Rates & Barrels - The Athletic's 2024 MLB Player Poll w/Katie Woo

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Katie Woo joins Eno and DVR to discuss several takeaways from The Athletic's 2024 MLB Player Poll including a few 'others receiving votes' for Baseball Player in Baseball behind Shohei Ohtani, the players' selections for 'most overrated' player, the organizations that have bad reputations among the players.   Check out the full poll here ($): https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5529966/2024/06/10/mlb-player-poll-overrated-underrated-worst-organization/ Rundown 2:27 The Others Receiving Votes for 'Best Player in Baseball' 9:45 Who Do the Players Think Is the Most Overrated Player in Baseball? 14:53 Who Called Yordan Alvarez and Juan Soto Overrated? 19:58 'Anthony Rendon Was Right -- The Season Is Too Long' 25:53 Where Do Players Want to Play, Removing a Few Variables 31:45 Organizations with Bad Reputations Among Players 39:40 Taking a Pause for the 2028 Summer Olympics? 46:34 The Impact of Analytics on Your Career Follow Eno on Twitter: @enosarris Follow DVR on Twitter: @DerekVanRiper Follow Katie on Twitter: @katiejwoo e-mail: [e-mail] Join our Discord: https://discord.gg/FyBa9f3wFe Join us on Fridays at 1p ET/10a PT for our livestream episodes! https://www.youtube.com/c/ratesbarrels Subscribe to The Athletic: theathletic.com/ratesandbarrels Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello guys, I'm Ioan Kimmolere, host of the Athletic FC podcast and I'm here to tell you about a mouth-watering summer of international football. The Copa America and European Championships kick off in mid-June and we're going to be covering both tournaments every step of the way. With the World Cup in the US just two years away, the Copa America is the US men's national teams chance to prove they can really compete with heavyweights like Brazil and Argentina, while England will be hoping to go one better than their agonising Euros final defeat last time out. So join me and the Athletics' unrivaled team of football reporters Monday to Friday as

we take you inside the biggest stories from the tournaments with more than a sprinkle of transfer talk on top as well. Just search the Athletic FC podcast wherever you get your podcasts from. Welcome to Rates and Barrels. It is Tuesday, June 11th. Derek Van Riper, Enosaris and Katie Wu here with you on this episode. We dig into the Athletics 2024 MLB player survey. I know what a lot of writers think. I know what a lot of analysts think. I love to know what the players think because they see it kind of differently than we do sometimes. We're gonna dig into some of the more interesting responses

to the questions from that survey. Before we dig in, Katie, how's it going for you on this Tuesday? Thanks for joining us. I would like to thank you guys, one, for letting me pop in here, but two, for reminding me what day of the week it is.

I have no idea anymore. We have reached the part of the season, I always say this, from June 1st to the trade deadline, every single day is the same. And we're starting a series today, which makes me feel like it's a Monday, but it's really a Tuesday, allegedly. So thank you for that. I have a little bit more semblance of where I am today. Yeah, I think I'm doing the same thing for Eno too. I think Eno

needs me to just tell him what day it is because it's been a bit of a slog for him over the weekend and getting into the new week coming off of the illness and being solo in the mornings too. That's a rough stretch. I heard Jesse Agler on Padre's radio, he said he guessed what day it was, and he said it was because it was a day game, it had to be one of two things. That's what he's saying. It's either a Sunday or a Wednesday.

That's amazing. Yeah, some teams really are pretty consistent schedule-wise in that regard. By the way, if you haven't joined our Discord, you can do that using the link in the show description. A lot of conversation happening there, fantasy and otherwise. Let's begin with this survey. And this is an anonymous player poll. Our Beat writers, Katie included, all checking with players during spring training, asking them questions about their peers. And this is wild because there's some stuff in there that's not surprising,

right? The best player question. Shohei Otani in a runaway had it and Ronald Acuna Jr. was the closest runner up and that was back during spring training when Acuna was healthy and we were all in awe of the season he just had in 2023. The takeaways for me on best player that were more interesting were the others receiving votes. The players that did get a mention from someone else, someone in the league who thought they were worthy of being mentioned there. I think Gunnar Henderson was the most surprising name I saw, not because I don't think he deserves it, but because he's there so quickly.

I almost wondered if Gunnar Henderson somehow has become one of the more underrated top prospects to come up and play really well, really fast in recent years. And we're kind of obsessed with players have immediate success. And what he's doing is happening a little bit under the radar outside of fantasy circles and of course outside of Baltimore. So I'm curious if either of you saw any names, either Henderson or otherwise out of the others receiving votes and thought, oh, that's interesting. I didn't think that player necessarily had a case.

That group included Bryce Harper, Jose Ramirez, Adli Rutchman, Corey Seeger and Zach Wheeler. So Gunnar Henderson surprised me. The Orioles came to St. Louis in early May and you know, I don't keep up with a ton of American League baseball. I don't watch a lot of it. I'm primarily focused on the National League, but obviously you're aware of who Gunnar Henderson is and watching him play for three days. I was just kind of in awe of the range at shortstop, what he could do at the plate. And I was like, this kid is, I don't think baseball is talking about him enough. And I wondered if he was on a bigger market team, would he be a bigger star?

Because he is legit. He is, I was just in awe the whole time. So I was glad to see his name on there. I was like, am I being dramatic about this guy? Is he as good as I think he is? Because my eye test is telling me he's pretty solid. So to see him up there, I was like, oh, being dramatic about this guy? Is he as good as I think he is? Because my eye test is telling me he's pretty solid. So to see him up there, I was like, oh, that's encouraging. I was also glad to see Jose Ramirez getting some love.

We talk a lot about the top quality third baseman in baseball, you think Manny Machado, Noel Narnado. And I'm guilty of this as well. I always leave Jose Ramirez off that list when he deserves to be on there, just as much as those other two. So those two I was surprised in a good way to see, they were mirrors off that list when he deserves to be on there just as much as those other two. So those two I was surprised in a good way to see, but I will say when I asked this question

to my group of players, I did preface it with, this might be the dumbest question that I'll ask you. And keep in mind guys, the bar is low. The bar is low for me. I said, who's the best player in baseball? And almost every single one of them rolled their eyes and was like, seriously, that's how we're starting this. And I was like, it's going to get better. The questions get better. But it was like over overwhelmingly Ohtani. Yeah, I guess I was a little surprised that Mike Trout was still on the list.

So I, um, I don't know. It's, uh, it's one of those things where it's almost emeritus. Yeah. He gets it. He gets it for work, uh, in the past rather than right now. Or they're saying like once he is on the field, he's still the best player in baseball, which is still a passable idea. But I think, you know, he's going to drop further and further on that list in coming lists and it's going to be hard to take Otani off the top for a while because next year he's going to probably pitch again.

And so even if his bat takes any step back, you're gonna be adding the two together. We may change the question I feel like next year to who is the best player in baseball other than Shohei Otani. And then we'll have some brave soul come back and say, I don't think Otani is the best player. And that will be in the notable blurb underneath the question.

Exactly. Yeah, the only other takeaway I had was Otani versus Acuna as the top two is the defense doesn't really seem to matter or resonate as far as being the best player in baseball in the eyes of the league, which is a little bit of a surprise. Gunner is a good defender, of course.

So I mean, Adley Rutschen being being on the list, I think, you know, speaks to it a little bit. You don't really have any first baseman on this list. You know, Shohei, I think that Shohei also gets a little credit for pitching even when he's not pitching. Right. Because people know he can do it and he will. If he's a D.H. without the ability to pitch doing this, there might have been more of a split at the top. Yeah, but I mean, he's not pitching, but everyone's seeing just how elite that is.

So he gets the benefit of the doubt. Like, yeah, he's not pitching this year, but he's pitched plenty of years before and he's going to pitch again. So still the best player. Yeah, right. Like Mike Trout's not the best player in baseball this year, but we've seen what he can do when he's on the field. He can still be the best player in baseball. So that's, you know, I think that's that's why I tiny got credit for pitching, even though, yeah, you're right.

Thought it was interesting that only one pitcher got a mention and it was Zach Wheeler. It wasn't Garrett Cole. Does that have to be split out in the future? And I realize Otani breaks that question anyway. I think so. You know, the position players are really obsessed with this. And even pitchers, you know, agree to it often is the idea of posting every day. And, you know, there's no pitcher that posts every day, at least in the game. They're doing a lot of work and they face as many batters as batters face at the plate.

There's many plate appearances affected by starting pitcher. So they should be theoretically as valuable, but there's something about baseball, and we're gonna get to this later, 162 games. It's really long. It matters, it matters guys. Having a guy be out there every day, usually your leader is a position player, you know, in the clubhouse, usually your best player.

That's why the size is important to split from the MVP. Yeah, that to me is the nudge towards maybe having the who's the best pitcher in the game question. And if that were the case, I think Zach Wheeler would have won potentially because he got a vote in this. And I think we'd get a lot of if we did split that out, obviously we didn't get a coal vote. If we did split out the pitch pitcher, my guess would be we'd have a lot of recency bias and there wouldn't be as much credit for years past and it would be like, you know,

who's the best pitcher right now? It'd be a lot of like the best pitcher this year as opposed to like over the last five years. That's like the pitching discourse in general though. I mean, were we talking about Rangers Suarez ever before this year? No, just in passing like, oh yeah, he could be a guy and now he's fantastic. Oh, and now I'm getting like death threats for like not having him in my top 10. Exactly.

And it's like who would have thought not to just credit Ranger at all, but who would have thought he'd be like the leader in the National League for the best starter. And guys that have, you know, look at Alec Manoa, for just an example, first guy that came to mind. We were really high on him a couple of years ago and now it's been a really unfortunate fall. So I think players, or pitchers over players always play into that recency bias a little bit more.

Yeah. Alec Manoa miked up during the All-Star game a couple of summers ago with one of the more fun All-Star game moments of recent years. And it's been a bumpy couple of years in the time since then. But yeah, it changes fast. Pictures just they burn so bright, but they burn out very quickly in many cases. So I think that'd be a constantly moving target. You wouldn't have the the career achievement award type players getting that sort of recognition if you split it down to who's the best pitcher in the game.

Because I think there is more of an immediacy to that question. The next question, I think maybe the most interesting question in the entire survey is who is the most overrated player in the game? I didn't think there'd be a clear cut winner in this one, but Jazz Chisholm Jr. got over 20% of the votes. And the other names on the list make a lot of sense for a variety of different reasons. Anthony Rendon came in second, big contract,

he's been hurt, I get that. Carlos Correa had a couple of big contracts as well, gets a lot of attention, maybe hasn't performed at the level we've expected. Some Astros hate still. Yeah, yeah, look a little further on the list. Alex Bregman got to mention he at least made the chart as far as being a top 10 in the overrated question that Tim Anderson pops on there. Jack Flaherty actually ended up on there. Peter Lonzo, Cody Bellinger, Ellie De La Cruz from the younger players bucket as well. And then many Machado and Blake Snell rounding this one out.

I think this is kind of interesting, though, because. All right. So like what what do they not like about Jazz Chisholm Junior internally? Katie, like I look at Jazz Chisholm and I think he's a good player. I don't think I've ever thought he was a superstar. And I don't really know anybody who thought he was going to get to that level. He's an infielder turned center fielder. So he's made a defensive adjustment and he's had a lot of injuries, too. So I just that that one kind of caught me off guard a little bit as a kind of clear

pick from 20 percent of people that participated. I'm not surprised to see his name on the list. I just I'm surprised he's first. Yeah, that's exactly how I felt. I think Jazz has always been a little bit polarizing because of how he plays the game, which I personally have no problem with, but this is not a survey about how I feel.

This is a survey about how MLB players feel. He's flashy, right? And he plays for a lower market club. I can't really personally, I don't think you can pay me to watch my Emmy Marlins game right now. And I think it's the way that he acts without necessarily having the performative stats

to back it up. There's still some of that like old guard rule, like you can have Acuna do what he does because he's Acuna, where I think like there's a standard that players for whatever reason, feel like Jazz hasn't hit yet. I mean, I've watched Marlins games obviously, and I think Jazz is a good player.

But I think the MLB players believe that there's a certain standard, and he acts like he's above where he really is. To me, whatever, play the game however you wanna play, but it was interesting to me that he had so, like he had the bulk of the votes, because this also was a question, at least in my opinion,

that a lot of guys didn't wanna answer. They were like, no, that's tough. This is a hard game. We don't really necessarily put someone under the bus. But when I'm going through the names, it seems to me like that's the overwhelming theme. It's a lot of guys that are good players, but have they lived up to their own hype?

And how do they act? Do they promote their own hype more than they should based on how they played, how they performed? So that's what I think the concern there is for, or the rationale, the rationale is for there, for jazz. Yeah, it's a tough one. I mean, you know, some of this feels like, you know, he's an uppity young black man, you know?

There's, I would, I just, I, I'm sorry to see like any sort of, uh, racial undertones here, but you know, there are a lot of white people on this list too. So it's not, it's not just that, but there's something about how, you know, you know, they say in other parts of the survey, Oh, we're totally cool with, you know, the celebrations, right? And then they pick as the number one guy, a guy who celebrates, you know, the number one overrated guy is the guy who celebrates, but no, I'm cool with celebrations. You know, like it's a little bit, uh, it's kind of like speaking out of two corners of

your mouth, uh, kind of deal. Um, I also just, the question is, is, is a tough one and I, I, this is going to come up a couple of times for me and it's not, I'm not critiquing the athletic. I'm not critiquing the questions, or the people that came up with them. There's always, there's just an inherent, like I'm a psychology major and we often studied the test, the questions themselves, and what was the psychology of the question. And when you ask a question like this without providing the framework, then you're not, then you're just leaving them to kind of sift through personal

experience. Oh, he celebrated a lot that one time, but you know, I looked at his stats and he was hitting 206. You know, it's like, you know, when you don't tell them what the rating is, you know, you're asking them what's underrated overrated, but you're not telling them what the rating is. You know, you ask him what's underrated, overrated, but you're not telling him what the rating is. I think that on the rundown, I'm sorry to steal this from you, but you said, is it because he was on the cover

of, you know, MLB the show? Right, is it jealousy? Is it extra push on him from marketing perspective to try and grow baseball? I guess, are players really that jealous about it? There's only one person on the cover of that game every year. So the other players on the cover didn't all get votes. They didn't put Vladdy.

They didn't put Vladdy on this list. I don't think, although he may got one vote. There's a lot of people who got one vote. Like, Jordan Alvarez got a vote. And I'm just like, what are you thinking? That was my next question for both of you. He might be underrated if there's a, if there's a rated aspect. Julio Rodriguez there. Really? Juan Soto.

How are people rated? Who's overrated? Who's underrated? How's Jordan Alvarez overrated? Like he doesn't have any national ad campaigns. He's never been on the cover of MLB the show. Like do, unless people are saying, even if people said he was the best hitter in baseball, I wouldn't say he was overrated. I mean, that's what I think he's in the conversation for the top three hitters in baseball.

I mean, he's huge, has power to all fields, a great eye and makes contact. I mean, it's just weird for me. Some of these make sense. Like you knew Rendon was gonna be up there just because he's so polarizing. But who rates him highly? Right, but that's the thing.

Don't we all agree that nobody likes him? So was it who's the most overrated or like who do we not like the most? Or like who gets- That's it. It's a popularity thing. The way that I got this was like, who are you tired of hearing about the most? Yeah. That's where I think like

there could be some mix up. Like what player are you so tired about or so tired of hearing about? Who are you just so over when you like go on Twitter or you open up your athletic app because every MLB player subscribes the athletic obviously that actually makes sense for Pete Alonso because He's in the big market and they're talking about extensions and who will trade for Pete Alonso like I don't think everyone's saying Pete Alonso is like the best hitter in baseball So if they maybe he's on MLB network, they, you know, that's

on a lot, right? It is. And every clubhouse MLB network is on. So maybe it's just like, who are you tired of? Yeah. So they're talking about Pete Alonzo extensions or Pete Alonzo trade offers or whatever. Then maybe they're just like, why are they talking about Pete Alonzo again? You know, he's totally overrated. I wonder how many of these guys were like watching MLB network before they did the survey and like just saw an interview and was like, why are they talking about this

guy and then just put him up there? That kind of recency bias. Yeah, I need to get on MLB network and more again. Yeah, I get on there. I keep looking at this and the quote, there's a quote in the survey, someone talking about Juan Soto and I'm wondering who this player is. It could be a spite pick to be honest. I feel like all he does is walk and hit singles and he doesn't hit for power.

Like he's portrayed also not a good fielder. Okay. I'll agree with the very last part. Yeah. He's not a good fielder, but we are talking about a player Juan Soto, much like you're on Alvarez, is an elite hitter. Right? If you look at the last four seasons, start from 2021 through today, sort by WRC+, Aaron Judge, Yoron Alvarez, Mike Trout, Juan Soto, Shohei Otani. That's your top five. Those are your five best hitters in baseball by that particular metric. So all he does is hit singles.

He's tied for 12th actually in home runs during that same span. He's got 108. So no, it's not all he does is hit singles. I don't understand where that one came from at all. I don't understand where the Yordan Alvarez one came from at all because those guys seem very appropriately rated. And I think as you know, said you're an Alvarez almost feels a little overlooked by some folks because they've had other stars on that team.

They had other guys in that core that came up and were winning before he got there. And you know, the Bregman Astros and the L2 Astros and the Korea Astros and the Springer Astros like those are all the guys you think of first. I think Alvarez and Kyle Tucker, to an extent, are almost underrated in the national conversations. I bet you some of this is how much the other players pay. Some of it is pay. That's one thing that players are really well aware of is how much other players are paid.

It's publicly available in a way that is actually kind of surprising. Not a lot of other industries where you can go and like, let me see all the CEOs that are paid in tech, you know? But if you think about it that way, then I think you get a little bit more juice out of, you know, the Craya big contract, like you said, and the Bregman big contract,

and the Manny Machado big contract. It's not, it's a little slightly different reasons for everyone, you know? Because, you know, some of these guys are very demonstrative on the field and some aren't, you know. So it's it's a that's a that's I think that's there's a little bit of a failure in the question. But if you ask, it's one of those things I get to ask all the time, overrated, underrated. And it's just there's who's doing the rating.

It's also a mean word in general, right? You could say someone's overrated and not actually say they're bad, but it implies that you don't think they're that good. Yeah. It's like the easiest way to start a fight. Yeah. Oh my God. I think U2 is overrated.

People are like DVR, you don't like U2? Like, I didn't say that. I think they're fine. I just don't think they're a top five band. I don't want to fight anybody. It's just it's things like that, right? People just have an immediate reaction to it. Oh my god. That's me with war on drugs, dude. Oh my god That's just like it's fine Fair enough Hello guys, I'm Iowa Kimmel erie host the Athletic FC podcast and I'm here to tell

you about a mouth-watering summer of international football. The Copa America and European Championships kick off in mid-June and we're going to be covering both tournaments every step of the way. With the World Cup in the US just two years away, the Copa America is the US men's national team's chance to prove they can really compete with heavyweights like Brazil and Argentina, while England will be hoping to go one better than their agonising Euros final defeat last time out. So join me and the Athletics unrivaled team of football reporters Monday to Friday as we take you inside the biggest stories from the tournaments

with more than a sprinkle of transfer talk on top as well. Just search the Athletic FC podcast wherever you get your podcast from. Let's move on to this next prompt. This was a good way to present this. Anthony Rendon was right. The season is too long. And I thought, okay, that's a fair statement. Like where do players stand?

No, this is why I have a problem with the question again. I like this question. To be fair, you know, I had a lot of problems with the questions. And again, you know, everyone, I don't want to slide anyone, but I did, preface almost every interview with, I did not write these questions, but I'm going to read them to you. So when I, when I ask you these, like, again, the bar's low. We know this, but like, I personally did not come up

with these questions. It's a bad question because they don't like Anthony Rendon. Yes. Yeah, yeah, you're baiting them. Excuse the answer. You're baiting them. You're not going to answer based on the season. Don't frame it around Rendon.

You're going to answer based on how you feel about Anthony Rendon. You're going to be like, oh, I can't stand that guy. Get out of here. He was on the overrated list. Right. They didn't know that when was on the overrated list. You know what I'm saying? They didn't know that when they asked the overrated question, though. I think a better question might be multiple choice, although there

there you wouldn't get as many sort of interesting answers, maybe. But like, what's an ideal length of the season? And maybe you can give them context, because obviously some of them didn't know it used to be 154. I know. I promise you the majority of like the young players did not know it was 154. I mean, there's even a lot of the guys think it's 160 still. And I'm like, it's actually never been 160. But OK, they don't even know what it is now.

They don't even know because because they're like you, they don't know what day it is. They just keep playing. We just show up every day. We just show up. Show up. You look at the board. Are you in the lineup? Yep. I'm playing today. Got it. But there's one question day. We just show up. Show up, you look at the board, are you in the lineup? Yep, I'm playing today. Got it. But there's one question there,

we've been doing this for 150 years and they're like, no. No, but close. It was 154 for like half of the baseball's existence. I don't know, 154 is actually kind of an entertaining idea for me because it's a little bit closer to Japan where like you can almost just have one off day a week. These are people. They should have a weekend.

I mean, it's like, I know it's one day weekend, but like they should have a weekend. They should have one day that they can put their feet up and know it. I think it would be good for pitcher injuries. It would give you a chance to reset a lot, especially with your relievers, right? You'd have that natural break built in where back to backs and three in a rows would, you know, you at least have something right there on the schedule that you could look forward to. I wonder if teams would actually push a little harder on some guys knowing that they have that built in off day though.

But that's part of the game, you guys. That's part of the game. Not to be, again, the 75-year-old get off my lawn kind of guy, but look, it's 162. That's what I think of when I think of Katie. Yeah, thank you. I'm a traditionalist. I don't like change. I can admit that I have been wrong before, barely, but I have been wrong. But it's just what makes baseball special I think and what really earns the respect from other players and I think we saw some of the answers in this, was that it's 162, it's a grind. You're exhausted by July, and surprise,

you still have two more months to go, and it builds up a lot of respect. Also, bullpen management, how you rest your relievers, how you rest your starters, how you rest everyone. That's part of the game too. Do I think spring training is a little long? Yes, yes, but we're also seeing like take Blake Snell, for example, he didn't have a full spring. Jordan Montgomery didn't have a full spring.

So it's maybe necessary for pitchers, but there's a, there's numbers between zero spring training. Yeah. You can't go zero and six and I call it even. Um, so I think if we're going to cut something off the season, maybe we don't need seven weeks of spring training. Um, but I don't know. I'm on team 162. I like 154, but in Japan, I think they take Sundays off, which makes that would not make sense in America.

If you're going to take, if you're going to take a day off, give me Saturday because you can do a lot of damage on a one day weekend. Trust me, you can, but I, that can't be a Sunday. Uh, I was thinking with my, uh, pocket book and I was going to say like Tuesdays because I know personally Thursdays. Thursdays. Thursdays.

But I know like if you're going to games, especially if you go to games in Oakland, you know that Tuesdays are the least attended days. Yeah, that's fair. I guess no no sports league is ever going to be like, you know what, we're not going to play on Saturdays. It would make my life better. But I would love to go to a concert Friday night. Or, you know.

There goes my pipe dream. You're gonna get Thursdays. That's like the most work-friendly day off you could ever get. And I think you're more likely to get Monday or Tuesday. That's the way it would go. 31.6% still agreed, despite being on the same side as Anthony Rendon.

So that makes me think that the answer might be closer to 50-50 if they were just prompted without Anthony Rendon's name as part of it. I want to know who the sicko was that wanted to make the season longer. Yeah, exile them. They're gone. Who wants to play a 200 game season? Not long enough. Of all the players in the league and all the players you've covered, who can you imagine

being the player that would say make the season longer and be serious about it too? It wasn't him, it wasn't him, but Nolan Arnotto for sure. Dude would play every single day for the rest of his life if he could. No, one thing that was also interesting to me was the one answer about pay, but I would take that apart from it. Yes, see, they get paid in sort of per game increments. But you could just divide the same salary over fewer games. Yeah, right. The per game rate would just go up.

I think that's very reasonable. Math, not like the best board for a lot of players. All right. So the next question I thought was pretty interesting Not like the best board for a lot of players. All right, so the next question I thought was pretty interesting was, where would you want to play in a vacuum? Which team would you sign with if contracts, state taxes and rosters were not a factor? Which to me is another way of almost asking,

where are you from or where would you like to live? Well, they're not a lot of players from LA. So LA and New York get a little bit of that. I'd love to live in LA or New York. Right. I mean, if you've got money, I think they're fantastic places to live. But Atlanta came away as the winner, which I thought was kind of interesting, but also speaks to a lot of players probably growing up in the southeast. Right. And Atlanta's footprint is big because of, you know,

the Marlins and Rays being relatively new franchises and not a lot of other teams in that region, right? We've talked about Nashville and Charlotte as expansion opportunities for a long time, but that whole corner of the country can largely be Braves fans. So if you think about where big league players born in America come from, a large concentration of them come from the area that would be the Braves main geographic fan base. I think that to me fully explained why Atlanta came out on top of that question. Yeah, that would make sense because when I was reading this question just from personal opinion, I looked at it like, where would I most want to live with a team that you know, performs relatively well? And I was looking at Southern California and that's

it's not because I'm from California. Okay. But maybe it is inherently maybe I don't know. Because it just seems like pretty sweet. Yeah. Who doesn't want to live in San Diego? Who does this? Are you kidding me? Especially if taxes aren't like a factor in this. If you can live in San Diego without the California taxes, I'm there. Just tell me when. The worst day in San Diego is like 57 and foggy. Yeah, it's beautiful. And guess what?

You still have the beach, so everything's fine. The beach isn't going anywhere. But I was actually a little bit surprised to see Texas until DVR's theory of where are they from? Because obviously Texas is like a powerhouse in turning out baseball talent. So I think a comment that they like the stadium. Yeah, that made me think that, you know, playing in the stadium, the facilities within the stadium, the field, how it feels to actually be on the field and play there is a lot different than the aesthetics of what the stadium looks like

from the outside. You have to think about the way players experience a stadium compared to the way fans do. They come in a bus with their headphones on. They're not like looking at it. They're not looking at overhead shots of these things. No, no. So I think that's one of those things. Well, yeah, it's a new ballpark and it probably has fantastic amenities

for the players. I haven't taken a tour of it, but I would assume that's a big part of it too. But it was surprising given how much that stadium got ripped on by the baseball media for its resemblance to a Costco and its exterior that players, at least one player pointed out as a really nice, beautiful ballpark to play in. You know, so seen in that light, the Cubs, you know, Wrigley and Fenway being at the top makes sense from like standing on the field and enjoying the history of the place and you know how it looks. But from what I gather, it's not that those aren't great places to train.

And you know, the clubhouses aren't necessarily that nice because it's a really old building and you're kind of stuck with old footprints. Yeah your facilities are really limited I mean I can only speak to the visiting side of both of those stadiums but those are the two smallest visiting clubhouses I've been in and it's not close like when you go into Wrigley Field and I love Wrigley Field like probably my love Wrigley Field, like probably my favorite ballpark in baseball, but you go up what can only be described as 8,000 stairs to get to the clubhouse.

And then if you're a player, you got to go down those same stairs into like the tiniest batting cages. I don't even know where the weight room is because I can't see it because the hallway is so narrow. I've had to do like recordings next to the bathroom because that's the only place you can stand where there's like room. It's just not an ideal training purpose.

So I would imagine the home side's a little bit better, but you used to go to stadiums like Detroit and that was a really nice visiting team setup. So yeah, maybe that does play into it, but I will say one team that I, or one city that I was, not city, one organization I was surprised to not see on here, given how much I hear about how everyone wants to play

in St. Louis, was the Cardinals, who got one vote. One vote. So maybe this is not the baseball mecca that ownership claims that it is, because every year I get, you know, players want to come to St. Louis and maybe they did, but if you're basing this just on like logistics, I don't know anyone that really wants to come to Missouri for fun. And I think that list pretty much reflected that. I know it says rosters are not a factor, but look at this through the lens of winning percentage over the last five years.

And a lot of good teams are at the top. I don't know, I just think it's like that thing where people talk about chemistry, winning solves chemistry. It's like there's a certain amount of these places are going to look nicer, you know, because, you know, those teams are winning and I don't know, like, I know that you're supposed to take that out of it, but I kind of feel like some of these places, like if we just come off the Giants winning, you know, those three World Series, like we did this in 2014 and we did tell them, don't worry about rosters. Do you think the Giants would be a little bit higher? Maybe. Probably. did tell them, don't worry about rosters. Do you think the Giants would be a little bit higher?

Maybe. Probably. There's also a connection to one of their questions that was in this. It's about a bad organization. Like which organizations have bad reputations among players? This is a list you really don't want to be on

because there's an extra cost to it, right? If you are a team that's on this list and you're trying to get better in free agency and you have players with similar offers to go to your team or go to a competitor, well, this might be the thing that kind of breaks you in the end, right? The A's, not surprisingly, were the runaway winner. They had 40 votes out of 79 responses, so more than half. white socks were second angels third Rockies fourth and you get the Mets up there in the top five and Then pirates Marlins raised Padres Yankees Nationals Royals all receiving multiple votes and Yankees

I saw one of the comments was they have a lot of rules. So I guess it just depends on Facial hair., someone with a beard. Someone didn't want to shave, so they decided to give the Yankees the bad reputation. But what's interesting for me is when I look at that group, there are player development questions in those top four especially, the A's, the White Sox, the Angels, and the Rockies. A lot of questions about whether or not you could go there and get better. And that's not the only factor that would have been considered for a question like this. Do they pay players? What's the stadium like?

It's a little bit of a catch all. But you really are fighting against the current when players don't want to play in your organization. Yeah. If I was going to pick the four teams who would top out on this list, I would have picked those. I would have chosen those exact four in that exact order. This to me wasn't really a surprise to see Oakland running away. I think it was similar to the Otani question or the who's the best player question, right?

And the White Sox, I mean, especially given their dysfunction over the last two years. And this is before their disastrous 2024 season start right because most of these things took place at during spring training so those two just kind of based off their prior history made a lot of sense the Rockies haven't been good and literally forever and the Angels no matter despite having two of the best baseball players to ever grace this planet had more dysfunction than I've ever seen in an organization so to me this is kind of like no surprises here. This top four has rightfully earned their place.

Yeah, there's some good comments that point to stuff that's really important. I mean, Sacramento for three years, I've been to that ballpark before. They can't find something better. That's going to be rough. And in fact, it might be so rough. I've heard the word contraction Bandied about I don't think that that would ever come around but do you remember the whole Expos thing where like baseball bought the Expos like

maybe there's a there's an outcome here where baseball buys the A's and Figure something out for them, you know, because the team that's the leadership team that there is really seems to screw it up. There's definitely a player development thing on the Angels. I've heard they treat their minor leaguers like crap. And the organization is just pretty poorly run and pretty cheap. That is the organization that didn't pay any of their minor leaguers or any of their coaches, their whole player development staff any money during COVID shutdowns.

They were, I think the only one that was that severe in just cutting off their entire minor league system the way that they did. And so- Who does that? Who does that in the middle of a pandemic when you're like a, nevermind. I just. When it doesn't matter, yeah, when you could just do it. Yeah.

This is the cause of doing that. And so what it does is it puts you in the market of having to overpay. That happens a lot. For all of your free agents. In that organization. Yeah, and then people will only take, only go to Anaheim if they can't get

an equal deal somewhere else. And I think that's been kind of the case, even on the level of like a Tyler Anderson who didn't get a huge deal, but he probably got a much better deal from the angels than he got from somewhere else because otherwise he probably would have gone somewhere else. Yeah. I think Sam Blum had a story about the angels last month about how all the angels have a bunch of veterans who thought their careers were over, but Hey, no, we'll go play for, for Anaheim because they'll give us a spot. I think that's pretty much

Yeah. Oh, here we go. Okay, it's it's an offer. I think that's how the angels that should be their little slogan. We're here It's a baseball team. I thought again, I know I'm local here at San Francisco Giants got one Mention maybe You know, they've they've talked a lot here that taxes are a big part of it. So I wonder if it's like this organization has a good reputation. They like the park, you know, it seems like a good place. They want to win. They're spending money. But it's maybe it's just mostly taxes. I mean, that's that was Brian Sabian's idea was that it was hard to land the biggest free agents because of California state taxes.

You also have to convince people that aren't from California or from the Bay Area, like you and I that it's not as bad as people make it seem. I mean, look, Logan Web has been doing a good job of like, good for him. It's fine here, dude. I mean, there's certainly just like every every other city, streets you would like to avoid and you need to be aware. But like, I mean, I'm like that in every city I go to.

San Francisco is still beautiful. It's still gorgeous. It's not the like crime-infested city that is sinking in trash that it's sometimes portrayed to be. That is about, you know, good luck explaining that to people or baseball players who are not from the area because they're not they're not gonna believe you So I mean I love San Francisco, you know, ever since I came out here for school I wanted to come back and I've come back and I've lived here and I love it

But you know one thing is true is also when you go to LA. Do you go to skid row? You know, like are like Dodger players like walking along skid row like no So like, you know, you know where they're going to live when they're in L.A. They're not going to go to the bad parts. Like, you know, you know where they're going to live when they come to San Francisco. They're not going to be in the Tenderloin. No, they're going to they're going to Pack Heights. All right. Take a picture of the Tenderloin and be like, oh, it's so bad there.

Yes, yes, we do have like a toilet neighborhood. It's yeah. Yeah, that's fine. I think that's a big part of why they checked in on that list. And I agree with both of you been there. It's it seems like most typical cities seems fine. The other team that goes in this this combination of questions that kind of falls into this empty space. The Tigers were among the teams that did not receive

a single vote in the where would you play, like just eliminating all factors. I thought that was kind of interesting just because A's, Rockies, White Sox, we expect to be there. Royals make a little more sense when you consider, not a lot of players come from that part of the country. It's a smaller market team, older stadium.

There's a lot of like simple factors there. The Tigers do have a relatively new, beautiful ballpark, and it's a franchise with rich history. I'm surprised they didn't pick up even a single vote. I think a lot of that's perception about the city of Detroit, right? Perception doesn't often match reality. They also have one vote for bad reputation,

so there may be a sort of player development aspect to it. And that could be a carryover effect from the previous front office regime, because it seemed like as an organization organization they were falling into the dead zone of not getting good enough with young talent to rebuild, not putting themselves in a position to get up and spend again. Previous generations in the Illich family, Mike Illich was willing to spend. We don't know if his children will spend on payroll quite the same way once they get better again

So maybe there's some questions about that that permeate that too But that's one of those teams that actually could be on the rise and I think will be more competitive for free agents Eventually than you might think just based on how people respond to that question What I throw this one at you the players were nearly split on taking a pause for the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles. And there's a lot to unpack there as far as, you know, would you cut games, would you start the season earlier? Would you run the season longer?

How would you how would you do it logistically? But there was one comment in particular from a player that I was really surprised to see. And it was to be honest, we would be too good. And we'd destroy and win everything. Talking about the US team. And I thought, really? Are you sure? Like, I know we're good.

We're very good. We'd be very competitive. But destroy and win everything is a pretty big, pretty big flag to put out there. That's that's the most American baseball thing I've ever heard. I like I'm actually kind of convinced that'd be their slogan. There's another comment that kind of speaks to that, where it says, if the Dominican feels a good roster and Venezuela, that'd be pretty cool. So, you know, there's there's the idea that no, we aren't necessarily going to destroy

the US wasn't necessarily destroying that. I think it'd be fun. The WBC is a ton of fun. You know, gold medals are awesome. I think, you know, the people that have done it for basketball, I think have found it really rewarding. And they have actually been the teams that have kind of run the gap. Like they've I think they've won almost every gold medal.

So, you know, I think this would be competitive. It really, really interesting. I think the logistics are the problem. And I think you hear a lot of that in terms of injuries. The one comment that I that stuck out for me was, what if we did away with the All-Star game? For that year, yeah, because I think it would, it would effectively be the showcase

of Major League Baseball talent in the middle of the summer, just on a broader stage, beyond the global stage. From a fan and analyst perspective, I'm all for that. Yeah, you're worried about injuries, but we worry about injuries for the world baseball classic too. Like that's always gonna be a problem. You can't make that go away.

So I think you open it up, let players opt in. I'd love to see every country participating have as many players as possible who wanna be there and be on that roster. I think it'd be a blast to have that in the middle of the season. Even if we did lose like eight regular season games that year, it's going to take a few weeks to do this. I think you could make that trade off for one year.

Maybe that's baseball's way of floating the one hundred and fifty four game season and seeing what kinds of ripple effects that has, because there's a lot of different conversations that come up around shorting the season. And at least that's an event where you've you've got a little more reason to try it. Well, again, I'm thinking through my wallet. I think that most of the owners think through their wallets. And so you take an eight games away from me. What are you giving me?

Yeah. And I would try to sell it like the London games be like, hey, our best players on the world stage. Yeah. You know, making baseball like a legitimate Olympic sport that people are excited to see. And then we get more fans around the world. If there was a way to do it without losing that many games and maybe just starting the season a little bit earlier, making the All-Star rig longer and, and not having the All-Star

game now, what about the money you're taking away from me, All-Star Game City or whatever? One thing we need to do is get rid of these really bunk, this really terrible math that people do where they're like, the All-Star Game was worth $250 million to Atlanta when they took it away. Oh, I'm sorry. It's not worth anything that close to that. It's one game. And like half the people that go are from the place.

You know, they're like, they're like, everybody comes down. And even if 50,000 people came and got a hotel room, is that really millions and millions of dollars? And those 50 people, those 50,000 people that came, if you would instead had a concert where 25,000 people came, you have to think about things in terms of like choices that players, people make. It's people have a real hard time with this. You we all have limited entertainment budgets, you know? And so if somebody's going to the All-Star Game,

that means they're not going to the movie theaters for like a month, you know? So in terms of money for the city, like it's really often not as much as people think. Yeah, you're shifting a large portion of your budget to one event, just a once in a lifetime opportunity. The All-Star Games in my city, I'll go ahead and I'll skip my vacation this year

and stay home and go to the All-Star Game. Right. And if you look at, you can look at tax document, like look at tax income, you know, for those cities and you find that it's nowhere close to the estimates that they say. So, but on the other hand, like when you are the commissioner and you say, Dallas, Texas gets the 20 hand, like when you are the commissioner and you say Dallas, Texas

gets the 2026 All-Star game or whatever, you want them to feel like, oh, they just gave us something really big, you know? So then when you say in 2028, we'll just won't have an All-Star game, then somebody's going to be mad about that. Always going to be someone mad. Everyone's always mad. We're all always mad about something. It's always mad. We're all always mad about something.

It's a choice. Because we'll just slag on the All-Star game, like, nonstop. How terrible the All-Star game is. What the hell? What is this? This is so terrible. Who likes the All-Star game?

And then you take it away and be like, wait, how can you take away the All-Star game? You can't cancel this thing that we all complain about. What are we going to complain about? We're going to complain about a competitive global tournament where the game actually gets to grow in front of audiences that don't always get to watch it. Oh, wait, that's a great idea.

Yeah, that's the one I circled. I was like, that one would be really cool if they could figure it out. I hope so. They got a little time. 2028, only four years away. Got a little bit too this year too. Have they already awarded the 2028 All-Star game? No, they've gone through 2026. It's it's going back to Atlanta in 25.

And then it's Citizens Bank in 26. And then this year, they'll announce 2027, right? They do that at the All-Star game. So they have to go to Oakland to figure this out. Sacramento. We're bringing baseball back to Oakland this out. Coming to Oakland. Sacramento. We're bringing baseball back to Oakland for an all-star game. Yeah. No, 0% chance.

That would be hilarious. Everybody descending on this tiny little park. The lies of the bathroom could wrap around the stadium twice. The first concern you had was the lines. Just the rest of the room. The lines of the bathroom. Wouldn't have thought about that. Could have thought about 100 things

before I would have got to that. Last question for you is, this is the analytics question. Have analytics helped your career, hurt your career, or made no difference to your career? 76% said they've helped, 10.8% said no difference, 8.6% both helped and hurt. And 3.2% said hurt. I bet these bars would look a lot different

if this question had been asked 10 years ago. I'd love to see how much different the response would have been in 2014 compared to 2024. But this one sort of fell in line with my expectations overall. Was there anything in the responses that made your ears perk up? I would be interested. Did you get like, I don't know if we're allowed to.

Did you get any anything that helped? Yeah, I got a mixed bag, but my led to my theory that the younger this is just me in my own little mind, the younger players are really, really into this and the older players, because I didn't just do all Cardinals players, but Cardinals are a little bit of an older team and I feel like the older teams,

like the seasoned vets, might've had a little harder time buying into this because it just so drastically changed the game for them and the way that they were brought up and how they trained and it basically was a complete 180 from how they did their everyday job. I think the younger players grew up with this kind of stuff so they're like, oh yeah, I'm all in. I'm buying into all this information where the older players were like, I don't care

about your numbers. We already discussed this. Baseball players, math, not really a good thing. But I do think that it's been a little bit, it took a little bit more time for some of these players to come around. And now I'm seeing like the overwhelming majority is okay with it. But I can certainly understand why like the older veterans

who have been in the game for a decade or so, were hesitant to adopt this method when it first came out. I was also wondering if sort of hitter pitcher split, because I feel like pitchers are 100% in for the most part. Even the older school, I take what I take from it, whereas hitters sometimes feel like are questioning if most of the analytics help the pitchers. Sure.

That's one thing that I have noticed, hit or hit or hit or pitchers split. There's going to be some of that coming out with the piece with jason stark about the current environment. Some of that there's actually a little bit of truth to it i think you know i do think that analytics favors run prevention. talk to are like, yeah, you know, sweat and the younger people too. And, you know, then, you know, like a season like I just talked to George Springer for like 20 minutes and he is not anti analytics. He came from the Astros, but he was saying things like. Can we stop putting my stats like all of our stats up on the scoreboard?

Isn't that weird when I go to the ballpark and I'm looking up? I mean, it's nice for me because I can like immediately know if a player is doing well or not. But you get like their their advanced stats. I mean, the Cardinals have the breakdown of the like the horizontal break of each pitch on the scoreboard, which I think is cool if I'm like a baseball nerd. But like, do players want their stats immediately up on the scoreboard like that? Do you want to see what their OPS plus is or their launch angle and stuff like that? Or can it be overwhelming in the heat of the moment? That's a good question.

We had a little back and forth where he was like, just take them all down. His point was basically like, don't put my batting average up there without context because you don't know, the batting average is not telling you how good I'm doing. It's basically the same. You don't know how my process is. You also don't have the context of the league. You know, you may have people being like, 300 is good batting average, you know,

it's an attainable good batting average. The people, good players hit 300. Well, the league batting average is like 239 right now. So 300 is actually like elite. Like that's the, like, there's three or four guys, you know, who do that as opposed to like, you know, it's 10 or 15. So he was like, you're not really getting the full,

and I was like, well, I'm a nerd. Why don't you put more stuff on there? Like your OPS plus or, you know, your barrel rate or stuff that talks to that process. And he was like, well, that is too much and it already is too much. Um, and so that's, that encapsulates a little bit of the veteran and the hitter, you know, mindset a little bit is, is how is this stuff helping me hit the like 98 Monarch fastball with 20 inches a right? Yeah. Well, the quote that jumped out to me was the it's helped everyone.

So it's made the game very hard. Everyone's better. So even though maybe I'm better, everyone around me is better. It makes it harder in a sense that that's that makes sense. Exactly what's bringing us saying. Ty France said to me, the game is so hard right now. There are edges, but there's no it seems like there's no weakness to take advantage of in the player pool anymore.

Like everybody is good at something or they're at least doing the thing that they're best at. There's no 92 with a soft breaking ball like. Yeah. Dial's turned all the way up right now, and I think analytics is a big part of that studying the game in a different way and Just finding ways to maximize players ability. I think that's the way so that's why it's overwhelmingly I think helping people but it is how to agree with that making it much more difficult We are going to go. Thank you again to Katie Wu for joining us today

You can find Katie on Twitter at KatieJWu. Read her great stuff on the Cardinals at TheAthletic. TheAthletic.com slash rates and barrels will get you a subscription. You can find Eno on Twitter at EnoSaris. You can find me at Derek VanRiper. That's going to do it for this episode of Rates and Barrels. We're back with you on Wednesday. Thanks for listening. Hello guys, I'm Iowa Kimwilere, host of the Athletic FC podcast, and I'm here to tell

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