Rates & Barrels - In-game video, renaming Cleveland's baseball team, Marcus Semien's foray into free agency, and holiday movie toss-ups

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

Eno, Britt & DVR discuss the importance of supporting local food banks, in-game video and the potential impact on overall team offensive performances, new names for the Cleveland Baseball Team, free-agent landing spots for Marcus Semien, the potential benefits of a condensed MLB offseason, holiday movie toss-ups, and traditions they're looking forward to as 2020 comes to a close. Rundown 0:44 Community Spotlight: Food Banks 11:50 In-Game Video & Team wRC+ 22:53 Jersey Number Trivia! 27:05 Best Facial Hair in Baseball? 31:15 Renaming Cleveland’s MLB Franchise 39:49 Did the Mariners Add a Closer? 45:14 Marcus Semien’s Potential Landing Spots 48:28 Should MLB Utilize Moratorium or Transfer Windows? 55:28 Listener E-mails: You Can Order Cheesesteak in the Mail 56:52 Would You Rather? Holiday/Christmas Movie Edition 73:23 Holiday Traditions We’re Looking Forward To Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow Britt on Twitter: @Britt_Ghiroli Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper E-mail: [e-mail] Buy a one-year subscription to The Athletic, get one free to give to a friend: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

So let's be clear. When it comes to shipping internationally, can I provide trade documents electronically? Mm-hmm. The answer is FedEx. Okay. But what about estimating duties and taxes on my shipments? How do I find all the... Also FedEx. Impressive. Is there a regulatory specialist I can ask about? FedEx. Oh. But let's say that... FedEx.

What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx. What? FedEx. Thanks. No more questions. Always your answer for international shipping. FedEx, where now meets next. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It's Friday, December 18, 2020. Derek Van Ryper, Eno Saris, Britt Giroli here with you on this Friday for what is scheduled to be our last Rates and Barrels of 2020. Failing some sort of very interesting trade or massive free agent signings. We are going to enjoy a little bit of rest before coming back at it in full force the

first week of January. So beginning the show, how are you guys doing? How is everybody feeling as this year finally winds to a close? Britt, what have you been up to? Well, I've been up to going to the food bank, the Maryland food bank. I went this morning before we sat down here for this podcast. I've been learning Spanish. Those are like my two kind of productive quarantine things that I've been doing. Other than that, I've been trying to not annoy my husband because the two of us have never spent this much time around each other.

And if you're listening to this podcast, you're the same situation send me tips because it's been a real it's been a real interesting dynamic to to uh share a town home share an office space and be constantly on top of each other um it's definitely i i love him but not that that much. From like zero to 60, screw that. It's like zero to 100. Yeah, it's like I was a baseball beat writer, used to traveling, see you every 10 days. Now it's like breakfast, lunch, and dinner. It's crazy.

He doesn't listen to this podcast, thank God, so he'll never know this happened. Your husband, my family, they don't listen to this podcast thank god so he'll never know your husband my family they don't listen to the shows yeah my mom just listens to the beginning so hi mom uh the uh i think that one of the keys is i don't know if you have enough space for this is just to have uh time by yourself in in your own space so I like that I've seen different backdrops for you. So I do know that you move around a little bit. So work in the kitchen one day or something or work, you know, I don't know how many rooms you have. So like, just be like, today's a bedroom work day. And you get out. They be alone. I think an outside hobby is the secret to not going stir crazy at the end of all of this,

right? We're nearing the end. It feels like we're getting closer to what could be at least a partially normal 2021. And being inside this long, this much is so different. Whether you travel as often as Brit does for her job, or whether you're home all the time anyway, like finding new healthy habits. Because the things that used to get me out of the house, I'd play soccer, or I'd go play pickleball, or I'd go do something with other people.

Ultimate Frisbee a few summers ago, right? There was sort of team social gathering things that even though it wasn't really about playing those things as much as it was about just getting out of the house, like those are gone. And doing those things on Zoom or the equivalence of those things on Zoom is horrible. I have come to the point where I actually dread

using Zoom outside of work. When it all started, being able to see friends and family on Zoom was like, well, this is nice. At least we can still do this. Now it's just like, forget it. I've got screen fatigue and it's just as bad as it's ever been. But yeah, if you don't have a lot of space and you're in a new relationship, that'd be really bad. So I think Eno's right. I think changing your location within the townhouse is key, but an outside hobby, like just walking.

Yeah, running has been that for me. I got to my 500-mile number that I wanted to hit, and it's time without screens. It's time outside. It's time by myself, and that's been really helpful. But we said during the summer that we would do these spotlights. And I think that we should take this opportunity because it's a season of giving. It's a season of the time to give.

And, you know, for me, I've struggled with this idea that, like, there's so many people in need. And there seems to be so many different ways to give. Um, and so my response has been somewhat, um, very to try and be very targeted and specific. And so I've done more kind of like go fund me, um, and sort of specific fundraiser giving this year than I ever have where, uh, you know, like my uncle my uncle, his house burned down in the fires. So like, you know, help start a GoFundMe and help create some interest around it and gave to it myself. And then, you know, Jen Mac Ramos had the unfortunate accident. And I helped try to boost the signal on that and gave to it. So there was, you know, there are these, that was, I mean, I characterize it as an unfortunate accident.

She was run over by a drunk driver. So it's much worse than that. But, you know, these specific ways I felt like I can make a bunch of impact. But I think we should put a spotlight on sort of more general stuff because, you know, I'm looking at the stat here that says nearly 8 million Americans have fallen into poverty since the summer. And that's from the Washington post. Um, and it seems like it's a number that, uh, is agreed upon from different media outlets. And that's an amazing number. That's a lot of people. And, um, just wanted to, to, to give Brit a chance to talk about her, hers in specific. And then maybe we can, uh, give people an idea of how to, uh, give

to those kind of, because, you know, as much as it is helpful for me to like, try to help people specifically like one-on-one, like there, there are reason these bigger, uh bigger things exist. There are reasons that these bigger organizations, they can help more people. And so, Britt, when you're volunteering, what do you do and what's the name of your food bank? Yeah, so it's the Maryland Food Bank. And I just started this month. And I agree with you.

It's like the GoFundMes and stuff are great, but you end up in that bubble of people you know or friends of friends where it comes across your feed. What's nice about this is you're giving a few hours. You sign up, and I've boxed up dinners. I've boxed up lunches. It's all socially distant and masked. They do play some Christmas music.

You see people from a distance, so you kind of feel like you're around people. For me, I've left my house, which, as i mentioned in the intro is absolutely key um and then you feel like you you've done something i mean what struck me during the the intro video uh my first day was they said that they've already hit double the the output so there is twice as many at least people in need that need healthy food that don't know where their next meal is coming from. And if you think about that, that's staggering. They said the number was initially one in 10 people in the state of Maryland didn't know. They think that is more closer to two or three out of every 10 people now in the state of Maryland, yes, that do not know

where their next meal is coming from. So what's about the food bank is uh there are food banks i'm sure everywhere and they place an emphasis on healthy food today we did like turkey wraps with cheese um that came with a side of celery and a little ranch and then peaches so it's it's not just giving you cheap food that's junk food it's also teaching people to eat healthy which i think is also important, right, to help combat some other issues we have in society. How did you find that? Because I found a thing here called feedingamerica.org, where you can search by zip code. And you know, that's either if you need food or but also, I think it could be an interesting way to find somewhere where you can, you could volunteer. How did you how did you find your, your spot? So you can you can kind of search like food banks or charities near me.

And we got lucky in that the Maryland Food Bank is five miles away. A friend of mine who covers the Orioles, his fiance actually works at the Maryland Food Bank. So I had texted her when I saw the volunteer page. A lot of the volunteer pages are waitlisted. But because of COVID, a lot of times they said that people don't show up or they cycle through. So especially now around the holidays, if you're looking, don't get deterred, I guess, because people tend to want to help right now and then forget about it.

And this is something that they're going to need help with forever for a long time. We're just scratching the surface of the COVID-19 ramifications. So hopefully, even when the season gets going, I can go maybe like a couple times a month still. So it's been fun. It's really cool to do something rather than just giving money is nice. But one, I'm not a millionaire. I don't have the kind of money that's really going to impact. And two, doing something kind of makes you feel good with your day a little bit.

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's interesting too because there's people in all different corners. Some people don't have time, but they do have money. Some people don't have money, but they do have time. There's a lot of ways to help. Sometimes it's just simply amplifying groups like this. The food bank near me that I try to help support is Second Harvest of Southern Wisconsin. There's a lot of Second Harvest food banks, and I think they all pretty much come up if you go to

the site Eno mentioned, feedingamerica.org, and you search for something in your area. And one other thing that people worry about is they say, well, if I'm going to give money, I want to make sure it's used in the best way possible. You can look at a site like Charity Navigator and just verify that the charity you're supporting or the group you're supporting does, in fact, use resources effectively. So that's always another way to kind of make sure that your dollars are going as far as they possibly can and making as much of an impact as they possibly can. But those numbers are staggering, and they could easily be even worse than reported. I mean, I think we've seen pictures on social media from all different cities of people just lining up because they simply don't have food right now. And at a time of year especially where I always feel very fortunate, my family's never worried about where our next meal is going to come from.

From the time I was a little kid through adulthood, right? If I go to a grocery store, I'm not worrying about what I'm putting in the cart. That's an amazing privilege. It's an amazing amount of luxury just in that alone. Just to be able to help people, especially this time of year, but at any time of the year with food in particular

is something that's just really important to me. Yeah, so hopefully we'll be a little better on doing spotlights in the future. But I think this is a perfect time to do it, you know, a perfect time to give outside of your family and to think about people who are less fortunate right now. And like you said, it's either money or time, those are the two things you can give. Hopefully you have one of those. Not everyone has one of those. But it seems like with COVID we're inside a lot more.

It seems like I've got all the time in the world. Yeah, time. Some days it just drags. Other days it feels like it goes by in an hour because the days are so similar, right? That Groundhog's Day thing that a lot of people are feeling is very real. Hopefully you can find a group near you to support

if you're able to do that this holiday season. We had some great baseball questions that came in through the mailbag. One really good one that I think is kind of a central topic to today's show. And it was a question about in-game video room access in teams that lost WRC Plus from 2019 to 2020. from one of our listeners, Matthew. He wrote, I wonder if there's any correlation between teams with fairly stable rosters that underperformed offensively in 2020 and the lack of in-game video usage. Mainly the teams that I wonder, Abel, are bolded in the table below.

He sent us a really good visual with this. The Cubs, the A's, the Astros, the Twins, the Brewers, and the Diamondbacks were the ones he flagged. Do you have a sense of which teams relied more heavily on in-game video rooms in 2019? And have you heard anything about this being available again in some capacity in 2021? So let's take the first part of that question first. Do we have a good gauge of this,

or is this the type of thing that is very individualized to players, even though you would see significant drops in team performance from year to year? If your best player lost a lot of offensive production, that would impact your overall team number from year to year if you're using WRC Plus as a measure. If either of you heard anything about teams as a group, because everything I have seen so far has been isolated to specific players. JD Martinez and Javi Baez are the first two that always come to mind

when this topic comes up. I did a piece with Andrew Baggerly about the opposite side of this table. The Giants had the, and the Giants, the Padres are in the top five too, but the Giants with a 31 point change in their WRC plus had the second biggest offensive turnaround year by year of any team since 1974, since free agency started. So, you know, the answer for the Giants ended up being, you know, some personnel changes, some changes in coaching, some just

regression to the mean for their guys like Belt and Crawford and Longoria just sort of returned to a little bit to normal. But one thing that did stand out is the coaching process changed. The hitting coach changed and the coaching process changed. And when I asked the hitting coach there, Donnie Ecker, to describe what's their mantra, like what is it that he wants, and he said, I want Brandon Belt. If you ask Brandon Belt after the ninth inning,

or you ask Donnie Solano during batting practice, or you ask this guy at a different time, I want them to all say that the thing that we do best is get them information that they need at the right time. And so that comes to mind as relevant when you're talking about not having this video, right? So the Giants may have found some way to get timely information to their batters without having video nearby. I don't know if, I'm not suggesting that they sort of skirted the rules, but maybe they just had a good process in place to get information to their players. And that process was independent of in-game video. And maybe other teams were more reliant

on the in-game video. I mean, just seeing the Astros at the top is kind of instructive, just seeing the Astros at the top is kind of instructive, perhaps, even though they lost some key players. And, you know, Jose Altuve just had a bad year, maybe health-related. So there's so much going on in a team number that, like, I don't want to, like, just be like, aha! You know, the Astros weren't cheating anymore, so that's why. But, you know, the cheating thing wasn't like last year, you know. So I don't know it's i i would say the real answer is it's complicated when you talk about things on a team level yeah i agree that's not like a singular oh this is the reason why

because some of the teams like the pirates and the rangers are two and three behind the astros are they what we consider the analytic forefront? Like we know the Rockies don't have an analytics department and they were like fifth or sixth. Yeah. And then on the flip side, the Phillies, I've heard some things about how

they've really struggled analytically and they're in the top five in terms of with the Giants, in terms of the positive side. So to me, there's some weird, like you said, this isn't a A equals B scenario. It's like A equals B plus take into account C,

plus you got the factor of D here. The coaches is interesting because the Padres too right behind the Giants have had great success. And a lot of that I think has to do with some of the coaches they brought in. Bobby Dickerson, their infield coach was named Baseball America's coach of the year.

I think he's an underrated guy and what he's able to do. Obviously having Fernando Tatis, Manny Machado is going to make you look good as an infield coach. But I do think that the Padres have a good system in place in terms of that kind of stuff. This is a fascinating question though. And I feel like Eno's mind is just churning with all the potential articles that something like this could turn out uh i am not a numbers person at all but looking at this chart um it's fascinating to me the teams that are just the nats and red sox are just like

a straight zero like i would have thought there would have been some maybe drop off for the nats because they went from the world series to last place. But again, it just shows you how kind of fickle the playoffs are and how really were the Nats the best team in 2019? No. Does anyone think they were the best roster in 2019? Clearly not. It's just interesting to see the teams that are right around that zero mark. The Yankees negative one, the Cardinals negative one.

There's a lot to digest and a lot of ways you can analyze something like this I don't even think that it makes sense on a on just like a player level like I can't make sense of it on a player level because even the name names that you mentioned Baez and Martinez like you know I was trying to like sort of think through like what how would I see this statistically? What would we see in the stats based on them not having in-game video anymore? And I don't know. I thought maybe it would be, where is the strike zone? What are these balls that this umpire is calling balls and strikes? And so I thought you might be able to see it in reach rates or in zone swing rates or something like that. But neither Baez nor Martinez had a terrible year when it came to reach rates.

So I don't know what it is. I really doubt that they're making a swing adjustment in game. So the other thing that would be, would be to get another look at the pitcher stuff. And I guess that's, I think that would be the primary effect is sort of, um, you know, relive the at bat after you had the at bat and be like, Oh, this is what he did in this order. This is what his, his curveball looks like. Maybe I can spot something in his fingers, in his release point that will clue me into this and give me a better shot in the next at-bat.

But I don't know how to prove that then. I guess maybe we could look at third time through the order if there was a drastic difference last year than before. Like if third time through the order was way worse last year than it ever was before. But at the same time, teams are not letting their pitchers go third time through the order as much. So there are league trends that are kind of going to mess with any numbers too. Yeah, and I wonder if this comes back to more of an Occam's razor sort of explanation where it's just like 2020 was just weird. And not having in-game video, sure, that was the thing that those players were most bothered by. That was different. At least that was the way they answered questions when asked about their performance but it maybe wasn't just that like sure that was a factor but i don't know if people

are generally well equipped to describe all the specific things about this year that made this year hard for them whether you're a professional baseball player or not. Like I was kind of talking about earlier, right? Like just me not playing pickleball anymore is having this weird impact on me. Not because like pickleball keeps me really fit, but because it's seeing a handful of people I like and relaxing for a couple of hours outside and just all of those things. Like everybody's got a bunch of things that are different about this year how each of those things are interacting to mess with us over the course of 2020 is really hard to calculate and then now we're talking about you know baseball players who are despite our best efforts also

still very difficult to predict year to year anyway right because they they aged right my bias and martina's age they're a year older so there's age there's an age effect uh there's to predict year to year anyway. Right, because they aged, right? Baez and Martinez aged. They were a year older, so there's age. There's an age effect. There's nobody in the stands, so there's like an intensity effect. We had that thing about spring training B game level intensity. So there's all these different effects. It's really hard to tease out any one thing and say this is it.

I just had this piece about popularity popularity and you can't even define popularity even though baseball is like the most metric metric out sport you know any any metric for popularity fan graphs clicks jersey sales google trends they all have um you know weird little foibles to them that make them not perfect for judging popularity like jersey sales almost all of them have a transaction effect think about garrett cole joining the yankees he's going to sell more jerseys just because it's a new a new yankee it's a new yankee you know a new jersey uh a new player on your team that's a star that got you know a lot of money was spent on him so there's this transaction effect even if you look at google trends you know you look at Anthony Rendon, like he's not clicked all year and then he's clicked,

you know, a bunch right before he signs or around after he signs. So, you know, it's one of the things that's hard actually about, you know, trying to do anything with analytics or numbers is that most of the time, and I was just saying this to somebody, most of the time, your articles just end with a big shrug emoji. A lot of things i do end with a big shrug emoji 2020 should it's gonna end yeah like what was this year what just happened i don't don't know for sure i just don't want to do it again uh do you guys want to do a trivia thing real quick? I just came up with a really great trivia fun random game we can play. Again, I know you both love trivia so much.

So bad at it. I would like it better if I was better at it. Yeah, right. All right. This one will not take long. This will be very quick. Here is my brain. You guys can team up on this one.

You can just go back and forth. Three wrong answers ends the game. There are 49 players, I think, in Yankees history who have worn number 45. And you named one, but you can name them again to get the first one. I don't know anything about jersey numbers. Well, let's just take a brief trip down memory lane for the Yankees. All I know is that Rivera was 42. Right.

We just talked about one guy who sold a bunch of jerseys because he wears number 45 for the Yankees. Was Reggie Jackson 45? All those old guys were like singular numbers, weren't they? Reggie Jackson was everyone who watched Reggie Jackson play in that era is furious. 44. Oh, you were close. I thought they were more singular numbers. I thought you were making fun of me.

Andy Pettit. Oh, that's a good one. Nope. Pettit. Andy Pettit? Andy Pettit wore number 46. Gosh. You can't kill us.

This is outrageous. Can we get a plus three either direction? Roger Clemens? Roger Clemens. No, I don't think Clemens wore 45. Roger Clemens. 49 people wore this damn number, and we can't come up with one. Give us credit if we come up with one.

Mike Mussina. Well, the guy currently wearing it and currently selling jerseys. No, it's not Mike Mussina. So you guys have missed three times already. Garrett Cole wears 45. Here's my funny point about Yankees jerseys though, right? If you had bought any of the other previous Yankees jerseys of players wearing number 45, you'd have a Garrett Cole jersey right now. If you would have bought Luke Voigt's jersey.

Right, because there's no name. There's no name on it. Sometimes I see people walking around with a nameplate on their Yankee jersey and I just think, you got the wrong one. I feel really bad because you shouldn't have it on there, but maybe you want to clarify for everybody whose jersey you're actually wearing because you don't want people to think you're wearing a Chazen Shreve jersey. You want people to know you're wearing a Garrett Cole jersey.

I have to tell you, though, I find it super annoying as a writer, and nobody cares about writers, but it's really, really terrible as a writer and nobody, nobody cares about writers, but it's really, really terrible as a writer to be in spring training, trying to cover a Yankee game or a Giants game and have no idea who number 99 is, you know what I mean? Like you already don't know who these people are. And now you're trying to be like, well, he looks kind of tall and where's that dang media guide and

you know sometimes the media guy doesn't even have you know the the the high number guys because they just got called up for minor league camp or something you're just like then you have to be like um pr uh sorry sorry um so who's that out there i mean my greatest fear as a meat writer and this has not happened yet is that I will call someone the wrong name. Because sometimes guys sit in front of the wrong locker because they're talking to another guy. It's like my biggest, biggest, biggest fear. And it's not happened yet that I'll go up to a guy and call him the wrong name. Oh, who was it?

I can't even remember because there were two relievers. But there were two relievers for the Padres, and one of them had the great mustache, the great handlebar mustache. And I should have known who he was, and he was sitting in front of a rehabbing locker, and I said, how's the rehab from TJ going? He's like, I don't have TJ yet. Oh, my God.

What? Have you talked to my doctor? Oh, my God. Ah! No! I'm sorry. What? I was thinking of Kevin Quackenbush randomly when you said that.

I don't even know. Did Kevin Quackenbush have a mustache? I think so. Was it Heath Bell? Because that's all I think of when I think of like crazy Padres relievers. Both Quackenbush and Bell kind of had the same beard, like the very thick, not quite Santa Claus beard. One of these guys had a uh like a fu manchu like a handlebar man well there's a trivia question for the listeners you know what

you know yeah you know you know why haven't we ranked like best facial hair i mean we've gotten like really low in story ideas why is no one done like 10 best 10 best mustaches in baseball? People would love it. If the offseason drags on and we come back and nothing's happened, then I think we'll have to do something. We're doing it. I always think of Sal Fasano, which that's an Orioles great right there. Yeah, yeah. I'm telling you, people would love because they would just go in there and be like

oh you missed this guy oh what about this you idiot clearly the best mustache belongs to exactly yeah we had daniel mangdon around here in these parts he always had the like kind of the raleigh fingers thing going yeah well uh hunter hunter harvey with the orioles looks like uh kenny powers he's got the kenny powers mingers thing going. Yeah, well, Hunter Harvey with the Orioles looks like Kenny Powers. He's got the Kenny Powers mullet going on and everything. Yeah, he's pounding down. He's leaning into the reliever aspect of his job now. Going full reliever.

Best all-time facial hair by org. So each writer could have to dig into their choice. I think you have to have some ground rules for... Well, you've got to choose carefully, right? If you have a guy... Relievers move around a lot. Sometimes relievers are the guys that have the best facial hair. So you've got to use teams correctly.

It's sort of like the Project Goat, where you want to make sure you use every team once, but you don't pull the wrong player from the wrong team in the wrong year. Think about this. This could be a big story. I'm telling you. And all these lists, Brian Wilson keeps coming up. And I have to tell you, man,

I always thought Brian Wilson's beard was so weird because it looked like he put shoe black polish in it or something. It looked like a toupee. It looked like a face toupee. Did anybody feel me on this? It had just like goo in it. Yeah, like he dyed it. Yeah.

It looks like he dyed it. His eyebrows are brown and his beard is black. I don't, I never understood it, man. And then I had this whole interview with him where I was like basically like uh dude i don't get it like what is what's going on here wasn't his beard a big thing no i meant i meant the whole thing just the whole way he acted and he was like he's like dude it's an act and i was like really you're gonna tell me this on the record he's like yeah it's an act he's like if i if i go out there and act all crazy and throw the ball and look like I'm throwing it super hard

and then it comes out at 45 miles an hour, I'll get a whiff. We were talking about his knuckleball, but like, you know, it was like, oh, I now understand closing so much better. A lot of confidence in that. That Kimbrel arm

thing is just like, they're looking at your weird arm instead of thinking about what pitch is coming next. A classic distraction. That's why Soto does the shuffle. He said, is it in the minor leagues, he would be so distracting that these guys in double A would be like, oh, cool, fastball down the middle

because what the hell is this guy doing in the box? Yeah. That works? I think it works, man. And it's also like's it's such a like is he celebrating a take like i could see like a picture being like what black rero has done that a couple times too where he does like a little shimmy after he after he takes but uh i was also just thinking about papal bond's little like thing he did with his mouth like

didn't that weird don't you remember yes that was terrible but by the way let us know if you're listening to this if you would read a story about facial hair because i'm willing to bet that a lot of people have strong opinions about this all right let's let's get weird that's for the let's get weird channel and i've said this before too. That's Levi Weaver's bat signal. When that thing lights up, like Levi's there in five minutes. That's his jam.

But I think you're going to find some writers that dig out their old baseball cards and really do some significant research on this too because you can find some classic facial hair back in those 70s and 80s baseball cards.

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We learned this week that the Cleveland baseball team is kind of going the way of the Washington football team. They're going to change their name finally. And instead of going down the why'd this take so long conversation rabbit hole, which we certainly could do. It took forever. It shouldn't have taken this long. I figured we could have a little more fun with it and say, hey, what should they call this team? It's an opportunity to rebrand and be something new.

So I'm curious what you guys think. Have you had any names that you think are great fits as Cleveland chooses a new name for its baseball franchise? The Rocks. I'm all in on the Rocks because of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I know it sounds like Rockies. However, there's the Red Sox and the White Sox and no one says anything about that, right? Like, okay, there's still a distinction. People are all about the Spiders. I don't really understand. That team was terrible.

They used to have a team called the Cleveland Spiders, right? They were terrible. There's also some, like, we wouldn't want, like, there's a legacy there we wouldn't want to reward. I didn't know all about this, but, like, the owners of the Cleveland Spiders also owned the Cardinals back in the day or whatever the team was in St. Louis back in the day. And they sent all their best talent from the Spiders to the St. Louis team. So they owned two teams and colluded with themselves. And they were banned as owners.

And the whole practice of syndicate ownership was banned. and they were banned as owners, you know, and the whole practice of syndicate ownership was banned. So, like, we would be rewarding, like, a weird legacy of this group. Otherwise, I mean, I'm a big fan of, like, you know, David Bowie, Spiders from Mars. The Spiders, you know, I think kind of could have some cool mascot situation. But, you know, why not? You know, I think more Cleveland-y some cool mascot situation. But, you know, why not? You know, I think more Cleveland-y could be like the Forest Cities.

That was one of their early names that doesn't have the same sort of bad background. And I like rocks, man. You know, lean into this whole Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and have, you know, have maybe some sort of allegiance with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Maybe have like a little area, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and have, you know, have maybe some sort of allegiance with the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, maybe have like a little area, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame area in the stadium, like, you know, have, have like, like a real premium on your walk up songs. And you know what I mean? Like, maybe like rock out, like, you know, like have some, you know, some like really allegiance to that have a lot of musicians throwing out first pitches and stuff i

don't know i think you could really have some fun with it i think you just for free offered them a slogan that they're going to pay a lot of money for an ad agency to come up with rock out like cleveland rock that's what it's going to be right it's going to be on shirts and everything it feels like you could market that brand like a minor league team. It does have kind of a cool, laid-back, fun vibe to it. I think some of the visuals you might kind of think of would be the Nashville sounds, right? They're kind of similar in that regard, but with the country music and everything. So you could actually, that wouldn't be the worst affiliation ever. I know they've got Columbus very close by, so they won't make that move.

But it's just one of those weird things where it's like, what really defines Cleveland? And the first thing I always think of is the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. So I don't have a problem with Rocks and Rockies being in Major League Baseball together. I think they're different enough. I'm curious if there's any other off-the-wall or really good historical names that I hadn't thought of because when this happened in DC, the Washington football team, one of the logos that I saw that was kind of popped out there on Twitter by a designer was for the Washington Red Tails. And that was in reference to a group of pilots from World War II,

predominantly Native American pilots too. So it was actually a name that was a fitting tribute too. And it just seemed like a great way to step forward and do something really good with that name change. and rebranding, from a business standpoint, you're going to sell a ton of merch. It always baffled me. It's like, you don't want to do the right thing for the sake of doing the right thing, but you don't want to do it to just make money? That's who these people generally are at their core.

That's why you have 30 alternate jerseys, right? Because they want people to continue to buy stuff, right? That's true. And that's also why when they announced this change, they said they weren't going to do it right away. They want to let the current merch sell out. Right, you got to buy the current merch top dollar first. They want to put a sunset date on it right before it's gone.

And also, I was thinking, you're talking about focus groups. You know that they're undergoing the process. They've got McKinsey involved and blah, blah, blah, thinking, you know, you're talking about like focus groups. You know that like, you know, they're going to undergoing the process. They've got, you know, they've got McKinsey involved and blah, blah, blah, blah. And one of the things I think that happens when you do that is that you kind of go towards the most boring outcome. I mean, and you kind of I think that I'm looking at a name right now. The Forest Cities were called the Cleveland Blues back in the day. And, you know, with the Reds in the same place. And also, if you think about it, aren't like 90% of jerseys either blue or red?

A lot of them are, yeah. It seems like it. Yeah. That's why the Padres jerseys are so cool. Remember the Padres changed, you know? Yeah. But they changed to blue and even the Diamondbacks used to have

like a cooler uniform and they kind of changed to that Sedona red right yeah the old purple ones like the Randy Johnson era Diamondbacks yeah those are long gone you know the only thing that's left is really the Marlins psychedelic situation

and you know, I'm into it. I'm into weird, man. And they got rid of the home run sculpture even though, I mean, it was ridiculous, but it was funny. So, my guess is Cleveland Blues, man.

I like Cleveland Rocks, but I think it'll be the Cleveland Blues. That's good, too. People are saying, like, Cleveland Buckeyes, and it's like, no, Ohio State already has that. You don't share. No. Don't you guys feel like that's terrible?

You don't share monikers. No. What if they change it to the Cleveland team? The Cleveland baseball team, yeah. It's like, jeez. I mean, if that's what you're doing, you might as well name them the Cleveland Cavaliers because they butt up to the NBA stadium and then just everyone could buy whatever they want, right?

That's ridiculous. I do think it's interesting if you look at some of the markets in North America that have multiple sports in one city, the Pittsburgh franchises largely overlap in look, right? The Pirates and the Penguins and the Steelers all have that black and gold color scheme. And it's just kind of interesting that they've all done that historically and

it works for all those teams. Like those uniforms are all still pretty iconic within their respective sports. I guess the Pirates maybe a little less so, but for all the things that we rip on about the Pirates, the uniforms and the branding is actually good. The Pirates stuff is cool. I think the Pirate theme is actually a lot of fun.

You can lean into that quite a bit. But yeah, the Cleveland Buckeyes, I can't get on board with that one. I guess Bucs and Brewers have slightly... The Bucs change their colors and uniforms every three years. They are constantly changing. They were red and green for a while. They were green and purple.

Now they get the cream stuff in there because Milwaukee is the cream city. I think they're finally getting it closer to right. They're figuring out their identity now. I like the really old school stuff. The deer with the basketball is my favorite Bucks logo by far. I think they should stick with that. That's a good one. Even if it is boring, Cleveland Blues has a fun

Ohio Bowl or whatever, the Cincinnati-Cleveland games. Reds versus Blues. There's a little bit of a thing going on there. It'd be alright. Well, they got the blue jackets in Columbus for the NHL team too,

so maybe it's a little too similar to that. Yeah, but they also have the St. Louis blues in the NHL and they didn't have a problem with blue jackets and blues. Think about that. So I don't know. By the way, you know it's a slow hot stove when we've talked about the cornucopia of facial hair and we've also hit like now.

Food, facial hair, and now team names and jerseys. We work with what we're given. Someone do something. Make a move. Make a move. There was one move that we didn't talk about in the last episode because it happened after we were done recording. What was that? Rafael Montero got traded.

Yes, a reliever trade. To Seattle. Well, he's maybe going to close. I think Jose Leclerc, now that he's healthy again, opens the year probably as the Rangers' closer. With Jonathan Hernandez waiting in the wings to take his job. That one, to me, is pretty straightforward. And all year last year, we kept saying,

who's going to close for this Mariners team? I think they've at least positioned themselves to have an obvious first answer with Montero. So that's kind of fun, I guess, but it's not the action we were looking for. I mean, Mike Zanino went back to the Rays. So my dream of JT Real Mudo signing there has officially been crushed. I don't think they're going to allocate resources that way. And the Rays are getting close to a deal with Michael Waka. And it's funny because now we have reached the point where a lot of people on baseball Twitter immediately say,

it's the Rays, so we must like this move, right? It's the stock answer. But Eno, didn't you point something out with Wacca on this show with stuff a while back? We were talking about potentially undervalued pitchers, and he actually came up. I forget what specifically you were searching for that dug him up, but he was kind of one of the last names that you mentioned. Like, oh, Michael Waka's on here too. We both kind of shrugged and were like, maybe he's a multi-inning reliever now,

and that's the right way to go, and that's the reason to do it. His VELO was up. So the VELO club, there you go. He's in the VELO club. Velo was up. So the Velo club, there you go. He's in the Velo club in September. Uh, his Velo was 94.4. Um, in the beginning of 2019, it was only, it was below 93. So, um, you know, he's always had that four seam change. And the one thing about the, the raise is they obviously they'll take a guy to be three or four inning guy. guy uh that's a two pitch guy that can get through the lineup twice you know and that's what they're going to do with michael waka you know they only

need to barely nurse a guy to the fifth inning and uh i guess they figured they could do that with waka just as well as morton um and then uh do it for cheaper but i mean morton is better than waka a lot better even at the reduced V, though. Yeah. So sometimes it feels like they're being a little cheeky. I mean, the real Muto market, though, as you mentioned him before, because he's not going to the Rays, is fascinating to me. Like, in an age where we're not sure what teams are going to spend,

I think the Nationals make sense for him, but I don't think they're spending that kind of money. So I'm just like, I don't know. I don't know what they... The Mets obviously added McCann and their team who maybe could have spent that kind of money. Does he just end up back with the Phillies? I don't know.

Are they spending money? I thought... Right? It's a fascinating... Trevor Bauer is going to get paid I feel like I don't know if it's a one-year deal or longer but the Rob Uto market to me is fascinating to to kind of look at and say like who's going to spend right Toronto we know is is asking everybody like to prom right like they're they're they're engaged with everybody but no one's really ready to commit. I'm just not sure.

Like I pointed out, Toronto actually has, by OPS, the number one projected catcher in baseball, Alejandro Kirk, dude. I don't know what it is. Steamer has him projected for the best OPS in baseball. So I just don't see the need as being that strong to kind of go to $120 million. I think Springer would be a better fit for the Blue Jays if they're going to spend that kind of money. And I think that you look around and I think you're totally right. The Nationals, it's like the DJ LeMayhew market where you're like, the most obvious market for DJ LeMayhew other than Yankees is the Cardinals and the Nationals. The most obvious market for DJ LeMay who other than Yankees is the Cardinals and the Nationals.

The most obvious market for Real Muto other than the Mets is the Phillies and maybe the Astros. You know, that's where I think the Astros might actually sign him. But for LeMay, I don't think the Cardinals and Nationals are spending any money. You can put the Nationals on the on the real muto level too it's like they could they could make a huge upgrade to their their infield and uh i just don't think they're going to spend money so that's why i have you know real muto going to the astros for like 80 million or 85 million with an option i mean what do you think derrick i mean i just that particular player to me is fascinating to watch it unfold

because it's not like Harper and Machado where you're like, all right, they're going to get paid eventually. It just might take until March. I don't know if Real Muto gets that $100 million. Did you know he was going back to the Yankees? I feel like this is just posturing on posturing. Eventually, he's going back to the Yankees. It's just a waste of time until then.

It seems inertia. Yeah, it just seems like it's where he's going. He wants 100. They want 80. They'll give him 80 with an option that looks like 100. I'm on the Astros or Phillies at this point for Real Muto. Real Muto. Processed by elimination, right?

But my dark horse went right back to the old friend in this case with Zinino going back to the Rays. The Angels, I thought, could have added Real Muto. I know they like Max Stassi, and they seem like they're comfortable with what they have at catcher. But they're so obvious their need is pitching, and all their moves so far have been for pitching.

Yeah. The other player, we haven't talked about him a lot as a nice free agent who's available, and he's coming off a down-shortened season in 2020, is Marcus Simeon. And one of the fears I had about Simeon as 2020 approach was that he maxed out everything in 2019. He had an amazing 2019 season, was a finalist for the MVP award, and even like literal playing time, he maxed out. There was nowhere for

him to go but down, and the shortened season was bad on top of the step down that he was certain to take i keep looking around at possible fits there and the reds i think are the team that come up as the most obvious or the team that's been linked to wanting to add a shortstop but there aren't that many teams looking for help at that position right now if you kind of scroll through shortstop's a young position, right? It's a franchise building spot for a lot of teams. I almost wonder if he's going to go right back to Oakland after a long wait. If he's not going to get four plus years from a team like the Reds, and the Reds are doing some weird stuff, kind of paring down payroll, trying to save in the bullpen,

that makes me doubt that they're actually going to go after Simeon, barring a massive discount. Yeah. And the thing about Simeon is, you know, he's 29 years old and there was only one qualified shortstop above 30 years old last year. It's a young position. So, you know, D.D. Gregorius, Brian Crawford was that that guy if you want to know dd gregorius is 30 marcus simmons 29 simmons outs above average his advanced stats for defense suggests that he's one of the worst short stops defenders already so you know he i think that like teams are like am i going to give you a four-year deal to be a short stop but i think you might be a short stop for one of those years um and what kind of team is in that position to be a shortstop, but I think he might be a shortstop for one of those years.

And what kind of team is in that position to be able to do that? So I actually could see, the Reds are in a good spot where they can just be like, I've got a three and 30 deal out there to the shortstop that wants to take it. If it's Simmons, if it's Didi, if it's Simeon, whoever it is, we're not going to move off this deal. We're not going to give add to it. This is the deal. Whoever takes it, takes it. And then I could see the A's saying, we've got a 2-20 deal for whoever doesn't take the Reds deal.

So, you know, the Reds will end up with, I mean, the A's will end up with Simmons or Didi or Simeon on a deal that's good. Also, the A's have shown that they're willing to kind of put bad defenders in certain spots and try to kind of use positioning to get the most out of them. Yeah. You're right with the shortstops, though. It's a short list. It's actually – and you look at the market next year too and the shortstop market is going to be insane like there's just not a lot of teams that need shortstops and then

you look and there's some really high-end ones who could be available very soon including Lindor obviously whatever happens with him I feel like there's been no buzz on that at all right well there's been no buzz on anything because clearly we're talking about mustaches for 10 minutes. There's been no buzz. Stove is broken. Yeah. I think, I don't know what you guys think. I mean, this is probably a long conversation, but why not shorten it to a month? I know it's not the NBA.

I know it's not the NHL where they can't do like two days of signing and it's over. But just think about how condensed a month would feel, right? It would still be action-packed. We'd still have a month to talk about the awards in November. And then you'd still have time to talk about rosters and spring training previews. Just a month would change the whole offseason. Well, I wish what they would do is sort out who is actually a free agent quickly after the World Series. That way, your non-tenders don't get dumped into the market much later than players with team options that are due a few days after the World Series. But if you wanted to say...

Yeah, options and tenders should be the same. They should be the same. Maybe it's a lot of work for the front office. Squeeze it. Make them both 10 days or 14 days. But make them the same. Get them closer together. Yeah.

If you said, okay, 14 days after the end of the World Series, you got to make these decisions. And then we're going to have a moratorium on signing and trades until the winter meetings begin. We all immediately can go on autopilot for three weeks in terms of not expecting moves. Good. Maybe we could even schedule baseball writer vacations at that time. Yeah, and it's a good point that Britt makes that there's still content. There's still content to be made. You can have award season.

Yeah. Right? Yeah. So we just switch to be made by you can have award season. Yeah. Right? Yeah. So we just switch over to writing about award stuff for a month. How weird is it to like have manager of the year possibly go to a guy that was fired?

Yeah. How weird is it to have manager of the year overshadowed by a really early signing in the off season or a trade too, right? I mean, if you want, if you want to make

your events stand out, don't randomly overlap them. There's an episode of Seinfeld where George says, if you take everything I did in my life and condense it down into one day, it looks decent. I feel like if you do...

It's the one where he pretends he's new in town, and he's dating the tourism guide. That's what he's trying to do. And she's like, this city will eat you alive. It's a great episode. But if you condense this entire MLB offseason so far into one week. Into one day. One day, one week. It's good.

It's fun. It's exciting. It's a lot it's like mlb just took over for a week instead of mlb just sort of dumped a few things in randomly and got overshadowed by everything else so i do think following the lead of the nba and you know stuff's happening behind the scenes during that moratorium but you can't announce these moves then you kind of have this thing to look forward to you're like okay now the window's open now these moves, then you kind of have this thing to look forward to. You're like, okay, now the window's open. Now these moves are going to start happening. Now we're going to work on reaction pieces and we're not going to get caught up in manager of the year and rookie of the year

and all those awards. I think that's a change that they really should consider. I do too. I mean, that's my solution to make baseball a little more exciting in the winter. Just a month. Still a long time for teams. Still a long time for teams. Still a long time for agents to negotiate and do their back and forths. Because like you said, they're doing it behind the scenes anyway. Just pick a month. I don't know what month that would be. Would it be December with the holidays?

Would it be January? I don't know. I haven't nailed that part down. I think they want the winter meetings to continue to be a big deal. I think if that's the case, then that's when you open the floodgates. That's when you say, this is happening. And it's already a media event, right? They already have around-the-clock coverage for five days from that event.

Then your MOB network hot stove at the winter meetings thing has a lot to talk about in the first day because they're just coming through. And then it becomes like a thing, oh, I gotta turn it on. This is the first day that they can announce anything. So the first day of the winter meetings, and that would combat the whole problem that we have that everyone's trying to just

wait out. They're trying to negotiate like an a-hole, really, and just wait it out and wait it out and wait it out. And so, you know, yes. Okay. Like Bryce Harper doesn't sign anymore on the first day of the winter

meetings. At least you get like the, the kind of veteran signings, the low level veteran signings and the, and some of the trades you get that on the first day. You know, because I don't know, I don't know personally how you can force a team to sign Bryce Harper on

the first day unless you just make the transaction window really short. But I think that doesn't work either. If you took the first two days of this week and said that was the first day of the winter meetings, that's at least something. You had Hunter Renfro going to Boston. You had David Dahl going to Texas.

You had the James McCann deal with the Mets. And you had that small trade we talked about where Rafael Montero got flipped. And then even all the stuff that happened deal with the Mets, and you had that small trade we talked about where Rafael Monteiro got flipped. And then even all the stuff that happened before that. I mean, there's been some stuff. Oh, yeah. Trevor May. Also, the Drew Smiley shining, all that stuff.

Adam Eaton went to a team. Yeah, that's a lot of stuff when you start to add it up. It's the Costanza. It's the Costanza thing. It's true. It looks pretty decent if you just condense it down a little bit. And you're right. You know, no one signs Bryce Harper the first day, but you know what else is

super exciting? The last day. The down-to-the-wire midnight move that gets made because otherwise he gets docked or the team gets fined or whatever they come up with to make it that you have to do it in that period. How exciting is that? And then we're all exhausted, but then it's over. Then you can

go to the grocery store without your phone. You can do all these things knowing that it's done. What if this window were 10 days or a fortnight? What if it started the Sunday night of the winter meetings and ended two Sundays later? Wow. It would be great. The transfer window.

One thing I have to say, though, is what happens if your team loses a starter in spring training? You could have some kind of special provisions for replacing players so you're saying like but then you're also but you're not saying freeze the roster in december no we're not freezing the roster entirely but we're trying to do something on free agent signings yes right yes and once spring training starts again you could start making additions to your team. But January, dead month. Maybe only minor league signings.

I think people deserve it. I think people deserve it. I think people on teams deserve it. There's something about baseball that feels very 24-7, 365. Yes, agreed. So then teams, if we're talking like how we talked about teams don't have their budget set yet, teams would have to have their

budget set because this is the period this is it yeah right exactly I think GMs might like it too

especially this year like hurry up what are we doing ownership tell me my number I gotta have it yeah in January

the team could be focused on amateur scouting and organizing things on that front more as the college season is going

to get underway and then spring high school seasons are a couple months off. You could do this with a lot of purpose. February becomes more of an amateur scouting time, yeah. Right. And you're allocating resources within organizations a lot more effectively. It seems like there's a lot of ways to make this a win. And it's not just, we want transactions at this time. It's, well, let's do this better. I mean, that's the point. Just try and clean things up a bit when you can. We got a lot of great emails, as I mentioned earlier.

One was about the cheesesteaks in the mail that we discussed last week. There actually is a service that will mail you a cheesesteak. And before you're like, gross, because that's what we all thought last week. It comes from Campos, which is underrated. This email came from Rob. They said the sandwich is made with peppers, onions, frozen on the side, sent in a foam cooler with instructions on time and temp to heat it up. So, I mean, that's about as authentic as you can do. It is out there if you're interested. Recommendations for cheesesteak places include the aforementioned Campos, recommendations for cheesesteak places include the aforementioned Campos

Delisandro's and Jim's Steaks I won't tell people not to go to Pat's or Gino's which I think I've seen on every food show ever but in my opinion there are better places and that seems very reasonable right those are the iconic places but they're not necessarily

the best places to go at this point Rob also recommends Tired Hands Brewing for a tasty beverage. Yeah, Tired Hands is great. If we get sick of cheesesteaks in Philly, there's always the Knicks in the Reading Terminal Market.

They have great roast pork and beef sandwiches. Thanks for all the work you do. Have a great holiday. Thank you for the email, Rob. I'm glad there is a way to, if you left Philly and needed a cheesesteak, you actually can get one and not have it just be a sloppy mess when it shows up at your door. We got a Would You Rather for you guys. It's the Holiday Christmas Movies Edition. I put them into two groups. There are about eight Christmas

movies I've seen a lot, and there are probably five or six really popular ones that I have either seen parts of, or I've seen once a long time ago, or I've never seen them at all. So we're going to start with ones I've seen the most. I'm curious what you would choose in this series of toss-ups. The Santa Claus or Miracle on 34th Street, and I'm talking about the 90s remake, not the original version of that film. We'll go to you first, Britt. The Santa Claus, because I can recite the lines to that movie. It's hysterical. It's completely ridiculous.

One of Tim Allen's best, maybe only. Besides Home Improvement, that's the only other time I can really say, great job, Tim Allen. Yeah. He's one of those people that has a pretty loaded IMDb page of things that I certainly do not want to watch. I'll take Santa Claus too. I mean, I don't even know if I've seen Miracle on 34th Street, honestly. It's a sweep for the Santa Claus in this case because I didn't like Miracle on 34th Street as a kid. I think I want to go back and watch the original

one as an adult. I think I'll like that a lot better. It was just too serious and sad for a Christmas movie. There's a whole group of American traditional holiday stuff that I missed out on as a kid.

I spent a lot of Christmases in Jamaica or sometimes my mom would forget that stuff that like i missed out on as a kid like i spent a lot of christmases in jamaica or uh sometimes my mom would forget uh that stores were closed on christmas and we would eat dinner at the waffle house oh yeah so that that's the kind of christmases i had getting off the plane in shorts you know i remember the blizzard of the century in Atlanta. We landed. There was like an inch of snow on the ground. We were in shorts.

We went straight to the Waffle House for dinner. An inch of snow. That's the kind of storm of the century, an inch of snow. It was an inch of snow. That's what they do here in D.C. We had a winter weather advisory. And I'm from New England. And so we got an inch of snow

that melted you could still see the grass like come on yeah i remember they had they didn't even have any snow plows so they had to like import them from like north carolina or something they're like sorry we can't get this up uh everything's canceled and they're like um my car's driving just fine i don't know it's kind of slushy already. It's fine. Don't worry about it. But the kids are like, no, we got a snow day. Yeah. Derek's like, that's spring in Wisconsin. An inch of snow? Cool. Yeah. I mean, every other year it snows on my wedding anniversary in the middle of April. That's just life up here. That's just how it goes. The worst winter ever was two winters ago. That was the polar vortex year because we had,

first we had an ice storm. Those are the worst, like ice storms are the absolute worst because your sidewalks, if you just want to take your dog out for a walk are major trip hazards and roads are actually like really bad. That's one of the few conditions I don't want to drive. I don't want to drive when it's icy. So we had an ice storm. Then we had a snow storm, like an actual snow storm, not an inch, like a legit foot or so of snow that came down over the course of a few days. And then, on

top of that, we had the polar vortex where it got down to, I think the actual temperature bottomed out for a brief time at like minus 30, and the wind chill was minus 55. And there are parts of Canada where that happens every year. It was the first time I'd ever been a part

of that and we took my dog. She wears boots when it gets really cold. Is the snow freezing or something? Is the snow freeze then and you're just like walking on top of the snow? It makes it different. I don't really know how to describe it but the hardest thing about that is for the 90 seconds I'd go outside

to take the dog outside, the wind hits you in the face, and the only part of your body that's not covered are your eyes. The wind hits you in the eyes, your eyes water, and the water that comes out of your eyes immediately freezes onto your eyelashes. It's that cold.

And you're just like, oh my god, I am done if I don't get back inside in 10 minutes. I am actually in some sort of danger. I can't believe there are places that get that cold every year and people choose to stay there because going through that once, I

did not enjoy that at all. Underneath all that snow was a nice sheet of ice too. My neighbors were falling down. It was just chaos. Just total chaos. Yeah, don't drive anywhere in those conditions. Next toss up.

This one was in our group Slack. Not the three of us, but the company Slack. Home Alone or Home Alone 2 Lost in New York. I think there are people that believe the sequel is better than the original on this one. Who? Britt's disg original on this one. Who? Britt's disgusted by this question. Well, I've seen these recently, the kids. I mean, there's the cat lady,

and there's the bird lady, I guess. She's a bird lady, yeah. I was going to say. Sorry. Pigeon lady. She has a name. Really? I don't know. I think she has a name. I don't know. Iigeon Lady. She has a name. Really? I don't know.

I think she has a name. I don't know. I can't imagine. My point I want to make about these two movies is, holy crap, they're violent, dude. Do you, like, I was watching with the kids. I was like, kids, don't ever do any of this. And they're like, if robbers come in the house, I'm like, no, call the cops.

Don't do any of this. Your children aren't trained to shoot robbers in the face with a BB gun? Yeah. And the paint can? I was like, concussion, concussion, broken legs, concussion. This is pretty violent stuff. The number of times that Harry and Marv would have actually died over the first two movies. Probably double digits from the various things they suffered.

It's like flamethrower action. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Home Alone 1, though, for me, it's a strong... The sequel never is this good. No. There's that iconic scene with the...

Yeah, he's not even... he's not home he's not home it's like a misnomer home alone 2 he's in new york like what yeah it's a franchise yeah i will say accurate though that that guy treated him at the hotel desk like he couldn't possibly be in a hotel room that was me my first few years on the beat at like 21, checking into these hotels. They'd be like, are you lost? There's like a Hotel 6 down the street. You'd be like,

no, I work for MLB. And you're like, you know. I come strolling in, like no makeup, probably looked about 15, you know. They're like,

you don't belong in these hotel rooms. Get out of here. That's fine. Is your mom or dad coming to check you in? Yeah, pretty much just had this random thought that kevin mccallister is kind of like what i think elon musk might have been like

as a kid like playing with blow torches and you know concocting these these booby traps for people out of uh well-engineered things in his dad's garage like that just just seems like something he'd have been up to back then. How about Home Alone 1? I think it's better. I don't think the sequel's unwatchable or anything. I think the sequel's fine. If you're into Home Alone 1, you're probably into Home Alone 2 as well.

How about this one? A Christmas Story or Planes, Trains, and Automobiles. These are not very similar movies. It's hard to put them up against each other. Hey, you got to do what you got to do in these toss-ups. It's hard to put them up against each other, but hey, you gotta do what you gotta do in these toss-ups. It's an easy one for me. I am not into the sap and the cheese. I am going planes, trains, and

automobiles. I just, I want it to be Christmas adjacent. Like, I'm like, you know, what's the big debate? Die Hard, is it a Christmas movie or not? I'm like, I don't care. I know which one I'd rather watch on christmas die hard or christmas story it plays trains and automobiles christmas story i'm watching planes trains and automobiles i want to laugh a little i wanted i wanted just uh i

wanted to be adjacent that's all i'm saying oh so you don't like any of these happy holiday movies where they make it home just in time and they fall in love at the end basically all my favorite holiday movies no they can be weird like in the next one you know there you know there's a happy ending of one of them and uh it's kind of sappy but it's like a weird movie so i like it i don't want to ruin the next one but in in this one it's like you're sort, but it's like a weird movie. So I like it. So I don't want to ruin the next one. But in this one, it's like sort of plain Jane versus off the wall. Wow, how dare you?

I'm going to go with Christmas Story for the many scenes. Sorry, I just offended you so bad. Also, Fragile must be Italian. There's some great lines in A Christmas Story. That's true. That's true. You'll shoot your eye out. I think my favorite line in that movie, so they're in line to see Santa

Claus, and Ralphie and his brother Randy are standing in line alone at the department store. I forget what it's called in the movie, but the characters from The Wizard of Oz, which is fairly new to the period in which the movie is set, they come walking up to him, and I think it's the Wicked Witch of the West,

and she comes up to him and she's like, what a tasty little boy. And instead of being like a normal kid, he just comes up with this thing that I probably would have done at 10 and goes, don't bother me, I'm thinking. And you see this very confused look on the witch's face as she walks away.

That stuff's gold. For G-Lay, obviously great. The pink bunny slippers. I mean, that one's the one in my family that we watch the most. So that one's just kind of like unique to my Christmas Day experience, I guess. And I'm sure it's unique to a lot of people's Christmas Day experiences because it's on for like 48 hours at a time. Planes, trains, and automobiles is good. If you haven't seen it, definitely worth checking that one out.

This one, this is another tough one for me, but I'm firmly on one side, so I'm curious where you guys are. Christmas Vacation or Elf? Because I think for some people those come up as possible. This is my favorite Christmas movie. This is my favorite holiday movie. This is my go-to

this time of year. Elf being a little more of the modern classic Christmas Vacation now actually over 30 years old somehow. It's hard to believe that movie's that old, but I guess we're all over 30 years old. Which side of that one are you on? That was the preview.

I think Elf has they're both kind of off the wall here and so I'm not totally anti sap. I kind of off the wall here. And so I'm not totally anti-SAP. I kind of like the way that Elf ends. And I think it's off the wall enough to keep my attention. And it's fun. Christmas Vacation is a solid choice.

And we just watched it last night. This is actually the hardest one for me. I like both these movies a lot. Yeah, I agree. This is really tough because i love elf uh we do watch christmas vacation a lot it's funny it's i think elf is more current funny more like yeah this like christmas vacation's almost a little dated funny right where you like know what's gonna happen oh the tree's gonna light on fire oh this is gonna happen because

you've seen so many of those movies by now. I understand it was so great back in the day. But for me, it's a solid second to Elf here. I'm Christmas Vacation over Elf, not because Elf isn't good. And I think it's coming back to what I like in a Christmas movie. I want to feel like a kid.

And I think Christmas Vacation brings me back to that younger age. I don't know how and why that works and happens that way. But Elf is one of my favorite modern Christmas movies, I guess we'll call them. Modern, like new in the last 10 or so years. Because most of what I go back to is late 80s, early 90s, this time of year. year again you want to feel like a little kid on christmas i guess and i'm very curious about eno's christmases though now like those those sound very different than mine like mine were like a script every year it was it was like this is exactly what we're doing on christmas uh yours sound a lot more fun and whimsical uh i guess i mean sometimes i would be super annoyed at mom and be like mom

i don't want to eat a freaking waffle house on christmas can we like like plan next time and and i tell you that christmas in jamaica was always very weird for me because you know everyone else is talking about you know you know being cold and by the fire that maybe that's why i'm not that into that cheese is i don't it doesn't like it doesn't link up for me you know i had maybe one or two christmases by the fire you know most of the time i was at the beach on christmas so you know there's it's you don't get that same kind of like roasty toasty and like you know let's let's go watch a christmas story and you know what i mean like i i just don't get that same kind of like roasty toasty and like let's go watch a Christmas story. You know what I mean?

It doesn't link up to my past the same way. Different vibe. I was actually having a thought that Almost Famous is a low-key Christmas movie in a strange way. Oh, interesting. Yeah, I like all the ones you guys probably haven't seen or don't enjoy, like The Holiday, Love Actually, all the rom-coms, like I'm there. I actually am not a rom-com person except for around the holidays.

And then I'm like, oh my God, they're going to be reunited. I watch a lot of those alone because there's only so much that my husband can take. Which of those is better? Which one would you choose between Love Actually and The Holiday? The Holiday. Because Love Actually is a little too much on the cheese. The Holiday's got this cranky little old man

who's a terrific character who I love. And I really like Jack Black and Kate Winslet in that movie a lot. Plus, some of it is in California, so it's not all perfect snow everywhere. in california you know so it's not all like perfect snow everywhere so it's it's you know i don't know that's my favorite movie though watching it tomorrow as a matter of fact nice the uh those were in the section of movies i've generally either not seen at all or seen very little of i also have white christmas in there i need to watch

white christmas just because it's White Christmas. How could you not? So I've got that up against Holiday Inn. I don't know if you guys have seen either of those. And then It's a Wonderful Life versus A Christmas Carol, which I've seen parts of It's a Wonderful Life scattered every holiday

season forever, but I've never sat down and watched it start to finish, which is absolutely embarrassing in some ways well i share your embarrassment third uh you know that one of the things too about once you have kids like you lose the chance sometimes to see some of these movies because a lot of times movie time especially if it's a movie that i'm not super motivated to see some of these movies because a lot of times movie time especially if it's a movie that i'm not super motivated to see is get stuff done time so you like turn the movie on you watch the first little bit and then you're like oh i've got to go clean the kitchen or get you know dinner

started or you know all these other things that i put away because i was watching the kids you know now the tv is watching the kids, and so now I'll go do these other things. But I will say that I have made some new movie marathon-type Christmas arrangements in the family, and we normally do, like, those are my kids. TV's watching them right now. Yeah, no, I don't know what they're screaming about

they're playing home alone yeah right we do movie marathons but we do before the kids we did Predator movie marathons, Alien you know

and now we've gone into more is this being handled now we've gone into more. Is this being handled? Now we're going into more. We do Harry Potter and The Hobbit as movie marathons. We're kind of like a movie marathon family. So it needs to have like four or five movies in there.

There's about five Home Alones. I will not acknowledge the last three. So beware of falling into that trap. We saw three. It's not great. Yeah. If you went beyond three, wow. I feel very bad for you. But I understand.

I know my kids will find four and five, and I'm just like, I don't want to help them find it. I'm not going to bring it up. Good choice. Good choice. All right. Well, anything you guys are looking forward to in the next couple of weeks here with the holidays upon us? I mean, Britt, you do the Italian cookie thing just like my wife's family does. We spent all of Friday night, Saturday, and Sunday just making cookies.

I put the picture up on Instagram. It's like being in a bakery for 48 hours and just being an employee. It was a lot of fun, though, because it pays off. The hard work is fun. It's a cool tradition to uphold. Yep. Mine is tomorrow, actually. So it'll be a good time.

But yeah, that's what I'm most looking forward to, making them and then eating them, obviously. Getting the assortment on your plate because you make so many different kinds. And then you're able to just have this nice little variety plate and then just sitting and enjoying all my cookies. And then later regretting why I ate so many cookies. It's like this cyclical thing. They look like sugar cookies

to me. No, you didn't just do sugar cookies, did you, Derek? You did other things. We do a lot. What do they call them? Ricotta cookies? An. No. We do a lot. Well, let's see. What do they call it? Ricotta cookies? Anchinettes. Do you know Anchinettes?

We do Anchinettes. We do Italian nut balls. We do Austrian chocolate balls. We do snickerdoodles, sugar cookies, Russian tea cakes. Wait a minute. But even if they're sugar cookies, they're kind of like floaty. Are they like really soft? Well, so the ones Britt's describing, those are more global.

These are like very generally very Italian cookies. Which ones? I'm looking at a Google search. They look kind of small, but are they super fluffy, like fluffy sugar cookies? No, I'm going to have to send you guys some just so you can try them in the future. I wish I would have planned for that this year.

Are there ones with ricotta inside? No, we don't have any with ricotta. I'm going to have to send you guys some just so you can try them in the future. I wish I would have planned for that this year. Are there ones with ricotta inside? No, we don't have any with ricotta. So the dough is made from scratch, of course. We have some that are red, white, and green together, and they end up being like little rounds with some icing on top. Those are pretty – I don't even know what they're called. They're just the most Italian-looking cookies of all.

We have some cookies that we – Yes, what are those called? I never really got a name on those. Anisettes? Maybe. Yeah, aren't they? Yeah, we do those. We have something called couplets, which are... They're like dough with a little bit of

nuts, like crushed pecans that we roll them in, and then there's frosting, a little bit of frosting in the middle. Almond? Yeah, I don't think there's any almond in that one. We have tutus, which the tutus are pretty different. I've never seen anything quite like those before. I think they're like pillows with jelly.

We have shiminus, which are like little, they almost look like little crackers with sesame seeds on them, so they're less sweet than the others. Those are good. Those actually pair really well with beer. And then we have some chocolate ones that are really good.

Like Nutella inside? Like a little bit of chocolate filling? No, no filling. The chocolate dipped ones? We don't do those. Nope. Oh. Did you do the butter cookies, the Italian butter cookies?

No. Those look good. We do mini cannolis. There's like amaretto cookies. Yes, I see mini cannolis. You do a lot of the ones that are on this main article that comes up. Yeah, ours are like the glazed Italian Christmas cookies, a soft cake-like texture.

There's a fig one. The Anisettes, we definitely do. Anjanettes is how I thought we said it. We don't do Pizzelle. Yeah, we used to have those in our family, and they don't make them anymore. I don't know why. There's a fig one called Choochie Dotty or something?

Coochie Dotty? Never done the fig one. We did something this year from the other side of the family there called Butterhorns. i've never seen butter horns in a bakery before if you go into an italian grocery store they'll have all the different cookies we make and a bunch more a lot like the ones that that brit's describing and butter horns they have two fillings one's a prune filling which is pretty different because you don't put prunes and stuff really anymore. But the other one is ground up nuts and brown sugar. It almost looks like a pastry.

Is it almost like a pastry? Like almost like a bread type thing? No, they don't look like. I'm looking at the Google search results. I'll have to send a picture out of these. But anyway, I'm looking forward to eating all those because we spent all of last weekend making them. What do you got, Eno? I kind of want you to send me a recipe

so that I can make them. I'll send you some recipes. They don't give me the recipes, so you got to get them from Britt. I don't even know the recipe. I'm just hands. You're not allowed to know? Not allowed to know.

I married in. I'm not allowed to have the recipe. Not blood. A lot of them, we had to 10 years ago, type them all up because they were handwritten on index cards from my grandmother and they got so worn and so you could barely read

them. We finally handwritten them up and my sister actually sent me some of them on email because a lot of them you couldn't find. The food situation I'm married into is we do of them on email because yeah a lot of them like oh I want those yeah you couldn't like find our food the food situation I'm married into is we do enchiladas

every Christmas then we'll do a why am I blanking on it a chili like a what's a pork with like you put basically with salsa and you put it in the –

Pork with salsa. Carnitas? Yeah, basically. But I'm blanking on that one. I usually – my wife does that one. But I do then – I bring in the German stuff. So I'll do rack of lamb. I'll do some roasts,

tons of mashed potatoes. We're going to do it up. We're ready to do some cooking. There's some really interesting traditions out there. We had a few people that emailed in to Scandinavian Christmas food. That's what, lutefisk? That's big in this part of the country.

I actually googled lutefisk after's oh yeah it's big in this part i actually googled lutefisk after that it i don't know that i'd be super excited to eat the lutefisk yeah dried white fish yeah i mean i i'm okay with uh with white fish on like you know like on a bagel you know but that's usually a little bit more like salmon or something. It's salty and wet. I don't know about the dried aspect of it. Yeah, I think I'd pass on the lutefisk. But hey, if that's your tradition, I understand why you love it because I love the traditions that my family has and the ones that I picked up joining my wife's family.

On one side, we have dried fish, and on the other side, we have tons of cookies. It's really good if your two family traditions kind of blend well together. My mom always makes Buckeyes, the peanut butter and chocolate balls. You make little peanut butter balls, dip them in chocolate, put them in the freezer. Those are good.

So we made a batch of those and then we dug up an old recipe. My great grandma made something she called polar bear cookies, which was white chocolate chips melted with some crunchy peanut butter mixed with mini marshmallows, rice krispies,

and a little bit of crunchy peanut butter and peanuts. So it comes out to be just like a ball, but kind of like a rice krispie treat, but a little softer, a little more flavor going on. Those were really easy. They're a no-bake dessert.

So if you're not very skilled in the kitchen, you could easily make them. And that's what this polar bear cookie. I'll send you guys the recipe for that one. No, what was the other one? The peanut butter one. Buckeye? Oh, the Buckeye.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the Buckeye. Buckeye. We're doing a cookie exchange next year. We're going to start like a month ago, and we're doing a cookie exchange. Because if I send them to you now, the way the mail goes, you'll get them in February. So we're doing a cookie exchange because if I send them to you now the way the mail goes you'll get them in February so we're doing it next year

the Black Friday cookie bake of 2021 is now on the calendar yeah we gotta do it before the Christmas rush so that we can get the cookies before they're stale yep that's our plan see it's good starting new traditions already for next season well no matter what you're doing to celebrate this holiday season

I hope everybody out there has a great holiday. Britt Eno, it's been awesome doing this show with you guys throughout the year. Looking forward to a great 2021. Hope you both have an awesome Christmas and New Year's. Yes, it has been really a pleasure.

And thanks, Britt, for joining our show this year. That has been a real positive step for us, I think. And it's been really fun to do these. And to all the listeners, thank you for listening and rating and reviewing. Yes, we appreciate that. That's the small gift. If you want to give us a very small gift for this holiday. And sending us emails, man. A lot of the times we need those emails to finish out to

have enough content with no hot stove. But also it makes us feel like we have a community here that we're connected to and we're all just trying to think about baseball and have interesting questions and go down weird rabbit holes. Yes, it's been great. And hopefully 2021 will have much better, more positive, uplifting storylines to talk about. Yeah, it has to, right? So stay healthy. Stay happy, everybody. We're back with you in 2021.

Thanks for listening.