Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2535: It’s Go Time

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Ben Lindbergh and Meg Rowley banter about Alex Bregman likening getting hit by a baseball to getting hit by a baseball bat, the latest Aaron Judge-Aaron Boone drama, which records to root for in the AL West, the Max Scherzer–Justin Verlander career strikeouts rivalry, the Marlins’ pattern of using starters in relief, how many players in a new book about baseball superstars are actually superstars, the turnover among top hitters this season, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s comments about what he was paid for, the AL West making the Central look good, and more. Audio intro: Ted O., “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Liz Panella, “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to Bregman clip Link to Bregman tape photo Link to Parker mask Link to Bregman update Link to Newton’s Second Law Link to “The Green Ribbon” collection Link to Boone quotes Link to Judge quotes Link to Judge video Link to Aarons update Link to Stanton jogging Link to Stanton article Link to Davis call of Ohtani fly Link to Rockies 100-losses streak Link to Scherzer article 1 Link to Scherzer article 2 Link to Verlander quote Link to career strikeouts leaderboard Link to Scherzer/Verlander article Link to 2023 Scherzer quote Link to Mandelbaums Seinfeld clip Link to Alcantara article Link to Alcantara postgame interview Link to latest Alcantara fun fact Link to Marlins tweet 1 Link to Marlins tweet 2 Link to Episode 305 wiki Link to Episode 2465 wiki Link to three-inning-saves Blast Link to Dan S. on WBC players Link to Baseball Superstars 2027 Link to previous Baseball Superstars Link to wRC+ repeaters data Link to 2025 wRC+ leaders Link to 2026 wRC+ leaders Link to Guerrero interview clip Link to Guerrero article 1 Link to Guerrero article 2 Link to Guerrero article 3 Link to Guerrero value numbers Link to private equity report  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Give a Gift Subscription  Email Us: [e-mail]  Effectively Wild Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  Apple Podcasts Feed   Spotify Feed  YouTube Playlist  Facebook Group  Bluesky Account  Twitter Account  Get Our Merch! var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source

Hello and welcome to episode 2535 of Effectively Wild, a baseball podcast from Fangraphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of the Ringer, joined by Meg Raleigh of FanGraphs. Hello, Meg. Hello. Well, last time we talked about various players who had suffered injuries on the precipice of the postseason and we're trying to recover from them, prime among them being Alex Bregman. and Bregman, of course, got hit by a baseball off the bat of Michael Bush, a foul ball while he was standing in front of the on-deck circle. And he reappeared around the team and made comments. And it looks like the prognosis is pretty good, actually, that there's a very good chance that he will be able to play in the wild card round.

Yeah. And the swelling came down. He was sporting a pretty nice shiner, for sure. And he might have to wear some sort of protective equipment. but at least his eye was open and visible, and that was an improvement from the original photos that he had shared. But Patreon supporter Matt wrote in to alert us to how Bregman described getting hit. And he said that Bregman's quote about this had been stuck in his head for half an hour,

and it's been stuck in my head ever since Matt emailed us about it. Here's what Bregman said. I don't know. I kind of just looked. look down and I feel like I got hit by a baseball bat to the face pretty much. Which was a very funny way to describe it because, of course, he literally got hit by a baseball to the face. So the fact that he felt the need to liken it to getting hit by a baseball bat, I'm just kind of confused by because we all saw what happens. And couldn't he have just felt

like he got hit by a baseball to the face, which is actually what happened? Did he have to comp it to another kind of baseball equipment? It was a curious choice. It's interesting to me. I mean, okay, I'm about to attribute a lot more thought to this than is likely true of a man who has as much tape and weird stuff on his face as Alex Bregman does right now. Do you see the picture of him arriving at Wrigley Field today? Yeah. With tape on it. Former fancrafts editor, John Taylor, said he looks like every Nissan Ultima bumper. Just been held on there by tape and, you know, hope. That's my editorializing at the end.

So it's interesting because a baseball bat, well, first of all, there's like an aggression to that analogy that is obviously absent from this proceeding, right? Like, it wasn't even like he got hit by a pitch as the batter, right? Like, he was just in a goofy place and had, you know, suffered from an unfortunate foul ball. But there's like an aggression to it, right? Like, if someone takes a baseball bat to you, like, you're in a bad fight that you're going to lose, right? That's like attempted murder. Whereas, like, so that to me feels like it's about a blunt force. as opposed to getting hit by a baseball, which is what actually happened,

which is all about like speed and misfortune. And so I do kind of take the point of it because, and again, I'm sure I'm ascribing like intent and meaning to what he's saying that maybe isn't there. But, you know, like getting hit in the face with a baseball bat, that's like, again, more like forceful and directed. And I think that people would assume, even though presumably like the force you're able to generate when swinging a bat wouldn't necessarily be greater than like the force of like the projectile that is a baseball. You know what I mean? Yeah. I don't know that they're actually quite different.

Yeah, I guess it's a force equals mass times acceleration kind of calculation. But I guess, you know, because a bat is is bigger and heavier. and has more mass than a baseball. Yes. And even if you're not... Thank you for landing the plane for me. That's what I was driving at. It's like you feel like a bigger thing has hit you.

Yeah, I think you could do more damage with a baseball bat than with a baseball. Like, you know, a bat is an actual weapon that people use. Right. You don't, you don't like, you know, keep a baseball under the bed in case a burglar comes in the middle of the night. What if you're Randy Jotson? Yeah. then maybe you should, right?

Then do you just assume, like, I'm going to, I'm going to wail on this guy from a distance? You know, that is the advantage of the baseball as a weapon. You can affect injury at a greater distance. If you're doing the bat, you kind of have to, like, get up on the guy, you know? Yeah, you don't have to have as good command. You don't have to have experience swinging a bat in a game necessarily to hit someone with a bat, you know, a baseball, because it's small. if it does damage, then it does a lot of damage. But it's very easy to miss as well,

which is why we don't just kind of keep baseballs lying around as a protective mechanism. So I get what he means. Plus, I guess a bad is harder. Even a wooden bat is harder than a ball. There's a little less give to it. So I do know what he means. I guess he was saying it felt even worse

than you would think that a baseball impact alone would feel. But it is funny because he's like, How can I describe this to people so that they will understand what this was like? Everyone who just saw it happen on video and does fully understand what it was. It wasn't like getting hit by a baseball. I was getting hit by a baseball bat. But, yeah, I mean, baseballs can kill people. Baseballs have killed people, you know?

And so that alone, I mean, I got hit by a baseball in the face, specifically the nose, and it broke my nose. And I didn't say, boy, it felt like my nose. It felt like I got hit by a baseball bat to the nose. I just said, no, it felt like I got hit by a baseball. And that is actually what happens. That's what you got hit by. Yeah.

And it took a bad hop off a tree branch in the park. And that was that. So, yeah, maybe it's just, you know, he was trying to come up with some analogy or some kind of comp. And he's a baseball player. And so. Right. This is really bad, you guys. Like, don't.

Don't. Just escalate to a different kind of baseball entry that might have been, even where. but this was bad enough. Anyway, that was amusing to me, and I wish him well. And to be clear, I agree. It's very funny, you know? Because you're just like, but you got hit by an implement already. Right.

If you wanted to like it to something, you would have to go further a field or not on the fields. You know, it's like I get hit by a train or something, right? But just to go from baseball to baseball bat, it's like, was that really necessary? We're still in the baseball realm. We didn't even really leave the vicinity of the on-deck circle here. You were holding a bat. Like, what can I like in this too?

Well, what else was I holding at the time? Ah, yes, a baseball bat. Yes. No, to be clear, very funny. A thing seemingly designed to drive all of us insane, candidly. but also I do kind of get I get what he's going for it's just um his face still looks so f***ed up man you know I I agree with you that it's better but the way that the tape is sort of like spider webbing out he just he just he just looks he looks like his his head is being

held on to his neck by yeah by the tape you know it looks like he you know like the um like that spooky story about the lady and there's a ribbon tied around her neck and then if you want to tie the right, that falls off. Yeah, it's sort of like that but with like a more discrete pivot point to the

destabilization. And his eye is still messed up, man. And like the tape part of the problem is like and we will link to this photo because I'm not doing it justice in our auditory medium here. But

there's the tape that's like on his face, right? There are three little, there's like three little prongs of tape that are sticking up from his neck onto his face. But then if you go, if you look further down to like the collar of his quarter sip, I really like this jacket he's working with. You got more of a,

there's a lot of like pockets though and zippers. I don't know, because he's got the, are men wearing these pants again? These pants with the cargo pockets? I don't know. I'm the wrong person. to ask. I am a man, but my pants are not a fashion. Not really responding to the latest trends in pants wearing. The universal concern is the

sweat pants or the pajama pant as far as I'm concerned. That's right. Your team soft pants. So anyway, if you look down from his face to where his quarters, little quarter zip collar is, you can see an additional three little prongs of tape sticking up, suggesting that there is tape descending down through the shoulder and like onto his clavicle maybe. And I don't mean to suggest that like Bregman's injury is different than what we understand it to be. Again, hard to lie about.

Look at his f***ed up face. You know, it's hard to lie. But also the way that they have taped him does make it seem like they are holding his head onto his body with tape. You know, maybe it's just that we're about to enter the spooky season. And so I'm... Yeah, no, you really brought me back with that comp to the green ribbon, I think that story was called. And it was in this collection of short stories and scary stories in a dark, dark room and other scary stories.

Yeah, yeah. They were very scary stories. They were very scary. They were very scary. Yeah. Yeah, I was like, how tight was that ribbon tied that it was keeping her all together there? Like, that seems like a really tight ribbon. People have been suggesting that Bregman has the opportunity to debut some sort of face mask.

And he could do that Dave Parker from the late 70s when he came back wearing the hockey style mask looking like Michael Myers or something. And then I think he switched to more of a football style mask because it was restricting his view. So he probably shouldn't do that. But no, it appears that he'll be okay. But those facial injuries, I mean, there's a lot of bleeding with scalp wounds and a lot of bruising, sensitive areas. You got a bunch of bones in there. Yeah, when I dropped that table on my head, it was bruised for, I don't know, weeks. So even after it stopped bleeding and hurting.

When I got my wisdom tooth pulled earlier this summer, like, they really had to wrench it out of there. And I had a bruise on the side of my face for like the better part of two weeks. And it was great because I was like, oh, good, what an awesome time to have to go to the combine. You know, I just looked like kind of fight. because I had this bruise. I said I was going to wait until this weekend to put up Halloween decorations, and I didn't, Ben, they're up now. You're so eager when it comes to the spooky season, I know.

I love Halloween. You showed great restraint even waiting this long, I suppose. Me too. The plot has thickened, really, when it comes to the judge situation, too, because all these three situations that we talked about on Tuesday, there have been further developments in all of them. We just discussed Bragman's. Shohei Watani returned on Wednesday and went one for four

also had a deep fly ball to center that Joe Davis got a little bit over-excited about. But yeah, he was very hand. Like you with Halloween, but, you know, a majestic fly-out if there is such a thing, according to Joe Davis. But the update with Aaron Judge is that the errands are still working at cross-purposes here because Aaron Boone said that he was not planning on having Aaron Judge available for the wild card round, which is not the same as saying he couldn't play or that he would be ruled out

or anything, but just they're not planning on having him back. I'm not expecting it, he said, but I'm not ruling it out either. And as we noted, he did describe the calf strain as a moderate grade strain. But then when the reporters went back to the other Aaron, the one with the calf strain, he sort of sang a different tune a little bit and even appeared to question Boone's comments a little bit because the moderate phrasing was quoted back to him. Yesterday, Boone said that it was a moderate calf strain. Usually that takes several weeks to recover from it.

And your opinion, is it realistic to be ready by Tuesday? everybody's moderate's a little different. I think your moderate's a little different than my moderate and so on and so on. So I don't know why I use those words, but like I said, I'm trying to come back as soon as I can. And I watched the video and he looked like he was not thrilled. It's hard to read facial expressions, even if you don't have multiple facial bones broken like Alex Breggman. But he didn't seem pleased. He did then walk it back a bit a moment later.

Are you upset that Boone Tip called it moderate or called you more like suggested it was unlikely? You'd be able to play in this series? Booney's my guy, you know, so I always got his back. I know he makes the right decision. So, you know, obviously as a player, you don't want to hear that. But that's out of my control. I got a job. I got to come back and be ready to go.

And that's what I'm focused on right now. Part of this is just a product of there are a lot of, reporters covering the Yankees. Sure. Aaron Judge is a big story, and his availability is pretty important. And so people keep asking him, and they keep asking Boone. And we talked about how they were kind of tiptoeing around saying anything initially. And so maybe there's a little bit of an attempt to drum up controversy, or at least how many times can

you keep asking someone something, given that they just might not know. But initially, of course, they were sort of denying that they'd just. knew the severity and everything, which was pretty tough to swallow. So I think what's happening here, it seems like they should probably get on the same page a little bit. I mean, if judge is saying, I don't know why he used those words about moderate, it's probably because it is a moderate calf strain. It's probably because those words were accurate, I'm guessing. And so maybe what judge is essentially saying is, I don't know why he divulged anything because we were kind of. of there was an omerta going on here that we just agreed that we weren't going to say anything,

maybe. But then you're sort of damned if you do, damned if you don't, because if you just keep stonewalling and acting as if you have no idea about the severity of the strain, then people are going to keep asking you about that. Ultimately, I think when everyone went back to the initial Aaron to ask about the second Aaron's response to the first Aaron, it's like, you know, one of the many Apple TV sci-fi series I watch that no one else does is Dark Matter, which is all about the multiverse, and you have different versions of the same person and different realities. And so when you're describing the show,

it becomes complicated because you have to say, well, this is Jason 1 and that's Jason 2 from the other reality, and sometimes they cross streams. And so here we have Aaron 1 and Aaron 2. Aaron 1 is Aaron Boone. Aaron 2 is Aaron Judge. I could just say Boone and Judge. I was just going to say you just didn't want to They are different errands. That would have been simpler. Yeah. But Putin finally tried to shut it down by saying, I'm not even going to get into the speculation game now.

He'll be in there or not. We'll see. Which. Look, look, you finish your thought and then I'll go. I was going to say, it's not that different from how we closed our discussion of this on the previous pod where we were just like, well, we'll all know in a week or so because they'll have to submit the rosters and the lineups. And he either.

Be in the lineup or not. Right. But because a lot of this is just, well, we have to see how he heals. So that's part of it. Like he's trying to come back. He's trying to respond. So if he's so severely injured that really he would be going against medical advice if he did return. And it's not even like, well, let's wait and see and how he feels and everything.

If they know, okay, he probably shouldn't be playing. But maybe he will anyway. because he's Aaron Judge and he also, he talks a big game about always wanting to be in there, which I think that came up when we talked about his previous return because he had been saying, you know, I always want to be in there, right? Like he would never allow that there was a day when he didn't want to be playing. So in some sense it's just a continuation of his usual line, which is, yeah, I want to be in there. I hope to be in there. I expect to be in there, which is like a little bit of eyewash, although maybe he means it too. I don't know if he's trying to set himself up for some heroic, miraculous return here.

You know, he's going to be pulling a Kirk Gibson or something, if that's what he's going for, if he wants to be burnishing his legend, or if he is just one of those players who it's really tough to talk them out of playing, even when they shouldn't. Okay. So, first of all, on the one hand, Aaron Judge, I'm just going to use their full name. Yes, please do. What are you talking about, like, people's debt? I suppose that moderate probably exists on a spectrum to some degree, right?

Like there might be a little bit of a range that is moderate versus not. But also, what are you talking about, man? Like this is like an understood medical term, you know, that people have. Precisely. There are numbers attached to the grades typically. Right. Right. Typically.

And we haven't gotten one of those in this instance, have we? So that's sort of interesting, I suppose. But so on the one hand, that's ridiculous. And I think that the judge feels perhaps the pressure of being the captain, you know, and that that comes with an expectation of hustle, of grit, of not only real want to use an annoying baseball term, but demonstrated want, right? Like you have to be restrained from being on the field. you're willing to jeopardize yourself in order to play because those are your obligations as the captain. So there's that piece of it that I imagine is at play for him.

But also, I have to admit that I'm enjoying this very much because he is so boring. And they are painfully stayed as an organization, right? And I think it's just a good reminder that inside every big tall captain of a man is a messy bitch who lives for drama. Right? Like that's what he's like he's the real housewives of the New York Yankees. You know, this is like such. Yes. Such such busy business that he's engaged in. I'm sure he isn't thinking of it that way. And I'm sure he would resent the comparison. But I think it's a good one. I think it's apt. And I like it because I'm not a Yankees fan. So I don't care. I mean, I want, I would prefer to watch a 2026 postseason that involves. a healthy, fully operational, Aaron Judge, because when that guy is at the sort of peak of his powers, whatever failures there may have been in postseason's past, like, it's a site to see. And they're a better, more competitive team that way.

And the American League has been defined by, I don't even think we can call it mid anymore. The American League aspires to mid at this point, right? Like before we got on, I was telling you, and this isn't going to happen. I'm not delusional. I understand what would need to transpire in order for Seattle Marish to make the postseason. I don't want that to happen. Free me from, you know that part in aliens where the Marines go to the ship and the colonists are there? And it doesn't want to the colonists who has like a has one of the like face huger guy,

like one of the guys has gone in and gestated and it's going to chest burst. and she's like, kill me. That's how I felt watching the Mariners last night, Ben. I was just put me on my freaking misery. And then I turned it off and missed them rallying against Josh Hader. So shame on me for my lack of faith, I suppose. But I think that's just taking prior experience and incorporating it into your decision-making. Anyway, the American League is really bad this year.

It's not even just made. It's bad. And so I want Judge to be able to play. And I want him to, like, resemble his. himself. But also, there's a lot of fun, because it's just like, you guys, how are you? You have the same first name. Can't you communicate better with each other?

Are you all so confused about who you are? Yeah, you'd think it doesn't make it look great when it appears that Judge is undercutting Boone or that Boone is wary of what he can say because he fears Judge's displeasure. And obviously, there are always sort of different rules surrounding superstars, especially if you are judge, you're the face of the franchise, you're the captain, you've got the long-term deal, you've been the best player in baseball when healthy, and the team has played better with you than without you generally. So obviously they want him and they need him, but it does feel like they just have to tiptoe around him every time he's hurt because he hates to say anything or ever express any negativity or any time frame estimate or anything.

And so the normal rules don't apply. but it does feel like they could have just nipped all of this in the bud by just maybe sharing what the diagnosis was more or less or saying like I really want to be out there and we'll just see how it responds. I have a moderate strain. Yeah. We're seeing how it responds to both rehab and activity. I can't wait to be back out there with my guys.

And I hope that I'm in a position to help the Yankees win a World Series. There. I did it. And Aaron Boone can go, yep. And that's that. But instead, they're like, I'm going to throw a glass of Chardonnay at you at a fancy restaurant. Yeah, they've stricent affected themselves. Great PR media training that you have just imparted there to all of them.

Yeah. And it does matter. Of course, they were asking him, well, can you DH? Do you want to play right field? Of course, he said he wants to play right field. And it actually would help roster-wise if he could because they have other guys coming back. they have Grisham and Stanton. Speaking of calf strains, he's strained both of them, but he appears to be just about ready to return.

And I saw actual proof of life video of Stanton jogging on the field and not hurting himself, at least in that instant. And so I have, you know, he hasn't played since late April. So I can absolutely envision some Stanton October plate appearances, not having faced anything more than a trajectory machine since April where he's swinging at pitches in the other batters box. Like that is very foreseeable. But on the other hand, he has been a postseason hero and given some of the other options. I don't know. So, I mean, he'd be a bench guy.

But things get crowded. If judge can hit but not play the field, then how do you actually fit all these guys in there? So anyway, we will soon enough. I think they definitely should just engineer the entire roster around the possibility of, of junk Carl's Dan returning because what's that a football for me to kick loosey? I don't mean to sound cavalier about it. I just, I think that, again, we should be realistic about these things. And it would be nice for them to be able to have that guy's bat in the lineup if he is sound

and able to hit well. But it's just been so long. You can't really plan around that at all. So among the things that I'm watching here over the last few days of the regular season and the final weekend, of course, Yes, there are still playoff seating considerations. There are still some teams that are technically in it that are long shots but not eliminated yet, at least as we record here on Thursday by the time people hear this.

There may be a few other teams that have bitten the dust, but they're still stubbornly hanging on there. But there are some other things I'm watching too. I want to know whether the Angels will lose 100 games for the first time in franchise history. It has never happened. And they are sitting now at 98 losses. They're 60 and 98. And they are, in fact, playing your Mariners for the final four games of the season. So easy assignment for Seattle, in theory.

But that's what we said about this entire season. I mean, it works either way, really. It works either way. It's a lot of. Yeah. So we'll see. Because the Rockies who have done a lot of losing lately to. undo a lot of the progress that they made earlier in the season.

They're sitting at 57 and 101 now, so they made some history. I think they're the fifth team to lose 100, four years in a row, and that they were the first to do it, I think, since the expansion met. There were some other not-so-fun facts about that, but at least 101 losses is a lot better than 119 from last year, so progress. Yeah, so watching the Angels, watching to see whether PCA can catch Yordon when it comes to leading the league in offensive value, according to fan graphs. Yordaan had a big game on Wednesday, and that became a little bit harder for PCA, who did steal his 40th base as so we're recording.

Yeah, so he is now a member of the 4040 club, but yeah, somewhat in jeopardy whether he can actually pull off that two-way feat of leading the league in offensive and defensive. value. And obviously, Yordon still has a shot at the Triple Crown, though that's sort of an outside shot now. But in addition to those things, of course, I am riveted by the AL West battle, slap fight. I don't know what you can call it exactly. I think you should call it a slap fight to continue with our Real Housewives theme, a show that I don't watch. I want to correct myself, they did not credit him with a second Strollin Basin. It was just the one. So he sits at for me. My mistake. I don't know what I'm rooting for here because we're recording Thursday afternoon.

The Astros and the Rangers are sitting on 78 and 80 records. And the Astros hold the tiebreaker over the Rangers. And I just don't know what I'm rooting for because I don't like the idea of a losing playoff team. That feels distinctively on baseball because it's never happened in a full season. and so I don't really want to see it happen. But then part of me kind of does because it just feels emblematic of this season. It just feels fitting.

At this point, it's quite likely that whichever one of them wins, and it's not all sewn up yet, but it's probably AL West or bust for these two teams now. There are still wild card scenarios out there, but pretty much they better win the AOS if they want to make it to October. and it's likely now that it will be 500 or below. One of them could still emerge with a winning record, albeit barely. So I don't know what I should be rooting for here. Should I just be rooting for a lose-off where it's just, you know, they just continue to lose and end up tied and terrible.

Because it's not as if anything will change probably. I don't, it's not, you know, sometimes it's like, you could be an accelerationist about it or something. You could be like, well, I want them to change the format or reduce the number of teams in the playoff field. So it'll be a bad look for baseball if a really lousy team gets in. And so maybe it would behoove me for a bad team to win so that this causes an outcry and then MLB is forced to change something. I don't really think that's realistic. So I think we're probably stuck with the system more or less.

And so do I want to just say, screw it? let's just see how bad they can be, how low can they go? Or do I want one of them to actually finish strong here and manage to salvage a winning record and be only as bad as, say, the 2005 Padres who were 82 and 80? Part of my answer to that depends on what do I think the best outcome is when that team gets there, right? Because there's an argument to be made that you should just be rooting for the best. whichever of those two rosters you think is the best and can actually, like, show reasonably well to advance, because then the playoff baseball we get is theoretically the best version of it we have.

Part of me, though, is like, well, no, you should, you should hope that whatever team makes it is lousy and then gets bounced, so that there are consequences to them having been, like, a bad team that sort of, you know, just stumbled in by virtue of the fact that someone, from the AOS has to make an appearance in October. Or you could embrace the chaos one, which is you want the worst team to get in and then win the World Series. Do I think that that happening would have any actual impact

on the upcoming labor situation? No, because I think that ownership's just going to make whatever arguments they make because they're fundamentally sort of disingenuous to begin with. But if you have a loo- like a team with a losing record, get in

and win, well, then doesn't it just further underscore that the playoffs are something of a crapshoot and that, you know, you can well, but you want teams to want to be good. So it's a real conundrum, right?

Yeah. You should want to be good. You don't want them to get in there and then win. You'd be like, oh, it's random. So we are guaranteed some amount of competitive balance. but then you don't want that to happen because you want the teams

that have invested in their rosters and are committed to winning to be the ones that are rewarded. Maybe I'm reading for Cleveland. Maybe I think that's the most labor-neutral outcome in terms of the impact on the negotiations. Again, I don't think it really matters.

Because then you can be like, well, a small market team, Cleveland or Milwaukee, I guess either of those fit down. Or Tampa. We're lousy with options is the thing about it. I don't really have to use that as a barometer for my individual rooting interests. The only thing I'm rooting for is for one of those two teams to win one more game.

You just we just do one more. Just do one more. Because then I don't have to watch this dumb Mariners team. Stupid. I hate them. Yes. Maybe they will spare you from having to watch technically meaningful Mariners baseball. by winning by the time people hear this.

It would be really funny if the Mariners made the postseason and then just the entire time my bit was that I was rooting for them to lose. Yeah. The thing about the Guardians, the Reyes, the Brewers, you can root for them putting aside any labor considerations, just fan bases and who deserves to win a World Series and who's due all of those teams either they've never won one or they haven't won one since 1948.

And that doesn't really apply. in the Rangers and Astros situation because they have one recently. Of course, the Rangers hadn't won prior to that. So in a larger sense, maybe they're more due. But yeah, it's not even that you can say, well, who has the longest drought or who deserves it carmically or something? Eh, not a huge difference there. Whereas the Mariners, you could say, yeah, they probably should at least win a pennant

one of these years. It's probably their time to do that. But I don't know. I guess I'm kind of rooting for just be as bad as possible, just because this is how I will remember this season, or it was one of the major storylines of the season, just how mediocre or worse these playoff contenders were, especially in the American League.

And what better monument to the 2026A.L. than to have either a 500 or an actual losing team win a division in a full season. It is fitting, I suppose, that we would have that sort of thing happen. But I don't know. Like, you just, you want the playoffs to be good, you know? You want them to be good. And I don't know that I necessarily really care which teams contribute to that general sense of them being good. I don't know.

Like, once your individual rooting interests are out or my individual rooting. interest throughout. The hierarchy for me is like I want the month to feature good enjoyable baseball. Secondarily to that, my preference would be that someone, that one of the teams that employs a former Fangraph's employee wins

the World Series so that they get a ring. And by extension, we get a ring. But beyond that, I don't really much care. I'm going to be watching no matter what, right? So like market size, whatever. It doesn't matter to me. I know that the league would prefer

that we just get Yankees Dodgers. Like that's or, or I think they would also allow for Red Sox Dodgers. I think that that would delight them to an equal degree. They'd probably accept Cubs. You can squeeze Cubs in there maybe. Sure. Sure. Yeah, their options in the NL are much better, just sort of across the board.

Yeah, man, that ails bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad, bad. Yeah. But does team quality correlate to postseason quality? Not necessarily. Sometimes. Right? Sometimes it does, but sometimes the team can get hot and go on a run and they turn out to be the most entertaining team of October, even if they weren't necessarily the best all regular season long. So, okay, I think I'm resolved to root against both the Astros and the Rangers, though with some reservations, just about the entire playoff field and format.

By the way, we talked last time about Paul Skeens and his comments about the WBC. and I just saw the piece that Dan Soporsky published for Fancrafts, which I'm sure you're aware of as the editor-in-chief of Fancrafts. And he took a more rigorous look at how WPC players performed versus their projections, pitchers and hitters, pitchers exclusively, and it looks like there's nothing there. So it doesn't mean that Skeens himself could not have been impaired in some way by the ramp-up. But the larger sample of...

players and even just pitchers. No, they haven't been off their projections by more than anyone else in any kind of statistically significant way. Yeah. Okay. The other thing, though, that my rooting interest here in the waning days of the regular season, which is sort of similar in a way to the which one of these teams will be worse, I'm now invested in the Justin Verlander versus Max Scherzer career strikeouts race.

Yeah. It seems like there's like a little bit of a grudge match. Yeah, did they not like each other? Did we know that? I don't know. There's a little healthy rivalry maybe. I don't know. You know, former teammates, obviously, a couple of the defining pitchers of their generation.

But it would appear that maybe Max is a little motivated by the idea of catching Verlander. So as we noted last time, Verlander is returning for one last round. he's going to start Saturday and he'll be honored by the Tigers and he hasn't pitched in months and months. And it's not like he's ramped up or done a rehab assignment or anything like that. So no one knows how long he can go. But he himself said that he plans to pitch until his arm falls off,

which he probably shouldn't literally do, but might as well throw some caution to the wins when it's your last ever career game. He said, if I can make it to 100 pitches, I'm going to do it. I kind of doubt that he can't. I mean, he could. I guess it's up to A.J. Hinch and how long he wants to leave him out there. He probably physically could, but how hard will he have been hit by that point?

But it sounds like they're not envisioning this as just a cameo and just sort of, oh, we'll get one inning of work in and we'll take a bow and get a curtain call and that'll be that. He is treating it like a real start. We'll see what his stuff looks like. but Scherzer, who pitched on Wednesday as the Blue Jays got eliminated, and the Blue Jays and the Orioles were facing each other, and there was a possibility that they could mutually eliminate if they split that doubleheader. They each would eliminate the other from playoff consideration,

but then that didn't happen. The Orioles swept the doubleheader and actually won both of those games four to two. But Scher, he took the loss in that loss, but he pitched okay, and he got seven strikes. And now he's just four behind Verlander on the all-time strikeouts list. And so there is a possibility that Scherzer could come back on short rest on Sunday to try to claim or reclaim. So Verlander has 3,554 strikeouts. Scher has 3550.

And we'll see whether Verlander has bat missing stuff and whether he can add to that. total. But if Scherzer's within range, it sounds like he is willing and that maybe the Jays are willing to let him do this too, to come back. Like they're eighth and ninth on the all-time strikeout Sleaderboard. And I just, I kind of love the idea that like these two old guys at the end of their rope are just like, I want to end up one strikeout ahead of my rival. So that would be, I would enjoy that very much. Say, save Rolander gets sick. couple Ks on Saturday. And he's sitting, say, a handful, several strikeouts ahead of Scher.

And Scherzer tries to come back on Sunday. It's just to accumulate strikeouts to just top Verlender semi spitefully on the last day of the season and possibly the last day of their careers. That would amuse me. Well, and he said, too, that he would sort of, it sounds like he's going to announce that he's retiring at the end of this weekend, right? Like he said something to the effect of, I'll have something to say, you know. Yeah, he did.

He announced that he would have an announcement of some sort. But I don't know. Because he's pitched fairly effectively lately. As we noted, he kind of turned a season around. It's not like he's been great, but he's been playable. And earlier this season, it got sort of sad because he just, his body wouldn't cooperate and couldn't stay healthy. and he was getting knocked out early. And since he returned in late July,

he had that one first start back that was abbreviated. But since then, since the start of August, he's actually been, you know, decent. He's made all his start. He's pitched 10 games. He has a 4.13 FIP. Like he's, you know, serviceable. And he's gone at least five in every start.

except one. He went seven one time. I mean, it was more than I expected from him as sort of a last gasp. And so given his competitive juices still seemed to be flowing, I wouldn't be shocked if he said maybe I have more in me. I don't know whether he would find a taker. I'm sure if he was willing to just have a minor league deal or just a really low dollar one-year deal, just some team take a chance on him. And maybe if he even just came out of the bullpen or something, I could imagine. and him maybe being effective if he were healthy, but on a low-risk deal, possibly. And if he's really competitive,

if there is some kind of grudge here, then I guess he could say, well, I want to have the spotlight at Cooperstown to myself, and then you'd have three years in a row where it was Kershaw and then Verlander and then Scherzer, if they retired one after the other. Otherwise, he'll have to share that stage with Verlander, and maybe they'll have to one-up each other,

there's acceptance speeches or induction speeches or something. It's like they're both so old. It's like they're like the mandelbaum on Seinfeld or something. They're like, mandelbaum, mandelbaum. I'm like, I still got it. I could still miss bats. Are you think you're better than me? Go ahead.

Pick out anything in the room here. I'll lift it up over my head. No one is lifting anything. The television. Well, for you, Pop, it's go time. Oh, my back. Why didn't anybody tell me? It was bolded down.

I still thought you could do it. Me too. Men, man, man. We don't have to be referring to them as so old. I know. Yes, they're not much older than we are, but they are crucially older than we are, which does make them old by active player standards. Yes, it does make them all by active player standards.

I'm just fascinated. Like, I think the likely explanation is just, unless there's, you know, longstanding known sort of beef between those guys that I've just missed this whole time, that they have a competitive, you know, sort of mutual thing and that it's nothing more. But is it just that? Or is their, this is just like the drama episode. This is an episode filled with. with drama. If I were them, I would want to stagger.

I think it would be so fun to have three years in a row where we have sort of these era-defining pictures going in, boom, boom, especially because who knows how long it'll be until we have another starter after those guys go in. So spread it out, you know, spread it out over three inductions so that we can enjoy it a little bit. And maybe it's better to get it all out of the way.

So we only have to do one cycle of like, what does it mean the starting picture standards? What will it be? I'm kidding. We're going to fret over that regardless. Of course. I don't know. It was like a, I saw the comments and I was like, oh, do you guys?

Yeah, a little catty. Yeah. No, I think it's maybe because Verlander came up first. And of course, Scherzer was initially with the Diamondbacks and then joined the Tigers. and Verlander had been with the Tigers and was their ace by that point. And so I think, yeah, a little competitive rivalry. I think they were asked about this later

and there was some reporting on it and they talked about how, yeah, they had been competitive and sometimes critical and kind of intense. Okay, Dave Dombrovsky said in 2023, let's say they budded heads. It was never a bad budding. you wouldn't want a bad budding.

It would be more from a competitive perspective, which isn't always bad. Okay, you pitched, now I'm going to be better than you, which evidently is still the dynamic after 20 years or whatever, which is great. And Dumbrovsky said, I don't think they were two who went out a lot with one or another, that type of social friendly situation. I'd say the competitive aspect is the way to describe it. They were not the best of buddies, but I didn't have any problems with them. So, yeah.

I feel like Dave is revealing more than he maybe means to in that set of comments. I wonder if it was like a political thing or something. I don't know. That's interesting. Yeah, it sounds like it was a little feisty. Yeah. So, okay, Gerald Laird, who caught both of them, said, Scherzer and JV were real big drama queens.

It was always an argument. Not an argument, but they would always get at each other's throats in the clubhouse. But I loved it because they pushed each other and, push each other to the point where now you're seeing two Hall of Famers. And Alex Avila said, obviously, two type A personalities. There were times not all of us got along at the same time. So, yeah, a little friction there. They both wanted to be the guy.

They both wanted to be number one and they couldn't both be number one. And now they both want to be number eight, I guess, maybe on the all-time strikeouts later portion. And that's the part of it, ultimately, that I find so funny. I mean, I appreciate that it is. an accomplishment regardless. They're both already so accomplished. So in some respects, I suppose this doesn't matter.

But it's not like the spot he's displacing him from is like number one. You're getting all amps so that you can be number eight, which again, very impressive. I don't mean to diminish it, but it is kind of a funny thing. I will say this

and I don't want to jinx anybody, but that's not real. So it doesn't matter. I can't imagine. I can't imagine many things worse than being so gung-ho and competitive in your final professional start that you blow out and then have to do some amount of rehab, but just like as a guy, you know, as a normal guy, a normal guy with tremendous resources, don't get me wrong, but a normal guy without the motivation, the pull of the potential for a ring. If you come back, It's just like, oh, now I have to like rehab while I'm at home with my kids.

That sounds terrible. So just everybody, you know, don't, don't mess up the next 18 months of your life by being a little too competitive for number eight. You can't, you're not going to be number one, you know? That's not an offer. So it's okay. No. Yeah. But I love that just to the last minute, they're still squabbling.

They're still competing. And they were asked about this when they reunited on the Met. in 2020, they were asked about whether they had gotten along in Detroit and whether they would get along then. And Scher said, we're at a different stage of our careers and more important, we're at a different stage of our lives. Things will definitely be different now. I really don't see that being an issue whatsoever.

But still a little bit, still a little bit of unresolved, something or other. It's probably just that they are really both competitive and super successful. And they've had very. comparably accomplished legendary careers. Sure. Yeah. And that's why I wouldn't be shocked if Scherer does try to outlast Verlender and just say, I'm coming back for one more year. Because Verlander is a little older and he's had a slightly longer career as well.

But maybe if Max can get the last word and the last laugh just by hanging on for one more year and racking up a few more strikeouts out of spite. I love low-stakes spite. I love just, you know, not like real bad bloods. Sure. No one's getting hurt, but just petty spite I quite enjoy. And this would fall into that category. Yeah, to be clear, I am also a certain amount of messy or an enjoyer of drama.

I don't like to participate in drama. I like to observe drama, you know? Yeah. I don't want to be messy. Subskeet about it from time to time. I don't know what you're talking about. I'm subskeeting subskeets. Not anything specific.

The good thing is, is that if you subskete in a way that applies to a lot of people simultaneously, no one's allowed to get mad at you. That's in the rules. No one feels singled out. Or everyone does. Right. But they don't know for sure, you know. And so what are you going to do? Can Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander eke out a few more strikeouts?

Can the Rangers win a game? Can the Astros? These are the exciting stakes of the last few games of the regular season. So get hyped and tune in. The Astros, by the way, have four in West Sacramento beginning on Thursday. And then the Rangers, after they finish their MET series, have a three game set against the twins. So those will be their opponents. Yeah.

All right. Yeah. Okay. While we're talking about starters in unlikely usage patterns, and Max Scherzer possibly starting on short rest or coming out of the pen on the last day of the season, I do also want to shout out again, Sandy Alcantara. I brought this up when you were away last week and saluted Alcantara for coming out of the bullpen to nail down. a game and get a save a couple days after he had started and thrown a hundred-something

pitches. He did it again. He got another save. And also, Yuri Perez did it for the Marlins as well. This is just a Marlins thing. Now, when I talked about it last time, I wasn't sure to what extent it was a Marlins plan or how much it was just Sandy Alcantara being an innings eater and wanting to shoulder that load and the Marlins weren't technically eliminated at that point. And so he was just like put me in

coach. And he was, to be clear, he did say he wanted to do it. But this does appear to be a philosophical shifts. This is something the Marlins are experimenting with. I haven't seen a quote exactly specifying that this is the plan. But it seems to be the idea is that, well, starters have a throw day. They have a bullpen session between their starts. And so instead of having them just throw in the pen, why not get them into a game and not, quote, unquote, waste that inning, though obviously a pen session can be productive as well. But the fact that now Sandy's done it twice and Yuri Perez has done it, a guy who has had injury issues and they've handled him carefully. And so, and for him to do it at this late date, this is, I think, a real thing. I haven't seen an explicit quote saying, well, it was his throw day.

We figured he should get out there, but this is something that the Marlins have been planning. I've seen some allusions to the idea that maybe they've been doing this in their farm system as well. I haven't looked into that closely, but it seems to be maybe an organizational philosophy. And of course, everyone will recall episode 305 of Effectively Wild October 2013. I'm sure that everyone is just instantly summoning to mind the topic of that episode. In fact, we discussed Justin Verlander largely on this episode, Sam and I, so the more things change. But we also did talk about a prediction that I made, which is that I thought that teams would semi-regularly have pitchers throw in-game bullpen sessions sometime in the next 10 years. And Sam doubted it and said that he thought if it were doable or if pitchers would agree to do it, that it would already be happening.

And we followed up on this, oh, on episode 2465 and noted that it didn't come to pass in the 10-year time span that I identified. But it does seem to be happening to some extent now because when we talked about it on 2465, which was this April, Michael Lorenzen had done it. And Lorenzen, you know, he always wants to be out there and he wants to start and he wants to hit and he wanted to relieve. but he did it for the Rockies on April 11th, I think. And now it seems that the Marlins are making a real go of it, and we'll see if this continues next season and if they start doing it with other starters or what. But I did think this was a good idea in 2013,

and I still sort of think it's a good idea. Like what Alcounter is doing here is pretty unprecedented, or at least without recent precedent. I've seen many fun facts swirling, and I cited some the last time. And there just hasn't really been a perfect comp for this kind of usage. Just someone ping-ponging back and forth between having regular starts and then just saving games and then also leading the majors innings and getting saves and coming out of the bullpen at the end of the season. This just this hasn't happened.

It's very much a postseason thing to the extent that it happens at all in modern baseball. We wouldn't bat an eye, really, we still celebrate it when it happens in the postseason. but we're more accustomed to that. And obviously they're usually more off days in the postseason, so it's a little more feasible. But what do you think is this viable? Will we see this catch on? Do you think it makes some sense?

I think that there are circumstances in which it makes sense, right? Like I think someone like I'm very interested in the fact that they have tried it. And not only is it to your point seemingly an organizational philosophy, but that these two guys are guys. that they're willing to. Like, Sandy makes a ton of sense to me. He throws a ton of innings. I know he has also dealt with injuries.

I don't want to be indifferent to that. But, like, if you were going to pick a guy who maybe has a little extra juice in his arms in between starts, like he seems like he'd be one of those guys just based on his existing stamina. They've been so careful with Perez that I'm a little surprised that they're sort of putting him specifically in this position. But I can imagine there being any number of guys where. it would make some amount of sense. The other part of it, though, that is interesting to me

is that, like, I mean, I guess you could, if you're the Marlins theoretically, derail some of the Cubs postseason aspirations, or at least put them in worse wild card seating position, but, like, you don't need to win those games if you're Miami, right? So I would expect that it doesn't, I should say, it's always nice to win a baseball game,

but it doesn't have any impact on whether or not they're going to like be a wildcard team next week, right? So I would imagine that the version of this that we might see if it were to catch on would involve it being tailored to very specific starters where the team maybe has confidence that they don't have like durability concerns with the guy and also that they would save it for moments where it might really make a difference in the course of the team's season. Although maybe if you're one of those teams where it does make a difference, you have a good enough bullpen that you don't need to do this.

So there's that part of it too. Like it does seem like it would require a particular constellation of things. And I think you have guys who are like, I'm a starter. I want to have a starter routine. It's really different to like throw on your throw day and throw in a game situation. Like the stakes of that moment are just different. The way that that washes over, some guys might make it a non-starter for them. you have to imagine that the strain of that session is different than like the strain of game action potentially

because you're not going to put him out there and then be like, yeah, throw it 80%. You're wanting him to pitch or you have someone else to do it, right? So I think there are a lot of considerations and all of those considerations might play a role in why we don't see it more often, but I could certainly imagine a scenario where it makes good sense either because of the composition of the team or the particulars of the player. And as those roles continue to sort of, I don't want to say collapse, that's too dramatic, but become more permeable maybe.

I could imagine it being something that we see more often. Yeah. And there were some extenuating circumstances. I think the first time Sandy did it, it was immediately after a game where Marlins had emptied out their pen because it was an 11-in-ing game. Yeah, it was 11 innings and the starter went three, so they end up using eight pitchers, so that was part of it.

I think the game Perez pitched in, I think it ended up going 12, but he actually pitched in the 8th. So it's not the same every time, and I don't think it'll be so routine. I doubt that there are starters who will do it every single time it's their turn through. For one thing, the game situation might not call for it. But at least you might be on the list. You might be available if needed, and I think that could become, more common. And the Marlins, they do seem to be approaching things from a sort of out-of-the-box

perspective. And I have bemoaned that when it comes to their calling pitches from the dugout. I haven't questioned the efficacy. I think that's probably smart. Also, it's just that I don't like it as much. This time I like it because they're making me look prescient because I predicted that this would happen years ago. To be clear, I don't think I was the first person ever to say that this could or should happen. And also, it used to. to happen in an earlier era of baseball when rotations were more amorphous and the schedules were more malleable and you would sort of rejigger them on the fly and sometimes you would have starters come in in relief and it wasn't that weird so it was more saying well this should come back

because things have gotten so rigid. I think there could be a downside in that maybe it's extra strain, maybe there is some cost to it. Also, bullpen sessions can be, you see, you see, you because pitchers use them to work on things in a non-game setting. And so sometimes it's just about keeping your arm strength up and getting your exercise and your work in. But sometimes you go in with a goal and you say, oh, something's out of whack or I haven't liked how this has been happening lately. And then you work on that one thing.

And so if you're in an actual high leverage game situation, then you can't necessarily experiment the way that you would have in a bullpen session. But I do think that it's kind of low-hanging. fruit. It's just, hey, this guy's throwing anyway. If he's a starter, probably he projects to be decent out of the pen might as well. I think the fact that teams are finally trying it maybe also is part and parcel with other things we've talked about recently. I talked about the resurgence of the three-inning save and stat blasted about that. I think I'm going to write about that as well. That and also peak position player pitcher and to some degree a coming.

back in multi-inning relief outings, I think there just aren't enough arms to go around, even though pitch design and player development have improved, and it seems like there's just an endless succession of fastball slider monsters out there, even if there are, they throw an inning at a time typically, and they don't work on back-to-back days often. We're, you know, at or near a low when it comes to just the number of outings on zero-day's rest. Like, often relievers are unavailable on days when they just wouldn't have been before. You know, it wasn't that big a deal to work three days in a row, four days in a row, or games in a row.

Now that doesn't happen, really, unless it's the postseason, which I guess is part of the general wariness about injuries, part of the well, max effort pitching requires more recovery. I don't know. But however you slice it, I think teams are really looking for just trying to get as many. as they can out of mop-up men or low-leverage arms or position player pitchers, non-pitchers. You know, if someone can finish off a game and get a three-inning save, might as well do that. There's less cachet associated with saves, but also I think teams are just trying to stretch it. Like, they're having a tough time because starters are not going as deep into games. They're starting less frequently.

I mean, it used to be the norm to start on four days rest, and now that's increasingly uncommon. having fewer starts and also typically not going as deep in them. And so the innings have to come from somewhere. There are just as many innings as ever, with the exception of maybe fewer in extras because of the zombie runner, but that's about it. So I think, you know, with even as many pitchers as there are in bullpens these days, and I know there is a limit, but it's not a strict limit, I think that teams are trying to stretch with certain guys and that this could be a mechanism to do that if you could just pick up even, I don't know, 10 or 20 innings or something of quality relief over the course of a season by just having certain guys who are designated to do this when the situation

calls for it and when they're feeling up to it makes sense to me. Yeah, I think that's right. You know, it could end up being a kind of elegant solution to a thorny problem that has managed to sort of resurface despite the league's best efforts from a rules perspective. I do think that teams are pretty precious about their starters and their rest and their arms. And they do view relievers as inherently more fungible even when they're really good. But I do think that there are guys where this would make a good amount of sense. So I'd like to see it.

Okay. I have one more context in which to mention Aaron Judge and Shohe Otani and other players we have already mentioned. And so I have noted that my daughter, Sloan, has requested a baseball-themed birthday party, which makes me pleased. I didn't push for it, to be clear. It's something of an upset that baseball has beaten out K-pop demon hunters and Mario and just all the other possibilities that were flashes in the pan. And at one point, she wanted birthday parties about those things. But no, baseball has emerged triumphant at the end. maybe it's just a timing thing.

You know, baseball could have had its phase earlier and burned out, and it saved it until the last. It'll just be the one that's standing when it is actually her birthday. So we've gotten various baseball decorations and party favors and such. And my wife, Jesse, came back from the store yesterday with a new baseball book written by Grant Brisby. Oh. It is friend of the show, Grant Brisby's Baseball Superstars 2027. It is a scholastic book series for kids for grade schoolers. And the idea is that it's, you know, it's like a 50-page, lots of glossy photos.

And it's just, well, the title says it all. Baseball Superstars 27th. It came out this month, September 1st, I believe, and Jesse saw it and bought it. And in fact, in the front of it on the cover, there is a plastic bubble with a little baseball eraser in the bubble. It says, includes baseball eraser. And it's just stuck to the cover. And I texted Grant a photo of this and he sent back in all caps. I am not liable for injuries caused by the baseball eraser.

So we won't hold him responsible for that if there are any eraser mishaps. But I did want to make fun of Grant. a little bit, but that won't, it'll be making fun of Grant in service of a larger point. Not that mocking Grant can't be an end in itself, but there is a larger point that I want to make here. So I thought we could go through and examine and sort of Fisk Grant's selections for the baseball superstars of 2027, because they're 15. Oh.

So these are seemingly the 15 top baseball superstars of 2027. It's a pretty exclusive group. So maybe we can just go down the list and we can say superstar yes or no. If we were coming up with the list today, would they make the cut? Okay. So number one, Aaron Judge, baseball superstar. Yeah. You know, hasn't had a superstar season, obviously, but he retained superstar status.

You know, he continued to play well when he was healthy. Obviously, as indicated by all the fuss about his calf, if he were not. a baseball superstar. We wouldn't be making as big a deal of whether he can play or not. Okay. That's right. Number two superstar, Paul Skeens, I'd say still superstar, right? I think that's fine. Yeah, obviously he's struggled. He's been inconsistent here in the second part of the season. But I think, you know, it takes a while to lose your superstar status. And it's not like he's been horrible. He was playing like a superstar for the first, you know, half of the season, right? And so I think, you know, a suspect second half of the season is not enough for him to forsake superstar status.

And he very well may come back and look like his excellent self next spring. That wouldn't surprise me one bit. Yeah. Okay. Shohei Otani. Yes. Baseball superstar, clearly. All right.

All right. Three for three. Not bad. Kyle Tucker, number four. Baseball superstar? Well. I wrestled with this even when writing about him when he signed. his deal and was the most covenant free agent of last offseason, because I would describe him as a superstar, but he's not really in terms of aura, you know. I mean, he had superstar level production, but now he doesn't have that either this season, which isn't to say that he couldn't bounce back, but...

Yeah, it's been better lately, right? Yeah. And also, you know, we're talking 15 here, so, I mean, we could still say he's a star, but we're talking superstar. And you can debate how to define that. Do you need to be famous or do you just need to have produced like a superstar? Either way. I think he lacked the reputation, the public persona of a superstar, but he had the on-field value. But this year, with one more season or whatever this has ended up being, I don't know. Not so much.

I think maybe he is, he certainly lost like top 15 superstar status, which. It's not to say that he couldn't play that way next year. But, yeah, I think going into it, I probably would remove him from the list. Okay, Hunter Green, I think we've got to sadly ax him from this list because he definitely won't be a baseball superstar in 2027 because he won't pitch at all in 2027, probably, right? Or, you know, he just, yeah, he had Tommy John surgery and it's his second one. So definitely would not make the list if we were drawing it up today. Okay, Mason Miller, you know, I'd allow Mason Miller to be in there. I'll allow it.

I mean, he was in and out with Groku. He was, yeah. And his numbers have come back to Earth a little bit, but they're still fantastic. Yeah, they're still shocking. They're still like, oh, that's a mistake. Our stat load was wrong. That's what his numbers are like. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, if you had to choose one guy to throw one inning at this point, it may very well still be Mason Miller. He's probably the – I don't know if he's the best known. I guess you'd probably just put Aroldus Chapman or someone who has accumulated more career value or notoriety. But Mason Miller, if you're going to put any reliever or closer in the top 15, which I guess in itself is debatable. But if you are, it would probably be him. So, okay. All right.

Freddie Freeman, would we put him in there? Sure. Yeah, I think why not? He's earned it on a career basis. When did it get it? It's a good question, and I will, I'll fill you in a moment. Okay. Because I did get the scuttle butt and the skinny from him.

So Freddie Freeman, it's been a few years now since he has actually played like a superstar. I thought you were going to do it. I thought you were going to do it. Oh, I came close. Yeah. You did. I was ready. Anyway, sorry.

It has been a while since. But he's been good. I think were he not on the Dodgers, were he not coming off back-to-back titles? Like that still has burnished his superstar status. I think that might have faded a bit. I believe that's right. Yeah. He's still good, to be clear.

Yeah. Still a good hitter, still a good player. And has done enough, you know, he'll be a Hall of Famer. Like, yeah, he's maybe going to get to 3,000 hits in the not too distant future. right, he's at 2596. So, yeah, I'll give it to him, but it is a little bit of a career value more so than what have you done for me lately.

Okay, Gunner Henderson. No. Yeah, I don't think so. That's my first no. And I expected that this season we would see like a big gunner bounce back, right? Because this season last year wasn't bad, but it was, it wasn't. I didn't think it would be like this. And it's been, Ben, it's been, it's been pretty bad.

He's gone the wrong way in two years in a row now. Right. Like you thought after his 2024, you're like, oh, this guy might be like competing for ALMVP if something happens to Aaron Judge. Like I was being honest. And then he had like a five-win season last year, but it wasn't what it had been. And I was like, oh, well, he'll surely bounce back. And it has in fact gotten worse.

No, no. Okay, so we are cutting Gunner, and I'm going to cut Hunter Green, not that he pitched his way out of super status, but he just didn't. Yeah, he's hurt. Okay, Terrick Scoobal, all right, he's still in there, certainly. Yes. And he'll sign a big deal and he'll be a big headliner. Okay, Corbyn Carroll is next. I am biased on this question in like four different directions because he is a hometown guy and he's, you know,

a really good player on the team that I see the most often in person, at least at the major league level these days. But he was a rookie of the year, you know, and he's had, he's in those MLB TV commercials about the hats, you know? Yeah. You know the ones about the hats? Yeah.

Or he's like, oh, did I lose my hat? And then the guy who's like, I guess, playing a clubby stole his hat. Don't do that. Don't steal his hat. Dastardly. Yeah. Dastardly. But yeah, like, I don't know.

A superstar feels strong to me. Yeah. Superstar is a bit of a stretch. But. But he's a star? Certainly a star. Yeah. He's a star?

This has not been his best year, but it's. Yeah. That's started so strong. He probably wouldn't put, he probably wouldn't make my top 15, but I'm not going to, I'm not going to really get on grant for that one. Okay. Francisco Indoor. Hmm.

I don't know what. to do with Lundor, man. I don't know what to do with Lendor. I think the answer is probably no. I mean, he's not even the most famous guy on his own team. Yeah, it's been a rough year. Obviously, he's had injuries and everything. He was certainly a superstar as recently as last year, not just by reputation, but also by performance.

He was as great as ever the last couple years. So I think in terms of name recognition and what he has, has done over the course of his career. He's a little bit in the Freeman camp, except he has played like a superstar more recently than Freeman and he's younger than Freeman. So it's one off year, really, for Francisco. So I don't know. I don't know that that if you're an inner circle baseball superstar, I'm not sure one year in which you've had injuries and stuff, whether that actually kicks you out. So I'll allow it. Okay. Got a few more. Garrett Crochet, Baseball Superstar of 2027. I would say no.

Yeah, I'd also say just because he missed almost all of this year. So could he come back in 2027 and be a baseball superstar? Yeah, he could. Sure. I agree. And it wouldn't be that unlikely or shocking. So, yeah, he's kind of in the Hunter Green camp in the sense that he hasn't pitched poorly. He hasn't, you know, it's not like he has Spencer Stridered, which I hate to say because, you know, I wish baseball.

I wish Spencer Strider wear up. baseball superstar of 2026 or 2027. No, I didn't like saying it either, but he has come back from injury and just hasn't been his old self. And so he has kind of pitched his way out of superstar status, whereas Crochet has just been unavailable. I think he has a stronger case than green because in theory, crochet should be pitching next year, so he could be a baseball superstar of 2027.

So it's debatable. All right. The last three, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. You know what? Let's table that for a second. I have a couple other Vladdy comments here. We'll tackle the other two. Stephen Kwan.

No. No, I don't think so. I mean, he's certainly bounced back this year and started terribly and then has been really good and has been a big part of the Guardians being in playoff position and all the rest of it. But, yeah, superstar feels strong for Stephen Kwan. I quite enjoy Stephen Kwan. But, yeah, I don't think I can go superstar on him. And then finally, Junghu Lee.

Baseball superstar, 22nd. You're sweet. Yeah, this might be a little bit of home cooking from Grant, possibly, when it comes to Jung Hooley. So I don't think we can give him. I'm not sure whether there was ever a point where I would have said that Junquilie deserved to be a top 15 baseball superstar. Yeah.

It's definitely not 2027. Okay. And then Vladdy. Oh, Vladdy. What happened? No, no. Man. Yeah.

Like, what happened? I wish I knew. So he's very much in the camp of does one bad year get you out of the superstar club? Because name recognition wise, celebrity wise, I'd say he's still one of the best known players in baseball. Oh, yeah. Not only, you know, Blue Jays and big fan base and Canada, but also just everything else he's accomplished. And, you know, home run derby performance. and playoff heroics last year and the big contract.

That postseason was so special. Yeah. So definitely has the, and obviously the name recognition of being Vladimir Guerrero Jr. That he had a head start when it came to that recognizability. So, yeah, I don't know. Probably he might be on a list of just like, have you heard of this guy? He's probably close to top 15 status for 2027. Yeah.

Ben, which of these data points is more shocking? to you, that he only has nine home runs on the year or that he only has one home run at home? Yeah, right. Like, I think the nine on the year. But he didn't have a home. No, he didn't until just recently, just a couple weeks ago. Yeah, mercifully, he finally hit one. Yeah, he didn't have a home run at home until September 13th.

That's so recent. Now, if he had, if he had hit nine and they were all in Toronto, I think you'd still say his season was just as disappointing, right? So I don't know that it changes anything all that much. It was like an unfund fact to highlight how improbable and weird that was. But yeah. So is he on the short list of best known baseball players? Yes. Would he be a top 15 projected war guy for 2027? Probably not. I guess I could check that at fangraphs.com. Anyway, the point of this was not solely to give Grant a hard time. So, you know, he did decently hear of the 15 guys. We are excluding Hunter Green.

We're excluding Kyle Tucker, probably. We're excluding Gunner Henderson. Yes. We're excluding crochet, I guess, although I could see the argument. And then we're excluding Kwan and Junghu Lee and Vlad probably. So I've lost track. But what's that? Six or something that we're cutting out.

So maybe nine for 15 or something. Now, here I come to the defense of Grant. And I say, you know, he actually did a decent job all accounted for. So he texted me, I write these so far in advance. They're lucky it doesn't have Anthony Rendon. So I asked him what was his deadline for superstar selections for baseball superstars 2027. He thinks it was May 2025. What?

I mean, that's, that's too early. Come on. May last year. May last year. Okay. Wait. So now I want it, I want some of my answers back because now I think that him including Vladdy and like Hunter Green makes him something of an Ostradamas, right?

Oh, maybe. Yeah. You know, it's like Vlad had this, like the postseason run alone. If he had had just like an average year, I mean, that wouldn't have been enough to satisfy Blue Jays fans. I'm sure just because their expectations were so high coming into the season and we know what good Vlad looks like. But, you know, being able to sort of anticipate that is like this caper to his year and then green like blossoming. And it was such a bummer when he went down because it just looked like, hey, this guy is really, over the last year and a half has really put it all together.

And he's going to be this force for the Reds and part of this really great staff that they have. The Junghuli stuff is still funny. but some of those choices, I think, in 2025, that's bonkers. That's bananas. That's, what is the point of the exercise? Yeah, I mean, you know, there can be long lead times in publishing, of course. And even though it's baseball superstars 2027, it's out now this month in 2026. But even so, yeah, it's like a 48-page book or something, you know, not to discount the labor that went into this.

but I feel like Scholastic's got to expedite the production process here. Grant is also writing next year's edition, and so he has already selected the superstars. And spoilers for any Scholastic kids out there. But Grant said next year's edition is chock full of Cow Raleigh and Gunner Henderson. Gunner Henderson will be back next year. So in 2028, baseball Superstar, 2028. But by then, who knows, maybe he will have had that bounce back,

and it'll be fine. Or we won't have played a single game of baseball yet. Yeah, that could happen too, I guess. Yeah, I said to Grant, hopefully the real baseball superstars of 2027 aren't like labor lawyers or something. Or if they come to an agreement, maybe they will be in a way. Also, another mitigating circumstance here, they are trying to minimize repeats. So I don't know what the full roster was the year before. But other than Judge and Otani, they're trying not to reuse the same guys every year.

So that's one consideration. and they are also trying to be inclusive with respect to teams and countries, which, you know, maybe that's why Junghuli gets in there. Maybe it's not just Grant's giant's bias showing, but, you know, throw a little love to the AL Central and to Cleveland and stick Stephen Kwan in there. So maybe that's part of it too, you know. Anyway, not only is Grant's roster here defensible because of that,

but there's another extenuating circumstance, which is that I think we've had a whole lot of turnover this year when it comes to the top players and maybe an atypical amount. So this actually came up in our Patreon Discord group in the Stapblast channel the other day. And someone asked about this. It was user Zig said someone just posted this screenshot of the top 20 players by WRC Plus this year. And Zig noted that 17 of the top 20 this year are different. from last years. So there are only three players who finished in the top 20 in WRC Plus last year and are in the top 20 now. It's just Rafael Devers, Shohei Otani, and Pete Alonzo, not in that order.

And so Zig asked if that was unusual, if that was uncommon. And I have examined that. And I have obtained an answer. And it turns out that, yes, this actually is quite uncommon to have that few repeat leaders and you know we still have a few games to go here so i i guess someone could maybe sneak in or qualify at the last second but i just looked top 20 qualified hitters every season going back to 1998 the beginning of the 30 team era so that we have consistent number of teams and games and schedule and everything and if we end up with just three repeat finalists that will be the lowest total in all of those years in whatever it is, 28 seasons. This will be the lowest.

The average is about seven and a half or the median is about seven. So usually it's twice as many players as we have this year who are stalwarts who were there the year before. So this is weird. Even 2020, I didn't even bother excluding 2020, but 2020 had five guys from 20. 2019's top 20. 2021 had six guys from the 2020 top 20, I'm saying 20 a lot. But even with the 60 game season, there was more carryover into that year and after that year than we have this year.

Before this year, the only time with fewer than five repeaters was 2011 into 2012 when there were four. And a couple years in this span had double digit repeater totals. 2015 into 2016, 12 of the top 20s. showed up again, more than half. And then the record in this span was 2001 into 2002. 13 of the top 20 were the same. And again, this year, but three of the same names.

So I don't know what that means, if anything. I'm sure it does mean or signify anything. Right, yeah. But we have had an unusual amount of turnover this year. And therefore, Grant had a particularly tough assignment. because how is he supposed to anticipate that Jake Bowers would be sixth in WRC Plus right now? I mean, he's a former minor league draftee of mine, but I didn't quite see this sort of season coming from Jake Bowers. So some of this is it's stars who you're not shocked to see.

Like, Yordon wasn't there last year because he was banged up and didn't hit as well. But no one's shocked to see Yordon Alvarez hitting well this year. Or even, I mean, PCA, of course, hit really well in the first half last year, and then he leveled up and sustained it and everything. And so there are some other guys who have placed before and have returned to the fold. Or, you know, like Ellie de la Cruz, he had a rough finish to last season because he was playing hurt. And there are a couple guys who were kind of close to qualifying, like Ben Rice and Junior Camerro are fifth and eighth as we speak. were outside the top 20 last year, but I think in the top 30 maybe by WRC Plus.

So, and, you know, we're not even getting into the rookies so much other than Chase de Lodder. Like McGonigal is just slightly outside by WRC Plus. Murakami is just slightly outside because it has been a great historic class of rookies and rookie hitters as well. But it's not even so much the rookies. It's just new names among not new guys. So, yeah, if you were always. looking at the leaderboards and I don't know whether war would tell a different story or some other stat would tell a different story. But if you just look at qualified hitters and WRC Plus,

there has been a unprecedented amount of turnover, at least in the 30 team era. So new blood, I guess. I like a little reshuffling that keeps things fresh. Yeah. I mean, and you know, like I think it speaks to sort of the health of the system. Maybe not the health of grant sanity. He asked to pick these guys so early, but why did they let Gunner repeat then? I don't understand that. Well, I guess he had to choose Gunner maybe this may. I don't know. So, yeah.

With Dominic Canzon, I would not have expected him to be there. I mean, I know he did hit really well last year in a smaller sample. And so he has just sort of sustained that. Maybe Mariners fans who saw him last year aren't as surprised. But, yeah, I didn't see. Didn't see this kind of, can we call it a breakout? I think we can for Dominic Kent's own. Powered by pasta, put in, like, good position to succeed.

So I think there's that. You know, he's hitting lefties really well this year, which is sort of a boon for him. So I don't know. The other thing that I meant to say about Vlad, he obviously made news this week because of some comments that he gave in an interview where he was speaking in Spanish and I saw multiple translations of what he said and there was some nuance to it. But I'll just go with the translations that I saw at ESPN and MLB.com. Here's how they put what he said. So the comment was, I want people to understand one thing. The money they gave me wasn't for what I'm going to do.

It was for what I already did. They didn't pay me because I'm going to hit 40 every year. They paid me for what I already accomplished. People are confused about that, but I think the same way they do, like sometimes I even say to myself, bro, they gave you all that money and you're out here doing nothing. I try. And then he was asked whether he wanted to stand by that or walk that back a bit. And he said through an interpreter, I don't regret myself. I'm not lying with what I say.

I understand some fans they don't understand the way and what I was trying to say specifically, but what I say is the way I feel. And then he also said that was a quote from the interview when she asked me how I felt about this year. I said that obviously I feel really bad about the year that I had, that I couldn't help my team get to the postseason because the Js were eliminated. I said I felt that it's my personal opinion that every player gets paid per what they have done. With that said, you guys have got to remember that I sign me. my contract at the beginning of last year, then I did put up a good year, then the kind of

playoffs that I had to help the team get into the World Series. So it's not as if he was just saying, who cares, I got mine, or, you know, they paid me entirely for what I did, and now it doesn't even matter, and this is all just gravy. Like, you know, he did say, like, he's still trying, and he feels bad about having had a down year and everything. And manager John Schneider tried to also do a little damage control and called it unfortunate timing, but said that he and the Jays would help Guerrera to deal with feeling the weight of being the guy every single day. The player, the person, not his physical weight, not the conditioning. That's not the issue here.

But yeah, just the pressure. He doesn't look like he's taken a step back in that regard. No, he's kept that in check, I think. The player, the person who I know in Vlad, he by no means is just saying, okay, I got paid and I'm good with that. I know the type of worker he is, the type of player he is, the type of teammate he is, he's going to continue to work to have a better year than he did personally this year. So it's not as if he was misquoted necessarily or taken out of context,

but there was maybe a little of the context missing or some additional comments or just the way he phrased it was just perfectly, you know, calculated to get fans' goats because they're upset. It's a big disappointing season for the Blue Jays after their playoff success and their investments in their roster and everything else. And Grero having had such a down year and so when people saw. that excerpt. I think that broke people's brains because it may have sounded as if he's just blithely,

hey, if I got paid, I already did my job or something. I don't think that's what he's exactly trying to say. But, you know, he was saying and then reiterating that at least part of his mindset is that he got paid for what he did. I thought it was kind of an interesting window into players' mentalities

because I'm sure that there are a lot of players who think that way to some degree that, you know, This is sure, it's not just what have you done for me lately. It's what will you do for me now? But it would be hard not to think because of the structure of the way that players get paid where they're so dramatically underpaid compared to the free agent market value early in their career. When, especially in this era, when the aging curve has changed, they're often super productive.

And then probably they do still think of it to some extent as this is my reward for what I, did, right? And, you know, even if they're aware that obviously they expect me to keep producing. Right. Yeah. I think that this is just like an unfortunate communication error. I don't even know if error is quite the right category to put it in. I'm very skeptical of the notion that what Vlad meant to communicate here was like, well, you know, screw them fans. I'm going to be, I don't have to work hard. I don't have to try hard. I don't think anyone could watch the postseason that guy had last year. year and think he doesn't care about any of this. Like, I, I know that there's margin for error with this stuff and you can definitely read, you know, intent into body language in a way that can get you sideways. But, like, I don't know if I've watched many guys in a World Series so obviously, so badly want to win a World Series as Vlad last year.

the disappointment on that guy's face when they lost was heartbreaking and I hated it. And maybe the thing that's wrong this year is like the emotional hangover from that experience. But I think you're right. Like I think that most players understand that when they sign these big free agent contracts, like there is a real mix of what they have done and what they are expected to do. and both of those things inform the ultimate dollar amount that they're rewarded with, right? I think there are guys who get,

certainly guys who probably have some amount of motivations tapped from them once they sign that big contract. But my sense of Ladd's season is not that it's defined by like a lackadaisicalness in his play. I don't think that's the problem. If anything, there are times where he looks like he's pressing. So I just, I think,

I get why this ruffled feathers and why people kind of got spun up about it, but I don't, don't really think it was meant in quite the way that it read to people. And I think the way he clarified it kind of reinforces that. And it's the sort of thing where if Vlad addressed the media in English, if he were like, let's imagine that he was Vladimir Guerrera Jr. from Cleveland, Ohio, right? And you read these comments from a native English speaker who addresses the media in English. They might read the way that Vlad's comments did. And then if you were to listen to the way the guy was talking, the tone that you would derive from that would probably help to clarify some of the confusion. And for an English-speaking audience that is listening to him speak through an interpreter, you're not getting the benefit of that. So I get, I'm not saying that people reacting to this were, like, wrong to do so. I totally understand why it rubbed people the wrong way, but I just don't, it's just not consistent

with, like, the way this guy conducts himself on the field and the way that he conducted himself on the field after having been paid, right? Like, he, yeah, like, he signed that, I don't know, I just, I'm not bothered by it. I would be very disappointed by his scene then if it were. Yeah, certainly. But, like, he signed that contract last April. I know it didn't take effect until this year, right? Like, I think the actual first year of the deal was 2026, right?

Mm-hmm. It's also not untrue that they paid him for what he had already done. Right. Because that's how contracts work. That's always what happens. Yeah. Because the best predictor of what you will do is what you did. It's what you've done. Yes.

And so, in a way, it's true, you know, from a certain point of view. I mean, when you get a $500 million dollar con. contract, it is because you have played so well to that point that the team thinks you will continue to play really well. I mean, you know, that's what goes into projection systems. There are other factors like age and your profile and your build and all the rest of it. But the biggest input to any projection system is just, what have you done for me lately? Yeah. And that is as good a guide as we have to what you will do for me next.

And so when he's saying, I got that because of how I pay, you know, it's different, I guess, to frame it as like a reward more so than they're paying me because I played so well that they have confidence that I will continue to play well. But it sort of amounts to the same thing. Obviously, with the expectation that you will continue to be that good. But, yeah, you only get that contract because you were already that good. Oh, it's such a long contract. Wow. It is a long contract. And, yeah, I mean, there were people who questioned it at the time. And we talked about it at the time, too, just like prior to the postseason, just like, has he been good enough?

Because they're paying him to be, you know, in the Grant Brisby book. And if he was merely good or okay, well, that's not exactly. Even if he was a popular player and even if they had the money to spend and Rogers was flush. And he was, you know, marquee value and popular and all the rest of it. And with Vlad, because I was thinking this speaks to the larger tension. with free agency these days because it used to be that teams would pay you more for what you had already done because they were not as aware of the fact that you were not necessarily likely to keep doing that because they just weren't as cognizant of the aging curve and projections.

And so they would give out a big contract to someone who had played well, even if they were 32 or something, because they just weren't really factoring in the aging curve and everything. And now, more than ever, you are paid for what you. are going to do or what you're expected to do more so than what you used to do, or at least there's a greater awareness that what you did might not be what you continue to do beyond a certain age, especially as a hitter. So you do get players who get frustrated because the economic model of baseball is still that you don't really cash in until you've got six, seven years of service time. Now, Vlad is a little different because obviously his dad made $125 million in his

career and then Vlad signed like a $4 million bonus. You know, he got a big bonus when he signed as an amateur. But you look at his, the shape of his production and say in 2021, which I think was before his arb years and before that process kicked in, Fangraphs values his production. He was a six-war guy that year at $50.5 million on the open market for a free agent. And he was not on the open market. And so I haven't checked, but I assume he was making add or close to league minimum during that time when he was already producing. And so on the whole, his valuation as a free agent would be $173 million to this point in his career.

And he has made $11 million total to this point. And, you know, he has so much more coming his way that it may very well end up that the payout paces the production. But for a lot of players, even guys who signed big deals, the pay never catches up to the market value of the production just because players are so underpaid relatively early in their career. So I'm sure that there are a lot of players who approach free agency with that mindset. Like, hey, this is when I'm going to get mine because they weren't paying me for what I was doing all those years. So this is my reward and I have earned it. And it's almost a semantic difference, as long as everyone's on the same page about, okay, they're paying. paying me to continue to produce, you know, it's, it kind of comes down to the same thing.

This is why I'm getting the deal because of what I did already. And they're just banking on that continuing. So hopefully it will at some point for him because he's fun when he's hitting well. Yeah, yeah. I also just think, and again, I'm, like, risking, you know, psychoanalyzing someone I don't know and I'm not a psychologist anyway. But it just, it would take such a, it would take such a strange psychological. to like sign that deal for that long and be demotivated to the point of it making you not

play well and be like I'll be able to withstand this for the duration you know what I mean like you would just be the most hated man in Toronto that seems unlikely as a thing that one aspires to so you know I agree with you I hope that he is able to sort of course correct and he's able to figure something out. It's, you know, one of those things where, again, the, the effect of the lockout might make itself felt a little bit because he's going to have to do that on his own, right? He's not going to be able to do that with any assistance from the Blue Jays. And plenty of guys work with their own coaches in the offseason and come back and have made meaningful and productive adjustments. So I don't mean to say he can't. But it is one of those, one of those times where you're like,

oh, yeah, you can't really talk to anybody in Dev, like after December 1st. So hope you get your plan in place. I meant to say, by the way, it's nice of the AL West to take the pressure off the AL Central for once, because the AL Central has been bad, too, to be clear, and whoever wins the AL Central, not really covering themselves in glory record-wise either, but because the AL-West has been so much worse, and the records will be worse, and the run differentials will be worse and everything. For once, the focus is not on the Central, stinking up the joint. Sure.

The West. One way to think about it. Yeah, right. It's like you don't have to outrun the bear. You only have to outrun the person you're with. The bear is also chasing. It's that sort of thing, right? It's like the AAL Central hasn't been good, but it's been better than the AOS.

So the onus is off the Central. Sure. Well, and we should note that while we were recording, the White Sox clinched their first postseason birth since 2021. So congratulations to the White Sox and their fans. So that's exciting. And we sit here with the Rangers leading the Mets three to one bottom eight. So some people's long national nightmare will be over soon, namely mine, assuming the Mets don't rally here. So, you know, we're just bobbing and weaving, Ben.

You know, we're bobbing and weaving as best we can. All right. Well, the Rangers did hold on to win that game. As I'm recording this outro, some other games have not gone final. But you know how to find the scores of baseball games. You probably don't need me to do a full out-of-town scoreboard update. After all, we have another pod to record tomorrow. I will give you an update on one other thing.

I mentioned on a previous pod that the Yankees were getting a bigger private equity investment and that it was going to take the private equity stake in the team up to 16%, which was above what everyone thought the limit was in MLB, 15%. And so people were speculating that that limit was going to increase. Well, turns out it already has, as reported by Morrie Brown of Forbes, with some follow-up from front-office sports. From the front-office sports piece, MLB owners voted this summer

to increase the private equity ownership limit for teams to 20% up from 15%. The change was not publicly announced. The revision was specifically made to match the NBA's approach where the PE limit is 20% unless the controlling owner owns less than 20% in which case the percent the percent

the controlling owner has is the limit. So if the team's controlling owner holds 19% of a team, a private equity firm cannot own more than 19% under a separate MLB rule, the controlling owner must own at least 15%. The NBA, NHL, and MLS allow one private equity firm to own a maximum of 20% in a franchise. The NBA allows the same private equity firm to invest in as many as eight teams. It was previously five, but the league increased the number earlier this year.

MLB does not have a cap on how many teams one private equity firm can invest in, as long as each stake is 20% or less. So yes, the private equitization of professional sports and amateur. sports for that matter, continues apace yourself for whatever impact that produces. Also, meant to mention the interviewer who elicited those initial Vladimir Guerrero Jr. comments. Her name is Veronica Batista. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to Patreon.com slash effectively wild and signing up to pled some monthly or yearly amount to help keep the podcast going, help us stay ad free and get yourself access to some perks, as have

the following five listeners. Ryan, David Propson, Drew Jordan, Aaron Sparks and Glacial Chasm. Thanks to all of you. Patreon perks include access to a third unrestricted episode each week. That'll be coming up next time. Plus, monthly bonus episodes, the next one of which we will be recording this weekend. Membership in our Discord group for patrons only. And exclusive live streams.

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