Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2531: The Regular-Season Two-Week Warning

Episode Date: September 14, 2026

With Meg Rowley on vacation, Ben Lindbergh continues his quest to (temporarily) resurrect a few dearly departed baseball podcasts. Next Up: The Baseball Show With Rany and Joe, featuring Ben, Rany Jazayerli, and Joe Sheehan of the Joe Sheehan Newsletter. With two weeks remaining in the regular season, Ben, Rany, and Joe talk about what’s worth watching the rest of the way: playoff races, awards chases, roster reshuffling, and more. They also examine some big-picture trends pertaining to MLB’s low-average offense, pitcher usage, expansion, and popularity. Audio intro: Garrett Krohn, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: The Gagnés, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to The Baseball Show podcast archive Link to the Joe Sheehan Newsletter Link to Rany’s medical practice Link to Rany on the Royals Link to Rany on Pitcher Abuse Points Link to Ben on postseason usage Link to Dan S. on 2026 playoff rosters Link to Dan S. on the postseason crapshoot Link to playoff randomness by sport Link to Kiger wiki Link to De Paula homer Link to 2023 Cranston promo Link to attendance-boost story Link to article on Vlad’s homer Link to article on Fischer’s homer Link to the Teoscar resurgence Link to Laurila on SP usage Link to Passan on expansion Link to NBA franchise values Link to KC ballpark update Link to Veblen good wiki Link to Sarris on sinkers Link to Ben C. on expanded playoffs Link to Dan S. on expanded playoffs Link to FG combined WAR leaderboard Link to Schlittler MVP article Link to leaguewide K rates Link to leaguewide non-pitcher K rates Link to Ben on Ks in 2017 Link to Ben on pitcher limits Link to Ben on improved defense Link to Rany on Ben’s gaming pod  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

We're going to crunch those stats. We're going to talk about baseball. Sticky stuff and torpedo bats. We'll talk about it all. If you want good takes on baseball and life, just tune in a band and his lovely co-host. Ben and Meg, it's effectively wild. Hello, and welcome to our best.

episode 2531 of Effectively Wilde, the baseball podcast from Fangraphs, presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindberg of the Ringer. Once again, not joined by Meg Rally of Fangraphs, who has decided to stay away for a second whole week. That was actually the plan all along. Meg continues to be on vacation. She'll be back with us next week. But in her absence, I am continuing to bring back baseball podcasts that I miss. And this is the only way I can do it by inviting their former co-hosts onto my podcast to talk to me about baseball. And today, I have the great pleasure of resuscitating a podcast that has been gone for longer than the three that we talked about last week, but is still lamented by me its loss. And of course, I continue to have a lot

of admiration and affection for its former co-hosts and current friends, Rani DeZerley and Joe Sheen. Rani and Joe, former hosts of the baseball show with Rani and Joe. Hi, guys. Welcome back. Thanks for having us. I can't believe episode 2,531. Like, I'm not sure I've done anything 2,531 times, let alone. Yeah.

So, goodos to you. Skin exams, I'm sure you must be up there, right? Skin cancer screenings. Fair enough, yes. But those get boring after 2,500 times. I don't know if this podcast ever gets boring. So my head's off to you. Listeners may differ on that.

I don't know. But if they're still with us, then I guess it hasn't poured them too much. If you guys had just kept going, then you would have been up there by now. So that's the difference between us. We were a once-weekly podcast. That would have taken 49 years to get to where you are. You were ahead of your time in doing long episodes, though. So I guess if you had broken them up into shorter ones, then maybe you could have upped your numbers.

You could have used the stats a little bit. But you guys, when you got gabin, then you could go for. for a while, which is also true of effectively wild. So it is a formula for disaster to have all three of us on a podcast. But we're recording on Sunday night. So hopefully just bedtime will maybe interfere with us going all night here because Rani has a real job and probably has to be up in the morning. Wow.

I'm just standing here. Mind in my own business. I'm in central time, though, so I can go a little late. That's true. It is an hour earlier for you. Well, Cal she set the line at three hours and eight minutes. So you got to be sharp for those skin exams that we just referenced though. But we are recording on week one of the NFL season.

And I imagine Rani may be more excited for Patrick Mahomes' big comeback on Monday night football than for the Royals playing out the string. But it is the two-week warning for the end of the MLB regular season. So baseball is not ready to cede the stage just yet. And the day that this will be posted, I think we will have exactly 14 days. of regular season left. And so it's the two-week warning for the end of the MLB regular season. And I thought this would be a good time to talk about what we still have to watch. And I couldn't think of anyone better to do that with than you two, who in addition to hosting

the baseball show also, of course, are a couple of the co-founders of baseball prospectus, famously. And Joe continues to write his excellent newsletter, the Joshean newsletter, aptly named, which I been a longtime subscriber to. In fact, I probably should have signed up for the lifetime membership years ago. I've probably, I'm costing myself money at this point or just about. There are still a few lifetime memberships left, as I understand it, but you can get any old membership at joshean.com, and I highly recommend it and read every word. And this is maybe the best time to subscribe because we are entering the time when you write, I don't know, 100,000 words in a month,

maybe. You write a book basically in October. It's an exaggeration. I counted it up and it ends up being like 35, 40,000 words from like the last weekend of the season through the World Series. And you know, it's just, you run on adrenaline. You know how it is at that time of year. You're just watching the games writing, watching the games writing. If we get good games, it's easy. When the postseason is entertaining, I will, I mean, not to, I don't want to send us off track initially, but I do think we've got, I think baseball runs on a different clock and I don't think it's necessarily meant to be played at an NHL playoff's pace for a month. I think it's one of the issues we have, but, you know, when the games are good, and if we get a good postseason,

it'll be, it'll be easy to write. So yeah, check out joscian.com and, and hey, listen, if you're, let's make sure let's do equal time here. If you've got a mole in the Midwest of the country. Operators are standing by, three offices in the Chicago land area for all your dermatological needs. Happy to see you. Yes. Do we need to give a URL? What is it? Clear skin dermatology. WWW. The letter C.SkinDerm.com. You can see my smiling face,

creepily staring at you from your screen when you put on our website. You know, Rainey on the Boyles was right there. Wow. That's all the perfect. Yeah. Now I need to go and buy that URL before anybody here is this episode. Well, I will link to the existing URL. And I do recommend regular screenings as a person of pale complexion

with some history of skin cancer. Ben, I need you to move to Chicago. Like, your skin type, like, you guys keep me in business. Yeah, I'd be great for you. Yeah. And hopefully I'd get some kind of discount for a fellow baseball prospectus, former member. But anyway, then that would change our relationship, really,

if I had to disrobe in front of you, probably. Haven't you had baseball, like, people who read you and know you actually show up as your germ patients? Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I've taken care of employees of Major League Baseball teams. Former minor league players, never a major leaguer. I was rooting for them. But no, so far, I can't offer that being a patient of mine will get you admission into the major leagues. Although I've had patients go on to the NFL, I should say. But you're a football guy now anyways. Exactly. Exactly. There you go. You're almost a sports dermatologist, if that's a thing. But yeah, I mean, people might make. miss the podcast so much. That's the only way that they could get you alone for an hour or so, or I guess it doesn't take quite that long. But, you know, go to extreme measures, schedule a

screening so that you can talk to Randy about the Royals and or the chiefs. But I'm sure that you don't mind a little sports chat while you were doing the examinations. My staff does because then I get 30 minutes behind and they're glaring daggers on me when I come out of the room after talking baseball or whatever for half an hour. Yeah. So I like reading the Josiah Newsletter. year round. But this is the time of year when you start to get granular, really. Not that you're not still doing the big picture coverage and looking ahead and all the rest, but your most recent newsletter just heading into the weekend was just kind of a watching guide. Just here's what to watch. Here's your path through the weekend. Here are the games that matter. And so that made me think

that you might be an ideal person to give us a guided tour of sorts. I don't know. I sent you some idea of what we might do on this episode, and I don't know whether we'll actually do it, but I'm just, I'm wondering what's worth watching or what you're paying attention to over the last couple weeks of the regular season, whether it's remaining playoff races, such as they are, there maybe aren't quite as many as we would like, but there are still seeding implications, of course. There are a few head-to-head series and matchups with potential playoff implications, though I know the last weekend of the season, aside from Diamondbacks Padres, which I hope will continue to have stakes when we get to that point, home field advantage for the wildcard

series is also still at stake. There aren't a lot of real kind of head-to-head, you know, you or me, we have to battle this out to get into October because we have a lot of interleague that last weekend. But there's also just the pre-postseason roster maneuvering, and you're always looking at, okay, how are managers handling guys and what are the lineups looking like and who's stacking up to be in the potential playoff rotation or what's the bullpen hierarchy, all these things, right? And we have prospects who have recently arrived who might be pressed into some significant postseason service. We have guys coming back from injuries or recently returned to injuries or who have been elevated to more prominent roles on the precipice of the playoffs. So all of those things, anyone you're interested in who's maybe slump in, who's a bit banged up, there's award stuff that's potentially still at stake.

So I don't know where you want to take this, but I'll follow your lead if you want to talk about anything that you have your eye on. Because I know that one of your regular complaints as a regular season guy is that we do end up focusing on some of the more mediocre teams in the latter stages of the season just because of the way the playoff field is structured these days. Now, this season, there's almost nothing but mediocre teams. So I guess pick your poison. Is that still bugging you this year? Folks, I just want you to know, Ben actually, that last monograph, Ben just sent me that in an email a couple days ago. And I don't think Ben understands that one of the reasons I have the job I have is because I don't want to work for anybody. And he literally sent out this thing.

Like, here, study all this and show up prepared for it. I just assume you know these things already. Is this how you treat Meg? No. We do next to no prep whatsoever. And we just show up and I say stuff. And sometimes she says stuff and that's how we go. That's how Brandy and I did it.

And we haven't done it for 11 years, so you know how successful that was. You know, I think there are two things that jump out at me. And one of them just really developed recently since, you know, we even set this up like a week and a half ago. But, you know, the White Sox and Guardians are now tied in Central. And they play three games in Cleveland starting Monday night, Monday night, Tuesday night, and then Wednesday afternoon. And all of a sudden this great one. White Sox story that has really driven a lot of the year, and Will Venable's been the favorite for manager of the year, and they're going to go from 41 wins to the playoffs in a two-year

stretch, which is wholly unprecedented, and now might be falling apart, and mostly it's because the starting pitching's falling apart. Anthony Kay, you know, they traded for Luis Castillo. That's been a disaster. Davis Martin had that great, you know, six-week start to the year, and he really has been very good since. They just don't have any reliable starting pitching, and the bullpen was never that deep to begin with. and when they're using Sean Newcomb as an opener, that really makes the bull pit even that much weaker. So the pitching has fallen apart.

They still hold the tiebreaker over the Guardians. They're a half game up going into the series. If they can just avoid getting swept, they'll be okay. Even if they were to lose two out of three, they would hold the tiebreaker, even though they'd be at a first at that point. If they can take two out of three, they leave town up a game and a half and have the tiebreaker,

and that would be a big thing. But, you know, you've got the Guardians coming into this. They've rejiggered their rotation of Gavin Williams starting, and he's been fantastic over his last 10-12 starts. Parker Messick's going to start in this series. They're going to have really big advantage over the first six innings, and then you turn it over to the bullpen. This isn't your typical Guardians bullpen,

but it's still pretty effective, Kate Smith at the back-in, Hunter Gaddis. It's not like I say, it's not the bullpen from two years ago, which is one of the all-time grades, and it's not even last years. It's not just the loss of Class A. They haven't really had the depth. You think about these Guardians' bullpins where they have like six guys coming out and just shoving at you. Well, that's the Braves bullpen this year. The Guardians don't have that level depth.

So I think it's going to be a fun series. I think that's really, you know, the next few days, they talked about the other day. You know, they just aren't a lot of head-to-head matchups here over the rest of the season. But now, depending on what happens over the next three days, the White Sox hosts the Tigers next weekend. And I've left the Tigers dead and buried a number of times,

but they swept the Rockies this weekend. They're six back. And if they can make up a game over this next week, they go into Chicago next week with a chance to sweep. And that's my thing. It's, as long as you've got a chance to go to a ballpark or host a team and have a chance to sweep and get yourself in this, I think you've got to pay attention. I mean, the Orioles didn't sweep this weekend. They're probably done. The twins, you know, lost two out of three to the guardians. They're probably done. Like, it doesn't always work out. But I think as long as you've got those head-to-head opportunities, I think it's interesting. I think you've got the Yankees in the race next week in a similar situation, although the rays have created some distance in that race.

And then the last weekend of the season, you mentioned the Padres and Diamondbacks, although the Padres, by the time you listen to this. they might be up two and a half on the diamond back. So, I mean, those are the matchups to watch. And then, you know, the other thing, and this is more abstract, and I really want to get Randy's take on this, because we've been talking about roster construction since, what, the NASA days, almost 35 years now, Randy? There's such a separation now between the regular season versions of teams

and the playoff versions of teams. Teams have finally leaned into the idea that when you're only playing, you know, you're almost never playing three in a row. and you have these long breaks between series. There are just elements of your roster that got you through six months that you don't need anymore. Your fifth starter, sometimes even your fourth starter. You've got to construct the roster differently. And the other thing is, you don't care as much about what the guy did over the course of the season.

I want to say it was the 21 Braves. I mean, there have been a number of signposts along the way. But the 21 Braves left off like three of their top five relievers by innings on their way to going on and winning the World Series that year. year. And, you know, we've seen it. Mark Kiger, what was it, 2000, it's been a while, so the A's made the playoffs. Ryan Weather is making his debut in 20, in the playoffs in 20. Last year, chased a louder. You go the way back to Krod 92. Teams are more willing now to say, that's 2006, Kiger, 20 years ago. Was it that far, that long ago? That sticks in my head,

because it's basically one of the most strange careers in baseball history. Yeah. For folks who don't know, Mark Kiger was a utility infielder who did not play a regular season game, but played for the A's, a couple of defensive replaced. I believe two times. He never got that bat in the major leagues, but played twice in the ALDS or ALCS, and then never made it to the majors after that. Only player in major league history to have played his entire career

exclusively in the postseason. He's Gen X Moonlight area, basically. So, and you go back to last year, it's still louder. But I want to look and say, okay, when I'm looking at these teams and trying to figure out who's going to make a run of the playoffs, who I think is better than they might look, who's worse, I'm almost having to do.

a couple of years ago, I started just using post-trade deadline numbers. And I don't even know if that's thing. Earlier today, and we're recording this on Sunday, for those of you don't, I want to pronounce this correctly. Osway de Paola hit a monster three-run homer in his second, third major league game. And you're talking about a guy who was in the minor leagues on September 11th, September 10th, who might actually be hitting in the middle of the order for the Dodgers in the playoffs, because he might be their best option, better than Teoha Hernandez.

as we'll see about the health of some of the guys they have. But this is where teams are saying, you know, we don't care that you weren't here for five and a half months. How can you help us win right now? So I'm kind of looking around. I don't think the brewer is going to call up, Andrew Fisher. But this is the kind of guy we're talking about it. 48th home run in the minor leagues this season.

Yeah, I mean, we're talking about the Brewers and short sequence offense and the playoffs and all that. I just, that's what I'm kind of looking to say. Who are going to be the guys who've barely played all year and are suddenly going to have an impact? You look at the Red Sox. They're seasonal stats. are going to include like 13 bad innings, a little more than that, 20 bad innings of Garretre Corchay.

But then Garrette might be going three, you know, nine batter outings in the playoffs. That's a weapon. I just, the playoffs now have to be considered just almost, I say almost, but almost an entirely different thing from the regular season. And, you know, as an analyst and, you know, kind of is going to look forward and try to figure out what's going to happen. I'm fascinated by that. I'm fascinated by the creativity these teams are showing. Yeah.

And it's true. I mean, I guess in some of those cases, I think it's Hoseway, Hosewe De Palo. Close. But he's up because Otani's hurt, right? Or at least that's the proximate cause. But then maybe he starts hitting or walking. He's doing both. And you suddenly make room for him, even though Tassar Hernandez is hitting a bit now, too.

So Dodgers often have an embarrassment of riches. But it's, I guess, also not just that you call up people late in the season who haven't been up before. But then you also change the roles of the stalwarts who've been there during the regular season. Sometimes, yes, you're just leaving guys off. It's, you know, you don't need your fifth starter from the regular season. Or maybe he's your long man in October. Or you just really ride those top tier bullpen arms more heavily, which didn't really use to be the case. And that's maybe going back a decade or so now that the teams will really concentrate the innings, a higher percentage of them with their top pitchers in October. And sometimes that's easier if they're more often.

days, some off seasons, it's just more manageable to do that, which I don't love, actually. I don't love when it's a completely different schedule and there's so many off days that what got you there isn't really what gets you. There's no way around. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, sometimes it's more pronounced than other times depending on the schedule, but it's always just inherently different. And what you're saying is true because I wrote an article about this a couple postseason ago, which was actually inspired by you making this point in the newsletter and looked back. over the decades and just kind of compared regular season usage and postseason usage and the commonality and how much overlap there was by decade and by round and all the rest of it.

And it's true. It's more true than ever that it's a different game and a different roster and different people playing. So that does make things difficult from a projection standpoint. I know Dan Samborski of Fangraps, he always does sort of a postseason tailored zips where he tries to project, okay, who's actually on the roster. So we're not just considering the irrelevant innings and played appearances from the season that will have no bearing on the outcome of these series.

But it does throw a wrench into something that was already pretty impossible to analyze because it's October baseball. And especially the trend towards now, I mean, this would happen occasionally in the 90s, certainly Bobby Cox would bring Greg Maddox out of the bullpen for three batters or Tom clavent or whoever have you. But now you're seeing guys take on high leverage roles. We saw Roque Sasaki, who really had like two good appearances last year, and then really wasn't good after that. But, you know, the two appearances were phenomenal.

The Red Sox in 18 pulling Rick Porcelo and Chris Sale out of the bullpen and in high leverage spots. The Nationals in 19 basically used six pitchers to get through the entire postseason, which gets into what you're talking about here, which you don't really want to see. They swept the Cardinals, so they were able to do some things that you might not have normally been able to do because they had those extra off days. But you just, you know, more and more teams saying, you know what, what we did to get here doesn't really matter. What matters is how do we get these, you know, Will Warren's been a very important guy for the Yankees. I have trouble putting Will Warren on their postseason Rossum. I sit down and kind of game it out and, you know, drop them down to 12 pitchers, which please God only, these teams that carry 13 pitchers for three games, just three max leverage games. I'm sorry.

Rani, you want to take this one? Well, I hope you guys are sitting down. when I say this, but I don't follow the sport quite as closely as Joe does anymore. But I do like to look at sort of the birds-eye view trends of the sport. So one thing that I'm really fascinated about with the last two weeks of the season, correct me if I'm wrong, but I do not believe there has ever been a division in which there was post-season baseball in which every team in the division finished under 500. Am I correct? Like the 1994, famously, the American League West, all four teams were under 500, well under 500, when the strike hit. And maybe the one and only silver lining of the 94 strike was that it prevented like a 75 and 87 Rangers. Oh, no. And I come out from a, Randy, I wish that it had. It would have been a hilarious mockery of the sport. It would have absolutely changed a lot of conversations going forward. In addition to my other 94 theory, which is that if Matt Williams or Ken Griffey or Frank Thomas hit 62 home runs,

It also changes all of the conversations that come after that about the guys who did end up hitting 6,200 home runs. I think what would have happened if 90 Fordman played out completely changes all of baseball history. Sorry, I mean, but that's a personal... I agree. I agree with everything you're saying, but yeah, that wasn't the point I was going to make. I know. And just, and again, for people who are, you know, truly said the Astros fell to 75 and 75, if I have that right today.

Yeah, and the White Sox are at 70. They lost are at 76 and 73. The Guardians are at 76 and 74. which means, and it's quite possible. FrameGraphs has run this and I haven't seen it, but I would love to know in the simulated odds, what are the odds both divisions finish with every team under 500 or also 500 or less? Like there is a very distinct possibility that both divisions,

well, there's a high probability at least one will. And I just find that fascinated because you can't even blame this on as much as I hate the 12 teams in the playoff format. Like you could go back to 1995 with 8. teams in one wildcard and you would have the exact same phenomenon. This is not a too many teams in the playoffs phenomenon. This is parody plus the American League just kind of sucks right now phenomenon that we've just never seen before. It's also too many teams in the playoffs phenomenon. I mean, if you lower the bar, you're eventually, this is eventually going to happen. I will say that the White Sox Guardian series this week does dramatically lower the chances that we're going to get to

some 500 teams. Although it doesn't, I guess if like I can sit here, you know, Charlie Davis thing. and tell you all the ways this could happen. The Rangers and Astros don't play. So the chance that we don't get a... The chance that the AL West is won by a sub-500 team is actually fairly decent. We'd have to sit down and, you know, okay, if the Guardians take two out of three from the White Sox

and then, you know, the Guardians lose six out of nine or whatever, I think it is more likely to get that the... If the White Sox were to sweep the Guardians, then I think the chance of a sub-500 wildcard team increases. Like, there was a brief moment. moment where I like, wait, can we have three sub 500 teams in the AL playoffs? And I think that's, that's a very, very long shot. But I do think two is possible. And one, again, you know, Ben can touch base with the gurus over at Fangrass. But I think the chance of one is actually pretty

decent. Yeah. Yeah. I think Dan ran the numbers on one earlier in the season, but maybe not recently. And also, a lot of these teams, it's not even like you have a team that has an undeservedly losing record. These are all pretty lousy teams. Like we, I talked about this. The only team, aside from the White Sox in either division with a plus run differential are the Tigers, who are at 70 and 79, almost certainly not making the race. They have a better run differential than the race. Yeah. I talked about this with Hannah Kaiser last week because she was thinking, well, has any division ever finished with all negative run differentials? And on the pod, as I was browsing in real time, I came across an athletic article that said it hadn't happened. It

actually has. It happened in the 2005 NL West, evidently, not very memorably won by the 82 and 80 Padres. The Padres were 42 runs underwater, and that was the division's best run differential. So not actually unprecedented, but very rare. And the AL West, well, they're basically that's going to happen. I mean, it would take quite a week by one of these teams to edge over even. And so, yeah, I mean, a whole division being under 500. Yeah, it's just even one team because other than 81 and 2020, and as you always say in the newsletter, 2020 never counts, we have never had a sub 500 playoff team. That's something for other sports. That's not a baseball thing. And I don't really want it to be a baseball thing. And you'll note in the newsletter sometimes, Joe, because you certainly have your gripes with the expanded playoffs, which people probably just picked up on. And I share some of them. And you can kind of get yourself into trouble. just hyper-focusing on a single season and the way the standings shake out. And you can say, oh, well, if the playoff format was what it used to be, then we would have

had this race or that race, and that would have been way better. And that's a little bit luck of the draw. It kind of depends on the season. You can't really tailor the playoff format to how the last season standings finalized or else you'd be changing them every year and you'd end up with unintended consequences. But it is true that obviously you let more teams in. It's easier for lackluster teams to get in, plus just the incentives changing and teams not really prioritizing being great and just good enough to get in. We can be somewhere within spitting distance of 500 and we could plausibly compete for a wild card and maybe that's good enough to satisfy everyone.

So I think all those things contribute to that and that's why we are where we are. And we haven't been exactly with this sort of situation in recent seasons. And maybe we won't be again with just everyone being clustered like this within a few games of 500. But it's not a great look, I don't think, for the sport. And maybe when the calendar flips over, it doesn't matter anymore because it was always pretty random. And you always had extreme upsets, teams that outduled other teams over the six-month season. and then failed to do the same over a best of five series. And then people ring their hands and say,

do we need to reinvent playoff baseball? And we never quite seem to, except for maybe letting more teams in if the owners get their way. Well, that's the, and I agree with you, Ben. You can't ever manufacture drama. And you go back and people say, you know, guys like me able to talk about 93 or 87 or 78, but there were years where all the division races were pretty much wrapped up

by the middle of September. And some years it was even worse than that. And all you do by expanding playoffs is lowering the bar. You can never guarantee drama. And what you do is you shift the focus to worse teams. I got a snippy email from a reader the other day, you know, basically saying, how can you have written about the Brewers? And I swear to God, it's because they've been too good.

Yeah. Like, I was going to write about them two weeks ago when they were setting up to play the Cubs. And they were up eight at that point. Like, okay. Yeah. They're up double digits now. Yeah. They and the rays have clinched to play a spot.

But this is what we do. We end up, instead of talking about the Rays and the Dodgers and the Brewers and the Braves, we end up having to write about the Guardians and the White Sox and the Astros and the Rangers. And it's not, I mean, it's just not as fun for me. I would much rather be focused on the good teams. And I think it takes away from the game to, instead of being focused on the really good teams to be focused on these mediocre ones. And, you know, the way I phrase is, we traded September for October and lost in the deal. And I really do believe that.

I think that the thing is, you know, you've got to be 30-something, you've got to be in your 50s to really remember divisional races. So this is an argument that is going to be lost on the majority of baseball fans now. And, you know, it's not like I haven't enjoyed some of the post seasons. Like I say, I do think it's gotten a little bit long. But the one thing I keep saying is that all you're doing is lowering the bar. And remember, the owners wanted 14 in the last CBA negotiation. I wouldn't be surprised if they go out and try to do that again. we're still, I'd take a bare minimum, five, six years away from expansion.

I don't think we get expansion in this next CBA. They just aren't very, very strong candidates for it. So I think if they go to 14, we're absolutely going to have multiple sub-500 teams in the playoffs in most years. It's the distribution of wins will fall that way. Yeah, I think we might get a decision on expansion within the next CBA. That wouldn't surprise me because I know it's a priority for Manfred so that he can sail off into the sunset. and declare the mission accomplished. And then also maybe now we are approaching a place of certainty with the Reyes and A's

ballpark situations, though, you know, I'll reserve judgment until first pitch is thrown at those places. But they have said consistently, well, we have to get those situations straightened out before we add on. And maybe now we're getting there. Passon did a piece last year where he looked at all the, okay, here are the likely candidates. and you're right, there's no sort of slam dunk, right? They all have.

But the reality is whether they're actually, it's a good idea or not, is secondary to, are there people out there willing to pay the entry fee? It's not even the entry fee. It's the ballparks. Yeah, well, I think, look, we've seen no evidence that municipalities are any more able to resist giving, you know, billions of dollars. Yes, we have. Because it's not municipalities anymore.

It's a handful of. politicians in Tampa, in Kansas City. God, you just went through this. Well, not you literally, but your royals, they're going, the end runs around the voters are disgusting right now. They bypass that, yeah, but they still get their way. Don't tell me to be some municipalities. The result is the same, though. Yeah, they're just skipping the municipality and just saying. But the point is, they're getting what they want. And the reality is, what is the expansion fee going to be $5 billion? I mean, you don't think it'll be that high? I think, I think two billion of franchise is probably as high as it goes.

I think it's going to be substantially more than that. Look at the markets. The money's not there. The money is there because there are people out there with that kind of money. I'm telling you. So much of the rise in franchise values since roughly 1980, right? 1980s roughly the last time a sports franchise in America was sold at a loss. It's been 45 years since that's happened. I think it's not coincidental.

1980s about the time where the income disparities in the United States. I should say Reagan. It's okay. I mean, I'm just pointing out historical facts. I'm not placing judgment on it, but the reality is income inequality has been very directly correlated with the rise in sports values. Because sports franchises are not a commodity which responds to simple profit and loss. It responds to desire and the ability to pay for something that you can't get anywhere else. There's an extreme shortage of them. So I think it's going to be, I think of expansion fee.

I'm just saying, If they can get maybe not $5 billion, but I think it won't be that far. If they can get $7 billion for the two teams combined, $200, $250 million per team existing for an expansion fee, I think they'll find a way to overlook the fact that maybe Salt Lake City is not the largest market in the world or that, you know, Nashville doesn't have a plan right now for a stadium or whatever. I think it's inevitable. We're going to see two more teams between now and 2030s. You can't give an expansion team to a place without a plan for a stadium.

that's got to come first. It's quite kind of if you build it, they will come. In this case, if they come, they will build it. No,

what, because this weird Vegas situation? No, you need, first of all, Nashville just built a football stadium

for a team that lost to the Jets today. So, you know, good call there, guys. You know, are you going to put a team

in Orlando? Because Florida's been such a bounty of profit for a Orlando on Jeff Passon's list. When I saw Orlando, I'm like, please, God,

no, what are you talking about? Portland? I mean, I mean, it's all a bunch of places that are going to be, you know, I'm sorry, revenue sharing recipients for the rest of time. Put me down from Montreal. I know it'll never happen, but oh, please. That's the one I would love to say.

Let's definitely, yeah, good luck building a ballpark there. The old one's still standing. No, I'm with you. I don't think that the numbers can go up the way they've been going up forever, even though if you had bet on them continuing to go up over the past few decades. you would have made a tidy profit. But you just, you wonder, right? Because is it a bubble? If the AI stuff either kills us or takes the bottom out of the economy, then suddenly will there

not be enough billionaires out there to pay the number? Because the stuff is, it's getting a little lucrative, potentially in some ways, with all the changes to the broadcast model and the cable bubble and all the rest of it. And so part of it is just the scarcity and just, hey, you can always find a billion. a multi-billionaire who really wants to own one of these things, and there are only so many to go around. So you'd have to have some larger trend disruption to the economy, probably, and the sports economy specifically to just take the bottom out of these numbers that just keep going up and up and up. And now it's just, well, I'll buy one because I'll always be able to find someone who will give me

even more a few years down the road, or 10 months, if you're Mark Walter, or whatever it was. you know, can that continue forever? I don't know. I have no objection in Rani's point about rising franchise values. He's absolutely right about that. I just think that's a separate discussion from the expansion mostly because of the ballparks. I mean, in theory, the franchise values should be coupled to how remunerative it is to own a franchise.

But that is, I think, increasingly untrue. Certainly in the NBA, it is from things I've read recently. Just the revenue is not really keeping up. up with the price tags for the franchises. So now it's it's more just provisional, hey, if I need to get out, I can I can turn a tidy profit on this thing because there will be a bigger sucker or there will be a richer multi-billionaire who will want this thing when it's time for me to cash out or when the feds come after me. So you guys are smarter than me. What's the term VEbbling goods for things that have more value than actually their economic worth?

They're like, did you buy to show off? Sure, let's go with that. Yeah. Right. He went to Johns Hopkins and Michigan Oh, I'm sorry, that's right. You went to USC. They didn't teach you. Yeah, you went to twice as many colleges as I did. Well, he has more degrees. And I spent almost just a little bit more time in college than you did, too.

Anyway, I think we are agreed on some aspects of this as it pertains to there will be a bigger playoff field at some point if the owners get their way. And, of course, that's one of the biggest chits that the players have. in their corner. It's one of the only ones. Yeah. And so they're always going to be willing, ultimately, to say, okay, we want to get this other stuff, then you can have that because they dislike it less, I think, than we do. Now, you have questioned whether adding an additional round is actually worth it,

whether MLB is actually making that much money from having, say, a second wild card series, just looking at how much they're actually raking in from the broadcast partners for those games. it's not an enormous sum. And so we know that MLB will just, you know, if the check clears, they'll be happy to have it. But is it really worth all of the angling and the negotiating to add more rounds or more teams just for that, just for the broadcast revenue? Well, you go back to the 2022 negotiation. And they actually sold the expanded first round from the playing game to the best of threes to ESPN before it ever actually existed. They had that deal in their pocket going into that negotiation. It's one of the reasons they were invested in making sure that it came out

of that negotiation. They got 12 teams and the best of threes now. ESPN is out of the baseball business now, for the most part. They've got a handful of games. But these playoff series are going to be on the NBC family of networks, which, you know, NBC is obviously the mothership. They've got Peacock and they've got NBC Sportsnet, the revived NBC Sports Network, which I don't know what its distribution is. I know I have Verizon Fios, I don't have it. So I think we're going to get for the first time streaming only playoffs. Some of these games in the first round are going to be streaming only. And I mentioned that, and I did the, I ran the numbers, I apologize, I don't have it in front of me. But it came to like $80,000 a team. When you actually calculated the value of the first round of

playoffs as part of the overall NBC package, it came to like $80,000 a team. Maybe it was $800,000 a team. But the point is, it's nothing in the grand scheme of things. And as I said, you're kind of completely screwing up your season for this. You're creating the possibility of sub-500 playoff teams, and you're turning September into this. Who can get to 83 wins first? And you're just not getting a whole lot of money out of it. You know, the ticket revenue, okay, well, first of all, only four teams get home games.

And, of course, you advance. You get more. And I've always questioned whether, if you didn't get a home game, did your fans really feel like they were in the playoffs? Yeah. And then, you know, the idea, some of the gate money is actually, you know, goes to the players. So the money you get, it's not a ton of money that you're even getting at the ballpark. So I just think that this idea that you, and granted, no league has ever reduced its playoffs. I'm not saying they're going to do that.

Do I think baseball would better for it? Absolutely. But I'm a realist about it. But I think at some point at least you say let's stop at 12. And unless you have nothing else have a conversation about how we got here. We got here because they sold these rights back in 2021-22 to ESPN, which I think, most people have heard of. Now it's this thing that's going to be,

and it's midweek games and it's day games, which is great for guys like us, because we love the game, but how much penetration are you really getting, putting, what's it going to be? While the Tigers and Guardians seem to play during the day every single year, or maybe this year it'll be the Guardians and the Astros,

how much are you really getting out of a Guardians Astros game on Peacock at 1 o'clock on a Tuesday afternoon? And then Wednesday afterdo, then maybe Thursday afterdo. I just don't think the value of this round, and I'm just talking about the money of it is worth all that you're doing. Of course, ESPN is also distributing MLV TV for now. But, yeah, when it comes to watching games on an ESPN network, not a ton.

I'm watching more WPBL on ESPN these days than I am, MLP, I guess. Did they finally get that squared away? I know they have some issues with that. Yeah, it's working. It's right about that. It's not the best broadcast quality that I've ever seen, but it's there. You can watch it. So I think you're right about the fact.

that it's bad that we tend to focus on the most mediocre teams down the stretch because that's where the stakes are. But of course, there is the counterpoint, which is, it is good that fan bases of some of these mediocre teams are invested in the season now and are not just fully flipping over to football. And this is, you know, your nemesis, Bud Seleague and hope and faith and all the rest of it, right? I find this to be an entirely theoretical point because if you actually turn on a, turn on a a Guardians game, turn on an Astros game, turn on a Mariners, Blue Jays, Orioles game this week.

And just look at the stance. Just look at the stance. Don't even look at a tendency. Just look at who's actually in the stance. I think I first noticed the Reds a couple of years ago when they were making a run. Nobody's going to these games. I mean, nobody is going to these games. And this idea that like it's driving

a lot of fan interest in September, just look at the game. Well, I will say, it's quite possible that data has changed over the last 15 years, but I remember a landmark study. I think it was Nate Silver who did it. And you know it was a long time ago

because Nate Silver was still writing about baseball. He's talking about somebody who also doesn't do baseball anymore. But he actually looked at this exact point, basically this idea of does hope and faith, does the fact that more teams have a possibility to making the playoffs increase attendance? And he did find a modest but measurable effect on September attendance.

Tickets sold. Well, ticket sold. I don't think we had the butts in-seat stat. We don't. We haven't had that for two decades. But you have to have as a proxy, it's better than no data at all. I'm just saying the data suggested it probably has an effect. But the question is, is that effect like the effect you're saying about having midweek, you know, ALDS games on Peacog of, you know, 800,000 a team?

If that's the level of impact that it's having, it's probably not worth the long-term growth of the game. The distinctiveness that the sport has. Not for nothing. There's a cost there too because Yankee fans and raised fans and Dodger fans are checking out. In fact, we saw this with the Braves when the Braves are on their run. Like, Braves fans checked out of the first round for a lot of years. Well, you can't tell me, though, that there aren't more Padres and Diamondbacks fans tuning into these games than would be if they were just 10 back of the Dodgers and that was that, right? And they had no hope.

Yeah, I mean, but that's an argument for expanding the playoffs to 28 teams. Well, yeah. I mean, you have to draw the line somewhere, right? Otherwise, it doesn't mean anything. I think you should be drawn to eight. Yeah. And why have a regular season at all? Why play 162 games if you're.

You're just letting most of those teams in anyway. Let me come on in the offseason. We'll have that conversation. Well, yeah, I mean, you might endorse that too. But it's just, yeah, the more teams you let in than the more meaningless, the regular season gets. And obviously, the NBA has dealt with this. And let's create a midseason tournament and turn that into something meaningful and try to turn that into a tradition. And, you know, that's with the load management and all the rest.

And the NBA, you need fewer games to determine which teams are better. And so even though it's half as long a season, it's still too long or it's longer than you need to actually separate the wheat from the chaff. But let's face it, all sports, well, baseball especially. But if you were starting a league today, you wouldn't have 162 games. You know, if any of the NBA, I think if the NBA was starting today, it would probably look more like 68 or 72. Obviously, the NBA, the NFL, the NFL could do twice weekly games, 42 weeks a year. It wouldn't matter.

As I said before, the NFL could feed orphans to lions before a game and all people would want to know is if they could bet on it. Yeah. So NFL is is its own thing. But I'm glad. I mean, personally, I'm glad that baseball is a constant that we have under 162 games. Even if the games don't mean as much individually as they used to, even if they meant nothing, I'd be happy to just have it on in the background to keep us company. Yes, of course, that's us. And that's a minority of people. And maybe you're not making many more people like that anymore if you don't give them reasons to get excited about the regular season. So I think music at 145 decibels. That's. Yeah, that drives some people away with their hands over their ears, but, but others, supposedly, it helps. Anyway, we've discussed that on this podcast, but I'm not going to drag you back into that. I know you guys just did that about two weeks ago. Yeah.

Yeah. But, but generally, I'm with you. It's a debate that we've had before how much does the team quality affect the quality of the race? Does it matter if the teams. involved in a playoff race are good teams, or is it more about how close is the race? And I think it's a little of column A, little of column B. I think it helps. I think not enough people have seen column A.

Uh-huh. Yeah. I mean, again, we're talking about 33 years since the Braves Giants. Yep. The last 10 race. You know, go back for almost 40 years since Tigers, uh, Tiger's Blue Jays. There just aren't enough baseball fans who remember something better. And I don't, I'm not blaming them.

I'm saying that this. conversation is largely happening among diehards of a certain age. And you, because as a baseball fan, you're spiritually Craig Kakatera. So, I mean, but you've got to be, you know, 50 at least to kind of understand what the hell we're talking about here. And I do think that if you've just never know what it's like to follow two teams down there. And by the way, to follow two teams down the stretch when it was the lead story nationally. Well, yeah. That's not going to be the case anymore. I think if you if you today had Yankees,

red socks in 78 for all the marbles, it would be like the seventh story behind, you know, two WWE stories. LeBron James picked, you know, didn't want chocolate and his peanut butter, you know, 17 NFL stories. Just that's the nature of baseball now. So

I know I'm pining for a world that can't come back. I fully recognize that. I just would like to make it a little better. And for me, that would be eight teams making the playoffs as opposed to 12. And do you think any part of this is baseball was never better, music was never better, insert, sport, or culture here was never better than when I was 10 or 12 or whatever it was and just imprinted on that version of that thing?

No, because when I think about what I'm trying to roll the game back to in a lot of different ways, strikeout rate, contact rate, competitiveness, I don't really think about the 80s. And don't get me wrong, I think 80s baseball was really good. I think it's funny, the first 15 years after free agency was the most competitive period in baseball history. but I'm trying to roll it back roughly to like 2005. I really do think that that's

and even going to talk about volume in the ballparks. I'm not trying to bring back 1956. I want to bring back 2006. I want that for competitiveness. I want that for the relationship between profitability and success on the field. I want that for the style of gameplay where a lot of different styles could win.

I want that for any number of things. I'm not trying to roll this back to when I was 12 years old because George Steinbrenner ruined my childhood. I don't want to be a 12-year-old Yankee fan again. George Steinbrenner ruin my child. childhood. I'm trying to get back to, you know, like I say, I think that the two, I'm not saying the 2000s was the best ever either, but when I think about what's a realistic goal for baseball to

look like, that's what I'm thinking about, thinking about the 2000. Yeah, when I, when I was planning to come on the show today and talk about how baseball was better when I was a kid, because that's, of course, where anytime I'm on a show with Joe, that seems to be where we end up going to, right? Yeah, but you were a kid like 12 years after I was. I was precocious, though. But I didn't want to talk about the whole pennant racing. That wasn't really my focus.

My focus was just on the aesthetics of the sport. And like Joe's saying, it doesn't have to be the 1980s again. I love the 80s because it was a balance between... Because the Royals were good ones. Well, they were good ones, yes. But I'm not asking for 2015 either. But to me, even the 2000s would be great. I mean, to me, the aesthetics of the sport today,

this might make me sound even older. and Joe, but like, wow. I miss the fact, yeah, I know, hard, hard to do, but I'm going to try. Wow. Don't you have a football game to watch? Tomorrow, tomorrow, Joe. I know you're getting old. It's Sunday still, not Monday.

I'm watching the Cowboys get stepped on by the Giants. Well, some things are timeless. Wow. So the, but the point I was going to make it's like, I miss, I miss guys with high batting averages. I really do. Like, nobody's hitting 320. in the majors this year. The entire decade, again, 2020 doesn't count, right?

The entire decade, we've had 12 guys who've hit 320 in six years. And just a decade ago, the 2010s, it was 53 guys. The 2000s, it was 136 guys. You go on and on. You can't even 320 in a league that hits 240. Even the 60s, though. Like, you know, the 1968, the lowest batting average in the last 100 years, I think was 237.

year where you had a league batting average, major league wide, that was, I think, more than a point or two lower than where we are now. We're at like 244 this year. We've been like 242, 243, 244 the last couple years. You had a few years back in the 60s like that. Sixty eight was even lower, but even the 1960s as a whole, there were 47 guys who hit 320 in a season who were qualifying batters. There were 10 guys in the 1960s who hit 340 in a season. Can I just ask you, have you have you divided that by 60 by because I mean to be a jerk about this but 6061 62 61 and 62 were expansion years and that was before the rule changes of 63 like 63 through 68 nobody hit but 601 62 69 were actually like recognizable baseball years it was only 63 to 68

you're right and guess what it was so extreme they changed the rules to me right to fix it from 63 to 68 two guys at 340 Maddie a lu in 66 Roberto Clemente hit 35 and 67. That's crazy. Did 3.57 that year. That is absolutely insane. Well, he's Roberta Clemente. But in the last, in the six years that make up to 2020s, 2021 to 226, how many guys

have it 340? Two. One. Arias? And he was a guy designed in a lab as an experiment to be like, how high a batting average could a guy have if all he cared about was hitting sitting singles, right? Luis Arias hit, I want to say, 354 one year. even Arias, who's on his way to winning his fourth batting title,

has hit 320 in a season once. That's the only time he's even hit 320, and he's about to win his fourth batting title. Like, that's a little too much for me. Like, 300 is no longer, you know, famously 1968, Carl Sistremski is the only American leader to hit 300. You know, hit 301. Last year, Trey Turner hit was the only national leaguer,

did 300. It hit 304. It was like, everybody, on. I'm just like, in 68, they're like, we're changing the rules. We're changing the strike zone. This is too crazy. Last winter is like, aha, whatever.

You know, we'll just try and hit more home runs. And then, of course, even that's gone wrong this year because the ball's not as bouncy as it was or whatever. This is a couple of days old, but the other day I was looking, and there were only four guys in the AL hitting even 285. Like Jack Caglione was fifth at 283. And 280 is the new 320. It's crazy.

Well, that's because 240 is the new 270 in terms of the league. Now, I know it's going to, people are like, why are you statheads talking about batting? I have a couple co-founders at baseball perspectives on that they end up talking about batting on. It's your fault that nobody hits for average anymore. Yeah, we're all looking for the guy who did this. I actually have that outfit. Now, I want to, but I want to make the point here, it's the statheads who are actually proposing all the solutions.

If you want to blame it's, first of all, it's not the stat hits because I'll tell you right now. If Bill James had never been born, but all of these pitchers, were the same, the league would still hit 240. If Bill James was Bill James and none of these guys through 97, the game would look more like it did 20, 20 or 40 years ago. It's entirely, it's the pitchers, not the hitters, and it's the pitchers, not the stat hits. I think it is the pitchers, not the hitters. I think it's a little assist from the stat heads over the years. No, no, you can go out.

Okay, expound on that. Well, if only in identifying the pitchers who excelled at those things, right? I mean, I think that just prioritizing and recognizing the value of missing bats and philosophy and all the rest of it, I think that had something to do with the fact that you had people paying attention to these numbers. If I and my friends all had this big an impact, should we all live in bigger house? Well, Rennie lives in a big house, but he went into dermatology. But I'm serious. Like, okay, we run baseball, then fine. Where's my batmobile?

Yeah, I don't know. I haven't seen James Clicks house or Keith Wulner's house. or Dan Fox's house. Maybe they have nice houses. But I don't know. Many of your former colleagues, our former colleagues, did end up working for teams, not necessarily running them. It's not the guys who stayed in media. It's therefore.

No. Yes, exactly. Yes. You stayed an outsider, a true outsider to the end. Yeah. No, I think that MLB agrees with you to some extent in that, you know, when the rules change has happened, we bring on Brian Cranston to talk about how we're going back to Ricky Henderson. right? I mean, they are appealing to 80s baseball, if not necessarily saying that explicitly,

then more or less signaling that this is what we want and that this is what our fans are telling us that they want via surveys and such. And so they've made some rules changes to try to bring that about. Now, obviously, some of those were flawed from the start with the defensive positioning restrictions and everything. And obviously you were calling that out. So you were first guessing that, Joe. But that was at least ostensibly the goal, make baseball a lot. look a little bit more like it used to. And that wasn't the way to go about it. But I think there is interest.

There's desire to do that. But there's not the will to actually do the things. There's not the will. Yes, because the things that need to be done. Right. So we get Brian Krans to do it. Like the whole stolen base thing. Well, first of all, the pitcher pickoff rules, that was because of the pitch clock.

Like you couldn't just let pitchers throw to first base. So it was only about the pitch clock. It wasn't let's inflate steals. Also, too, if you look. The steals are all empty calories. It's not like stealing bases is suddenly a big part of the game again. It's just occasionally a guy's most of a sudden. A lot of those are uncontested because there's a big clock on the field that tells the

base runner when the pitcher has to do something. So the things that were interesting about base stealing, the cat and mouse game between the pitcher and the runner on base and the catcher and pitching out, none of those things exist. There's just a clock that says you can go now. Well, it's a little like lowering the bar for the playoffs. Now there are more playoff teams, but it's not quite as special to, be one of them. They've lowered the bar for base stealing as well.

I had a conversation. I'm not going to, there's no point really, I had a conversation people in the commissioner's office five years ago now before they made all the changes. And I laid out, you know, if you do this, this will happen. If you do this, this is, this is the actual solution. And they literally put in the plan. I used to joke about the the Hall of Fame once created the committee to elect Buck O'Neill that did everything but elect Butler at Buck O'Neill. They had this meeting with me and then they created the rule set to piss off Joe Sheen. And all I want, and I just can't stop screaming, it's the pitchers.

Stop giving them so many pitchers. That's your solution. That's your answer. And it's going to take a long time. But you can't just slam down like it's the last domino. Well, if you do that, pitchers will get hurt. Oh, no. Pitchers will get hurt?

Yeah. Oh, whatever will we do if pitchers are getting hurt? You've got to start restricting teams, access to pitchers to force them to value durability so they can't be witches as much. And then, Rannie, we might get the occasional three. 20 hitter. But until under the current model, which Ben, you're right, statheads are

actually a part of this. They're just not as much a part of this as the pitchers are. And stat heads are the ones saying, don't give them 13 pitchers. Don't give them 14 pitchers in September. They, one of MLB's dead on arrival proposals a couple weeks ago. Yeah. Would have actually created a 14-man pitching staff.

Yes. I just, I don't even know it. I think I'm going to start coming out in favor of really bad ideas. Just to see it actually is. If there is a committee to this off Joshi. You know, guys, I think what you need to do is, is put the, the stupid runner on second base starting in the seventh inning. Just to see if there's super. Yeah, that'll bring the run scoring up. Yeah. No, it's mandatory position players pitching. I don't get us a 320 hitter. Yeah. Yeah. I do think that a lot of these things, I share a lot of these gripes. And obviously,

we're all pot committed and we will be watching whatever. baseball looks like. And so we're ranting, but we're not actually abandoning baseball or anything. And I think any conversation about baseball inevitably turns to what's wrong with baseball, if given enough time. That's just an age-old tradition. I do think it's hard to make the case that MLB is suffering seriously from some of these seemingly fan unfriendly spectator, unfriendly changes to the game. Maybe this is part of the- partly also you had to be there. You don't lament the absence of 320 hitters if you never saw 320 hitters.

Just looking at all the other metrics, I mean, we're heading for a fourth consecutive year of attendance growth. And, you know, barely. And a lot of that is just because the rays aren't playing in a minor league park this year. But still, four years in a row of any kind of increase, that doesn't happen all the time. From what we hear, at least the ratings are up. There are more people watching. There are more people paying attention. digitally, there are younger people tuning in and buying tickets.

So that's part of the reason why everyone's saying, don't you dare cancel a season because baseball's kind of on a role right now. And maybe that's one reason why they will be more wary of doing that because baseball's thriving, relatively speaking, not going back to when it was football, when it was the national pastime, but relative to recent years. That's the dichotomy. It's the business side of it and the popularity is going up, even as the game on the field. And again, I think you have to be, I'm not sure everybody's going to notice this.

You once lectured me, you told me nobody could tell the difference between a 22% strikeout rate at 18% strikeout rate. I just, I just think you're wrong. I just think you're flat out wrong about that. Yeah, you look at how many strikeout difference that is per game. Like, if I plopped you down, I mean, there are a million reasons why you could tell you were watching a 2026 game instead of a 2002 game or whatever it is. But just put aside, you know, the uniforms and the 4K and all the. and the rules changes and everything. I do kind of doubt that maybe you could,

just because you're so precisely attuned to everything and you're a statistically inclined person. You just be aware of the lack of hits. You just be watching the game, you would actually be able to sense it and notice it in the lack. Honestly, the foul balls too. I know this is Travis Sauchick's corner,

but the foul balls too. But I just, you really do notice. I think one of the, I want to go back to something you said about, first of all, they're not grapes. they're legitimate complaints about game. But I want to go back to something you said about the good things about the game. And I think one of the, there's a double bank shot argument here, which is I talk a lot about strikeout rate.

You know, the stuff for Annie's talking about with the batting average and stuff, because we want to see more different skills rewarded. We want to see a greater variety. And one of the reasons I want to see fewer pitchers, more contact is that or more pitches that are, you know, you can make contact with. because I want to see more plays by Pete Carl Armstrong. I want to see guys going first to third more. In today's game, there's just not enough opportunity to see more than, oh, my God, look at this guy with 26 IVB throwing 108 miles an hour. I mean, look, I mean, one of our biggest differences is framing.

And I think some of that comes from so much of the game is experienced from the centerfield camera. Certainly as more games have been televised over my lifetime, more people watch the game on television as opposed to going to the game. And so much of today's game, in contra the attendance and the enjoyment people get at a ballpark, it's just not that enjoyable for Section 322. And I want the game to be better from Section 322 than it is today. And that's why it all comes back. It's not just griping because I know these players are the greatest players who've ever played the game.

I just want to see them do more. Well, here's sort of a hidden problem that I have with the fact that strike rates are up that, yeah, maybe you can't tell the difference between 18% and 22% or maybe it would be difficult. But what bothers me is strikeout rates have gone up. But the coolest thing about increased rate of strikeouts is the strikeout pitcher. Is the guy at the ballpark, you know, the fans who are carrying K cards with them and slapping them up? I mean, this goes back to, you know, my childhood.

I think it was probably Dwight Good, right? Dr. K. Dr. K, where they're slapping K's on the, the, the, the, the, the fence with each strikeout because, you know, 14, 15, 16, like the strikeout pitcher is a cool thing. It's a phenomenon. But we have strikeout rates today as high as they've ever been. Like, I know it's plateaued now.

Maybe it's not an absolute record high in 2026, but we're basically at the highest rate we've ever had. And yet, high strikeout games have almost disappeared, right? Like, to me, you really start paying attention with like 16 strikeouts. 16 strikeout games. In the entire decade, there have been two pitchers who've struck out 16 guys in a game.

You remember who the last one was? You'll never guess. Lance Lynn. Of course. Vince Velasquez was going to be my guess. He's done it, but I was a little farther back. But Lance Lynn, and of course it was like seven innings. I think Chris Sale did it.

It was eight innings. I don't think we've seen a complete game with 16 strikeouts this decade. The anticipation. Like if Jacob Misarowski has 11 strikeouts through five innings. Yeah, he's not going to win. You're not getting to 20, right? Max Schurz was kind of a unicorn. It was 2016.

Nobody's been above 17, I think, since that. But like, even in the 2010s, there were 15 16K games. It was more, you know, one and a half a year. 19 in the 2000s, 23 in the 1990s. All right, we had 17 strikeout games. We even had a single one this decade. There were six last decade, seven the decade before that, 11 the decade before that.

Like those were kind of cool. That was the cool thing. When the guy could go for 17, 18, God forbid, 20. Even no hitters now. Like a guy gets to six innings in a no hit bid. And the conversation is, can he do it? It's can he will be allowed to do it. Right.

Exactly. I mean, even perfect games are not sacrosanct anymore, which, and look, I get it. But it's still, look, far be it from me to be like, well, gee, teams are not allowing pitchers to rack up high pitch counts. Say, Randy, didn't you invent a status? Can I, can I, can I borrow that a hot dog? suit of yours, Joe. I think I need it right now. I'm not going to fit.

I'm not going to fault the team's limiting pitches. It's actually interesting. The last four times I looked at this, where there was a 16 strikeout game, none of the pitchers got to even 115 pitches. So that's the only way to do it. You have to be like unbelievably efficient. And even then, you're probably going to seven innings. So you might get to 16. You're not getting to 19 or 20. It's just not possible. And so it's like... Lowered offensive levels also affects season long chases.

Right, exactly. Like, you know, it's kind of interesting how, you know, Nolan Ryan set the all-time start-out record at 3-73 back in... 383, sorry, 383 in like 19783. God, this football guy, geez. Oh, I know. And Randy Johnson got to within one? One of the years with the Diamondbacks, right?

Yeah, I went like 0-1. I think he had made one more start, but I think that was the year they went to the playoffs. So I think obviously they didn't start them the last game of the season, it was going to the playoffs. But like nobody's got... They didn't play the World Series that year. Sure they didn't.

But I mean, you know, even 300 now is extremely rare. And 300 used to be like something you could aim for. And I know, okay, milestones, yeah, they're... I'm just reinforcing the narrative that statheads really just care about the stats. I don't just care about the stats, but it is a part of the game. This is what gets fans excited. Yeah. If you've got somebody going for...

Last year, Cal Row. going for 60 homers. Yeah. Five years or four years ago, a judge going for, and there was a whole conversation about that we don't have to have. But it was a chance,

you know, hits records, strikeouts records. Guys, hell, I'm going to tell you something. They're going to be hurried the next time somebody gets to 20 wins. Yeah,

I mean, there are a lot of those, a lot of things like that have changed. And some of it, look, some of it's another maybe 20 wins.

I mean, to me, there's a very simple rule change. Get rid of the five-inning requirements for Pinterest. No, because you disconnect the stat from history. I don't care. I don't care. It's already disconnected from history.

My God. Yeah, because we really compare today's win totals with Jack Chesbrough. And then you're doing the same thing you did with the base stealing in the playoffs, right? Just make it easier to get the thing that you used to have more of. But is it actually the same accomplishment? No, you're just sort of propping up the numbers. That four and two-thirds innings, you know, throwing 101 miles an hour. Era adjusted is, you know, is just as impressive as getting, you know, seven innings.

If you want to go back and manually, really calculate everybody's win total. throughout history. You're welcome. Yeah, well, I could do that. I mean, I could program a computer to do it about 10 minutes. It's not a deal. They did saves before there were actual saves. That's right. They did. We've retroactively accredited saves to picture. You're doing some real time stat heading during this podcast from the sound of it, Joe, or Rani, I guess. Yeah, so I do find it encouraging you alluded to the plateau in the strikeout rate. The strikeout rate this year is lower than it was in 2018. And I know, Joe, that you always say this is because a lot of those outs are just outs on balls and play now because the bad at the fielders are better.

If you want to compare to 2018, it's the pitcher's not hit. That too. Yeah. But even if you compare position players only, it's still, it's flattened out or even decreased. No, it has. It is plateaued in recent years, although I do think some of that is more efficient defense. Outs are finite. So the better teams are turning balls and playing outs.

And I think maybe even the increase in caught stealings are accounting for this too. But no, I agree with that strikeout rates have plateaued. I think is it, Enosarves was written about how. the increased use of the two seamer has also had been a factor. I might begin. I don't want to pin a bad idea on Eno, but I thought that it was something about pitch mixes are also changing strikeout rates. Yeah.

So that's kind of encouraging, I think, just because for about a 15-year stretch there, it seemed like there was no strikeout ceiling and it was just going to go up and up and up and up forever. So maybe we have hit that ceiling, famous last words, I know. And it's still perhaps too high, but at least it's not getting any higher, at least lately. But I mean, it's seven straight years of hitting. 240. And that's only happened once before in the, we literally call it the deadball error. Yeah. No, it's not ideal. It's definitely not ideal. I bring you on to ostensibly talk about,

hey, what are we excited about watching the last couple of weeks of the regular season? And we end up talking about everything that's bad about baseball. I blame Randy. He brought on this. This is all Randy's full. No, but that's the thing. It's, it's, there are good things about baseball. I just want to see more of it. You know, we're going to see incredible individual baseball plays. We're going to see incredible individual performances. especially as you say, we get down, I mean, if we don't end up with a number, you know, six C versus five seed playoff, you know, World Series,

which is entirely possible. We're going to see Cam Schlittler against Vladimir Guerrero Jr. We're going to see. Hey, he finally hit a home run in Toronto. In Toronto, yeah. Our long international nightmare is over. Canada day, right? Yeah.

You know, I'm not saying I'm not going to enjoy it. It could be better. And I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, these are the things that are broken. And the league isn't doing anything about it. It's not like this has snuck up on us for, you know, this in the last six weeks. This is a decade now.

We're coming up on a decade of this being, MLB isn't doing anything about it. It's their job to do this. The NFL makes rule changes. I think the NFL made two rule changes this afternoon. That's how frequently they changed the rules. The Big Ten, you know, Randy's cheating school, stealing a game

the other day, they actually, the Big Ten actually changed its replay rules this week because, you know, they could do that. Not retroactively, Joe. Not retroactively. No, because that would have been admitting that they cheated Western Michigan out of a win. that's why they didn't do it.

Ben, you're not an other sports guy. Do you have any idea what we're talking about? I became one when I was hosting a multi-sport podcast for a time. Yeah, I still have some residual sports knowledge. But, yeah, but no, it's funny because I think MLB has changed its reputation from hide-bound staggy MLB, which will never tamper with anything because the traditionalists will be up in arms to, I mean, I've had colleagues who work on other sports and actually admire MLB and say, hey,

look at these rules they're changing. They're open to new ideas and everything. They did one year they changed four rules and like three of them were either ineffectual or bad. I was against the pitch clock. I don't care about the pitch clock anymore and it made a lot of people happy. But everything else they did was either ineffectual or actually made the problem worse. So I don't really want to give baseball a whole lot credit for, you know, one time making a bunch of changes and like one of them stuck. Gee, and I'm the negative Nelly here.

Tell me I'm wrong. I think the pitch clock is the best rule change in any sport in decades. gates. Yeah, the pitch clock is... I was wrong and I'll tell you, I'll wear that. But everything else. It is doing a lot of the work in the reputation being improved, I think. But, but, well, it's not really a problem, but it is a problem if you want to see meaningful change, which is that business is pretty good right now. And so if fans were flocking away from the park and nobody was watching the games and we were saying it's because people are batting 240,

then there would really be pressure to mix things up, like 1968, right? And so, if we got to that point, and maybe we're at that point, statistically speaking, but we don't seem to be at that point when it comes to interest in the game. Is baseball selling baseball now, or is baseball selling baseball-themed entertainment? I think one of the interesting things, when you go to a ballpark now, for all the talk about how baseball's average, the average age of a baseball fan is 700. If you go to a game, it's lower now. Yeah, I mean, they've...

Like, it's just a whole bunch of young people having a good time. Right. But I don't know necessarily that they're there entirely. They're there because everybody likes to hear dual leap at 160. I think that's it. And it's the only place you can get to do it. But I do think that all sports now are really selling the ballpark experience more than necessarily selling, you know, a baseball game. And I don't think, you know, basketball game, hockey game, whatever. This is not a unique thing to baseball. So I think baseball is doing a really good job of that. But, you know, at some point, I think you've also got to look at your core product and say, this might not be the thing it could be. Taking it back to the is a race interesting if all the teams are bad, but they're close. There was a time. just a week or two ago when I was seeing some Rani Deserly tweets about the Royals when... Oh, I got a text. I got a phone phone to text. Everything he tweeted, he tested out on me first.

Even they had a glimmer of hope just because the AL Central is second only to the AL West when it comes to no one wants to win this thing. And so the Royals went on a little mini run there and no one the AL is ever out of it this year or at least until recently. And so our odds got up to 0.2 percent, Ben. I'll let you know. There you go. So they were saying there was a chance. And you got a little, now you fully acknowledged that this was an extreme long shot, but at least you had a little glimmer of an inkling of, hey, maybe if things break the right way. And this series goes that way. And so that's what I'm saying. And the Royals are one of the worst teams in baseball this year, right? And so, and one of the more disappointing. And yet there you were a few weeks before the end of the season, at least talking yourself into there being. a remote chance. Now, you would be paying attention to what the royals are doing regardless. I was going to say, I don't think I'm the median baseball fan. That's the burden you bear, and that's your curse, at least until the chief season starts.

But, you know, that attitude of, hey, maybe there's a chance. Look at the standings. Plus, not everyone is looking at the playoff odds, and the playoff odds might tell a different story than the standings do, which is one reason why we end up with at the trade deadline teams that are barely out of it technically deciding that they're sellers, which again, sort of leaves a little stink, but you look at the underlying numbers and everything. Can you really say, well, the Tigers, you know, did they tank post-deadline or would things be any different for them if they had held on to Derek's people all this time?

I've been rooting for them to miss the playoffs by one game. Yeah, once they did that. Right. But here they are and they're probably going to end up. The fact that we have to have this conversation about the value of a playoff spot is a core problem. Yeah, I mean, it is a meaningful difference because when you have 12 teams making it, then each one has slimmer chances, especially when some of them have to go through a wild card coin flip series to get there. And so, no, you can't value all those playoffs spots the way that you did when there was no playoffs other than the World Series or maybe there was a round or two before that.

But that was that. It's not the same value. So playoffs spot doesn't mean what it used to, but it still means something. it means a chance, it means getting into the tournament, and it's baseball and anything could happen. Because it's baseball and anything can happen, I think is the reason you have to value them. Because we've got plenty of examples. We're talking to one right now of teams, well, I'm talking to a fan of one right now, of teams that snuck into the playoffs and either won the World Series or won the pennant. They got within a stop sign at third base of possibly winning the World Series.

I mean, there are all these examples of teams that just get into the tournament in a way that if you just sneak into the NBA, playoffs, you've actually hurt yourself. So that's why that's really what angered me about the Tigers, because if you take the Tigers on August 1st, July 31st, whatever the hell they traded school bowl, and just say, take this team, get into the trial. Remember, they were plus 50 run differential at the time, they had the fourth best third order.

There were all of these indications that they could make the playoffs. And if you just take that team and put them in the tournament, and now you're facing Scoobel, Job, and, you know, bullpen chaos in game three, I just, the value of a postseason spot at baseball, of just getting in is higher than it is in the NFL of the NBA. I can't speak to the NHL because the NHL playoffs always seem completely random to me. Yeah, they are similar to baseball, for sure, to MLB when it comes to the randomness.

But I think that's the saving grace and also the dark side of the playoffs. So in the NBA, just squeaking into the first round, it's not very valuable because, again, of what we were saying about the nature of basketball and there are so many possessions and points and it's just very determinative. and it's tough to have upsets. And so just getting in is almost always not enough. And so you end up with, well, if we're not good enough to win the whole thing, then why even bother trying to get in at all? And the downside of that is you end up with tanking for top draft picks. You end up with not really trying.

And then that becomes a farce. And you get constant sort of, well, it's time to tear it all down discourse about a team that's just okay. The good thing, though, is that everyone is aspiring to put together a championship caliber team. that actually can go all the way. That's the goal, at least. And baseball is bailed out to some extent by the fact that you can just get in and make a real run.

It's a blessing and a curse for the sport. It is. Right. Because to me, it's like, yes, on the one hand, you can sneak in at 82 and 80, or what was it, 83 and 79, the Cardinals were in 06 and win the World Series. But as we've seen from the Dodgers,

like, there's no bonus in building a super team. Like in other sports, you know, how often, you know, there was a year where the warriors went like, what, 70. 73 and 9 and lost game 7 of the finals. But it was game 7 of the finals, and they did win, you know, for other championships. Like if you put together a super team in another sport, you're almost always going to win a title. Right.

And usually in that year, you know, there's always going to be the 07 Patriots, the Warriors that year. But like, generally speaking, the better teams wins. And you can eliminate, almost eliminate, you know, chance. if you're simply good enough. And that's just not the case in baseball. Whether, you know, there was the year the Dodgers won 111 or whatever. But there's also, like, the 0-1 Mariners, right? Like, if you look at the winningest teams of the last 40 years,

maybe a third of them, 40% at most won the World Series. So, like, that is the problem. Until the last two years, the conversation about baseball was always the randomness of the playoffs and how the good teams. It was literally, I mean, less than two years ago, the Dodgers were the team that would always choke in October. And we had the first two years of the 12-team playoffs. Everybody was bitching because the lesser teams were winning, the lower seats were winning.

And it was a huge crisis. And now two years later, it's a crisis because the good teams are winning. Maybe the problem is us. I just want to be clear here. I was never saying it was a crisis either way. It's just you've got to just, one of the things we haven't, and I blame myself for this, I've never found the right messaging on this, is just to get people to understand. that the baseball playoffs, random is the wrong word,

but the gaps between the teams just aren't wide enough for them to be displayed in a best of three or a best of five and a best of seven. So you've just got to accept that the team that plays better or the team that plays slightly worse and gets a little lucky is going to be the one that wins. And I just can't, it's one of the biggest struggles I have because I want to try to convey it without saying it's luck or random.

That's so dismissive. Like the 2010-12-14 giants, they weren't lucky. they played better baseball over the course of nine series in those years, and they absolutely deserve to win championships. And when you say that they were lucky, because they weren't the best team in the regular season, you sound like he's like a jerk. But I don't, I truly believe that, you know, in most years, the World Series champion is the team that played the best in October. There's just a massive disconnect in a lot of years between the team that did that and the team that played best for six months. And I just, I've gotten very comfortable with it. I've gotten very comfortable with the idea that the regular season is one thing and the playoffs are another.

and this is just the way baseball is. I do think it's better for the game if the better teams win a little bit more often, which is what you would get. I don't think it's great if the White Sox, you know, win the last wild card in 82 and 80 and pick off three teams on the way to the world. I don't know if that's going to get a first round buy.

The buy this year might be like 83 and 70. There is a five, there is a single digit but real percentage that a losing record will have a buy. That is the apocalyptic scenario. I did the math on this. It's highly unlikely. It's highly unlikely, but it's not zero.

Let me tell you. But I just want to make this point that when we talk about the issues in the sport, like we do have to separate the issues that we talk about, like, that are fixable versus issues that are inherent to the sport. And like the crapshoot nature of a short series is built into the sports DNA on a level that it is, not only is it impossible to fix it. You shouldn't want to fix it. Like that is what baseball is. It only became a problem when we started letting worse and worse teams in the players. Exactly.

The World Series was a crapsheet. The LCS round until 93 was a crapsheet. I might even argue that the 18 format that we had until 2011, I don't even remember having these conversations then because you just didn't really have truly bad to you occasionally. But again, you know, the 73 Mets or the 86 Cardinals. You had a floor, but I don't remember these conversations happening until 2012. And then that's where you really started to say, well, wait a minute. The best teams just don't have enough of an advantage over the worst teams.

We're kind of throwing away the regular season, and that's where it gets a little uncomfortable. Yeah, and I think that the nice thing about this, the silver lining, is that people don't complain about tanking in baseball anymore. This was a huge talking point a decade or so ago, the Astros, the Cubs, right? The Orioles, maybe you lump the Phillies in there. I mean, there were a lot of teams that were intentionally trying to be bad. You know, some teams they just naturally get bad. They die of natural causes and then they get built back up again. I mean, the tanking teams won three world series.

So, you know. Right. But speaking of rule changes, like, that's the rule change we haven't talked about, which is like the draft lottery, I actually think it's changed behavior. I don't think the lottery has any effect at all. Because the draft in MLB just doesn't have the level of impact it has. Yeah, I think that's part of it. As a veteran of rooting for a bad team, Joe, like this I know as a Yankees fan that

this is not going to ever crosses your radar, but I can say that I certainly approach the second half of the season in 85% of royal seasons now, very, very differently. Didn't the Guardians get the first pick in the draft two years ago? They were like 79 to 83. I got the first pick in the- But my point is like, that used to, as a fan, it used to be a very uncomfortable situation where your incentives were misaligned in August and September,

or it's like, you know, my team is 62 and 80. Like, they have no chance of making the playoffs. Do I want them to win or do I want them to get a better draft pick? I don't think tanking was ever about the draft. I really don't. I think the tanking was really more about, you know, getting payroll down and getting a lot of, collecting a lot of low-service-time players. I think that was part of it.

But I think the Astros, Cubs, teams like that, absolutely it was part of them. You can't name a third example, though. But those teams were quite successful. There was a very small window. Yeah. A very small window. But the, well, the wind. but I think that window has been shut before there was a chance for it.

But it also opened very late. I mean, we're not that far removed from Brian Sabian signing Michael Tucker so he wouldn't have a first record. Well, it opened late because teams were run by morons for most of the baseball history. Now the baseball perspective, people were worried that we were imposters talking about batting average. Can you talk about some of that arrogance and remind people who we are?

I think the people talk about how stat heads ruined the game, don't realize just how effed up this game was until the stats came wrong. I'm dead serious about that, man. There were just some... Well, in terms of management, yeah. In the same way that people don't really appreciate what real pennant races were like, they don't really understand what it was like watching

Sid Thrift on a baseball team. There were, look, the sport was such that five dudes on the internet in the early 20s were able to, like, be able to say this sport is run by a bunch of morons and we could do things better. And most of our ideas were adopted. Like, that's how effed up the sport was. Didn't you actually write that in the 97 book?

Wasn't that actually a quote? probably. I agree with Joe that the primary benefit of tanking is not about the draft picks. I think the draft picks played a part in it, and I think the CBA changes and the lottery and all the rest. Kind of nip that in the butt a bit, but... Was it Brody Aiken? Brady Aiken. Yeah.

How is you going to get Brady Aiken without tanking? Well, I do think, though, that now we're in this spot where you don't get teams that are aspiring toward greatness, because they don't have the same incentive to. But tanking being a blight on the NBA, you don't have that in MLB now either. Now it's a couple of reasons you don't have tanking in individual games, the way that you do in basketball when you rest guys. And sure, maybe sometimes it's about rest,

but sometimes it's just about not wanting to win. You can't really do that in baseball because one player, one star, doesn't have that sort of impact. You also have, right? Bruster restrictions too. Exactly. Yeah. So that, but then you also don't get tanking in a long-

term sense because you don't need it anymore. So that is, is that worth the lower upper bound? I don't know. The fact that everyone is kind of compressed, but the virtue is that how many teams right now look at 2027 and say there's no chance for us to, to win a wild card with a 500-ish record. I mean, I'm sorry, you can't look at the 2024, 26 White Sox and see anything but the chance to win next year. I've said two years. I said, I don't think any team is more than two years. from being a wild card contender. And there's never going to be a better argument for that than these white socks. I will say the one downside for me personally, it always comes back to the Royals, of course, with me.

But like with these years white socks, is it makes the accomplishment of the 2024 Royals. Like at the time, it was like, oh my God, 106 losses to the playoffs. You are using really big air quotes around accomplishment, right? Yes, I know. Well, 106, the worst team to go to the playoffs the next year. and I'm thinking to myself, this is a historic accomplishment. And now I'm looking at the White Sox, I'm like, is this just 20-20s baseball?

It's just, and I think that's what it is now. And then, you know, maybe what the Royals did was just kind of like, that's just the nature of the sport. You can have a, you know, up year and still not actually be that well-run a team, but like the forces align because the teams are so compressed together. And I think, I mean, for the White Sox, that's exactly what we're seeing. So I think that any team that claims they can't win more than one year out is just lying to their fan base. Yeah.

And that's where we are right now. I mean, I'll put up another can of worms, but this is where, you know, local revenue sharing subsidizes this. When you just say, you can be profitable without ever winning, you nobody, you know, you can, you know, we don't have to try to win. Okay, we won't try to win then. And if we make the playoffs great. And if we don't, well, to chain. And Ben, we can do this again in the offseason. I'm sorry.

I'm going to, but if you look at the players' proposal. the main one they made three months ago now, they really are trying to tie performance back to profitability. They're trying to tie revenue sharing disbursements, or basically they're trying to penalize teams that aren't trying to win. And I really think the game actually needs that as a counterbalance to all the local revenue sharing. And I think that if you basically say to teams,

your money now depends on the standings, I think we'd have a much better situation. You've got the situation right now where just so many teams clustered around, you know, 500, and we've got to find a way to get some of these teams to push up forward and try to win 90 games again. That would be nice. But I do think it is also nice that you can't count anyone out for more than a year or two. That's a good thing.

So is it worth... Except for the Angels. Maybe except for the Angels. But hey, even they have new ownership, new management, you never know, right? So there's some amount of hope. Same with the Rockies, right? New management, maybe new ownership sometimes soon too. The massive advantage that teams have in holding players.

the first six, six and a half years of their career, seven, if they do it a certain way, is just so unlike anything else in sports, especially as younger players become up. I was going to say, I think that sort of the hidden change in the sport here, everything we've talked about with strikeouts or batting average or whatever, the fact that the sport, the aging curve is accelerated actually allows teams to collect more of a player's career value in that, in that team control window of six plus. I've written about it. How hidden can it be? I'm a moron. I wrote up. It's not that hidden.

Because the newsletter's not free, Joe. That's why. You have to be special to get the newsletter. No, you just have a couple bucks. Please sign up everyone. But no, you've got it, ready? You've actually got it. Yeah, but that's what it is. I think it's, but that is actually, it's a boon. Like, to me, that is a form of, I don't want to call it revenue. But it's a form of like small market uplift. The idea that if you just develop talent, better, which doesn't require enormous sums, you should be competitive no matter what, because

like the amount of value teams can get from free agents. You can go back to look at the 90s and 2000s and, you know, the dominant Yankees run. Yeah, sure, of course they had the core four. But, like, they were signing free agents in their 30s who were remained stars in their 30s. And now, like, I mean, Trey Turner looks like he might be washed up. Mookie Betts is like, like, I mean, it's crazy, right? It's probably not good for the sport, but it's probably good for small market teams, good for the idea that any team can be good in two or three is because you don't need money. You just need to develop talent. This is where the money argument loses everything.

Because if you look at the separator of the Dodgers, we mentioned DePaula earlier today, it's player development. If you look at what the Yankees do, if you look at what the Dodgers do, if you look at what all the successful teams do, the brewers do it with a payroll of 79.95, it's player development. And all of the focus on payroll and on free agents, distracts from the fact that the key separator right now is can you acquire, develop, and build baseball players. And you know what? Same as it was in 1956. Before we wind down, which we will do in a second here. Come on, it's an hour and a half in. Yeah. I'm just getting my throat warmed up.

Yeah. You told me we're going to need an intermission. I guess you could always press pause on a podcast. But yeah, if you're going to need a bigger boat with the three of us in it. But no, I, we've kind of, you know, there's going to bill us for the band with them. There aren't that many super exciting races remaining. So it's, it's just about the ones that we've already touched on here. I know you're not a Hall of Fame guy, Joe, and you haven't been for a while. But you're, you're sort of an awards guy, to some extent, at least. Any interesting races?

Because even here, it seems like a lot of stuff is, is pretty locked up at this point. You know, it seemed like some things would come down to the wire. I did want to get your thoughts, Ranny, on Bobby Witt, Jr., because we're heading for a Yordon AL MVP here. I was going to say, the AL wins above replacement leader. Yes. The baseball reference, Bobby Wade, Jr. And fan graphs as well.

And, you know, I guess if you care about Triple Crown, which I can't get super excited about, then I guess you're paying attention to the AL home run race where Yordaun is trailing Jr. Camerro by a couple homers. But putting that aside, one thing I am actually kind of interested in is can PCA lead the majors in both offense and defense. And that's neck and neck with him and Yordon in terms of offensive value as calculated by fan graphs. He's going to lead the NL in both of those things, but can he become the first ever to do it in the majors? That would be kind of a cool accomplishment in the historic season that he's having. But Yoran, if he loses out on the Triple Crown, I guess that

slightly weakens his MVP case, narratively speaking. But it's got to be a bummer for Royals fans and for Bobby Wood Jr. Because it seemed like this would be his year, potentially. The lane was clear. Once Judge got hurt, all he had to do seemingly was just stay healthy, which he mostly did, but not quite. He did have that short stint on the IL. First aisle stint, yeah, he's going to have another season leading the league in war

and probably being a distant second, if you're not. not third with Caminero in the mix also. And I guess the curse is that he's too good at too many things and not he's not leading the league in in anything flashy enough. Well, I think this year the curse is that's not the curse. And he's on the Royals. His team sucks. Three missed weeks.

Yeah. I mean, that doesn't help. But if he were having the exact same season and the Royals were the 2024 Royals were, was this year, I think that would change the narrative dramatically. The reality is, like, I was just pulled out the baseball reference for because what shocked me is, while he is in the lead, less than 0.1 behind him right now is Kevin McGonagall, who's kind of a similar kind of broad range of talent. Doesn't have the stolen bases necessarily, but like a high average in this era, 272, 280, thermal fitting. That constitutes a high batting average. You know, good plate discipline, getting on base at a good rate.

And then like doubles and like, you know, double digit home runs, neither one's at 20. but like Bobby has 18, I think McDonough has 17. You just got that broad range of talent, and then you throw in double digit above average defense at a up the middle position that adds up to six or seven wins. And that, you know, that is the brilliance of wars that just sort of, you know, allows you to see the full picture. But is Bobby Witt's so far ahead of the pack that like you ignore narrative entirely?

Like as much as I would love to see him win the MVP award, I don't want the MVP award to adjust. be a like a ranking of players by wins above replacement whichever one you use like their narrative and just kind of external context should have some impact and if it has this is a year where if it has any impact at all bobby whit is not the MVP so and that's not his fault but at the same time like it just you you should have at least some reason to give the guy on a on a team you know one of the more disappointing teams in baseball this is it's not a team that lost 120 games last year and he's helping them restore them to respectability.

This is a team coming off back-to-back winning seasons that was expected to at least be competitive and is not. So that part of it sucks. And, you know, if Jordan wins the Triple Crown, which is one of the things I'm definitely watching for, I think, you know, I would be a lot less upset about him winning the MVP than I was the year Miguel Cabrera won it with the Triple Crown over Mike Trout like 12 years ago. And the NL MVP race ended up being no contest because PCA has just not missed a beat and

Otani has. And then the other races, you mentioned McGonigal, I guess he probably has AL Rookie of the Year sewn up, although Parker Messick might have something to say about that. But really, it seems like pretty much everything is decided because you could say cease versus Schlittler for ALSci. People are talking about Schlittler as ALMBP now, which I mean, you could make a war-based case, but that's not going to happen. But, you know, I guess with a few starts remaining, if one guy bombed and the other guy was great, maybe that could sway some. of minds, but it seems like Schlittler certainly has the inside track on that. I was somewhat surprised to see that the prediction markets at least think that Sal Stewart is a stone cold lock for NL Rookie of the year, which seems to me like kind of a retro take in the sense

that he's leading the majors in RBI, but there are stronger war-based candidates there. So I don't know if that's a failure to price in the way that voters are actually thinking these days or whether he actually will be the winner. I don't know. But, you know, how excited can you get about that particular race, I guess? So I don't know. I wish that there were one that were really coming down to the wire, but it doesn't seem like that's the case. Well, first of all, glad you guys finally mentioned the AL leader in baseball reference war, play on Peter Schiller. I think the ALVP race is closer than you guys do. The Stewart-Wetherhold thing, I think it's less about RBI's, but I think it's just Weatherholt's going to miss the last three weeks of the season.

Right. I think if Weatherhole was still playing, I think this would be a much closer. That's going to really hurt his case. But the ALNVP, what I've been saying for a while now is that if Alvarez wins the Triple Crown or the Astros with the division, he'll be the MVP. If neither of those things happen, I think it's going to default to who was the best player in the league. And Whit McGonigal, they won't be Schlittler because they won't give a pitcher an MVP anymore. But I think Whit McGonagall is the conversation. I think we have something wild here where because there's no one consensus and all the voters, you know, have their ballots kind of scrambled. Do you get like a 1999 situation where like they have to get Ivan Rodriguez on a plane from Puerto Rico at the last moment because nobody expected him to win the MVP? The reference I was thinking is the 95 NL where I think four guys split the, I think Maddox, Larkin won and Maddox got some votes, Bichette got some votes.

Somebody else got some votes. I forget who. But like there was like a there was a scramble because it was no claim. And of course this was pre-war and all kinds of stuff. But I think that, you know, Alvarez, look, he's got the ankle thing right now. He only played one of the three games this weekend. Let's craft a scenario here where, you know, it's like, well, let's, I don't want him to miss the last two weeks like he did last year. But let's say he comes, he limps to the finish line. And he doesn't lead in any of these categories.

And the Astros missed the playoffs by a game. Are you going to give the MVP to that guy when it's a national. narrative case. It's not a war case. It's not a triple crown case. It's just you're a D.H. who was a good hitter on a team that finished under 500. I don't think that's an MVP. And again, I think this is going to be decided over the next two weeks. I don't think there's, I think if Alvarez has one of those narrative points, he wins. If he has neither of them, it's, you know, Ben, you mentioned the big thing. No judge, no room, all of the guys we would typically be looking to for MVP who have been the guys on top the board just don't exist this year.

I mean, I saw a note the other day. He doesn't have a barrel since he came off the IL. You know, Judge missed too much time. And it's a very strange year. So, you know, it wouldn't surprise me to see four guys get MVP votes at the end of this. And like I say, Alvarez goes nuts the next two weeks. I think it's his to lose, but he's absolutely capable of losing it. I also think that I've never thought he was going to win the Triple Crown just because I thought at some point they'd just stop pitching.

He would just stop getting RBI opportunities. You're going to end up with, you know, six or seven intentional walks. week down the stretch here and he just he won't be able to get the rbis whereas piazzles games don't really matter sorry your ralos fans um so he'll have opportunities to drive and runs because he's not going to pick up all these intentional walks but i do think the al-a-vp is not remotely locked up well the question is if he if he does let though if it doesn't win the mvp who does like i still don't think it's bobby win i'm thinking junior caminero is probably like that's that's a possible i think if the tigers make a run i swear to god i'm not drunk

they have those four games against the White Sox. I'm looking at that. If the Tigers were to somehow steal a playoff spot here, which is highly unlikely, they've got to probably finish 9 and 3, 10, and 2, I think Kevin McDonough develops a case then. I think performance over the last two weeks is going to affect this race in a way we haven't seen a while.

It's been Judge Erotani five straight years in the Yale. Do you have that right? And then in 2019 it was Trout, and 18 it was Betts having a month. Like, we haven't had an actual weird MVP award in some time. It's been the war leader for the most part most years, or if it hasn't been the war.

The year Harper won, he was like second to goldschmidt, maybe, if I've got that right. But it was like a fraction of war. I don't think war can be the determinant if we're not talking. Like, Trout was two wins better than Cabrera the year that he lost his MVP's. Like that was, those were bad MVP awards. The year that Cologne beat out Santana was a joke.

But if you're like, we're talking about 6.5 war versus 6.2 war, the biggest stathead in the world is it going to go to the mattresses for that one. Yeah, I mean, if, if Otani were still in the AL, he might still be the frontrunner at this point. He's leading the AL in war. He's just not in it anymore. If all these guys fall apart down the stretch, I just give it to just give it to, give it to Autonnie. Give the ALVP Award to Otis in a second.

Why not? By the way, the fact that P. Cro, I just, I'm going to theoretically coming to the end of the podcast here, the fact that Pete Carl Armstrong has not only had the, the fact that he's made it so that we're not even considering Otoni for MVP. Yeah. Otani hasn't pitched in two months. He hasn't hit in a week. Injury is a part of that. But let's not forget, Otony's a VP two years ago was a little bit because everybody else also got hurt. Like he only had about six war that year. The year is a DH. And like Betts got hurt, Harper got hurt. Like everybody who might have taken it from him got hurt.

And he was able to win it with a fairly low war count. Well, this year's the other way right. He's getting hurt in PCA. But PCA isn't just squeaking into this. PCA is putting up a 10-win season as one of you said, earlier, he might be the best hitter and the best fielder in baseball, which I didn't realize it ever happened before. I thought maybe some Cal Ripkin year, maybe 91, really, that's never happened. No, the only thing that has happened is that there has been one player who led his league in offense and defense. And it was, of course, Snuffy Sternweiss in 1945 as well. Which was World War II, so that doesn't actually like that. Yes, exactly, right. So,

and he didn't win the MVP. How new on that? Yeah. So, yeah, it's just a spectacular season. It's incredible. And I just think, again, the Stewart thing, I don't know people aren't as interested in rookie of the year, but for me, it would still be weather hold. And even if you said not weatherholt, I'd probably come up with a couple guys ahead of Stewart, which I'm leaning into the bit of not talking about the Reds here on effectively wild, I guess. But, you know, it's not that Stewart's had a bad season or anything, but it's just like even Carson Bench, even Nolan McLean, we could put a couple, couple Mets ahead of South Stewart potentially. Yeah, I had somebody, I left, I did a, I forget when I was talking about the Reds, but I listed off a bunch of their core players.

And I left Stewart off. And somebody bit back on them, like, I don't think he's a core guy. Yeah. I'm thinking about like five win players. I think of Stewart is more like, like, he, is he Pete Alonzo? Is he somebody who can probably be like that on that second tier? I mean, he's 22 years old, so I would say he's part of the future for sure. But like, I don't know.

If he's one of your five best guys, I mean, I just, I feel like, especially if he's just going to be a first baseman now, I don't think the speed is going to carry over. Redo is stolen a few bases. But now if we're just talking about a first baseman, the bat's got to carry everything. And what's it was, an 8, 10 OPS, I think. I'm just not that excited about a 22-year-old with that skill set. And we know sometimes Reds regress, maybe the hitting development, not the strength of that organization. Yeah. Yeah.

Is this the longest you've gone on the Reds except for the season previous series? Yeah, maybe so. Just dumping on them a little bit. Well, anybody other than C-Trens has talked about the Reds on the show. Yeah. Certainly, Ellie Cruz, exclusions. Yeah, probably, or Chase Burns maybe. Did you see the throw?

Yeah, yeah. Pretty breathtaking. Rainy, you don't watch baseball, but go look up the Ellie dog. Even I saw that throw. Yeah, no, that was. And it wasn't like when I heard about it. I'm like, oh, well, a running start. Of course, no.

There was, that was flat footed. That was, that was impressive. Can I leave on that? Can I end on that note, Ben? I know I got some fun with, oh, you're crabbing and this. I have a reputation. I'm fine. I've nurtured that.

I'm okay with that. I've missed listening to you guys bicker with each other. But I really don't think that people understand how much I enjoy watching baseball because you'll see stuff like that. Oh, yeah. Or you'll see the Colton Couser catch for the other night. I love watching the game. Like I said, I wish there was more baseball in the baseball game. And every single night, even if it's Nationals ain't.

Okay, maybe if it's not Nationals angels. But there's going to be something cool. Like Mason Miller's going to come in and do evil things to hitters. I'm thinking about that because the Padres, yeah, they're playing the game tonight. I just can't emphasize enough how much fun it. is to watch this game. And like I say, I do it 135 nights a year. And it's just stuff like the L.A.

Dela Cruz, the fact that I can mention that, all three of us immediately were like, oh. Yeah, the players are great. They've never been better. The game could be better, maybe. It's still pretty good. We still like baseball. We still like it a lot.

But seriously, lower the volume at the ballpark. Yes, please. Please do that. And I am, just to take it back to where we started. I am eager to see just who is sort of the late arriving or late returning player who goes on an October run, which, again, is because of what you said earlier about how playoff rosters are different from regular season rosters. Not that that's a brand new thing. You could talk about Francisco Rodriguez or David Price or whoever doing that, right?

Maybe there will be a guy like that this year. Or maybe it'll be someone who just came back from a long absence. Maybe it'll be, maybe it'll be Garrett Crochet. Yeah, right? It's like we got here without him. He was expected to be the leader of the staff. Turns out we didn't. We didn't. We didn't. didn't need him to get to the playoffs, but boy, he could be a huge weapon then. Or my guy was going to be DePaula, but he had a home run today. So, you know, I just sound like I'm, oh, yeah, great call, Joe. You're pretty good, not tall. Yeah.

Or is, is, is Joey Otani a good player? Right. Well, I mean, that's somewhat in question right now, I guess. I, obviously, Otani's healthy. He's going to be the DH. I would, I would, I would, at the worst, I'd have put DePaula platooning, DePaula, platooting with Tio. I really think he's that ready to play.

Yeah. And what do you do with Edwin Diaz? what do you do with Roki Sasaki? These are also guys who are just coming back, right? Yeah, but you know Dave Roberts is loads to do that. Kike is still on the roster. Right, exactly. Well, playoff Kiki.

That's a whole different story. But yeah, you know, I have just like, hey, does Corbyn Burns? I mean, if the Diamondback sneak in, what are you going to get out of him? Just like all these late returning or late promoted players because a lot of exciting prospects have been called up late. I just, I love it when October can be about them too. So I just, I look forward. to your October breakdowns. I mean, the newsletter is never better than in October, I think, because you're excellent at the X's and O's and thinking along with the managers and ahead of them,

often. And it's a problem with podcasting because we just never know when to record. And whenever we record and publish an episode, we're a gamer too behind in each series. And so that's an issue. You can just bang out a newsletter at three in the morning and there it is. I mean, it's not great for your sleep schedule. We've referenced Snuffy Stern-wise. I'm going to reference Lucy here a few. people have ever seen the classic Lucy I Love Lucy episode where her and Ethel at the chocolate factory. Yes. And that's what the playoffs are like now. You're just trying to desperately wrap the chocolates fast enough for the next batch to come out.

And that's what the playoffs are. So yeah, you guys, you do great work. It's just it's hard to know when actually. What's the story big enough that we've got to sit down and record knowing that a playoff podcast has a shelf life of not as long as some of the other stuff you do? Exactly. Right. And then we end up in this weird position where we're breaking down individuals. baseball games and talking about individual moves in a way that we don't for most of the first six months.

Well, it's hard for me. I love doing it, but it's easier when everybody's watching the same games. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, no one cares. Sometimes I say, like, we should just, for a week as a bit, just cover the regular season the way we cover October and just like go hyper, deep and microanalyze each managerial decision. Two fan bases will care. And the other 28 will be like, uh, what is this? This is not for me. Here's my mailbag. Yeah, exactly, right. So, but we have to switch into that mode where suddenly we're scrutinizing individual decisions that probably had, you know, a 2% impact on the win probability. But if it was in the wrong direction, then it's, it's still big. Yeah, and you never want to lower your chances of winning one of those things.

A year from now, we'll be talking about Kendri Churio being called up. Yeah, well, I'm ready for it. I just want to see if he was still here. I haven't left yet. Let's just hope that we're not savoring these last couple weeks of the regular season because we'll be without one. I firmly believe we're getting a full or 99% full season. I do too.

I do too. What's your re-grim. The only thing that makes me nervous is that it seems like that is the consensus everyone has that we're going to have. No, they're not messed up. Yeah, I don't think it's the mainstream consensus. Smart people. Mark Normandy did a whole big thing this last week.

I think everyone else assumes that the season is canceled already. Oh, well, if the smart people, say there'll be a season and the dumb people say no, then yes. I wouldn't be here today if I didn't know. I'm going to point you to the recent history of the United States America. Well, the recent history of the United States of America tells me the dumb people win. That's what I'm saying. I don't know if I'd really like your theory all that much right now. Yeah, fair enough. On that note, we all won by... And he's so editing that out? You'd be surprised what we leave in the podcast these days. Sometimes we bleep it, not always.

I was glad to get you guys back together. I'm always happy to talk to. you. I had Rani on my video game podcast recently. So, you know, speaking of topics about which I know nothing, but like Ben, Ben very kindly brought me on anyway. Yeah. I'll talk to you about it. Yeah. And I will be reading every word. Again, people should go to joshean.com and subscribe. I don't know if you want to do any other pitching while we have you here. Please subscribe. Seriously. Look, it's a one-year subscription. Joe Sheehan.com.

You can follow me on Blue Sky at Sheen Newsletter. But as Ben said, if you're, this is the time to do it because you'll get a year's worth of content the next six, seven weeks. So please check it out. If you go to Joe Sheen.com, too, there's a bunch of free stuff up there. You can get a sense of what I do. There's some old playoff coverage up there. I did a piece off 2018's game three that's up there. That was the Muncie off the Evaldi Homer.

And I think that's some of the, that's really good to help. You'll check that out. And like me, Joe doesn't sleep in October. So, brother, I don't sleep in the other. Yeah, but you'll get something in your inbox at 3.47 a.m. breaking down the big move that just happened in the latest October game. He means that is a good thing. Yes, because I'm up reading it, and I'll sometimes reply to you. It's a ghost town for everyone else.

I don't know why we're ending this. All three of us stay up for another four hours. It's true. We should just be talking. But, no, it's, I'm glad you guys are. We do. Hang on. I got some McCallin if we're going to get you. I'm glad you guys, or at least Joe, that you're still, still trucking with baseball. Not like living. Again, we've dumped on you for your age enough already on this episode, but just we were talking before we recorded about how even though everyone in MLB is a junior these days and a son of a former major leaguer, we don't seem to see that so much with second generation stat heads and baseball bloggers, you know, maybe because it's not a lucrative enough field for nepo babies to want to go into it. So it's just the OGs or a few of them. sign of good parenting myself. That could be it too. It's or just yeah, parenting by example,

just observing us and saying, well, why would I want to do that? So yeah, that's why we still need you carrying the torch because I guess your daughter's not going into the same line of work seemingly. By the way, can we make something clear here? I'm 55. You guys are making me out to be in my mid-80s. You're younger than what the median MLB fan was until very recently, seemingly. So you got, that's why you should subscribe to one of the few remaining lifetime memberships to the Josiah Newsletter, because you'll still get your money's worth. All right. Thanks, guys.

This was great. I miss hearing you podcast, but this is not the first time that I've had you two back together on this pod. And I hope it won't be the last. Thanks, Ben. Well, given that, this is the only chance I get to talk baseball with really smart people for an extended period of time, Ben. I hope you'll have me on again soon. Note that he just means he can text me whatever he wants. I just don't think I don't count, I guess, in that category.

We never talk. We just text. This is the longest phone call I've had in 10 years. You said people, multiple people. You're just one person when you text you. Ben, thanks for having us and love the show. You and you and Meg do incredible work. I listen all the time and I really appreciate you having us on. That will do it for today.

Thanks, as always, for listening. And special thanks to those of you who support the podcast on Patreon, which you can do by going to patreon.com slash effectively wild. And signing up to pledge some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad-free and get yourself access to some perks. As I have the following five listeners, Ben Zerett, Nick Kraft, Andrew Barnett, Billy Garver, and Devin Schwibold. Thanks to all of you.

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Thanks to Shane McKeon for his editing and production assistance. I'll be back with another episode a little later this week. Talk to you then. O'Tonnie, the stat class, live before, so shweets, les avi peatants, and super, a fete, a fact. I think that it's effectively cool. I think who it's effectively wild. Effectivement, Salvage

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