Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 917: State of the Standings: AL East

Episode Date: July 1, 2016

Ben talks to Joe Sheehan about the AL East, wrapping up a five-episode series on the state of each division as the regular season’s midpoint approaches.

I wanted to go home with you. I wanted to stay true to the cause. What love, what we're living in. It's war on the East Coast. It's war out West. Oh, I don't care, I don't care. It's war on the East Coast. It's war out West. Oh, I don't care, I decided to spend this week's episodes talking to Rennie Giserely and Joe Sheehan, running down each of the divisions and discussing where they stand. So we have covered five out of six, and today we are up to the AL East, which actually comes last in a series for once. This is the last installment of the conversation I had with Rennie and Joe, and then just Joe alone a few days ago. Joe, of course, is the author of the Joe Sheehan newsletter at JoeSheehan.com and a contributor to SI and The Athletic Chicago. So we will pick up right here where we left off with the AL East. All right, well, we have come to the

last division and this is a division we're talking about last, both because, you know, going by my spreadsheet of your rankings of how interesting teams are, which I did at the beginning of this series, the AL East has the highest average interestingness rating. But it's also – That's not East Coast bias at all. Right. And it also has three teams within the top five games. And I think up until recently, you could have said that all five of these teams were within six or seven games or something, and now the Rays at least have fallen back a bit. But still, we're talking about a division with, as we speak, four or five hundred teams and at least one team that is significantly overperforming preseason expectations.

So since we were talking about overperforming Orioles teams not long ago, we should talk about this overperforming Orioles team. So what is the formula for this Orioles squad that has managed to be much better than most of us expected? Hit a bunch of home runs and employ Zach Britton. Right. So I mean, the home runs was foreseeable, right? We knew the Orioles were going to hit home runs, but we thought they would be bad or middling regardless, right? But they've managed to hit home runs and still be a team that's 15 games over 500. I said at the start of the year, the Orioles would have to hit 225 home runs. They're on pace to hit close to 250. No, I did not see this coming. Mark Trumbo is just never a player I've bought into, and he's having the best year of his career. Pedro Alvarez has actually been a league average hitter. Obviously, Machado's breakout is something you could have seen, but Jonathan Scope has a 317 OBP. That's great for Jonathan Scope when you consider everything else he brings to the table.

that great defense at second base, and he's hitting the, being a 20-25 homer guy, that's a great player. And it just, it does show that, I mean, for all the guys like us get, I don't mean that you and me, I mean, guys, stat heads get pinged for, oh, OBP is too much. It is possible to be a good player who doesn't have a great on-base percentage. You just

have to do everything else well. Lord knows the Orioles have had that type of guy in Adam Jones for years, and scope really fits that model. But really, this is just, they're hitting, they're hitting 250 home runs, and it's hard to be a bad team if you do that. If you do nothing but hit 200 – and they're doing other things. I mean, they're fourth in the league in batting average. They're squaring up balls. They've been incredibly healthy.

They've only used – counting here – 15 position players all year. The only injury they had, I want to say, was to Caleb Joseph. So, I mean, they've really been very stable. Hardy. Hardy was hurt, which allowed them to move Machado to shortstop for a while. Real hardship. You know, but Zach Britton – and I'll throw this out at you. The very best one-pitch pitchers in baseball history.

Yeah. Mariano Rivera, Zach Britton. Yeah. I've never seen anything like – this guy throws one pitch 90% of the time. He's in the ERA below one. And he's done this for three years now. It's just – and he's fun to – like it's something to watch where you just – you watch him. You're like, this guy is going to throw the sinker.

And he throws the sinker and it's a swing and miss or it's a ground ball. It's – I just – I feel like we're just – this ball is focused on Wade Davis and we're not looking at Zach Britton and what he's doing. It's just – it's amazing. And of course, Darren O'Day, having a Darren O'Day season, maybe a little bit worse. Brad Brock. Joined by Brad Brock and Michael Gibbons. The average, the typical Buck Showalter is going to pull a guy out of the Padres organization and turn him into an effective reliever. It's essentially the 2012 formula. They hit home

runs, they play defense, and they shut you down in the bullpen. I just don't know if he can continue when the rotation is this bad. Randy was complaining about the Royals rotation, and I'm not sure how much better the Orioles rotation is. I like Tillman. I've been on Gossman for a while, but the drop-off after that is utterly disastrous. They had like five guys who never missed a start and had a 3.5 ERA, and their peripherals didn't seem like they would go along with an ERA in that range. But they managed to keep outperforming that, and maybe some of that was defense, and maybe it still is. See, that's where you lose me because as much as this is a good defensive team in infield, it's not one in the outfield. I mean I can't emphasize that enough. I mean Joey Rickard, who was supposed to be like the young speed guy, the Rule 5 pick, was a bad outfielder. Yeah. probably not a good defensive player. And yet it's working for them. They don't have a particularly good stat. They're 11th in the league in strikeouts, so they're relying on the defense for run prevention. And they're middle of the pack in run prevention. Yeah. And it's not a especially ground ball heavy staff, which would be nice with their defense. So

I don't know. But Adam Jones, after starting the season slow, has been the peak Adam Jones for the last few weeks at least. So that's been a big help. And yeah, I guess the Orioles are not going away. It would be nice if they could pick up a starter at some point. But again, as we've discussed earlier in the series, there aren't a lot of appealing arms to go around. And this isn't an organization with a lot of... I mean, you look at Hunter Harvey just came off the DL the other day. I don't think he's got a lot of trade value. Bundy has no trade value anymore. I don't think they want to give up Cisco in case Wieters leaves as a free agent. There's not a lot of trade bait within this organization.

I don't think that's going to be how they get it. I mean, I can see them making moves around the edges, but they're not going to be able to compete with, say, the Red Sox if there's a pitcher out there that both teams want. Right. And you would think that would happen because speaking of teams with weak starting rotations, the Red Sox, despite the breakout of Stephen Wright, and who knows if a knuckleballers breakout will prove to be ephemeral or not, but Wright has been great. He's been the ace that David Price was signed to be. It turns out it's Stephen Wright all along. And so yeah, you kind of have to, you know, Eduardo Rodriguez has been back for a few starts, but hasn't helped that situation yet. And Porcello has, I guess, settled in as a decent mid or back of the rotation

guy, which is fine. And then you kind of need something there. You need that. You'd expect Price to be the ace and he still misses bats and has good peripherals, but he's also given up home runs and doesn't seem like he's quite the guy he was. He's lost some velocity. And so I don't know, you'd hoped that Rodriguez would come up and sort of fill that spot and he hasn't yet. And of course, Joe Kelly, Joe Kelly. So I don't know what you do there. It hurts, of course, that they lost Carson Smith because this is a of course, Joe Kelly, Joe Kelly. So I don't know what you do there. It hurts, of course, that they lost Carson Smith because this is a team that, you know, it would have really helped to have another unhittable bullpen guy to paper over the weakness in the rotation. And now they don't have that. And Joe Kelly is just sitting there.

Right. But apparently will never be converted. They'll try him in left field before they try him in the bullpen. Yeah. It's hard to understand the reasoning there because speaking of guys with a Mitch Williams-esque walk rate, as we did earlier in the week when we talked about Trevor Rosenthal, I mean, he's got the seven plus walks per nine in the rotation. So you'd think that at some point they'd stop banging their heads against that particular wall, but hasn't happened yet. So yeah, you'd think they'd be at the front of the line when trade talks come up, not just because it's Dave Dombrowski, but because they have the prospects. They have the young players that you could trade for. So I don't know.

Who's the most appealing guy out there? Who's the player who would make the Red Sox pitching staff look better by the most? I mean, is Jimmy Nelson available? And I don't love Jimmy Nelson, but this is the problem. If you think – okay, let's say Price, Wright, and Porcello are 1-3-4. You want a two. That animal doesn't exist in captivity. I had somebody – I was in a chat once, and somebody talked about Rich Hill.

Yeah. And I want you to tell me after this, by the way, what you would pay Rich Hill after the season. But like I said, Rich Hill hasn't thrown more than 100 innings in a year since like 2008. Why would you ever look to him for the second half of a full season? On skill, sure, but he was always going to break down. Now he's hurt, and we'll see if he comes back and what he gives the A's. But just in terms of quality, and the guy you would say, this is who I want starting the second game of a postseason series, I'm having a hard time finding that guy. And that's going to be a problem for all these teams. Now, I think if anything, the Red Sox go out and get a left fielder.

You know, assume Brock Holt was never going to be a solution in left field even before the concussion and go out and find some ridiculous hitter to play out there. I talked about him and them being in the McCutcheon talks. And to connect two reasons you pointed to here, Dombrowski and the prospects. But remember, those two things aren't connected. General managers, Dave Dombrowski is not at all invested in the Red Sox prospects. But remember, those two things aren't connected. General managers, Dave Dombrowski is not at all invested in the Red Sox prospects.

They were acquired by a completely different organization, a set of guys that got fired. Yeah. Of course, a lot of the front office

is still there. A lot of front, but he traded Margot and Guerra for 65 innings of a 2.85 ERA reliever, which you can pretty much get off the waiver wire. I absolutely think

that if it comes down to trading Ben Attendee or even a Yohan Mankata, Anderson Espinosa, Rafael Devers, they have so many prospects. I fully expect the combination of Dombrowski wanting to win now, saying he was going to win now, and having all these prospects he's not connected to, leads the Red Sox to make – I don't know what the biggest trade of the deadline will be, but I fully expect the Red Sox to make it. Right. Even if there is no number two, I guess the hope is that they just hit their way out of the problem, which they might very well do.

And that's what you do. Yeah. You just try to build a 900 run offense and run them out there. And honestly, if you would add a real left fielder to this team, I mean, you could say, Travis Shaw is not going to keep it up and I'll completely buy that. But I mean, when you start Betts, Bogarts, the last, this unbelievable year that David Ortiz is having. You know, Pedroia is having a bounce back year. Bradley has turned into a star in the last 11 months. Just keep piling hitters on. I mean, it's a very 1998 way to approach it. But if that's the talent that's available, go ahead and do it. Yeah. And they're really, I guess, trying to eke the most outs that they can out of their pitching staff by playing Christian Vasquez.

And, you know, it's kind of the Jose Molina model that the Rays tried a couple years ago, which is, you know, get a guy who doesn't hit at all but gets you some extra strikes. And I don't know, maybe in their case when everyone else hits and pitching is the weak spot, maybe it helps them more than it would most teams. But it's still a lot of outs to live with in that lineup spot. It is. And I also liked it. Blake Swart's hurt now. So it's almost like, well, this is the play that works. I didn't like turning Blake Swart into a left fielder so that he could play Vasquez. I thought actually, I would have probably dumped Hannigan and just gone with Swihart and Vasquez. I think Blake Swihart really got a raw deal. And of course, who knows how he comes back for the angle. They suffered a play in left field. But again,ihart really got a raw deal, and of course, who knows how he comes back from the ankle. They suffered

a play on left field, but again, if you've got eight hitters, you can have the Memorial Ray O'Donohue spot, especially in the American League. You can't really get away with that in the National League, where you've got to play a pitcher plus a glove. But I don't mind it. And as you say, Vasquez's framing skill, and I'm using the air quotes,

umpire exploitation, is good enough that he might be one of the guys you can actually justify it with. So I wish he'd hit more. A guy like that, if he can find his way to 15 homers in a season, that's what I thought. I thought he could be like a 230, 280, 410 type hitter. And if he's going to be worse than that, it comes real hard to play him. All right. And the Blue Jays, they're also a team that has more or less played up to expectations, but has done so in sort of a strange way. I don't think anyone expected the Blue Jays to have the third lowest ERA in the American League and then be basically an average-ish offensive team. That's not what we thought the Blue Jays were, but that has been what they've been to this point. So they have some weird holes in the lineup, you know, guys like Russell Martin, who just hasn't hit and just maybe isn't right, but it's hard to improve on that spot mid-season. And, you know, maybe Tulewitzki has looked very good at times

and has looked past his prime at other times. And overall, I think we can say he's no longer the star player that he was with the Rockies. And And of course they were living with guys like Goins and Pillar who are mostly In there for their defense to begin with So I don't know how you Improve the Blue Jays right now I mean Aaron Sanchez That move has worked out fairly well And that was something that there were a lot of

Concerns about jerking him around And I know that you were worried about him going down The Jabba and Neftali Feliz Path and thus far at least least, he hasn't broken. But Marcus Stroman is a guy people are talking about sending down to the minors, and he was the savior of last season's staff and the postseason ace, or at least that's how he was treated. So again, there have been a lot of surprises along the way, but the Blue Jays are in it and not too far from where they were expected to be. Let's not forget a year ago, the Blue Jays were one of the more disappointing teams in baseball. They were plus 90 run differential and they hadn't played to that.

And then of course, down the stretch, they became the Blue Jays that we all came to know and love outside of Texas. You're right. I was down on the Sanchez move and he certainly regressed a bit over the last month. And I think longevity has to be a concern for him. If you're looking 15 starts, 97 innings, we're about at the halfway mark. Are you really expecting to get 30 starts out of him? Are you really expecting to get 190 innings out of him? At what point do you have to throttle him back? They don't have the depth to throttle back on anybody, really.

Marcus Stroman, is he really going to give you 200 innings? He has, what's his career high? I think his professional high is 140. And last year he threw 60. All in, count the playoffs, count the minor leagues. It's really hard to see how they manage their rotation. I guess, does Gavin Floyd become a guy for them? He's pitching out of the bullpen now,

and they might need to get 12 starts from him down the stretch, and who knows how well that'll work. Does Drew Hutchison eventually have a role on this team? You see the guy releases one of those two. I think it's probably going to come down to the offense being better, and I don't necessarily buy it. Last year, they were incredibly right-handed. They're still, other than Saunders' tremendous year,

very right-handed, so they can get exposed, particularly late in the games, tough matchups. I don't like teams that are that imbalanced one way or the other, especially in an era where we've got all of these hard-throwing right-handed relievers. You can just blow guys up. I like the one way or the other, especially in an era where we've got all of these hard-throwing right-handed relievers. You can just blow guys up. I like the way they shape the team, where they kind of punted some defense, punted some offense and center at second,

but Pillar and Goins haven't hit at all, and that's just not getting it done. You've lost – Tulewitzki didn't hit, then he got hurt, and now he's back. I don't know. I just – I look at the talent level, and to me, they're not actually close to the Red Sox when it comes to talent level. I think we forgot that at the end of last year when they had David Price. I'm not going to say that's a 12-win swing from one team to the other, but if I say it's eight plus four minus four, I think that's reasonable. To me, that's probably the gap between them right now is an eight-game gap. In the Ari Dickey trade And as much as they'd like to have some of the players Involved in that deal back He's sort of settled into this nice Late career phase Sort of like an old knuckleballer phase

Where he's just an average pitcher Who throws a ton of innings now And he was nothing And then he went from nothing to One of the best pitchers in baseball for a few years For one year And then instead of just completely flaming out He's settled into this nice Late productive phase of his career For one year. For one year. Understand, but impressive nonetheless, and he's turned into their best starting pitcher. So it's not the team that anyone expected exactly. Well, do you buy into Estrada?

You guys, I know, talk a lot about what we know in terms of pitcher effect on outcomes and how it's not as simple as dips theory. But Estrada is really the outlier in that this year. Where do you stand on him? Yeah, I mean, when we talked about him last year, I think we gave him a lot of credit for the things that he did. And I know that, you know, Mike Petriello, who writes about StatCast at MLB.com, he pointed out all the things that Estrada was doing differently, and he was inducing weak contact. And I looked at all that, and I thought, okay, you know, maybe he's not a league average

Babbitt guy then, but he's probably not a 216 Babbitt guy, which was what he was in 2015. And it turns out, no, he's not. He's a 183 Babbitt guy. Does that animal really exist in nature? I don't think that could possibly exist. It's hard to imagine something like that existing. I don't know. I mean, I could buy, I guess, that a pitcher could actually be that for a small period. Maybe that is a pitcher's

true talent over a limited time, that he's just doing everything in such a perfect way and he's just balancing on that knife edge and whatever line he's walking, he's managing to do it. But how long can you continue to be that perfect and beat the odds over and over and over again? Oh, I'm sorry. I feel like we've dropped into like a Britney Spears bio here or something. We just don't know how long she's going to hold up. Yeah, I don't know. It's just it's hard to I mean, beating your FIP is one thing, but beating it by, you know, two full runs over a couple of years, that's that's difficult to do.

So I'm not saying that he's going to turn into full Chris Young 2016, but hard to imagine him sustaining quite this amount of success, but they need him to. So I guess we have finally worked our way around to the team of your youth, New York Yankees. Team of yours too, no? Yeah, of mine too. Like some other teams we've talked about there,

Sam and I kind of talked about them last week and lumped them in with Like some other teams we've talked about there, Sam and I kind of talked about them last week and lumped them in with a couple other teams that are in confusing situations. You know, we talked about them and the White Sox and the Pirates as teams that aren't out of it, certainly, but aren't exactly in it. And should they sell or should they buy or what should they do? And I don't know, is there any case for the Yankees not being sellers? Because, of course, they have a lot of very attractive pieces. They have the bullpen guys. They have Beltran.

You could, you know, even think that there are some other guys even in the lineup as bad as it's been. Brett Gardner, for instance, has been a guy who's been talked about in trade speculation before. Maybe this is finally the time. So for a team that hasn't been particularly good, they do have a bunch of guys who would catch a contender's eye. So is there any argument for not taking them up on that

other than that this is the Yankees and the Yankees don't sell? The credible argument would be the 2015 Yankees, which are more or less the same guys that made the playoffs. And quite frankly, if the AL West turns out differently and they don't have to face Dallas

Keuchel in a one-game playoff, maybe the whole last postseason changes around it. They've got to face, I'm trying to remember, Colby Lewis in that game. Colby Lewis in Yankee Stadium is a recipe for disaster and maybe everything goes differently. But the Astros blew the lead. The Rangers won the division. The Yankees got Keuchel shoved down their throats and with expected results. But I don't think it's a real good argument. I think that I've said for a while, I mean, the idea that the Yankees got Keuchel shoved down their throats and with expected results. But I don't think it's a real good argument. I think that I've said for a while, I mean, the idea that the Yankees can't rebuild has

always made no sense to me because the Yankees built a dynasty after punting three years. And you don't even have to suspend George Steinbrenner to do it this time. George Steinbrenner has been suspended forever. All you have to do is just decide. You know, we can't build – the core we have right now isn't going to win 95 games. It's have to do is just decide. You know, we can't build... The core we have right now isn't going to win 95 games. It's not going to win 90 games. They've been getting away with... Frankly, Joe Girardi

is very good at his job and doesn't get nearly enough credit for... And I didn't... I spent a long time beating up Joe Girardi and now I'm fully on the Joe Girardi bandwagon. He's managed these dysfunctional rosters without getting this influx of great young talent that other managers get and he's done a good job. And I think if he wasn't as good as his job as he is, the Yankees would have looked a lot worse the last three years, and maybe the

need to rebuild would have been more apparent. But no, I'd like to see them take the next two years, clear the payroll, wait for the Mateos and the Caprellians to be healthy and effective if those things are going to happen at the same time. And decide who you want in 2000 after 2018. Because even though most guys get signed now, I think we can reasonably expect Harper's going to be a free agent. Kershaw might, Machado might, Price might, if he's still there. The Yankees then can get their payroll down to $65, $70 million and go absolutely nuts for two guys.

And presumably bring those guys into a team that has a better younger core. But I don't think you can do that unless you've put some effort into – you've got to get worse. And the best thing that can happen for the Yankees is going in 2018, they have a protected draft pick, assuming the rules are still the same. The Yankees want to be drafting in the top 10 at the end of 2018. Because that's the way they can go out and sign the Bryce Harper and still have their first-round draft pick in 2019. I absolutely think this – the current Yankees can't win anything of note. You can start over – you don't have to take five years like the Astros, the Cubs, the Braves. You can do it in two years because you have the ability to run a $220 million payroll.

And now is the time to do that, right? Because I mean if you – even if you wait till this coming off season, I mean you lose Chapman or you get a compensation pick when he leaves, or maybe you keep him. But all the guys they have here, they're guys on expiring deals, they're guys who have a year or two left, but reasonable contracts, reasonable rates. They could go from, I don't know where their farm system would rank right now, but wherever it is, they could leap from that tier, certainly into the upper tier of teams, you would think, if they were actually able to sell a bunch of these guys. And it would be a busy month to actually move all of these players at one deadline. But if they could, if they dismantled the three-headed bullpen beast or at least two heads of it and maybe even move Sabathia, move Beltran, move Gardner, move all these guys. I mean, there are attractive players here.

There are players who would bring back real value. And it seems like that's the smart move. So would you expect the Yankees to be one of the more active sellers at this deadline? I think it's going to depend on what the standings look like on July 15th. And maybe even as late as July 28th. It's going to be very hard to get this organization to do what the White Sox did. The year the White Sox were three out and traded a bunch of guys.

Probably was before he was born, I think about it. They traded Danny Darwin and Wilson Alvarez when those names actually meant something. The Yankees need to do this, but I think if they're within two games of a wildcard spot, which isn't the most ridiculous idea because, as we talked about with a couple of teams in this series, if they're up 3-2 in the seventh, they're really hard to beat. Every now

and then, they're going to be up 3-2 in the seventh. They're not the Braves or the Phillies where they're going to lose 15 out of 17. They're the other day where they run into a couple of home runs and they're going to have a lead and they're going to put that lead away, which is actually the worst place to be. The worst place to be in baseball right now is 78-82 or 78-84. I can can do math. You just want to avoid that at all costs, and that's where the Yankees are right now. And they've looked better because of these bullpens and because of Girardi, but really, these have been 500-ish teams the last three years, last four years, that one of them actually fell into a playoff spot. But whether they're actually doing it or they're not, the Yankees haven't won a playoff game since 2011. It's time to get on with it. Anyway, I've ranted about the Yankees too much. The idea that they can't do this is ridiculous. They did going to be adding bulk and depth and guys who are going to be like 4 through

12 on a prospect list. And there's nothing wrong with that. But I also think that one of the hard things that the Yankees can't – if the Yankees could go out and trade for a top 20 prospect, they could get Gleyber Torres. If they could go out and get Trey Turner, who apparently his career is ending and is wallowing away in Harrisburg, wherever the team is now. Then it's easy to sell, right? But it's harder to sell when you're getting top 50-ish guys or top 75 guys.

That's one of the problems they have right now. They're going to trade Jacoby Ellsbury for salary relief and two prospects between 80 and 120. That's the hard part, but that's the necessary part. All right. The only team we haven't talked about is the Rays. Maybe there's not too much to say. Sam and I spoke about them recently. And it's just last week, right? That was a really good one. Yeah. I mean, it's just a it's a bad place to be because, you know, everything worked out for them. They were great. They beat expectations. They defied their market size and their attendance. And they still didn't draw and they still didn't spend.

And now they are on the downside of that and still not spending and still not drawing, but also not having the great talent that they had on those teams. So I don't know where you go from here. It's really hard to duplicate or replicate what they were able to do for that stretch of several years. And now the architect of those teams is gone. The manager of those teams is gone. And you can't keep drafting at the top of the teams has gone the manager of those teams has gone and you

can't keep drafting at the top of the market and having those guys turn into great players and managing to swindle other organizations and pull off trades that can really set you up for years to come so i don't know what you do if you're the rays they they still have talent i don't know whether maybe if you're the rays rebuilding hurts less than it does for other teams because no one's coming anyway So you can be bad for a few years And it won't even make all that much of a difference to your bottom line People will still come out and see the Yankees and the Red Sox play in your park

And that's the best you can hope for But I don't know whether they are at that point Or whether they think that they can eke out another contending team or two Out of the players still on this roster But it's a tough spot to be in I think I trust the Rays to team or two out of the players still on this roster. But it's a tough spot to be in. I think I trust the Rays to get the most out of whatever 25 players they have. But you've eventually got to have talent.

And you can't draft as poorly as the Rays have drafted and run a $70 million payroll and win. It's just not going to work. And I think you look at the A's with that too. The A's haven't drafted very well. And I think the common – it's such a cliche because we're supposed to be advanced and smart and look at all these little things, but if you blow your draft picks, it's very hard to win. It's not that it can't be done, but if you're the raise in the A's, you need

to have that five or six man core that's making $12, $15, $18 million and producing well above that. These teams don't have that. They haven't drafted. I don't know if if that means you got to fire everybody in Tampa. I mean, that's hard to do. And even in saying that, I have, of all the organizations, I mean, geez,

Haim Bloom was an intern at Prospectus forever ago. And I'm here advocating that, you know, I don't mean to say, Haim, if you're listening, I'm not saying you should be fired. I'm just, what do you do? And again, I think it's as much external as anything else. You've got a ballpark and a body, excuse me, a population and a body of water between them that's passable by

one road. If you took the trop and put it in Tampa proper, you'd solve a lot of the problems. It's not the greatest place in the world to watch a game, but people make it sound like it's going to, I don't know, some inward park or something. It's not a bad place to watch a game. It's just in a terrible location. And when you put those things together, nobody's going to go.

But I think until they get a ballpark in Tampa, you're going to have the same problem. Just people aren't going to continue to drive that one lonely road with no public transportation to St. Petersburg to see the team play. All right. Well, we have reached the end of this odyssey. It wasn't the two hours we were planning to do, but it was less than three hours. So I guess that's a win. Ben is regretting ever sending that email. Well, maybe you are, but it worked out okay for me.

So we have gotten through a week without Sam, and we've caught you up on how things stand halfway through the season. Again, I would urge you all to subscribe to Joe's newsletter Sam and I both subscribe And it's great, I mean, it's the best money I spend on baseball I don't spend all that much on baseball these days But of the money I do spend I think the Joe Sheehan newsletter is the most indispensable part of that Maybe MLB TV is up there

I guess I have to be able to watch baseball But other than that, just goB TV is up there I guess I have to be able to watch baseball But other than that Just go to JoeSheehan.com And if that was the only thing you read about baseball It would keep you pretty well informed It's good as a supplement to whatever else You are reading as well You can also follow Joe on Twitter

At Joe underscore Sheehan And thank you very much For being the co-pilot for this trip I was glad we got to do it and reunite you and Rani And always good to talk baseball with you guys It was a lot of fun, always great to come on Because I'm a huge fan of the podcast and I love the book So thanks for having me

Thank you All right, so thanks again to Joe and Rani for filling in for Sam And participating in this series I hope you all enjoyed it You can get free access to Joe's newsletter through the month of July by emailing sheandnewsletter at gmail.com with the subject line, Sam. And please do check it out.

Joe talked a lot of baseball with me this week, so I want it to have been worth his while, but I also think you would enjoy it as I do. You can support this podcast on Patreon by going to patreon.com slash effectivelywild. Today's five listeners who have already pledged their support are Nishant Menon, George Bremmer, John Sandstrom, Mark Rohan, and Patrick Green. Thank you. You can also buy our book, The Only Rule Is It Has to Work, our wild experiment building a new kind of baseball team.

Find out more about it at theonlyruleisithastowork.com. And if you have completed the book and you liked it, please tell the world. Leave a review at Amazon and Goodreads. You can join our Facebook group at facebook.com slash groups slash effectively wild. And you can rate and review and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes. Get the discounted price of $30 on a one-year subscription to the Play Index at baseballreference.com. Use the coupon code BP when you sign up.

Send us emails at podcast at baseballperspectives.com or by messaging us through Patreon. Sorry there was no email show this week with Sam away, but we'll have one next week. We'll be off for July 4th, but there will be a new episode up next Tuesday. Enjoy your long weekend. Old times were good times Old times were good times

Old times were good times