Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 435: The Battle of Bad First-Base Contracts

Episode Date: April 24, 2014

Ben and Sam banter about Josh Johnson, Michael Pineda, and more, then choose between the Ryan Howard, Albert Pujols, and Miguel Cabrera contracts.

Good morning and welcome to episode 435 of Effectively Wild, the daily podcast from Baseball Perspectives brought to you by the Play Index at BaseballReference.com. I'm Sam Miller and you're Ben Lindberg. Hi, Ben. Hi. How are you? Pretty well. I have a couple quick banters, if I may. Sure, me too.

Oh, really? Mm-hmm. We might have a whole banter episode. Could be. Because of my topic, we could talk about the topic longer or if we want but we could very easily talk about the topic in about 45 seconds as well so maybe the banter will take up the bulk of our day um so a couple things first off did you read the piece on bj upton that jorge orangay wrote for Sports on Earth today? I have not.

It's an interesting piece and it's sort of if I it's not you know like if I had to give it a thesis statement it would basically be that BJ Upton doesn't have the dread of fear necessary to pull himself out of this

state that he's in. I don't know that Jorge would say that so conclusively, but that's kind of like the central thesis statement. And there's an interesting part in it because, you know, we talked when we were talking about how much things, how much we should think about the state of baseball kind of resetting itself in the offseason and whether we should have been excited or kind of optimistic at all that B.season and whether we should have been excited or

kind of optimistic at all that B.J. Upton would get a fresh start in 2014. And you noted that one of the ideas behind that is you have a whole offseason to fix things and to really work on things and change the things that are too hard to fix during the season when you're playing every day. And Jorge writes in noting that he's doing very poorly again this year and that his peripherals are even worse. And then he says, and you can tell he's not worried about it because he hasn't done much to correct any deficiencies from last year.

Quote, honestly, I just kind of kept the same thing but worked on using my legs more in my swing. But other than that, I didn't really change anything. So that's kind of interesting. Yeah, that would seem to kind of contradict the other articles about all the things he did. I mean, those articles seem to say that he just went back to what he was doing before more less, or tried to, but it sounded like an active process. Maybe he needs more of the fear that motivates you and me. Could be, yeah. Although, yeah, no, that's possible. But it does seem like the sort of thing where it's really hard to say.

I mean, it feels to me that probably the way that you should behave is the one that is kind of truest to your personality. Like it could very easily be the case that if he were slumping and all of a sudden he became super hardcore BJ Upton who was spending six hours a day in the cage and tweaking things obsessively, that that could be sort of a spiral and that if he didn't come out of it, that you could change that or sort of point at that. It's very hard. Psychology is obviously very hard. So, yeah, who really knows knows but this was a i guess an

interesting admirable attempt um at looking at pj upton it's very in-depth it's a good piece um the other piece uh the other thing i wanted to mention is a friend of mine told me uh today via twitter that uh tom candiotti said on the arizona radio that no Cubs position player would start for the Diamondbacks. And the Diamondbacks, of course, are terrible. They're in last place. And yet, could it be true? Could this be true? Could the Cubs actually not have a single player who could start on the last place Arizona Diamondbacks?

Let me pull up some depth charts. Yeah. Hmm. Yeah. Hmm. Okay. Looking fairly persuasive so far. Uh-huh. The Diamondbacks, I should note that the Diamondbacks have the 13th best OPS in the National League

and the 14th best OPS+. And the Cubs are 11th and 12th and by those measures so they have uh they have actually out hit the diamondbacks as well as as outpitched them yeah i mean it you wouldn't take you you wouldn't take bonifacio over Aaron Hill. You wouldn't take Junior Lake over Cody Ross, probably. You certainly wouldn't take Rizzo over Goldschmidt. You wouldn't take Shearholz over Parra. I guess, is Castro and Owings the closest? Castro and Owings is the first thing I thought of.

Mm-hmm. And I guess that Castillo Montero is worth discussing. Yeah, maybe. You wouldn't take Sweeney over Pollock, and you wouldn't take Valbuena over Prado. You probably wouldn't, although it's worth pointing out that over the past two years, Valbuena and Prado, there's not a per plate appearance level over the past two years I think Valbuena edges him I'm just sort of eyeballing it but yeah on a per plate appearance

rate Valbuena's been the better player but that's of course over two years if you go three years it's not particularly close and Valbuena doesn't play every day you know partly for a reason I imagine but you probably would start and Val Buena doesn't play every day, you know, partly for a reason. Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. But you probably would start, what, two Cubs starting pitchers over the best Diamondbacks starting pitcher right now? And I would definitely take the Diamondbacks bullpen as well. Uh-huh. I mean, I think every step down i i would probably take the diamond back on the in the bullpen um so yeah so it's uh it's not absurd no i i think i think though that um i mean to me uh you got to take castor Owings, right? I think so.

Yeah, and I like Owings. What kind of start is Castro off to? 299, 325, 416. So pretty typical Castro pre-2013. Exactly, league average hitter. And who knows about the defense? Presumably a little bit worse than average. Yeah.

So I'd probably take Castro, but it's kind of close. I like Owings. Do you consider this to be a problem with baseball that you can have a team where every single player basically is better than every single player on the other team and still they're essentially equal teams? taking a step further uh i'm i'm certain that we could find a team or

a pair of teams where this would be uh uncontroversially true uh like say the astros and the um i don't know name a team the red sox or the rays or the you know a's or whatever um and yet there's not there's not a huge And yet there's not a huge, even there, there's not a huge difference between them. Like the Astros would still win a game if they played three. Is this a problem with baseball that you just can't really separate yourself at all? I guess it allows for things to be interesting over a long season. On the other hand, it requires a long season. I like it.

I think it's a good thing about baseball. Yeah, I guess it is. I agree. All right, what do you want to talk about? So do you remember last year when I had my, I think it was last year when I had my revelation about Sean Markham and I gave up on perpetually injured pitchers who were by-low candidates. I've adopted that, yeah. By the way, I think Castillo is a clear edge over Montero at this point.

Uh-huh. a clear edge over Montero at this point. So I had this revelation about Sean Markham that I used to be a person who would always say if a team signed a talented starter who had trouble staying healthy, I'd always say, oh, this is a good buy low move. There's not much risk. It's not a big contract. And if he stays healthy, then there's there's not much risk it's not a big contract and if he stays healthy uh then there's a there's a high reward but i finally figured out that this is not

that the reward is not actually that high that if you get a sean markham he's going to get hurt and i'm not confident that that there is really any chance of just sort of sneaking a 200-inning pitch season out of a guy like that. Right. And if I can just add to that, I loved this piece that you wrote, and I've used this theory as well, but one of the other things that's interesting about it is that it is actually likely that you're going to be a year too late realizing that he has also become bad yes that could be like yeah like that that they always go bad before they stay healthy

and they always go bad before you realized they were going to right so i had the same sort of feeling about josh johnson whom the padres signed to a one-year $8 million deal. And I would say that the reaction, the response to that signing was pretty positive, that people generally did the low-risk, high-reward sort of thing because a healthy Josh Johnson, an effective Josh Johnson for $8 million would be a steal. But I gave up on the idea of a healthy josh johnson and so now josh johnson is having tommy john surgery again and the interesting thing is that there is a clause in the contract which gives the padres a four million dollar team option on johnson if he got hurt in this way. And so he has. So now the question is, do you take Josh Johnson for $4 million? So let's assume that he has Tommy John surgery imminently. He has Tommy

John surgery next month. He spends the season rehabbing. Everything seems to go well, and it's going as planned, and maybe he'd be ready at midseason or something next year, and there's no red flag in the rehab process by whatever time they would have to make the decision about picking up this option. Are you even tempted to take Josh Johnson at half the rate that he is making this year? I'm a little tempted. I remember when that option came out, there was some buzz that like, oh, this is this great lackey clause that the Padres have got. It gives them more upside and I remember thinking that there is almost no way that that clause could be triggered

in which I would want Josh Johnson anywhere near my team, right? I mean, because it's a very low number. It's like if he made like seven or fewer starts or something like that. Yeah. And so the thing is, though, that Tommy John is like the one, it's the closest thing to a reset button in baseball. The recovery rate is so high and you often see guys come back so close to full strength or at full strength. I mean, Lackey being the classic example of it,, hundreds of pitchers being the classic example of it, that I might be tempted. However, it's not like Johnson's issue has always been his elbow.

He'll just get hurt some other way. If he hadn't gotten Tommy John, he would still be missing this season for some other reason. And so I wouldn't. The only thing about it is that if you're the Padres, Johnson, I don't know this for a fact, but Johnson probably chose you specifically because that's the park that basically that's the park he wants to pitch in to rehabilitate his value. And I don't know that Petco is still as pitcher-friendly as all that, but as long as it has that reputation, that seems like something that you could use if you're a team. So, you know, Johnson is maybe essentially taking a discount to pitch for you that he wouldn't be taking anywhere else. So it's conceivable that Johnson actually was signed for so low below market value that he still was a good deal for the Padres, even adjusting for your expectations,

and that he still will be even adjusting for your expectations. I wouldn't think so, though. I would just turn down the option. Yes, I agree. And my other bit of banter was just, I mean, I don't know if you heard the Dirk Hayhurst interview from last week when Russell and I talked to him about Michael Pineda and the things that he had written inspired by Michael Pineda's seeming pine tar sighting in his last start against the Red Sox. basically said that if you do it that obviously, you made a mistake, that use of these sorts of substances is universal or near universal. And obviously, it only becomes a controversy a few

times a year. So if it's that obvious, if it's as obvious as it was last time he did this, then it's really the fault of the pitcher for applying stuff improperly or just not being more discreet about it in some way. And so now in another start against the Red Sox, his next start against the Red Sox, Michael Pineda did the same thing. And this time, presumably, they told the ump the empire to check and he did, and he was ejected from the game in the second inning and, uh, now faces a 10 game suspension. And Gabe Kapler tweeted that this was like getting pulled over by a cop, him not giving

you a ticket and you peeling out in front of him as you drive away, which, uh, seems like a pretty good comparison. And this is, I almost, I mean, I wonder how he could have conceived of doing this again so obviously. And even more, I wonder why no one on the Yankees said anything or, you know, told him to be more careful because it was clear that he had done something. And he said he was, I don't remember what his, he said it was just dirt last time or dirt got wet and got muddy or something like that.

And, of course, the substance, whatever it was, mysteriously disappeared mid-game once people started talking about it. So this is, I don't know, this is evidence that Michael Pineda is possibly the worst cheater in Major League Baseball. I will give him that title. Yeah, so presumably he will continue, I mean, since everybody does this, since everybody has their sticky stuff, Presumably he will continue to, and I wonder if he'll figure out a way to get away with it or whether he's now fair game,

whether he's sort of the one guy who isn't exempt from this rule and people will be watching very closely and the rare time that the internet discovers it or something, because the internet's often discovering this sort of a thing, right? That action will be taken, or if all he has to do is basically just, you know, keep up appearances and he'll get away with it starting now. Mm-hmm. People ask John Farrell after the last start, you know, if you face Pineda again, would you say something to the Empire? Because? Because of course he didn't say anything

last time and it wasn't clear. Listening to him, it sounded like he hadn't become aware of it until the substance had been removed. But it wasn't clear whether it was that or just the fact that he was hesitant to challenge because Red Sox pitchers do the same thing or the same sort of thing and have been caught doing the same sort of thing or spotted doing the same sort of thing. And that would make you hesitant as a manager to challenge because then you invite challenges from opposing managers who may catch your pitchers doing the same thing.

But someone asked him if they faced Pineda again, would he check? And he kind of gave a non-answer. But, I mean, I don't know how if you're michael pineda you're not aware of the fact that this became a story the last time you pitched against this very team and that if you do exactly the same thing you're likely to get caught this time so not not the smartest move on his part he did hide it on his Yes. Like, who's looking at a guy's neck? Right. It's the part of your body that just blends in so seamlessly to the rest of the world.

Yeah, not seamlessly enough in this case. Yep. Okay. Okay. All right. So then, to the topic, which we can do relatively quickly, when Miguel Cabrera signed his extension, there were two scary stories that were brought up to point out how much risk the Tigers were taking on. One was the Phillies signing Ryan Howard two years before they had to.

The other is the Angels signing Albert Pujols for a massive, massive, massive amount of money. Even though Pujols was the best player in baseball at the time, it became clear how quickly things could go south for big sluggers around the age of 30 or so. And so those were kind of the two precedents for why you shouldn't do a deal like Cabrera. And Cabrera, on the other hand, is at the top of the game, was at the top of the game. And so even though this was, you know, I, is at the top of the game, was at the top of the game. So even though this was, I would say, widely panned as a move, probably not as, I would think, not as widely panned at the moment as the Howard and Fools deals were, because both of those guys looked like they were pretty bad and weren't going to be very good. So I wanted to reassess because Howard right now is hitting 276, 364, 526.

He's having a good month. And Albert Pujols is hitting 284, 351, 625. I believe he leads the American League in home runs and slugging percentage. And you wrote about how Pujols had very quickly turned things around and gone into 500 home runs with a bang. Cabrera, meanwhile, is hitting 236, 295, 403, which is easy to overlook. But as Dane Perry wrote, he's basically in a 200 plate appearance slump right now, going back to late last season and including the postseason. And the injuries that you might point out to excuse the slump at the end of last year are just as easily marshaled as evidence for why he's risky and why his age is a dangerous one. So I just wanted to go over these three moves real quickly and ask you which of the three right now,

we're not talking about the entirety of the deal, but right now, which of the three is the worst and which of the three is the best from the team's perspective? So you have to take on one of these three moves. We'll say you're a big market team, but not the biggest market team. We'll say that you're like a team in the fourth through seventh range in payroll, like the Angels or the Tigers or the Phillies. Do you want Ryan Howard for $80 million roughly over the next three years, including this year? Do you want Albert Pujols for about $208 million over the next eight years, including this year? Or do you want Miguel Cabrera, $288 million roughly over the next decade with two vesting options?

Such enticing choices. Well, my first inclination is to go with the shortest term. I mean, Howard, we're talking about three plus seasons, which is so, I mean, it's such a smaller financial commitment, right? And 2017 is a team option for him, although there's also a big buyout. The buyout is included in this. The option is essentially for $13 million for 2017 if you take it. Otherwise, it's a $23 million option with a $10 million buyout. So I would certainly expect Howard to be the worst of the three players

over the next few years, but you clear that contract much more quickly than you clear the Pujols or Cabrera contracts. So that's my initial inclination. I mean, if we evaluate which of the moves was worse at the time it was made, I think you could still make a pretty good case for Howard as the worst of them. Wait, wait, wait, wait. You're saying you could make a pretty good case that it's the worst of them,

and it's only gotten worse since then, and the two best years are now gone from the five. Yeah, but it's so close. I mean, you'd be done with that if you want in a couple years, just over two years. Whereas with Cabrera, you're stuck with that contract through next decade. And Pujols, what's the last year of Pujols' deal? That's very far in the future also. So I don't know. I mean I think you could kind of reevaluate the contract. I think maybe the labeling of Pujols as one of the worst deals was slightly premature

or at least he was written off a bit too much and i was sort of guilty of this too i think over this past winter maybe we maybe we read too much into that injury or or took it as a chronic thing whereas maybe it was more of a correctable thing um and now he's just back to being the player that he was before that injury, which was a diminished version of the best player in baseball, which is still a really good player. So I think you could make the case that maybe that deal won't look completely terrible if salaries continue to rise somewhat steadily. But I don't know.

I think I kind of just want the one that I can wash my hands of the quickest, which would be Howard. Okay. You don't put any kind of stock in the idea that there's just not that many good players around and that you have to overpay for good players. And it's not like if you have the $300 million available to you, it's not like you could just go out and sign a bunch of all-stars real easily. It's actually hard to spend money at this point to some degree if you want these kind of impact players. And so at least there's some, at least there's some value in the fact that,

you know, a guy like Cabrera is irreplaceable. You know, you can't just go out and get that guy. You have to, you could get, you know, you could try to piece together a bunch of guys in the old money ball kind of way who can replicate it. But, you know, nobody's going to replicate it that's it's irreplaceable so you don't want that guy you don't want that guy on your roster ben cabrera um you're anti you're saying that you don't want miguel cabrera as a baseball player

i think your statistics have gotten crazy ben you're way out of hand how can you think that mig Miguel Cabrera is a bad player? I just heard you say that. Yeah, well, I think it's true. I think that's why they made that move when they did, that partially it was that it's getting really rare to find a star level player on the free agent market, or it's getting rarer and you look at the the free agent market this off season and it looks just awful uh and and it could be even thinner by the time we get there so so yes um and i mean the question maybe is like how how bad do we think cabrera is going to get during that contract is he is he going to he's starting from such a high level a much higher

level than ryan howard was at when he signed his extension so even though it takes him through an older age will i mean how old is cabrera during the last year of that deal do you know is he 40 or 40 or 41 yeah right so is is cabrera at 40 better or worse than Ryan Howard at 36, 37? I don't know. That could be close. I don't know that I would expect Cabrera to be worse at any point during that deal than I expect Howard to be by the end of this deal. And the money is not, not a, you know, it's not a crazy amount more, especially given the, the inflation of,

of the last few years of that deal after, after Howard's is up and Cabrera's is still going. So, so, uh, that's a, yeah, you can make a pretty good case for Cabrera, I think. Let me continue to make, not because I necessarily am choosing Cabrera, but let me continue to make a case for Cabrera, a three-step case here. One is that I just read Howard's good numbers, his batting numbers. However, he's still, I believe, below replacement this year, at least by baseball reference, because his defense is so bad that defensive metrics are like,

no, no, a small sample is good enough for us. We're good. We got it. So he's like at minus five defensively already this year. So Howard is, despite the impressive slash line that I read you, a slash line good enough probably for him to make the all-star team if he keeps it up. He is not actually a good baseball player this year, according to that. Of course, we know enough to be skeptical of April defensive metrics even more so than usual, so maybe you want to disregard that. But anyway, that's one thing.

two. Yes, Albert Pujols was extremely good and appears to be healthy and playing better than he has before they signed him. And he's a valuable ballplayer again. There's lots of reasons to think that Albert Pujols is going to produce a lot of warps in the next eight years. However, that deal was heavily backloaded. They signed him at ridiculous rates for the first two years so that they could afford to sign C.J. Wilson and do other things like go out to dinner. He basically made like $10 million the first year and I think like $16 million the second year or something like that. So it's now the time when he's getting real money. And simultaneously, the two years that he should have been at his best, the two years that he was still near, if not in his physical prime, theoretically, are gone. So now you have only the bad years

in the contract. And I looked at various projection systems when they signed him at the 10-year projection systems. And basically they thought that pools would be MVP level the first few years and then very good the next couple of years. And then like right around year five is the last year where he's supposed to be worth the annual value. And from that point on, it's all downhill. And by like year seven, year eight, he's average at best and then replacement level. You've got the two MVP level years that projection systems had seen are gone. Maybe he'll get one this year, or maybe he'll even get one next year, but the two years that you're supposed

to have banked 13, 14 wins already are gone. And all the projection systems, every single one of them, basically had him being like a 25-win player or so the last eight years. So you've got that player now making much more. So here's the third thing. You have to assume that these teams do know something that we don't and that they do kind of know what they're doing to some degree i mean generally uh i think that it's fairly healthy to at least start with the idea that they know what you know they know what they're doing and that it's the onus is on

us to find the evidence that they don't and that they've made a mistake and i think there were people who argued that all three of these were mistakes at the time but you know probably given given the feeling that at least the the teams know their own situations better than we do, you would probably regress all of those mistakes slightly toward being not a mistake. Now, that being said, though, things change after they sign. And so the Howard deal looked like a mistake. Then Howard was much worse than any projection system said. Now it looks like an even worse mistake. Right now they have a deal that looked bad that got worse, that got considerably worse when

it hit reality. Pools, same thing. It looked maybe bad, got considerably worse when it hit reality. Cabrera's deal is like two months old. There hasn't been that much time to reshape how we think things. What we basically still have is the deal that he signed and that the Tigers willingly signed and that the Tigers thought with all of their smart economists and lawyers and business people and so on reflected market rate for him. And so we should probably have to some degree a feeling like that's still a move that the Tigers would have been comfortable making or are comfortable making even now or close to now. And therefore, it might be more defensible than we give it credit for. Yes, that's a good point. Although when people criticize the Cabrera deal and when I criticize the Cabrera deal,

it was just – it was basically on the basis of it being a buy-high move that he was two years away from free agency and you're signing him coming off back-to-back MVP seasons, coming off one of the best offensive seasons anyone has had in a while. And why do that, basically? That if they had waited to sign him, that it almost inevitably would have worked out in their favor unless he, because it didn't seem like they got a big discount. And if you sign a guy two years before free agency, then you should get

some some reward for for guaranteeing all those years before before you had to and and maybe that discount was priced in maybe Miguel Cabrera's is worth more would have cost more than than we think he should have um or would have but that was that was kind of the thing that hey why not wait he almost almost has to be worse this season uh than he has been the last couple years just because he has been playing at such a high level and maybe if he comes out and he has a slightly worse season then maybe you get him for less when he's still a year away from free agency. This month that he's having right now, unless he has a really good last week, which of course is possible,

looks pretty clearly like it will be the worst month that he has had in either of the past two seasons. In 2012, he really did not have a bad month. His worst month, he hit 330 with not a ton of power. And last year, he was great in every month until September, at which point when he played was a bit better than he has been this year. So this is right now looks like he is playing at a lower level than he has, or at least results wise, worse than he was at any point in the last couple of years. And so even if he salvages it and returns to the same level that he was at the last two seasons, with this one month that's been worse than any other month in those two years, his final stats might look a little worse. So this is the kind of thing that people were talking about

and I was talking about, that maybe he has a bad month, which we didn't really see him have the last couple of years. And if he has a bad month, maybe he doesn't command the same kind of contract anymore. If he looks bad for a while, that there was really no way, and we talked about it in the podcast that that even if he came out and won two more mvp awards and continued to play at the same level that it didn't seem like he could make all that much more than he was making from that deal because he would be older and maybe an aging profile that kind of scares teams a little bit. And so they were wagering that he wouldn't walk away.

It didn't seem like they were getting much upside there, much potential savings. So all that being said, you might be right, that there are reasons to think that he is the best. you might be right that there are reasons to think that he is the best. So is Pujols then a consensus among us? Worst one of these deals? No, no, no. I think Cabrera is the worst deal.

But you made such a great case. Let me ask you. I don't actually know which one. I'm very bad at comparing contracts of radically different shapes, sizes and shapes. I always find this difficult to do and I'm not sure there is a right answer. But let me rephrase the question slightly. This is not actually not, or rephrasing so much is a totally different question, but the numbers I gave you for Howard and Pujols, which are rounded in estimates, but they add up to $288 million over 11 years. The number I gave you for Cabrera

was $288 million over 10 years. So who you got? The two? Would you rather have Howard and Pujols for $288 million or Cabrera for $288 million? Well, in a practical sense, what do you do with two of these guys? You're a bad contract fence. You're not actually going to use these guys but you're a you're a you're a bad contract fence you're not actually going to use these deals you're just going to go sell them on the open market somehow um i think i'd rather just have the one yeah uh i think that yeah uh that that, boy, Cabrera for seven, if you take out Howard's portion, you have Cabrera for $7,208 million. I think I, I don't know, man. I think that even if this is not mathematically correct, the aesthetics of it are just too much for me to get past.

I will say that Howard is the one I want the least. And I think that probably Pujols is the one I want the most. He was so much better than Cabrera as you noted today. He was so much better at Cabrera than Cabrera when he was on. His five best years are just so much better than Cabrera's five best years. I would sort of gamble on his health at this point to some degree and say that I'd take him over Cabrera at those prices. And the extra $80 million that comes with it. Uh-huh. Okay.

So, yeah. All right. Did you watch the GIF I just sent you? Yes. So, this is Puig hitting a triple while we were talking. And you'll notice his slide. It's a five-point celebration. There are five distinct moves of celebration.

It's a five-point celebration. There are five distinct moves of celebration. Is Puig the first player to have a closer celebration who is not actually a relief pitcher? He's got, okay, so he does this. I'll link to this so people can watch it. Clap, swing, and then kiss, and then at the very end, a little wave with his fist. It's sort of an off balance slide.

And then you could almost make the case that the slide itself is it's self celebratory that he is going out of his way somehow that like, what is that? Right. Cause he kind of, he goes like horizontal. He comes in perpendicular to the bag instead of parallel. Oh no. He comes in parallel to the bag instead of perpendicular or No, he comes in parallel to the bag instead of perpendicular or whatever. He comes in the way people don't. Yeah, so there's a point and then there's sort of a hand sweeping gesture, almost a clap in a way. And that goes into a swing.

That's a clap swing. Right. And then there is... This is great because the swing is like he's hitting a metaphorical home run, but he's an actual baseball player who just hit a triple. He does the home run swing like you and I would do. If I had a business meeting and you're like, how'd it go? And I went, knocked it out of the park.

Except he's literally a baseball player who just knocked it in the park. Right. And so then he does the point to the heavens. And then he also does a bit of a fist pump at the end. Yeah. Every possible version of celebration. Of course, it was a pretty big hit. So.

Yeah. Well, kind of. They already had the lead. The 2-1 lead into a 3-1 lead in the seventh against a non-division opponent in April. Not the biggest hit. Yeah. All right. We will link to this in the Facebook group if you want to watch it along with us.

All right. So that's that. We'll be back with one more show tomorrow. Please support our sponsor, Baseball Reference. Go to baseballreference.com. Subscribe to the Play Index using the coupon code BP to get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription.