Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2530: The Top 24 Players 24 or Younger

Episode Date: September 12, 2026

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, please visit our Patreon. With Meg Rowley on vacation, Ben Lindbergh continues his quest to (temporarily) resurrect a few dearly departed baseball podcasts. Next Up: The Ringer MLB Show, featuring Ben, Michael Baumann of FanGraphs, and Bobby Wagner of Patreon and Tipping Pitches. Ben, Baumann, and Bobby banter about their old show and the absence of one member of the Ringer MLB crew, how MLB commemorated 9/11, who’s to blame for banged-up Shohei Ohtani, whether they’re buying Anthony Volpe’s power spike, and what the widespread mockery of Vivek Ramaswamy’s baseball swing says about politicans’ eagerness to invoke baseball, the danger of appearing inauthentic by faking ball knowledge, and the difficulty (relative to other sports) of not looking doofy doing baseball activities without past playing experience. Then (54:49) Ben plays “Did This Famous Figure Play College Baseball?” and they draft (1:02:38) the top 24 MLB players who are in their age-24 seasons or younger. Audio intro: Dave Armstrong and Mike Murray, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Alex Ferrin, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to The Ringer MLB Show feed Link to Ringer Baseball feed Link to Baumann’s FanGraphs archive Link to Tipping Pitches Link to 2021 young players ranking Link to 2021 young players podcast Link to 2022 young players ranking Link to MLB’s 9/11 press release Link to Baumann on Ohtani Link to Woo on Ohtani Link to Ardaya on Ohtani Link to Ohtani comments Link to Volpe reinvention article Link to Triple-A wOBA leaders Link to Triple-A xWOBA leaders Link to Volpe gamelog Link to Cruz vs. El-Sayed Link to Vivek’s football jersey Link to EW on politician sports fails Link to Jeffries bat post Link to Vivek’s baseball post Link to eyewitness account Link to Vivek’s tennis post Link to Vivek’s bowling post Link to Vivek’s basketball post Link to post deletion story Link to Vivek name article Link to Curtis on baseball language Link to list of Baumann games Link to Eisenhower baseball controversy Link to RoS ZiPS projections Link to 2028 ZiPS projections Link to rest-of-career ZiPS projections  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

If baseball were different, how different would it be? And if this thought haunted dreams, well, stick around and see what Ben and Meg have to say philosophically and pedantically. And pedantically, it's effectively wild. And welcome to episode 2530 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. of the Ringer, once again, not joined by MagRally of Fancrafts who has ditched me in favor of vacation, understandable. And so I am extending this series that I started earlier this week where I am briefly resurrecting defunct former dearly departed baseball podcasts. And this time, it's personal because we're talking about a defunct former baseball podcast that I was a part of. And this is at least a partial reunion.

We have the majority of members, we have a quorum of the beloved by some Ringer MLB show. And so I am joined by my former colleagues on that show, Michael Bowman, presently of fan graphs. Hello, Michael. Yeah, unfortunately not beloved of, I can actually list the specific current bosses if you want to. I am still employed by the ringer. so please be conscious of that. But clearly it was not beloved by all who had decision-making capacity. But we miss it and we still hear from some folks who miss it.

Another person who misses it is the former producer of that podcast. People who understand what tipping pitches is all about, understand him. He is Bobby Wagner. Hi, Bobby. This is a bad time to tell you guys that I was actually the one that canceled it and knife to guys. You were working behind the scenes. Just telling us, I was actually. I'm in your corner, guys. I'm on your side.

I would say if that were true, that would explain a lot of puzzling production decisions you made over the years. Oh, like leaving in all of your college baseball bits? We're going to get to some of that. I'm sure we are. It's great to be back with you guys. I've missed you both very much. Sadly, we are not joined by the fourth member of the crew, Zach Cram. And we tried. We wanted Zach Cram, who I'm sure is listening. Hi, Zach. We miss you. We wish you were here. and his heart was willing, but his employer was not, and possibly also his child is not.

And so he could not be with us today for both employment and child care-related reasons, and also the fact that he has abandoned baseball and is now a member of the basketball media mafia. And so we were willing and happy to have him on, despite the fact that he is not following or covering baseball on a professional basis anymore. But perhaps it turns out that if you are employed to talk about one sport, certain powers that be tend to frown on you talking about other sports. But, you know, we were okay with Zach coming on and faking it and not having any idea what he was talking about. That would have been just fine.

I feel his loss. I feel his absence in the baseball media quite acutely every single day. It's so crazy that they let Jeff pass and come on tipping pitches, but not Zach Cram go on effectively wild. His preferred home of effectively wild. Especially because what a waste having him cover basketball. A lesser sport, his talents are wasted. I mean, just I would say a lesser empirical culture.

Well, maybe he's more needed in the basketball media. If he can get basketball people to stop saying playmake his verb, then maybe we can talk. The empirical rigor that he brought to the rigger. or MLB show. That's a little less, well, in demand maybe, but also in supply when it comes to covering basketball. So he was needed, I think. He can go over there and he can bring his baseball sensibilities to basketball. And I was hoping to have him on so he could tell us about covering a different sport and about how we should all just dread having to deal with aprons in baseball should the owners get their way. And we have to figure out trade machines and

arcane salary cap considerations. Hey, now. Don't get me started on this one, Ben. Please, Jesus. Yeah, you can check out tipping pitches if you want. Bobby's thoughts on that. He's not a salary cap supporter. Spoiler.

Not until the check shows up. Yes. Yeah, I noticed that Ben is still soft pedaling for the mouse, too. Like, you don't work there anymore. They fired you, man. I mean, they fired the whole website, which is, I didn't take it personally. But then I transferred to a different website. So, you know, I guess.

And then that website eventually got fired to long after I had moved on. But we're rehashing old layoffs and unfortunate work-related news. Speaking of present employment, Bobby may be moonlight as the co-host of tipping pitches, but by day he is employed by Patreon, where he is, in fact, the Patreon rep for Effectively Wild. And so if you're sorry that that effectively wild is partially paywalled these days, blame Bobby. You're trying the audience against me before the draft even starts. You'll do that yourself soon enough. This is foul play.

I was just thinking about like the three of us back together. It's like those pictures of the FDR Stalin and Churchill at the Yalta conference. I'm FDR. I'm FDR. No, you're not. Yes, I am. Unfortunately, I've painted you as the. the left-wing authoritarian and myself is the sensible democratic socialist moderate.

Oh, I'm the handsome Joseph Stalin. How nice. And Ben is just ideologically the racist imperialist conservative. This is more like the Potsdam conference. I think Zach is FDR and he is no longer with us. And so now one of us has to be Truman, I guess. That's bleak. Yeah.

I know we just said there's an illness going around his house, but it's not that severe. No, it's not that. serious, I hope. But it's true. Bobby's, it was not his idea, by the way, to partially pay well, effectively well. He supported it, to be clear, but he did not put us up to it. In fact, actually, he had a whole pitch deck about how we weren't properly monetizing the podcast and we were resistant and we said, no, effectively wild is for the people. I'm all about OKRs and KPIs now, boys and girls. What's up? Exactly. Yep. And actually, part of the ulterior motive, we were actually a spy to being represented by Bobby because we were not Bobby material before we changed our structure.

We were not lucrative enough for Patreon to be represented by Bobby Wagner. And so we sort of set a goal for ourselves of having Bobby as kind of our concierge, where he's just constantly on call if we have any Patreon issues. But we had to earn it. Not just anyone can be repped by Bobby. Exactly. Thanks to all of you. it may be Bobby's fault partially that this is why we can't have nice things or all of the nice things for free.

But it's nice for us that now I can just send Bobby a message in not only a personal but a professional capacity at any time, day or night. I can get him out of bed, three in the morning. And Lord knows you're awake during those hours. So, you know, that's not a problem. That's normal for me, yes. Yeah, it has been an unwelcome return to previous scheduling regimes. I've had questions about what we're going to do all week. And I was like, what is a good time to message Ben about?

You just got to fire it off whenever you're ready to send it. Well, at least, Ben, you've earned the ability to, you know, use your bully pulpit against me. Unlike Balman, when I became the 22-year-old producer of the Ringer M-O-B show, and he just put me to work. No empathy, you know, no shepherding, no putting me under any kind of wing. He just started bullying. I was told you were a professional. And by the way, what you were replacing was nothing. That's true.

I was self-producing the Ringer MLB show for some time. That's actually beautiful. That they trusted me so much to replace no producer at all. Thank you. The Ben produces himself era of the Ringer MLB show. I was like, you know, we didn't always see eye to eye with our bosses, but I can't believe they let us get away with that. It was a different time. And we have a draft on tap today.

and it is sort of a spiritual successor to an exercise that we did on The Ringer MLB show and for the Ringer.com. We're going to be doing an under 25 draft, the best players under 25, or at least under their age 25 season. And I wasn't thinking about this when I pitched this to you, but it is today, after all, as we are speaking, the 25th anniversary of September 11th, 2001. So this is sort of the players born after September 11th draft. Hang on. No, I asked you specifically about the age cutoff. No, it's not technically that. It's true. So we are going by baseball age. So anyone who is aged 24 or younger by baseball age, which is generally like July 1st of the year.

And so there are a few players eligible who have turned 25 in the past couple months. But for the most part, these are going to be players who were born after 9-11. It just so happens. I got an email from- I've never been so afraid in my life. I was going with that. What, yeah. Oh, man. What a thrill that was.

Yeah. Well, we will never forget on this podcast either. But MLB, you know. And unlike certain people, you landed that segue. Yeah, I mean, we got an email or I got an email from MLB about all the 9-11 remembrance plans and everything. And it's kind of, it's tipped over into. Tacky?

Is this, yeah, is this really about remembrance or is it sort of about reminding, everyone that baseball was a big part of the aftermath of that, which, yeah, no, it was. It's the exact same, it's the exact same playbook is racism in the United States with Jackie Robinson. Like, yeah, every April 15th, we come together to remember how Branch Ricky ended racism in the United States all on his own. And doesn't MLB deserve so much credit for that? There is a little bit of that. Not that baseball was not a unifying force. Not that it didn't help.

Yeah, America came together to root against the Yankees in the World Series. Yeah, that was particularly painful for me as a Yankees fan in New York at the time. I don't know what you guys are talking about. I feel like they're doing a really good job with this. In 2023, when they had the 9-11 themed parlay with draft kings, I thought that was really sensitive and nicely executed. So I don't know where this sort of cynicism comes from from you guys. Days like this, I think about Rain of Terror by Spencer Ackerman, this great book about a tracing, how the war on terror brought about the structures that gave us the rise of fascism in the United States

in the early 21st century. And one of the things that was, one of the few things was omitted from that book was how the 2001 World Series elevated Kurt Schilling. Not the greatest tragedy of that time, but not a beneficial byproduct either. Anyway, I sometimes think that the never forgetting insistence, there's kind of an undercurrent of we will forget, like there's an anxiety, which I mean, look, it's good to remember some things for some reasons, certainly, but I wasn't about to forget. It certainly left a mark, but also some of this does tip over from, this is a moment that is cause for remembrance, and you can tie baseball into it into almost a promotional opportunity to remind everyone that baseball's big business

and people like baseball. I like baseball. Also, I liked baseball then. Baseball was a nice unifying moment and great that brought us together. But also, yeah, do we need quite so much. I'll also say like MLB is far from alone in this. Oh, sure. Nobody has profaned the memory of 9-11 more than people who take it seriously. And like this has not been a solemn occasion of American togetherness since, you know, a lot of people would say September 12th. I would say March 2003 at the absolute latest. So, you know, they're not alone, but it's still collar-telling material. So that's, you know, first 10 minutes of this show is just nothing but serious war on terror remembers. Hashing out old grievances and also, yes.

It actually comes up an interesting time for how MLB is positioning itself publicly on social media and other platforms. You know, given that the lockout is impending and that they are posturing as if this might last for a significant amount of months, deep into 2027, they are kind of like soft peddling nostalgia core as a persona on the social media channels. This is obviously a part of that. Early 2000s, nostalgia is such a huge part of how MLB positions itself publicly these days. Posting highlights from this era, you know, talking about how baseball used to be. They are kind of in there, make baseball great again era, you know, with some of the changes, the rule changes that they've made. the field of dreams game.

They're positioning this as all part of the same soup. It does tend to feel a little bit like inauthentic and like unsympathetic to some of us who are who are following it through that lens. It's been notable to me that MLB has been posting on like random old highlights as if they happened yesterday, even pre-9-11. Dude, I love early 2000s nostalgia. Oh, sure. Who doesn't like remembering some baseball guys and some sports guys?

I guess that has always been the case about baseball. It has always harkened back to some previous golden age. Yeah, and we like the nostalgic aspect of it. But part of it is also if you were at one point more central to American society, then you're inevitably going to be yearning for then or at least presenting it that way. But yeah, I mean, every generation of players, talking about how the new generation of players is not as good as they were, that sort of thing. No, that stuff's cool.

I think it's really good, actually. I love it every time. I just drink it up. You really want to strike. a tone of a partially estranged older relative. What you're talking about, your relationship to the national psyche. So we will be drafting rosters of our players we like the most who are, well, not necessarily like the most, but think are the best who are in their age 24 seasons or younger.

We'll draft 24 of them. And it'll be in terms of long-term production, whom we expect to be the best for the rest of their careers. Just a bit of non-9-11 related banter before we get there. Baumann, you wrote a post earlier this week, headlined Shohei Otani might also be too hurt to hit. Pretty tame headline for you. No wordplay whatsoever there. And Meg's away.

Meg's on vacation. I was writing in a hurt note. Matt is actually way tighter on this. Yeah. Meg occasionally frightens me with how much she lets me get away with. I know. Yeah. Well, when Meg's away, Michael will play, but evidently Matt will not play along.

No, when Meg's away, I got to get off this call and edit me. Matt's mailbag response. So like, like, I'm surprised I'm not feeding Meg's cat to like, well, you have your own felines to feed. But, but this headline is, now I guess there's no uncertainty about it because he can't hit right now. He is on the 15-day injured list. I guess he's on the 15-day because he's a two-way player, but he's not even a one-way player for now. So as we have noted on previous pods, he's done pitching for this season. But now there is also some question about whether he can hit or whether he can hit well, at least. And he is now in a position where I think he's eligible to come back about five games before

the playoffs. And this is the opposite of what the Dodgers wanted to be in a situation where he is far from fully operational as either a hitter or a pitcher, let alone both. And they don't know what they're going to get out of him, whether he'll be rusty, whether he will be too hurt to contribute. And so everyone's looking around and wondering, well, how did they get to this point? Dave Roberts the other day said, anyone can do that and say, what could you have done better or different? That's something going forward we're going to look at, absolutely.

But it's certainly not a blame game thing. It's learning from what happened and getting better. But it has become a blame game thing. And the esteemed Katie Wu of the athletic wrote a piece headlined, who's to blame in the Shohei Otani injury saga? Everyone. So if you had to a portion blame, are we laying this at Otani's door? Are we saying that Dave Robertson? or the Dodgers front office should have been more proactive or should have made him sit sooner

instead of just nursing the arm, biceps, and knee and maybe neck now injuries that have hampered him as a hitter as well. Do you blame anyone in particular, Michael? I do think that I'm going to say something that's going to sort of share blame between the Dodgers and Otani himself. He is such a weird player and a weird personality that I do think the Dodgers, the one thing I think the Dodgers like did like, you know, wrong was playing for one game after they had sat him for five and resetting the IL clock and they could still get them back with a couple games to tune back up before the end of the season. But like you've got to be able to, no matter how big a star this guy is, you have to be able to sit him down and be like, you're not helping the team by doing what you're doing

right now. Like he was, you know, he was hitting like Alex Freeland, basically, for most of the past few weeks after that last bullpen session. And they've got such a huge lead in the division. Like, and, you know, I said this in my piece, they're going to be in kind of a dogfight with the Braves for the second buy, which is huge. But at the same time, Otani's not actually helping them pursue that goal if he's hitting in the position that he's in right now. So give him a couple weeks off, get him as close to better as you can, and get him back for the playoffs. And, you know, I think they made a mistake not pushing that button about a week earlier than they did. But I think it's just like the entire relationship between Natani and the Dodgers, you need to be

able to treat this guy like a normal player sometimes and make decisions and take stuff like this out of his hands. It's interesting because like everybody hurts. Like everybody's in some sort of pain. Exactly. There it is. Thank you for singing backup. both, Mike. Everybody's hurting by this time of the year and Otani can't be an exception, even though he seems like a superhuman. He is human. And we've seen that pressure like bust in the past like couple of years where he's had Tommy John multiple times. He's been so protective of his health and his process that you almost felt like part of the reason that he even went to the angels in the first place is because they were too incompetent to be able to tell him otherwise.

And that was one of the reasons why he might have stayed there had they met his, you know, equal contract demands as the Dodgers did, that he just wants to be so in control of his process, so in control of whether he plays through an injury or not. I just don't think that that's like a reasonable thing to trust over a 10-year contract, like it might be when you're talking about a guy who's in his, mid-20s, these injuries are going to start to pile up. And if the Dodgers don't have a process for being able to deal with that, then this is not going to get better. It's going to get worse. He's like going into his mid-30s over the next couple years, even though that seems crazy

to imagine because it feels like he's still as young and fresh as ever sometimes. I don't think that this was handled great. But if you're the Dodgers, this is the reason that you got this guy is because he told him he could do whatever he wants. And that has worked quite well for you up until this point. Yeah, he hasn't pitched in a game since July 3rd. If you go back to when he started his throwing ramp up again, August 8th, I think. He has a 91 WRC plus since then and worse lately and has been striking out a ton. And I blame him to some extent because ever since he got here, it's been incumbent on him to communicate and explain how he is feeling because he is such a cipher. I mean, he's a private person, obviously. And because you can't

really map any other player onto him. And so it's not as if teams really have a playbook for how to handle him. And so a lot of it relies on, how are you feeling? You have to be totally transparent and honest with us about how much this is bothering you and is it actually hampering your performance. And it seemed like at times the Dodgers were almost willfully oblivious to how much it seemed to be bothering him because he just didn't look great. And I know that he does grimaces sometimes just when he's feeling fine. But there were some ugly swing. and, you know, he was kind of hobbled. And Brandon Goames, the Dodgers GM, came out and said, well, that could be anything.

Like, guys struggle for a lot of reasons, which is true. And he has succeeded as a hitter before when he's been sidelined as a pitcher. So I certainly don't blame the Dodgers or him for trying that. It just hasn't worked this particular time because it seems like these injuries have crossed over. Now, the proximate incident here, he had a really bad game recently where he just had an extremely ugly swing. And it was hard for anyone watching to say, oh, yeah, he's physically okay. And he didn't say anything publicly or to the Dodgers, I think, until a day later and then said, yeah, I'm not feeling so hot. So perhaps he has not been as forthcoming as he should have been.

Or maybe the Dodgers haven't been as vigilant. Or maybe, you know, he's like John Locke and lost. He's like, don't tell me what I can't do. You know, people have been telling him he can't do whatever he tries to do for his whole. career and he typically proves them wrong. So maybe he just thought I can gut and grit my way through this. In this particular time, it turned out not to be true. He went radio silent with the press. Like he wasn't talking to reporters for a stretch of a few weeks there. So he wasn't really giving much insight into how he was feeling. And then also he was saying essentially that even if

he is physically compromised, he could make some tweaks. He could make some compromises. He could use his experience. Like, he'll be able to fix his swing somehow, even if he has to kind of jerry-rig it to get through this season. So maybe overconfidence was a flaw in this case. You know, I know I just toss and blame at the Dodgers' feet for not yanking him, but they have that inability to pull a star player who's obviously hurt and obviously diminished, even when he's hurting the club, is something they have in common with every team in baseball

history. Like, you know, you think about last year, how long did it take the cut? who I think have a pretty good front office and one of the best managers in baseball, how long did it take them to take Kyle Tucker out of the lineup? So, you know, I think the other 29 teams would all have done the same thing.

It's just something that's frustrated me. Like, yeah, when your best player's hurt, he's not your best player anymore. I mean, this is one of the things that confounds me so much about running a baseball team and like the medical staff of baseball teams these days where it's like Jorge Polanco can barely even walk to first base, let alone run.

and the Mets let him run a sub 400 OPS for like two straight months before putting him on the IL. Like, do you really have to trust a guy that much? How about you, like, trust your eyes and the performance and make a decision based on it? Yeah, I wonder if for some of these things, you're like, well, if we stop him, like, it's the whole, you know, if we sit him down, is he going to not be able to gut through it after a couple weeks? You know, what happens if he doesn't bounce back with some rest? And I think at this point, I don't know that there's a whole lot that, I don't know a whole lot. that I don't know a whole lot that the Dodgers could do to really influence the outcome of what Otani can do for them. Because I think even if he's diminished and even if he's only hitting, if he's like, I think it was about a 119 WRC plus in the second half.

If I have the numbers right, that at DH is fine. Like that's way better than what the Dodgers are replacing him with. And even if that's like 60% of what Otani's capable of it is best, you want that in the lineup. up. And maybe having a couple weeks of rest increases the probability of that happening. And one of those couple weeks happen a week late based on their decision not to put him on the aisle right away. That probably doesn't matter a whole lot. And they're not going to miss his arm in the playoffs because their rotation is so deep and they finally got healthy. I think this is just the anxiety of good team going into the playoffs in an imperfect state. We're going to freak out about

whatever the shiniest thing is. I think what they actually do here maybe matters a little bit less than people think. But I still think they could handle it better. If there's one team that shouldn't have anxiety, though, isn't it the daughters? Like, shouldn't they be adult enough about this to handle it?

No, when you have everything, it just, when you have everything, it just makes you more worried about losing it. And that's why we need a salary cap, right? Because their whole thing is like, well, we'll nurse guys through whatever they're dealing with and we'll give them plenty of rest because we have to have them fully operational in October. And so this is a failure of that plan, presumably. And I think you can maybe get yourself in trouble because you see Otani and he still looks like Otani for the most part.

And you have faith in him and he says he can do it. And you figure he'll figure a way out and he'll compensate somehow. Like Robert said, even if he's not 100% as a hitter, he's certainly a presence. But then is the presence overrated? because he's just sort of a facsimile of Otani who looks like Otani, but then swings like Michael Conforto or something in his Dodgers era. I know. Maybe not that. Take it easy. Come on.

But, yeah. So Michael Conforto is a future Hall of Famer, Ben. I get frustrated. Yeah, that's your inner Mets fan speaking, but or your outward Mets fan. But I get frustrated when people don't disclose injuries when it's to their own detriment and to the teams. And maybe there could have been a bit more disclosure. here, or maybe just guys get hurt and bodies don't cooperate sometimes. You think if we work hard enough, we can brand playing through injury is selfish?

Yeah, I mean, sometimes. Sometimes it is. And even if you think this is a team first move, it's actually not because you're hurting the team by going out there. And maybe he'll bounce back. Or maybe this is something where he couldn't fully recover anyway and we'll need some sort of surgical solution. And so will a couple weeks off help?

Maybe. Are you just postponing the inevitable? We'll see what he looks like in late September and October. I did want to ask you about another player who has already returned and is looking not like his old self, but better than ever. Anthony Volpe is back, baby. And it's a new man. He is a new Volpe.

He is the Volpe that everyone wanted him to be. Maybe. Or is this fool's gold? is this an illusion that is calculated to drive Yankees fans even more out of their minds. That'll do it for the free preview of today's Effectively Wild. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to listen on and hear whatever wisdom and wit await, we would love to have you. You can visit patreon.com slash Effectively Wild to access the rest of this episode and plenty of other exclusive content.

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