 20-ish starting pitcher going every single day in October. It's just so stacked that it's ridiculous. So that is the big difference, I think, that the Dodgers have the freedom to say prospects, well, we can always make more of them. And also, even if we have them, we don't have a place to play some of them. And because this is their hope, as good as he is, is their third or fourth, best outfield prospect, right? Because they have DePaula, who's their top prospect. And then they also have Sorota, not Soroka, not Saratka, but Sarota. He is their maybe third best prospect.

And then they have Eduardo Cantaro, who's a level down at high A. I mean, it's like DePaula and Sarota are also at AA and are as close to the majors as hope and maybe even better. They're hitting better, right? So it sort of stinks because the Dodgers did give up meaningful value here. And yet it doesn't hurt them at all, really. I mean, it doesn't cost them a thing. It could turn out that hope is the best of all of them and they actually rude the day they dealt him or something. But given that they have Pahas now sort of entrenched in center, plus Tucker under contract for at least one more season, maybe more, plus this wealth of.

of other similar, if not superior prospects. It's like dealing these guys didn't ding their long-term outlook at all, really. And even Ryan, if he pans out, it's like the Dodgers have 10 guys who are as good or as good as or better than him, you know? So it's not that the Tigers got a bad deal. It's just that the Dodgers have so much that this doesn't actually affect their long-term outlook. If it turns out that Scouble is just a rental and doesn't resign or extend. And they won't even feel it. They won't notice the difference probably.

It's nuts. But it is a meaningful difference that the Dodgers can operate in a way that the brewers and Reyes can't at least as easily. Because in this case, the salary wasn't really the impediment. No. Anyone could have. And there was reporting to that end, right? That was not a deterrent to either of these clubs despite the payrolls that they were.

Because it's like what, 9 or $10 million? the rest of the way. It's, you know, for scoble. It's, if that's stopping you, then sell the money. Yeah. So, yeah. So it really was the prospect capital that's presumably prevented them from topping this offer, which they, they could have. They could have put superior packages together. They have the sheer prospect. Yes. Talent. Yes. To exceed what what the Dodgers offered them. And, and, and that's why I view this kind of, I mean, it's maybe adjacent to, but importantly different than the Roki signing, right? Because the money with Roki wasn't a problem for anyone, right?

Anyone could have afforded Roki's salary and certainly his signing bonus because he was limited by the pool rules for internationals because of his age. So anyone could have done it. The razzle-dazzle of the Dodgers is what ultimately sports. Rokey. Well, you can't do anything about that. And so that is different than this situation where the players involved across the board don't have any say. So I want to, I want to make sure that I'm sort of differentiating between those appropriately. But it is similar insofar as you noted that there, there is a better hypothetical prospect package available in baseball that could

have been offered here, presumably would have swayed them. Like if the if the brewers say, screw it, we want Terrick Scoobel, they can they can outbid LA on this. And so could so could Tampa, right? Presumably. And there might have been other teams that could have teams that operate in bigger markets or with higher payrolls because yes, the raise in the brewers, they've gotten to this point and they're perennially relevant and in contention because they have such message discipline or, you know, they don't stray. They don't say, oh, this one time we're going to get away. Now, they perhaps could stand to from time to time.

Perhaps they take that to an extreme. But I think that is part of why they've been so successful is that they don't let themselves get emotional about things and say, oh, we're going for it. And hell or high water, we're getting our guy. They do think about it in this kind of cool, collected, calculated, and sometimes infuriating way. And it helps in the long run. And they rely on those cost-controlled pre-R pre-free agency guys to sort of level the playing field and help them compete with teams that spend more.

Could they also spend more? Yeah, to some extent, but obviously not as much as you said. So there's also the extension question because I think it's almost presumed that, well, Scoople is just going to stay with the Dodgers now. And I certainly wouldn't be surprised. I think you'd have to say they're the favorites. They were probably already the favorites, of course. I think it's unlikely that he's going to sign an extension. It could happen, but bore his client, right?

And he's just... He'll almost certainly test the market. Yeah, he's so close that, you know, there's hardly any downside other than, I guess, you know, he could always break, right? But in the next couple months, but barring that, it would seem to behoove him to test the open market, put his elbow boo-boo-boo and he, his loose body further behind him if he has a big finish for the Dodgers. And also, it's not as if the Dodgers, this wasn't like a Glass Now trade and extend sort of deal. Right.

And so even if he does end up reupping with them, I mean, even if he surprises people and signs extension, it's not as if they couldn't have persuaded him to sign as a free agent, right? So I don't see that as being a huge thing. I mean, yes, if you're the Razor Brewers, you almost certainly know that, It is going to be a two or three month short-term thing because you're just not going to spend enough to keep him. But the Dodgers didn't really need to trade for him in order to sign him. I guess there's also the question of the lockout and how does that plan to think? Does that affect his calculus at all when it comes to signing an extension?

If the Dodgers were to make him a big offer, would he maybe say, you never know. Maybe 2027's canceled. Maybe it's more likely to be canceled if I sign this extension with the Dodgers. but maybe I just sidle around that risk and this is where I want to be and it's a good deal. And so you never know. It could happen, I guess. And maybe it comes into play with one of those other teams that's not going to sign him. But I think it's mostly the other thing, just that they rely on those cheap guys,

the guys who are under team control forever. There are other teams that were rumored to be interested in Scoobble. Obviously, every team is interested in him on some level. but realistically, seriously interested. Now, maybe if you're the Yankees, you say, we've got a strong starting five. Probably not as strong as the Dodgers or the Brewers, but Cam Schlittler, Max Fried, Garrett Cole,

Ryan Weathers, Will Warren, that's not too shabby. So maybe we want to hang on to George Lombard Jr. You know, maybe Anthony Volpe isn't the cornerstone of our franchise. It's short. Maybe we don't want to deal Lombard for a couple months of Terrick's Google. okay, what about the Cubs, right? The Cubs were connected to Scoobble. No one needs pitching more than the Cubs. The Cubs should have money to spend. I know that they don't have the system that the Dodgers and Brewers and Rays do, but it's not bereft. It's a middle of the PAC system. And they had three guys on the Fangraph's mid-season update from late July. They had three prospects between number 47 and number 56. So, you know, I got to think that they could conceivably have put a package together and maybe it would have cleaned out their system, but they could have put a package together that would have at least rivaled this Dodgers deal. And as we speak, we don't know. We haven't gotten behind the scenes. Here's what this team offered and here's what the, for all we know, there were appealing offers. Maybe the tigers were super high on Hope and Ryan or whatever. You never know. Maybe their internal ranking and preface of,

of these guys didn't match the public consensus, that's always possible too. But just saying, there had to be some other team out there that could have matched this and maybe some bigger market teams. And then also the Tigers also could have said, no, we're not going to give you Terik's Kupil.

We want Terik's Kouple. He's our guy. We're close. We have a realistic shot at this. So put all those things together. And that's what I find frustrating. I don't blame the Dodgers for operating.

within the constraints such as they are of the system that they're in and maximizing their advantage. And it's not just money. They're not just the Mets. Right. Sorry, Mets catching strays here. I mean,

no, I think that that's a good, it's a good comp to bring in because Kohn has basically been trying to replicate their model since he took over the team. And I do think they have made progress in some important areas. Like, they are certainly a much better, like pitching dev organization than that.

they were before he bought them. So you are starting to see some of the returns from that like personnel and infrastructure investment. But yeah, they haven't been able to do anything. No, you can't just declare yourself Dodgers East and be Dodgers East. And you can't spend like the Dodgers and necessarily have the success that the Dodgers have had because they spend a lot. But they also usually spend smart and they don't make many major missteps.

And the ones that they do, yeah, they can just swallow those and absorb them. Yeah, but they don't make that many. I have a lot of respect for what, like, Milwaukee and Tampa do because I think they are importantly differentiated from, okay, now I'm going to bring Pittsburgh back in. You know, I think they are importantly differentiated from some of the perpetual cellar dwellers and things are shaping up better in Pittsburgh this season than they have in a while. But, you know, I do think that the brewers and,

the race have a seriousness of purpose, right? That there is ambition in those organizations. And I think that when you're a fan of a team and they show, I'm going to do a big swear, they show the like, let's fucking go energy. It does change things. Like I was thinking about, you know, as I was winding down from editing Ben's reaction to the trade. I was thinking about the brewers and the raise of it all in conversation with the

Luis Castillo trade from 2022, right? And we'll get to some of the other deals that went down this weekend in a bit. But, you know, that move when the Mariners traded for Castillo at the deadline, big prospect package, they may be hyped up their guys. And so, you know, there's that. But like big prospect package, really well-regarded dudes, they spent. a lot in prospect capital, excuse the kind of gross way of talking about human beings. And it was this signal that like, no, we're, we're doing it now. We're tired of this drought.

We're getting this monkey off our back, right? This is the guy to help us do it. And then they signed him to an extension. It sort of reoriented the expectations of the fan base in a way that candidly, like they haven't always done a great job of living up to in the intervening time. and I know that that maybe sounds harsh, you know, in a year that comes right after they were like one wood away from finally making the World Series. Hashtack 54%. Right. But it signaled a real commitment to ambition. And I think that that is increasingly the way to think about the problem that faces the sport.

And I wonder if it's a way that I can maybe talk about it that'll be more compelling to people because I think that the problem. The problem that baseball faces right now is that there is a feeling among fans who are not fans of the Dodgers that like, what's the point? They're just going to win the World Series, right? That there is a predestination to the season. And even though we know the postseason has this element of randomness that makes that not true in a technical way. And, you know, some of us can, and here I will be momentarily snarky. I feel like I've done a very good job of not being snarky, though. Because it's important to grapple with it, right?

It's a real concern. And I think the way we talk about it needs to account for that. And I have maybe not done a great job of that in the last little bit because I've been so annoyed with Rob Manfred. And also, it keeps happening, you know? And so, I mean, the conversation that we were having three or four major signings ago, well, when it happens over and over again, then we'd be silly not to update the tone. Right. But I think that the problem is increasingly. one of ambition versus not.

And I am mindful that the architecture of payroll is a part, is certainly a manifestation of that and it is a huge part of people's ability to enjoy the regular season. And it is not a sufficient answer, even though it's true,

it isn't maybe sufficient for us to say, well, the postseason is random. And it's like, well, that's true. And, you know, here's the snark. Like, I remember the Dodgers getting swept out of the playoffs by literally the Arizona Diamondbacks. And they didn't just get swept out.

They got freaking rinsed, right? I remember that. That was in 2023. You know, that just happened. And I do think that we have a problem collectively of, like, having really short memories around this stuff and that we ascribe a permanence to things that doesn't necessarily comport with reality. It wasn't that long ago.

It really wasn't that long ago at all that the way we talked about the Dodgers was this is a big payroll team that's super talented and they can't get over the finish line. They just can't do it. And we sat there and we like, excuse me I swear, fretted. It's Sunday, so I'm a little looser.

We fretted over Clayton Kirshaw. Should be less likely to swear on the Lord's Day. I don't observe those rituals. And, you know, can Dave Roberts manage his way through this and all this stuff. And last year, you know, it wasn't a given. Like if a Ryan Kirkring can field his position, maybe they're not even in the World Series, right?

Among other things that happened that helps them on their way. But, you know, it would be disingenuous to say they lucked into that championship either. Yamamoto threw a zero day's rest. That was amazing. Like, that was bonkers, right? Andy has made that great play in the outfield. He almost killed Keating. Hernandez's doing it, but like, that still counts.

So having more fans feel like they're in it and invest in the regular season, I think is important to the future of the sport. And it's funny that the Dodgers are the ones ruining that for people because they don't give a shit about the regular season. I mean, they do, but they don't, right? So how do you close the ambition gap? And that's where apart from the labor questions attendant with a cap, that's where I find the cap to be a wanting solution because, one, it doesn't address in really to anyone's

satisfaction or it wouldn't address to anyone's satisfaction. The advantages away from payroll that LA has. And I say that conceding that many of those advantages are intertwined with and in part facilitated by the payroll advantage. So I don't want to separate them entirely. But like, again, the Brewers are a good dev team. They are a good baseball team. This is a talented club, right? And they are able to do a lot of that stuff that isn't payroll as well as the Dodgers,

even if they end up being prospect huggers at the end of it, in part because they don't have the payroll part of it. So that conceded. Like the ambition gap, that's a bigger problem. And you don't solve that with a cap. I don't think that if you look around capped sports

that you fix that problem. And by the way, ask NBA fans how they enjoy the regular season and payroll conversations. They hate that stuff because it sucks. And this isn't just me being lazy about not wanting to learn about an apron,

although that is part of it. Yes. And look, a floor conceivably could help with the ambition problem. Absolutely. But... And that is something that the Players Association

has asked for. And the owners say, we're not doing a floor without a cap. And their commitment to the cap isn't really about ensuring parity. I know that they say that. And I don't, you know, we don't have to take the PA at its word either in terms of like parity being its primary priority. They haven't said that. And obviously the union's not going to do a cap without a floor, right? So, right. And, and, they're not going to do a cap at all. And they're, they, I think, are more, as I've said before, more directionally aligned with competition based on their proposals. But their number one priority as well it should be is to make their members as much money as they can. And so, you know, I don't think that it is a genuine number one priority to either side of this negotiation. And I think

that the cap system is very often, it serves as a cap on that ambition too. Because it's like, Oh, is that guy? And I know that Bruce Myers just said this, but I promise it's a thought that's been in my head before the head of the union said it. Is that guy the guy is going to make a difference to you? Well, too bad.

You can't exceed the cap, you know? So if you want him, you're going to trade these other dudes. You're never going to make me excited about what the Washington Wizards have done in the NBA. Ever. You're never, that's never going to jazz me, right? Or, you know, the jazz, for that matter. So I think that we need to talk.

in more direct terms about the problem at hand while still, I think, making the point, which I believe to be true that the solutions that have been proposed on the owner's side are not a direct answer to those problems, either because you don't necessarily need a payroll like the Dodgers to be a very good draft and development organization, or because it's about ambition. It's about the will to win in these circumstances. And in some ways,

it's easy to have ambition when your best players, arguably underpaid relative to the value he's accruing to your organization. And you don't have to take my word for it. Like, I heard Bazin making this point, too, on Dan Patrick's show where it's like

the money that they are bringing in just from having Otani on that team is bonkers. Right? And so I think that fans of other teams are well within their rights to be annoyed, and they are pointing at something that is real, which is this feeling. But I, first of all, don't think we're ever going to fully remediate that feeling because put a cap on the Dodgers tomorrow. They're still best in class when it comes to drafting and development. The sort of tales of that advantage are going to be long, even when you take away the sort of payrolls. support to it, right? They're still going to be a really good organization. That doesn't mean that they will suddenly, you know, that another club that is also good at that can't surpass them.

But like that, that had part of their advantage relative to much of the rest of the league will persist, I think. It's not going to get Bob nutting to care, you know. It's not going to get the owners of the Reds to care. If you put the system in, sure, they'll have to spend more than they do. They will, I guarantee. you manage that floor to the freaking dollar. They'll manage it to the dollar, right?

It will not solve the ambition problem. It just won't. And so I think that there is, you know, there needs to be a shift and I think a reorientation in how we talk about this stuff, and I could stand to be less glib about it. But I really do think that there is a broader rot that is the,

the main issue. And look, I hesitate to even say this, not that I'm like some powerful witch. Scoobel's next start is going to be what, like next Sunday? He could blow out. And then what? Sure.

I mean, he could. Sure. Could happen. Yeah. Yeah, we didn't really talk about Scoopal's performance because he's Terrick Scoopal. I figure people are pretty familiar with him by now. But I had some slight concerns

after he came back from the nanoneedle super fast and was not quite his usual. self for a few starts. He was pretty homer prone and maybe some of it was bad luck. And if you adjust for that and look at his ex-fip, for instance, it was pretty flat during that time. But he was giving up a lot of runs. And his pitch speeds are down almost a mile per hour since last season on average. So there could have been some causes for concern. But I think based on his more recent performance, I'm not really worried about him anymore than I am. about every pitcher, which is a lot.

But not more than the norm because, yeah, in his last handful of starts, he's basically been as dominant as ever. He leads all pitchers in FanGraph's War since June 30th. Like all the metrics are basically back to being where they were. So is there a little elevated concern because of the loose body and everything? Yeah, I suppose. But I'm not that worried about it. at least on the spectrum of all Dodgers whose elbows I'm perpetually terrified about.

And I don't know really what could lead to the dissolution of the Dodgers because you might think that it'll catch up to them at some point. If they keep just trading prospects and getting older guys, they are an old team. They do have the oldest hitters in baseball. And some of those guys, at least offensively, are showing some signs of decline. I don't know what's going on with Tucker. but Mookie, for instance, okay, he can play shortstop pretty well, but he's not hitting like Mookie Betts used to. So you could say, oh, it'll catch up to them.

And it has for a lot of other teams that pursued that model. But it just seems like unless some catastrophe strikes, as we talked about last time, unless Mark Walter's fortune and or health is done in, then I don't know how you could confidently project that they would never not be good for any foreseeable time in the future because it does seem like they can kind of keep going because they keep signing the elite guys and then they mix in some young guys from time to time like Yamamoto or Sasaki or Otani or whoever who are pretty young when they get them and it does seem like they can just kind of keep it running and unless the money spigot turns off somehow or they do make a bunch of mistakes and they commit to the wrong player

and they're just so choked up that there's no playing time for anyone who's good. It's just hard for me to see that happening. I'm not particularly conspiratorial, but I have to think that on some level, Rob Manfred must have been rubbing his hands when he saw this deal get done, because for much of this season, the narrative was pretty anti-cap, or at least it was pretty easy to undercut MLB's argument,

that there was a huge acute competitive balance problem. And people were writing things to this effect. I mean, just a few days ago, Ken Rosenthal wrote a column for The Athletic, which is basically like the standings belie the argument that there is some sort of pervasive problem here because there's barely any correlation between payroll and winning this season. It's like the weakest correlation since before the strike.

And entering Sunday's games even, you had, seven teams that were more than four games removed from a playoff spot. It was hard to look at the standings and make the case that, oh, boy, this is a big problem. And even the Dodgers, like last year, yeah, they're really good. They're almost certainly the best team in baseball, but it's not like they're running away with things. The Brewers have been just about as good. Maybe Scoopal gives the Dodgers the edge and helps their postseason seating or something. But it's not like they were making a run at 116 wins or something.

obviously they're not motivated to do that. They haven't blown everyone out of the water when it comes to the regular season, but now adding scoble, I think, suddenly refocuses everyone's attention on the Dodgers, which is what MLB has been trying to do pretty explicitly with its ad campaign and with some of its messaging

to draw fans' attention to the Dodgers specifically or to spending imbalance more generally. And this is like earned media now. I mean, Rob doesn't even have to run that MLB TV campaign for a while. He can just sit back and the Dodgers have done his dirty work for him because everyone's just talking about. The Dodgers, they've broken baseball again. So that was part of why I just sort of, oh, here we go again. You know, sort of CJ from GTA San Andreas, which is essentially Los Angeles, the, the, ah, here we go again.

Like, I just, I knew we were in for it after having gotten a bit of a reprieve because, of the Dodgers not being so spectacular and lots of other teams that weren't expected to be good or weren't big spenders being good and then other big spenders being bad, et cetera. It felt like, oh, boy, it's about to come back with a vengeance. So here we are and we do want to touch on a few other trades. So I guess we should do that. And the raise, by the way, did end up making a trade. We have been talking about the one they didn't make.

They then pivoted. And on Sunday they settled for Freddie Pearl. Bralta, so former brewer involved in this one as well. And this was also for a prospect package. So the Reyes have acquired Freddie Peralta for Aidan Smith, Emilia N. Petrae, and my favorite name, Gary Gill Hill. I mean, that's just the best. People are losing their gourds over Gary Gill Hill's name. In a way that I, well, this is going to make me sound like a prospect's novel.

I'm like, what, are you not familiar with Gary Gilhill? Many people aren't. Tell me, tell me you didn't edit 30 less. Without telling me you didn't edit 30 less. Yeah, like they took more of a sort of go-wide approach to this one than, say, Detroit did to trading scuba. You know, we have a 45 on Gil Hill. We have a 40-plus on Smith. we have a 40 on piquetree you know this is like hey this starter's bad and hasn't been very good and

let's see what we can can make of of these guys um gill hill is a starter a double a smith is a center field or ptch is a second baseman um so you know that that was the sort of approach that they took for it given peralta struggles like i'm i think that that's a reason reasonable return, all things considered. I can see the appeal of Peralta to the raise where, you know, I just said that the Mets have been a better pitching dev organization and I think that's true.

I think that the race track record around that is a little longer. So they'll see what they can make of him. But yeah, that was their move. Which I guess means the best available starter on the market right now is redembers. That was true before

Porata got traded, but... Yeah, it's assuming that the Angel actually do put players on the market. If they hold on to those two guys, it doesn't it doesn't matter what you think of Detroit's return that they will have lost the deadline. If those two dudes are angels at the end

of the day on Monday, then John Moselleck should not be made a non-interroom GM. That would be a bonkers outcome. If that's the case, I doubt it will be his fault. Yeah, you're right. That has raised the question of why have a GM at all really because just let already do it

if he's going to, right? Yeah, or not. but we'll return to that topic one way or another next time. But yeah, Peralta, I wouldn't be surprised if he's perfectly fine for the race. Sure. Obviously, he's not Terek Scoopal, but I think he is somewhere between his 2.7 ERA for Milwaukee last year and his 4.99 for the Mets. And his XERA was in that range, 3-8-ish. I don't know. I could see him just snapping back to basically being the guy he was, at least under the hood for the Brewers.

year in and year out, and that's a not insignificant addition. So it's good that the race got a consolation prize, at least. It's hard not to feel let down a bit when you're in the running for Terrick's Google potentially, and then you end up with

anyone else, but Freddie Peralta is not a bad plan B, I suppose, even if there's a pretty big gap there. Yeah, and we don't know if they're done, and you know, this is the danger of us recording on Sunday, but there were just so many transactions. We had to get some of them out.

We couldn't wait until Tuesday. That would have been a four-hour-long pod, which I know you wouldn't have minded, but. Yep. Well, we could talk about another starter trade involving Meg's Mariners, which you just alluded to. So Luis Castillo is now on the White Sox, and this was a swap for Sir Anthony Dominguez,

whom you mentioned the other day, he's pitching every time you watch the White Sox, right? So you're going to be seeing even more Sir Anthony, and not pitching well also. I finally landed on the comp. He is Louis Varlane's warrior for me this season. Because every time I watch the Blue Jays, Louis Varlane is on the mound.

It's shocking, you know? It's like I turn them on and I feel like that's true even when I turn on the Blue Jays in the first inning, which are you bringing this perception on my part. But I just feel like I have seen every inning that Louis Varlane has thrown this year, and they've been great, to be clear. and I feel like I've seen most of the innings that Sir Anthony Dominguez has thrown

and they've been largely bad. But here's the thing, much like the role he's settled into with Chicago, he will not, he'll be a middle inning guy. You know, he's not going to be, I would think, throwing high leverage innings for Seattle. I have a little more faith in Seattle's pitching dev than Chicago's. So maybe they'll be able to tease something out of him. I don't know. Okay, so the cynic in me is a little worked up about this trade because if it's a salary dump, that feels bad.

And look, Luis Castillo is not the guy he was when they traded for him in 2022, and they ushered in this era of expectation that I talked about, right? The signaling of ambition, the seriousness. He's not that guy anymore. He is having arguably his worst season in the majors. And this isn't just like, oh, he's getting unlucky and he has fantastic peripherals. Like everything is down relative to certainly his peak and even to last year, right? He's not the same guy. And I think that that's important to remember.

But also part of why they did what they did was because the white socks were willing to take on not only what remains of his salary this year, but also the entirety of his salary in 2027. And he also was a vesting option that year if he throws 180 innings and avoids certain IL placements, et cetera. So they are saving a meaningful amount of money, even taking on Sir Anthony's salary, which remember when he signed and we were like, well, that's a lot of money to throw it a reliever? That's kind of weird. Yeah, we were wondering if they would flip him to a contender at the deadline, whether that was the plan, which I guess that is what happened, but it turns out that the White Sox were a contender too. Right. But I think that, like, the White Sox need starter innings.

They are certainly putting pressure on Noah Schultz at the moment. I imagine he will sort of phase out of that for now. And so I think that Castillo is, like, a good guy to have soak up innings as your fifth starter. He is, by all accounts, a delight to have in the clubhouse. And for a young team contending in a way that was sort of unexceptive. expected and I mean credit to the White Sox like they're two years out from setting a record for losses.

So you know this is this is I think a defensible move on their part. They partnered with Boston Smith who is unexpectedly a main character of this deadline right? Because savvy listeners will remember that Boston Smith was who the White Sox traded for when they traded

away Curtis Meads, the nationals. So weirdly at the center of a lot of deadline activity this year and then Nolan Jones, who had one really great year for Colorado and has been hurt and an effective since then, he will, I imagine, be outfield depth for Seattle at AAA. There are some rumblings that, like, they are listening on Randy or Rosarena. If they do that, I think that they are signaling that they are not competing, if they are to move him. Because, you know what, Randy Roserina has been, apart from infuriating at times on the base pass,

Randy, stop running. Stop it. Also, stop challenging. You're bad at that. And your base running? Very strange. But he has been their best bat and their only all-star, even if you almost did miss that A All-Star photo.

I'm never going to forget that. It was such a delightful moment of, like, being in the press box at just the right moments, it'd be like, is that Randy Rosarino sprinting across the field? Because they're taking the American League All-Star photo right now, and he's not over there. Yeah, that's Randy. I think Nolan Jones will settle in as sort of outfield death at AAA for now. They'll figure out if they can fix him. Boston Smith was sort of a as a.

as Eric put it, a priority senior sign. He didn't get much in the way of a signing bonus because he had no leverage. Not a good defensive catcher. Big pop in the bat. A lot of contact and swing and miss issues. So they'll have to figure out if they can fix him. I am nervous that this is mostly about getting Castillo's salary off the books. If they reallocate that money to a good bat, well, then you got more starters than you know what to do with.

And less than he won't forget, Kate Anderson is just like. like shoving at double A. Yeah. And they have, you know, they have Sloan too. So they are very well positioned to backfill their rotation. There are other rumblings of them listening on Emerson Hancock, them listening on George Kirby. So I don't know where their rotation will, how that will settle out when the deadline comes and goes tomorrow. But they are trading from a position of great depth.

even if it feels sad just because of what Castillo meant to the organization. And if there's a twinge of nervousness that this is about saving money, because there's some precedent for that. But I am going to reserve judgment on that piece of it until we know what they have done in the next little while. Yeah, there's enough money remaining on Castillo's deal that he better be better or else. Right, yeah. It's going to be a bit of a drag. gone for, yes.

Yeah, I applaud the White Sox for doing something and making an effort because they've been such a fun story. And yeah, they have payroll room and they need help in the rotation. He doesn't have to be great to improve on their alternatives, but it does probably have to be better than he has been this season. Correct. Because he has been used, he's been deployed in sort of a piggyback role at times this year, which we've talked about on the pod and to varying degrees of success.

And I should be clear, like it's not like they're. on the clock to spend all that money by Monday. It does give them flexibility to take on payroll in a deal. They could also look ahead to the offseason. Maybe there's a bat that they like, you know, what have you. But if it just ends up going back into John Stanton's piggy bank, I'm going to be annoyed, but I'm going to be responsible in the interim and not be annoyed prematurely. As my mother always says, save your panic until you need it.

I'm not good at that. It's like the advice she has given me the most often in my life and probably the advice I have inadvertently ignored more fruit than any other, which isn't me disrespecting my mom. I'm just an anxious little bird. So there's that. But yeah, Castillo. Luis, thanks, bud.

You were a fun mariner. I hope that those sunflower seeds you planted outside the dugout that one time blossom into thriving in Chicago. Well, I guess the only other somewhat significant move that's been made is Atlanta trading for Lane Thomas and Bailey Falter from Kansas City? And I would maybe submit. So I like that deal for Atlanta. Makes sense for the Royals to sell because they're not going anywhere this year.

And Lane Thomas is probably surplus to requirements for them at this point. I like Atlanta bolstering that lineup. You don't want Lane Thomas to play center field, which he was playing a good amount of for Kansas City. but guess what? The Braves have Michael Harris second. So he doesn't have to play center field. Pop him over into a corner have some flexibility there. DuBong can pop around. He and Yaz can

platoon he being Lane Thomas. They talked about wanting a right-handed alternative for that lineup. So I think that works out nice. I think the most interesting thing, and it's certainly not the highest profile move that has been made.

The other Brewers, the Brewers trade? Brewers Guardians. I was going to talk about how the twins, little buying action for Minnesota. Yeah, that's true. Yeah. It's the posture is more interesting than the individual moves, I think, is the way that I would maybe put it. Because I don't mean, I don't say that to try to be disrespectful to Dean Kramer. That would be rude.

I don't want to disrespect Dean Kramer, who is now a Minnesota twin, but also, you know, like it's Dean Kramer. But they also picked up Minter from the Mets. So that's nice, you know, to get Minter. It's a change from last year's deadline when they traded every reliever who wasn't nailed down. And now they're acquiring some. So, yeah. Yeah, it's good. It's good.

Again, the posture. They're in it according to the standings. So they should be shoring up a weakness here or there. This is like a responsible posture. And again, we are recording at 1.30 p.m. my time on Sunday. By the time we record again, maybe they've cleaned out the cabinet, you know, and this isn't their posture at all. But in terms of like an early signal, it's just like, oh, we're going to make a little,

we're going to make some shoring up sort of moves. We need to shore up. So here we are shoring. We'll kind of go from there. Seems reasonable given where they are in the standing. Yeah. The pirates also acquired a reliever, Camilla Duval, from the Yankees. We don't have to go in depth on every reliever move.

There are going to be a lot. Here's what I'll say. We have not yet written up Camila Duval because he is firmly in the, either we'll do a reliever roundup or the pirates will do more moves. And Camillo DeVal can get written about then. Yeah. I hope there's a pirates reliever roundup because that's, they need that. Oh, man.

And they need better than Deval, candidly. Yes, right. I don't know how much he helps, but at least a suggestion. you're in the right direction because the bullpen's been holding the pirates back. They have the strong starting staff, which is sixth in Fangraph's War, and then their fifth in position player war, which exceeded my expectations for how good their non-pitchers were going to be. And then it's the bullpen. The bullpen has been a big part of why they're still sort of on the periphery of contention.

Their bullpen is 18th in Fangraph's War. it's just it's got to be better right 19th and win probability added nothing more frustrating than that probably than when every other aspect of your roster is sort of squared away but you can't hold leads because your bullpen keeps blowing them and that seems like fortunately it should be one of the easier things to correct because there are always relievers to be had not that you can always reliably predict which relievers are going to be good over the however 15 innings or something that they have left. But yeah, do something.

Don't let the bullpen sink your season when so much else has gone right. It's like that other meme with the guy poking with a little stick. Yeah, the little guy. Do something. He's like poking. What is he poking? Do you just always plaster over whatever he was originally poking

with the thing that you want to do something? Yeah. I don't even know if he's poking anything. He's just kind of... Doesn't he have a little stick? Yeah, he has the stick. But I don't know if he's actually. poking anything in particular.

He's just kind of poking at air. Yeah, you can fill in whatever you want someone to do. Gotcha. Yeah. All right. The Brewers deal that I alluded to, I mean, the Brewers acquired Boehler. They did. Cody Hoyer from the Guardians for Blake Perkins and Craig Yoho.

So we all got to enjoy Craig Yoho. I can't believe Craig. He needs to be a pirate, right? Yeah. Why is it? That would fit. Yeah. All right.

Because of son. But also, I, I'd be really annoying about it if he were a pirate because I'd sing the song. I can't believe that I managed to restrain myself when you mentioned Mike Cerota. I know. Because I just, every time I want to be like, yeah, my little pretty one, my friend. When are you going to call up Maxerrota? I guess I didn't resist.

Thanks for refraining until now. Yeah, I was going to say, I guess I didn't actually hold back, did I? Yeah. Anyway, some of those names in that trade would have been more noteworthy, a couple of years ago or at some point in the past. I think it's interesting. Bowman wrote that trade up for us and he made the point that, you know, it's sort of dependent on what Milwaukee is able to make of bow nailer.

They do have roster decisions related to their catching position in the future. They have an option on Contreras. It's not particularly expensive. It's a little pricey for them given where they operate. But there is a scenario where they make bone nailer really good. and then all of a sudden they have options about trading Contreras, and then we have to get back on the mic and talk about how annoying the Brewers are.

And no one will remember that when they're wanting to get mad at the Dodgers. Sorry, I snarked again. But I hope they don't do that because Contreras has been so good for Milwaukee. Bonaylor has been so frustrating because he was so promising in the beginning and then like the offense hasn't been great and it's not like he's a defensive standout so he can't even like hedges his way to value.

So they have some work to do there. They're Cleveland officially out of the nailer business. No more, no more nailers. They've divested themselves of all nailers. All nailers must go. Not nailer down. Not nailer down. There will be more moves.

And we will return next time to round them up. And hopefully not too much of what we said today is altered by subsequent moves. But inevitably, it will be. It will be. That's what tends to happen. but hopefully most of our analysis holds up and you get our trade reactions hot off the podcast presses. So that's that and more deadline deals to be discussed.

The biggest news of this weekend, though, are moment of zen to end on. You know how you always wonder whether men are okay because some of, for any number of reasons, but specifically because some of us have used from time to time some sort of three and one, four in one shower concoction, where it's like body wash plus shampoo plus conditioner plus I don't even know what else, right? Well, it was revealed live on air on a Baltimore Orioles broadcast this weekend that Ben McDonald's is the opposite of that. In fact, maybe he could use one of those combined things because he issues shampoo entirely.

He uses a bar of soap to wash his hair. You think you use the same amount of product in your hair as Brandon Marsh does? No way. For me, it's just a bar of soap. A bar of soap? Yeah, I've never used shampoo. Not once ever. Just a bar of soap in the hair.

I was going to say he confessed this, but he didn't seem at all ashamed about it. In fact, if anything, he seemed quizzical. He seemed flummoxed that any. would do anything else. And Kevin Brown was sort of the proxy for normal people. You have never used shampoo. Never. In your life.

Never. Now, not when you were a kid. No, just a bar of soap in the shower. That's all I need. You use shampoo? Yeah. Why? Doesn't everybody else be?

I don't know. I've, I, I, I, it's just, It's a bar of soap. It's simple. All you need is a bar or soap. It cleans it perfectly. I mean, Phil. Feel how soft this is. It's just a bar of soap. Look, I have my share of odd habits, as anyone who listens to our bonus pods can attest to. But this is one where I'm firmly on the side of, wait, what are you talking about? He sounded as if we are the weird ones, those who use shampoo. And in case anyone's wondering, it's not that he's hairless, it's not that he's bald or something and just has less need of shampoo.

He has a full head of hair, but he does not believe in shampoo. He says he's never in his life used shampoo, which I don't know how he can verify that it was never used on him before he had reached the age of shampoo consent. But at least as an adult, as someone who can make his own choices about hygiene, he has not used shampoo. he claims that he is none the worse for this. He had brown feel his hair and see how soft it was and how clean supposedly. And so he just rubs a bar of soap over his head. And that's how he washes his hair. And he claimed not to understand why anyone would do anything different, which to me is mind-blowing.

Because if anything, I might underutilize bar soap just because I have like liquor. Good soap and body wash or whatever. Soap-like substances. And I don't like bar soap that. It's like I don't like the feel of it. It's all slippery. And, you know, I like some sort of liquid soap substitute. I mean, that's soap too.

So soap in any form. As long as you're getting in all the crooks and, you know, jokes and crannies. So this is very much as Bryce Harper's toothbrush method. Again, I'm open to different strokes for different folks. And if it works for you and no one's. complaining about his hair and it looks clean. And he is, he is washing his hair. He's washing it.

He's just putting a bar, just dragging a bar of soap over his head. Yeah. It's just never would have occurred to me to do such a thing. Okay, here would be my concern. Does he use any conditioner? Did he say? Oh, I don't think so. So, okay, so there are two concerns I might have here.

And again, like, everybody's head of hair is different. Yeah. So I'm going to have less of a reaction than you maybe thought you were winding me up for here, given some of my takes, which are correct, about you guys and your lack of wellness. Mostly it's just like give yourself little treats, you know. It's fine. No one's going to have questions about your masculinity if you use both the shampoo and occasion. Yeah. And I don't know if that's, if that's McDonald, unless this is some internalized thing where he's worried that people will think he's not macho.

I don't know. look, he was a ballplayer. Maybe you're in the communal showers or whatever. Maybe there's an expediency element. Right. But he should have the time. And he has sort of an old school, he has like a flat top, like military crew cut kind of style going on here. I don't know whether that affects anything.

Like, I mean, if he had long, luscious flowing locks or something, maybe that would be harder to handle with a soap bar. Maybe because his hair is so square. in maybe more than one way. Maybe it's sort of soap bar shaped. Maybe it works for him. But yeah, so you're not, you're not as... I have two concerns, though. The first is about the state...

Well, look, it's either we talk about his hair or my colonoscopy. So here we go. You know which I'd prefer, but... Yeah, but you know what? Don't worry about it, everybody. Don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. I will say,

anesthesia is a trip, man. That's such a strange. It's such a weird experience. It is. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was very odd. Yes. But my first concern would be, like, what is, and I worry about this with fellas sort of generally, because I think a lot of you are very routine-based in the shower and you're, like,

washing your hair every day you're in there. And so I always worry, like, what's the state of your scalp, you know? Like, are you real dried out up there? And there are a lot of things that can contribute to dander and scalp dryness. And so, again, and everybody's individual little oil glands and this is a matts. And, you know, it's very particular. So, but having said that, I would be a little nervous that he's just dealing with a real dry situation up there, right? Because depending on the bar soap, he uses, now, some bar soap is very nice and, like, might be moisturizing.

There are solid shampoos that you can get that are in sort of bar soap form, but operate like shampoo. But I'm imagining this guy with just like the barest bones. You know, like you go to the store and it's the kind of aisle where you're only getting like single ply toilet paper, which is an abomination. And then you have just like the harshest. most astringent Any type of toilet paper is extraneous as far as I'm concerned But that's a separate conversation

That we have had Well, I mean Could rectify that And rectumify that I'm trying to pull us away from that End of the body Up, you know I think it's good that we saved this

Till the end though I bet that there are people Who are going to see this episode hit And they're like She's going to talk about our stupid colonoscopy first We didn't We got right to the news of the day We were real folks

focused. I had a, I had segments. You know, I had a plan. We were, we were lactant. So I would worry about sort of the, the state of his scalp and how dry it is. And then I also would worry about sort of the texture and brittleness of his hair. Now, he might have wiry hair to begin with. He might have soft hair. He might be working with a really nice bar soaps. Some of the bar soap, because I'm a, I'm a bar soap person. I have like liquid soap also because sometimes you know you forget to buy a bar soap. You do have to, your margin for error there tends to be lower. And then I'll buy multiple bar soaps and they can smell very nice and they can be very gentle. But I would worry about maybe the condition of his hair. There is a reason that we condition hair, right, that we have conditioner

to sort of add moisture and sheen. But also, and I want to express this as non-judgmentally as I can because I like that booth very much. I like him in that booth. I think those two are really nice compliments for one another. I really enjoy that broadcast and think it's really good. And he clearly likes his haircut. It's not for me. I don't have a desire to look at.

like a drill sergeant, but also he seems pleased with it. So as much as I do inquire after men and their okayness, because, you know, dude wipes and deodorants that are named after verbs, that's filling a segment of the market that does suggest that there's something I'd be a little worried about. And we did have, what's his name with the Mets and all those eggs. So I don't know that all of your sources for wellness are necessarily the best. But this one actually doesn't alarm me to the same degree. I would, I would, though, offer to him that there is a whole wide world of stuff that might be a little softer on your scalp or your hair that might make it feel nicer to the touch

for you that might make your scalp feel a little more quenched. and that if he ever wants to explore that whole big world out there, and also would just invite him to remember that there's nothing wrong with using litigally shampoo. I think that the best posture that one can take when one is adopting a minority opinion is to accept that you are outside the consensus, which doesn't mean that what you're doing doesn't work for you necessarily, but also suggests that like you're the one that's being a little weird, you know? And you can just have the humility of that reality.

Yeah, I'm familiar with that feeling. Yeah. Right, because you are a lifelong holder of weird ass grooming and food opinions, you know? And I feel comfortable calling them weird ass because they are, some of them are quite strange. And I'm comfortable with you calling that, but not using shampoo is not one of them. So yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I can't go along with the other Ben, the other.

the other other other bend on this one. Right. So many bends. Maybe one day he'll experiment. Maybe it's not too late and he'll just luxuriate and he'll realize what he was missing. Or yeah, maybe not. Takes all kinds as long as he's cleaning with something as he seems to be. Like every time they take a road trip and he stays in a hotel and he goes in there and they have, they have shampoo and conditioner and body wash. Is he like, what's this for?

Yeah. You know, maybe he's the smart one because he has never had to. grapple with the, I imagine, cost-based change that is terrible away from the little mini shampoos and conditioners and toward the fixed big bottles in the shower and hotels. And I'm not doing more hotel shower talk here. Okay, I save that for when Craig's on the show. But it is a travesty that we should collectively rebel against after we're done slipping on the water on the floor.

Met's egg guy, by the way. Ryan Lambert. Thank you, Ryan Lambert. Has a 6 plus ERA in AAA and... See, Ryan? Also missed some time. So I don't know if it's because he was O-Ding on eggs, but it doesn't seem to have fortified him enough, at least.

It's been major control issues, both with egg consumption possibly, but also with the strike zone, definitely. All right. Well, much as the Ray is having missed out, on Scoobel secured a starter, Freddie Peralta, the Cubs, acquired Kevin Gossman from the Blue Jays, the Yankees added the Nationals, Luis Garcia Jr., the Braves got Tyler Malley from the Giants, coverage of those trades, and others next time. Also, all that shampoo talk reminded me of a scene from season three of the West Wing that my friends and I still sometimes repeat to each other.

White House Chief of Staff Leo McGarry, played by the late John Spencer, and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, Percy Fitzwallis, played by the late John Amos, are sitting a little. alone in the situation room. It's a heated time, and they have a little light, almost non-sequitur of an exchange. This is always when you say something. No. No. Have you changed shampoo?

You have. I can tell, because your hair seems bouncy and more manageable. I like to look good for you. Well, I appreciate it. Not a sentiment we're likely to hear. here in the Baltimore booth. The name of that episode, we killed Yamamoto,

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