Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 272: Picking Each Team’s Perceived Clubhouse Leader/Delmon Young and Players with Moral Warts

Episode Date: August 23, 2013

Ben and Sam pick a perceived clubhouse leader for each team, then talk about whether teams should ever refuse to sign certain players on moral grounds.

Chemistry is, well technically, chemistry is the study of matter, but I prefer to see it as the study of change. Now just, just think about this. Good morning and welcome to episode 272 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectus. I'm Sam Miller with Ben Lindberg. Ben, how are you doing? Okay. Okay. Great. What do you want to talk about? My topic is something that we discussed at some point. I think we discussed on the podcast

doing a – selecting the top clubhouse guy from each team or the top perceived clubhouse guy from each team. So, so yeah, I don't, yeah, I was trying to remember the context why we threw that out there, but I, I just to be clear, uh, I think the, the point of this exercise is to see whether, uh, whether our our impressions agree whether it is something that is so firmly established in the public that we uh you know that kind of like two independent evaluators come up with the same answer yes uh not that we we're not actually going to try to gonna say who is the best based on our yeah because we don't know it's right yeah exactly okay so good just just so it's clear we have no idea i would

say that i was talking to somebody today who um uh was has some kind of uh he has a relationship with a gm and anyway long story short uh there is a i think there's a real sense within the game that the perceived clubhouse guy is very often not the real clubhouse guy because it's so driven by the media that the media thinks that good clubhouse guy equals accessible and that in a lot of cases that's true and in a lot of cases that's specifically part of why the guy is a good clubhouse guy because he takes the pressure off of his teammates yeah um johnny gomes last year for instance um down the the stretch uh i was somebody was telling me the other day would um would actually call all the media over to his locker and basically just like bring everybody over and talk to them for like the entire media availability or whatever

so that nobody else would have to deal with the questions because they had so many rookies and it was such a tense time. So that's often correlated, but it's often not. And there are guys that you would probably think of as being, perceived as being good clubhouse guys who are actually not that well-liked. And we don't know which ones those are, but just so that's out there.

We're going to try to avoid that, but we probably won't. And my topic is very closely related. It has to do with the raise signing guys who are perceived to be bad guys and whether this is a credible strategy or like a sort of credible market inefficiency or not. So they're related, and I guess it's interesting that we chose these two

because I don't know if you've noticed, but it does seem like the topics that we continually go back to, these kind of ideas among them, tend to be the things that we have the least hope of answering because they're sort of known unknowns. Yeah, right. Well, if we had brought them up before and answered them, then we wouldn't be able to talk about them anymore. Oh, that's a good point. We keep finding slightly different angles to attack the same topics.

So, yeah, why don't we start with yours? Okay. So I don't know when you were selecting your guys did you did you i guess we'll see when we when we read the names but did you kind of did you try to steer away from good players were you looking for guys who are like pure clubhouse chemistry beings or no yeah right you're just just looking for leaders perceived leaders who can be could be scrappy gritty clubhouse guys or could be actual stars right yeah i think it's i think it ends up being the case that you're much more likely to choose the well you're probably

more likely to choose either a star or um or a scrappy 25th man. Yes, right. Because the star sticks in your head, and so in your head you just think, oh, he's very good. He must be a leader. He's very good. He leads by example or whatever. And then the 25th guy, you think, well, there's got to be a reason that he got signed

as opposed to all the other 100 veterans who just kind of wash out of the league. So there's a little bit of Nichols' law of capture defense at work here where the worse the player it is, the more you probably attribute some positive other skill to him. So I found myself choosing some stars and sometimes choosing a default star or the star by default.

And sometimes I chose the 25th man by default. And a lot of times i chose the well i i guess the trends will become apparent so i don't need to tell you the trends i also found as i was looking through these there were there were some teams where i just you know no one really stood out to me um yeah and i found that if you google any team plus clubhouse guy there will be a story written within the last like three days or so about how someone is stepping up and embracing a new leadership role so i did not i i had a couple teams like that and i did not have success doing the exact same thing i would i some i i did

google a couple and i also googled uh called players only meeting to see whose name preceded that clause. And sometimes that worked. But there were a couple teams that I genuinely have no idea. Like I would say there are probably two teams where I picked almost at random. Yeah. All right. Okay. So let's just – do you have –

I went alphabetical by location. Oh, you have... I went alphabetical by location. Oh, all right. I went alphabetical by team name. Go for it. Just go ahead. All right. So this is one that you probably know better than I do. Angels. Angels, I had... Angels are actually a tricky one because they have a void. Such a void. They have a well-documented void um when tory hunter left he actually said my reign is over as yeah this guy and every week some beat writer writes a story about who is stepping up and

usually the answer is usually the answer is it's not one guy who steps up. It's a lot of guys. So I genuinely don't know that there is necessarily a right answer. I chose Mark Trumbo, though I don't know that Trumbo is the guy who would call a players-only meeting. I don't know who would call the players-only meeting. I think it would probably be Hamilton. probably be Hamilton, but Trumbo is the guy who seems to carry himself in a way that almost everybody on the team respects and admires. So I pick Trumbo. I just pick Pujols. Is that a bad pick? He seems to have some leadership qualities, aspects. It's hard to know. I mean, mean i hear basically what i hear is is totally unreliable it's innuendo but i i wouldn't have picked him to put it simply okay um and a lot

of times i i kind of wondered because there will be guys who were established clubhouse leaders with one team and then they're on a new team now and they still have that reputation, but I don't know whether in actuality you can just go onto a team and be the newcomer and immediately become the leader. But I kind of still went with those guys if they had the reputation. Okay. We're starting with some hard ones.

Astros. Well, Carlos Pena. He is gone. Is he gone too? Yeah. Everyone's, it's just been a, it's just, it's just been every, every clubhouse leader,

Anquil and Pena. And then like when they were gone, it was like Bud Norris briefly, just like anyone who. Yeah. I sort of had, I vaguely was kind of aware that pena hadn't played in a long time but on the other hand i saw somebody uh recently say that he was their highest paid

player so did they just dfa him like they didn't even uh yeah they just released him yeah um okay so so let me go ahead i'll say castro i'll just say Castro. Yeah, I think it's Castro. I actually, this is one of the ones I Googled, and it's in a sad state right now where, like, a contender for clubhouse leader is, like, Jordan Wiles. There's a quote in the Chronicle that says, it's our time to step up and start leading by example and start showing people the right way to play the game on and off the field and just show them the Astro way.

Jordan Lyles, 22. No, this is not the time to be wasting leadership. They need to take a page from the front office and save all the leadership. Like just bank it. Don't invest any leadership in this year. You really want to be able to use your leadership when you're contending. So just save it.'t invest any leadership in this year yeah you you really want to be able to use your leadership when you're contending so just just save it just hold on to it i might have guessed dominguez but uh you know but no i think castro castro is definitely

yeah this oh you know chris carter is well liked in general yeah chris carter seems like a quiet leader uh i i was around around. I saw them. I saw that team recently. Carter sort of seemed social. But no, Castro is a good one. I'd go with Castro. Yeah. Okay.

Okay. Next one. And by the way, if you follow these teams more closely than we do and you have a strong opinion. Oh, yeah. We want to hear this. Please tell us if we get this perception wrong or doesn't agree with people who pay more attention to the teams than we do. Okay, athletics. There are a few guys.

This is another. I think there are a lot of guys who could have some claim on it. But I went with Grant Balfour. Okay. And specifically, I know for a fact that he is kind of the consensus player that people in that club say would call the meeting if the meeting needed to be called. Uh-huh.

Yeah, this is another one where I guess there's a void with Gomes and Inge being big clubhouse guys and not being there. I feel like maybe Chris Young has a claim. He's apparently popular. I asked Chris Young specifically this question like four days ago. Oh, no. And he laughed and said, oh, no, no, maybe I should be, but I'm not. I haven't been here that long.

And he's not. I mean, he is popular, but I'm not. I haven't been here that long, and he's not. I mean, he is popular, but he's not. I mean, I think you can make the case for Moss, maybe for Doolittle, for Redick, for Colon, definitely for Bartolo Colon, but you could not make the case for Chris Young. Not in a bad way, but I don't think he has chosen that role. Okay.

Blue Jays seems like a consensus one. Yeah. I mean, if we were doing it, I think if we were doing the Hall of Fame chemistry team, there would be three names currently, maybe four names currently out there, and DeRosa would be one of them. Yes, right.

Okay, Mark DeRosa. Okay. This one may be a little tougher. Well, it depends on whether we're counting active players or players on the DL. Braves? Tim Hudson. Yeah. So, so if we're counting Tim Hudson, who's not on the active roster right now, then, then yes, Tim Hudson.

If we're not counting Tim Hudson, I feel like there's some support building for Freddie Freeman as a potential clubhouse guy. But I guess Hudson is around the team. So I guess as long as you're around, you can still serve that role. Okay, Cardinals. You skipped the the brewers i did skip the brewers uh okay brewers i had no idea this is one of my two that's almost totally random and i went with aramis ramirez went with lucroix uh yeah catcher's never a bad default yeah the problem is i mean the catcher in one way is never a bad default because it requires leadership skills.

But in another sense, a lot of these clubhouses are very clearly divided by position. And so like, you know, a lot of clubhouses, unless you're a super leader, the reliever can't be a leader. And, you know, even a starting pitcher often won't be the leader. And catcher could be, but catcher doesn't spend all of his time with the rest of the position players but uh catcher is usually a good default yeah uh i'm i'm reading this was one of the ones where i where i googled and found something um some some blog post from like six hours ago where uh luke roy has emerged as the primary leader in the clubhouse. So that's indisputable. All right.

Okay. Cardinals then. I went with Chris Carpenter. Yeah. Molina was my number two. Was Molina yours? Yeah, Molina's mine. Just, yeah, Carpenter is not pitching.

Okay, another tough one is the Cubs because... Yeah, this is tough. I know I've heard good things about Edwin Jackson in the past. I don't know if he's a leader, but I've heard that he's well-liked wherever he goes. So I went with him. This was one where Soriano really seemed to have embraced that role in the last couple of years. And so now he's gone. And I went with just some quick research. There was a Chicago Tribune story from, I guess, right after the Soriano trade.

And it was about how with Soriano gone, there are no real leaders. And at that point, De Jesus was still there. So he was kind of the default. But the consensus was that Samarja is kind of the guy. So there's a quote from Samarja who says, obviously, it's been shaping up that way. I'm just one more guy who has to speak up and fill a hole because Sori was such a big personality in the clubhouse and in team decisions. But it seems to be Samarja and maybe some Rizzo. But I'll go with him. Okay.

Diamondbacks. I went with McCarthy. I thought that there were a lot of leaders. Yeah, there's no shortage. I wasn't sure it would be that. I mean, I don't know. I thought about going with Prado. I put Pennington and then switched it.

Montero, I think I could make the case for Montero. I went with Prado just because Montero is on the DL right now. If we count Montero, I think I'd probably go with him. Prado seems like he had that reputation coming over, but he's new, so I'll say Montero. I don't know that I ever heard that reputation from Prado. I mean, Prado is a grinder, but i never knew him as a as a leader in in popular perception maybe maybe a leader by example type yeah okay but montero montero might be we maybe both of us should just say montero yeah all right uh dodgers I was torn between two, but I went with Mark Ellis. Yeah, I was torn between Ellis and Punto.

I don't know whether... I actually, yeah, Punto's a good one too. And AJ Ellis is a good one. And Adrian Gonzalez is a good one. Not Puig, though. A lot of good ones, though. Not Puig, probably. And Kershaw is kind of a good one. Not Puig, though. A lot of good ones, though. Not Puig, probably. And Kershaw is kind of a good one.

Yeah, I guess. And Kemp's not a terrible one. I feel like Ty goes to the inferior player. So Mark Ellis or Punto. Punto is the inferior player. Yeah. So you're going with Punto? Yeah, I had Punto.

All right. Okay. inferior player yeah so you're going with punto yeah i had food all right okay um and did you realize by the way that uh the 2013 heart and hustle awards the nominees were just announced so this is almost like a cheat sheet kind of for this um i think that i think the heart and hustle nomination process is very inconsistent i think think teams, teams, uh, use drastically different, um, uh, standards for who to nominate. So I don't think that there's a consistency there. Okay. I think there's an overlap. There, there are certain guys who win every year. Um, okay. So who's next giants? Uh, Posey. Okay. Yeah. Pence is a good one. Yeah, Pence is mine.

Pence is obviously a good one, but I think that Pence definitely got huge, huge chemistry points for last offseason or last postseason. But Posey, man, he just carries himself as such a leader. All right. Next team seems like one with kind of a recent inductee into the chemistry hall of fame probably the captain i would say the captain of the indians yeah i would say jason jambi is the captain of the chemistry club right now yeah it's a yeah it's an interesting career transition for him right because when he was with the aids he was kind of like a free spirit type and now he's like the the elder statesman type sort of yeah it is a fact i mean i've i've i've

wanted to write a long feature about him um and i never got around to putting together a pitch for anybody but i think that like the new yorker should really be doing 6 000 words on jambi right now but uh because it is the most interesting kind of career transition in public perception. And he has gone from that guy that we all knew in 2004 to being everything that's right about the game. But he was a huge, huge, huge leader in Oakland too. So that element of it has been consistent. Okay, Mariners. Abanas.

Yes. Marlins. Pierre. Yeah. I went with Pierre. It doesn't seem like there's much else to choose from there. Polanco. Polanco is what else to choose from there um polanco polanco is what else to choose from okay mets uh mets uh well i this is a tricky one yeah i mean you almost when a team has a captain it's like by default he wins but remember our r and Kiel discussion. Yeah.

Is he still with the Mets? Is he? I don't think he is. Okay, well, if he's not still with them, then I'm going with David Wright. But if he is still with them, I'm going with Rick and Kiel. Let's see. I don't think he is, no. So, yeah.

So, wait. Yeah, okay. So, do you have a... I felt like Latroy Hawkins is like a really respected leader type. That's true. Is he the player rep? He might be the player rep. Yeah. And then when I went to Citi Fields to write that story about the Mets base running,

it seemed like Justin Turner was a big clubhouse guy who was like inspiring everyone and um but but yeah i don't know when there's a captain i guess you you kind of just have to go with the captain yeah um nationals uh i didn't really know i went with dan harron i went with worth Heron. I went with Worth. Oh, yeah, that seems right. Yeah. That seems plausible. Suzuki's plausible.

Yeah. Yeah, those guys are more recent. Uh-huh. Yeah. Worth seems good. I like Worth. Seems good. Okay. Yeah, I like Worth.

Orioles? Almost Totally Random went with Adam Jones. Me too. It seems like Showalter. Yes, right. Went with Adam Jones. Me too. It seems like Showalter. Yes, right. I was going to say that too. Yeah, they're dominated by the manager sort of. Okay, another Hall of Famer, Padres.

Really? I think so. Who did you have? I couldn't think of really anyone. I went with Quentin. Who should I have picked? Isn't Katsay still on the Padres? Oh, I never remember that.

That's the only reason he's on the Padres. Every seven weeks or so, I get shocked that Katsay didn't retire in 2008. It really is amazing. He's hitting 195. 195, 248, 236 in 133 plate appearances he's got like 9 years of sub-replacement

level play at this point I don't think of Kaze as a Hall of Famer in this regard I think you're right that he's been named for this team but I never think of him as I mean I think of him as good as a plus chemistry guy but i i've never you're probably right but i've never thought of him as the hall of famer yeah

he's gotta be why else how else would he still have a roster spot um phillies michael young yes although howard's a plausible choice, but Michael Young is Michael Young. Yeah. Pirates. I went with Russell Martin, but A.J. Burnett's the one who called the players only meeting recently. Huh. But I went with Martin. Yeah, I did too.

All right. Rangers. Beltre. Yeah, that's what I did. Rays. David Price. Okay. I went with Price because to me the pitching staff is where the kind of heart of the team is.

That seems to be where the chemistry emanates from the pitching staff, it seems to me. And so I had to pick a pitcher, and Price is like the elder statesman there. I went with longoria at first but then well longoria plays third ben yes uh he does not play first you should know that i changed my pick to sam fold uh-huh okay which not that i really think he's the the leader but he's just he's a perceived clubhouse guy. So I went with Boltz. Just to be clear, that was a pun that I was making. Yes.

The fact that I didn't laugh was not a sign that I didn't get it. Red Sox? Well, obviously it's Gomes. Yes. Although, I mean, Pedroia kind of, I mean, he's got the tenure. Pedroia probably calls the meeting in that clubhouse, but you can't pick Pedroia after last year. You can't pick anybody who was there last year after last year.

I mean, you could, you could, but Gomes is a Hall of Famer. Gomes might be, after Giambi, it's Gomes and DeRosa in a tie. Sure, he's worth 20 wins. Pedroia has won four straight Heart and Hustle Awards. Yeah. Okay, Reds? I went with Phillips. Yeah, me too.

Did you think about Arroyo? Not really. Okay. Rockies? I went with Helton. Okay, i went with kodair seems fair i don't know i i just figure helton's been there so long i mean you know sometimes you just go with the guy who's 100 years old royals shields yes uh tigers we don't even this, but it seems plausible to me that Hunter would take a slightly lesser role in the chemistry department there. Because it's Cabrera's clubhouse and he would kind of respect that.

It wasn't a clubhouse that had a void. So I actually, I'm going with Cabrera. I'm making the choice. I feel like I still hear from Torrey Hunter more than just about anyone on that team yeah you do but you know you hear from swisher more than anybody on the indians but you didn't pick swisher no but i might have if he'd been on some other team that didn't have jason giambi um okay twins i went with Maurer. With Morneau. I don't know. It's one of them. Okay. White Sox.

Canerco. Yeah. And Yankees. Jeets. Yeah. Going by the captain rule, I guess it has to be Jeter. I almost feel like maybe Rivera is more looked up to, maybe. I mean, yeah. Yeah, but he's a he's a closer he

doesn't even sit with him during the game yeah you would I Jeets is calling that meeting yes okay so we agreed on 16 of 30 we agreed and 17 if you count Montero okay surprisingly low surprisingly low uh yeah I guess that is kind of low. I wonder what the racial demographic was of that. I guess this is not the same as the gritty clubhouse guy, so maybe it's... No, but I would say that if you looked at this, we probably both showed an obvious bias against Latin players. And I think that's something to grapple with but um you know i i think that probably if you asked players they i would think that in a lot of clubhouses there is

both a clubhouse leader and uh you know an english clubhouse leader and a latin clubhouse leader and a team a lot of times probably needs that um but you don't hear about the latin clubhouse leader and a team a lot of times probably needs that. Um, but you don't hear about the Latin clubhouse leader because most beat writers don't speak Spanish. Yes. So I think it's, uh, it is a blind spot that we probably showed that, that we should acknowledge. Okay. So what was your topic? So the Rays signed, um, Delman Young to a minor league deal today. um, Delman Young to a minor league deal today. And, uh,

coupled with, um, uh, Luke Scott, who a lot of people hate for, uh, some things that he said about the president and maybe others. Uh, and Josh Lukey,

who has a horrific past. Uh, some people kind of put that together into a trend about the Rays, who sign perhaps bad dudes because they are an undervalued commodity on the field or something like that. And I've thought this about various teams in the past, although I wondered this about the Mariners at one point a few years ago, and it was a little bit different. The group of people was a different kind of group, obviously, but Lukey was there.

And it just felt like they had a bunch of guys who had been run out of their organization for one reason or another, and for different reasons. Like Brendan Ryan was sort of not it according to reports wasn't really well liked in St. Louis because he was sort of too too antsy or something but I mean you know the idea is the same that you get guys whose personalities don't play well in other organizations and you get their talent at a little bit less of a price I'm not I'm not concluding that that's the case with the Rays. I think I later concluded that it probably wasn't the case with the Mariners.

But if it were, is this a noble strategy? Should a team do this? Is this legit? Or do we in the end only have our souls? It wouldn't surprise me at all. I mean, who's a player who's really been blackballed by baseball for some sort of character issue purely? Yeah, maybe Bonds, maybe Milton Bradley,ley like eventually i well it's hard to say because

what did bradley play for eight teams nine teams yeah i mean he he got a ton of chances um and i guess there's another ray elijah dukes whom they drafted uh so that doesn't really count maybe and then he he only got a few years but i don't know whether he was even he was even fit to play really um so i it certainly wouldn't surprise me not that not that friedman or anyone else is intentionally acquiring these guys because I mean the race have have I think showed a tendency to go get good clubhouse guys also uh at times whether it's you know our our pal Gabe Kapler or Cliff Floyd or you know guys who are just known for for tying bringing teams together and all that sort of thing, they seem to value that also. So I think there probably is an element of the players with warts philosophy, and sometimes those warts are even more ugly.

They're not characteristics of on-field performance, but off-field issues. And, yeah, go ahead. Uh, yeah, I, I, I think that we, we might've talked briefly about this originally with Delman Young, um, with when Delman Young was signed probably, or maybe we talked about Lukey at one point, but the thing about it that, that, the thing about it that I always sort of come back to is that it's like, on the one hand, the Rays are giving these guys a dollar more than another team would give them, basically.

So in one sense, they are rewarding, giving guys who you maybe don't want to see get a life of privilege. They're giving them, you know, a little bit extra, a little bit extra profit. But on the other, I mean, it's like, it's not like the Rays are the only team out there that's trying to employ Delman Young. I mean, teams keep, keep hiring him. Yeah. And probably another team interested, supposedly. Yeah, exactly. So it isn't like, again, it's not like Delman Young, if the Rays had taken a moral stand on this issue, it's not like Delman Young would be digging ditches

or whatever you would like to see him be doing instead. He would just go to another Major League Baseball team and live a life that we're all basically envious of. Now, the question is whether it feels right to cheer for a team that is kind of actively profiting on their crimes. If the idea is that Young and Lukey, et cetera, are compensated slightly less, if we treat them as a market inefficiency and they're compensated slightly less because of what they've done, then you're saying that basically the team

that capitalizes on that is profiting from the things that they've done. They're actually getting a better deal because Lukey has this pass, because Young has this pass. That's sort of a little bit hard to root for, but I guess it's just something you have to just get over and not think about too much, right? Yeah. I mean, to be very clear, every single team that you have ever cheered for or been inspired

by has had a garbage monster or two that you just probably didn't know about that might have had six or something. I mean, we're all pretty off. I mean, I'm a horrible person. I no doubt about it. I mean, I could, I could, you know, like, look, we're all bad. We're all awful. We're terrible.

We're a fallen race, right? But we're a fallen species. Anything you want to get off your chest? Well, I'm a horrible human being. That's all. I'll just leave it at that. So, yeah, I don't know. I'm always conflicted.

I don't want to be i don't want to be judgmental of strangers so in that sense i really wish that i didn't have any of these feelings when a player gets signed on the other hand you know it it is it does feel weird that that um there's that baseball i don't know, I don't know, it seems like baseball is just so much moralizing. And then to have these like few blind spots where it's like, oh, yeah, well, you know, we don't care if you throw a bat at an umpire and are anti-Semitic. Yeah. Those are kind of okay. That's weird.

That feels weird to me. Yeah. I don't know. I think almost almost every general manager is willing to kind of look the other way if he feels like it's not really going to it's not going to impact attendance. It's not going to be a PR disaster and it's going to help the team. I don't think there are that many who would, you know, make a worse move for the team's performance to make some sort of moral statement. Yeah. Yeah.

So let's just say that, let's imagine that Delman Young was really good and he was a free agent. And so basically all 30 teams would have a role for him. Do you think that there are any teams that would not sign him for a price that they deemed one dollar better than than he's worth uh is there is there is there even one general manager out there or one owner who says nope not having that guy on my payroll i could see an owner doing it maybe i don't know which one it would be um But a GM? I kind of don't think so, really. Lukey? What about Lukey? Is Lukey in a different class?

Maybe Lukey. See, I feel like the vast majority of baseball fans have no idea about Josh Lukey's backstory. Well, I'm not talking about from a business perspective, though. Right, okay. Well, I'm not talking about from a business perspective, though. I mean, ignore the business. Supposedly the Mariners didn't even know when they traded for him or so they said. But I mean, I'm including that as part of the calculus of how much he's worth.

So if he's worth X dollars to him, including the effect on fans, and he's willing to pay for $1 less than X. Yeah, I'll say there would be a team for luki uh yeah i i think so so luki yes young no and pretty much everyone no everyone else no yeah scott no i mean scott as i i think scott is probably almost within the mainstream within the game. So Scott's a popular teammate from what I can tell. Maybe not so popular with certain people on the internet. Yes, Scott's more of a cultural divide between clubhouses than the rest of us, if anything. Yeah, and there's so much. I mean, just the players who complain about their, all the vocal players lately and vocal teams about PED users.

We really haven't seen someone get just blackballed because of PED use. I mean, Melky Cabrera is, he got a two-year deal and Bartolo Colon a deal, and Nelson Cruz and Johnny Peralta are going to be playing for teams next year. It's not like, I don't know, you hear players talk about how terrible it is, but if those same players are on the teams of those PED people next year, they'll say, well, now they're teammates and I support them and we're pals. Not that PED use is really what we're talking about here. What about, yeah, go ahead. Yeah, I mean, I just think the competitive advantages usually win out. Any team that wouldn't sign you now, Escobar? I don't think so.

No. His contract is really good. So maybe they'd just take his eye black away. So I don't think so. No. Alright. Alright, so that is the week.

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